A Feast of Nonsense (3)
A magic tower's mana core remembers the mage authorized to control it. The Ten Commandments can consult the records of every mana core that belongs to their lineage.
Put those two facts together, and any mage who has seized a tower without leave can be exposed at any moment. The punishment for unauthorized occupation varies with the duration and the reason, but the heaviest sentence is a subjugation order.
Occupation counts as unauthorized when a change of tower master goes unregistered for more than a month after the succession. Registering the new master with the Orthodox Magic Towers creates no tax obligation toward any higher tower, and so most of the upstart masters who inherit a tower would rather file on time than pay a fine.
"To put it another way: if Hydra Inc. were to occupy every magic tower in Etna City, the Orthodox Magic Towers would inevitably learn of it."
In the original work, White Nameless had hidden her true aim with absolute care, yet she had never once troubled herself to conceal the movements of the organization called Hydra Inc. Her end had been, to some degree, a foregone conclusion from the moment she left her subordinates to manage themselves.
I wanted Carisia's real purpose to stay hidden—from the Orthodox Magic Towers, and from the protagonist Simon, whenever he finally arrived.
"Which is why we will not be merging your tower, Geryones, nor Kaicl's. Not on the surface."
Geryones let out a hollow laugh. I could hear the self-mockery in it: a future mortgaged, a man reduced to a puppet.
"A figurehead, then. Generous enough, if it means I keep my life."
Generous. Sure. Of course it was. By all rights he should have died the moment he picked a fight with Carisia.
I stole a quick look at her face before she could catch me at it. She did not look dissatisfied.
"To all appearances, the three towers will enter a state of tension and go to war with one another…. Ah. Forgive me. An unfortunate choice of words. They will enter a competitive arrangement."
A false war, with Geryones set out in front of it. That, I had reasoned, was why Carisia had taken him alive.
"If we suddenly recruit mercenaries or raise new facilities, no one will think it strange. We will use that cover to reorganize the organization—and, beyond that, Etna City itself."
"Toward something more efficient, and more wholesome."
Put kindly, Ortes's plan was radical. Put unkindly, it sounded like a delusion. An eleventh Commandment—an absurdity on its face. The greatest problem was that no one in the room knew whether the Artificial Decalogue Kaicl was said to have made even existed.
As if giving voice to the directors' doubts, Geryones asked the question.
"A captive who hopes for more than survival is asking for luxury. Even so, I have to ask. A way to find the Artificial Decalogue. No—do you at least know a way to meet Kaicl?"
"Hm? Did I not say? He is inside Mount Etna."
"You want us to send search droids into boiling lava? Or hire water- and ice-attribute mages and advance while we cool the magma as we go?"
"That—"
The words that had been flowing like water cut off all at once. The smile he always wore came apart, leaving something close to a blank face—a look that had no place on the man who was never anything but at ease. Those who had been watching him closely caught the flicker of his gaze toward Carisia.
A moment later Ortes drew that faint smile back across his mouth.
"It is a secret."
Of course it was. There was only one person in the world who could put that man on the back foot.
"Please do not take it to mean that I distrust any of you."
Whatever he had been about to say must have crossed the line Carisia allowed. What method was the president planning to use to draw Kaicl out, that she would hide the plan even from her own directors? And Ortes, the only one let in on it—what, exactly, was he to her?
That the two of them were bound together was certain. How they had met, and how that trust had come to be what it was, lay wrapped in the unknown.
Oh, hell.
I had not actually thought about how we were going to meet him.
I checked Carisia's expression again in a hurry. Still that faint smile. She was in a thoroughly good mood. Which meant she had not yet found any incongruity, or any hole, in the nonsense I had been spinning. Call it a secret, smooth it over, and improvise the rest later.
The meeting ended.
How they would manufacture the tension, and how they would rebuild the organization, was a conversation for after Kaicl was in hand. So the question that closed the meeting was what would happen if they failed to find him.
Carisia did not so much as pause to consider. "What must be done does not change."
Whether that meant they would still make Etna City their foothold and prepare to take the throne even if Ortes's plan failed, or whether it came from a certainty that Ortes could not fail, none of the directors knew.
