Merchants' Street (4)
The Merchants' Street had erupted into chaos.
The defeated knight and his master, the noble Danor, flushed crimson as they jabbed their fingers at Najin, spitting empty talk of justification and rank. Even the crowd gathered in the street knew it for what it was — a loser's thrashing. Noise not worth hearing.
"It's gotten rather loud," Dieta murmured.
She had no desire to listen, and even less to let that noise spoil the moment. Taking Najin's arm as she rose, she leaned in and whispered,
"Shall we make a run for it?"
"Are we allowed to?"
"Cleanup can wait. I'm in a good mood for once — I don't want it ruined."
She might as well have said she refused to think about any of it right now. Najin nodded. He swept a glance over the street, then looked down at Dieta's shoes. Not the kind made for running.
He lowered himself and presented his back.
"…You're going to carry me?"
"You said you wanted to run, didn't you?"
Those shoes wouldn't hold up if she tried to bolt on her own. His tone was so dry it held not a scrap of ulterior motive. After a brief hesitation, Dieta carefully climbed onto his back.
She flinched.
The moment her palm met his back, her shoulders gave a small shiver. She hadn't noticed looking at him, but his back was solid — hard, split muscle pressing through the thin leather of his coat.
"Hold my shoulders, not the coat."
Najin muttered it as he straightened.
The clamor of the crowd, the noble's pointing finger, the defeated knight's snarling — he left it all behind and took a single step forward.
Then — tap.
"Eek…!"
In an instant Dieta's body pitched forward. Najin had dropped low and broken into a run. Afraid she would slip if she clung only to his coat, she locked her arms around his shoulders.
"Any idea where we're going?"
"Anywhere — somewhere without people…!"
She shouted it from his jolting back. Wind rushed past her ears; scenery whipped by. Dieta pressed herself tighter against him.
This is… better than I expected?
She felt like the heroine of a fairy tale. That thought lasted only a moment before reality set in. Fairy tales were fairy tales — a real escape was far less romantic.
"Hic!"
His back kept rocking. Scenery snapped past. Her vision bucked up and down. A Sword Expert's full sprint was more than she could handle.
I'm going to be sick…!
Desperate only to avoid the catastrophe of throwing up on him, Dieta bit down hard on her lip.
"We're here."
Najin stopped.
Somewhere along the way Dieta had given up fighting the motion sickness, closed her eyes, and buried her face against the back of his neck. She lifted her head slowly. Wiping the dampness from his nape with her sleeve, she patted his shoulder.
"P-put me down."
She stood on trembling legs and thumped her chest, drawing slow breaths. Her stomach still rolled, but a deep lungful of air helped.
She looked around.
An open view. A low hill overlooking the City of Opportunity, Cambria, spread out below them. Wide sky, a clean wind — not a bad prospect at all.
There was a place like this in the city?
For someone who lived among the always-crowded Merchants' Street and the central guild, it felt unfamiliar. Probably a hill on the outskirts.
Dieta shot Najin a silent glance. He was looking down over the city without a word — nothing surprising there. For nearly a month she had watched him from behind, and he was, by nature, a quiet man whose face barely changed.
Which was exactly why…
She couldn't forget the smile he had shown a little while ago. A smile that had felt like looking into a mirror. Her lips parted, then she spoke.
"Why pull a stunt like that?"
Najin tilted his head, looking at her as if the question were obvious.
"I told you. It just got under my skin."
"My smile?"
"More precisely — that resigned attitude. I know it too well."
He went on.
"'This is just how they treat me. I've had it so long it doesn't bother me anymore. They want me to get angry, but I never will. I'll just keep smiling…'"
The boy who had always worn a false smile in the underground city muttered,
"That was the smile. That one."
Dieta fell silent.
"I'm fine, really, I don't—"
"'It's just habit, so it doesn't matter' — that's a lie you tell yourself."
Najin cut her off, looking her straight in the eye.
"People who don't know say, Just don't engage. Ignore it and move on. That's all garbage. Anyone can say anything with their mouth."
He gave a short, scornful laugh.
"Once or twice is one thing. Keep it up and it piles on. Forever."
From the age he had first learned to read faces and form thoughts of his own, he had lived that way — head bowed in submission, resigned.
"There's no such thing as someone it doesn't touch. You just leave it there to keep chewing you hollow. So yeah. I didn't like watching it."
He exhaled.
"Maybe it was meddling. I did it because I couldn't stand it. It irritated me looking at you."
"…That's all?"
"Do you need more reasons?"
A trivial reason. And not trivial at all. Dieta narrowed her eyes at the young man in front of her. A faint smile had settled at the corner of his mouth.
"So this is the kind of person you are."
"What are you talking about?"
"I thought you were the quiet type. Thorough. Unemotional. Calculating."
Her eye had not been wrong. What Dieta had seen in him were fragments of the years he had spent as a hunting dog in the underground city — the period when he had clamped down on his feelings and resigned himself out of every desire. Leaving the underground had not erased those fragments; they still clung to him. But they were not his true nature. They were only a mask. At his core, Najin had always been impulsive and emotional.
"I didn't expect someone this spontaneous."
"My real temperament is closer to this side."
Najin huffed a quiet laugh.
"Same as you wear a mask — I wear one too."
