Chapter 246: Where the Light Points
Whrrrsh, whrrrsh, whrrrsh—
The Republic of Prozen’s premier press company, ‘Le Jemion’.
Editor-in-Chief Lucien picked up a copy of the newspaper pouring out of the rotary press like a waterfall.
“Whew…….”
He exhaled a long stream of smoke from the cigarette dangling from his lips and grinned.
“Ohhh~ would you look at this composition. It’s art. Pure art.”
The photograph itself was black and white, but it was more than enough to send ripples across the continent.
On the left, the red ranks of Robrus in formation; on the right, the jet black of the Empire. And at the very center where those two opposing seas collided, the directors of each nation stood clasping each other’s hands.
“This could win the Cherzhev Prize, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I’m saying!”
“The composition is absolutely stunning.”
The staff gathered around also gazed at the freshly printed paper with flushed faces.
The Empire’s monster, Maximilian, and the East’s master, Tatyana Volkov. The tension the two of them created seemed to come alive right there on the page.
“Editor-in-Chief, this is the original color print our correspondent sent separately.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed as he took the developed photograph the staff member handed him.
Maximilian’s face, captured from much closer. Golden hair gleaming under the sun, and the flawless, elegant bearing of an aristocrat. And standing squarely before him, the woman of steel, Tatyana.
It was a composition like a jewel striking against iron.
“……Damn. Hey, put out a notice that we’re selling this one separately.”
Of course, there’s the old talk about how carelessly printing and selling the revered visage of an Imperial noble is a breach of etiquette, how a portrait should only be preserved through a painter’s brush.
But that’s all from the days when cameras were rare, old-fashioned nonsense of the most antiquated kind.
Photography has come so far in just the last four or five years.
Now cameras pile up gathering dust in newspaper storerooms, and even citizens on the street press shutters. A face that walks itself out into the public square already belongs to everyone.
Besides, this is Prozen. There’s no way Imperial law is crossing the Seloua River.
“Print it in color on the finest paper, limited edition. The VIPs will go crazy buying them up.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Work like your bonus this month depends on it. And forget about resting until the Expo is over!”
“Of course!”
Whrrrsh, whrrrsh, whrrrsh—
Lucien looked up in satisfaction at the rotary press churning away.
“Even those Imperial bastards…… come in handy like this once in a while.”
He snorted a laugh and ground out his cigarette butt against the sole of his shoe.
…….
The mass-printed black-and-white newspapers and the finely developed color photographs spread in an instant through the political circles of the continent’s major nations, including Prozen, Highland, Itelik, and Yursled.
Politicians fixated on those clasped ‘hands’ of Robrus and the Empire with an obsession bordering on the abnormal.
They advertised it as ‘peace’.
Look, they said, aren’t the Empire and the East holding hands so warmly? This is history, they said. The fear of war is nothing but the paranoid delusion of cowards.
“If you still insist that the Empire is plotting war even after seeing this photograph, that itself is proof of an incompetence that cannot read the currents of the age!”
The Prozen Parliament,「Le Palais Lermont」.
From the podium, senior Councilor Clemand shouted, holding the photograph high.
He meant to use this single photograph as a weapon to slash the defense budget. Solely for his faction’s interests and his own standing.
……Though, of course, that would not be his only reason.
“The Empire and the East also desire the peace and shared prosperity of mankind! What is this photograph if not proof of that! If anything, speaking of war to them is itself a provocation, a senseless act of reckless antagonism!”
Peace. They cried out only what they wished to see and wished to hear.
“At this World Expo, we shall gain not the stench of blood and gunpowder, but a single noble flower by the name of ‘peace’!”
His fellow councilors cheered Clemand as he finished his impassioned speech.
The opposing faction, of course, merely scoffed, as if it wasn’t worth a reply.
“Let’s go.”
“Yes, sir.”
After finishing his keynote speech ahead of the World Expo, Clemand quietly slipped out of the assembly hall. He climbed into the government vehicle waiting at the main gate of Le Palais Lermont.
Clack.
The rear door closed, and the car pulled away smoothly.
Clemand casually glanced down at his own feet.
A black suitcase, heavy-looking at a single glance.
“…….”
He forcibly suppressed the smile threatening to leak out. Struggling to rein in the corners of his mouth as they twitched and squirmed, he turned his gaze out the window.
He wouldn’t know exactly how much the ‘price of peace’ inside amounted to until he counted it at home, but they had never once disappointed him.
This time, no doubt, would be plenty satisfying as well.
…….
Those rumors from Prozen had, before anyone knew it, spread all the way here, into the deepest heart of the Empire.
「The World Expo. The Handshake of Peace.」
The photograph, lauded as ‘history’, ran in the newspapers of nations across the continent.
“What do you think?”
