The City of Water, Erchia - 03
"I've rented our lodgings and put up a silence barrier, so we shouldn't have any trouble."
"Right. Thanks."
Belita sat in the chair, shivering so violently it looked as if she were freezing and simply couldn't stop. The tremor was almost funny, and wretched in the same breath.
The way she looked at Livia, especially, was the way one looked at a monster. It was understandable. She had tried so desperately to kill her, and yet Livia had come back alive — and even with her wounds still severe, she looked strong. Anyone would have been afraid.
But if that was how it was going to be, she never should have laid a hand on her in the first place.
"I'll say this now, Belita."
"Yes!"
It was a booming reply, the kind a soldier might bark when snapping to attention.
"No matter how young you were when this journey started, fifteen is legally an adult. You were fifteen when you tried to execute me and kill me. Being young doesn't mean you get to be protected."
"I-I know that!"
That was almost certainly Livia speaking to herself as well. She had thought Belita was younger than she was, but the girl had turned out even younger than expected, and it had thrown her. For a moment, her judgment had nearly wavered. So while warning Belita, Livia was lashing herself with the same words. Don't let emotion decide this.
Even for the same crime, whether an adult or a child had committed it carried considerable weight in a trial. When a young woman was accused of a serious crime, people tended to think, Wait — does this even make sense?, and looked all the more carefully into the facts and the motive. It wasn't that they neglected other cases. It was simply that children rarely had motives one could readily understand, so the investigation only grew more exhaustive.
"So I'm going to ask you questions from here on. Answer them properly."
"I-I don't know that much myself... Lord Alex handled most of the assassination on his own. Lady Rayna and I just... followed. Th-that isn't to say following along means we're innocent. It's just, how do I put it... we barely have any information at all..."
"I figured as much."
Rayna hadn't known much either, in truth. Even if they had somehow broken through the Geas and gotten her to talk, they probably wouldn't have heard a coherent story. At best, they would have learned what Belita was saying now — that Alex had led nearly all of it.
And if I were Alex, I would have passed information to Rayna, who couldn't betray me because of the Geas, before I ever told Belita a thing. She was young and frail, and Alex would certainly have seen her that way. He was likely treating her as little more than a doll that did as it was told.
"Belita, I think you've got the wrong idea. I honestly never expected to pry any information about Alex out of you."
"I-is that so... It's true Lord Alex never taught me anything... I-I think that's an accurate assessment."
"What I want to ask is a continuation of the earlier question. ...Why did you do it?"
"......"
Silence again. The fact that she went quiet here meant this was the one thing that absolutely must not come to light. For someone so soaked in terror she could barely move to still refuse to speak on this point — that meant this was the important part. A vital point.
Should I push a little harder? Seeing Belita's near-regenerative healing magic a moment ago had shaken my certainty somewhat, but there was no harm in asking.
"Belita."
"Yes?"
"Would it be all right if we confirmed the Saintess Stigma?"
"...What? Huh? What?"
"If you're uncomfortable with a man doing it, Livia will."
"Th-that's..."
Belita rose from her seat and stepped back. A clear refusal — the reaction of someone who could not, would not, show it. Even fear lived in her trembling eyes.
So she really doesn't have it.
That would be astonishing. It would mean that without any blessing from the Goddess at all, she was wielding healing magic of that caliber through nothing but her own talent and effort. No wonder the Goddess had said that so many strong people were being born in this era. Livia, Belita — it seemed people with talents so unreasonably powerful they bordered on unfair were appearing, enough that one could almost call it a golden age.
"H-how...?"
"We had an unusual encounter in the Spirit Forest."
"The Spirit Forest?"
"Because of what we met there, we came to suspect that you might not be a true Saintess."
"......"
There was no need to mention that we had met the Goddess herself. Belita's expression froze; she didn't move, only trembled, and that was enough to tell us our hypothesis was correct. Even so, we hadn't confirmed it on her body, nor heard it from her own mouth, and that left things frustratingly incomplete.
"You don't want to show us your body? The stigma can be transferred — you could move it to the back of your hand, if you liked. Or if not that, would you try using a blessing? Try casting one on me, or on Livia."
"......"
