A Stroll in the Imperial Capital (3)
The secretary had not only handed over the letter of introduction, but had also written down the address of the artisan’s workshop she recommended.
—Classman’s Workshop, at 3-2 in the Southern District of the capital. There’s no signboard, so please knock on the door of the brick building on the first floor at that address.
That, too, had been completed the moment I lightly touched the paper, so it must have been written in some sort of magic language specialized for shorthand or document work.
“Then shall we go? Get up, Clea.”
“Ah, yes….”
The imperial carriage was already turning off the road and disappearing into the distance.
Unlike me, who got up at once and dusted off my hands and knees, Clea had sat there dazed until I spoke to her.
In fact—
“J-just a moment… my legs won’t move.”
When I heard the way she looked at me, I tilted my brows and asked back, “Why?”
“…That’s what I should be asking you.”
Clea looked absurdly wrong-footed.
How could she be that calm?
Not only she, but all the other nobles who had happened to pass by had been overwhelmed by Her Majesty’s immense mana and its precision.
Just over there, one middle-aged nobleman had even failed to notice that his glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose, and on the other side, both maids and young ladies alike had collapsed where they stood.
No.
Looking closely, with the single exception of one person on this street, no one was standing on both feet.
A being who, whether or not she intended it, pressed down on everyone simply by existing in one place, leaving them in awe and reverence.
That was what one perched above all others ought to be, and yet—
“Are you really that tired? Want me to carry you?”
—the exception was me.
A girl who had walked past after making everyone else kneel, and remained utterly unaffected.
Only one person, yes, but the one who had put a crack in the word everyone.
“N-no….”
I didn’t know why, but when I saw the hand Ellie held out to me, strength seemed to return to my legs, too.
So I took her hand and was able to stand. The second person to do so on this street.
“Then should we go right away? Or do you want to rest somewhere first?”
Ellie asked as she tapped the rolled-up document His Majesty had bestowed on her.
“Let’s go now.”
Clea answered with a little stubbornness mixed in.
To be honest, she wanted to sit down and rest for a while.
But if she accepted Ellie’s consideration like this, she felt she might no longer be able to keep standing beside her as her friend.
If you were friends, then even if you weren’t equal, you still had to try to be.
So she forced her trembling legs onward and shoved aside her pounding pulse. Just to stand side by side with Ellie.
“Hmm, no doubt about it, that’s the real imperial seal.”
The owner of the workshop in the Southern District, 3-2, was an old man with a rough beard and a fierce face.
What’s more, even though he was a mage, he must have done hard labor with his own body, because he had a powerfully built frame, all thick muscle like a carpenter or stonemason.
“If the command is to set everything else aside and make a wand for the Empire, then I can’t very well refuse. Come on in.”
The old man’s pink eyes swept over Clea. For the record, his hair was pink too.
He definitely shouldn’t have looked like he did, and yet because he looked so spectacularly wrong, it somehow circled all the way around and became right again.
Then Ellie said to the old craftsman, “No.”
The old man stopped. Beneath his shirt, the muscles of his back rippled like snakes.
“What do you mean, no?”
Ellie held up two fingers.
“First, it won’t be my friend who receives the wand. My name is Ellie.”
Then she added,
“And if you have to make other works first, I don’t mind being pushed back that far. No, even if I have to wait until every piece ordered before today is finished, that’s fine.”
“...You’re both students at Lycaeon?”
“We’re first-years at the Academy.”
The old man stroked his pink beard with his log-like arm, then jerked his chin toward the inside.
“Then come inside first.”
The entire first floor of the building was the workshop.
In the center sat a huge workbench.
Countless pieces of wood, jewels, and metal were neatly stored along the walls, and on one side, tools like saws, knives, and chains were lined up in a row.
In one corner of that space there was a visitor’s seat so plain it looked as though it had merely been put together in a hurry.
The three of us sat on the hard chairs.
The artisan got straight to the point without bringing out tea or snacks.
“Do you students know how far behind my orders are?”
“No.”
“At least seven years. If complications come up in the middle, it could become nine, ten. Compared to that—”
He tapped the paper Ellie had handed him, the letter of introduction and promise of payment, with open irreverence.
“If we go by this, I can diagnose it today and hand it over within seven days.”
A miracle where years became days.
That was the magic wielded by power.
“Then now that you know, let me ask again. Do you still want me to begin production only after everything ordered before the student’s piece is finished?”
Ellie’s answer was immediate.
“Of course.”
Because—
“If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be giving it your all, would you?”
“…What?”
“I can see it in your face. You’re dissatisfied with an order that barged in and shoved aside your own schedule and plans. And if you start making it in that state, there’s no way the best result will come out—”
Bang! The old artisan slammed his fist down on the table.
