The Judge (3)
The Judge (3)
Divine Judge Dimona glanced at the church.
It was tidy. There were worn spots here and there, but it was different from before. There was no obvious source of income, so how had it been done?
Dimona smiled brightly.
"Priest Mierkant. The church looks much tidier."
"Our congregation has grown. The regular donations have increased as well. I believe I included that clearly in my reports..."
"Did you?"
"Didn't I tell you to read the reports properly?"
"But formal reports are boring. It wasn't my jurisdiction anyway."
Dimona signaled to her closest aide beside her. A middle-aged man. Inquisitor Radatok.
His grim face nodded curtly when their eyes met.
"I will take a look around."
"Take them all."
"Even so, we should leave one or two..."
"Oh?"
Dimona tilted her head. She looked up at Radatok sideways.
"Hey, did you forget I'm the strongest one here? Without an Inquisitor, leaving the others here is as good as leaving no one. Take them all. I need to interview these cute young priests."
"Don't break them."
"Break them? If you say things like that, everyone gets scared of me! You know you're partly to blame for my bad reputation, right?"
"I will pretend I didn't hear that."
Radatok left the room immediately. The attendants also vanished without a trace.
Now that all the nuisances were gone... let's see. Dimona drained the tea in front of her.
As expected from cheap tea, the flavor hadn't steeped properly.
Ugh. Awful.
Dimona subtly pushed the teacup away.
"Priest Mierkant, you still seem to like tea?"
"Drinking something warm helps me sort out tangled thoughts, so I drink tea often."
Mierkant.
The caretaker of a ruined branch. A priest who had practically been driven out of the church headquarters.
There was a reason the lord of the city, Mamelan, had kept him alive. Mierkant enjoyed a level of public respect almost unheard of for someone from the Sun God Church, and his record was spotless.
He was clean. Dimona knew that. She also knew that sometimes, being too clean created problems of its own.
Incorruptible integrity.
It sounded like an admirable thing. In practice, the world often treated it as the opposite.
People of the world did not like those who were endlessly clean. The more selfish and greedy a person was, the more easily they looked down on good people.
This was a world where using someone up and throwing them away—or simply pushing them aside—was considered normal.
Dimona knew the church had already rotted to the core. Mierkant refused to attach himself to a faction, and he remained here as caretaker of a branch everyone else avoided. She knew both choices came from the same upright heart.
But contrary to him, well...
But she didn't particularly like people like the man sitting in front of her. She respected him, but she didn't want someone like him at her side.
People with no greed were boring. They were content with ordinary lives.
"It's delicious. I like the refreshments too. You really didn't have to prepare this much..."
"You came a long way. This much is only natural."
"You're still so kind. I hear you take in all the orphans too?"
Dimona let out a sigh.
"I'm sorry I haven't been able to do more for Ra's cause. There are too many places that need money and only so much to go around. I heard you were denied support funds again this time?"
"That isn't your responsibility, Judge. I'm fine."
"Thank you for saying that. The way support money reaches the branch churches is a tangled mess... if I touch it, I have to fix it properly. But too many people would oppose me."
"Who on earth...?"
"As you know, I'm hardly welcome in the church. We're treated like an independent faction at best. Even the other judges keep their distance from me. One of them actually told me to stop sticking my nose into things."
Dimona twirled the teaspoon.
"The only reason they haven't cast me out is probably because I'm useful."
"...That is not true."
"Come on, Priest Mierkant. It's just us here. You don't have to be so careful. You know what the church is like too."
Clink.
The teaspoon striking the teacup made a clear sound.
"The Sun God Church isn't what it used to be. It's rotten through. Inside, it's full of bastards trying to siphon off what little wealth remains... and outside, people cling desperately to positions the church no longer has the power to sustain. It's a complete mess."
"Is the situation that bad?"
"Of course. The money coming into the church shrinks every day. It's already hurting the facilities we operate. We could survive for a while by scaling down, but then our support would shrink again."
A vicious cycle. Dimona gazed at the calm surface of the tea.
If only the church itself could be as calm as this tea.
"And right now it's even worse because three people are fighting over the cardinal seat. Well... it isn't something you need to worry about, so I'll stop there. I do have a question."
Dimona rested her chin on her hand.
"Knowing you, Priest Mierkant, I thought you would file the Divine Trial under your own name."
"......"
"You don't have to hide anything. I'm just asking—not as Divine Judge Dimona, but as a friend. Why did you put an apprentice priest down as the person requesting the Divine Trial?"
"He wanted it."
"Whether he wanted it or not, you know how much weight that name carries, don't you? This is whistleblowing. He's voluntarily stepping onto a trial platform no priest wants anything to do with. Win or lose, a trial like this leaves scars."
