0. The Pursuers, Again (2)
I tore down the streets at a dead run, eyes darting every which way. Thanks to the pre-dawn darkness, I was lucky enough not to run into a single soul.
Then I found a secluded nook behind one of the warehouses and laid Atalante down in it.
"Haah... huff—"
Mungchi, who had followed close behind, lowered the elder's corpse to the ground as she fought to catch her breath. She was drenched head to toe in sweat from hauling the body all this way.
After undoing Atalante's belt and securing her weapons, I turned to Mungchi.
"Why did you do it?"
"Huh?"
"I said, why did you kill him?"
Mungchi wiped the sweat beading on her forehead, then blinked at me for a moment.
"Mungchi was making him quiet-down, that's all."
"Quiet him down? You mean he was about to scream?"
"Yes."
"Then you could've just pinned him down. Killing him wasn't necessary."
"Uh......"
Her face clouded over.
"Was you going to make him answer-questions?"
"......On that old man?"
"Yes, yes."
"Why are you suddenly asking me that?"
At my question, Mungchi tilted her head, her expression dimmed a shade.
"If no answer-making, then, um, er... no need for staying-alive, there isn't."
"......What?"
She did her damndest to explain, but her Milanor was so wretched that I couldn't make head or tail of it. Still, going by her bewildered face and the tone of her words, Mungchi didn't seem to grasp the very concept of thou shalt not kill people.
My skull throbbed, and a sigh slipped out of me before I knew it.
"Haah. Forget it. We'll talk later."
"Uh... yes......"
Ignoring Mungchi as she watched my mood with a sullen face, I examined Atalante where she lay on the ground. A check with my blood-reading art showed that, mercifully, nothing was seriously wrong. The blood trickling from her mouth had worried me, but she'd only bitten the inside of her cheek holding back the pain — nothing inside her was damaged......
So now what.
We had killed an elder of Atalante's clan. Whether he was an innocent victim or not, murder was murder. This was not going to be easy to clean up.
"Mmm—"
My fretting lasted all of a moment before Atalante moaned. Brow furrowed, eyes still closed, she looked ready to come around at any second. Having roughly sorted my thoughts, I hurried to Mungchi and gave her a quiet order.
"Go on back to the lord's mansion."
"Huh?"
"I'll handle things here, so you stay at the lord's mansion."
"Yep, Mungchi understand-ed."
"Shh. Quick, now."
Mungchi clamped her mouth shut with a snap and melted into the dark.
And how long had it been? Atalante's eyes drifted open, slow and heavy. Amber irises blinked, sluggish and unfocused.
"......Nix? Is that you?"
"Atalante."
"Why are you—"
She pushed herself up and clutched her forehead like a woman tormented by the world's worst hangover.
"Uuurgh."
"You okay?"
"......Ugh. No."
After groaning for a good long while, Atalante abruptly raised her hand as if struck by a stroke of genius.
"Can I touch your butt?"
"......What the hell is that supposed to be?"
"I'm asking to touch your butt. I think it might make me feel a bit better."
Magnificent nonsense. The tension wound tight inside me snapped loose all at once.
When I only frowned at her, she clicked her tongue in disappointment and swept back her ash-gray hair.
"So. What exactly is the situation here?"
"Well." I scratched at my brow and started explaining.
"......So, let me get this straight." Atalante spoke, confusion written all over her face. "You just happened to stumble across us while out on a stroll? Of all possible moments — right in the middle of Maurio torturing me?"
"That's right."
When I gave a small nod, she burst into a hollow laugh.
"And then you — you killed Maurio?"
"......It was a mistake. I only meant to knock him out—"
"The body?"
"Brought it with me."
When I pointed toward where the elder's corpse lay, Atalante staggered upright and made her way over.
"......"
A knot of emotions surfaced on her face as she looked down at Maurio. Shock at the center; rage and grief, relief and a dark elation twisting around it in a dizzying braid.
