BPOTWC Chapter 22

〈Help Noah, I beg you! Save Noah, I beg you! Noah must be rescued!〉

The red pebble had shouted this out before Clarisse's question was even finished.

"N...oah?"

At the sound of the name, Mallangie—who had been struggling to force the window open—stamped both feet against the floor.

"Mrrph!" (Throw that thing out this instant, I said!)

〈Wicked mages have shut Noah up in a cargo wagon. Worse still, it seems Noah means to let himself die there! The girl's help is needed!〉

"Mrrph!" (Don't go asking Clarisse for favors on your own! She's my owner!)

Mallangie shouted this at the red pebble and then turned a sharp look on Clarisse.

"Mrrph!"

It was a warning not to go poking her nose into every stray thing she came across.

But Clarisse had already given her whole heart over to what the red pebble was telling her.

"Someone's asking for help, through a stone. It just—it feels like fate, somehow."

"Mrrph." (Don't ask me.)

"And besides, they said the other one's a mage. The Duke came all this way just to meet with mages. Maybe this could even help him."

Mallangie hopped down onto the desk and plopped itself there, sulking. Head turned pointedly aside—clearly pouting.

Clarisse lifted the red pebble back up to eye level.

"Will you tell me what's going on now?"

〈Ah, to have found so kind a Golem Master right away! Truly, what good fortune.〉

"I'm not a Golem Master. That's supposed to be someone very important."

〈No, surely that cannot be—〉

"So—what do you need me to do?"

Just before he reached the meeting-room door, Maximilian found himself recalling, without meaning to, what Clarisse had said to him a little while before.

'I think... this must be very hard for you, Your Grace.'

Who, exactly, was worrying about whom here?

Watching the child, he sometimes wondered whether she properly understood that she would be dead within a few years.

That, and the way she went about smiling and laughing constantly, as though there were nothing at all to worry about.

Then again—sour and gloomy instead? That'd be its own problem too.

Little enough time left as it was—it'd be a worse headache still if she went to pieces over it, wailing that she meant to die that instant.

More than anything, the Duchess—who doted on the girl as something to be proud of—would be devastated—

'No.'

He shook off the thought that had risen unbidden.

Clarisse's life was not some private, sentimental matter.

He seemed, just now, to have briefly forgotten it himself—but the child was the princess of a fallen kingdom.

If a girl like that lost her life before her formal execution, Sheridan as a whole might draw the King's fury for having failed to keep even one prisoner properly guarded.

How had he failed to think of something so important first?

The Duke yanked the door handle, cursing his own mushy-headed weakness.

The three mages who had arrived ahead of him rose from their seats to greet him.

He gave them a light nod in return.

"Thank you for granting us the research permit again this time, Duke Sheridan."

The man who appeared to be the group's representative stepped forward first.

"I am Alfie Nelson, of the mage order."

Unlike the two men in black robes beside him, this Nelson wore a gray one.

Maximilian recalled that the closer a robe's color came to white, the higher the wearer's standing within the order.

"It merely happened to suit my own ends. There is something I mean to look for beneath the Fallen Golem myself."

He answered curtly and swept his gaze once more over the mages.

Sensing the doubt in that gaze, the gray-robed Nelson quickly added an explanation.

"Master Sinnett is resting in his quarters at present."

"I had understood this permit to be something he himself requested."

"To be precise, it was requested by his teacher and guardian, the mage Yona Astor. He passed away not long ago, however, and I have taken over all matters in his stead."

Maximilian felt something was off.

He had certainly seen the name Alfie Nelson before, in the paperwork.

Only there, he had been listed merely as a researcher under Noah Sinnett, the one heading the study—there had been no mention of him stepping forward now to serve as any kind of proxy.

"I have received no documentation to that effect."

He pointed this out calmly, and Nelson gave an awkward smile, fidgeting with his own hair.

"Since Master Yona Astor passed so suddenly, we were unable to inform the ducal house in time. The papers will arrive shortly."

"Then the permit shall be issued once they do."

The Duke used the word procedure deliberately, to make plain there was no room to negotiate.

"I—but without that, we can't even begin the research right away—"

"Then bring Master Sinnett here. As procedure demands."

At this, Nelson forced the words out as though handing over some deeply uncomfortable truth.

"The thing is... his mind is not entirely sound at present. Which is only natural, having so suddenly lost the teacher who was as good as a parent to him. He is only eleven, after all."

"Hm."

"The child came here only because it was his teacher's final command. He is still buried in grief. He's nothing more than a helpless little boy—would you not be kind enough to overlook this, just this once?"

The way Nelson framed it, insisting on summoning Sinnett through proper channels would make the Duke of Sheridan into a man who tormented a grieving young mage.

'Simpler, maybe—just grant it.'

For an instant, an uncharacteristically slack thought crossed his mind.