"That boy also applied knowing that."
"Why?"
"...That child said."
Mierkant smiled faintly.
"He said he didn't want to drag me or the other child under my care into it."
"...Ha."
So that was it.
An upright disciple taking after an incorruptibly upright teacher.
Dimona puffed out her cheeks. She'd thought this might be interesting, but apparently it was just boring. Once her interest faded, she slumped over the desk and idly tapped the teaspoon.
So it was only the recklessness of a child who thought being righteous was enough. She'd expected some more complicated motive.
Boring—
I hate this—
"Well, if that's all... Still, I'm surprised you actually let him have his way."
"I thought it was fine to grant it."
Mierkant downed his tea.
"That child has always gone beyond my expectations."
Praise from Mierkant.
Then he was probably nothing special after all.
Dimona forced herself upright. The work was boring, but she couldn't just sit there forever.
Work. Time to work.
"I want to conduct the interrogations. Let's start with Apprentice Priest Beverick. Bring me all the evidence you've collected too."
"I will send him in right away."
"Just in case..."
Dimona smiled.
"And just so we're clear... even if it's you, Priest Mierkant, I won't go easy on you if I catch you tampering with anything."
"...To think you'd play tricks on the Divine Judge they call the Guillotine."
Mierkant rose from his seat.
"I would rather die."
. . .
I swung my legs idly. Waiting quietly was more boring than I'd thought.
Beverick, who had entered the room first, still hadn't come out even after quite some time. Occasionally, a frightened scream leaked out through the door, but that was all.
"Don't be nervous. Just tell her exactly what happened. Judge Dimona is unusual, but she's an upright person. She won't force crimes onto someone who didn't commit them. There's a reason I asked for her specifically."
"I'm fine."
I was someone who had cleared this game countless times. Did he think I wouldn't know the personality of Dimona, one of the few major NPCs in the Sun God Church?
Completely unpredictable. And Dimona only cared about one thing. I knew exactly what it was.
The door creaked open. Beverick had no visible wounds, but his cheeks looked strangely hollow as he crept out.
Then—thud. He pitched forward and hit his head on the floor as if he'd collapsed from exhaustion. Had the mental strain really been that bad?
"Apprentice Priest Zahard. Come in."
What was coming had come.
I stood up. I waved lightly at Mierkant and Irene, who were watching me with worried eyes.
"Go on with your work."
Alright.
Let's go see.
I stepped over Beverick and entered what had originally been Mierkant's room. It was bare, with neatly arranged old books and almost no furniture.
Dimona sat at the one desk in the room. She might have been a complete lunatic, but she really was pretty.
"Apprentice Priest Zahard."
She smiled at me and gestured toward the chair.
"Sit comfortably. It's just a necessary procedure, so there's no need to be nervous."
I sat down. Dimona rifled through the documents and kept me sitting there without a word.
Thirty minutes passed like that. I sat still. Various things seemed to have changed, but Dimona's fundamental nature didn't seem to have changed much.
Her first move was to seat someone in front of her and watch how they reacted.
I yawned lightly. Dimona smiled.
"I told you not to be nervous, but I guess you really aren't?"
"What's there to be nervous about? I just reported a bad guy."
"...Is that how you think of it?"
Dimona set down her pen. She clasped her hands and brought them to her mouth. Her upper body naturally leaned forward.
Her voice lowered as if whispering a secret.
"Apprentice Priest Zahard. Do you understand how serious this is?"
"I do. It means I'll be branded a whistleblower."
"Priest Mierkant must have told you, but 'whistleblower' isn't a word you can toss around that casually."
Dimona raised her hand. Her hands were pretty too. Slender and white.
"Focus."
"Ah, yes."
"Well, I am pretty, right? I hear it a lot."
"It's a bit off-putting when you say it yourself."
"...Off-putting?"
Dimona burst out laughing. Her shoulders shook enough to bring tears to her eyes.
"Let's get back to the point. First, every piece of paperwork associated with you will start getting deliberately rejected. Requests for funding, dispatch applications, whatever you submit—they'll reject all of it."
"Can the church do something like that?"
"Officially, all you'll ever see is something like 'ineligible.' The real reason will remain unofficial. And that isn't the end."
"What else is left?"
"The second thing is that an inspection will come down to this branch. Well... that's a problem Priest Mierkant will have to handle, right? He probably won't give them any excuse, but they'll dig through everything. They'll find even the smallest thing to humiliate the priest."
"Is there a third?"
"There isn't just a third. There are plenty. Let's see... even off the top of my head..."
Dimona folded and unfolded her fingers.
