Not a Single Thing Goes Smoothly - 2

It had been two weeks since I came to the royal palace, and I was living in a room they had set aside for me in one corner of it. Since that day, though, the king had not called for me once.

He offered no explanation. He didn't need to. I could see the reason well enough, through the Harvesters.

Using the specialists at the hospital, they were analyzing the Harvesters down to the last detail. The people who had already been patients there were mostly persons of importance, and so they were being examined under the pretext of confirming that their illnesses had fully cleared. The ones who weren't important were another matter entirely.

The children orphaned in the Berne City incident, for instance. From among them, Harvesters were pulled aside and, quite literally, taken apart. They didn't even bother with proper anesthesia while they experimented on living bodies, and so, thankfully, I heard every word they said. I learned a few things that way.

The blue skin, for one. Peel it off, and the scraps of flesh return to their original color. The same is true of the hair. Once removed, it fades from blue back to what it was, and if you set it in place again and let it heal, it stains blue once more, the way meat drinks in seasoning.

Severed wounds varied wildly from person to person, but the findings suggested that more than half of them could regenerate, given time. I also heard they would almost certainly live longer than an ordinary span of years.

Beyond that, I know nothing. It was no different from torture, so they had kept using the same person for every experiment, and that person died. A child who had been hiding an ability seized control of metal and blew the researcher's head apart. The child, already carrying fatal wounds, died as well. Unfortunately, no one has been kidnapped and dissected since.

I'll content myself with the little I managed to learn this time.

As for the rest — two days ago, they held a press conference with the people who had distinguished themselves in Berne City. Broadcast reporters and newspaper reporters alike came, and left with their photographs and their footage. The king appeared in person, presented a plaque of gratitude to each of those who had served in the disaster zone, and distributed prize money.

A truly splendid method. The suffering of everyone else who had labored there was treated as if it had never happened, and only a handful of people received any money at all. Better still, their faces were fixed plainly in the photographs, easy for anyone to recognize. If they had power or strength enough to protect themselves it might not matter, but for people who have nothing, they become targets of jealousy and greed.

A plaque of gratitude would be difficult to steal, of course. But humans are not the sort of creature one can ever swear won't try. There will be a great many people intent on taking that prize money. They'll resist, won't they? And the warmth will grow along with it. Hehe.

Let me bring the story back. There was a press conference. I had wondered whether I might see Victoria there, but I was kept entirely apart for it, and so I never did. I know she is bound for the Royal Academy as well, though, and that she means to look for me there, so I decided I would do the same.

For the record, on that broadcast I made it clear that I am no apostle of God, and at the same time planted the impression of someone who simply does as she is told. If someone asked me something, I answered yes, or no. I had been instructed to answer that way whenever a question was put to me. And when a question came that was difficult to answer, I stared blankly at whichever person in the room ranked highest. I was curious, too, what people would make of it.

The Harvesters, at least, took it like this: that I was a pitiful thing, held captive by the royal family. I had been acting so I would look exactly that way, and it took remarkably well, which pleased me. I stayed perfectly still, like a child who knows nothing. I already had more feeds pouring in than I could ever watch, so there was no need to go out; for the most part I simply sat quietly in the room I had been given.

The people who worked around me mostly cleaned, or dressed me. Those too well-bred to be called mere servants and maids would look at me and whisper that I put them in a foul mood. Only natural, since I was behaving as passively as a doll. I had not yet made a Harvester of the one person the king truly wanted healed. Easy to understand, easy to handle — a thing that stays where it is left.

Thanks to that, the people around me disregarded me openly. At first they had carried themselves as if attending someone of rank, but their manner loosened by degrees, and once they realized I barely reacted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even to muttered asides and curses, they began to treat me at their ease. Whether from fear of the king or because I wore a child's shape, their attitude grew crude without ever quite reaching abuse. They simply treated me like a cute little doll. As many as five of them were replaced over those two weeks, so not everyone was like that.

Time passed quickly. And at last, the king summoned me.

Unlike the usual, people in heavy armor came for me, and I followed them to where the king was waiting. I had expected to be shown once more into the room where he worked, but instead I was led somewhere I had never been — not a building at the heart of the palace, but a beautiful palace standing alone, a little removed from the rest. The soldiers who had brought me stopped at its entrance and looked back. I went in alone.

Inside were the king and a young man who resembled him closely. Father and son, then. Both of them looked perfectly sound. Was something the matter with the queen?

