Chapter 12
Don’t imagine things that don’t matter. Besides, the only reason I came here in the first place was because the commander called for me.
Sylvia shook her head and dragged her thoughts back to their original purpose. Then she hurried over and knocked on the commander’s door. He called for her to come in at once, opening the door himself, and as if he had been watching the sparring match through the window, he strode back to his place and proudly launched into talk about Heston.
“Has the man come into some good fortune? He’s especially quick on his feet today, isn’t he? Wouldn’t you say?”
At the commander’s back, two mages from the Ministry of Magic stood awkwardly. They wore light smiles, making a show of polite interest while plainly keeping their distance.
“He’s the one everyone says is a hero, isn’t he? He certainly looks impressive.”
“Of course. He’s always so diligent with our Appleton.”
Sylvia let their words go in one ear and out the other, trying hard not to look at Heston moving beyond the window.
After a few rounds of pleasant, one-sided praise, the mages carefully asked whether they could take Lady Appleton with them now.
“There’s a bit of trouble with the sky palace,” one of them said.
At once, the Knight Commander seized Sylvia by the shoulder and practically shoved her toward them.
“Ah, of course! Off you go, then!”
From the beginning, the commander had summoned her because the Ministry of Magic had asked to borrow her abilities for a time.
It happened often enough that Sylvia was used to it. She climbed into their carriage and rode with them to the Ministry of Magic. The same mages who had just been fawning all over the commander fell silent in Sylvia’s presence, and before long, the carriage filled with an awkward hush.
Of course, Sylvia understood why the mages found it hard to deal with her.
Born a Posmata—able to read magic circles without effort from the moment she was born—and yet only a Supporter. The only woman in the great House of Appleton who had turned out to be nothing more than a Supporter.
Those labels had always followed her, and they never knew whether they were supposed to treat her like any other Supporter, with the usual disdain, or with the deference any mage instinctively gave the House of Appleton.
In the end, after wavering back and forth, they chose a careful politeness paired with complete indifference.
When she stayed in the capital, the Ministry of Magic summoned her once a month. The same people always came to fetch her, but not once had they ever asked Sylvia for anything directly, or made small talk with her. They always delivered their requests through the knight order.
But by now it was far too late to take offense at that sort of treatment. She was tired of fighting not only this quiet dismissal, but the open disgust people showed her as well.
The mages brought Sylvia to the tower in the north. This was the Astronomical Tower, where one could study and repair up close the countless magic circles that wrapped densely around the sky above the enormous Imperial Palace. The tower rose so high one could strain one’s neck all the way back and still not glimpse its peak. In the old days, it had stood at the very center of the palace grounds, watching over the Imperial Palace like a guardian of bone and stone, but after the Emperor stopped maintaining the sky palace, it had been moved—somewhere around the reign of the seventh emperor—to the far north, to that harsh hunting ground.
Sylvia had heard the stories of the many mages who had died in the process of dragging the tower here. Even so, every time she came, she couldn’t help feeling a sense of reverence for the tower that had once stood in the center like the spine of the palace.
It was white as if carved from the bones of a beautiful mermaid, and the joints of the bone were densely inscribed with golden prayers.
When Sylvia held out her wrist, a mage named Emily removed the restraining spell she had placed on her. Then, with a faint sting in her palm, transparent golden magic circles began to appear one by one across the clear sky. Like a wrapped gift box, a wide band dense with magic circles stretched across the heavens.
“Ah.”
It was a sight she saw once a month, and yet every time it left her breathless. Perhaps because she had stared too long, the male mage behind her, a man named Cabal, cleared his throat and motioned for her to go up.
They couldn’t simply climb the tower one step at a time, rising through the clouds, so they used frequent teleportation to reach the very top. The mages had cast spells on themselves to make their eyes able to see magic circles, so though they still couldn’t see as much as Sylvia could, they could at least observe part of the sky palace’s structure.
“We worked on this section this time. Would you check whether there are any problems?”
Sylvia nodded and looked where they pointed. As a Posmata, she could see with sharper precision than an eagle and read the invisible flow well enough to instinctively detect any fracture.
That was why, after the monthly repairs were finished, they always called her up to look at the sky through a telescope. But they rarely offered explanations. They found it humiliating enough to have to leave the sky palace to a Supporter in the first place, and they couldn’t bear to speak as though reporting to her, telling her what had been fixed and why.
Because of that, even when Sylvia saw something, her words were always necessarily vague.
“There’s a reddish tint in that area. It feels a little detached, like it isn’t linking well with the others.”
Every time, they furrowed their brows deeply, clearly at a loss for how to interpret or repair what she said.
“Anything else unusual?”
Sylvia turned the telescope and scanned the sky in every direction. Only after pointing out a few other odd places was the work done. Even then, the mages would pepper her with questions, trying to translate the problems she had named into their own language, and then, as if stung by their pride, they would soon fall silent again.
At first, Sylvia had been eager to help with the empire’s work—especially with something as important as the sky palace, said to have been made with the power of the gods. She had eagerly offered her opinions on what she saw.
She even told them things like, “Writing the formula for that magic circle in Tokka’s style was probably a mistake. The circle next to it should value flow the way the one Kualla made does.”
