Chapter 180
The day after I met Aurora was frantically busy. They woke me at dawn, and the day began with the business of being dressed and fussed over.
Strip the rest of the schedule down to its bones, and it amounted to this: I went somewhere crowded with royalty and nobles, stood there for a very long time, and then returned to my lodgings.
Throughout, the royal household explained what had happened, held a time of mourning for the dead, and announced that the crown would support the work of restoration. The order of cause and effect, however, had been bent just a little out of true.
To begin with, the credit for bringing the witch down was given to the crown.
A great many people already knew the facts. Princess Aurora had been cursed by a wicked witch on the day of her birth, every possible avenue had been tried to undo it, and in the end it was with my help that Aurora was freed from the curse. The royal household simply laid another story over that one.
When the witch learned the curse had broken, she flew into a rage and came storming in, but the citizens of the capital and the royal household joined their strength and sealed her away. That was the tale they told.
They did not lie. When the Harvesters fought, shafts of light really had come lancing from the royal side.
The king, though, twisted that with a deft hand and proclaimed it as though the crown itself had sealed the witch. They had captured her, he said, and struck down a witch who had spent centuries wandering about doing evil. While he was at it, he made idols of the Harvesters who had fought her, rousing patriotism with the claim that without their efforts the witch could never have been defeated.
Above all, the rewards were generous. Every citizen who had fought on that ground, even someone from the Brightshin Slums, would have their name carved into a monument. Anyone who died there would receive a knighthood, and their families, he promised, would be granted all manner of benefits. That, he declared, was the repayment the nation could offer for their devotion.
Heard aloud, it sounded as though magnificent heroes had been made. A memory taken from the ruling class of the first world glimmered up, quiet and knowing: pile the honors on as high as you like, and the treasury hardly has to open. Another memory shone beside it. Even those honors, if you waited for the proper moment, sullied them, and took them back, would cost nothing but pocket change.
One memory seemed pleased that everything sorted itself so neatly it was almost beautiful. There is someone to resent. There are victims. There are people who devoted themselves. There is a leader to mourn them. And since everyone who devoted themselves is already dead, there is no need to watch a hero's fall when that person later does something strange.
The king promoted those who had sacrificed themselves for the country all the more aggressively. The press carried it across the whole kingdom, and the news even reached Berne City, sealed nearly shut as it was.
Funnily enough, that news turned the hearts of the people still fighting in Berne City clean over. Everyone there, the city's Harvesters included, was furious beyond measure. Not a single word was coming out about what was actually happening in Berne City, while in the capital the royal household boasted of having struck down a wicked witch.
Then, strangely, fewer people called for surrender, and fewer still gave up. More and more voices argued for resisting to the very end. The Purple Twilight Society had even moved past being a single organization and was preparing to found an entirely new government.
It really is amusing. On one side of the country they celebrate a victory and mourn the dead, while on the other the number of people planning nothing short of a revolution against the throne keeps growing.
The one small mercy is that there will be no indiscriminate crackdown. Unlike in the second world, not everyone who is a Harvester will be treated as a villain.
A great many citizens in the capital saw the Harvesters fighting the witch. No one, it seems, watched all the way to the end — the black brambles pierced them before they could — but what matters is that they saw it. They had fought her with psychic powers in a situation where magic could not be used, so the sight seems to have lodged all the deeper in the witnesses. And yet, because no one saw it through, people also swallow without much trouble the claim that the royal household was the one that finished the witch.
Put another way, the capital's Harvesters are good people. Princess Aurora herself is a Harvester. It is difficult, then, to become a villain merely for being one.
Which means the person in the greatest danger is Victoria. A Harvester out of Berne City. I don't know what will become of her.
Oh — and Victoria, unexpectedly, spent the day in comfort. The Royal Academy had been ordered closed for the week. Considering that most of the students in our class had come and sat through the king's address, it was safe to assume every student at the Academy had been there.
Victoria collapsed in her room and slept like the dead. Come morning she tore off to the classroom, certain she was late, and found a notice posted there.
Classes suspended for the week.
She turned around, went back to the dormitory, and fell asleep again. A small disaster, of a sort. She slept soundly until late afternoon, and then, while the sun was still up, she got out of bed, declared that she was hungry, went out, and ate an astonishing amount all by herself. In the evening she headed for the Clockwork Knight school, heard that it was closed as well, and came shambling back to the dormitory.
By the time I reached my lodgings, she was reading a letter from her family and studying her Clockwork Knight coursework. I have nothing in particular on my schedule, so I think I'll go see her tomorrow.
The next day.
There was no need to go to class, but I woke at the hour I always do. I washed, changed, and let them finish dressing me, the same as usual.
Strangely, the people who look after me speak to me more familiarly than before. Until now they had watched me the way one watches something alien, and a great deal of that has faded. It isn't awe at my having defeated the witch. There is none of that. If anything, they tell me I needn't be quite so considerate, and that if I have something to point out, I am welcome to say it. They must have overheard what I said to the butler.
So I offered a few corrections, and the young maids went pale as paper. It was genuinely funny when a maid with some years behind her asked whether I had perhaps worked in the same line of work. The butler arrived and chased her off just before I could answer, so I never did. That was for the best. I have never actually held a job like that, and if someone asked why I possess that sort of knowledge, it would be a little awkward.
