BPOTWC Chapter 25

The year's last day. Alistair Astor of the Mage Corps had come and gone.

Having recovered his health, Noah Sinnett and Duke Maximilian rode together in the same carriage, moving steadily along the northern wall.

The Duke gazed at the boy seated across from him, taking his measure. Today, as always, he wore his cat-shaped mask.

'Eleven, was it.'

Noah's body was certainly small enough to match that age. But there were things about him that didn't match it at all.

The way he sat, upright and composed, was one such thing. So was the seasoned quality of the gaze that sometimes reached him from behind the mask.

And above all else—

"I should like to convey my most earnest thanks, regarding the permit granted for this inquiry. The royal household, as I am given to understand, yet harbors some wariness toward mages."

It was the sort of talk you'd expect out of some council of graybeards.

The unbroken, boyish voice made it seem all the more out of place. The Duke might almost have suspected Noah was just a full-grown man shrunk down to child-size.

Setting aside his scrutiny of the boy, the Duke turned his attention to matters of business.

"Sheridan lies under my own authority. The royal household's understanding, I shall secure presently. Mage Sinnett need not trouble himself with it. Devote yourself wholly to your research."

"I offer you my genuine thanks. Even though this form of mine... must trouble the eye, surely."

He fussed with his mask, his hand somewhat awkward.

He seemed a little bashful, and for the first time, the Duke saw him as the young boy he was.

"Your teacher, Mage Astor, vouched for you personally."

The old mage who had introduced himself by mentioning he had little time left in this world had gone on at great length about what a splendid mage his prized student would become.

"He said that among all living mages, only Noah Sinnett could study the fallen golem."

The Duke knew little of mages, but he had felt deep trust in the old man's long career and the dignity that came through in his manner of speech. Besides, Noah was one of the celebrated Five Great Mages.

There was no need to doubt his ability.

Though the cat mask remained a rather considerable question.

"That my teacher spoke so is not because I am some great mage."

"...That—"

The Duke, gazing at the boy, pressed his lips shut before he could say more.

Noah, seeming to sense his hesitation, raised one hand.

"Never mind that. Speak."

"Noah Sinnett. You are the son of the former Mage-Commander."

The Duke leaned back against the seat for a moment, his gaze turning out the window.

"I myself met her once, as a boy. In those days, the mage corps and the royal household still kept up a fair traffic between them."

The former Mage-Commander had been a woman with hair the same sky-blue as Noah's own.

She was, above all others, the strongest golem master there was—so strong that not even a silver-ranked monstrous beast dared so much as set foot on human ground while she stood in its way.

"A woman passionate enough to ride to war against the monstrous beasts even while great with child. I too... hold her in the deepest respect as a leader."

Only now did he turn back to look at Noah. The boy—whom he'd feared might grieve—sat exactly as he had before.

The carriage began to slow. They had nearly reached the fallen golem.

"Are you all right?"

The Duke asked, worry rising anew as he recalled the boy's age.

It was because of the many meanings the fallen golem carried.

It was what remained after a golem, battling a silver-ranked monstrous beast eleven years ago, had collapsed.

A golem's collapse—when it moved by its master's own mana—meant either the golem master's death, or the loss of that mana.

The body of the previous Mage-Commander, owner of that enormous golem, remained trapped at the very deepest point of the rubble, and had never yet been recovered.

Noah was the sole survivor of that brutal scene.

He had been rescued, though only barely, from beneath a comparatively lighter section of the rubble, by Alistair Astor, a young mage who had served under the Commander at the time.

Was it not, perhaps, that the former Mage-Commander—in the last moment of her life, with all the strength she had left—had pushed the child she'd only just barely managed to bring into the world, out beyond the reach of that massive stone?

Which was to say—the fallen golem was Noah's birthplace, and his mother's grave besides.

At last the carriage came to a stop.

"That question of yours, whether I am all right... I should like to return it to you, Your Grace."

The Duke let out a bitter laugh.

He had not expected to have the question handed straight back to him by a boy several years his junior.

The fallen golem was also the place where his father, the former King, had passed away.

The former King's knights and soldiers, too, had been caught up in the golem's collapse.

The royal family and the mages, having lost their leaders in the blink of an eye, turned blades on one another then and there—flinging aside, utterly, any such thing as the comradeship they'd shared fighting the silver-ranked monstrous beast.

"I am all right."

As the Duke said this, an attendant opened the carriage door.

"Then so am I."

The boy answered exactly as he had, and hopped down from the carriage first.

The Duke followed him down, and the two stood side by side before the fallen golem.

There, upon the cold field, lay an enormous slab of red stone, collapsed into a grotesque shape.

Beside it, a newly erected memorial stone made plain the fact that someone lay buried beneath.

The Duke glanced sidelong at Noah.

Somehow, worry crept up on him.

However much a man's work the boy was doing, was he not still, in the end, a child?

