The Tenth Pass
Yan was about to answer when Chris waved him off.
"I've changed my mind. Don't answer."
"Why the change of heart?"
"I don't see what difference it would make now."
"Is that so?"
"Even if you knights forgive me, the mages of the tower are still there. Tell me this instead. What sort of punishment is Alex going to get?"
"You think Alex will be punished?"
"Yes."
"Alex isn't the one who killed Mark."
"He still insulted the royal family. You're not going to let that slide just because he's reached Spirit Awakening, are you?"
"Hard to say. Why did you kill Juan?"
Chris handed the answer straight back.
"Hard to say."
Bianca cut in.
"If you wanted him dead, you should have done it in secret. Kill a man with that many people watching and there's no way out."
Chris looked at her as if he'd caught the first half and missed the second.
"You think I killed him on purpose?"
"Yes."
"No. It was spur of the moment."
She was drawing breath to argue when the food arrived. Chris seized his knife and fork and set to work with real appetite, and whether his hunger stirred the rest of them or they were simply ready to eat, everyone bent over their plates until the only sound was the occasional scrape of silver.
Chris had just finished his steak when Yan sprang the trap.
"You killed him in public on purpose."
"What do you mean?"
"You were laying the ground for a claim of self-defense."
Chris shrugged and said nothing.
"You stood right there and watched the mages investigate after the prince died. As Bianca pointed out, you knew that killing Juan in secret still wouldn't save you. One look at his eyes and they'd have known it was your work."
Chris held his tongue.
"That would explain it," Bianca said.
John studied Chris. "Why did you kill Juan?"
"He came at me... It was self-defense."
"I don't see it that way. The mages won't either."
"Why not?"
"You were carrying a hidden blade. The moment Juan lunged, you stabbed him as if you'd been waiting for it."
Chris couldn't admit that. His last hope was riding on self-defense, so he turned the talk elsewhere.
"Knight Bianca. You're royalty, aren't you?"
"How did you kn—"
The answer slipped out before Bianca could stop it. She caught the mistake and shut her mouth.
"Is it a secret?"
Yan answered for her. "Not exactly a secret, but nothing good comes of the rumor spreading. How did you know?"
Chris told them.
"The commander's right," Bianca said. "This one is clever."
So Yan had been overrating me.
It was not a welcome thought. Chris shook his head.
"Not clever. Just quick to notice things. Those are not the same. And Prince Mark... are the two of you brother and sister?"
Bianca hesitated, then nodded.
"I'm his full sister."
Full sister. Then she was a concubine's child as well.
"A princess, and a knight..."
"Does that seem strange to you?"
"Yes. In the stories, a princess is usually the one locked away by an evil mage or a dragon until some knight comes to rescue her."
"I have no intention of sitting around like a fool, waiting to be saved."
"Explain why you killed him," Yan said, "and we'll drop the charge of deceiving the nobility."
"Listening to you, it sounds as if you'd already settled on forgiveness."
"Is there something else you want?"
"Help me."
"How?"
"Keep the tower from punishing me."
"You want us to throw our weight behind the self-defense claim?"
"I'm young, and I don't know much. I can't tell you the precise way out of this. Swear on your honor as nobles that you'll do everything in your power to lighten my sentence."
Yan considered for a moment, then nodded.
"All right. I'll do what I can. But you should know there's a limit to the influence we can bring to bear on the tower."
"Yes. That will be enough."
"On my name, I promise to help you."
Chris licked his lips, and the knights leaned in as one. Every eye fixed on his mouth.
"Juan killed the prince."
The words landed like an earthquake.
"What!"
John lurched to his feet and slammed a hand on the table.
"Is that true?"
"Yes."
Yan was just as shaken, though his face stayed calm.
"On what grounds?"
"The day the prince died, only two of the passes issued for the Lion Pavilion crossed the ward. Mine, and Alice's."
"Everyone knows that."
"There's something we didn't. The Lion Pavilion wasn't issued nine passes. It was issued ten."
"And that's strange?"
"It means one more suspect."
"You're saying Juan had a pass."
"Yes. He'd been around so long I assumed he'd had one for years, but he'd been issued a Lion Pavilion pass."
Bianca cut in again.
"If the records say only two passes crossed the ward that day, then Juan was inside the tower. Fine. I'll grant he can be a suspect. That still doesn't make him the murderer."
"Juan was there when we were questioned, and no one so much as looked at him. Why? Because he was a servant. Because he was nobody. To the people above us, a servant is there and not there. Invisible. We were the same."
Chris swallowed and went on.
"A fool who trained for thirty-six years and never got anywhere. A loser cooking meals for juniors so far beneath him they might as well have been born yesterday. A permanent failure, with no hope of ever amounting to anything. That's how other people saw him, and that's how they treated him. As if he weren't there at all."
"So he was ignored, and that makes him the killer?" John said.
"Who in that place was the most desperate?"
Chris looked around at the knights.
"Juan, you mean?" Yan said.