What he wanted, after all, was only to recover the late king's remains and the royal heirloom from beneath the Fallen Golem.

It made no real difference to him who carried out that work.

Only—this man Nelson standing before him could not be trusted.

Every gesture of a liar was showing itself plainly across his body.

A gaze that could not properly meet his own.

Hands that kept fidgeting at his hair or his face, as though anxious.

Even his tone, uneven and broken.

It was quite unlike the ordinary nervousness of someone simply tense in a duke's presence.

That such a man should be left to rummage about and experiment upon a precious ruin as he pleased sat rather ill with him.

'And yet...'

For ten years, crown and mage-tower had turned their backs on each other.

Through all that long estrangement, neither had shown the least sign of cooperating with the other—until an old mage had sent Maximilian a warm-hearted letter, and only then had the talk arisen of joining forces at last to properly investigate the Fallen Golem.

It would not do to let discord arise with the mage order at the very outset of so important a matter.

Worse still—"was it truly necessary to drag a grieving young mage into a council chamber?"—such talk would only earn the order's renewed anger.

'What should I do.'

The Duke fell briefly into thought.

Clarisse put on the fur garment issued to her as a prisoner's uniform, pulled the fur-lined hat firmly down over her head, and tugged the white ribbon at the nape of her neck forward, tying it snugly.

Done this way, it would shield even her ears and cheeks from the northern cold.

After that came two layers of white socks, one over the other, and boots that came up past her knees.

These, too, had been newly issued as "prisoner's footwear" just before their arrival here.

Having completed the full Sheridan prisoner look from head to toe, Clarisse poked her head out the door and threw her right hand up in the air.

"Privy, is it?" Sir Benson asked, ambling over out of habit, but Clarisse shook her head.

"Outdoor activity, Sir Benson."

Benson nodded.

Ever since the incident at that last dinner, Benson had been treating Clarisse a good deal more warmly.

"Hm, is that so. Anywhere in particular you'd like to go?"

"Where's the carriage the mages came in?"

"Ahh."

Benson clapped his hands together as though he'd grasped her meaning at once.

"So you've heard about the enchanted carriage. Things go in without limit, and it can carry any weight, no matter how heavy, without so much as a wobble! That's quite the thing to be curious about, isn't it?"

She'd never heard any such thing, but Clarisse just gave a loose, silly grin and didn't bother setting him straight.

"Come along, then. Though it doesn't look all that different, mind you."

"Thank you, Sir Benson."

Noah let his body go slack against the floor of the cargo wagon.

Anyone else would have frozen to death by now, and no one would think it strange—but he was no ordinary human, so there was no need to worry on that account.

He simply did not feel the cold.

"What if he really dies like this?"

"Hell if I know. Did we starve him? Damn thing just won't eat—that's on it, not us."

The black-robed mages who had been bringing him food for the past few days grumbled this to each other and locked the wagon's door behind them.

"...Monster."

Noah murmured the word he was sick to death of hearing—the one that always meant him.

'You're a very special child. I promise you, someone will come along who sees your true self for what it is. Plenty of good things will happen to you yet.'

Teacher Astor had always said this to lift his spirits—but the truth was, Noah already knew.

Knew exactly how terrible a monster he was.

The way he could survive the harshest, most relentless cold without a scrap of warmth to protect him.

The way his mind stayed perfectly clear even after days without food.

'A friend... there could never be such a thing.'

The other children in the mage order had made no secret of keeping their distance from him, and the adults, too, found him unsettling.

Couldn't be helped, really—looking as different as he did....

In circumstances like these, his teacher's death—the nearest thing to warmth he'd had in his life—had left him with a fear that would last forever: the fear of eternal solitude.

'Go and study the fallen golem. If it's you, I believe you'll find what's hidden inside it.'

Now his teacher's final command was the only reason left for Noah to go on living at all.

But even that much—

'Don't you even look in a mirror? Do you honestly think the Duke will grant your research once he's seen what you really are? A hideous monster, and you think you've got the nerve to show that face anywhere?'

The mage Nelson had put a stop to even that.

Since then, Noah had been shut away in a storeroom where he could cross paths with no one.

It was as good as Nelson locking him in—though in truth, he could have simply used magic to slip out with ease. That he remained here at all was his own choosing.

It seemed that what Nelson had said wasn't wrong, after all.

A monster too dreadful to look at, barefaced, in front of anyone.

What lord would ever let such a creature onto his own land? Even his fellow mages wouldn't accept him.

Noah closed his eyes, still slumped there.

Then, at some point, a strange ache began to prickle somewhere inside him.

It wasn't pain.

What was this even supposed to be called...?

The unfamiliar sensation coiled swiftly around his whole body, and before long it had taken hold of his very consciousness.

Just as his eyelids were beginning to fall shut, pushed along by some feeling he couldn't even put a name to—

From outside, a girl's voice came whispering through.

"Yes, right here, Sir Benson."