The meeting that had begun with Carisia's sudden summons ended, in the same fashion, with her order to adjourn. Ortes and Carisia were the last two left in the room. As Arabelle went out, she turned her head just slightly.
Behind Carisia stood Ortes, hands clasped at his back, wearing that faint smile.
He always looks like that. I haven't the faintest idea what he's thinking….
Ortes was thinking:
I want to clock out.
The dearest wish of every working soul.
"Old man."
It had been decided that Geryones would, for the time being, be left in the care of Bertrand's Miners Guild. The two already knew each other, and that would make him easier to keep in hand.
"Your president doesn't imagine the two of us will put our heads together and knife her in the back?"
Bertrand shook his head.
"It means that even if we did, we wouldn't amount to a threat. You charged her yourself. You ought to know better than I do."
Humiliating as it was, Geryones nodded without argument. She had already spent an absurd quantity of mana, and the attack had been an ambush she had not seen coming. Even so, he had failed to land a single telling blow before he was taken.
The slums and the underworld had begun to stir, and he had meant to pull a dangerous rival out by the root before one could grow. The one nearly pulled was himself.
"Well. How did the president fight?"
"You've never fought her, not once? From the talk, she was something fierce. A tyrant who slaughtered the Lernaean Magic Tower alone and ground down every underworld idiot the moment they came at her."
"The Miners Guild doesn't step into brawls like that. Our bodies are our fortune. We do hard labor, so a few of us are strong, and we handle mana stones, so some can work a little magic. That's the whole of it."
Others would think twice before laying a hand on them. By the same token, they could not reach any farther themselves. Self-preservation, not expansion, was the limit of the Miners Guild.
"Ah. So everyone else went belly-down, and you went belly-down with them to watch?"
"That's how you get by. If we can keep digging the earth and living as we always have, that's enough for us. Answer the question. How did she fight?"
"A mad boar?"
He had blurted it on impulse, and yet Geryones felt the words described Carisia's way of fighting exactly.
"The truth is, it wasn't light magic that tore my arms off. She snapped them, one after another, with nothing but strength. She did throw a beam into the arms she'd ripped free and vaporize them."
"Any armament that stuck in your memory?"
"Does she even use a weapon besides the gauntlets?"
"Is that so."
Watching Bertrand nod along, Geryones wondered why an old man with no interest in fighting would dig into such trifles—and then he remembered what Bertrand was.
"Crafty old man. You're thinking of offering a bribe."
Dwarves were known, as a people, for mastery of artifact-craft. Bertrand clearly meant to spend that talent currying favor with the city's new ruler.
"A survival strategy."
His mind had been read, and Bertrand answered as if it were nothing. If a well-chosen gift to those in power was enough to stay alive, then that was the wiser course: an old man's lesson, learned across a long life.
"Then I'll ask one thing myself. What sort of man is this Ortes?"
Hydra's eight directors were the city's hard cases gathered under one roof, and Ortes carried himself, plainly, as their superior.
"Not the air you'd get off some ink-stained clerk who merely has the president at his back."
What had struck him most was Crito's bearing. Use three of his six arms—four, if things went sour—and Geryones could certainly kill the man, but Crito was still a talent of considerable strength. His temper, for its own part, was foul. Bowing his head to the president, Carisia, was one thing. Going that low before Ortes as well?
Bertrand considered. Too much had been done, and too little of it was known, for a few words to hold Ortes.
"First, let me correct one thing you've got wrong. When the Lernaean Magic Tower was wiped out, Carisia was not alone."
"You're saying that man was with her."
"Yes. In every fight over the shape of the underworld, he was at Carisia's side. Stronger than anyone beneath her, and trusted more than anyone. Fair to call him Hydra Inc.'s second, wouldn't you say."
"Then would you explain it to me now?"
The moment the directors were gone, Carisia spun her chair and looked at me.
"Not our true purpose. The reason you fed them that fine-sounding false plan."
Boss. Destroying the Ten Commandments is your purpose. It isn't "ours."