“…Student Ellie.”
The old man’s voice sounded like the growl of a mountain beast.
“Do not underestimate people who make things for a living.”
His fierce eyes flashed.
“Even if I were given only three days—no, just one—I can make a wand better than anyone else. Because I have that kind of skill, I was able to open a workshop in the Southern District even as nothing more than a mere wand craftsman. Do you understand?”
Ellie looked at his fist for a moment, then raised her own.
And with a deafening WHAM, she brought it down onto the table too.
“Of course. If it’s you, Old Man, you could make a masterpiece better than anyone else.”
Mana crackled and spat across the tabletop.
“But what I want isn’t a wand that’s merely better than what other people can make. I want the best wand you, sir, have ever made in your entire life.”
Ellie’s eyes were fierce and cool at once, and utterly serious.
“A work so good that the greatest artisan of this age, one the Emperor would recommend, poured out his soul to create it. A masterpiece that, in the instant before death, would flicker before one’s eyes and make them feel their life had been worth something. That’s the kind of wand I want.”
It was, in the truest sense—
“A thing better than the one in the hand of the man who granted me this letter.”
Ellie’s black eyes and the old craftsman’s pink ones collided in a fierce stare-down.
“If I can get a wand like that, I don’t care how long I have to wait. Ten years? As long as you don’t die, I can wait thirty. I will never let it go. I won’t treat it carelessly either. A chance like this will never come again.”
Silence settled over the workshop.
Yet it was a sharp, seething silence, as though fury and mana might erupt at any moment.
“………Hah.”
What broke it was the old artisan’s—
laughter.
“Huhwahahaha!! Bwahahahahahaha!!”
When a mountain laughed, it sounded as refreshing as mountain air.
Clea, who had been overwhelmed and pressed down by Ellie and the artisan’s combined force of spirit all this time, felt like her head might split open from being thrown back and forth between hot and cold so quickly.
The craftsman, laughing so hard he seemed to be drawing in air all the way to the bottom of his lungs, shouted a name.
“Garzan!”
“Y-yes! I’m coming!”
A boy with the same pink eyes and pink hair as the artisan came down from the second floor of the workshop.
The old man pointed his chin at Ellie and Clea. Strictly speaking, he was pointing at Ellie, and Clea, seated beside her, had merely been included as a bonus.
“This is your junior. Greet her.”
“U-uh….”
The boy followed along in confusion, rattled by his grandfather’s sudden behavior.
“H-hello, nice to mee—”
“That’s enough. Go back upstairs.”
“Huh…?”
“Go on.”
“Y-yes….”
The boy went back upstairs, looking thoroughly bewildered. Clea felt a pang of kinship.
After sending his grandson away, the old man said to Ellie,
“Give me one year.”
Calmly. Yet beneath those words, lava-like passion roiled.
“Before Student Ellie advances to her second year, I swear I’ll make a wand superior to anything that exists now, and to anything I have ever made. No, I’ll contract for it.”
“That’s hardly any time at all.”
Then Ellie held out her hand over the table.
The old craftsman’s hand, broad as a pot lid, took her smaller one and shook it firmly.
The contract was made. One with binding force stronger than anything any written agreement could ever reproduce.
.
.
.
“Wow, this cake is really good!”
Clea stared blankly as Ellie happily devoured her fifth slice of cake.
She had only spent a single day with Ellie, and yet it felt as though she had walked through the very heart of a storm.
His Majesty the Emperor.
And the old artisan.
Individually, if she measured them by time, neither encounter had lasted more than thirty minutes, and yet the tension had been so intense it felt as though entire ages had passed.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“...I am.”
There was a slice of cake in front of Clea too.
A high-quality cake topped with candied apples, a seasonal autumn fruit, and cinnamon, a spice from the distant East.
She should have eaten it. She knew it would be delicious if she did. But all she did was fiddle with her fork.
One thing had become certain.
There would absolutely never be a boring day in Academy life with Ellie.
“What’s wrong? Did you order it and then realize it wasn’t that great? Then want to try this one?”
Ellie scooped up a big bite of her fifth cake, made with fresh cream, cheese, and mixed berry jam, and held it to the corner of Clea’s mouth, which had gone slack with dazed bewilderment.
Sweet cream smeared her lips. Clea opened her mouth to speak to Ellie.
“I—mmph!?”
Ellie misunderstood that as meaning she wanted to be fed, and the cake ended up in her mouth instead.
“How is it? Tastes good, right? Hehe.”
Watching her friend smile with delight at sharing something delicious, Clea thought it again.
There really would never be a boring day.