37. Infula Church Territory (2)
He was called an old man, yet there was nothing feeble about his spirit.
Yona had never seen an elder like this before.
The instant she met that piercing gaze — eyes that seemed to spew fire — she felt her whole body instinctively shrink back. Though seated, the old man held his spine as rigidly straight as Scarlet, watching in silence as she and Scarlet stepped into the room.
"Your Holiness. It has been far too long. How fare you these days?"
Ceres approached the gruff old man and bent forward in a deep bow, her smile in full bloom.
Yona likewise stepped up before him, folded her hands together in front of her, and bowed low in reverence — exactly the greeting she'd been taught at the cathedral for meeting the high dignitaries of the Order.
What's the point of being high and mighty, I used to grumble, until Aize smacked me upside the head for it. But meeting one in person... yeah, it hits different.
"I present myself before Your Holiness the Pope. I am Yona, a lowly healer."
The old man's eyes flashed as he watched her bow so deeply. Then, a gentle smile settled into the deep creases at the corners of his mouth.
"Lowly, you say? None of that, young cleric."
With the faint creak of wood, Axell IV pushed back his chair, rose, and strode over to raise Yona back to her feet.
"The Heavenly God stands before every member of the clergy, and She is the mother of all living things as well. What matter if one is a healer? Speak no more of lowliness. If anything, it is a healer who stands at the side of all people that deserves to be called a true servant of the faith, is it not?"
Ah.
For a moment, Yona was struck speechless.
This was the second time she'd heard those words. Once from Aize — and now again from the Pope himself.
"So do not call yourself lowly, young cleric. Now then, come — no more of this. Please, have a seat and make yourselves comfortable."
Only then did Yona notice the sofa set against one side of the room. It was a plain, austere thing — far too modest for the office of the man who stood at the very summit of the Heavenly God Church. Scattered across it were scratches and worn patches, and here and there she could clearly make out places where the fabric had torn and been carefully patched over with new cloth.
"Bring us tea and refreshments, if you would."
At the Pope's word, the priest gave a silent dip of his head and slid away, vanishing without a word. The Pope watched him go for a quiet moment, then turned his gaze to Ceres.
"And how fared you, Elder? I trust your journey went well?"
"My journey... ah, my journey. Yes."
For just an instant, Ceres looked caught off guard. But it lasted only a heartbeat, and then she was nodding with the same unshakable smile.
"However pressing the affairs of state may be, you do seem to travel on business quite often, Elder. Not half a year ago you returned from a long expedition, and scarcely a month past you departed on yet another. Doesn't all that rushing about risk wearing down your polish?"
"Well, that is..."
Ahaha. Ceres laughed, the sound awkward and thin.
Yona stole a sideways glance at her face. It was the look of someone desperately trying to steer the conversation elsewhere.
Yona hadn't known her long, but they'd spent plenty of time pressed close together on the road — and never once had she seen Ceres look like this: flustered, off balance.
"A difficult question, I see. Very well then. I hear you have brought the Hero and the Saintess — and that you passed through Semek on the way here."
"Yes, Your Holiness. What happened at Semek is a source of great regret."
"Regret it is — a bitter regret indeed. To desecrate the bodies of those gathered into the Heavenly God's embrace... that is a crime that can never be forgiven nor overlooked. The culprit must be found and made to answer for it with their life."
Axell IV had been a stalwart man of arms, born of the Glakien Margraviate. And clearly, none of that old fire had left him — the sheer force of presence rolling off him now was staggering.
Staggering enough that Yona, who had just lifted the teacup that had somehow appeared before her, found her hands going taut with tension without her even meaning to.
"As for the Hero and the Saintess — well, neither has yet received ordination, but since both were personally named by the Heavenly God in revelation, we need only complete the verification procedures and then hold the ceremony at once. And above all... Miss Yona."
"Nepyah?!"
Yona had been in the middle of biting into a cookie, and being suddenly called, she choked and coughed violently. Only after slurping down the tea that Ceres hastily pushed toward her did she finally settle, wheezing for breath in small, ragged gulps.
"Oh my, forgive this old man — that was rude of me. Are you quite all right, Miss Yona?"
"F-fine! Yes, I'm... I'm fine...!"
Wiping the tea that had dribbled down her chin, Yona's face burned scarlet with embarrassment.
She hadn't expected the Pope to call on her out of nowhere — it had been so sudden, and the conversation had seemed to concern matters that had nothing to do with her, so she hadn't been paying the slightest attention.
"Forgive me for startling you. I wished to hear a little about what happened at Carpatia Port."
Figures.
Yona began to explain, slowly and thoroughly, from the very beginning to the end — from the moment she'd met Rubina, all the way up to now.
"It really is something, isn't it."
Alec murmured, staring out the window.
The Church territory was enormous, and the guest quarters were lavishly appointed. Every wall was blinding white — but beyond that, everything about the place was so fine it left little to complain about. Even Rubina had declared it felt like heaven, racing from corner to corner with shrieks of delight.
Alec had finished his bath and was quietly watching Rubina when he simply sat down on the bed alone.
Rubina was ten years old. A ten-year-old girl being washed by Alec was a recipe for doing the job badly at best — and if some ridiculous rumor started circulating on top of that, it would be a headache of the worst kind. So even when he saw that she'd fallen asleep in Yona's room, he had deliberately let her be.
