The Song of the Betrayed — 9
"The leg they'd cut off... it really did grow back. Clean."
While Morris and his parents looked his body over, I stepped outside with Beatrice. There was a stiff, uneasy current between the two of them. From the look of it, they weren't on good terms.
"Would you like to make a contract too, Beatrice?"
I indicated her body. Baggy clothes hid it, but judging by the scars, these were no ordinary wounds. There were scars left on her face, even. For the sake of marks that simply would not fade, she would be handing over something truly important.
"I'd end up changing like that, too?"
Like that.
"Unless you're at death's door, your skin won't turn blue."
"Death's door."
Beatrice repeated my words once more, then sank slowly into fear. She had understood what I meant.
"You mean Morris was about to die?"
"As far as I know, yes. Everyone who made the contract while physically staring death in the face had their skin turn blue."
A minor injury — a missing arm, a missing leg — is fine. But people dying of a fatal illness or a curse, people whose death cannot be stopped merely by staunching the blood pouring out of them, had their skin stained blue. Like a brand on someone who had defied death.
As for me, if they come back to life, good is simply good. I even think it might be possible to revive someone who has not been dead for long, because a dead body still holds a light, if only for a very brief moment. Recite the words of the contract, and I believe a contract could be formed. Saving someone on the brink of death and raising the dead, though, are entirely different matters. So when I see a corpse, I only take the warmth.
Ah — it isn't that I hold back because reviving the dead would earn me worship. It does unsettle me. Honestly, I dislike the idea enough that if someone urged me toward it, I would kill them without a second thought. For warmth, I could even put on the mask of a god. But raising the dead is far more dangerous than treating the wounded. The people trying to study me would multiply. Some already do. Even so, techniques for regrowing lost limbs, or for curing someone stricken with a dangerous disease, already exist in abundance in this age. A technique wholly unlike the ones they believe they understand has to be approached in a different way.
And the second thing. I would have to explain that the dead must be brought back while the warmth remains — more precisely, while the light remains — and no matter how I turn it over, the people of this era are not ready to accept that. In the world of Kunlun, or of the Great Gon, they would do it without hesitation. Why? Because there, they have the art of saving a life. In the Great Gon's case, they can even revive a creature long dead.
Only, that comes in two kinds.
One. The flesh is restored, but the soul is new. Looking through the Great Gon's memories, it isn't strictly new — there is some complicated law at work, they say. But it might as well be new, and it isn't strong enough to uphold that body, so it dies soon after. Not a proper resurrection. Only a brief, time-limited return to life.
Two. Flesh and soul are both restored. Except that if the soul has reincarnated and is living now, they kill the present life. Put simply, the current life is offered up as a sacrifice to revive the past one. Even then, the soul that enters the restored body is flawed, and unless it is adjusted separately, it dies easily.
So as technology goes — not yet. I have my own revulsion, besides, and I have no intention of saving the dead. I simply draw the warmth clean out.
To return to the matter at hand, I looked at Beatrice as she weighed a contract with me. For a woman, appearance is an extremely important thing. Standing beside Morris, who had grown a full measure younger upon becoming a Harvester, would be hard to endure for long. They might even part over something like an affair. It is a common enough business among humans — leaving the partner covered in scars, and going off in search of a prettier one.
I don't actually know how they would think of it!
So I said this.
"Take your time. It isn't as if your life is hanging by a thread, the way Morris's was. The contract is easy."
At that, Beatrice looked down at me with an uneasy face. Meanwhile Morris was introducing his daughter to his parents. Victoria offered a greeting with a thoroughly awkward expression, and only then did the two of them greet one another.
"No. The contract won't be that easy."
"Why, all of a sudden?"
Beatrice looked puzzled, so I pointed toward the room.
"Victoria seems to think my place is in there. She left me a goodbye and turned back. I followed in a hurry, but I ought to go back up to the capital myself."
Yes. Just as she had simply gone, I would go up now. I had followed because she spoke as if she would never come again, but that was that. Within reason, I was in the middle of a little performance of humoring what people said. If Victoria wanted us to part, then that was what I ought to do.
"She did that?"
"You didn't hear it in a letter?"
At my question, Beatrice shook her head, long blonde hair of subtly uneven length swaying from side to side. No — the lengths weren't different. She was hiding the places where there was no hair at all, with the way she wore it. I dug through Morris's memories. While they were fleeing, some cruel person had caught her and torn her hair out by the handful, and so there was a bare patch on her scalp. Ripped so hard that in places the hair had never grown back. She was covering it with the style.
