Chapter 173 - The Value of Aureo (2)

Vlad, who had tossed and turned all night, was only able to fall asleep near dawn.

That was because even when he closed his eyes, the thoughts that came to him kept linking one after another.

["What are the virtues of a knight?"]

"... Please."

But even if he had fallen asleep late, the rising sun of the day would not wait for him.

["Only one who is fully prepared to answer the call at any time can be called a true knight. The incidents and accidents that come crashing in will not wait for you."]

It was the first true rest he had faced in a very long time since the tense events in Moshiam.

And so Vlad had tried to sleep in even just a little, but the problem was that the being dwelling within him was Quijano, a knight among knights.

["Always keeping yourself alert..."]

"Let me sleep a little. Please."

Vlad, floundering under the fatigue and worries pressing in on him, protested to Quijano in an irritated voice, but the problem was that Quijano was not the only one listening.

"Am I being noisy?"

"Huh?"

When a familiar voice sounded from inside the room, Vlad's eyes snapped wide open.

The fatigue tangled together with bloodshot veins still lingered in Vlad's eyes, but this was not a time when he could comfortably keep them closed.

"Got it. I'll leave. Keep sleeping."

"No... wait, Zemina."

Vlad sprang upright as if launched, caught Zemina as she was about to leave the room, and forcibly turned her around.

"Can we talk for a moment?"

"If it's only for a moment."

Zemina, who had been leaning against the door that had slammed shut, gave a small nod as if she understood when she saw Vlad's urgent expression.

["See? Incidents and accidents don't wait for you."]

Doing his best to ignore Quijano's chuckling words, Vlad sat the somehow prim-looking Zemina on the bed and carefully opened his mouth.

"What happened yesterday? Why were Lady Alicia and you alone together?"

"Took you long enough to ask."

Sitting on the bed and swinging the tips of her feet that did not reach the floor, Zemina looked up at Vlad before her and opened her mouth.

"We didn't say much."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Just that Lady Alicia told me to stay away from you."

["Oh, damn."]

It was far too heavy a thing to hear as soon as he woke up, but the person actually saying it was simply sitting there as if it were nothing at all.

"We used to see this kind of thing all the time at the old Rose's Smiles. I just didn't think it would come all the way to me."

Watching Zemina say that with a shrug as if it were nothing, Vlad felt something boiling inside him for reasons he could not quite name.

"So what did you say?"

"What could I say?"

Zemina's eyes as she looked up at Vlad somehow seemed sorrowful.

"As if I'm anything to you."

"..."

She held it in her hands, but she did not have the right to grasp it.

Though something had tacitly passed between them, if someone asked, as Alicia had yesterday, what claim she had over Vlad, Zemina had nothing she could answer.

Because nothing had yet been officially exchanged between the two of them.

"There wasn't really anything for me to say."

Looking at Zemina, who spoke far too calmly, Vlad realized that he had been much too thoughtless all this time.

"I'm sorry. I am."

"What are you sorry about?"

"... I'm sorry I never said it clearly."

With Zemina seated before him, Vlad scratched the back of his head and honestly admitted his mistake.

It was something that could be done with just one word.

And now, with just one word, he also had the right to say she was his.

"Listen carefully."

"...!"

When Vlad suddenly gripped both her shoulders, Zemina stopped breathing for a moment.

In the suddenly changed atmosphere of the room, the two eyes of Vlad she managed to look up at with only her gaze were now wholly fixed on Zemina alone.

"I've been meaning to say this for a long time, but the truth is, I..."

Knock, knock, knock.

"I... you..."

Knock. Knock, knock, knock.

Vlad had tried hard to set the mood, but the persistent knocking clinging to them was interrupting it.

"... It's ruined, isn't it?"

"The attempt wasn't bad."

Every attempt had its proper time.

Seeing Zemina grin and gesture toward the door with her chin, Vlad realized that today was not that time.

"Who the hell..."

"Good morning, Sir Vlad."

Pointlessly wounded in his pride by Zemina saying the attempt had not been bad, Vlad threw the door open in irritation.

But unlike his irritated mood, what he saw when he opened the door was Alicia smiling brightly at him.

"... Lady Alicia."

"I wondered if we might eat together if you had not had breakfast yet."

If there had been a lord's mansion, she could have stayed there, but this was Soara, where there was only a mayor.

Alicia, perhaps thinking a luxury inn called Rose's Smiles suited her station better than the cluttered city hall, had already unpacked her belongings here.

"When I tried the food yesterday, the cook here was quite excellent. And there are things we should discuss over breakfast as well."

