A Midday Date (2)
He had been kidnapped at the crack of dawn.
Dragged into a carriage by the arm without so much as a word of warning, hauled off toward an unknown destination—Najin decided the situation more than qualified as a kidnapping.
Kidnapped? Please. If you put your mind to it, you could smash this carriage and escape in a few seconds.
It still counts as a kidnapping.
Oh, sure. A guy half a step from Sword Seeker, getting himself kidnapped. Right.
Hard to argue with that.
Najin let out a short breath and sank back into the carriage seat. Strictly speaking it was a kidnapping, but he hadn’t exactly refused, either.
“……”
He stared silently across from him.
There sat Dieta, fidgeting her knees and ducking her head a little. She had managed to drag him into the carriage; what came after that, she clearly had not planned.
“So where is this carriage headed?”
“W-what?”
“I asked where we’re going.”
Dieta’s head snapped up. She smoothed a hand over her chest and finally spoke.
“The capital of the Empire. Camelot.”
“……Camelot?”
“Yeah. I have business there. I can bring one more person along besides my guardian knight, so… why not come with me?”
The capital of the Empire. Camelot.
Najin nodded slowly.
“But why me?”
“……You’re seriously asking?”
Dieta sighed and crossed her arms.
“Sir Kaufman, who shared the same mission, died in the middle of it. Rumors are flying everywhere—black mage workshops discovered, executioners from the Church paying visits. Do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“……Is that so?”
“Yes, it is. Why are you looking at me like that’s some surprise? Of course I was worried.”
When he thought about it, it made sense.
He was the promotional face of her merchant company, receiving every kind of support. If that model died in some far-off place, the losses would be anything but small.
That was the thought running through his head when Dieta narrowed her eyes and glared at him.
“You’re thinking it right now, aren’t you? ‘I’m the model—if I die, the company takes a hit.’ That exact thought.”
“How did you know?”
“I’m going to lose my mind. Yes, fine. You’re right. The company would take a hit. But you think that’s the only reason?”
Dieta let out a long, drawn-out sigh, as if she had expected nothing less. Then she looked at him with something almost like hurt.
“We’re not just business partners, you know.”
“What does that mean?”
“……I won’t ask for more than that, but we’re friends at least, right? I thought we were at least that much.”
He hadn’t caught the first part, but the rest came through clearly enough. Najin fell silent. Friend. An unfamiliar word. Growing up in the underground city of Atman, he had never had anything like a friend.
Rivals.
People who needed killing.
Or one-sided relationships—that was most of what he knew. Atman had been full of people who either admired him, envied him, or feared him. The closest things to real relationships he had were Ivan, Oppen, and Old Man Hogel……
Those feel more like adults or mentors than friends.
So what did a friend even feel like?
What’s the definition of a friend?
What……?
Najin rubbed his chin and put the question to Merlin. She sounded incredulous. He tilted his head slightly, thinking hard. Friend. Friend.
“Don’t tell me you’re sitting there trying to figure out what a friend is.”
“……I’ve never had one. Do you have friends, Dieta?”
“That’s the kind of question that could come off as extremely rude. But if you want an answer—of course I……”
Dieta fell silent too.
On the surface the word was simple. You talk a little, shake hands, hang around together—that’s a friend, right? But the kind of friend Dieta meant was different.
Someone you could speak to with your guard down.
Someone you could face without the mask.
In that sense, she had never had one either. Her own childhood had been anything but ordinary. If the man sitting across from her denied they were friends, then she would have to admit she had never made a single friend in her life.
“……I don’t have any either.”
Dieta suddenly laughed.
A man and a woman nearly twenty years old, sitting here having a serious discussion about the definition of friendship. The absurdity of it. Still smiling faintly, she said,
“I thought we were friends. If you didn’t think so, that stings a little……”
She held out her hand to him.
“So how about we start being friends from now on?”
“What exactly does a friend do?”
“Just…… someone you can talk to openly. Someone who’s easy to be around, someone you can dump your thoughts on without worrying.”
“Then……”
Taking her hand, Najin thought it over.
It was true—he could relax a little around Dieta. He didn’t know why, but he could.
“That does sound about right. Friends.”
“Right?”
As she shook his hand, Dieta thought to herself.