"I take it you don't want to do that either."
"That's enough, Lois."
Livia stepped forward.
"You're not a Saintess, are you?"
"Ah, aah... No! I am a Saintess! Just look at this healing magic! No one who isn't a Saintess could use healing magic of this level! Right?!"
"I won't deny that. Honestly, I'm surprised. It seems you've grown even after I left. I ought to call it outrageous skill — I can see why no one ever suspected you."
"So then..."
"Whether you're a Saintess or not doesn't matter."
"...It doesn't matter? It doesn't matter that I'm not a Saintess?"
Hmm. Mentally, she might be in even worse shape than Rayna. I had thought she looked relatively intact compared to Rayna, and that she would be all right — but peel back a single layer, and the inside reeked even worse. Where had I felt this before? I had felt this somewhere. That pathological need to protect something — there was a part of it that overlapped with the Livia of the past.
"That's right. The part that matters to me isn't that. I'm not speaking to Saintess Belita Bright right now. I'm speaking to Belita, who was my comrade."
"......"
"Answer me. Why did you do it?"
"Does my answer even mean anything?"
"I'm the one who decides what it means, not you. The victim wants to hear it. I don't want to listen to some bullshit about you regretting it all on your own and dying a tidy death as a sinner."
"......"
"But don't get the wrong idea. I'm not showing you mercy. You and Alex have to be punished, one way or another. I'm only asking because I can't accept it if I don't know why you did it."
It wasn't a lie, but it was only half the truth. Livia simply wanted to think of them not as the worst kind of villains, but as comrades who had taken a wrong turn. She wanted their circumstances to be something people could generally understand — something that could be punished within the bounds of the law.
This was a plea wearing the mask of a warning.
Tell me. Please tell me. Please, just tell me. I don't want to cut you down as sinners. I want you to receive a just punishment.
Because if it was Olivia Reinhardt who passed judgment, the method of that punishment was already decided. And Livia did not want to choose that method, so she was hoping, as much as she could, that Belita would answer her honestly here.
"Hm?"
"I-I am a Saintess. I-I'm a Saintess. I have to be a Saintess. So..."
Scratching. Belita kept scratching at the skin around her wrists.
"Hey! What are you—"
"Wait a moment, Livia."
"Huh?"
I moved in quickly, stopped Belita from scratching her wrists, and rolled up her sleeve.
Clean skin. With a Saintess's power, even old scars could be erased without difficulty, so the fact that it was unblemished wasn't strange in itself. That wasn't what mattered.
"I-it hurts...! Lord Lois!"
"Healing magic isn't omnipotent. There's a reason they tell you to wait for a wound to heal on its own unless it's an emergency."
"It looks fine to me."
"Would you like to touch it?"
"Yeah, uh... All right."
Livia came over and felt around Belita's wrist. Then her eyes went wide.
"What is this? For skin, it's... kind of rough. Something catches. What is that?"
"It's a kind of symptom that appears in people who use healing magic too often. When you apply it frequently, the treated areas grow coarse — like running your fingers over rough stone."
"......"
"And then sensation gradually fades. ...If it's progressed this far, there's no going back. You must not use healing magic on your wrists from now on."
Why had she injured her wrists so badly in the first place? Had she tried to kill herself? No — then why was she still alive? Had some desire to live asserted itself?
No.
Don't tell me.
I carefully drew the dagger at my waist and leveled it at Belita.
"Eek!"
"Lois?"
"I'm going to make a small cut on you now, Belita. Don't heal it."
"Ah, that's..."
I nicked Belita's leg with the dagger. A tiny wound welled with a little blood — and vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Belita hadn't healed it. It looked as if it were regenerating on its own.
"What on earth..."
Livia's eyes went wide with shock, and so did mine.
Did this even make sense? This wasn't healing magic. This was regeneration. Healing magic that had reached the realm of regeneration and true regeneration were not the same thing. They existed on entirely different planes.
"Belita. Don't tell me..."
A simply young Saintess. A girl swept up in the politics of wearing a Saintess's mask. A girl who had committed a crime. It could no longer be summed up that neatly.
"Do you have a Spirit Core in your body?"
There was nothing I could do but ask that question.