Chapter 264 : Chapter 264
Chapter 264: Baby (2)
Her legs were trembling.
Even walking at a crawl, she felt she might topple. That was the good end of it. The residence's servants had collapsed.
Knight-trained, special servants capable of withstanding the Grand Duke's Aura. They were scrabbling to get back up.
Outside was a grander sight still.
The residence servants were at least conscious; those outside had lost consciousness entirely. The same for anyone meant to tend or carry them.
Grand Duke Aratus's Aura had crushed the entire Inner Fortress.
'The Crescent Moon.'
That Origin seemed to be Grand Duke Aratus's reverse scale.
'The current Moon is the Full Moon.'
The Grand Duke wanted the Moon dead.
That Moon would be the Full Moon.
'Then the Crescent Moon?'
Harad couldn't think further.
His vision blurred. A feeling of fog settling inside his skull.
"What happened?"
The voice came faintly.
Only then did Harad realize Ellen was right before him.
"The Grand Duke was angered."
"...... What did you do this time."
"I didn't do anything."
"Then?"
"The Moon?"
Harad answered as though asking.
That was the best he could do. The Moon's voice surfaced in his mind. For some reason he felt bewitched.
"We should move the people. Is your side all right?"
Harad surveyed the servants who lay collapsed here and there. The Grand Duke's Aura must have acted across the whole of the Inner Fortress.
"We're fine. Thanks to Jis and Sir Cassion."
Kubel's Annex seemed to have come through safely, mercifully.
Thanks to Jis and Cassion. Which was to say, without Ellen-level strength or the 5th Rank, one could not withstand the Grand Duke's Aura.
'He didn't even attack—merely grew angry, and still.'
Harad let out a dry laugh.
He felt he understood why the Moon was wary of Grand Duke Aratus.
That was a monster who could not die even if it wished to.
'The Moon.'
In the past life, Grand Duke Aratus had died.
That death was surely linked to the Moon. Harad was inwardly certain.
"Didn't you see Eiga?"
Eiga had left the residence ahead of Harad.
But Ellen had mentioned only Jis and Cassion.
"He came and left. Outside the Inner Fortress."
"Why?"
"He said he was going to deliver a baby."
"What?"
"You know Snow Leopard's Footprint? There's a couple in the alley near there who love their drink. Come to think of it, the due date's nearly here."
"How do you know that?"
"It's a baby matter."
Come to think of it, Ellen knew everyone in the domain.
That was the kind of heir she'd been.
"Why would Eiga deliver a baby?"
"He was the 'doctor mister.'"
"Ah."
Doctor mister.
Shura had called Eiga that.
***
The North cherished children.
Caring for a pregnant woman was natural if natural.
"Metel!"
"Aaaahk!"
Desperation and screams leaked loudly from the house. The reason Harad and Ellen couldn't simply open the door.
Ellen knocked cautiously.
That was the best course. Childbirth was self-sacrificial and sacred. As with the Church, Serzila too respected and cherished midwives.
Fortunately, the birth seemed yet to come. A midwife whose back had just begun to stoop opened the door.
"At a moment like this...... Lady Ellen?"
"It's been a while, Banersa."
As Banersa had recognized her, Ellen recognized the midwife in return.
Ellen smiled warmly at her.
"Sorry to bother you at such a moment."
"Oh my, not at all. It's still fine."
Midwife Banersa and Ellen seemed quite familiar.
Come to think of it, Ellen was like that with everyone.
Playing the perfect Grand Heir as Elaine, and as Ellen mingling with the domain's people.
An itinerary only a body with Innate Strength could keep up with, and a transgression.
"Has a man come here? Introducing himself as a doctor."
"Ah, you mean Doctor Eiga. Yes, yes. The doctor is currently examining Metel."
Doctor.
Harad and Ellen exchanged a wordless look.
"Is he someone you knew too?"
"I've only met him for a few days, but I've been hearing of him for a long time. Word from the Empire."
Midwives had their own communities.
They shared their respective knowledge and expertise. Within that circle, Eiga Akker was a well-known doctor, Banersa added.
'Not a mere cover, then.'
Natural enough, on reflection.
Unlike the Otherworld, the continent was a land where mages had to hide. To disguise oneself as a doctor here meant one was confident of flawlessly imitating one.
"A wonderful doctor. He examines pregnant women without charge. Metel is the third expectant mother Doctor Eiga has taken on since coming to Serzila."
Midwife Banersa said she had already worked with Eiga twice. Today's delivery was the third.
'Childbirth is a critical event.'
So the Church had decreed.
In the North, which cherished children, all the more so.
Grand Duke Aratus might seem indifferent, but his particular information network would be keeping tabs.
'A child will be born.'
That had been a remark directed not at the Volcano-mage but at the doctor.
The Grand Duke had known that the doctor who'd examined the expectant Metel was Eiga.
"Aaaaahk!"
A scream rang through the house.
Something crashed along with it.
"Oh dear, oh dear! The contractions must have started. Excuse me."
Banersa didn't wait for Ellen's answer and dashed inside. Hard to believe the hunched old woman could move so fast.
"An unpredictable mage."
Ellen murmured as if to herself, watching Banersa's retreating back.
Harad nodded.
Eiga had followed the Extinguished Torch's trail to Serzila. And yet what he'd done was not search for the Sun but assist two births. Then, when Shura was kidnapped, he'd let himself be kidnapped along with her.
"A strange one."
"But I like him. It means he's human."
Indeed.
