The Existence of Divinity
Helga came toward me with that enormous frame of his buried in a dark cloak of the Lighthouse Order.
"Sniff, sniff. What is that smell? Burning flesh, from somewhere... Is this what you meant by playing with fire?"
I hurriedly hid my right hand.
Jin!!! If someone was coming, you could have said so!
Stolen? What did I steal? The Prime Flame spread her own legs!
Mm-hm. Your Prime Flame is flat on her back under me.
I ignored Jin's feeble attempt to slam into me and offered Helga a greeting.
"You do have a gift for catching me off guard."
"As if I could ever match you at that, young master."
"I heard you went down to Stemwind after the first examination."
The work in Stemwind seemed to be running him ragged. His cheeks had hollowed, and even I found the sight a little pitiful.
"Something came up, and I've only just come back up to Lighthouse Village. I have to wonder if 'senior knight' isn't simply an excuse to work me to death."
"I'll put in a word with my father."
"Hahaha! The joke goes too far! Are you that eager to see my head roll?"
"Now and then."
A sharp, peppery reek of ash lifted from his cloak and found the tip of my nose.
"Ash is still falling on Stemwind, I take it."
"No sign of it letting up. The one mercy is that Young Master Aidan has devised a method for mass-producing plate glass. Refine the process a little further, and we'll be able to shut the ash out with glass and farm beneath it."
"...Aidan developed a process for mass-producing plate glass?"
"You hadn't heard?"
"Right. How would I have?"
Because I was the one who had developed it. Aidan, with a temperament like his, was not the sort to steal what wasn't his. This had Canniel de Jevitz's hand all over it. So that was how Stemwind was being run these days.
I did my best to hide the irritation rising at this long-missed news from home.
"Stemwind is in an uproar. The Commander called a council, and every house head worth the name in the North is gathering there."
"A pity. There'll be no shortage of spectacles."
"Would you go down, even now?"
"I'll pass. No need to add another act to the show."
I clawed this breathing room out of the mess with my own hands. Crawl back into hell and throw it away?
Helga let out a dry little laugh at my answer.
"Ah, that's right. The Holy Cross Knights have come to Lothric Village. It seems they're only now investigating that dungeon you discovered."
"Those pious bastards do deserve credit for how heavy their asses are. When do they say the reward gets paid?"
"They look into the dungeon's scale, the danger, that sort of thing, calculate it, and then pay. Past their prime or not, they are still a knight order under the Papacy's direct command. They won't take the money and run."
"You were furious as fire when I found the dungeon. Funny how pleased you look now that money's on the way."
"That was that, and this is this."
Cooped up in the backcountry, I was glad of news like this. A mind that had been stiffening felt as if it were spinning taut again. But the hour was late, and I still had training left to do, so the talk had to end here.
"You've come a long way. Why not go in and rest?"
"There's still work left. That's why I came to you at this hour. Sir Ragnar wishes to see you."
"Sir Ragnar?"
I raised a brow and turned the question back on Helga.
That old man asked to see me alone?
Whatever the case, I was a candidate, and Ragnar was Lighthouse Master. A private meeting could breed a misunderstanding I didn't need.
"Tell him I'll see him once the entrance examination is finished."
"It's important."
"Which is why I'll hear that important talk later."
Helga said nothing.
"What? Why? What is it?"
They call, and I'm supposed to come running? Since when has rank in the North worked like that?
When I wouldn't so much as snort, Helga changed tactics.
"He says he has something to tell you about the Commander's letter."
"There it is. A fish won't bite until you bait the hook."
Helga's face seemed to say, Yes. Now that's the young master. As he turned to go, he reminded me of something I had forgotten.
"Young master. Congratulations on your fifteenth birthday."
Ah. So today was my birthday.
Three years left until Canniel issued me a ticket to the Homeland. Chewing on a restless urgency no one ought to feel on a birthday, I made for the Lighthouse Master's office.
The office had originally been the Human Lighthouse Order's war room. With no demon invasion, there was no longer any reason to hold councils of war, and so the place had been turned to the Lighthouse Master's private use.
"Welcome, Lord Bjorn de Jevitz."
He rose from his seat to greet me. Years had creased the corners of his eyes, and his scalp was bald in a neat circle, but none of it could soften the sharpness of his face.
"This is the first we've met like this since the day I arrived at Lighthouse Castle, Sir Ragnar."
