Chapter 236: Goodwill (3)
A sea drowned in pitch-black darkness. Atop the dark swells, people bobbed and drifted, clinging to their life jackets. From those scattered specks rose moans steeped in the cold.
“Save me, save-”
“Get your hands off! Any more weight and it’ll sink, let go!”
The man who’d been stretching out his hand in desperation to catch a passing raft was kicked away, carried off somewhere back into the sea once more.
“Haah, haah……”
Every breath bloomed white in the air. A thick sea fog walled off every direction, and the searing cold of the water stole the warmth from their bodies.
“God, please…… God…….”
By now they hadn’t even the strength left to cry for help. The people could only clutch the last hope that remained against their chests.
The Mana Stones that a nameless Merin had handed out.
Soaked in seawater, the little stones pulsed faintly and gave off warmth.
One of those stones, which had been burning like a stove in the ice-cold water, went out without a sound.
Plunk.
The Mana Stone slipped from the loosened grip and sank into the depths, and where it had been, not a single sound remained.
Whoooooo──
A night in which countless breaths were swept away by the frigid wind.
“……?”
Some nameless old man suddenly stared hard beyond the sea fog. Far off past his blurred sight, something huge seemed to be swaying.
Was it a hallucination, or the mirage they say appears at the end of one’s life?
A silhouette wavering in the moonlight. The teetering shadow tore through the fog and slowly…… revealed its shape.
It was the prow of a ship.
“……!”
The old man’s eyes went wide. The back of his neck bristled hot.
“H-here! Over here! There are people here!”
The old man forced his frozen arm upward. The warmth of the Mana Stone clutched tight to his chest was what made the motion possible.
“Here! Over here──!”
At the old man’s strange, bellowing outburst, everyone else’s eyes swung toward that spot all at once.
──In that instant, a searchlight blindingly bright tore the pale fog to shreds.
It was a warship of the Imperial Navy.
“Over here! Here!”
“Please, save us! There are people here!”
“O God!”
Tearful cries burst out all across the sea. The warship slowly turned its prow, chasing the blue lights glittering on the water’s surface.
“Lower all lifeboats! Search for the Mana Stone lights first!”
The Captain’s command. Lifeboats were lowered from the ship’s flanks.
Splash!
The sailors who dropped down to the water rowed or swam, using the blue Mana Stones as their markers. They made for the lights and seized the survivors’ hands. One by one, the blue stars were gathered up onto the ship.
* * *
Charlotte slowly opened her eyes.
“…….”
An unfamiliar ceiling. Instead of the Titan’s ornate gilded décor, there was a gray steel frame and a bulkhead with the rivet marks left plainly exposed. The smell of paint and oil tickled her nose.
Somehow, it seemed she had survived.
“You’re conscious, I see.”
At the voice from beside her, she flinched and turned her head. The face of an unfamiliar Military Surgeon was right in front of her.
He held up his fingers.
“How many do you see here?”
“……Three.”
“And now?”
“Two.”
The Military Surgeon jotted something down on his chart, then asked her name next.
“What is your name?”
“Charlotte Grossman…… I’m fine. My head’s perfectly clear.”
“Very well. Then-”
“That’s enough.”
She sat bolt upright. She left the cabin and climbed up to the deck. She asked the crewman trailing behind her.
“Where is this? Where are we headed right now?”
“This is the Imperial Navy cruiser ‘Verga’, ma’am. We received a distress signal while under way and rushed to the scene last night. At present we’ve made a temporary port call at the southern Highland harbor.”
The southern Highland resort. It had been the Titan’s original destination.
She leaned against the railing. Down at the distant dock, Highland officials and soldiers seemed to be exchanging words about something.
“Lady Grossman.”
Someone called out to her from behind. His rank was naval Colonel.
“Captain of the Verga, Colonel Ottlich. I’m glad to see you unharmed.”
A soldier. Ordinarily his would have been an unwelcome face, but just this once she was glad to see it.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“However, there is something I must tell you.”
The Colonel abruptly held out a note, water-soaked and crumpled.
“The thing is, one of the survivors passed along a rather curious note to us.”
Charlotte took the note, and her eyes wavered.
“You wrote this yourself, Lady Grossman, did you not?”
[ As this person is an agent carrying out the personal business of Charlotte Grossman, I request your cooperation in ensuring that no harm comes to them. ]
Below it, Charlotte’s own signature was scrawled.
“Where is he?!”
“Pardon?”
“The person who had this note, I’m asking where he is right now!”
Eli Zella. That Merin appraiser had survived!
“Down in the lower cabin-”
Charlotte bolted for the cabin the Colonel pointed to. She ran with a bright smile on her face.
Bang!
The moment she flung the door open, her face faltered. Her smile froze.
