Deep Beneath the Sea - 14
The ship reached the harbor, and a gangway was laid between dock and hull. At once people came pouring out in a rush.
Among the passengers stepping ashore, one stood out at once: skin unnaturally white, and purple hair.
Victoria Vett.
She was striding this way from the quay with a confident look on her face when she startled and saw me and Polaris. Through Victoria's eyes, Polaris's face was just as full of shock.
Polaris ran to her. She was so short that it looked like a child pelting across the dock.
"Pola? How did you end up here?"
"Running into you like this is a miracle. So, Tori. We're going back to the capital. Right now."
As if there were no need to hear another word, she seized Victoria's arm and started hauling her toward the ship.
"Pola? Polaris? Hey, that hurts, my arm—"
"Ah... sorry."
Polaris flinched and jerked away from her.
Mm. An overreaction. Polaris was halfway to panic.
Victoria had been about to snap, but she seemed to catch the state Polaris was in. She approached carefully and took her hand.
"You all right?"
Looking at Polaris through Victoria's eyes, I could see fear beading out of her face, drop by drop. Her expression crumpled as if a dam she had been holding all this time had finally burst. She forced it back down anyway, and clenched her fist.
"I'm fine. Victoria. We have to go back. To the capital. Now."
But that was exactly where she and Victoria parted ways. Victoria wanted to go to Berne City. Polaris wanted to return to the capital.
"I didn't think you'd go home alone, Victoria."
"Ah."
Victoria was already flustered just looking at Polaris, and Polaris meant to drag her off with no thought of persuading her at all. One sentence from me, and Victoria's confusion showed plain on her face. Left as they were, the tangle would only pull them harder in opposite directions, so I stepped forward.
"B-Bell? How are you here?"
"You went home by yourself. Without a word to me."
As I said it, I drew from my pocket the note Victoria had left behind. Her eyes slid away from mine.
"First, we talk. We'll write this ship off as unavoidable and stay here for a day. We need time to talk."
As much as possible, so that we would remain in this place.
I was already expecting bloodshed between the protesters and the soldiers. I ignored that and pointed toward the village. From off to the side, Polaris was glaring at me with a look that demanded to know why I wasn't taking her side.
Yes.
I'm sorry, but what is about to happen in Berne City is considerably warm. I intend to take that warmth here as well.
Two to one.
In the end Polaris couldn't force the issue, and she and Victoria set off together for an inn in the village.
The inn we found sat a good distance from the center. Even there, no large room was to be had, so the three of us took a single one. One bed. A narrow, musty single. We had, however, paid the rate for a double, because there were hardly any rooms left in the whole village. The people who had come from far away to protest were staying here, and the inns in good locations, or with decent facilities, had nothing at all.
We went into that room, shut the door, and had barely sat down before Victoria looked at us and asked.
"No—why is Polaris here?"
Polaris was glaring, and Victoria paid it no mind. She was asking me.
"Because you slipped away alone. We came looking for you."
"Then how did you get here ahead of me?"
"We came by airship."
At that, something seemed to click, and Victoria looked at Polaris.
"Whoa. Don't tell me Pola lent you an airship?"
"No. The royal family did."
Victoria let out a short breath of admiration as she looked at me. I do have a connection with the royal family, after all.
"I see. Then take it and go back. I'm going to see my parents, and then I'll return."
"We can't! A clockwork machine on the airship suddenly tore people apart and killed them, and they fired magic from the ground to kill us! If we stay here like this, we might actually die!"
Polaris shouted it like a scream. Victoria stared at her, hysterical and wild, with the look of someone who had failed to understand a word of it.
"Bell. What is she talking about?"
Asking a third party for an opinion.
"Someone doesn't want people entering Berne City. So they sealed the harbor and the land routes, and tried to bring down anyone coming by air with clockwork machines. That wasn't enough. They also meant to finish us with military weapons, just in case."
Neatly summarized, that was all of it.
Polaris nodded along with me, then went straight to Victoria and seized a fistful of her clothes.
"Tori. Let's go back. Those lunatics didn't hesitate to attack a ship flying the royal seal. They're out of their minds. And if they're using weapons like that, the army is the one blocking this place!"
That cut in half my suspicion that the royal family was behind it. I had wondered whether they meant to make us disappear, but if so, they could have handled it at a military base. My name is known well enough, but what I actually am is hardly known at all. I am no distinguished noble. If the royal family simply killed me, no one would say a word.
