Chapter 248: Where the Light Points (3)
Weeping.
The people, they were weeping.
And not only Imperials. Even the foreigners who had shared in this vision alongside them, even the citizens of Prozen, were gazing up at the halo of light with eyes full of emotion.
Knights of the Empire, soldiers, nobles, commoners alike; faces of every station, shaped by wildly different lives, were bound as if under a spell into one single expression.
A state in which the sanctity called the nation swallows the individual, and a life lived for its sake becomes only natural.
Johann Goetze named this ‘Totalitarianism’.
The language, the concept itself, was Johann’s invention.
“…….”
Suddenly, I found myself wondering about those friends in the Crystal Society. And about those young men who supposedly follow me.
Might they, too, be sobbing somewhere in the square right about now?
Praising and exalting the Empire, measuring the Empire’s light against the shabby reality of their homeland, turning their thirst into faith?
This is a light made for exactly that.
The grandest propaganda of all, meant to temper the Empire into a single weapon.
Lenny’s camera is capturing this square right now, and Prozen’s freedom will carry our propaganda uncensored to the very ends of the continent.
A moment as great as this— will be preserved forever.
“You’ve done well, Sir Knight.”
Johann. He stood at my side, wearing a faint smile.
“You did well too, Dr Johann.”
I laid a hand on his shoulder.
The program of this ceremony had been entirely his idea.
“……Sir Knight.”
Out of nowhere, someone approached us.
It was one of the Emperor’s ministers.
“Yes. Is something the matter?”
“It’s…… ah.”
He could not continue.
The mouth of the old minister, who had spent a lifetime repeating protocol and formality in all matters of speech, opened and closed several times.
“Very, very…… good. No, words like these can’t…….”
The emotion called patriotism. It was overpowering formality itself.
“……Never mind.”
In the end he gave up on finishing the sentence, and instead stepped closer to me.
And whispered these words.
──His Majesty the Emperor summons you to his presence, Sir Knight.
Those words froze my entire body.
The Emperor.
The heart of the Empire, whom I had never once met, neither before my regression nor after.
For the first time in my life, the chance to stand before him had come.
……
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A night in which the Empire’s anthem still pulsed faintly somewhere in the square.
I walked, guided by the Imperial Guard.
It was a strange route.
The farther the noise of the Expo fell away behind me, the more unnaturally empty the streets became.
Such stillness could not possibly exist in the middle of Prozen.
Which meant it had been made to exist.
Either they had bought out this entire district’s night, or driven it out by force.
At every corner, men in plainclothes stood embedded in the darkness.
The reason they stood in plain view was likely to block the citizens from approaching at all.
The place I arrived at was a certain luxury mansion.
Not far from the square, yet tall enough to look down over the entire Expo grounds at a glance.
From the outside it was merely an expensive building, but the moment I crossed the entrance, the air changed.
The Royal Guard stood arrayed in the lobby.
Twenty…… thirty…… no, forty.
Black uniforms lined along the walls without a flicker of motion.
As I walked between them, not a single gaze followed me. Every one of them had been trained to stare only straight ahead.
There were three inspections.
One for each floor I climbed.
At the third inspection, I unfastened my Ceremonial Sword and handed it over.
The stairs were covered in carpet that swallowed my footsteps, and at every landing hung the banner of the Empire’s Black Eagle crest.
A rented building in the capital of a foreign nation had been remade into Imperial territory in a single night.
This is what it means for the Emperor to take up residence.
Wherever he sits becomes the center of the Empire.
“Just three more floors up, if you would.”
With each floor I climbed, the silence thickened by another layer.
By the time I reached the last flight of stairs, I could all but hear my own heartbeat.
The sky of the Empire, whom I was meeting for the first time across two lifetimes.
Before the door on the top floor stood Sebestian.
“…….”
He is my father.
But before that, he is the Emperor’s vassal.
Sebestian jerked his chin toward the room. No word of praise, no word of caution. I gave a short nod and crossed the threshold.
The room was dark.
Beyond a window with its curtain half drawn, crumbs of light drifted in, staining the darkness of the room silver-white. At the heart of that backlight sat a single chair draped in a thin veil.
Beside it, the Emperor’s daughter Justine stood like a shadow.
─Maximilian of Ebenholtz. Son of Sebestian.