“…….”
Eli Zella was not inside.
Instead, there sat only a mother cradling a newborn that wailed waaaah—, and a father with a hand resting on her shoulder.
They looked at Charlotte with frightened eyes.
The Colonel’s voice drifted in from behind her.
“Merin businesspeople. It turns out they’re on the Imperial Guard’s watch list. There’s suspicion they may have boarded the Titan with impure intentions, so they’re under investigation at the moment.”
“…….”
Waaaah— Waaaah—
Charlotte quietly gazed at the crying child and the parents rigid with fear.
“Ah…….”
Charlotte understood at once.
So that’s it.
He had gone somewhere else.
She gripped tight the note in her hand, the token of survival she had given him.
Rather than spend it on his own life, it seemed he had traded it for the tomorrow of three people whose names he didn’t even know.
“Lady Grossman. Are these the people?”
Colonel Ottlich asked.
The words that Merin had spoken one night came back to Charlotte’s ears.
─We survive. All of us, together…….
A foolishly simple dream.
But why had he left ‘himself’ out of the word ‘all’?
“……Yes. That’s them.”
In the place where grief should have surged, something strangely warm welled up first.
Her eyes reddened, yet the corners of her mouth kept softening.
She could not put a name to a feeling like this.
At last, a short, hollow laugh slipped out.
“These are the ones.”
Feeling as though she were dreaming, she murmured softly to the Merin family that had survived.
“I’m…… so glad you made it.”
* * *
Titan voyage, Day 7.
─When are you letting us off, you idiot!
Nils, the Agency’s operative, leaned against the railing and took in the view of the dock.
─I’m asking when you’ll let us off, you brainless fools!
He was cheerfully watching Halbert throw a fit at the soldiers.
─You there! What’s your name! What’s your name! What’s your name!
He jabbed his finger diligently at each and every man blocking his path. Pointing dead-on at a person’s face was a talent too, if you could call it one.
─What’s your name!
─Er, Lord Goering-
─And who’re you! Name, now!
─Second Lieutenant Ken-
─Do you know who I am?!
He’d ask who they were, and the moment they tried to answer, he’d ask again whether they knew who he was. A line of questioning the other party could never possibly answer.
Nils watched the spectacle in silence.
Before long Halbert returned with nothing to show for it, huffing as he straightened his clothes.
“These bastards, once I’m back in the Empire I won’t let this go! How dare they waste a Goering’s holiday so utterly, so meaninglessly! Gaaah!”
Even toward the soldiers who had saved him, there was not a shred of gratitude, only shameless indignation.
Nils gazed out past the horizon and remarked idly.
“That Merin appraiser wasn’t on the survivors’ list.”
“……”
Halbert’s expression stiffened. He fiddled with his mustache as though lost in deep thought.
Kreee- kre-e-e-eek-
Around the time the geese had cried out a few times, Nils changed the subject.
“So, what on earth is the reason they’ve kept us penned up all this time? Things with the Highland authorities should already be settled.”
“No idea! Carrying on like there’s somebody coming!”
“Someone coming?”
“That’s right! Word is this fellow gave an order not to let a single soul off the warship. Just who the hell is this bastard, to go wasting the holiday of a Goering and of a Grossman!”
Nils gave a snort of laughter.
Halbert Goering was surprisingly happy-go-lucky. He had sunk most of his valuables to the bottom of the sea and brushed up against death itself, and still he fretted over nothing but his own prestige and his holiday schedule.
“You’re quite right.”
Nils was, in his own way, both annoyed and worried.
Halbert Goering was a collateral branch member, so he might be waved off easily enough, but Grossman would be quite a handful to deal with. For a mere soldier, it could well become a problem for his promotion.
“Treating us, the victims, like we’re some kind of criminals, and for how many days now……?”
That was when it happened.
“Exactly my point! Looks like I’ll be spending my whole holiday on this warship!”
While Goering went on grumbling and muttering, a small commotion arose over by the harbor.
“Hm?”
At some point the crowd parted, opening a path.
Through it, the Imperial Navy men snapped a salute in unison, and the Highland officials stared blankly at ‘someone’.
“Looks like someone’s coming.”
At Nils’s words, Halbert jutted out his lips and glared toward the spot.
“Let’s have a look at this face, then.”
Just then the noon sun beat down fierce. The sun that had hidden behind the clouds washed the entire harbor in gold. The silhouette of a man, hidden until now behind the crowd, slowly came into view.
“Just what sort of great man could he be……?”
A noble gentleman clad in the uniform of the Sentinel.
By now there was no one in aristocratic society who did not know that face.
Goering, of course, and Nils as well, both knew it.
“……Maximilian.”
