༺ 𓆩 Chapter 23 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
Ironically enough, it was a priest of the Old Faith who presided over Randolph’s funeral mass.
“……You laid the sinner down in peace, and he came to rest in a tranquil place.”
A fair number of people had gathered in the Old Faith’s cathedral.
Randolph’s family and relatives.
The guards who had held him in affection.
His friends.
And when the Margrave, Jonas, the chamberlain, and their escorting guards were added to them, well over forty souls had filled the chapel.
Randolph lay in the coffin with the sword clasped in his arms, dressed in the chainmail and surcoat he had worn in life.
Every trace of blood had been wiped away; because of preservation magic, decay had not advanced very far. He looked almost comfortable in the coffin.
“It was an imperial noble. He nearly struck my son with his carriage. Everyone around him had been trembling, but it was the knight who saved my boy.”
Those who spoke of the deceased all looked sorrowful.
“He must have been well loved.”
“Ralph was that kind of man.”
At Isaac’s remark, Carlson answered.
There was neither grief nor agitation visible on Carlson’s face.
“Why don’t you step out and say a few words too? At the very least, you should tell them how Sir Randolph died.”
“Death is only death. However grandly one speaks of it, it remains only death. I’ll be going on ahead.” Carlson brushed a hand down his dry face, then left the chapel.
Randolph’s body was buried in the cemetery of the Old Faith.
It was a place where clergymen and knights were laid to rest.
A place furnished even with proper gravestones.
One shovelful, then another.
As Isaac stared at the coffin sinking into the earth, he looked toward Randolph’s family, the family Randolph had asked him to watch over.
He saw a woman holding a younger sibling close.
The children were crying, but the woman’s face was blank.
It seemed the truth had not yet fully reached her.
‘What was that woman thinking right now?’
Isaac wondered.
Even without a mana explosion, an innocent bystander had died all the same.
If that woman learned her husband had died because of Isaac’s plan, would she rage, would she curse him?
If he had foreseen that the bishop would come leading Holy Knights.
If he had prepared for that as well.
Could Randolph have lived?
Was Randolph one of those he had to protect?
Or was he one who, for the sake of those he had to protect, had to be used as a piece on the board?
The sunlight, bright beyond reason today, pierced through Isaac’s eyelids.
He wanted to collapse where he stood and fall asleep at once.
But the sunlight came down hard and sharp, as though commanding him to bear the death before his eyes, and the deaths that would unfold ahead.
Do not doze. Do not seek rest. Open your eyes wide.
It seemed to press him so.
That guilt, that heaviness of spirit.
Isaac knew it for what it was — a magician’s melancholy.
He had drawn far too much mana to overwhelm the bishop, and the exhaustion had seeped into his mind as well.
He knew that, yet there was no way, for now, to relieve the weight in his chest.
“Brother, can I ask you something?”
At some point Jonas had left Margrave's side and came to Isaac’s.
“……What is it?”
Isaac asked, his voice roughened and split.
“What’s it like, dying?”
Nine years old now, Jonas’s eyes shone with curiosity.
“Well, that’s…….”
Isaac started to answer, then closed his mouth.
A moment later, he laid a hand atop Jonas’s head.
“It means sleeping for a very long time. A sleep no one can wake you from.”
“No one can wake you?”
“No.”
“That’s why they bury people like that, so no one can disturb them.”
“……Yes.”
Jonas nodded as though convinced.
“Then don’t die, hyung.”
“What?”
“It’s fine if you don’t play with me, but I hate the thought of you falling asleep forever.”
“……All right. I won’t die.”
Isaac stroked Jonas’s hair.
Then, with narrowed eyes, he looked up at the dazzling sky.
From the moment he killed Nias.
No, from the moment he killed the deserter in his previous life.
It had already been a road he had begun to walk.
To protect his family, to protect his house.
To repay the debts engraved upon his heart.
To accept the staining of his hands.
To abandon the wish for peace.
That road had already begun.
“……?”
Suddenly he felt a small hand take hold of his left hand.
It was Jonas’s.
Randolph’s wife had begun to sob at last, and so had his children.
Seeing them, Jonas had reached out without even realizing it.
“I wish no one would die.” Jonas murmured.
Isaac stared at the hand that held his own; his right hand, the hand Isaac had once caused him to lose in the mana explosion, the hand he had resolved never to take again, fearing he would one day see Jonas screaming and weeping over its loss once more.
Slowly.
Isaac let go of Jonas’s hand.
“Brother?”
“I have something to take care of.”
This was no time to sink into a magician’s melancholy.
Wandering the grounds around the cemetery, Isaac forced himself to think of what he would do next.
He had to.
There was no time permitted, and none that would be granted, for weakness.
His aimless footsteps came to a halt at the rear gate of the cemetery.
Carlson was standing there.
“Were you following me?”
“I just happened to come this way.”
At the rear gate stood a great stone monument, crowded with names engraved in the common tongue.
“Are they names you know?”
“The names of those whose bodies could not be recovered from Winterband. A monument raised by the order of the Commander-in-Chief, no, by His Excellency’s order. In truth, there should have been far more than this.”
“…….”
Without replying, Isaac studied the names carved into the stone.
Not a single one was familiar.
All of them were people who had vanished into the back reaches of Winterband’s history.
“……He could have been saved.”
Flutter—!!!
As birds suddenly burst into flight, Carlson spoke. “Ralph could have lived. If I had done my utmost.”
“So you’re saying you did not do your utmost?”
“Until I kill that man, I must remain nothing more than a common soldier. Terrifying skill and a terrifying reputation are always followed by things just as terrifying.”