"......Fate, like this......" Standing blankly over the body, Atalante murmured half to herself. I added, as if pleading half an excuse: "If we'd left him there, the blame would've landed on you. So I figured, for now—"
"That was never going to happen."
"......What?"
"I can't kill a member of the Ashun. The whole clan knows it."
Atalante sank to one knee and started rifling through Maurio's clothes. I watched her in silence for a while, then laid out the suspicion I'd been nursing.
"You're under a curse, aren't you."
"......Not a curse. A kind of binding."
"A binding? What kind of binding?"
"I don't know the details." Tucking away a coin purse, keepsakes, and the like, she went on. "It was put on me when I was very small. Six, was it? Or seven? I hardly remember."
"Who put it on you? Your elders?"
"Yeah."
A binding the elders had fastened on her in her earliest years. That tracked — I could guess the shape of it well enough.
Feeling along the elder's neck, Atalante narrowed her eyes a touch.
"You used a rope?"
"......A rope? Ah — yeah. Yeah, I used a rope."
"Mm-hm."
She seemed to have caught onto something, but beyond a knowing hum and an arched brow, she pressed nothing further.
Atalante reached for the pendant hanging at Maurio's throat. The instant her fingertips brushed the deep-green jewel—
Szzt!
"Yowch—!"
As if she'd grabbed a white-hot coal, the burn seared her fingertips. Gritting her teeth, she flung the pendant to the ground and crushed it flat under her leather boot.
Crack!
The deep-green jewel set in the pendant splintered apart as easily as a glass marble. Then, with a low whoomph of wind, the magic dispersed and was gone......
"Ha... haa."
Atalante let out a breath that couldn't decide whether it was laughter or a lament.
"Wasn't that a magic tool? You sure you should go smashing it like that?"
"......Good point."
Amber eyes turned on me. Through that gaze, roiling feeling came through with startling clarity.
"I just... moved without thinking, I suppose."
"So did that undo the binding?" Atalante gave a faint smile and shook her head.
"No. The other elders all carry pieces just like it. The binding's a long way off from breaking."
Yet for all the weight of the words, her voice carried an inexplicable lightness. I quietly scratched my brow.
"......Look, I have no idea how any of this works anymore. Explain to me what's what."
"I will. But before that—"
"Huh—"
She broke off mid-sentence and, out of nowhere, flung both arms around my neck. Then, pressing her body flush against mine, she started showering me with kisses.
"Hey — what the hell are you doin—"
I grabbed her shoulders and tried to shove her off, but Atalante hauled me forcibly toward her, her hair bleeding violet from the roots.
Strength that had leapt far past its ordinary bounds......
No doubt about it — she had activated Power of the Void, a Rank 1 skill of the Void lineage.
"A-Atalante, hold on—"
"Shut up and congratulate me."
"Congratulate you for wh— mmph—"
She was coming at me with every intention of devouring me lips-first. She did not appear to be in her right mind.
Violet light poured from her eyes in unbroken ribbons, and somehow I could read the feelings inside it.
Liberation and guilt. Elation and dread.
Emotions so elevated that a glint of outright madness shimmered beneath them.
The violet glow born of the secret arts was pushing back the darkness around us. One slip and the sentries on the palisade might catch sight of us......
Ah, to hell with it.
With Atalante's lips firmly sealed beneath mine, I scooped her up with my left arm and drew Hrunting with my right. Then I moved to the warehouse at our backs and slid the blade through the gap in its door, shearing the bar clean through.
In the corner of the warehouse I forced my way into, hay for the horses was piled high. I shoved Atalante down onto it and pulled the door shut behind us, wedging Hrunting in place of the severed bar.
There once lived a miracle worker.
He wielded every manner of uncanny art, came and went like a phantom, and knew all there was to know of the world.
The Nudein who crossed his path worshipped him as a demigod and offered up a shamaness to receive his seed.