Halbert’s words cut off. His pupils went wide with shock, and Nils too flinched in surprise and straightened his posture without realizing it.
Maximilian exchanged words with the Highland officials in fluent Highland Language and with the Imperial soldiers in the Imperial Language, then set foot at the warship’s gangway.
Thud. Thud.
The echo of him climbing the stairs was like thunder in Halbert’s ears.
“Y-you there!”
Halbert hastily grabbed Nils’s sleeve.
“What I just said, keep it an absolute secret…….”
Before he could even finish, Maximilian stepped up onto the deck.
He swept his eyes over the surroundings, then came straight toward them……
“A pleasure to meet you.”
A voice smooth yet dark and deep, unmistakably that of an Ebenholtz.
“…….”
“…….”
It was Nils’s first time seeing him in the flesh. The same was true for Halbert Goering.
His looks were every bit as Aran as the rumors said, no, even more so. The golden hair and the deep, shimmering golden eyes, set against the sea’s sun──
“I’ve already heard the witnesses’ testimony.”
He opened the folder of documents in one hand.
“That aboard the sinking Titan, you selected the survivors on the basis of their Genealogy Certificates.”
“Ah, um, w-well, that…… the truth is it wasn’t me, there was, there w-was a Merin appraiser.”
Halbert Goering’s tongue tangled up.
“That fellow took the lead and…… did the appraising. The Genealogy Certificates, he appraised the Genealogy Cert…… he did, yes.”
‘It’s strange. When I meet his eyes, my heart hammers away on its own. As if I’m the one who committed some crime.’
‘Was it, perhaps, wrong to have selected them by Genealogy Certificate first? Had there been some better way?’
“……Hm.”
Maximilian raised his eyebrows and peered at the documents.
──Gulp.
Nils and Halbert swallowed hard in the tension.
All at once, a smooth smile rose at the corner of Maximilian’s mouth.
“You’ve done a most heroic thing. To uphold the order of the Empire even out on the open sea.”
At Maximilian’s praise, the very opposite of their unease.
Halbert cocked his head for a moment. He felt as though he’d heard something rather peculiar.
A hero. Hero……?
“……Sorry?”
“Truly worthy of a member of the Goering Family.”
Maximilian offered his hand first. Halbert grasped the meaning belatedly and hurriedly clasped it.
“Ah, ahaha! Yes! W-we did it together with this fellow too! Haha!”
Nils quickly took his hand as well. Maximilian gave him the same smile.
“You’ve been through a great deal. There will likely be press interview requests later on, and I ask for your cooperation when they come.”
“Oh, my! My! Of course, of course~!”
Halbert beamed from ear to ear, squirming and twisting like a bashful girl.
“Furthermore.”
This time Maximilian turned his gaze to Nils.
“Might we of the Sentinel take custody of every unidentified passenger here? It is, after all, a matter directly tied to the security of the Empire.”
“Uh…….”
Nils hesitated a moment. This was a case they’d cracked through the Agency’s intelligence. By rights, that meant the entire Titan affair was the Agency’s achievement, and yet…….
As things stood now, he had neither the grounds to refuse nor the nerve to.
“Of course. I’ll leave it to your discretion, Sir Knight.”
“My thanks. Then, this is a personal token of my gratitude to the two of you, who safeguarded the Empire’s Aran people.”
Maximilian gestured somewhere with his eyes and turned away, and his attendant came over to hand each of the two men a bag.
Nils and Halbert exchanged glances, then furtively opened the bags.
Shhhaaaa—
Startled by the deep blue radiance rising up from inside, they quickly shut them again.
“…….”
“…….”
The two of them fought to hold back the smiles twitching at the corners of their mouths.
Suddenly, Halbert’s expression sank dark.
“Would’ve been easier if that appraiser were here. Could’ve gotten these things appraised on the spot too.”
Nils asked, half-joking.
“Is this about the pocket watch?”
“……What, you think all I care about is money.”
Shooting Nils a sidelong look, Halbert drew out from his waist the fake pocket watch that had nearly been sent to the bottom of the sea.
Clutching it in one hand, he mulled over the word ‘hero’ he’d just heard from Maximilian.
“More real than the genuine article, isn’t it.”
Just then, a soldier’s voice rang out through the ship.
─Attention all aboard. Attention all aboard. Disembarkation procedures will now commence.
─Disembarkation will proceed in order, beginning with personnel whose identities have been confirmed. Said personnel are to gather with their belongings before the starboard gangway.
─Unidentified personnel and those subject to investigation are to remain in place. As of today, custody of said personnel is to be transferred to Sir Maximilian Ebenholtz of the Sentinel, so for all further guidance, follow the directives of the Sentinel.
─That is all. End of the Captain’s message.
~~~
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