Imperial Princess Justine asked. Commander-in-Chief Sebestian picked up the newspaper she had set down.
“Your son must make you proud.”
A very beautiful piece of propaganda, capable of concealing the Empire’s intent for war.
Sebestian answered without taking his eyes off the page.
“He still has a long way to go.”
An answer without a single trace of warmth.
“Anyone can talk, and anyone can step forward. But judgment is rendered by results.”
A man who spoke of his own son without a shred of emotion.
Was it, in its own way, for his son’s sake? Or did it mean his loyalty was fixed solely upon the Emperor?
“……How cold you are.”
But Justine knew. Sebestian was a man who had worked hard and achieved a great many things. And yet he had cast it all aside and devoted his entire life to the man called Emperor, a human being who, just as he himself put it, spoke through ‘results’.
Even Justine, who trusted no one, acknowledged Sebestian.
“I heard you will be accompanying His Majesty on opening day, Sir Sebestian.”
“Yes. That is correct.”
Whenever the Emperor left the Empire, even briefly, Sebestian always went with him.
It was the reason Sebestian had, for all practical purposes, retired from the front lines.
For he had become a man who protected the Emperor and no one else.
“Knowing you will be at his side puts my mind at ease.”
It was no empty compliment. Any space where Sebestian lay coiled would be safe from danger of every kind.
“You honor me.”
Still, he was an uncomfortable man to spend much time with. He spoke so little, and the air about him weighed so heavily.
Rather different, one might say, from Maximilian, who had a gift for words and actually tried to keep a conversation going.
“Well then, Sir Sebestian. I shall see you again on that day.”
“Yes. Rest well, Your Highness.”
Justine gave a graceful nod of farewell and left his office.
Tap.
The moment she stepped into the corridor.
Her bodyguard knight Yannick fell in behind her like a shadow.
Yannick Jackal.
The strongest man of the North. The Jackal whose might, they said, rivaled even Sebestian’s…… or so the talk went, but strictly speaking, he was not yet a ‘Jackal’.
The surname Jackal was permitted only to the heir of the family, and he was merely one of several candidates.
What’s more, he is not entirely my man, either. He, too, is one of the watchers.
Inside the Imperial Palace, everyone watches everyone. Even the Emperor, my own father, is likely watching me.
But it doesn’t matter. In the end, father and daughter’s purposes fold into one.
War.
This continent is diseased. Subspecies parasitize the civilization raised by Aran blood, Mixed-bloods muddy the bloodline, and inferior things dare to speak of equality.
There is a reason why Father and I, the most noble and pure of the Aran, despise the likes of the ‘Ezenheim’ and the ‘Mer’ above all others.
Look at the trades they pursue.
Finance. Moneylending. Brokerage. Appraisal. Speculation.
Not one thing made with their own hands; nothing but trades that wedge themselves between the blood and sweat of those who make, and skim the profit.
What’s more, they have no history.
No homeland, no king, no graves to defend.
They are rootless things.
But one must not be mistaken.
The Ezenheim are merely the most conspicuous tumor, not the disease itself. The cause of the disease is every Subspecies.
Cut out the Ezenheim alone, and if the root remains, the disease grows back.
So what is needed is not surgery but the clearing of land.
The great task of plowing it all under, roots and all.
And the means to that end is war.
The superiority of races is not proven by arguments at a desk. Only struggle proves it. The race that fights and wins is the superior one, and to flee that judgment is itself a confession of inferiority.
Cleansing and purification.
And, duty.
“Your Highness. What do you make of Maximilian?”
Yannick asked abruptly.
“There’s been a great deal of talk about him in Prozen lately.”
The World Expo, where the eyes of the continent converge. The Empire’s prestige rides on it. The Emperor wants the highest place of all. At the very least, he wants superiority over Robrus.
Justine asked in return without shifting her gaze.
“Do you doubt him?”
“No. I merely wondered how Your Highness felt…… Do you trust Maximilian?”
Justine answered with a small laugh.
“Being unable to trust and being unwilling to trust are two different things.”
Someone you cannot trust, you simply suspect.
But to a thing you refuse to trust, you do not even give a test.
Just as the only answer for the Subspecies is extermination and cleansing, a test is given only to ‘those whose answer you wish to hear’.
“……I see.”
However Yannick understood it, Justine did not bother to add anything more.
She gazed at the light at the end of the corridor and thought.
Perhaps I envy my father.
The Emperor, who keeps a lifelong retainer like Sebestian at his side. A perfect vassal who speaks only through results.
Perhaps that is why I want to believe that Maximilian can become my Sebestian.
That is why I test him.
* * *
The morning dawned bright. It was D-DAY, milder and more radiant than ever before.