It was morning just after sunrise, but Alicia's appearance somehow looked as if a great deal of effort had gone into it.

Her finely braided hair and the faint scent of powder drifting from her told him that she had been awake far earlier than now.

"If we are to go as far as Bastopol, the city of the Iron Duke..."

But unlike her neatly arranged appearance, her head kept tilting to the side.

"If we are to go, if we are to go... Oh my..."

Alicia was tilting more and more to see beyond where Vlad stood.

Following her gaze, Vlad turned his head and was horrified.

"I suppose I should have come a little later. How tactless of me."

"No, no..."

Because Zemina, who had been sitting so demurely only moments ago, was now lying on the bed in a disheveled state and looking at the two of them.

Her somehow tousled hair and the damp look in Zemina's eyes made it a situation anyone would misunderstand.

"... I suppose I should have breakfast first, then. Please, the two of you, by all means finish what you were doing."

The sound of footsteps pounding through the corridor, unbecoming of a noble lady, was now speaking for Alicia's feelings.

And Vlad was so greatly flustered that he could not even stop her.

["How is it? I was right, wasn't I?"]

"..."

Quijano's words were indeed correct.

Incidents and accidents never waited for the proper time.

※※※※

There were spaces even the power held by a lord could not recklessly invade.

A place that belonged to no one's land, for the will of God dwelled there. A church.

It was a place even the owner of this land could not enter without permission, and yet there was someone now roaming freely within it.

"Bishop, I'm here."

"Have you come? Come in at once."

The knight Vlad Aureo.

The title attached before his name was guaranteed by secular power, and the surname attached behind his name was proven by the will of God.

"Come here. I was just preparing tea."

Vlad watched Andreas personally bring out the tea and sat in the seat he indicated.

A stillness and peace felt the moment he sat down.

Having barely escaped the chaos of that morning, Vlad drank the tea the devout bishop offered him and only then was able to catch his breath.

"Now that I look at it, the office itself hasn't changed much since Varna."

"... Did I ever show you my room in Varna?"

Vlad merely smiled faintly at Andreas, who looked puzzled.

"I just said it because I thought it would be like that."

"What a bland answer."

Andreas gave a hollow laugh at Vlad's empty reply, but in truth, Vlad had already seen his room.

Because that room of his, which seemed far too modest to be a bishop's office, was not very different from the sight he had seen in Jean's dream.

"I heard many things happened in Moshiam. I am truly grateful that you protected Jean until the very end."

"I merely did my best to repay the grace I had received."

In truth, the calamity in Moshiam was not known to many people.

That was because the Iron Duke had strictly controlled information in order to prevent unrest among the people of the North.

"I know well that it was not a hardship that could be answered so easily."

But those who needed to know were certainly aware of the incident.

Andreas, the Bishop of Soara, knew well how many hardships Vlad had endured to rescue his young acolyte.

"The saying that salvation lies within kindness that turns and turns was indeed not wrong. Through you, I have once again understood His deep will."

Watching Andreas quietly murmur a prayer with those words, Vlad could only lift his teacup with an awkward expression. It could not be helped, for while he was known to the world as a devout knight, Vlad had never actually opened a Bible even once.

"We got through the matter in Moshiam well enough, but it bothers me greatly that we could not bring it to a proper end, Bishop."

"Mmm. I fully understand how you feel."

Among the worries that had followed one after another last night were also the unidentified woman and the man who had introduced himself as Frausen.

The memory carved deeply under the name Justia was like a wound to Vlad that could not be erased.

"Is this incident connected to the woman shedding black tears whom we first saw?"

"Hmm..."

The woman shedding black tears, who had been a curse aimed at Joseph.

And even the incident that had taken place in Moshiam this time.

As Vlad, the one who had experienced them directly, demanded an explanation for them, Andreas heavily set down his teacup.

"We all walk the road, but because we do not know where its end lies, we grow weary."

Andreas took out a quill pen with a somber expression and carefully began drawing something.

Andreas, who had been pursuing the black curse since his days as a priest of Varna.

And the ceaseless pursuit by the Church and by him had finally borne fruit, bringing them before a single name.

"The will of God is distant, and dark temptation is close at hand. That is why our bodies and souls are also places where His holy war is constantly waged."

Vlad began watching closely the symbol Andreas was drawing.

It resembled the symbol of the Church, yet somehow it was crooked and upside down.

"This is..."

What Andreas was drawing was the Church's symbol turned upside down.

That symbol, full of blasphemy against the divine, was also the symbol the headless priest had drawn everywhere in the fog-filled village.