From beyond the drape, a voice called me.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
I dropped to one knee. In my lowered field of view, the pattern of the carpet filled my vision.
─…….
The silence was long. I could feel the gaze measuring me against the back of my neck. One second, two; the longer it stretched, the more weight settled onto my back.
Even this silence must be a language of the imperial presence.
─Thank you.
Abruptly, unexpected words struck my ear.
Far too heavy a phrase for the first thing the pinnacle of the Empire chose to say to a subject.
─Today, in you, We saw the future of the Aran. [TL: “We” is the royal we: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we]
He must have meant the light beyond the window. The tears in the square, the Imperials joined into one. That scene of rapture was exactly what this window looked down upon.
─Yet there is one thing We must ask.
The voice sank half an octave.
─Where did you get that light? The design was yours, We are told, and the conception as well.
Is he asking after my muse? Demanding the source of the inspiration?
As I weighed my answer, the Emperor’s ‘excuses’ from before my regression suddenly surfaced in my mind.
“……I saw it in a dream.”
─A dream?
“Yes.”
In the records from before my regression, the Emperor had repeated stories of ‘dreams’ once the war began sliding toward ruin.
“For a long time, I dreamed the same dream. A dream of a sanctum built of light. Your subject merely transcribed that dream.”
My words were, perhaps, not a lie.
Regression could well be called the longest dream in the world.
─…….
A long stillness passed.
Then, from beyond the veil, a low sound leaked out.
It was laughter.
─……Is that so. So you dream as well.
At those words, I knew I had passed.
─We too have dreamed. No, We dream still. Every time We close Our eyes, a dream that never ends…….
I listened quietly, then ventured with care.
“……What manner of dream, Your Majesty?”
─The continent. A dream of uniting all under heaven, and of the Aran victorious.
That much was the ambition of a conqueror.
─But We dream the opposite dream as well. A dream in which We are defeated, and mankind perishes.
“…….”
A chill ran down my spine.
If we lose, not merely the Empire but humanity itself perishes.
The sentence was far too accurate to dismiss as a conqueror’s megalomania.
Seized by an uncanny feeling, I raised my head.
The Emperor, still hidden behind the veil. I had the illusion of meeting the gaze beyond it.
“……Perishes.”
─Indeed.
The Emperor went on, deliberate and unhurried.
─Do you know why We call them Subspecies? Because one day they will turn against mankind. Just as you have said all along in that book of yours.
Within my heart, a sense of wrongness bloomed, difficult to put into words.
Was it coincidence?
Had delusion and truth simply happened to overlap?
Or, like my regression, did ‘something’ beyond explanation dwell within this man as well?
─As the true masters of civilization, as Aran, we must cleanse the continent of its enemies.
And yet, it is different.
Not every part is the same.
His blade points at everything that is not Aran; my blade points only at those that are not human.
Two hatreds with different targets, meshed together like gears, for now, by coincidence alone.
─Today you carved the greatness of the Aran into every nation. Even We felt pride in being Aran. Within Us, the Empire has grown fuller still.
The moment those words ended, Justine moved. Her hand took the hem of the veil. The drape began to lift in silence.
The Emperor had decided to show me his face.
Before the veil finished rising, Justine’s gaze fixed itself on my face.
This, too, is likely a test.
The Emperor I know is a man with a bone-deep inferiority complex about his looks. What flickers through the eyes of a vassal beholding that face for the first time, father and daughter mean, from this moment, to appraise.
“Raise your head.”
The veil lifted away completely. I raised my face and looked upon him.
Black hair and blue eyes. Short-cropped hair. Pursed lips and an unremarkable nose.
The gold that is the emblem of the Aran was nowhere on him, but neither was his face hideous, as the rumors from before my regression had claimed.
It was simply ordinary.
The face of some middle-aged man you would pass on the street without a second glance.
And precisely because of that, what lies within cannot be read.
As ordinary as it is chilling.
“What say you?”
I did not hesitate to answer.
“I am looking upon the glory of the Empire.”
“…….”
The Emperor’s blue eyes narrowed.
“Does Our countenance not disappoint you?”
It was a question that cut to the bone.
I met his blue eyes head-on and said,
“Your Majesty. Your subject has always spoken of ‘spirit’.”
Nowhere in「Under the Moonlight」have I ever praised golden hair and blue eyes.