Once the shamaness was with child, the miracle worker vanished as suddenly as he had first appeared — leaving behind one prophecy for all the people to hear, and one message for the shamaness alone.
The child born of that union was Atilia. By the miracle worker's prophecy, she was destined to deliver her people.
True to her father's blood, Atilia awakened to one of his many arts at an extraordinarily tender age — the power of the secret arts.
The elders of the al-Kadari clan trembled with unease as they watched Atilia grow into something far beyond ordinary. They feared that she, like her father, might one day vanish without a trace.
It was around then that the shamaness died.
She whispered the miracle worker's message into Atilia's ear and closed her eyes, and the elders gathered at the Ashun and reached their verdict: they would lay upon Atilia a binding to suppress her power and her mind, before she grew any greater.
With that, the clan chief and the elders gained a bridle with which to control Atilia — and took to playing the part of her parents. The satisfaction of standing in for a demigod was a bonus.
By the time Atilia, by common consent the clan's foremost warrior, marked her twenty-third birthday, the al-Kadari clan was passing through Multingham, the principal city of Marba province.
It wasn't planned, but neither was it anything out of the ordinary.
Wandering was the most natural thing in the world for the Nudein, and the mild, good-humored central and southern provinces were favorite stops along their routes. So once every two or three years, the al-Kadari clan would pass through Multingham, peddling their goods and hiring out their hands.
Then, in the middle of that unremarkable journey, an unexpected offer arrived — from Count Tristan, master of Marba province.
"My vassal, Baron Mallory — lord of Longville — has committed an act of madness. Aid my son Doyle in reclaiming the fief."
It was an offer that was, in all but name, a command — but the reward alone was honeyed.
The Count had pledged with his own mouth that once the work was done and a suitable sum of gold and silver rendered up, they would be granted a manor near Multingham. With admirable prudence, he had even prepared papers notarized by the church, and the Ashun accepted the offer on the spot.
The elders placed the clan's elite warriors under Atilia's command — all save the Hares Kees, the guards who watched over the Ashun itself.
Doyle Mulin, Count Tristan's second son, was a man whose quick wits were matched only by his notoriety as an arrogant degenerate.
That infamy ran so deep that when the Count's eldest son died young, dozens of household retainers went so far as to beg the Count to name Doyle's younger sister heir in his place.
Stripped of the succession by his sister Clarissa, Doyle carved the grudge into his bones and waited for his chance.
Then came word of Baron Mallory's deranged proclamation, and Doyle sought out Count Tristan with an earnest plea. The gist of it: If you won't pass me the county, at least let me have Longville!
In the end, Count Tristan granted his son's request. For even a man counted among the kingdom's greatest magnates was, underneath it all, a soft-hearted father pushing fifty.
Backed by his father's support, Doyle readied a hand full of cards. Atilia's victory at the hunting festival had been one of them.
After so much sacrifice and toil, Atilia believed she had dealt every usable card into Doyle's hand — that the task assigned her was finished.
But Doyle demanded the al-Kadari clan's cooperation until Longville was wholly his, and the elders had no power to refuse.
With the agreement struck, Doyle and his party resolved to unwind at the Golden Blade tavern.
As he always did, Doyle set his household troops to driving out every last other patron before opening a drinking party of his own. And as he always did, lust got the better of him, and he forced his way into a beautiful woman's room.
The beautiful woman on the receiving end of this midnight intrusion was none other than Atilia — and she beat Doyle to a pulp.
Elder Maurio, alerted by the uproar, came hurrying from the next room — and went white at the sight of Doyle with a broken nose and a split lip.
Maurio left the unconscious Doyle in the room and dragged Atilia outside. Then he ordered her to share Doyle's bed, to bury the affair.
"Young Lord Doyle is a magnanimous man. Apologize with your whole heart and serve him with every ounce of devotion, and he will count his broken nose a medal of honor. Go, and take responsibility for what you have done."
Maurio's drivel enraged Atilia past her limit. And when their exchange curdled into a shouting match, Maurio finally produced the binding pendant.
