Daily Life There
Stemwind. The great hall of the de Jevitz lord's keep.
When humanity first raised this castle, the vast hall had been meant for a king and his vassals. The chair upon the dais, now used as the lord's seat, had once held the First King—the last hope of the human kingdom in that age. The hall had long since lost its original purpose. It served for banquets now, and the tables stood laid at all hours.
Today a hush had settled over a chamber once filled with warm light, the extravagant scent of wine, and the songs of musicians. The banquet tables had been shoved into the corners, and the northern notables who usually claimed a seat apiece and preened themselves kept their eyes on the floor, as if they themselves had committed some crime.
"There's a chill in the air." Helga murmured it as she drew back her hood.
Among the people of this place, every word bound up with cold was used as a curse. Demons, after all, lived only where it was cold.
From the seat of honor beside the lord's chair—the place reserved for House de Jevitz—I answered her in a bored voice.
"Yeah. A demon really is on her way."
I flicked a glance toward my stepmother, Aileen de Jevitz, seated at the far end opposite the family seats.
Aileen de Jevitz. Her house name had been Haenrel, and her family was the greatest power in the North after House de Jevitz. In sheer age of lineage they were older than the de Jevitz themselves. Their blood was mixed with the Aria, the original people of the Esteria Continent, and they boasted skin white to the point of pallor and those vivid green eyes.
How a house could carry Aria blood and still claim a history longer than the de Jevitz—and how they could go on standing as a great house even now, when House de Jevitz had become the kings of the North—was nothing but the author fiddling with the setting. I let it go.
What mattered was Aileen de Jevitz. This bitch.
Call up what she had done to me as a child, back when my memories were not yet whole, and my teeth ground. Lock a five-year-old in the stables for three days without a drop of water because he spilled his food. Break his wrist because she didn't like that he was training with the sword. In the twenty-first century that would have been iron bars, no questions asked. Stepmother or not, how could anyone be that empty of sense?
From the moment I reached Sword User, she could no longer lay hands on me. She was still the sort of woman who worked from the shadows and raked at a person's nerves like something unhinged.
"Bjorn, however much you may dislike me, I am your mother." She paid my sharp look no mind at all, and smiled as she spoke. "There are many eyes here. Please do not glare at me so fiercely. I do not mind, but it reflects poorly upon the lord."
"Don't like it? Then get lost."
"......I beg your pardon?"
But I was not the boy I used to be. Back then I had none of my past life's memories, and I was young enough to shrink at the word mother. Not anymore. I had recovered the full twenty-five years of that previous life, and I had climbed to the lower rank of Sword Expert. I had no reason to be kind to a woman whetting a blade for my neck.
"What manner of speech is that..."
"Goddamn. Listen to her whimper. Little fly." I waved an arm as if swatting one and brushed her words aside.
Aileen's face went scarlet, but with so many eyes on her she looked ready to swallow it. I had nothing to lose. She had plenty. I had no reason to linger in this house, and no need to look good in it. She did. And so it was Aileen who was thrown. She seemed to be having a hard time adjusting to a version of me that had changed overnight.
In the middle of that war of nerves between me and my stepmother, the great hall's central doors swung wide. A tremor of mana swept over my body.
The one who came through was a man. A massive frame, an inverted triangle of a body his clothes could not conceal. Pronounced cheekbones, a powerfully built jaw, a hooked nose set in harsh harmony on an angular face, and sanpaku eyes lifted inside a narrow gaze. As fierce as the impression he made, a black cloak of grey feathers billowed on the mana rippling around him.
The Oxburg Empire, upon Esteria, the continent where ash fell. Margrave who guarded the Empire's North. Head of House de Jevitz, the house of eternal light. King of the North, heir to the blood of the First King, and commander of the Human Lighthouse Order. Lord of the star fortress Stemwind. A Sword Master—beneath one, and above all the rest. The Crouching Griffin.
And my father. Canniel de Jevitz.
He kept his mouth shut tight and walked slowly toward the lord's seat. With every step he took through the hall, the space itself seemed to warp. When he passed beside me and sat in the lord's chair, my breath caught hard in my throat.
"Human Lighthouse Order! Bring in the criminal!" The moment Canniel de Jevitz took the seat, Helga shouted.
A man bound in ropes was dragged in and forced to his knees at the center of the hall. Even at a distance, the sour brine-stink of the sea knotted my brow. Canniel stared at the prisoner with eyes gone cold.
"State the charge."
"This man crossed the Red Line without authorization." The knight of the Human Lighthouse Order who had hauled him in recited the charge.
The Red Line. A boundary drawn with perfect clarity where warm currents and cold currents met upon the northern sea, marked by the difference in their temperatures. The Species Boundary, dividing demon waters from human waters. To have crossed the Red Line was to say he might have met demons.
The murmuring around us swelled.
"He crossed the Red Line?!"
"A man in league with demons!"
"Blasphemer! His head should come off at once!"
The whispers spread into shouts. Then Canniel opened the mouth he had kept shut.
"Enough."
Mana rolled out like a wave and spread through the hall. Under that crushing weight, the muttering died.
"What is your name."
"Ghk...... My name is...... Hodan. I'm...... a fisherman. Lived a long time...... in Lighthouse Village."
