Chapter 265 : Chapter 265
Chapter 265: Baby (3)
Origin is born from what is near.
Manoa had once said that. The reason the Moon had existed for most of history.
The Otherworld is rich in cold and scarce in fire.
Because there is no Sun. The Sun spoken of here is the literal Sun that hangs in the sky.
But was that truly all?
A mistake, if one called it a mistake.
Back then, Harad should have asked Manoa. Whether fire could be born not only from the real Sun but from the Sun that was an Origin.
He hadn't asked.
Because he had never entertained such a premise.
More precisely, because Harad had regressed.
'It never happened in the past life.'
Wrong. He had to correct that. Not that it hadn't happened, but that he hadn't known.
It was Elaine who had loved the North.
The Harad of the past life had not loved the North.
He'd been standoffish with most of the knights, and had not the faintest familiarity with the domain's people. Harad had had to be that way, and was a mage accustomed to keeping his distance.
So he'd had no interest, either.
Perhaps in the past life, fire-mages had been born in places Harad didn't know. And not a few babies, at that.
Those babies wouldn't have reached Serzila's ear. Because that was the nature of mages. And with fire especially, the couple who'd given birth would have had to mind their conduct all the more.
Her eyes met Ellen's. The look seemed to ask: had it been this way in that other world, too? Harad bit his lip and shook his head.
A wretched answer.
He had spoken of taking responsibility for the Village of Embers, and further, for the mages—and yet it hadn't even crossed his mind that fire might be born in Serzila.
Harad could not even open his mouth.
Because the midwife and the couple were in the room. That fact struck him as absurd. The baby's identity had been exposed, yet the mage with the power was trying to hide his own.
The reason he'd been ignorant in his past life.
Harad had prioritized not the North but Serzila. Precisely, Elaine.
"I'll——"
Take responsibility.
Harad had been about to say so.
"Jacks. Metel."
Eiga cut Harad off and called the couple.
Coming from the usual Eiga, it was an irreverence he would not have committed.
"Have you decided?"
Eiga seemed determined to hear the couple's answer, come what may.
"D-dispose, what do you mean by......"
The husband, Jacks, asked haltingly.
"Killing, of course."
Eiga mimed slitting his own throat with his thumb.
Jacks's face went blue. Ahk! The mother, Metel, gave a short cry and slumped.
"M-Metel!"
Jacks caught Metel's falling shoulders.
"She's fainted for a moment. The shock must have been too great."
She would likely come to before nightfall, Eiga said in his doctor's voice. Waah! The baby in Eiga's arms cried.
"She's not crying for Metel. A baby's eyesight is terribly poor."
At those words, Jacks shook violently.
He seemed to have heard it as: if the killing was to be done, now—while the baby knew nothing—was the time.
Eiga gently rocked the baby in his arms, up and down. The baby made a pleased sound. Then an old, wrinkled hand grasped Eiga's shoulder.
"D-Doctor...... the joke has gone too far. Dispose, indeed."
Banersa stammered, but she managed a small smile.
She seemed to have taken Eiga's words as a joke.
Come to think of it, that was what Eiga was.
Most of the time he was smiling, making his sincerity hard to read. And when read, that sincerity was often twisted. Fanatics, by nature, excelled at misinterpretation.
"A joke? I'm serious, Banersa."
Eiga wiped his smile and spoke.
A face cold by Volcano standards.
"Don't tell me you mean to let a demon live, Banersa? A fire demon, at that?"
"This is Serzila, Doctor."
"The cold and the snow don't put out the fire. A demon doesn't stop being a demon, either."
Eiga was speaking now like a priest.
"If anywhere, shouldn't Serzila be more vigilant against demons? Its chief enemy is demons, after all."
This too was orthodoxy.
The closest land to the Otherworld. The North should be all the more conscious of mages.
"Listen well, Banersa. Demons must die. Without fail."
Eiga contorted his face.
A face that wanted to kill the baby this instant. Yet his hands peacefully rocked the baby up and down.
"Don't worry about guilt. I'll dispose of it for you. Banersa, Jacks. Nothing happened today. Lucky for us Metel fainted."