Above all, the clockwork machine. Setting me aside, what need was there to kill the crew with one of those? A knight disguised as crew could have walked in and killed only me. They hadn't done that. They had tried to attack the airship itself and destroy it. Better to assume some other group was involved.
"So what, then. I can't get into Berne City?"
"Did you see the crowd out front earlier?"
At my question Victoria nodded slowly. She seemed to have seen them, though the memory wasn't clear.
"Yeah."
"They're people trying to enter Berne City, the same as you. Entry's been forbidden, so they're protesting to be let in."
Victoria's face twisted hard. From the look of her, she understood exactly what I meant and did not want to accept it.
"What?"
"You heard me right. It's dangerous to go inside, Victoria."
And I knew those words would land on her as the same thing as saying her parents were in danger. Sure enough, fire lit in her eyes. But the one who caught hold of her was Polaris.
"That's right. Victoria. Let's go back to the capital first. If we take this to His Majesty as it stands, we can come back with the kingdom's soldiers. Yeah?"
That aside, Polaris had grown truly weak. Nothing remained of the face she had shown until now; what showed was someone desperate to flee to the capital. But this was the correct thing. To set one's own foot in hell is a foolish act.
Victoria, however, was capable of doing exactly that.
"Pola. You go back to the capital first. I'm going to look for my parents. You can take Bell with you."
Mm. Of course. Victoria would say that. Firm in her resolve, convinced that if the danger fell on her alone, that was enough.
To break that, I only had to do this.
"You're going to leave me behind? Morris and Beatrice may yet accept me. And I cannot bring the dead back to life, Victoria."
The worst case. If she failed because she hadn't brought me, even though there had been a chance to save them, Victoria would regret it bitterly. And which way her scales would tip—my danger, or her family's safety—was obvious.
"Come with me, Bell."
"Yes. All right."
The correct answer.
Polaris, meanwhile, was staring at the two of us with a faraway look.
"You're going to die doing that."
"I'd rather regret going than regret not going."
Victoria answered her without wavering. Heavy words, from someone who had opened her eyes in the worst of circumstances and forced her way through with nothing but an iron crowbar. Terrifying, too—terrifying enough that even as she herself was twisting into a monster, she had been ready to blow herself apart along with every monster there.
"Bell, aren't you scared?"
"Polaris Valouin Bearington."
I would strike aside the hand she had reached out, coldly. I was pressing a reality too cruel for a young girl to bear.
"I am a monster. It is people who ought to be afraid of me."
The truth. Almost no one recognized it. And now the way back was cut off as well.
KRA-KOOM!
Far off, and a little sooner than I had expected, fire shot up from the center of the village. Screams and blasts filled the streets at once as the light began to fail. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened.
Earlier, as the protesters had gathered, soldiers had gathered with them. In this world the royal family does not own every army. Nominally, yes, but the nobles each keep private forces of their own. Most hold them under the name of knightly orders. These were different. The nobles of Berne City kept not knights, but an army.
It was permitted because a provincial noble without soldiers could hardly cope with the wild monsters on every side. Restrict that, and you might as well be telling them to go and die. So the arrangement had endured, and now its harm had come due.
When the royal family asked how things stood out here, and the local nobles answered that everything was proceeding as it should, there was nothing to do but believe them. A lie is bound to be caught eventually, of course, so they wouldn't answer falsely unless the stakes were high.
Unless.
There had to be a reason they lied to the royal family anyway. Either they stood with the throne, or they had gotten their hands on a means of opposing it. Those who held the industries bound up with clockwork machines, for instance. In the world within my faded memory, one would call them international oil corporations. People who wield capital on that scale sometimes surpass even governments with history behind them.
"What! What's going on! Why are things exploding all of a sudden!"
I looked at Polaris, screaming as if something in her had snapped, and at Victoria, flustered, trying to soothe her. Polaris had reached her limit. It is nearly impossible for everyone to stay calm in a situation like this.
Smoke and blasts. Magic circles split the air beneath a sky that had gone fully dark, night at last. In this world even ordinary people will sometimes cast powerful magic. There are perfectly ordinary folk who will tell you they grew up in a village monsters raided often, and so they know their way around a weapon. Try to crush them by force, and the force that shoves back is greater than anything in the world within faded memory.
And out there, a great many people had already fallen.
Hehe.
"Someone is calling me. Think about where you'll run."
I left the two of them and went straight outside.
It was time to make a Harvester.