Barely two years older than Clarisse...

"I shall begin my research at once, today."

"You needn't wait for the other mages sent to assist you?"

"They would be nothing more than watchdogs from the mage corps, in any case."

"...."

"You needn't concern yourself with matters here. As agreed, I shall report my research's progress to the Sheridan estate once a month."

Watching this small child—one who wouldn't even reach his chest—declare so stoutly that he'd manage alone, the Duke found himself, quite naturally, thinking of someone.

Clarisse.

The two children had a strange resemblance to one another, though their words and manner were nothing alike.

"I shall leave the carriage at the wall."

"...?"

"I would ask that you deliver your reports by riding the carriage yourself, all the way to Sheridan."

Arranged this way, he could look in on Noah's circumstances once a month, at least.

Maximilian could, of course, come north on a regular basis himself, but it seemed the Sheridan estate would, all things considered, still be the better environment for the boy to properly rest.

He watched Noah's reaction carefully, half-expecting a refusal.

"There's truly no need to go so far..."

Seeming as though he might refuse, the Duke hastened to bring up something else.

"I hear you're friends with Clarisse. Surely you ought to see her once a month, at least."

"...Well. Can't be helped, then."

He said it like he couldn't be more sick of the whole business, and went right back to worrying at his mask.

"Ah."

Then, as though something had occurred to him, he turned back to the Duke.

"...Now that I think on it, that child—"

"Clarisse?"

"...Mm. No. ...I must have been mistaken."

Whatever could he have been mistaken about?

The Duke was curious about the thought left unfinished, but Noah went off to examine the fallen golem, and he had no further chance to ask.

The last night of the year.

Fully fortified against the cold in her Sheridan prisoner's coat, Clarisse was stamping both feet in her room.

An important matter had only just now occurred to her.

"I'm hopeless."

She had made up her mind about something, back when they first came to the northern wall—and she had gone and completely forgotten it, so preoccupied had she been with Noah, right up until today.

"At this rate I really will deserve to be called an ungrateful Clarisse!"

The girl clenched both small fists tight.

"Since it's come to this, I absolutely must accomplish it tonight, while we're watching the fireworks."

Accomplish what?

Why, the Duke and the Duchess's hand-holding, of course.

To carry out this important task, Clarisse would need to summon up a bit of courage herself.

She held her hand out toward the wall several times, murmuring under her breath as she rehearsed a certain line.

After a good while lost in practice, a knock sounded at last.

Clarisse ran and opened the door.

There stood Maximilian, dressed in a black winter coat.

"Good evening, Your Grace. Where's Noah?"

Clarisse asked at once about her friend, who had gone with him to see the fallen golem.

"He said he was tired and would sleep. He tells me he has no interest in fireworks."

"It would have been nice if he came along."

Clarisse said, disappointed, and stretched one hand out toward Maximilian. It was a somewhat awkward-looking gesture.

Now was the moment to deliver the line she had rehearsed against the wall all this while.

"I, I—!"

But all that fierce rehearsal came to nothing—pitifully nothing.

'Wh-what do I do?'

Her fingertips, stuck out in front of her, went stiff—just like that.

The line she had practiced was: Please hold my hand.

That way, once she had hold of the Duke's hand, she could naturally suggest afterward, I'd like it if you held the Duchess's hand too.

'....Can't say it.'

Hold my hand—ask him that?

A memory surfaced without warning. A scene from her childhood so, so embarrassing that she avoided it whenever she could.

The day Clarisse—who had always lived alone in Grezekaia—had her first audience with the Queen.

Clarisse had privately decided the Queen was something like a 'mother,' and had gone pattering eagerly toward her, hand outstretched.

"Please hold my hand!" she had said.

Though what came back to her, in return... was only a sharp, jabbing finger against her forehead.

The hand Clarisse had held out began, quietly, shamefacedly, to sink.

"...Now that I think of it, there's wind on the wall. Better to hold hands."

"What?"

"It would be troublesome if a small, light prisoner went and flew off into the sky."

"I can't fly! And I'm not light either. I ate a very big dinner."

"That was well done of you."

Having offered his praise, he gently took hold of the hand Clarisse had extended.

Though she wore two full layers of gloves, Clarisse somehow felt an extraordinary warmth seeping through toward her.

"Your Grace is like a fireplace..."

"Hm?"

"I-it's nothing! No—it's not nothing, either!"

Somewhat flustered, Clarisse stammered out the rest of her thought.

"I, I was just worried, that's all. It's just that the Duchess is very light too, isn't she? Right?"

"...Hm?"

"That's right! Yes! If the wind blows she'll get blown clean away! No—if Your Grace doesn't grip on tight, it'll be a disaster, no doubt about it!"

"...."

"You have to hold her tight. You must hold her. You absolutely have to!"

"Hmm."

He gave no definite answer, though Clarisse kept right on pleading.