But the more Sylvia showed that she understood the sky palace, the more sharply they displayed their discomfort. One mage even openly rebuked her, snapping, “This isn’t a place for some Supporter to stick her nose in!” Worse, the same mage who had shouted at her later insisted to his superiors that she be removed from all sky palace work altogether.
Back then, she had trembled with humiliation and hatred after being treated like that despite helping them. But looking back, she could understand it. They had seen her desperation too. They had seen her desire to restore her own self-worth by doing the work they could not.
Even so, I’m still just a Supporter.
The old frustration she had thought was already resolved still sat deep inside her. What she had believed she had abandoned long ago still lingered endlessly beneath her fragile pride, like a lake frozen over with a thin skin of ice. Even Heston’s comfort could do nothing about that.
Every night, all she could do was wash it away, shake it off like water from her hands.
“Understood. Thank you for your help.”
The mages were polite in their farewells, but their expressions remained dark until the very end. The many problems she had pointed out sat heavily on their shoulders. Once they solved them in their own way, they would call her again to listen to another set of cryptic complaints, and then they would return to the tower and pace through the fog with their heads in their hands once more.
The carriage dropped Sylvia off in front of the knight order. By then, evening had already fallen, and the training yard was empty, washed in red sunset light.
Did Heston go back all right?
Sylvia thought of Heston beneath the blazing sunlight, turning a practice sword in his hand while never once looking away from his opponent. That habit of flicking the sword around his wrist was something he did when he was in a good mood, but the neat crease between his brows had shown that his thoughts were not on the people he was training. He was focused on something else entirely.
He must have had something on his mind. Judging by the scratch marks left on the back of his neck, it was highly likely to have something to do with Princess Catherine, but Sylvia still wanted to talk to him and help lighten whatever burden he was carrying.
Just as Heston had once done for her.
“Appleton.”
Someone touched Sylvia’s shoulder then. She turned, feeling a flicker of discomfort, as though the face she wore when she was alone had been exposed to someone else’s eyes.
The man who had called her was a knight, and rather unfortunately, one of the knights she had run into a few days ago when she had gone to Owen’s lodgings.
She remembered his sneering laugh. Appleton’s actually pretty cute. Makes you want to bully her, doesn’t it?
Suppressing the sick feeling that rose in her at the sight of him, Sylvia answered as casually as she could.
“What is it?”
“Oh, nothing much. Could you help me train for a bit? We’re being dispatched next week, and it’s a little tricky swinging my sword to match the palto. I just can’t get used to it.”
“What about your partner?”
“Our partner’s on leave for a bit. And we’re low-ranked, so things like that don’t affect us much anyway. No need to worry.”
He said the last part with a faint, mocking lilt.
She didn’t want to, but she didn’t have a proper reason to refuse. Besides, he had said they were being dispatched next week. If he told her nothing and then died, she knew she would feel terribly guilty.
“All right. I’ll help if it’s just for a little while.”
“Wow, really? Knew you’d say yes. Thanks.”
He flashed her a bright grin and tapped her shoulder twice. It was hard to count the number of times they’d ever spoken, and yet his easy, casual touches kept grating on her nerves. Still, Sylvia told herself she was only being unusually sensitive lately and followed after him.
There were five knights in the training room, and one other Supporter besides her. Along with Wilden, the knight who had brought her here, two other knights who had been gossiping about her on the stairs were there as well, and just as Sylvia felt her brow beginning to knot, another knight swinging his sword nearby glanced over and greeted her.
“Oh, Sylvia! You really came to help?”
They had eaten together a few times and were reasonably friendly, so she returned his smile warmly.
“Michel, I didn’t know you were being dispatched next week.”
“It’s a lot to carry. Especially since Heston recovered a holy relic on the last mission.”
“Surely no one expects you to recover another one. That would be shameless.”
Trying to ease the pressure, Sylvia spoke gently, and Michel clenched his fist and raised it to his face with a big flourish.
“We keep the morale up so it doesn’t die!”
“……”
“That’s what the commander says. I got hit in the nose by the fist I threw up then.”
“So that’s why your nose is so swollen? You should dodge that sort of thing right away.”
Answering from an unexpected place, a different voice cut in, and both Sylvia and Michel turned. It was Wilden, standing there blankly and trying to force his way into their conversation.
As unfunny as the joke was—and as insulting, really—the atmosphere in the training hall turned cold almost at once. Michel did not hold back; he lifted his brows in open defiance.
“You look like you’re real good at dodging. Want to bet, then? Let’s see who’s better at it.”
“Doesn’t seem like a fair way to settle a duel.”
By subtly pointing out that Michel and his group were of a different rank, Wilden made Michel snort.
“Sylvia’s a Supporter. Can’t even do that much? But if it seems so unfair to you, I’ll let you go first and score ten points.”
Wilden crossed his arms, his expression dissatisfied, and rubbed his chin. The whole reason he had brought Sylvia here was because he thought maybe he could flirt with her a little while they messed around, but if things turned out like this, they would really have to grind through training and nothing else.
Still, seeing Michel swagger around and brag that he’d score ten points first made it seem as though backing out now would only make him look scared enough to run.
In the end, Wilden and the others accepted the bet.
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