A Day Off (1)
Carisia had dropped a title on me out of nowhere, and a headache came roaring in right behind it.
Damn it. I could happily steal a paycheck even if all they handed me was an empty lunchbox—and yet the boss had seen fit to order me to actually work.
I could understand being told, after I'd gone to all the trouble of bringing Kaicl in, to have a plan for the future ready and downstairs within five minutes. The false war built around Geryones had been Carisia's scheme, but using Kaicl and the Artificial Decalogue had been my idea. Setting aside, for the moment, that I'd lifted the method from her own doings in the original story.
Hadn't I already spelled out how we'd use the Artificial Decalogue from here on—how we'd dangle ascension in front of the directors like bait and aim their impulses wherever we pleased? I'd gone this far for her, and what came back was extra work. How could she do this to me?
I unloaded every grievance I had on Carisia.
Strictly inside my own head.
Say any of it to the real Carisia and all I'd get in return was more work. She'd put on that lethal smile she saved for me alone and, in the most refined manner imaginable, inform me that when she said jump, I jumped.
I'd better draft a few proposals before I slept. Tomorrow was a holiday. Better to finish everything today, so I wouldn't get hauled in on my day off.
Around midnight, Carisia was reading the report Ortes had sent down the direct line. It concerned how to make use of the space Kaicl had built beneath Mount Etna.
According to his analysis, the place where the Artificial Decalogue was enshrined was a kind of Aether Space—a semi-real domain, the intermediary between the material world and the immaterial. Mages seeking to enter Aether Space usually approached it from the immaterial side. Spiritual connection through meditation was the classic method, and there were two chief reasons physical access from the material world was avoided.
The first was danger. Fail at a spiritual connection and the worst you faced was a few days of rest. A physical connection always carried the possibility of brain death. Even the standard method of material access—a neural-terminal link—was no exception. Catch the wrong firewall, and your brain was cooked on the spot.
The second was accessibility. A spiritual connection needed no equipment at all; meditation in the bare body was enough to reach Aether Space. Physical connection demanded a modified body fitted with neural terminals, and a great deal of additional machinery besides. Ways of bringing an entire body into Aether Space without neural terminals or anything like them were vanishingly rare.
What was ordinarily called a full dive into Aether Space meant a connection in which all five senses could be felt, and neural-terminal links usually fell into that class. The form that went one step further—entering with the body itself—was called Eleusis. For Eleusis to succeed, the Aether Space being entered first had to be extremely solid. It needed a completeness sufficient to overcome the instability of something strung between the real and the unreal.
The structure Kaicl had made was not perfect, but it held a vast quantity of mana, more than enough to offset those shortcomings. It was an Aether Space that used Mount Etna itself as a kind of reserve power source, and it was thanks to that overflowing mana that Ortes and Kaicl had been able to step into it in the flesh.
Ortes's proposal was to remodel the space into a shelter of sorts: a refuge, should all-out war with the White Light Magic Tower see them loose grand magic capable of scouring whole cities. It was a suggestion very like him, forever worrying about Carisia first. Feeling a faint satisfaction, she sent back a short reply.
She had not let go of her dream of manufacturing the largest mana bomb in history.
The short message Carisia sent back was more than enough to seize the base of my skull. Why did this woman love explosions so much?
I'd given every piece of advice a subordinate could give. I was done. Tomorrow was a holiday. I'd been running myself ragged lately; I was going to sleep in for once.
"Look at me."
Aigoo. Boss.
Why are you in my room?
The hour I opened my eyes was the edge of dawn—and a holiday dawn, at that. A suspicious presence in the room had me on full alert, so I lifted my eyelids by the barest fraction. The trouble with this body was that opening my eyes all the way made me see far too much. Even opening and closing them had to be done with care.
What met that carefully secured sliver of vision was a pair of golden eyes, radiant even in the dark.
Carisia.
"Wasn't today a holiday?"