Canniel asked. The prisoner answered.
"Why did you cross the Red Line."
"We struck drift ice...... and the ship was smashed. Everyone but me...... the crew all died...... and I was the only one left, clinging to a plank...... swept off by the waves."
"And that is how you crossed."
"Yes. That's right."
Canniel rose from the lord's seat and walked toward the prisoner.
"What did you see."
"In the drift ice...... I saw demons. I saw their legion. They've finished getting ready to come down!" Foam gathered at the prisoner's mouth as he screamed it. "Demons! The demons are coming! They'll kill my family...... they'll kill everyone!"
He was already out of his mind. He had lost his ship, drifted on the sea, witnessed demons, been seized by the Human Lighthouse Order, and been dragged all the way to Stemwind as a criminal. He had passed the limit of what a human mind could bear.
Canniel drew his sword.
An instant. The fisherman's head fell first. The blood fountained a beat later. Not a single drop clung to the blade. If there was skill beyond skill in this world, this was it.
I stared at my father, Canniel. Someday I would have to fight a monster like that.
"Helga. Is it true that drift ice is coming down from beyond the Red Line."
"Yes. The pieces are not large, but of late the Human Lighthouse Order has been sighting drift ice at regular intervals during patrol voyages."
"Are there other signs."
"The Red Line is growing faint."
Drift ice floating down into human waters. The Red Line, born where warm current struck cold, thinning away. That meant the North was growing colder. Demons, who lived only in the cold, might be able to come south. And in truth, they were already preparing to.
Ten years from now, when the ash would cover even the northern sky entire and not a single thread of sunlight would fall—riding the frozen northern sea, trailing the stench of rot, the demons would set foot in Lighthouse Village, the northernmost point of the Esteria Continent.
"Summon every lord of the North to Stemwind!"
Canniel's order sent the vassals hurrying to carry word to their own lords. And so the curtain rose on the Last Council, the meeting that would decide the North's crossroads.
But that was a story for later. Set it aside.
What mattered now was the political offensive already surging at me inside this Stemwind.
"Is it not about time we gave Ai a seat in this hall?"
A brief gap. Aileen did not miss it, and she struck. Moments ago a fisherman who had crossed the Red Line by accident had had his throat opened and died; he was still twitching, still spraying blood, right before her eyes. She carried on as if it were any ordinary day.
Ai was the son she had borne. A boy who had only just turned twelve. To drag him into the affairs of the house was a declaration: she meant to shove that child into the fight for succession against me. A knife at my throat.
"What does a boy of twelve know."
"Bjorn has been helping with the house's affairs since he was twelve as well. Ai ought to do the same."
"Ai is Ai, and Bjorn is Bjorn. I hear he has been tormenting Marjorie through the night of late, on the pretext of studying magic. Let him attend to that."
In truth Aileen was using Ai to hound Marjorie—the court wizard of the Imperial Magic Corps, under the Emperor's direct command—so she could spin a thread to the imperial house. But that was beside the point.
When Canniel would not bend, Aileen turned the point on me. "What do you think, Bjorn? Would it not be pleasant to have another pair of hands?"
Say yes here, and I was a fool grinning while a knife came for my own neck. Say no, and I was trash for slighting my half-brother. Watching her pick the fight as if it cost her nothing, irritation surged up hot.
"Ai himself doesn't seem interested in any of that. He's still young. Wouldn't it be better, for now, to let him do what he wants?"
You fucking bitch. Stop tormenting a twelve-year-old and leave him alone!
I swallowed what I actually wanted to say. If Canniel had not been sitting there, I would have cursed under my breath as if talking to myself. Father or not, I did not have the nerve for that kind of bravado in front of a Sword Master. My life was worth more than anything.
"Then you are saying I am forcing Ai?" Aileen seized the tail of my words and came in like a starving hyena.
"If you're not, then you're not." I shrugged. If she said she wasn't, what was I supposed to do about it?
I had tossed the line out only to scrape at her. The answer came at once.
"Bjorn, you have been speaking very harshly to me of late. Rolling about with the knights while you learn the sword seems to have coarsened your mouth. However outstanding your talent, this mother cannot stand by and watch you grow crooked."
"Strange. I've learned more from you than I ever did from Helga. Doesn't that make you the problem?"
"Mud does not need a long time to stain white cloth. You are still young, Bjorn. You simply do not understand."
"Are you saying the Lighthouse Order is mud? Then Father would be commander of the mud. Aileen, mind your words."
My political footing might be poor just now. My mouth was not. Go on—grab another loose thread. The more you do this with a fourteen-year-old, the uglier you get. I gave Aileen a bright little smile.
"Have the people around you praised you until you have grown arrogant?"
At Canniel's intervention, I put my tongue straight back where it belonged.
"The demons are coming south. Is this the hour to shake the family with idle talk?"
For a look turned on his own son, the eyes were cold. Under that gaze driving down at me, chill enough to raise the hair on my neck, my school days came back. Family, my ass. What kind of father looks at his son like that?
But he was too strong to defy, and I was not yet ready to stand against him. For now, I had to bow my head.
"......I'm sorry."
"There is much to be done. Come with me."
Canniel led me out of the great hall. I followed that massive back, out beyond Stemwind.