Banersa bit her lip and turned her gaze to Ellen. Collateral she might be, but Ellen was Serzila, and this land belonged to Serzila.
There were two people in this room who could stop Eiga.
Harad thought it was his duty. A calamity born of the Sun.
"Or is the question too difficult? If I'd slipped away and done it, it would have been duly disposed of."
"Get out!"
Jacks rose then.
He puffed out his body like a wounded beast and snatched up a hammer propped at an angle in the corner. A self-defense tool every Northerner carried.
"All of you, get out!"
Ellen was no longer visible to Jacks's eyes. The hammer threatened everyone. The only ones safe from its wild swings were Metel and the baby.
"My child. Put it down and leave."
The stilled hammer pointed at Eiga.
"Are you sure you can bear it?"
"Shut up, outsider. This is Serzila."
A mage it might be, but it's a baby. My own child at that. So Jacks said. Eiga gazed at him for a while, then broke into a bright smile.
"All right, Jacks. But the one who decides is Metel. She's the one who gave birth."
"Shut up."
"Tonight. I'll come to hear Metel's answer."
Eiga set the baby down gently beside the unconscious Metel.
"Don't worry about the aftermath. I've disposed of young mages numbering in the dozens."
Eiga's index finger tapped the baby's nose.
"Kyah!"
The baby laughed as if delighted.
***
Following him out, Eiga had vanished without a trace.
Call him and he'd come, but Harad didn't call. Ellen didn't look anxious either. Eiga clearly had something odd about him.
Harad walked through the alley in silence.
Neither seeking Eiga nor heading for the Inner Fortress. He simply paced. Ellen followed without a word.
Harad spoke when the sky had reddened. Snow fell dreamily against the sunset.
"My fault."
Babies—fires—would be born.
A different order of magnitude from the mages he'd taken in so far.
A baby could not be controlled. It could not put on a poker face or hide its magic.
Though the Sun hung in the continent's sky, the reason fire was neither common nor cheap. To the Church, fire-mages became priority targets.
Because of Harad, Serzila had been forced to hold a bomb. Not one or two, but a number that would steadily grow.
"I'll take responsibility."
"How?"
"Win over the midwives first. Then send the babies born as mages to the Village of Embers."
That was the rational course.
"With respect."
But Ellen shook her head firmly.
"You have to think of the parents, too. And the babies."
"......"
"And you should make us thank you. Because it isn't bad—it's special."
Ellen said.
Words Harad had once said to Shura.
The fact of being a mage was no problem at all. The world was the problem.
To Shura, Harad had promised he would change not the world, perhaps, but at least the North. That scope had since grown beyond the Village of Embers.
"But it's fire."
Mage or not, a child was a child.
The North cherished children. If a young mage appeared, the custom was to exile rather than kill.
But would that hold if the subject were fire?
To Harad's mind, that was closer to an exception. Fire gave the Church its pretext.
"I know. That's why I'm doing this."
Ellen turned Harad's head and met his eyes.
"Are you going to leave Serzila?"
"No."
Harad answered at once.
He could not afford to. The regression belonged to Elaine and Ellen.
"Then what you should feel right now isn't guilt, it's responsibility."
Fire is a fence.
So the Church said.
"Fire will keep being born. You have to provide for them. Because you're the Sun."
Ellen was saying the same thing.
That Harad should become the fence.
"Gather people, Harad."
No—that he must be the fence.
"Capable mages like Anton, Ocellin, Eiga. Incapable ones are fine too. Weak mages, useless mages, anyone. The people you want, and the people who want you."
"......"
"I want there to be an enormous number of such people."
To Ellen's words about increasing his people, Harad had jokingly spoken of continental unification.
"Then the guests at the wedding will be far more."
Ellen was looking beyond that.
"As expected of the Queen!"
A voice came then.
From above. Eiga lay prone on a rooftop, with only his head peeking out.
"Isn't it a shame?"
"Pardon?"
"You didn't get to dispose of the baby."
Ellen said with a smile.
Eiga was a bastard whose inner thoughts were hard to read.
But precisely because of that, something could be known.
"I suppose!"
Without Harad's orders, Eiga would not readily show his true feelings.
***
"I intend to predate. Just born, but fire is fire!"