I clutched my throbbing head and looked at her. I'd been ground down in this society of mana inequality for more than a day or two, but a boss barging into an employee's room at dawn on a holiday was not something you saw easily, even in this world.
"And? Do you have plans?"
And? What was that supposed to mean? Had she come in person to hound me because she didn't like the idea of me resting on a holiday? I didn't think I'd done anything lately to earn her displeasure.
"I don't. You ought to rest as well, boss, in accordance with the will of that oh-so-great Archmage King."
What I'd put in my mouth was one of this world's myths: the origin of the calendar the Archmage King was said to have made. To grasp the principles of magic, he had sunk into meditation for ten days, and when he opened his eyes he had mastered the ten mainstream attributes of modern magic, the ones represented by the Ten Commandments. Of those days, the first—when he began—and the tenth—when he finished—were held sacred and made into holidays.
That's right. In this world, a week was ten days. A month was three weeks, which at least made the dates easy to count. But convenience of arithmetic could not reconcile me to the horror of it. Two holidays in a week. Three weeks in a month.
Only six days off in an entire month!
I had no desire to spend a precious holiday with my superior.
"I came to rest, didn't I?"
Carisia sat on the edge of the bed as if to ask what on earth I was talking about. Right beside me. I choked back the sigh that wanted out, lay down again, and squirmed until I'd made room enough for one more person.
"What do you make of the directors?"
She asked it lying on her side.
"…We founded Hydra Inc. last month. The first week of the Month of Light, wasn't it? It's only been a month. How am I supposed to know what's in everyone's heart?"
"By the calendar, that was already thirty days ago. Come on. Talk."
What did she take me for, some clerk in Internal Audit? Eyes closed, I started reciting whatever came to hand. She'd shown up at this hour; surely she wouldn't scold me for an underprepared report.
"Crito's slave-trading business risked drawing the eyes of the other magic towers, so I shut it down in advance. With his personal faction's source of income removed, he's weakened. The city restructuring will need brute strength and mana on the construction side, so assign him there—and use the work to put a collar on him."
Half-asleep, Carisia listened to Ortes's murmur.
In truth, as far as she was concerned, her will was his and his will was hers. There was no need, now, to go back over the future he had already drawn. If she wanted it, he would have it ready.
"Arabelle is shrewd, and Bertrand is steadfast. Neither of them is the sort to cause real trouble. The Miners Guild losing ground is a concern, but recruiting Kaicl has patched that risk for the time being."
And yet she had come all the way to his room.
"Dimedes, the beast tamer, is somewhat dangerous. The magic beasts he keeps hunger for blood. Give him the role of hunting the towers' wanted as cover for Sacred Investigations, and let him spend that appetite."
She had come, quite literally, to rest.
"Taros, out at the mana-waste disposal grounds, isn't much of a threat. He commands the mutants, so the organization's strength is among the better of them, but all he wants is for his own kind to survive, and that isn't hard to look after. Treat them as equals and they'll grow favorable in time."
The one person who could assure her she had not lost her way on the long road of vengeance.
"Noiro the hunter, and Divius, the specialist in illegal body modification—both of them have schemes of their own. For now, though, they're still overawed by your authority, and I haven't seen all the way through them, so I mean to look a little further before I judge."
Listening to Ortes speak of the future as he envisioned it, Carisia could feel certain that she herself was walking the right path.
…No. That isn't it.
It might not be the right path at all. The White Light Magic Tower was closer to a vast nation than to a tower, and when it fell, the aftermath would not spare the innocent among those caught in it.
Even so, this vengeance was the path she wanted.
"The half-spirit Meconion is…"
Only Ortes could give her that certainty. From the moment she escaped the White Light Magic Tower's laboratory until now, he was the one who had stayed at her side and never once named a price.
"Boss?"
"Employer?"
"Carisia?"
"…Honestly. You."
Listening to the voice of the one person with whom she could let her guard down completely, Carisia slipped into an easy sleep.