"It is the symbol of apostates. It signifies lambs who have lost their way."

Andreas's brow twitched as he looked at that symbol, ominous to behold.

"Because they have once walked the path toward God, they are more threatening than any demon. The woman you encountered is such a person."

As if even looking at it was unpleasant, Andreas hurriedly covered the paper with his hand.

And where his fingertips passed smoothly over it, the correctly drawn symbol of the Church had been set in place before anyone knew it.

"Long ago, there was a nun called the mother of all orphans. She was a voice of God recognized by the Vatican, and a woman called the saint of that era."

Though he did not say it outright, Vlad could tell.

What Andreas was about to say was a very deep secret that could never be heard unless one was connected to the Order.

"The choir she created for the children became the Vatican's first choir, and even now it has been passed down under the name Tramashtu, after her."

But there was a reality even the woman called a saint could not endure.

What happened that day under the name of none other than God ultimately made black tears flow from the devout nun.

"The name I am about to tell you now is one of the deep disgraces the Vatican seeks to hide. You must absolutely not speak of it to others."

"Understood."

Andreas approached Vlad's ear carefully, as if he would not leave even a trace behind.

A voice so small that even the wandering wind could not hold it flowed along Vlad's ear.

—Lamashtu.

"...!"

Though it had been conveyed by a devout bishop, when it reached him, it was someone's name filled with a foul stench.

Hearing that name, Vlad shuddered before he even realized it.

Before God, she had been Tramashtu, but when she turned her back on Him, her name became entirely inverted. Lamashtu.

There was a woman who wept as she looked upon children burned entirely black.

Looking upon the corpses of children who had been scorched more thoroughly than burnt-out matches, they said that on that day, the woman shed black tears mixed with ash toward the heavens.

※※※※

Today was a day with water fog.

It was a fog so thick that the walls of Sturma visible in the distance could not be seen.

"Cough, cough. Hm..."

And on days when fog lay thick like this, Joseph's coughing grew worse as well.

To him, with his weak lungs, air made heavy with moisture was no different from an unwelcome guest.

"You need to breathe. Slowly."

"I'm all right, Mother."

Joseph said he was all right, but Oksana's fingertips followed him to the end, patting his back.

"..."

On a cold winter day, feeling the warmth of his mother coming through her fingertips, Joseph could not help but smile bitterly.

Though he was an ugly failure, a loser and a failure both, the concern his mother sent his way still had not changed at all.

"Joseph, have you thought about it? What I told you last time."

Before him was warm tea sending up steam, and behind him was his mother's hand carefully stroking his back.

Everything in the room was softly loosening Joseph's heart, but because of that, there was a sadness that reached him all the more sharply.

"Your maternal grandfather already knows well how intelligent you are. So..."

Oksana had opened her mouth, but perhaps it was hard for her to finish the words, for the end of her sentence trailed away.

There was no mother who would simply watch her son's back as he ran toward ruin.

That was why Oksana wanted to send Joseph to her maiden home, the Oscar Family.

"If you go there, even if it is not a grand position, you will have a chance to use your abilities. And the weather there will be warmer than here."

"Mother."

Joseph quietly took hold of the hand with which his mother was stroking his back.

His mother's hand, which he touched for the first time in a long while, had become much rougher than he remembered.

"Thank you for worrying about me."

Oksana's face, seen from up close, was deeply creased with faint wrinkles.

Joseph knew very well that each and every one of those wrinkles had been carved there because of his cough.

That was why he had wanted so badly to prove it.

That the son she had given birth to was such an honorable person.

"Even so, I don't want to stop."

And so Joseph could give Oksana only this one sentence.

That he would not live a life of giving up.

"I want to live always doing my best, as you taught me, Mother. Fiercely."

"... Yes. I understand."

The mother and son facing each other now were sinners to one another.

Oksana also knew well that even if words began as warm consideration, when they reached each other, they would spread into painful wounds.

"Still, Mama will always be here. When things are hard, make sure you call for me."

"Yes, Mother."

Having once again confirmed her son's firm resolve, Oksana left Joseph's room with reluctant steps.

Looking at his mother hurriedly turning away before the sorrow she had been pressing down could flow out, Joseph had no choice but to lower his head.

"... I will at least prove that I was not born useless."

Not only my life, but even the life of the mother who gave everything for me.

With his head bowed, Joseph quietly opened the drawer of his desk.

Inside it was a single pitch-black envelope.

"..."

Joseph slowly opened the envelope.

Beyond the window shining behind him, thick water fog filled the world.

Today, as he opened the pitch-black letter, was a day filled with fog.