Illusion (1)

The blood of Slonhar, Kyle Rowellin.

He was scratching something onto papers I could make nothing of, looking not a bit different from the last time I had seen him.

“So Talios’s lackey has graced us with his return. Well? What brings you here so early in the morning?”

I took a moment to choose my words. Now more than ever was the time to be careful about opening my mouth. The survival of the city rests in this man’s hands, and nobody else’s.

True, he holds a guard corps, but more important than that, he holds a justification. The one and only justification for overturning Norbelgard and taking sovereignty of it.

“I’ll make my report.”

He is a noble. Tearing out the cathedral, scrapping the workshop guild, and then holding back the riot that follows is work only he can do, and nobody else.

“I’ve looked into Baron Lestein and the workshop guild.”

And the first step toward taking hold of that one card Norbelgard holds is—

“The baron is the cathedral’s stooge.”

—to denounce the Ecclesia church.

To borrow his justification, he first had to be set against the church.

“Ten years ago. The baron moved the armory over to the new manor. The story goes that the old warehouse was torn down and an entertainment district put up in its place, but the reality was different. The warehouse was moved underground, a tunnel was dug linking the manor to the cathedral, and through it weapons were being supplied to the Ecclesia church.”

Kyle Rowellin’s pen stopped. He pushed the document he had been writing to one side, set his arm down in its place and propped his face on it, brows drawn as tight as they would go.

“If you want to convince me, you had better at least explain in more detail than this, Roan Belgard.”
“I’ll go through it again from the start. Baron Lestein put on a show of moving the warehouse, and all the while kept the old one hidden inside the entertainment district.”

“…And there, arms were being handed over to the Ecclesia church? For close to ten years?”

“That’s right. You’ve understood it well.”

He lifted his chin off his arm.

“I’m sure that is exactly how it went.”
“You must know it yourself. That there is nobody in this world who only gives things away, with no price and no gain in it.”

Kyle Rowellin is himself the head of a body of men, so he would have been sending people here and there, gathering information. As conscious as he was of the workshop guild, he must have been just as conscious of the Ecclesia church.

“I don’t know how much you know about them, but I can state this much for certain. The Ecclesia faith is no paragon of virtue. If anything, the reverse. They knew that you had men hidden inside the cathedral, too.”

“…”

He was still scowling, but he did not seem to be writing my words off entirely as nonsense. Even so, the finishing blow was missing. The finishing blow that would turn him to my side.

“This is evidence I took by raiding the scene of their trade.”

I set the wrapping cloth I had brought out of the inn’s cellar on the table. Inside were a priest’s head and a weapon of the workshops’ make.

“…Priest Linholt.”

“All of it came from beneath that entertainment district. And if they haven’t noticed the trouble yet, the priest’s body will still be down there as well.”

A workshop-made weapon, and a priest of Ecclesia. In the space of a single night I had carried in things that had no business being in one place. That bundle was decisive evidence that the workshop guild and the cathedral were in secret communication with one another. Kyle Rowellin too would have no choice but to believe my claim.

“Truly… revolting.”

But his reaction was not what I had expected.

“Revolting, filthy, vile. My blunder. I should never have brought a dog of Talios here in the first place.”

His expression had not changed at all. From first to last he had only been glaring at me.

“Come in.”

The words were barely out of Kyle Rowellin’s mouth before the door of the clerks’ office opened, and soldiers came through it, a great many of them.

That is not the uniform of the guard corps. Well ordered, and someone able to move a force of this size.

The baron’s private soldiers?

Kyle Rowellin had already joined hands with the workshop guild. I had stood in the palm of the enemy’s hand and confessed outright that I knew their business. The guild’s intervention is abnormally quick, but that is no trouble, since the justification had only ever been needed for the sake of Norbelgard and of the guard corps. It would make things more of a headache, but Lilian and I could also wipe out the cathedral between us and let the city fall as it may.

It was the moment I was about to cut the soldiers down and kick the door open.

“You had best not resist. There are the same number of soldiers waiting in your companion’s room, and at the first sign of anything suspicious that woman dies.”

Until Lilian’s name came out of Kyle Rowellin’s mouth.

When I did not move, he went on.

“It makes no sense that a paladin of Talios could be beaten by a force of only this size, but you go about with an ordinary civilian in tow and dote on her. You’ve made a weak point of your own and set it out on show.”

He was using Lilian as a lever to threaten me. Let me think about this rationally. Judging by what he said, the guard corps does not know Lilian’s power, which means nothing whatever has been prepared against it.

The chance of her being brought down by the guard corps’ soldiers was small, but there was nothing to be gained by digging my heels in here, and so—

…Lilian is going to worry.

—after a short deliberation I decided to dance to Kyle Rowellin’s tune.

So long as even the slightest possibility exists, I do not gamble.

“Touch Lilian and I will kill you. Everyone you know, their children, their parents, every last one of them.”
“Brutal and barbaric. Now you finally sound like the Talios lot, who aren’t worth as much as animals.”

