The Young Lady Has Us

Just then Ardine’s eyes flew open.

“Hup—!”

Eyes like amethyst rolled this way and that, uneasy.

“I— it’s strange.”

“Don’t move.”

“H— hic.”

“Stop this.”

Keith took one long stride closer, looking ready to draw his sword at any moment. Pai shifted where she stood, quietly, as though putting herself in his way.

“M— mister…”

At his niece’s tearful whimper, Keith’s face turned savage.

“Take that hand off her.”

“I will not. The mana’s vibration is off.”

“Hgh, hhaagh. My breath— I can’t get my breath—”

— Shing.

Keith’s blade tip swung to Hamel’s wrist, and his back teeth clamped together with a grinding sound, as though upper and lower meant to wear each other away.

“Move it, or I cut it off.”

“Ignorant brute! You don’t know the first thing about— hhaagh!”

“Hyaaagh! M— Mama!”

The shrill scream went up, and the mana inside Ardine’s body churned and burst outward as incomplete magic power.

— Rrrrrumble…

A gale whipped up as though it had gone mad. Fine sand and pebbles scattered on the wind, and the gaunt bare branches clattered.

— Rrroooooar… BOOM!

Trees tore out root and all and went flying. One of them drove into a building attached to the drill ground and brought a wall down.

“Kh—!”

Keith spread his sword energy out like a shield. Even so his feet dragged backward, so he drove his sword into the earth and clung to it. With his free arm he hooked Pai’s waist and pulled her in against him.

“Ardine!”

“— — —! —! — —!!!”

He hurled the shout out, but it could not pierce the whirlwind lashing furiously around Ardine. She was at the center of the storm, together with Hamel. He too had both arms crossed over his face, shouting something.

“Cough, cough!”

“Damn it…! Miss Pai. Are you all right?”

Pai spat out the sand grinding between her teeth and nodded. Keith let out a breath of relief.

“Ardiiine! Ari!!”

He kept it up, holding Pai fast, flinging the name out over and over like a man gone mad. There was enough anguish in his voice to taste blood in it.

“Calm down, Keith!”

Pai seized the hand wound about her waist and squeezed hard, hard enough to make him bite his tongue in surprise. When Keith turned, eyes gone wide, she cupped the man’s cheeks in both hands.

“Look. Hamel has hold of the young lady. She’ll settle in a moment.”

“But Ardine—”

“Shh, Keith.”

She came in close to whisper it, and felt the arm around her waist go taut.

Break in now and it could ruin everything.

She had to trust Hamel and wait for him to check the young lady’s runaway surge. Pinning the child down by force would not do it; Ardine could be settled safely only if the two of them communed in spirit.

Nor was Keith hard to understand, wild as he was. This was a man who had liquidated the life he spent years building, all to protect his niece.

“Can you feel it? The wind is dying down already.”

The hands cupping his cheeks slid slowly down to the nape of his neck, as though to cool the blood seething up in him. Then she ran her thumb along his throat and pressed lightly on the collarbone that stretched thick and level across it.

“…!”

She felt the muscle banked along his neck and shoulder twitch. Mercifully, the chest that had been heaving went as still as a horizon.

“The wind…”

Keith’s lips fell still. Just as she had said, the wind did seem to be growing weaker and weaker.

He carefully let go of the hand that had been gripping the sword’s hilt. Even then, he was not driven backward.

— Sssp. Hoooo.

He drew a great breath in and let it out. When he closed his hand gently around the one resting at his collarbone, Pai’s almond-shaped eyes went a little rounder. The aquamarine irises inside them were as clear and translucent as the sea.

— Whooooooo…

As it died the wind tossed her hair about, thrashing like a thing in its last throes. Keith reached out toward the flying threads of silver like a man under a spell. The fine, thin hair tickled between his fingers, smooth and cold, like touching silk.

— Ssssssshhh…

At last the wind stopped altogether. Tucking her hair behind her ear, he murmured,

“Thank you, Pai.”

“…”

He threw a glance toward Ardine and Hamel, who had become a single heap. Pai looked over at them with him.

“My lady…!”

Ardine lay cradled in Hamel’s arms. He smoothed the hair stuck to the young lady’s forehead gently back for her. When Keith came up, Hamel handed the child over to him.

“She is only sleeping. Don’t fret; let her rest.”

“Ardine…”

Keith asked it, searching the face of his niece as she slept in soft little breaths. Hamel let a breathy snort of laughter slip and straightened the set of the child’s robe for her.

“You looked ready to eat me alive, and now it seems you are curious about the result after all.”

“…”

“Peanut will make a mage finer than anyone.”

“…Thank you.”

“Provided she has an excellent master.”

“Ah.”

Hamel let out an ‘Ahem,’ cleared his throat, and went on.

“We will talk about the contract after the child wakes. Putting my power to use after so long has left me tired.”

With that he crossed the drill ground at a slow, dragging pace. Keith stood blank as a man wandering through a dream, and Pai gave him a light nudge with her elbow.

“Aren’t you glad you trusted me?”

The instant he saw that brightly laughing face, the feel of her hands cupping both his cheeks came back to life in him.

“Yes.”

“Er… are you angry?”

“No.”

Heat flushed up into his face; Keith dropped his head low and hurried his steps.

Ardine Paragon at seventeen.

Eyes that would never open again, skin cold as a sheet of ice, lips gone livid blue.

In the previous life Pai had not known Ardine. And even so, standing before the coldly stiffened corpse of a girl of seventeen, how she had shaken with rage and cursed the demon.

But the Ardine Paragon in front of her was alive.

Warm.

Ardine’s small hand was soft and warm. Pai put strength into her fingers and held the young lady’s hand.

“She leapt straight from the stage where her mana was still latent to a mana heart. An ordinary sort would have had her body wrecked past mending.”

Hamel said it. It meant she could have died, and yet he went on quietly, taking Ardine’s pulse.

“Peanut is perfectly sound. Mana has already begun running through her circuits to overflowing. Once she has had a good sleep she will be flying about, if anything.”

“…”

“What is that lukewarm look for? Do you not follow? Your niece is a genius, boy — a genius!”

“Shh. Keep your voice down!”

Pai scolded him, and Hamel shut his mouth, though his nostrils still flared with excitement not yet worked off.

“Tch. That is only because you have no idea how remarkable this little—”

“I know.”

Keith murmured it quietly and drew the quilt up over the child’s shoulders for her. Well dried in the sun, it gave off a clean smell.

“Strong is better than weak, of course, but…”

“…”

“Ardine is still only seven. I do not know whether I ought simply to be glad that she has come by such strong power at so young an age.”

Keith laid his worry out in a low, even murmur.

Not that she could not understand how he felt. If anything, Pai sympathized.

Great power turns to poison sometimes. It can win you worship for no reason but that you are strong, but…

The far side of the moon is dark, as a rule.

Conversely, it can win you hatred rooted in fear.

I know all about the trouble that comes with power.

It was power that had saved her when she was an orphan with not a soul in the world, and power too that was the occasion of her losing the master she had followed as a chick follows its mother.

Swallowing a bitter smile, she spoke in a tone that said she understood, and at the same time that he should set his mind at ease.

“The young lady has us, doesn’t she.”

“…”

A long index finger poked Keith square in the chest.

“A man once called the Mercenary King. And now lord of the North!”

“…”

The fingertip moved on to the prim boy.

“A respected mage, and an excellent master!”

“…”

“And…”