In her eyes Najin had always been perfect, competent in every way. Swordsmanship, disguise, escape, social maneuvering, combat—there was nothing he lacked as a mercenary.
But watching him wrestle so earnestly, so awkwardly, with the word “friend”……
It felt like discovering a new side of him. Refreshing. Socially, he was clearly out of his depth. Well—he had always given the impression of a man who lived staring at a wall.
So he’s weak in this area, huh……?
Dieta swallowed dryly.
Reading people and using that knowledge was a merchant’s essential skill. Even if she had never made a single friend, this was her specialty. Greedy light filled her eyes as she looked at him.
If I work him over just right……
Maybe I can make him look only at me.
Friends meant dropping by every day to say hello, eating meals together, and then after that……
“Friends.”
While Dieta was turning those thoughts over, Najin suddenly spoke. A quiet murmur, but more than enough to catch her attention. She looked up and saw his face.
Najin was smiling faintly.
As if the sound of the word itself pleased him.
In that instant Dieta’s mind went completely blank. She whipped her head toward the window, pressed a hand hard against her racing heart, and forced her breathing back under control.
……In human relationships—
No. In relationships between men and women—wasn’t it said that the one who falls first loses? By that measure she had already marched onto the battlefield with the loser’s brand stamped on her forehead. Flipping loser and winner would take more than ordinary resolve.
This is not going to be an easy fight.
So, for now—start with friends.
They said beginning was half the battle. She had begun, so she was practically already there. Halfway there was a long way. So today she would take it easy and……
“……”
Dieta’s guardian knight, Pasion.
Riding ahead, he glanced back once and shook his head. He had no idea what conversation had taken place inside, but one look at his master’s ears, flushed bright red all the way to the tips, told him everything he needed to know.
Hang in there, Lady Dieta.
He muttered the encouragement to himself and urged his horse on.
2.
Reaching the capital of the Empire took a considerable amount of time.
Even while the carriage rolled, Najin kept his senses stretched to their limit, scanning every direction—an intensity that struck Dieta as odd. He looked like a man being hunted, cornered.
Eyes sharp and open.
A hand that never left the hilt of his sword.
Exactly the way he had looked the first time she saw him.
The Najin who had been slumped in that alleyway that day had worn the same expression. She almost brought it up, then decided it was still too soon and held her tongue.
“No matter who it is.”
Several days later, as they drew near the capital of the Empire—Camelot—Dieta looked at him and spoke.
“No one will be able to harm you in the imperial capital. Spill blood by attacking someone in the middle of the Imperial City, and he will never simply look the other way.”
“He?”
“Sir Gerd. The Sword Master.”
Advice to let his guard down.
Najin blinked. Only then did he realize she had noticed how he had been watching every direction. He managed a clumsy smile.
“……Is it that obvious?”
“You keep your hand on the hilt even when we’re talking. Even when you sleep. How could it not be obvious?”
Dieta smiled bitterly.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
With that she stretched out her arm and pointed ahead.
“We’ve arrived.”
Where she pointed stood a massive gate.
“At the capital of the Empire. Camelot.”
Camelot, capital of the Briton Empire.
Beyond the vast walls that encircled the city, the view that opened was the heart of Briton itself—an empire woven into myth. The moment he stepped down from the carriage, the suddenly expanded world made Najin suck in a sharp breath.
The place called the center of the world.
Looking up, the eye met towers soaring high enough to pierce the sky. Seven magic towers ringed the imperial capital, yet none of them cast a shadow. The specially treated walls of the towers let sunlight pass through in translucent sheets, so that the sun’s light fell evenly over every corner of the empire.
A vast city with no end in sight.
At its center, at its highest point, stood the Imperial Palace. A colossal palace sheathed in platinum. Raise your eyes to its peak and you would find a hole punched in the sky above it.
The center of the empire and the center of the world.
A hole open at its exact middle.
Even in broad daylight, that hole between the blue sky was dyed the black of night. Yet it was not dark. Because a star hung beyond the opening.
A constellation of thirteen stars.
The first emperor of the empire.
The rightful master of Briton.
The great hero, the Knight King—Arthur’s star.
Arthur’s star shone at the heart of the empire without regard for night or day. Overwhelmed by the entire vista, Najin could only let out a short breath of wonder.