The workshop guild’s soldiers began binding me. Kyle Rowellin sat on in his chair and watched it happen.

“Baron Lestein said as much. That you would come today and slander the baron and the Ecclesia church to me.”

The baron is the Lucseon church itself. So the Lucseon church had known for some time that I was here.

How?

Should I not have killed the owlbear?

Just as I can draw information from Pormel, whoever of Lucseon was linked to the owlbear would have caught the anomaly the instant the beast died. They had anticipated that I would dig up the workshop guild, and had sent soldiers to the guard corps in advance.

But a question remains unresolved. Why Kyle Rowellin joined hands with the workshop guild so readily.

“Siding with the baron will be the worst blunder of your life.”
“No, it may be the best choice I ever made. I came within a hair of being taken in by that sly tongue of yours.”

He made no attempt to hide the hostility in his eyes, far sharper now than before.

“Baron Lestein told me more than that. That my father has died, and that the culprits were you Talios people.”

The lord of Slonhar. Kyle Rowellin believed with absolute conviction that it was the Talios church that had killed him.

Because Lucseon can exert indirect influence over the faithful, the Ecclesia church passes word from one branch to another with overwhelming speed. The church in Brus had most likely learned of the lord’s death and sent word on at once to the bishop of the Norbelgard branch.

“Foolish. Have they ever once gone down to the west? You would believe the word of a lot who have settled into Norbelgard and play at messiah with the poor?”
“A false messiah is more dependable than a hound with rabies. Are you trying to tell me it wasn’t you who killed my father? Given the circumstances, isn’t it all the more suspicious that it wasn’t?”
“Don’t take their word for it. Send men and check it yourself. If Slonhar has not vanished from the map and is still holding out, you’ll see how unnatural it would be for Talios to slip into the city and assassinate your father alone.”
“There is nothing left worth hearing.”

He waved a hand as though shooing off an insect, and the soldiers hauled me up off my knees and back onto my feet.

“Count yourself lucky. If not for Baron Lestein, I would not be handing you over at all. I would have taken your head with my own hand, right here.”
“Do you think I would have let it happen quietly?”
“Of course. Rather than watch that woman die you would offer up your own neck instead, wouldn’t you, Roan Belgard?”

“…”

With one last flick of Kyle Rowellin’s eyes, the soldiers dragged me away. Just before I left the clerks’ office I turned back and spoke to him.

“I’ll tell you the cause of your father’s death.”

He was still looking at me with the same eyes.

“Poisoning by a virulent toxin, brought on by Ecclesia’s authority. At their hands your father was grotesquely transformed, and met a wretched end.”

No answer came. A soldier shoved me in the back, and on my way out of the clerks’ office I heard him muttering quietly to himself.

“Absurd nonsense.”

Baron Lestein’s private soldiers kept me bound and hauled me off to the baron’s manor. It stood northeast of the square, facing the cathedral with the inn between them. A vast manor, an annex as vast as the manor, and a long wall running round them both. The building beside it looked to be the warehouse that took delivery of arms from the blacksmiths.

Inside, the place was not greatly different from the manors of other cities. A broad hall, long corridors, and a dingy cellar besides.

The soldiers took me deep into that cellar, put me into a room that resembled a prison cell, and disappeared somewhere. Foul water had pooled on the floor, perhaps from groundwater running beneath it.

“Is nobody there?”

My voice is blocked by the low ceiling and echoes back. A pillar in front of the bars keeps me from seeing the cellar as a whole. A vile stink of rot comes off somewhere, as though a rat had died in it, and in the dark the only sound reaching me is the occasional drip of water into a puddle.

I don’t know what they intend.

It could hardly be the baron’s purpose to seize me and stuff me into a corner, could it? There would be some scheme in it.

After a while I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. A single soldier appeared, said nothing, and stood in front of the door.

“Hey.”

There is no reply. A guard posted purely to watch me, it seems.

“Hey. You there. Can’t you hear me?”

“…”

“How long do you mean to keep me locked up?”

The soldier did not so much as pretend to hear, and would not even meet my eyes. Kicking the bars to make a noise did not stir the soldier either.

“Do you know where I come from? Once I’m out of here, I’ll snap your neck like a sick chicken whenever I please.”

At that the soldier moved a step away from the door and pressed back against the pillar. Judging by the reaction, this was an ordinary soldier who knew nothing and had come down to the cellar on the baron’s orders.

In the end I got nothing out of it and sat down in the corner. Getting out of here would have to wait until Lilian’s safety was secured, at the very least.

She said she wanted to protect herself without my help, didn’t she.

This is the very situation Lilian had been afraid of. Was it not for fear of exactly this that she gave even her own soul over to Leo? The moment she learns I have been taken, she will blame herself. She might well cry her eyes out.

But, just supposing. If she gets herself out safely, and can get word this far.

That will be the moment Norbelgard is destroyed.

For now there is nothing to do but trust her.

She is not a child. She is not something to be protected unconditionally either. That was what I told myself, over and over.

Somehow the air around me seemed to have grown a little colder.