The Aran’s colors are merely the vessel; however brilliant the vessel, if what it holds is murky, it is not Aran, and if the spirit it holds burns bright, then that itself is Aran.
Those sentences had, in truth, all been for the Emperor.
“What makes an Aran an Aran is not the color of hair or eyes but the spirit, and the pinnacle of that spirit—”
Half a breath. Just as Johann had once advised, after drawing the Emperor’s gaze to a single point.
I continued.
“lies in the conviction and the dream that Your Majesty holds within. Therefore.”
“……Therefore?”
The Emperor asked, as if he could not endure my silence.
I answered with a faint smile.
“Your Majesty is the path of light the Empire must follow.”
The Emperor gazed into my eyes for a long while. So did Justine.
“The light draped over the Imperial Pavilion. That light is Your Majesty.”
Theirs were eyes searching for falsehood. A bearing meant to sift out flattery.
But this sentiment, at least, was sincere.
For you have just spoken of a dream whose gears mesh with mine.
“……Indeed.”
The Emperor nodded slowly, seeming satisfied.
“Truly, you are Sebestian’s son.”
Coming from him, it was the highest of praise, yet somehow it landed on me like a slight.
Because I am not Sebestian’s son. I am the knight Maximilian…….
* * *
Predawn.
Tatyana was still gazing at the resplendent Imperial Pavilion. A short, hollow laugh escaped her.
So their aesthetic was ‘light’.
“…….”
A temple of light, brilliant even from this distance. The Imperial anthem still flowed through the square, like a stream.
What had to be acknowledged had to be acknowledged.
There is no victory or defeat in art, but the ones who had taken this moment, at the very least, were the Empire.
“Even so, ours will last longer.”
The Adversary said.
He must have meant that light vanishes the instant it goes out, while steel stands for a hundred years.
Tatyana smiled bitterly.
“Walls without walls.”
She murmured, gazing up at the temple in the sky.
“Raising walls out of light. That is the art of magi-engineering.”
She added with a snort, half in self-mockery.
“I’ve learned a thing or two. So he wasn’t just a knight with nothing but a tin can for a head after all.”
“……That is a dangerous thing to say.”
The Adversary warned in a low voice. Tatyana nodded readily.
With the purges in full swing in Robrus, merely praising an Imperial could be enough to put one’s neck at risk.
“But we will not lose.”
She said, laying a hand on her own statue—the steel man and woman awaiting the morning sun.
“We will press onward without end. With the will of the East.”
…….
The next day. Front pages across the entire world were plastered with similar phrases.
[The Empire That Conquered the Night. A Temple of Light Raised in the Sky ─Le Jemion]
[The Definition of Architecture Rewritten : Walls Without Walls, a Roof Without a Roof ─Highland Times]
[The Promise of ‘Tallest’ Was Kept. Only Not in Stone, but in Light ─Itelik Morning Post]
Every paper listed Maximilian merely as something like ‘director of the Imperial Pavilion’, but the pitch of their praise was unmistakable. Since the Expo’s keynote was peace, there were no needlessly provocative lines.
Even the review journal circulated by the 「Crystal Society」 ran a column like this.
──[ We Too Can Become Aran ]──
I confess, last night I wept in the square. And I will not be ashamed that half of those tears were envy.
Under that light, the Imperials were one. But when was our Prozen last one? Our parliament is split, our streets are on strike, and our songs are nothing but jeers hurled at one another……
I ask. What does it mean to love one’s country? To embrace a rotting homeland as it rots, or to bring it back to life by whatever means necessary?
The origin of the Aran is Centric. The human civilization that rose from the heart of the continent. Prozen, therefore, is of their collateral line, and if we strive on our own, we can attain ‘quasi’ standing.
For we are not the Aran’s enemy, but their brothers who lost the way.
The day we prove that spirit with our own hands, we too shall earn the right to stand beneath that light…….
──────
Clara Magal.
Such was the ideology of the「Crystal Society」, the rot gnawing at Prozen.
The moment Maximilian read this column, he wired them 10,000,000 Imperial Dollars in membership dues.
And so the continent, and the Empire in turn, were slowly steeped in it.
On radios distributed even to rural villages, the broadcast of that night was replayed again and again.
Imperial knights and soldiers took leave or traded shifts to make their way to Prozen.
