The Victims
Prince Mark's face was twisted in pain.
"What do we do?" Alice asked.
"Aaaah!"
Faye had been too frightened to come inside, only peering in from the doorway. She saw the prince's corpse and screamed, a beat too late.
"What's going on?"
Smith leaned out from behind her and froze.
Tony had only just clawed his way out of the shock.
"Who did this?"
He had screamed so much in the meantime that his voice had gone hoarse. No one answered.
"I said, who did this!"
Tony shouted, raw with agitation. He was ignored again.
"We have to report it."
At Alice's words, people started to move.
"I'll go get someone," Smith said.
"Who are you going to get?"
Smith stopped at Chris's question. Alice spoke up.
"Get Mage David."
"I don't know where he lives. There's no way to contact him, either."
The Tower was remarkably unhelpful. It crammed the aspiring mages into a dormitory, tossed them a single spell, and expected them to claw their way through the rest alone.
"You said you were going to report it. Who were you planning to report it to?"
"I was going to head toward the lecture halls, grab the first mage I ran into, and explain. Mages can reach each other, right?"
Smith left, and Faye asked in a frightened voice.
"Are we just going to stay here?"
"Yeah," Chris said.
"Shouldn't we cover His Highness with the bedsheet?"
"I think it's better if we don't touch anything."
They were clustered by the door. Tony, still seated, scrabbled backward on his legs, putting distance between himself and the body.
"Get out of the room."
Everyone did as Tony said. They stood in the corridor, staring in at the prince's room.
About half an hour later, Smith returned with a mage none of them had seen before. The yellow robe meant he was at the Jenyeom stage, like David.
The Jenyeom took one look at Mark's corpse, spat a curse, stepped past the body, and opened the window.
Chris thought, Why open the window all of a sudden?
The mage drew a staff from inside his robe and muttered for a while. A small whirlwind spun before the head of the staff, and a translucent mass took shape. Wings sprouted from either side of it until it formed a bird.
"Go."
The bird flew out the window.
"What was that?" Chris asked.
"No idea."
Alice shook her head, and Smith shrugged. The answer came from Tony.
"It's a magic bird mages use to send word. They call it a herald bird."
The mage shut the window and fixed the apprentices of Lion Pavilion with a severe glare.
"All of you, down to the lounge. Wait there."
They obeyed. Every one of them went downstairs, sat in the lounge, and kept their mouths shut.
"I'm scared," Faye said, hugging her own shoulders. Honestly, Chris was scared too.
"Scared of what?" Smith asked, squaring his shoulders.
Faye's face crumpled.
"There's a murderer among us."
"No way. That can't be."
"An outsider got into Lion Pavilion and killed His Highness? That doesn't make sense."
Tony ground his teeth.
"The moment I find out who, I'll kill them."
Then he glared at his squadmates as if he meant to kill them, too.
"It wasn't me," Faye said. "Don't look at me like that."
"And why wouldn't it be you?" Tony raised his voice.
"I'm a woman."
"You think a woman can't kill someone? Drive a dagger in without warning and even a knight goes down."
"There were no signs of a struggle," Alice said.
"So what?" Chris said.
"It means it was someone he knew."
"Someone he knew?"
"An acquaintance."
"Exactly!" Tony said. "So the killer is one of us."
The words, thick with certainty, rang through the lounge. The squadmates who had been huddled close drew apart, watching one another with suspicion.
Smith moved to a chair by the fireplace. Faye and Alice shifted to opposite ends of the sofa. Tony, face flushed, paced back and forth near the door.
"Why kill him?" Alice muttered.
"Who hated the prince enough to want him dead?" Smith picked it up.
"It's strange," Faye said. "We got along, didn't we?"
She was right. At first, things between the nobles and the slaves had been terrible, and the commoners caught in the middle had kept an awkward distance. Then Alex, so often the spark of the quarrels, rose from apprentice to Spirit Awakening, and the time he spent at Lion Pavilion dropped off sharply. The fighting among the squad died down with it. On top of that, Alex sneered at the rest of them and called them losers, and that gave them a bond of their own — a bond among losers. The wall of status was still there, so they were not quite friends, but no one disliked anyone. At the very least, no one hated anyone.
Chris was turning Alice's first question over in his mind. What's the motive?
He thought hard, then shot to his feet and ran up to the second floor. The mage had Mark's wardrobe drawers open and was rummaging through them. Startled by the sound of someone coming, he glared at Chris.
"What?"
Chris was breathing hard from the run. Not hard enough to be gasping, but he put on a show of being winded and swept his eyes around the room.
"I asked what you want."
Chris didn't answer. He kept looking the room over.
"Can't you hear me?"
When an edge came into the voice, Chris put on the same idiot expression he used to show Jack and scratched the back of his head.
"May I use the bathroom?"
The mage was dumbfounded.
"Why are you asking me that?"
"You told us to wait in the lounge."
"You're not five. Decide that much for yourself."
"Mages are frightening. Some of them kill you just for talking back..."
Chris gave a shudder, as if he were terrified.