It’s been a long time. This place, too.
Looking out over Camelot through Najin’s eyes, Merlin gave a bitter smile. The Camelot she had known had changed so completely.
Briton had not originally been an empire.
Camelot had never been this vast, either.
In the beginning Briton had been little more than a refuge Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table had built for people who had lost their countries. The place now called the capital had been nothing but an old fortress.
They grew it a great deal.
That Briton had, at some point, become an empire that commanded the continent, and the old fortress of Camelot had become a capital crowned by seven magic towers. Carrying complicated feelings, Merlin let out a long breath.
“This way.”
And Dieta took Najin by the arm and pulled him along.
The place she led him to was a street lined with buildings of every kind. Each building flew a flag bearing the crest of a house or the symbol of some particular group.
And among those buildings
stood one that bore the crest of the Dieta Merchant Company. Smaller and shabbier than the rest, a plain structure that so far carried only its flag.
Thud.
Dieta stopped in front of it and turned to Najin. She was smiling—the smile of someone who was thoroughly pleased with the building itself.
“This is our company’s building.”
She planted her footprint on the ground before it.
Opening the door, she gestured for him to follow.
Najin walked after her.
The interior was still empty of furniture and bleak. Dust lingered in places where the cleaning had not yet finished. Creaking stair by creaking stair, he followed Dieta up to the top floor.
The top floor was only the third, but still.
At the highest point of the building Dieta threw the window wide open. She beckoned him to her side. Tap-tap—she rapped the windowsill until he gave in and stood beside her.
“This is Camelot’s Merchant Street. It doesn’t even compare to the merchant street in Cambria, does it?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Just planting a single plot here is enough to be called a successful merchant company. See those flags? The Loctid Merchant Company, the Cornellhild Merchant Company…… the biggest names on the continent. Companies so huge that mine can’t even begin to compare right now.”
Buildings decked out in flags and crests,
piled high toward the sky.
Pointing them out, Dieta said,
“Still—we’re the first company that started in the City of Opportunity and managed to put up a building in the imperial capital. I am the first. That’s a massive achievement, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Yes. Right now it’s a shabby little place, but.”
She turned her head and looked at Najin.
Looking at him, she smiled.
“Later I’m going to swallow that building whole.”
She laughed as she pointed at the tallest building on the street, the one flying the Cornellhild family flag.
“Just like I did in Cambria—I’m going to devour this entire street and make it mine……”
And after that, over there.
She stretched her finger straight toward the Imperial Palace. Around the palace rose five towers shaped like watchtowers. People called them the Five Pillars of the Empire.
The Five Pillars of the Empire.
Towers granted to the five greatest figures in the empire after the emperor himself—the ones who upheld the realm. Najin knew that one of those towers belonged to Sword Master Gerd.
“Becoming the master of one of those towers.”
Pointing at them, Dieta said,
“That’s my goal. A goal I only became able to dream of because of you, Najin.”
Her eyes as she gazed at the towers gleamed a vivid yellow. The eyes of a snake that swallowed gold coins—Dieta’s eyes.
“Dragging you all the way to the imperial capital wasn’t for any grand reason. I just wanted to look at it with you. Well? It looks impossibly hard, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t look easy.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
Dieta grinned.
“Your goal is right over there, isn’t it?”
She jerked her chin. Even without a finger pointing, Najin knew exactly what she meant. He looked up at the star hanging above the peak of the Imperial Palace.
The star fixed at the highest place.
The greatest star—Arthur’s constellation.
Looking at it, Najin suddenly smiled. The road ahead felt very long indeed.
“We’ve got a long way to go.”
“Same for me. I have to tear down every one of those flags before I can climb up there. Just thinking about it makes me sigh already.”
Dieta turned around. Leaning her back against the window frame, she brushed her hair back.
“So.”
She reached out and seized Najin by the collar.
With a firm yank she pulled him in. Her fingers were slender, her strength something he could have shaken off at any moment—yet he let himself be drawn in without resistance.
At that close distance their eyes met. Close enough that each other’s breath almost touched.
Sunset-colored eyes and vivid yellow eyes faced one another. Looking into Najin’s gaze—which had regained a little of its life—Dieta spoke in a near whisper.
“Don’t be too impatient. If you are, even the things that should work out won’t.”