Even as I offered the greeting, my eyes went first to the operations board, which loomed larger than Ragnar himself. The north of the Esteria Continent and the sea, a long enemy line drawn across them, and the Homeland beyond—every surrounding map had been set, without omission, onto the great board at the center of the chamber.
"Everyone who comes here for the first time loses their eyes to that board."
"Remarkably fine work. Making it must have been a misery."
"No one knows who made it, or when. The deeds of the Lighthouse Masters are never entered in the records."
"That surprises me. Why leave no record?"
"A knight's merit survives only in a bard's song."
He guided me to the table kept for guests.
"A great many knights were moved by the second examination. To sit all three subjects at once... One can only call it House de Jevitz."
"No need to gild it that thick."
"As a swordsman, I offer you my respect."
Ragnar was Sword Expert, mid-rank—the realm where a knight of merely passable talent comes to rest at the end of his life. It was fair to say he had given his entire life to the sword. To a man like that, I, who had reached Sword Expert, mid-rank, while still a boy, must have seemed all the more worthy of awe.
"Those who have been calling the talk of Lord Bjorn an exaggeration will not be so free with their tongues after this."
"You weren't free with yours, I hope."
"Even if I was, I no longer doubt your talent, young master."
"So. Why did you ask to see me?"
"Because of that talent."
I looked at Ragnar with an expression that asked what on earth he was talking about. He came to the point.
"The Human Lighthouse Order is a shield that guards humanity from demons, but we are also vassals who serve the head of House de Jevitz. The Commander's orders are absolute. They cannot be refused, even when they are plainly political."
"What is it you want to say?"
"If I may dare to guess why you applied to the Human Lighthouse Order, you wished to take one step back from the succession struggle underway in Stemwind."
I said nothing.
"My answer is that you cannot."
Ragnar showed me a torn scrap of a letter. It was unmistakably my father Canniel de Jevitz's.
Spare no effort to ensure that nothing disrupts the account of Bjorn de Jevitz's entrance examination for the Human Lighthouse Order.
I read the single line and let out a short laugh.
The account.
In plainer words, erase the very fact that I had sat the Human Lighthouse Order's entrance examination.
Canniel de Jevitz has only one objective: the stability of the North. Understand that, and his conduct becomes intelligible.
To protect the Northern March, the Oxburg Empire's only vassal realm, he must shut out the imperial house, which never stops looking for a chance to seize the North. I, with imperial blood in my veins, am a troublesome son to him. If I inherited the house and became margrave, the imperial house would gain a pretext to come sniffing around. And yet he cannot casually break the North's ancient custom of succession by the eldest son. Therefore he has to manufacture grounds to disqualify me.
His leave for me to sit the entrance examination rests on that same design. In the Human Lighthouse Order, even a mere Sword User can be admitted at the head of the list. But if I failed to get in? It would be solid proof that the rumors had been exaggerated, and worse, that I was a liar who had deceived people while possessing no ability at all. That is what Canniel is aiming at. Failing a mere entrance exam would hardly be enough to overturn the shape of the succession, but he means to stack my disqualifications this way, one careful layer at a time.
I, of course, had no intention of sitting still and taking it. Revealing that I was a Sword Expert, in a manner a little extreme and impossible to look away from, had been one form of that resistance. Rumors pass from mouth to mouth. I could not stop every false one from spreading, but at least the men who had seen my skill with their own eyes would refute it.
Canniel's method, though, was baser than I had expected. I had thought he would go no further than interfering so I could not take the top seat. Pettier than I'd imagined.
Canniel de Jevitz. I can hardly contain my admiration for how small you are.
"What you've said leaves me with a question. Why show me this?"
"Because the Human Lighthouse Order are knights before they are vassals. As a man who lives by the sword, I have no wish to make an enemy of you. I ask that you judge the matter for yourself."
"Your words and your actions don't match."
"I mean that I would ask you to understand the position I am in."
In his own way, from the seat he occupied, Ragnar had taken a gamble. The nerve to sit a fifteen-year-old brat—already shoved aside in the fight for the succession—down and say a thing like this was not easily come by. That courage was worth giving its due.
After a moment's thought, I spoke.
"If you truly have no wish to make an enemy of me, then grant me a single request."
"A request? Of what sort...?"
"Nothing grand. You need only carry out what is written in this letter, exactly as it stands."
At that, Ragnar asked again, as if he could not follow.
"You mean..."
"What else? I'm telling you to proceed as originally planned. There is, however, a condition."