"I left him off the list of suspects, and that's why I made the mistake of naming Smith. We spent eleven months trying to sense mana. Juan spent thirty-six years. Thirty-six years of trying. Can you imagine how badly he wanted it?"
"Juan knew the helmet existed?"
"Juan is the reason I learned the Mana Helmet existed. I saw him go into the Brian Magic Store and followed him in. Donna told me he wanted that helmet desperately, and she tried to sell it to me before he could save up the coin to buy it himself. The helmet Juan wanted that badly is the one Mark bought."
"All right. I'll grant the motive. It's more than enough. But he wasn't the only one who had one. Smith did. Tony and Faye had weaker ones, but they had them. And Alex, who was on bad terms with the prince, goes without saying."
Chris smiled the smile of a man laying down his winning card.
"I'm not naming Juan on suspicion alone. I could be mistaken, the way I was mistaken about Smith."
"So?"
"I checked."
"Checked?"
"I found evidence."
Yan swallowed.
"What evidence?"
"I found the Mana Helmet. The thing the murder was about. In Juan's room."
"The treasure!" Bianca cried.
"So that's what he meant," John said, "when he came at you raving about a treasure. The Mana Helmet."
"Yes. I asked Donna where he lived, searched the place, and found the helmet he'd hidden. When I took it, I left a note saying I was the one who'd taken it."
"Juan saw the note, lost his head, and came at you."
"And that's how you dressed it up as self-defense," Yan finished.
Chris waved the word away.
"I'd rather you didn't call it dressing anything up."
"Fine. We'll call it self-defense."
Michael looked to Yan. "Commander, do you believe Chris is right?"
Yan thought for a moment, then nodded.
"I think the killer was Juan."
John and Bianca nodded their agreement. Bianca watched Chris with a complicated look, then let out a sigh.
"You made a mistake."
"I did?"
"You shouldn't have killed Juan."
"Yes. You're right. It was a stupid thing to do. I should have told you he was the killer. I took it into my own hands, and now I'm the one facing death."
Chris bit down hard on his lip.
"But I don't regret it. A lot of my friends died because of him. Smith, Faye, Tony... I wanted to avenge them with my own hands. Even if I die for it, I won't regret it."
His face went bleak.
"It isn't as if living on would have brought me any glorious life. I was fated to die wiping up after mages in the tower. If that's all that was waiting, I might as well take my revenge."
Something odd moved across Bianca's face. She had not called it a mistake out of pity for the punishment waiting on him. Frankly, she did not care whether Chris was executed or not. A princess of the kingdom had no reason to grieve a tower drudge born a slave.
The commander of the royal knights had staked his honor on helping the boy, so she would lend a hand as well. That was all. She would not lose any sleep if the request failed.
What actually rankled was how easily Juan had died.
They should have hauled him to the palace and tortured him for five years at the least.
A pity.
"Ahem."
She cleared her throat and closed her mouth. There was no need to speak the truth and break the tragic conviction Chris had wrapped himself in. It would shame him, and it would shame her.
Yan held out a hand.
"Give me the helmet."
Chris's eyes went wide.
"What?"
"The evidence is still only your word. I want to see it with my own eyes."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I found it."
Yan's voice hardened.
"It belonged to the prince. It has to be shown to the king."
Strictly speaking, it was the prince's property, and the helmet would be needed when the truth of the case was laid before the king. Chris still did not want to give it up.
"So you didn't kill Juan to avenge your friends," John said. "You killed him because you wanted the helmet."
Anger flushed Chris's face until it seemed steam might pour from his ears.
"Do not insult me."
"You want to use the helmet to reach Spirit Awakening? You told us over and over that you'd given up. Had you?"
"No."
"Then why are you trying to swallow the evidence?"
Chris hung his head.
John's voice softened.
"Tell us."
"It's something I could never buy, not if I worked myself to the bone my whole life. If the self-defense claim holds and they let me go, I could start a new life with it. Maybe... maybe I could even sense mana..."
"I see."
Yan chose to be generous.
"Then I'll buy it from you."
Chris looked up.
"Truly?"
"Yes."
This time it was Chris who held out a hand.
"What's this?"
"Payment first."
Yan shook his head.
"We'll put it on credit."
"You don't have the money?"
"I'm commander of the knight order. I carry that much as traveling funds."
"Then why?"
"Suppose I handed you a large sum. Before you could spend it, you'd have to get past a cliff."
"What do you mean by a cliff?"
"The mages of Mickclonia Magic Tower are the sort who will burn every last suspect. Do you really think my protection will get you out of this easily?"
"It would be difficult."
"Assume you're sentenced to death. Who gets whatever you own?"
"Right," John said. "Chris has no wife or children to leave it to."
"Which means the mages who execute you walk off with a hundred gold coins."
The fight went out of Chris.
"True enough. Dead is the end of it."
"And escaping execution won't be the end of it either. They'll confiscate your property on top of whatever else they give you."
"Ah."
"When your punishment is finished, leave the tower and come up to the capital. I'll leave your name with the gatekeeper, so give it and go in. If I'm home, find me. If I'm not, find the steward and collect the money."
"Yes. I'll do that."