For as long as the Expo continued, the Imperial Pavilion would repeat the same lighting ceremony at the same hour every night.
Maximilian had kept the promise of ‘tallest’, and later, an [Imperial Grand Ceremony] of the same form was scheduled to be held on the Imperial mainland as well……
Thus the continent was swept up in the temple of light, yet Maximilian himself was in the Zerpha pavilion.
Dressed in plainclothes, he always took the same spot.
A position from which the completed grand oil painting「Zernica」could be viewed at just the right distance.
Zernica had been finished a full week after opening day, but from the moment it was complete, he came here whenever he could find the time.
“……Your art is drawing a far bigger crowd.”
Pablo Sobakin came to stand beside him.
“Is there some reason you go out of your way to come to this shabby little corner?”
When night fell, everyone flocked to the Imperial Pavilion. The continent overflowed with people boarding trains and ships with the single thought of seeing that light with their own eyes.
And yet the master of that very light stood every night before a black-and-white mural in this deserted pavilion out on the fringes.
“…….”
Maximilian only smiled.
Without taking his eyes off Pablo’s painting, he spoke in a low voice.
“I’ve been thinking about what will last the longest.”
The Imperial Pavilion and the Eastern Pavilion, raised at this Expo by the Empire and the East pouring in money, and more money, and more money still, like absolute fucking lunatics.
The Empire became light, and the East rose in steel. Every soul on the continent had eyes only on them.
But when time flows on and on, and the world of some later day asks, ‘What was there at that World Expo?’
“I think this piece of yours will last the longest.”
It will likely be this「Zernica」.
Not the temple of light, nor the man and woman of steel, but a single black-and-white mural hung in an outlying exhibition hall of Zerpha.
“…….”
Pablo Sobakin silently studied his profile.
He was a strange man.
The one who built the art that brought Prozen to its knees speaks like a man who already knows his own work will be forgotten.
“In that case.”
And watching this knight who so loved「Zernica」, a painting that held a massacre, the painter grew all the more certain.
War cannot be avoided.
“……How many people do you intend to kill?”
Maximilian did not answer. Instead, moonlight slipping through the gap in the window settled upon his face.
One half sunk in darkness, the other shining white. A portrait in which a golden beauty was split into two distinct strata.
That sight was probably his answer.
In that moment, Pablo felt a shiver that made his hair stand on end, and at the very same time, a ferocious inspiration as a painter. He had no need to hear an answer.
As if entranced, he picked up a stick of charcoal and drew the first line upon an empty canvas.
The face of a man divided precisely into darkness and light.
The title had already been decided.
「Where the Light Points」
* * *
The Empire, the Sentinel Knight Order.
Hannah Usar had booked a train ticket to Prozen and still could not bring herself to go.
“……What on earth did you detain those people for?! At least give us an explanation!”
Because she had detained, every last one of them, the Ezenheim bastards who had used that ‘suspicious manner of speech’ down in the sewers.
“There is a reason for all of it.”
“Then what reasons! There aren’t any charges against them at all!”
The detainees’ acquaintances, along with people from their workplaces and the city, had been coming day after day to protest, but there was nothing Hannah could reasonably tell them.
A charge of subversive activity, based on a scent only the Yaken race can smell…….
The sort of thing guaranteed to get her treated as a madwoman.
“……It is Sentinel business.”
“No, what is that supposed to—”
“Go home.”
Hannah signaled the clerk beside her with a glance.
“Get them out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No, wait, Knight! Knight—!”
Even Hannah had to admit the numbers were a bit much.
Nine in total.
It was plainly a burdensome head count to hold on a single knight’s authority to detain, and it would be no surprise if pressure came down from above at any moment.
That did not mean she had any intention of releasing them. These people were tangled up with the「Blue Rose Society」, of that she was certain.
“What about Sir Julian?”
“Still away on assignment, apparently.”
“……Ugh.”
Hannah pressed her temples.
The Ezenheim bastards had shut their mouths as if by prior agreement, claiming to know nothing, and the one person holding the thread of this investigation could not even be reached.
Thanks to which, her train ticket to Prozen was, today as well, sitting in a drawer with nothing to do but inch toward its own expiration date—
“Knight!”
—when.
A staff member burst through the door and shouted.
“Word has arrived from Sir Julian!”
~~~
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