I'd Do Anything for Warmth — 11
I drew my hand back the moment I saw every fine hair on Hyungkesuni's face stand on end.
Put food in front of her and she eats whatever she's given. That's the wild-animal meta, and a proper wild animal ought to be skittish.
Backing away, I let my eyes settle on the staff—enormous, absurd against little Hyungkesuni's body. A sticky power clung to it. It was close to what had wreathed the weapons of the Church of Future Hope's warriors, but the feel of it was subtly different. Their standard-issue arms are chalky and dull. This one is viscous. I don't care for either.
If this were a proper fantasy, you'd expect someone nearby who understood mana. But Cheki and Patricia, the first ones I licked, were raised from the very start as warriors of the faith, and what they know is thin. The person in front of me looks as if she might know all sorts of things.
I still have to hold. A little slower. Only patience gets me warmth.
I went back to my place. The beast is somewhere safe. If they won't give me warmth, I'll stage a protest! A democratic citizen's courtesy runs all the way to the guillotine—but there isn't a person here who is master of themselves, so it can't be helped.
"Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
At my question, Hyungkesuni hesitated, then pulled the cloth she had thrown back down over her head until it covered her completely.
"Aha. Ha. No. Nothing. I know what you are now, and that's enough. This witch will take her leave."
With that, she slipped out through the door, her attention fixed on me the whole way.
That one—whether she is a girl, or only wears a girl's shape, I couldn't say—is one of the four who stood in the inner circle. One of the highest in rank. Four of them. Does that make them the Four Heavenly Kings? Someone may simply have failed to attend, so for now I'll call them senior officers. Someday I want to make them like Joanna, here beside me.
When I turned my head, Joanna was looking at me with fear on her face.
Oh?
Hmm. Had there been anything about me frightening enough to warrant that? I told Hyungkesuni what she asked to know, and I even thanked her for bringing me into this world. She was the one who drew me up, out of the place where I had lain pooled like an endless sea. I let her know there was no villain in it—that I was grateful. Should I have said it more plainly?
I had thought speaking that simply would be a mistake. It would bare the very bottom of me. And once again, it isn't as if I can read minds. Joanna had only been watching my exchange with Hyungkesuni, so all I can know is the moment she grew afraid.
Her heart was hammering so hard I took it for excitement, but if you consider the sympathetic nervous system, there isn't much difference. It was when Hyungkesuni muttered, low, what have we done, that Joanna's condition turned. If that was when she began to be truly afraid of me, had she caught the fear from her?
I don't know. Then what am I supposed to do? If I don't know, I ask.
"Joanna. Am I frightening?"
At that, Joanna's heart gave a great leap. No—I'm not going to eat you. She began, slowly, to nod, then stopped, and suddenly braced her stomach.
"You are frightening."
"Why?"
The bracing just now I'll set aside. There was no incident in it worth being afraid of. When I took the warmth of that pitiful sacrifice, Joanna hadn't been afraid at all. But if she felt fear in the middle of what just happened, then I need to ask the reason.
Joanna hesitates terribly. Well—if the person you serve asks whether you're scared of them, and where, you'd wonder if they meant to sink you. Still, I've never shown her an authoritarian face. It may simply weigh on her that I am someone above her. She can endure it. Satisfying my curiosity comes first.
I stood quietly in front of her, rolling my blackened eyes this way and that, and in the end I gave up and simply waited until she looked at me.
"I had only just come to understand what sort of person Lady Rebecca is. That is why."
"Is that so? I'm only like water pooled underneath. A sea lying perfectly still, watching stars be born beneath a night sky that never ends."
Oh? Now that I think of it—since I've been hauled up like this, a subspecies of me may already have been born down there, should I ever go back. Yesterday the one whose warmth I stole twisted and changed. And there was the blue blood that spilled when the neck was cut. I think I saw it when the light broke loose and dropped into my body with a splash.
When I descend, I might be picked clean. Even in the wild, empty territory is claimed by someone in the end. So I ought to do my very best in this world, while I have it.
Wild animals are frightening. Especially in that they can attack you, whether they eat meat or grass. People who hate them really hate them—enough, at the very least, to feel the threat and wipe them out beforehand.
I should have made myself a pet instead of a wild animal. If I were something like a cat, I could raise a whole crop of people who love one particular creature—because I'm cute!—but Rebecca Rolf is not that young a girl. At this rate I feel I could grow until I had three heads. I'm short, and already this large. Or else, being already dead, I may not grow at all.
A half-hearted threat is worth nothing except to be stepped on and killed. Either be so dangerous that you are forbidden outright, or be harmless. Dangerous is impossible. What am I supposed to do with this body? At best I could take a dozen or so with me for company, and then I'd be driven right back to the bottom. If my luck is bad, I might vanish even from there.
That, on its own, isn't so bad. Even so, if I want warmth, I'd like to make a little more use of this group. I've already drawn up plans for a harvester! Better to seem a little more harmless.
"I came into this body, and I've been doing what's asked of me, faithfully. Why should there be any need to fear me?"
Joanna gave no answer. Only, as if a single word had climbed all the way to the tip of her tongue, she swallowed.