In any case. When I went out, the butler saw me off without a word, which makes it quite plain that the king really does mean to treat me favorably. If this were surveillance, he would have asked my destination. But no matter where I went, and no matter how late I came back, he asked nothing of note. At first I thought it was simply because he was a butler. Looking at it now, it seems far more likely he has been told to let me do as I please. They had misunderstood Merryweather, and so they had been watching me through prejudiced eyes.
Thinking that it would be nice if people were just a little cleverer — clever enough not to misunderstand someone without my having to make them a Harvester — I left the lodgings and headed for the dormitory where Victoria lives.
Turn aside at the entrance to the lodgings, and the main gate of the Royal Academy is right there. Go in through the gate, follow the road a short way, take the path that branches to the left, and keep walking, and two buildings stand at the end of it. One is the dormitory. The other is the student dining hall. They sit directly beside each other, and Victoria once muttered that at mealtimes the smell of food drifts straight into the rooms, so there is absolutely no way anyone could skip a meal.
The first floor of the dormitory opens into a wide space of chairs and tables, where students bored of their own rooms gather. Today, too, they had claimed their seats. A television stood among them, and every eye was on it.
I paused, thinking I might watch a moment, but Maleficent's memory lit with a sharp sense of that isn't how it was, so I simply went upstairs. The first floor holds all sorts of auxiliary facilities. From the second floor up are the rooms where the children live.
I stood before a door and knocked. A long while later, Victoria opened it with her hair a wild tangle.
"Bell?"
"Yes. It's me."
I went into the room of a thoroughly startled Victoria. The place was a considerable mess. The corner where she slept was clean, but tools, scrap metal, and oily-smelling hunks of machinery lay strewn in a heap along one side. Clockwork machines she had brought back yesterday from the Clockwork Knight school, saying they were for study.
"It's filthy."
"They're clockwork machines, I can't help it. Even if I could get another room, this is the only place I can keep them, so I have to work in here. So don't throw them out!"
"I won't throw them out."
At that, Victoria looked at me with open suspicion.
"Really? My mom said the exact same thing once, and then she hauled everything off and dumped it. It was Dad's stuff, not mine, but still."
"You're studying, aren't you?"
"Ah. Yeah. Right."
Watching her laugh awkwardly, I pointed at the bathroom.
"Go wash up first."
"Yeah, yeah. It's a day off. What's the harm in taking it a little easy."
Grumbling, Victoria gathered her clothes and went into the bathroom. Once I was sure of that, I picked up the letter lying on one side of the desk. It was from Beatrice.
The two of us will both be busy this time. Don't even think of coming down.
Nowhere in it was there a word about what was unfolding in Berne City. Victoria, reading it, had been glad, wondering whether her father Morris had started working again, but there is a strong chance the letter means nothing of the sort. Even so, there would be nothing she could do if she went down there.
Whether they intend to shrink her part in things or erase it altogether, the royal household made no separate mention of Victoria. Perhaps they believe the crown has already given her everything she needs. Admission to the Royal Academy is considerably difficult, after all. And a one-way journey from the capital to Berne City takes four days at the least. An airship, like last time, would manage it in less than a day, but without one the road drags on. The question is whether this is still a situation in which a letter can be sent at all, or one dangerous enough that they wrote specifically to tell her not to come……
"Haaah, that feels better. What are you looking at?"
"A letter."
"Oh, from Mom? Guess they're busy. They've never both been gone at once before, but that was only because they forced themselves to come in for my sake. Now that I'm out of the house like this, they must both have gone off to work."
Yes. Morris and Beatrice. Both of them love Victoria enormously. I know that no matter how busy they were, one of the two always made time to be with her. I heard it while cooking with Beatrice in the kitchen. Victoria had known it too.
I see through Victoria's eyes, and I know everything she feels, but I don't know her thoughts. Memories come to me only in the instant I make someone a Harvester. So I asked whether she had read, between the lines, what was happening to the two of them.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm not a kid. You think I'd sulk over something like this? Still, it's not very like Mom to write nothing at all about you, Bell. Or did you get a letter too?"
I shook my head. As far as I know, no letter has come for me.
"You think they're really that busy?"
It was more likely that busy did not mean busy with work. A few memories glimmered, cautious. They were hoping no reply would come. Seeing them, I understood.
Yes. Write a single line about me, and the letter may well be taken. And with no guarantee that mail bound for Berne City arrives as it should, it is better to send a letter that invites no answer. I couldn't very well go on pretending not to know. I had already said something to King Hypion. For the sake of keeping my account consistent, asking the question here would keep my words from tangling later. Being told why didn't you say anything is unpleasant, isn't it?
"Victoria. The day we first met. The way you were screaming then — faintly, from the south, I can hear people screaming just like that."
Throwing Beatrice's consideration straight into the trash, I let it slip to Victoria that something might be happening in Berne City. Her face went rigid. I pressed a pen into her hand.
"I'm worried."
And so I urged her to ask. Soon Victoria nodded, sat down, and wrote a letter.
Well then. What will become of this letter, I wonder? Turning over which future it might drift toward, I sat down behind her and waited.