Much was omitted from his words, but Isaac understood soon enough.
Until his revenge was complete, his presence could not be allowed to stand out.
“The Holy Knights the bishop brought were skilled men. In a situation where even one might escape alive, I had no choice but to remain Carlson, not Kyle.”
“If you had truly done your utmost, you could have saved Randolph and killed the Holy Knights too.”
“That lies in the realm of possibility. And…….”
Carlson trailed off, unable to finish, his face dark with complication.
“So. You did not trust Randolph either.”
“……It was not that I did not trust him. It was only that what I must do from here on mattered more.”
His revenge had meant more than his close friend’s life.
Isaac could not condemn Carlson for that.
He himself had been no different in accepting another’s sacrifice for the sake of his goal.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I am warning you in advance.”
“About what?”
“If, by any chance, the same situation comes upon you, young master, I will act the same way.”
“You mean that even knowing your birth, your purpose, and your ability, I should expect nothing from you beyond what is due.”
“That is correct.” Carlson nodded heavily.
“Even though I am one who cooperates in your revenge.”
“That is correct. The day I lay everything bare, it will be only on that day.”
That day would be the day he carried out his revenge not as Carlson, but as Kyle.
“……I understand. You and I alike are men who have no right to remain until the end of Randolph’s funeral.”
“…….”
Without another word, Isaac and Carlson stood watching the monument until the sun began to tilt westward.
There was still ample room upon that great stone for someone else’s name to be carved.
***⚜***
“It seems you had a great many things hidden away.”
Only Isaac and Margrave rode inside the carriage.
The chamberlain had gone ahead on horseback with Jonas and the guards.
“…….”
At Margrave's quiet remark, idly cast while looking out the carriage window, Isaac did not answer at once.
The Margrave had already heard the whole course of events through a priest of the Old Faith.
Everything was as Isaac had said.
And yet Margrave was far from easy in his heart.
“I had not known the rites of heretics were so cruel. I had heard there were Holy Knights, but not that there were thirteen of them. I had not known the bishop not only made heretics, but committed such deviations himself. I had not known he was hated by the Holy See. Nor had I imagined the deacon to be involved. There is too much that you knew and I did not.”
“…….”
“What happened to you? Before I left for the fortress, you were a child suffering because of your peculiar constitution. But now you are…….”
The Margrave closed his mouth for a moment, then opened it again.
“I cannot tell what you are thinking.”
“I only act for the sake of the house.”
Silence lingered for a while after Isaac’s answer.
There was only the grind of the wheels against the road, the hoofbeats of the riders ahead, and the wind slipping through the crack of the window.
“Schiller said something to me.”
The Margrave spoke again.
Red evening light was streaming through the window now, staining his face.
“He said that to other lords, family is no different from private property. Something that may be summoned at any time, replaced at any time, used as a means. But I cannot do that.”
“…….”
“He said that is why Goethe can progress no further, and at the same time why Winterband does not collapse. I married Adele when I was fourteen. A girl possessed of a wildness wholly unlike mine, with whom I shared neither language, nor culture, nor customs, nor even a way of thought. It was a kind of hell for us both. We were tools meant to stop a war.”
Isaac looked at the Margrave.
The Margrave still gazed out beyond the carriage window, toward the mountain ridges dimming under the setting sun.
“At that time, Adele and I made a promise. That the children we bore would never become tools for the house. That though life itself remained difficult to fathom, we would at least help our children live lives of their own.”
The Margrave let out a sigh.
“I thought there were still several more years before the day I would tell you this. But you grew too quickly.”
Isaac did not know what he ought to say.
The last image of the father from his previous life.
The old man who had come limping with valerich and a travel pack, and cut his hair.
Until that aged back had turned and gone farther away.
Just as he had said nothing then.
Just as, no matter how many books he had read, he had not found a single word to bring to his lips.
So it was now.
‘Was he always this talkative?’
Isaac was a little taken aback by this Margrave he had never seen before.
This was not a man who wasted even an expression, much less a word.
Had Randolph’s funeral moved him so deeply?
Had the sinking sunset made him sentimental?
This side of his father was strange to Isaac.
“That is not a thing I said so you would wear such a complicated expression.”
The Margrave, worry creasing the space between his brows, set a hand heavily atop Isaac’s head.
It was a thick hand, and a heavy one.
“It means you may remain a child a little longer. It means you may act spoiled if you wish. It means you need not yet wrap that clever head of yours in the troubles of the house and torment yourself over them. Do you understand?”
A father not yet halfway through his own life, speaking his concern.
At the Margrave’s words, Isaac wanted to answer something.
But what rose to his throat was something that had never once been shaped into language.
Things knotted over decades, things no handful of words could ever have released.
And so what came from Isaac’s mouth was only a thing pared down to the utmost, simple and brief.
“……Yes.”
That answer alone.
“Good.”
The Margrave ruffled Isaac’s hair.
In that instant the dimmed sun, sunk low now, swept directly across Isaac’s eyes.
The brightness made him squint.
And then, on the Margrave’s face, Isaac thought he saw the shadow of a smile.
Bitter, and yet somehow warm.
Perhaps he had seen it wrong.
For by the time the red light had passed and Isaac’s sight had cleared, the Margrave had already resumed his usual expressionless face.
Yet the cold, pale blue melancholy that had been consuming Isaac
melted away
in the waning blaze of sunset,
in a fire greater still.
‘Things will become busy from now on, Father.’
Isaac smiled as he looked out through the carriage window, in the same direction as the Margrave.
END σϝ CHAPTER