"Can this one truly save that child?"

"Yes. You have seen those who were treated, have you not?"

Rather stiff, for words between a son and his father. The prince watched me with suspicion, and the king with expectation bright in his eyes.

The moment I arrived, the king spoke.

"Follow me."

I followed him deep into the building, up to the second floor, and into a broad room there. It must once have been beautiful, but in place of ornament and furnishing an enormous machine hummed as it turned, and the countless tubes spilling from it ran toward a bed.

At the center of that bed lay a girl nearer to a corpse than to the living. Several tubes entered her face, and more were driven into her chest and abdomen. Less a machine for healing than a machine for keeping someone alive.

"Make a contract with this child."

So the king said, indicating the girl. I stole a glance at the prince. He was half suspicion of me and half hope, and nowhere on his face was there any displeasure at the thought of the girl waking. They must have been close.

Thinking that, I climbed onto the bed without a word. The tubes lay so thick across it that I stepped on one by accident, and the prince raised his voice at me. The king soothed him. He still growled, but at my height it was hard to draw near without treading on the tubes, so I simply stepped across them and stood before her. My skin met the girl's body, and I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spoke.

The girl answered that she wanted to live, and the contract was sealed.

A sharp ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠crack. Her whole body began to turn to porcelain, then stopped all at once, and a strange pattern rose ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠across her face and her chest.

"Do you know what this is? It's interfering with the contract."

The prince came at me in anger, saw where I was pointing, and went white. The king, too, stared at the pattern with the face of a man looking at something dreadful. So there was some tie here after all.

Well. This is a world with magic that can restore nearly anything. If a princess able to receive treatment of the highest order still cannot rise, it means something is standing in the way. I waited on purpose, perfectly still, so they could commit the pattern firmly to memory — and so their desperation would deepen.

"Even your power cannot save Aurora?"

The king asked it while looking at me, his face sunk in despair.

The contract was already finished. But when I tried to push myself in, a thin film of plastic lay across the cup, and I couldn't enter. Very thin.

"I'll try my best."

Yes. With that, I made it perfectly clear that I was making an effort. I waited for them to explain something. No one opened their mouth. Anything more than this would be difficult to get.

So I tore through whatever was interfering, and made her into a Harvester properly.

The moment I entered, the light washed a blackish purple. At the same time her whole body turned to porcelain again, and every tube driven into her was flung outward. The porcelain broke, and blue skin came out from within.

The eggshell shards pattered down, and when the last of them had fallen away, a naked girl emerged. Unlike before, of course, her hair was purple and her skin dyed blue. And the girl named Aurora opened her eyes.

"Ah... Father? Mother? Brother?"

She sat up, groggy, and looked back and forth between the king, the prince, and me.

"Uh... is she my little sister, or my niece?"

Naturally. A logical inference. In a place only family could enter, an unfamiliar girl was standing on her bed. She remembered that she had been sick and dying, so she must have thought a great deal of time had passed while she lay there. Thinking it through, I would have to be someone's family.

That wasn't the right answer, so I got down from the bed at once. Aurora stared at me, her face full of questions, but I went and stood before the king.

"It's done."

Slowly, the king knelt in front of me.

"You have my thanks."

I nodded without a word. I had shoved everything but his daughter's present life into the sewer, so this was hardly an occasion for thanks. But warmth is more important.

"Huh? What? This isn't clothes! Why is my skin blue? Was I really that close to dying? Ah. Ah—? My hair! Why is it purple? Wasn't my hair platinum blonde?"

Flustered, Aurora patted at herself all over. Her older brother, Sorindiges, watched his little sister with tears of joy in his eyes, and her father, Hypion, let out a sigh in which relief tangled with any number of other feelings. King Hypion went to her, covered her naked body with the blanket, and drew her into his arms.

"Welcome back."

Aurora's face went awkward, and a moment later she answered in a voice thick with tears.

"Yes, Dad."

I left them to it and watched from a little distance. From far away, they looked like a good family. For the record, the queen had died giving birth to Aurora. In a case like that, the correct thing would seem to be hating the child who survived, and yet here they had doted on her and raised her with every care. Perhaps that is exactly why she will be unhappy. A father like that sold her to me.

So I thought, looking at my new Harvester of the upper ranks. If my expectations hold, in this world I ought to be able to build an automatic warmth-harvesting system.