「The World Expo — The Stage of Peace」
To proclaim its opening, the President and Prime Minister of Prozen, leading their retinue of cabinet ministers, took their places on the semicircular terrace at the palace’s center.
Before their eyes, the square stretched to the horizon with tourists from every nation, press corps, honor guards, and the countless citizens of Prozen.
Paaaang─!
Right on time, the fanfare rang out.
♩♬♪♬♩── ♩♪♩♬──!
As the trumpeters arrayed along the palace roof sounded the signal of the opening in unison, the noise of the square receded like a retreating tide.
The flags of the Expo’s participating nations were hoisted one by one.
Each time a nation’s flag rose, cheers erupted in every language across the square, and the moment the final flag touched the top,
The President stepped up to the microphone.
“─In the name of the Republic of Prozen, we welcome all friends of the continent. Here and now, at long last, I declare the World Expo open!”
Boom─! Boom─! Boom─!
A gun salute thundered from the riverside. The solemn melody of Prozen’s national anthem flowed out in orchestral strains. Dozens of fountains surged skyward. Birdcages swung open, and hundreds of white doves soared up over the banner that read「The Stage of Peace」.
I watched the opening of the World Expo from in front of the Imperial Pavilion.
The sun was still up.
“Spehl. Is everything ready?”
“Yes. Everything is perfect.”
The assembly and installation of the Mana Stone Searchlight were already complete. The Empire’s art stood solemnly prepared, but we had to wait until the sun went down.
For the sun was our enemy.
In the meantime, the other National Pavilions revealed themselves one by one. Valkania, Prozen, Highland, Itelik, Verkina, Canilan, even Mekerel.
But only the two of us.
Robrus and the Empire alone remained shrouded in their tents.
I was biding my time, and Robrus was standing on its pride.
Before long, people had gathered in the square. Many of the faces were familiar.
Kentz Bertem, Reutern, Ezell, Sonnet Kandel, Jun Kandel, the Sentinel knights led by Chiron and Cliff, Regular Army generals in plain clothes, the Imperial Guard, Genen’s next Prime Minister Elias Walter, even Charlotte and Halbert Goering, whom I had met aboard the Titan, and Agent Nils.
And not just people of the Empire. Distinguished figures from every other nation had gathered here.
……The Emperor, the Imperial Princess, and Sebestian were no doubt watching me from somewhere as well.
“Sir Knight.”
An Operations Officer approached and whispered something to me. Robrus had sent word proposing a simultaneous unveiling at five in the afternoon.
“We proceed as planned.”
The star of the show always appears last.
I already knew what Robrus’s sculpture was. Theirs was the kind of piece that had to show itself while the sun was still in the sky.
“Open it at exactly eight tonight.”
The waiting game favored me by far.
…….
“What the hell? Why aren’t they unveiling it?”
Reutern looked left and right. An ice cream in one hand, cotton candy in the other.
The noon opening was long past, but the Imperial Pavilion remained wrapped in its tent, not stirring an inch.
“It is a battle of pride.”
“Pride?”
“Yes. You see, it goes like this…….”
Bern whispered from beside him. Reutern’s eyes blinked as he took in the explanation.
“Huh? Ohh~ so that’s what this is?!”
The Imperial Pavilion to the west, and the Eastern Pavilion to the east.
Reutern scrunched up his face and clenched his fists tight.
“Don’t you dare unveil it! Don’t you dare lose, Max!”
He glared at the Eastern Pavilion swathed in red canvas.
“Those bear bastards, they’re really crafty…… They dare defy the Empire? They dare?!”
While Reutern growled to himself, on another side of the square.
Sonnet and Ezell, standing there, had also more or less grasped the situation.
“……This is going to take quite a while.”
Ezell answered Sonnet’s remark indifferently.
“Wanna bet on how many hours it’ll take?”
The two had somehow become close enough to drop formalities. In truth it was closer to one-sided friendliness on Ezell’s part, but at any rate, they did have something in common.
「Outcast」.
They were both fans of that comic book.
“……That’s petty.”
“Hm? What’s petty?”
“I saw everything. You asking earlier when they’d unveil it.”
A bet made already knowing the answer.
Ezell chewed at her own lips for no good reason.
“A-ahem. Well, I didn’t catch the exact hour, so…….”
And three spots over from them.
“Er…… Lady Grossman.”
Halbert Goering broached the subject while stealing glances to gauge Charlotte’s mood.
“You see, I’ve been, er, giving some thought lately to the camp business.”
“……The camps?”
“Yes~ yes. These days the camps get tax subsidies, you can run businesses off the inmate labor, it’s an absolute gold mine…… Let me get straight to the point. Please help me out!”
“……Right now? Here?”
Meanwhile, Chiron and the knights were calmly biding their time. They were tourists, but at the same time, bodyguards for the Imperial dignitaries within this crowd.