"The higher-ups scared you kids too much."
The mage clicked his tongue.
"Go on, then."
"Do I come back here?"
"No. Go to the lounge."
As Chris turned away, the man shook his head.
"That one's too stupid. Even if he senses mana, he'll never make a mage."
Chris let the insult go in one ear and out the other. He took his time pissing and washed his hands with care. Wiping the water off on his clothes, he walked the corridor and went down the stairs. When he stepped into the lounge, Tony asked,
"Where were you?"
"The bathroom..."
"People are awfully tough, I think," Faye said. "A comrade dies, and you still have to pee, and you still get hungry..."
Her voice broke, and she started to cry.
"The living have to live," Chris said.
Tony's eyes went sharp as axes.
"You lot never liked His Highness to begin with, did you?"
"Why would I dislike him?" Chris muttered. "He's my one and only precious customer."
Tony was thrown.
"Oh. Is that so?"
"If Lion Pavilion caught fire and I could save only one person, I would carry His Highness out on my back."
"Somehow that stings," Smith said.
"You and I were never on good terms."
"Not in the barony. But we got close here at Lion Pavilion. Or was that just me?"
The Smith of the barony had been rough and blunt, but the Smith of Lion Pavilion was soft and obliging. He was good with words, too, and talking with him was a pleasure. For the first time in his life, Chris had made a friend.
"No. I like you."
Alice let out a short laugh.
"Sounds like a love confession."
"Gross," Faye said.
The mood loosened a little. Then silence took its place. They kept their seats with troubled faces.
A short while later, Juan came in with his arms full of ingredients. He looked at the gathered squadmates and radiated contempt with his whole body. Tony, who usually let Juan's insolence slide, flew into a rage.
"Eyes down, you son of a bitch!"
Smith sidled up to Chris and whispered.
"Tony getting this angry is suspicious."
"The prince's death must have hit him hard. That's why his moods are swinging."
"Treating us like the culprits was a bit much, too."
"How so?"
"It feels like he's trying to pin it on us."
Juan was not Juan if he swallowed an insult. He got even angrier.
"Son of a bitch? A lowborn whelp, and there's nothing he won't say to his senior."
He flung the ingredients aside and charged. Tony rose with his fists clenched. In that hair-trigger instant, a wind blew in and shoved them both.
They hit with a thud, flung into the wall and dropped. The impact was vicious. They couldn't get up at once, only groan where they lay.
Chris looked at the group of mages who had entered the lounge. The one who had thrown Juan and Tony was a stranger in a blue robe. Going by the color, he was a water mage, but he had disciplined the two with wind, which suggested he was proficient in other attributes as well.
To his right stood Mage Randal — the mage who had come to the barony, picked Chris out, and burned Jack to death with such cruelty. Chris had not so much as glimpsed him since entering Lion Pavilion. It had been a very long time. Behind Randal, his disciple David stood with his hands respectfully clasped.
To the left of the blue-robed mage stood William, his face twisted as if he had smelled something foul. Peter stood at attention behind him.
They did not spare a glance for the groaning Juan and Tony. They talked among themselves, and from that talk Chris learned that the blue-robed mage's name was Thomas. Thomas was here as the man who had escorted Prince Mark. Randal was here as master to David, who bore responsibility for supervising Lion Pavilion. William was here as the training officer for this intake. One way or another, all of them were tied to the prince.
The way people fighting among themselves close ranks the moment an outside enemy appears, the squadmates drew together. Tony, after reading the room, quietly slipped in among them. Only Juan stood apart, like an island.
Randal looked the apprentices of Lion Pavilion over. When that gaze landed on him, Chris clenched his teeth so he would not shudder. He was terrified. It felt as if Randal might draw his staff at any moment and hurl a ball of fire.
I didn't do anything wrong. I haven't committed any crime. He whispered it to himself over and over, but he could not stop his body from shaking. The sight of Jack burning to death kept rising in his mind.
Randal spoke.
"Did you think you could kill someone and get away with it?"
Silence.
"If this were the backwater territory you used to live in, perhaps you could have."
He raised his index finger and wagged it from side to side.
"But not in the Tower. You will never get away."
Chris heard Tony swallow.
"You will pay with your death for the folly of taking the Tower lightly. David, bring the prince's body."
"Yes."
David backed away from his master, then turned and went up to the second floor. A little later he entered the lounge, and in front of him Mark floated along, still seated in his chair.
Behind David came the mage Smith had fetched.
"Carl. Did you find anything?" Randal asked.
So that mage's name is Carl, Chris muttered to himself.
"Nothing of note."
"What have you been doing all this time?"
"I searched the victim's room and the suspects' rooms."
Chris started. Then he went through my room, too.
While Randal put his questions to Carl, the other mages were watching the apprentices of Lion Pavilion. William's finger pointed at Chris.
"Hiding something?"
Chris hunched under the accusation. William was the man who had suffocated Henry Jefferson, second son of House Jefferson, to death. In all the Tower, he was the mage Chris feared second only to Randal.