Chomp!
Eiga spoke, then bit the air.
"That's what I'd have said in front of other mages!"
"So it was a lie."
"Yes! Ah, I should change the line now. I'd say I must offer it to Lord Harad."
Because it had been a lie, it still hadn't changed.
Had he sincerely meant to predate, Eiga would have urged Harad to predate the very instant the baby's magic was discovered.
"If they'd said they'd kill it, I would have killed Jacks and Metel."
"......"
"If they'd said they'd abandon it, I would have taken the baby alone. Either way, the two of you would have objected."
The latter was at least more humane.
Harad understood Eiga's words and yet didn't. The bastard was Otherworld-born.
"What answer did you want?"
"To raise it, of course. A baby needs parents."
Eiga answered with common sense.
"For someone who wants that, you pushed quite hard."
"Because it requires resolve. From the baby's point of view, being killed or abandoned later is worse."
Eiga had spoken harshly on purpose.
To test Jacks and Metel.
"Where were you planning to take the baby? The Otherworld?"
"No. The Otherworld is no place for just any baby to live."
The Otherworld was a mage's paradise.
So it was known among continental mages. But Eiga, an actual Otherworld mage, was shaking his head.
"Usually it's better to live on the continent than in the Otherworld. Church and all. So I'd have kept the baby on the continent."
Why go so far?
Harad's first instinct was suspicion. A mage's habit. But he didn't voice it. Order Eiga to answer and he would, but Harad didn't want to hear it that way.
"So the young mages you've protected number in the dozens."
Before him stood a mage.
But Harad thought of the Church.
"I'm only ashamed!"
Eiga smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head.
Unfire-like conduct. Yet from the Church's perspective, the most fire-like conduct of all.
"You were already a fence."
What Ellen had spoken of, Eiga was already doing.
"Only a temporary one."
Eiga curved the corners of his eyes and looked at Harad. Ellen was not the only one who wanted a fence, it seemed.
"Shall we go in?"
Eiga pointed to the sky, which had gone black before they knew it. The promised night had arrived.
"I won't kill anyone. No one."
Harad and Ellen nodded only after hearing that. The door was locked. Eiga picked the lock and openly announced his presence as he climbed the stairs.
When the stairs ended and he opened the second-floor room's door, a hammer swung down. Eiga halted as though he'd expected it. Thud! The hammer, having missed, lodged in the floor.
"What does this mean?"
Eiga asked.
Jacks pulled the hammer free and backed away.
Harad and Ellen hid against the wall beside the door, out of Jacks's sight.
Eiga's request.
He'd said he had to go alone to know the truth. Doctor Eiga was experienced in such things.
"Mage!"
Jacks pointed at Eiga and shouted.
"Pardon?"
"The mage who set our child on fire!"
"Me?"
Eiga pointed at his own face.
Then Jacks took a stance. Metel was on the far bed, clutching the baby tight, glaring at Eiga with anxious eyes.
Sparks flickered intermittently from the baby's hand.
"Ah! So that's supposed to be my magic!"
Eiga exclaimed.
"Now that's a novel idea! Three witnesses now, is why."
To sell Eiga out for the baby's sake.
That was what Jacks and Metel had decided. To deceive Midwife Banersa, and Harad and Ellen.
"You're truly going to raise it? It'll be hard."
"Die, mage!"
Jacks charged with a shout.
A scripted performance. Soon that booming voice would draw people, and Eiga would be branded a mage.
Comically, that happened to be the truth, so all suspicion about the baby would be washed away.
"I should apologize to the Grand Duke."
Eiga murmured.
The swung hammer was caught in his hand.
"Better the continent than the Otherworld, and better Serzila than the continent."
Fwoom!
Fire consumed the hammer. It became molten metal and wet the floor.
"...... Fire?"
Jacks's eyes went wide.
Instinctively he turned to check the baby first.
Sparks still flickered from the baby's hands.
Paltry beyond compare next to the fire that had melted the hammer.
"I'm that baby's senior!"
Eiga spread both hands beside his face as though he were a surprise gift.
Flames blossomed like flowers from both palms.
"Kyaah!"
The baby laughed wide.