"Is that so."
"But, Bell. Did you know Morris was in a state like that?"
That was when Beatrice put her finger on the important part. Of course. Their relationship had gone bad, and yet she had forced herself to follow him down here. She was asking whether that had been because of Morris.
"She sent letters like that. Wouldn't it be strange not to know?"
At my question, Beatrice closed her mouth.
Yes. I knew. Back when Victoria was still attending the clockwork knight school, the letters of this spring and summer had run far more sentimental. There were words about missing them, and sulking complaints that it was hard to see Morris. Mother and daughter had been close. On top of that, Morris's short notes used to be enclosed along with them, and there had been nothing of the sort at all.
"So you did know."
She was lamenting herself for having sent letters wrecked enough that someone could tell. That was fine either way.
I stepped up to Beatrice and flicked her long skirt upward, the way a naughty child from the neighborhood plays a prank. Or — in that world of faded memory, were they hauled away without exception, no matter how young?
Anyway.
"That's bad."
"We're both women, but if you're going to do something like this, say so first."
A long tear showed itself, split open and then closed — and only knitted back together in a tangle by magic, healed over the once. A severe wound in its own right, but she was alive, and that would do. I let go of the skirt.
The urgent business here was drawing to a close. Should I return to the capital like this?
No.
There was one thing I still had to do. She had gone off as she pleased and left me behind, so I would do as I pleased, too.
"Beatrice."
"What?"
"From here on, listen to what I say in there, and don't collapse."
At my words, Beatrice's face hardened. She gazed at me for a long while, then shifted her eyes to the door.
"A great deal happened to Victoria as well? Enough to drive the two of you apart?"
"Enough happened that whatever lies between her and me amounts to nothing at all."
Of course I had no intention of speaking about the mass slaughter. But they ought to know, at the very least, what Victoria had been through. I took Beatrice by the arm and dragged her straight into the room.
"Hello."
While I was at it, I went in speaking in a voice that wasn't quite a person's. I did let go of Beatrice's hand as I crossed the threshold — only a little. But the people inside had already seen her face, so backing out would be difficult. Hehe. This body was still short.
"Bell..."
Victoria looked at me, thoroughly awkward. I raised a hand at once and pointed at her.
"The name Victoria gave me is Bell. Humankind. What are the two of you called?"
"Who... just who are you?"
Morris's father. Gain stammered the question.
"An old monster. You are Morris Vett and Beatrice Vett. And their daughter, Victoria Vett."
I pointed at them one by one on purpose, naming each person and each relation. Would they understand, like this, what I wanted?
"I am Gain Vett, and this is my wife, Rebecca Vett. First—"
Gain came forward, and before me he bowed his head.
"You have my thanks for saving my son."
Strictly speaking, it would be more accurate to say I had flung him into the worst possible ending than that I had saved him. So I denied it, clearly.
"No. I only gave you myself. I'll be leaving soon, so I would rather you forgot this part. More importantly, there is a story I must tell you here."
Quietly tucking the unflattering truth about myself out of sight, I looked at Victoria. She couldn't meet my eyes, her face all fidget and hesitation. She must have thought I had run away. You can't run from a thing like that.
Anyway.
I went up to Victoria and covered her mouth.
"Mmph!"
"It is time to tell, without leaving out a single thing, everything that has happened to Victoria since this year's summer break. If you are good adults, oughtn't you to bear a child's misfortune?"
I provoked them a little while I was at it, and the people in the room stared at me with serious eyes. Well then. It isn't as if the world holds only bad adults.
Looking at them, I slowly laid out everything that had happened since I met Victoria this summer. Victoria's meeting with the Great Gon's vanguard. The fight against the witch called Maleficent. The journey to Berne City, brought on by a letter that had come back. Here, Morris and Beatrice went pale. Then Victoria in her rage, who had come within a breath of killing every person in Berne City — and the fact that she truly could have done it. After that, the return to the academy, only to find the capital thrown into chaos by politics; the citizens of the capital running wild and killing the teachers and students of the clockwork knight school; and, at that very scene, the corpses pieced back together by her own hands.
There Victoria moved water in place of an arm, seized the arm of mine that covered her mouth, and tore it away.
"Bell."
And in a sharp voice, she cut me off.