CHAPTER 3

On the Ship of the City of Water
Il_Mare_e_la_Sconfitta.

1

Ice on the outside, and ice on the inside.

The hallways, walls, and ceilings were all made of a semitransparent ice. Everything was made out of it, even the doorframes, the knobs, and every single screw in every hinge. Some of them didn’t even seem like they should actually work. The interior of the ship was ice, through and through, and the walls and floors dimly shone with the same white glow as outside. Was it taking in moonlight and diffusing it everywhere?

The illumination wasn’t as strong as an electric light. Despite the clearly visible outlines of the walls and ceiling, the space itself was dim. It resembled a movie theater with the weak light from the screen shining in it.

After Kamijou and Orsola opened the hatch linking the deck to the interior, they dashed into the nearest room. No lookouts had actually been there to stop them—it would all be over the moment they were found, anyway. But even without anyone here, there was this invisible feeling of pressure coming from farther down the hallway. Part of it came from wanting to hide somewhere safe immediately.

As soon as they entered the room, closed the door, and pressed themselves against the inside walls, they heard the hatch outside opening and closing. The sounds of multiple pattering footsteps and indecipherable shouts drifted over. All he could tell was that they were men. And he couldn’t understand them, which meant he couldn’t understand the present situation—which got on his nerves even more.

“Damn it, what’s going on?” he said to himself.

He’d come all the way here because he’d won a vacation trip to Italy. And then some weirdos attacked them, and now they were on some huge stinking boat? He was sick of it.

The room he and Orsola had hidden in appeared to be a room for controlling one of the cannons—the ones lined up all along the walls of the ship’s hull. They must have each had a single, small, separate room for it.

They could see inside the cannon from here. Several chairs sat in front of it, with a shelf along the wall and a big barrel in the corner of the room. All of them were made of the same translucent white ice. But on the other hand, that was all. No cannon powder or volleyball-like shots were in that barrel. Was the cannon purely an imitation? Or was it a magical cannon that ignored the laws of nature? Kamijou couldn’t tell.

Everything inside the ship, from the interior walls to the furnishings, was giving off a weak light. It all had flat textures, giving the entire setup a smooth, slippery impression. It was a strange space, where there was light everywhere but it would be difficult to read words on a page.

“I am concerned about this ship as well, but why would they need to use something so outrageous to attack us…?” said Orsola uneasily. Her anxiety was understandable—they were out to kill her. She and Kamijou couldn’t plan to fight against something they didn’t understand.

Suddenly, Kamijou remembered the man who had appeared from the canal with the short spear. “That idiot who attacked us…His clothing was like your habit, but remade for a man to wear.”

“Yes. Those were indeed the garments of a male priest. It might be appropriate, then, to assume he was from the Roman Orthodox Church.”

“Which means this is all about the Book of the Law? I can’t think of anything else that would cause us trouble.”

“I was under the impression that incident had been settled with my moving to the English Puritan Church…If they buried me in the darkness now, they would be the ones to be incriminated.” She paused. “Would they go through the trouble of making a warship out of ice, destroying a canal in Chioggia, and ruining the Vigo Bridge?”

“Yeah, it seems a little theatrical…” Kamijou clutched his head.

All the sorcery-related incidents in Academy City and Japan felt arranged specifically to keep sorcerers out of the public eye. But this ice warship was nothing like that. It didn’t hide its appearance, its destruction, or its retreat. Was Chioggia in a state of panic right now? Of course, nobody would believe someone who said a giant ice sailboat appeared in a tiny canal and destroyed part of the city. And even if they did, it wouldn’t lead them to realizing the existence of sorcerers…

“Where’s this ship headed?”

“If we are moving north out of Chioggia, we are likely headed toward Venice. As long as we don’t go south, we will not go to open sea, but…Oh, there’s a window over there.”

Orsola pointed to an observation hole for aiming the cannon from inside the room. But all they could see out of it was a dark ocean. The flat seas went all the way to the horizon, and after that it was an equally black sky. There were no clues as to their current location.

And then.

Crash!! The water’s surface exploded. With a water-splitting roar, like a killer whale breaking the surface, came an icy sailboat of equal size to the one they were on. As they watched, five—no, ten—translucent warships broke through the water’s surface. They could see in only one direction from here, but the same thing was probably happening all around them.

The Adriatic, which had been clear to the horizon, was now being covered up with innumerable ships.

The sea surface, which had been naught but dark, was now being dyed in a pale whitish light. The light from this ship wasn’t all that strong on its own, but with so many other ships gathered, it was a different story.