When he took a seat on one of the chairs arranged around the table, a huge window faced him directly.
And beyond the glass — orcs and kobolds, goblins and dwarves, beastkin and more — every race imaginable was pacing the grounds in white clerical robes, their footsteps hushed to near silence. There was something genuinely astonishing about seeing orcs, famed far and wide for their inability to restrain their own strength, or dwarves with their trademark stomping gait, draped in pristine white vestments.
They say the Church has permitted evangelism among the other races... but did priest trainees actually come here to receive their education?
At its foundation, becoming a priest required awakening holy power.
But it was hard to believe that every one of those many nonhumans had managed to do so. It wasn't the sort of thing that came easily — and at heart, the Heavenly God was a deity who cherished humans, not one who gathered races like these under Her wing.
Besides, among the other races there were priests of the native gods, sure — but Alec had never once heard of a priest of the Heavenly God Church who wasn't human.
If they accept the Heavenly God Church... what happens to the native gods?
The question had occurred to him out of nowhere. What would happen when the Church of the one true God collided with the polytheistic faiths of the old ways?
But there was no way to know. As a mere adventurer, Alec had no desire to dig into thoughts that deep. They weren't worth the trouble.
Alec. You in there?
It was Kayak's voice, calling through the door.
"Yeah, come on in."
With the creak of wood, the door opened and Kayak stepped inside. He'd bathed too, apparently — his scales had faded to a pale whitish-grey, and the overall effect was quite respectable.
"Resting, were you."
"Kind of. Did a bit of sightseeing out there too. Sit down, Kayak — the ceiling's not going to cave in."
"I'll manage."
Kayak considered the chairs for a moment, then simply lowered himself to the floor instead. With a body that size, the chair likely wouldn't have survived him — which, as it turned out, was a wise choice.
"Quite a sight out there, I'll admit."
"The nonhumans wandering the Church grounds — that surprising to you?"
"Surprising, aye. These are the folk who'd have hunted down and butchered every last one of them not long ago. And now they're opening their arms to them all... you can't call that anything but strange, can you?"
Alec turned his gaze back to the window as he spoke.
On the smooth white paving stones below, a small board had been set up, and a human priestess in flowing white robes stood holding a piece of black charcoal, writing characters across it. It was hard to make out from here, but what the charcoal was sketching on that board was the sun. A drawing of the sun, and beside it a winged woman — from which Alec gathered she was probably explaining the creation myth of the Heavenly God.
"Strange, sure enough. But I'm a worshipper of the Water God — I've no intention of converting to the Heavenly God's church."
"That's exactly my point. That's how it should be, isn't it? They've got gods their people have worshipped for generations, and now they're supposed to just accept the Heavenly God? Seems off."
"They're probably just buying converts with coin. No need to look so grave about it."
"You think so?"
It wasn't a crazy theory, really. There were rumors that the Church's coffers rivaled the Imperial treasury itself — so even if these tribes were accepting the faith purely for the Church's subsidies, who could blame them, Alec reasoned.
"More to the point, Alec."
"Hmm?"
"How long were you planning to keep it hidden?"
"...Keep what hidden."
"Don't play the fool with me, Alec. Yona might be oblivious — that thunder-struck blockhead — but you'll not slip one past my eyes or James's. The one in that tin can. Her."
He meant Scarlet.
The Alec who had stepped between Scarlet and the Yona she was threatening. The hammer that, even as it caught the mace she swung, drove squarely into the girl's side.
"Even I had no idea. If you hadn't done what you did, James and I likely would have passed right over it. But now it's out, isn't it?"
Alec said nothing.
With a quiet tsk, he jabbed the toe of his shoe at the innocent floorboards, over and over.
"Best abandon any hope of burying it for good, Alec. Carried on like this, it may only end up wounding Yona all the more."
"I was going to tell her when the time came. It's not some great sin."
"It's the deceiving that matters, Alec. I understand you did it to stay at her side — but this isn't Evian. There's no comrade here who'll gladly bury your secrets for you. No. Not anywhere, not until we make it back to Evian."
"...I'll tell her."
"Hmm."
With that, Kayak fell silent.
He could understand Alec's heart well enough — but as far as Kayak could see, the man's approach was simply wrong. There was no need to share every last thing, no need for full confession of every truth. But here was Alec, three years deep in single-minded devotion, trailing after Yona like a faithful hound — and this secret could shatter even that, if it came to it.
If that stubbornly proud Yona ever came to believe she'd been lied to — deceived by the man closest to her—
"It would break her, wouldn't it. If Yona found out."
"Aye. You'd best tell her soon. That girl may be a fool, but she isn't blind. If she stumbles onto it herself, that's when it becomes a real problem."
At that, Alec glared at Kayak. But the fire drained quickly from his eyes; his lips worked a few times, and at last he muttered, half to himself:
"Yona's not a fool."
And yet there was something strangely uncertain in the way he said it. Kayak couldn't have missed that — and it wrung a short snort of laughter out of him.
Even in the middle of all this, the man was still defending her. Truly, the workings of the human heart were beyond him.
"Aye, well — the fool I see is you. You daft bastard. Three years chasing after one woman — there's no bigger fool under heaven."
"...Can't say I've got an argument. Damn it all."
Alec broke into a rueful laugh too.
A fool, yes — that much was true. Three years. What a long, long stretch of time it was.