"There could be retaliation... gossip from other priests... pressure from headquarters... they might even increase the money this branch has to send up every month. Ostracism is a given. Priests who join after you may look down on you. Priest Mierkant wouldn't do it, but priests dispatched from headquarters might treat you badly too. Maybe even hit you."
"What a mess."
"Exactly. That's what happens to someone who requests a Divine Trial against another insider. Sooner or later, they end up leaving the church. And the man backing Apprentice Priest Beverick is Bishop Brody."
Dimona cleared her throat.
"Simply put... he's a bishop in Archbishop Dwayne's faction. Dwayne is being discussed as the next cardinal, and both his authority and his achievements are enormous."
"What about you, Judge?"
"Me? My title is Divine Judge, but my rank is roughly equivalent to a bishop. Under certain conditions, I have enough authority to threaten even an archbishop."
The way she lifted her chin with pride was very Dimona. Good. She was exactly the battle priest I remembered.
I crossed my legs. I leaned back against the chair comfortably.
"So what is it you want to say, Judge?"
"I'll give you a chance."
"A chance?"
"A chance to take it all back. The luckiest thing about this mess is that I came instead of another Divine Judge. As you can see, I have plenty of other work besides cases like this, you know?"
She whispered like a snake. As if seducing me.
"Even if I handle one trivial matter like this, there's not much for me to gain. But you're different. With one trivial matter like this, you'll lose your entire future in the church."
"...So you'll give me a chance to undo it?"
"We reduce it to a simple assault case. Since Apprentice Priest Irene was nearly raped, we fold that into the case, give both you and Beverick light disciplinary measures, and close the matter. We say the Divine Trial request was a spur-of-the-moment mistake made while you were still worked up from the fight. How does that sound?"
Dimona smiled. It was a mischievous smile that showed her canines.
"For your sake, and for Beverick's sake, that would be the best thing. And for Priest Mierkant too, of course. What do you think?"
She was probing.
To observe my reaction.
I knew her. It would be stranger if I didn't. The type who toyed with people as she pleased. A woman like a mischievous brat who poked innocent people just for her own amusement.
But I also knew how to handle her. Being like a mischievous brat meant she had a naive side, and she became endlessly merciful to those who caught her interest.
I smiled back at her.
"No thanks."
"...Excuse me?"
"I said no. There's something you misunderstand, Judge. I didn't report Beverick because I was outraged by his wrongdoing. I asked for a Divine Trial for one simple reason."
"...What is it?"
"That bastard picked a fight with me first."
I grinned widely.
"I'd rather be the one hitting than the one getting hit. Let's proceed."
"......"
Dimona's eyes widened. She looked me over from head to toe.
"You remember I'm a Divine Judge, right? Did everything I just told you shock you so badly that your brain short-circuited?"
"No?"
"You requested a Divine Trial over a personal grudge? And you're admitting that to my face, knowing I'm a Divine Judge?"
"You act under Ra's authority, Judge."
I shrugged.
"What can I do? I don't like lying."
"......."
Dimona closed her mouth. Then she began to laugh, snickering.
She wiped away the tears that leaked out with her hand. She grinned and stared at me.
"Interesting, Apprentice Priest Zahard. Fine. I'll open the Divine Trial just as you asked. I'll conduct the formal questioning next. Before that, is there anything else you want to tell me?"
"Please remove Apprentice Priest Irene's name."
"...Excuse me?"
I just didn't want things to get complicated.
Hm.
That was all.
"Beverick must have said it, right? That Apprentice Priest Irene also participated in the assault."
"...You want me to remove her name? Even if you win the Divine Trial, you'll still face separate discipline for the assault. If you take all the blame yourself, the burden on you will be heavier."
"If someone's going to get beaten anyway, what's the point of adding more heads? I'll take the beating myself."
"...Pfft."
Dimona laughed brightly.
"I like you, Apprentice Priest Zahard. I can't remember the last time I laughed this much. I'm glad I came here. All right, let's talk a little more. Liking you doesn't mean I can skip the interrogation."
Dimona slammed down the evidence. She swept her long platinum-blonde hair behind her ear.
"I'll verify everything: how the assault happened, Beverick's usual behavior, and whether this whistleblowing really originated with you. Any objections?"
"None."
This was the opening I'd been waiting for. I knew exactly what kind of words she liked.
"Beverick is a damn heretic anyway, isn't he? I'll tell you everything. That bastard deserves to die. Betraying Ra's name. Unforgivable."
-Show that kind of reverence normally.
She scared me. A little warning before jumping into my head would be nice.
Dimona paused. She looked at me, then licked her lips.
Her eyes changed. The playful gleam vanished, leaving them unfocused, as if something inside her had snapped.
"...That's right. If all of this is true..."
She smiled a sadistic smile.
"I'll break him with my own hands. After all, I'm the Divine Judge."