So it's something awkward for me to hear. The your temper is goddamn awful variety? I wouldn't mind hearing whatever it was, but press her any further and she looks ready to collapse from the stress. That's enough for today.
Hyungkesuni has taken my measure and gone back, so now she'll go and talk with Hieronymus, won't she? The next time we meet, I ought to press him once. If he makes his choice then, I'll make mine. If he can manage it, I'd like him here before dinner tonight.
Thinking that, I sat quietly down on the bed.
Hieronymus was in a difficult position.
Witga had come to see him—an instructor of the warriors of the faith, and the man who stood highest among them. He was a little shorter than Hieronymus, though only because Hieronymus's frame was so large; he was by no means a small man. All muscle, and, like most who had given themselves to this religion, not a speck of light in the eyes. The sort of person so full of despair and hatred that he could not go on living unless he spent it on something. He was also one of the four who had stood at the foot of the stepped pyramid.
"Hieronymus. Yesterday one of the men under me asked to be given the blessing as well."
"Refuse him, Witga. That turns people into monsters. We have to begin with those a little further down."
Hieronymus was weighing several possibilities. The worst of them was that it might be able to control, perfectly, everyone it had remade the way it remade Joanna. The testing would have to proceed little by little, starting with those it was acceptable to sacrifice.
"I think so too. But the man had a story. That woman it blessed, the one called Joanna—she's become a complete monster. An old woman who knew nothing grew young in an instant, and within a few hours she was about to catch up to him, after decades of training."
Witga regarded Hieronymus with a grave face and folded his arms.
"Listen, Hieronymus. Our leader. If we can use that thing, it will hand us tremendous power. No more hiding in some remote mountain gorge, performing horrific rites to call down a god of death."
"It said as much. Three a day. And that there is a chance of an explosion."
At that, Witga snickered.
"Listen, Hieronymus. Where in the Church of Future Hope are you going to find a human afraid of that? It's the blessing of the god this Church believes in."
A human sunk in terrible despair turns into a bomb and goes off in a vast explosion. Such a law exists in this world. Once it was fully established that the phenomenon was real, the number of people who worked others to death, absurdly enough, declined. In their place came a different habit: while the workers are young, offer them hope and the promise of good pay, use them up, and the moment they age, drive them out at once—to some far place where an explosion would not matter.
Ironically, taken as a whole, the total sum of misery decreased. Even so, special cities such as the capital are guarded with absolute thoroughness, and the smaller a place becomes, the more that system fails. Someone, therefore, is always made unhappy. One result of this is the Church of Future Hope itself. It exploits and consumes people so steeped in misery that they can no longer think, doing exactly what every country does—and all of it in order to take revenge on the very ones who made them this way. Whatever else happens, so long as revenge is possible, it is enough. From the beginning, they do not count their lives. That is how a person warps, here.
"We need the blessing. If you're truly worried, send three of the children first. The two with the best skill, and the one with the least. Easy enough to read, don't you think?"
At Witga's words, Hieronymus considered for a moment. Whatever else was true, he could not simply leave that thing as it was. Let them test, then, how useful the something that had introduced itself as Rebecca Rolf actually was. He took the thought a step further. If those who had been changed proved useful, he would hang a suitable title on them—apostles of Ksaksibal, the false god of his own making—and put them to work.
"Very well, Witga. I'll prepare the blessing. You prepare the children who are to receive it. If our luck holds, we can move the plan forward by several years."
"You mean the plan to crawl out of this sickening life underground. I like it. Though I do wonder what the whole of it really looks like. You'd found a country, wouldn't you? Former king of the Theocracy."
Hieronymus did not so much as blink.
"The Theocracy has no king."
"I know. But a leader and a king amount to the same thing, don't they? If you make a country, give me a seat in it. That way, when you act, I'll have a voice."
He said it with a low laugh, cold eyes calculating how the power would shift. Witga, too, had a group upon which he was bound to take revenge, and it was not a revenge that could be finished by turning a few monsters loose. The larger the Church of Future Hope grew, the better his odds. That was why, knowing full well who Hieronymus was, he had chosen to train warriors inside this cult. From the beginning, he was a man Hieronymus had brought in for precisely that purpose.
"If I make a country, I will promise you one of the highest seats."
"Excellent. I know that's an empty promise, but you'd keep it. You'll need me for the revenge. Well then. I'll be going. Hieronymus."
With that, Witga rose. To his back, Hieronymus put a single question.
"Do you want to return as Grand General?"
Witga waved the notion off, and he was stepping out when he caught the doorframe and stopped.
"Give it to me as something higher. A grand general of a ruined country, becoming grand general again—that would be a shabby thing."
Once he was fully gone, he shut the door so quietly it made no sound. Hieronymus, turning over whether to rebuke Hyungkesuni for having contacted it on her own, looked through the magic at the figure sitting blankly on the bed.
A docile, childlike girl. When he remembered how sharp-tempered the original occupant of that shell had been, he found it chilling instead.
He kept up the watch, and began setting in order the plans the Church would have to carry out from here.