The knights’ eyes swept ceaselessly through the throng, watching for any suspicious movement.
“……I am a little worried.”
Chiron looked up at the black canvas of the Imperial Pavilion. He’d been given advance word that it would open at nine that night, but the wait was needlessly nerve-wracking all the same.
“I hear the East’s director is quite the famous figure.”
At Cliff’s words, Chiron shook his head.
“She’s not just famous.”
Born to a family of new money and obsessed with refinement, Chiron knew very well who Tatyana was. Her name turned up constantly in the art magazines he subscribed to.
“Even those stuck-up Prozen critic bastards acknowledge her…….”
Could Maximilian beat a genius like that?
…….
Across from the Imperial Pavilion, the Eastern Pavilion.
“They refused. Our proposal to unveil simultaneously.”
At her aide’s report, Tatyana let out a hollow laugh.
“Ha! How truly unbefitting of an Empire. They claim to be a great nation, yet they act worse than some petty state!”
She crossed her arms and knit her brow.
“Then we’ll wait too!”
However many hours it took, the tent only needed to come down before the day was out.
“For that is the spirit of the Premier.”
“Will you be all right? You said yourself that our sculpture is one the sun completes.”
Tatyana clenched her teeth for a moment. Her brows twitched, and she glanced at the western sky.
“……In Prozen, the sun sets late.”
Maximilian waited for his moment, while Robrus fought alone to defend its pride.
The same silence. Different hearts.
The two National Pavilions faced each other, letting the sun slip by…….
* * *
Around the time the entire continent was soaked in the festive mood of the World Expo.
Drip. Drip.
Through a dank sewer where droplets fell from the ceiling, Hannah Usar pressed forward.
She was investigating the Blue Rose Society.
……In truth, she was chasing Julian’s trail.
Drip. Drip.
Julian’s traces were faint, but he had unmistakably visited this place.
Drip. Drip.
Disguised as a sewer maintenance worker, Hannah shone her flashlight into every corner of the walls.
Why had Julian passed through here?
She calmly examined the interior.
And then, at a certain moment.
She caught a shimmer of Mana barely perceptible to the naked eye. It was a strangely shaped pattern carved into the sewer wall.
“……A marker.”
Hannah murmured under her breath and looked back over her shoulder.
“Well? Can you sense anything?”
At her question, the Yaken Operations Officer Karak nodded. He approached the wall, sniffed at it, then hastily backed away.
“Ugh, fuck!”
He spat the curse and clamped his nose shut.
“What is it?”
“Ah, my apologies, ma’am. That fishy stench hit me all at once. How do I put it…… like dozens of rotten fish all mashed together at the same time.”
The distinctive stench that certain Yaken could sense only from the Ezenheim.
Hannah ran a gloved hand across the wall.
“Then…… perhaps. Could you tell which parts are stronger and which are fainter?”
“Wh, this smell?”
“Yes. Try checking the concentration of the odor.”
Karak swallowed dryly and steeled himself. Even for a Yaken this smell was torture, but on the Knight’s order he pressed his nose right up against the wall.
Sniff sniff. Urk. Sniff sniff. Hurrgh. Sniff sniff. Huuurrrgh.
Fighting back gag after gag, carefully.
Sniff sniff.
“Here, and here…… These three spots are especially strong. There’s definitely a difference in the concentration of the smell.”
Where Karak’s finger pointed, there was nothing but unremarkable graffiti.
“The concentration, of the smell…….”
As Hannah mulled the words over, a thought struck her mind like lightning.
“……It’s a conversation.”
These were the traces of them keeping this place as a hideout and carving ‘something’ into the walls to exchange information.
Otherwise, there was no way the concentrations would differ.
One was carved recently, and so it was strong. Another was comparatively old, and so it was faint.
Traces of different times, left on the same wall.
They had come and gone from this wall at staggered intervals, conversing.
“They talk through smells?”
Karak’s eyes went wide.
“No. The conversation would be happening through that graffiti. The smell is more like an impurity left over from their method.”
Had they, the Ezenheim, invented a language all their own?
Hannah irritably swept back her hair.
“Hah, because of these fucking bastards I can’t even go see the Expo, what the hell is-“
“Shh.”
Karak suddenly grabbed Hannah’s arm and pulled.
“A presence. Someone is coming this way.”
A Yaken’s keen senses had picked it up a step before even a knight could.
“Let’s lie in wait.”
Hannah whispered softly. The position, directly above. The ceiling, the one place in a sewer no one ever thinks to look up at.
They leapt up silently and clung to the ceiling.
“……This is why knights trust the Yaken.”
She whispered quietly, glancing at Karak beside her.
Karak grinned back, and the two of them hid themselves in the darkness of the sewer.
~~~
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