By the time Atalante's breathless tale had run its course and we stepped out of the warehouse, a crimson sun was already climbing in the east.
"Doyle has his eye on the county."
"I thought the succession went to his sister."
"He means to snatch it back. Now that there's a gold mine."
Tightening her boot laces, Atalante went on.
"The moment he takes Longville, he'll conscript every last fief dweller to work the mine. So he says."
"If he drafts all of them, what about the farming?"
"They can buy their grain."
"......Hm. Well, concentrating investment in high-value industries is only sensible, I suppose. But do you really think people who've lived as farmers will take to the mines so meekly?"
"Hm? What are you on about? Of course it has nothing to do with what the fief folk want."
Her ash-gray hair streamed on the wind, and a scent of jasmine drifted over. As the red cloth lifted her hair, the fine down at the nape of her neck pulled at my gaze.
"For two, three years he'll wring the fief dry and scrape together every coin he can — then use it to turn the whole territory on its head."
"Within two or three years?"
"Because by then Count Tristan will be dead."
"How old is the Count, that you're already predicting his death?"
"A little past fifty, I'd say."
"Fifty and you call him dying? Isn't that a man in his prime? He's one of the great magnates."
"Not quite. Word is he's been wasting away ever since an arrow off your liege's bow knocked him from his saddle in the Thousand-Day War. His body gave out during his imprisonment — even the priests' treatments don't take anymore."
Ellen's words came back to me all over again.
"You weren't knighted by just any noble — you were knighted by the royal House of Zeore, by Prince Ulkar himself? Do you have any idea how many enemies Prince Ulkar has!"
I understood exactly what she'd meant. In the Thousand-Day War, they said, he had fought seven great nobles, taken three captive, and put two in the ground. The road ahead looked treacherous indeed...... Ugh — and I'd gone and accepted that knighthood for nothing.
While I grumbled inwardly, Atalante came close and wrapped her arms around my neck. And whispered:
"Convince the Baroness."
"......What?"
"If we hold out as we are, the people of Longville will be trampled beneath Count Tristan's army, squeezed dry by Doyle, and then driven in a march on Multingham. And the Baroness — she'll be put down before she knows a thing, or end up with a fate worse than that."
A short kiss passed between us.
"Promise the Count his inheritance in full and buy time. In the meantime, get the fief folk fleeing to other provinces. The Baroness too."
"......I'll give it a try."
I caught her hand as she made to pull away.
"Don't forget — you have other choices too."
"......You mean that manor of yours in Southshire?"
Atalante swallowed a wry smile.
"I told you. For the Nudein, the north is too cold and too dangerous. Too few cities worth trading in, either."
"Still, you wouldn't have to tiptoe around a master, would you."
Her smile deepened by a shade.
"I'll come."
"You'll manage, even without my help?"
I jerked my chin at the corpse of Elder Maurio, stuffed in the corner. Any scrap of guilt had long since burned away, thanks to Atalante's story.
"I'll manage. I have a plan."
Her eyes, calm once more, soaked in the morning sun and turned to gold.
"Nix."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
"......Thank me for what? It was nothing but coincidence."
"Even so," she added, her face grown serious. "If something like this happens again, don't get involved."
"......What?"
"Things could easily have turned dangerous for you too. We were lucky this time — there's no telling about the next."
I was silent for a moment, then shook my head.
"That much risk I can shoulder. My life's in your debt, after all."
"I was the one who owed first."
She meant the second time we'd met — when a pile of mercenary corpses bred a misunderstanding and we came to blows.
"......That hardly counts as a life debt—"
"Regardless."
Shouldering Maurio's body, Atalante admonished me with a grave face.
"I'm begging you — even if a day like today comes again, stay out of it."
"Atalante."
"If nothing else, then for my sake. You understand, don't you?"
To her, smiling so sweetly, I nodded at last.
A sigh escaped me, quite unbidden.