As with Ellen, Shura had played a large part in Harad's accepting of Eiga.
Had Eiga ignored Shura's kidnapping, Harad might have predated the bastard's Volcano.
Even short of predation, he'd have drawn a hard line.
Let alone bringing him before Grand Duke Aratus or into the Inner Fortress.
He'd simply have shipped him off to the Otherworld to stir chaos.
"Lord Harad!"
Someone called out gladly.
Eiga. The bastard had stuck his head and one waving hand out from the second-floor window.
"You really are a doctor."
"Thank you!"
"Do you like children?"
"Yes! But it's more of a bonus!"
A bonus?
Harad and Ellen tilted their heads.
"Ah, you can come up. Banersa is delivering the baby right now!"
Harad and Ellen entered the house and climbed to the second floor. Eiga greeted them at the stairway window. Aaahk! The screams came from behind the left-hand door.
"How is it?"
Ellen asked reflexively.
Childbirth was a dangerous act.
"They'll be fine! Both mother and baby."
Eiga answered like a doctor.
He seemed to possess genuinely doctor-like knowledge.
"Isn't 'doctor' too conspicuous a cover?"
And yet, why?
To Harad's thinking, it was. Doctor was a prized station. The more remarkable, the easier to pin down. There were plenty of safer identities for a mage.
"Because no other profession gives such easy access to a newborn baby. Becoming a midwife was out of the question for me."
Eiga displayed his body with a grin.
He meant that had he been a woman, he'd have chosen midwife as his cover.
"I thought I was your goal."
Harad tilted his head.
Eiga's goal was the Sun.
"Pardon? Ah, aah. You didn't know!"
Eiga said something incomprehensible.
It was then that a small birth was heard.
"Waah!"
Hk! Eiga held his breath theatrically. Harad and Ellen followed suit without meaning to. They waited like that until a response came from inside.
"Doctor Eiga!"
Banersa called from beyond the door.
Eiga beckoned Harad and Ellen.
"Is it all right for us to go in?"
"Of course. Lord Harad is pure and clean."
He meant the fire.
Harad lightly licked himself and Ellen with fire. Eiga had already lightly seared himself beforehand.
Eiga opened the door at once and stepped in. The mother was heaving for breath, the husband blinking back tears beside her. The baby was in the midwife's hands.
Tending to mother and child was usually the midwife's role.
Yet Midwife Banersa had summoned Eiga the instant the delivery was finished. Proof that he was a renowned doctor among midwives.
"One moment!"
Eiga examined the mother first, with practiced ease.
His hands looked thoroughly skilled. But Harad noticed that Eiga's attention was on the baby more than the mother.
Eiga fidgeted constantly.
It looked as if he wanted to finish the mother's exam quickly and get to the baby.
Smack! Beside him, Banersa swatted the baby's bottom. With each swat, a small cry trickled out. It needed to grow louder, Eiga whispered.
"May I try?"
"Go! Quickly!"
Banersa handed the baby to Eiga at once.
It was then that Harad's eyes narrowed.
Because he'd felt magical power from Eiga's hands. It hadn't been realized as magic, but it was unmistakable magical power.
Smack! That hand struck the baby's bottom.
And then...... fwoom!
Fire bloomed across the child's body. Harad's eyes went wide.
"Crazy bas——!"
Harad reflexively caught Ellen, who was about to charge. Their eyes met, and he shook his head.
"It's not Eiga."
Not Eiga's magic.
Harad's eyes were still wide.
At their end was the baby, wrapped in fire as though it were amniotic fluid.
A new fire-mage had just been born.
"Ah."
Only then did Harad understand.
The reason Eiga had been playing doctor on the continent.
"Beneath the Sun, fire is born. Just like this!"
Eiga lifted the baby up with a radiant smile.
Harad recalled the past life.
-But why did you take me Hostage? What's so pretty about a mage.
-Before long the North will be no place for people to live. It grows colder and more barren by the day.
To fend off the North's cold.
Grand Duke Aratus had taken Harad Hostage.
"AAAAAAHK!"
The mother, having seen the baby's fire, screamed.
'Could that be what it meant?'
Harad squeezed his eyes shut.
***
Had Grand Duke Aratus known?
If she truly knew, she should have sent Harad along with Eiga, not Eiga alone.
Grand Duke Aratus had not.
"A child will be born." Those words had been directed at Doctor Eiga.
That didn't necessarily mean she hadn't known.
She might not have known, or might have been pretending not to.
Harad could not be sure.
But at this moment, it was entirely beside the point.
Known or not, Grand Duke Aratus was irrelevant.
'It's because of me.'
Fire had been born because Harad had stayed in Serzila.
A sacred birth, a precious baby—born on the continent as the most ominous of demons.
"Thanks to you!"
Eiga shouted that it was thanks to Harad.
Harad checked the husband, the mother, and the midwife.
A continental mage's instinct, and he knew at once. Midwife Banersa would keep the secret; the husband and mother were wavering.
That, Eiga too had read.
"Wonderful, Banersa!"
Eiga clapped.
It was respect for Serzila's midwife, Banersa.
The North cherished children.
Banersa, who delivered the North's babies, could not think to kill one even if it were a mage.
"Will you kill it?"
Eiga turned his gaze.
He took in the husband and mother at a glance.
"Or abandon it?"
Eiga smiled.
"Please, speak freely."
His eyes were not smiling; only the corners of his mouth were raised.
"If you intend to kill or abandon, I'll dispose of it for you."
A tongue that had crept out licked his broadly curved lips.