Everyone wears a mask. Theirs just happened to be thicker than most, forged to hide unhappy childhoods.
And so—
"We're alike."
Dieta and Najin recognized something of themselves in each other. She let out a long breath and looked down over the vista of Cambria, the City of Opportunity.
A mask, he had said. He was right. She smiled bitterly. She had fled her house branded a cast-off child and never stopped running.
Twenty years.
The mask forged by twenty years of living was thick and hard. Before the head of the house, before her sisters, before the servants — even before her own mother — Dieta had worn a false smile and endured.
A mask built over twenty years did not break easily.
But a little while ago, the young man in front of her had forced a crack in it and looked through. That startled, oddly triumphant expression she had worn without meaning to — that had been her real face.
Dieta breathed out slowly and looked at him. Najin's expression, too, was looser than usual, lighter. That, she thought, must be his true self.
…Arvenia's discarded whore.
Through the gap in the peeled-back mask, facing Najin, the noble's words from earlier circled her ears again.
"…Hey."
"Go ahead."
"Aren't you curious why I'm a cast-off child?"
"Not particularly."
"That was fast."
"I don't see why I need to know that badly."
Najin answered with indifference.
"You seem to want it kept private. Is there any need for me to dig?"
The nameplate he had seen the first time they met — the scratched letters reading Arvenia — had been enough for him to guess. For Dieta, her house was a past she wanted to shed. Then why force the issue? In its way it was consideration, indifference, and a defense mechanism of his own; he had plenty of past he needed to hide as well. To Dieta, though, that very indifference only felt refreshing.
"It's strange, somehow."
"Is it."
The sun was already going down. Najin had promised to escort her until sunset. With the falling light, their noisy little walk was drawing to a close.
"I had fun today."
Dieta said it.
"It wasn't quite what I expected, but… it felt good, for once. Maybe you're right — every so often, charging in like that isn't so bad."
Sunset caught in her hair and made it shine. Standing with the light at her back, she looked at him.
"Hmm."
She worried her lip, then let out a long breath. With that sigh the false smile fell away, the sly, serpentine cast of her face gone — and what remained was Dieta's real face. Unmasked, she looked at Najin.
"I hope we can keep a good relationship going. Ivan — twenty-eight-year-old adventurer."
The identity was almost certainly false. But the smile and the actions he had shown her today had not been. Fully himself, Najin huffed a laugh and held out his hand — not for an escort, but for a handshake.
To Dieta, who had shown her true face, he offered a simple clasp. She carefully took it. Calluses from endless hours with a sword met fingers that still carried the iron scent of gold coins.
"I meant to say this last time and never got the chance."
Still holding her hand, Najin spoke.
"Since I came to the city, you've helped me a great deal. You said it was mutually beneficial, but…"
He knew. Every condition had favored him. Her motives had never been pure goodwill — and still, the help had been real.
"Because of you I found my footing fast, and I climbed the ranks fast."
"That was your own ability—"
"Ability alone doesn't seize opportunity. You gave me that."
Settling in so quickly. Joining the Red-Eye Mercenaries' commission. All of it had come through her.
"I owe you."
So—
"Once. Whenever you need it."
Najin said,
"I'll help you without questions. As long as it doesn't stray too far from what I can live with."
"That's awfully vague."
Dieta laughed under her breath.
She usually hated verbal promises like this. People broke them as if they had never spoken, or twisted their words into a refusal — she had seen it too many times. Ordinarily she would have insisted on a contract, something with clear terms and legal weight.
Today she didn't want to.
The view from the hill pleased her. The cool air pleased her. And more than anything, the open smile on the young man in front of her pleased her.
"No taking it back later."
"I keep the promises I make."
"Berhaigen, knight of House Schulhauser."
A voice rolled across a plaza built in the image of the Round Table from the legends of King Arthur.
"He slaughtered his own lord."
He had broken the precept of absolute loyalty to one's master.
"He murdered his comrades."
By betraying his brothers-in-arms, he had broken the precepts again.
"Every one of those acts was carried out by dishonorable ambush, and the sword he swung held no pride."
A blade without pride. Without honor. A blade swung in violation of every code.
"And last — he colluded with a demon. He seized a relic that sealed a devil and contracted with it for power."
The voice rose higher. Fury rode it as it echoed through the plaza.
"Berhaigen has lost his honor. He discarded his pride. By colluding with a demon he trampled the last will of the King of Knights. Can such a being still be called a knight?"
The answer came at once. The knights gathered in the plaza cried out as one. Absolutely not. He could no longer call himself a knight, nor be called one by any other.
"Berhaigen has defiled the honor and pride of knighthood."
Judgment fell.
"Therefore, we pass sentence upon Berhaigen."
The man standing at the plaza's heart — the most knightly of knights, Godif, head of Atanga — raised his voice.
Those who still kept the old codes. Knights who judged other knights.
Across the plaza, the knights of Atanga struck the Atanga emblem each bore — some on their armor, some on their swords, some on their lances, some on their shields — with their fists.
"Hunt Berhaigen down. Execute him."
Judgment had been rendered, and Atanga moved — to defend honor and pride. In an age when the weight of the word knight had grown endlessly light, they moved to show that there were still lines that must not be crossed.