CHAPTER 3

“LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER.”

Hey, what color is God? Julius had once asked his nursemaid. As a small child he’d had an endless need to know things; he wouldn’t rest until he’d cleared up whatever question was bothering him.

Well, young master, color is essentially light. God is light itself. He holds all colors within him, so He doesn’t have one particular color He has to be.

That was more or less how her answer went, he remembered. At the time he’d been totally awestricken, and he’d accepted the answer without question, but thinking back on it now that he knew something about the principles of color, wouldn’t mixing all colors together make Him virtually black? It would mean God was black, a jet-black that swallowed up the light.

This is a silly argument…

Gazing down at the dark-gray city below him, Julius sighed and left off thinking about stupid things. The view from the windows of his family home was a steel city that looked almost like a great collection of steam locomotives, making extravagant use of the scant mineral dregs that could still be gotten from the mining district to the northwest. Thick smog belched unendingly from the exhaust pipes sticking out of every corner of every building. If you looked down on them from this mansion near central headquarters, the ordinary residential districts in the middle and lower strata looked like gray miniature gardens dim with smog.

He heard one of the servants say “Welcome home, sir,” and things got noisy down on the first floor. He turned away from the window on the landing halfway up their staircase that he’d been gazing at the skyline through and jogged down the steps. He could see his father in the entryway, surrounded by servants. Julius had been waiting ever since he’d heard that his father would be able to make it home today.

“Dad.”

“Ah, Julius. Did you get taller again?” his father said as soon as he saw him, taking off his greatcoat and handing it to one of the servants. “I was hoping we could have dinner together, but it turns out I have to go right back to the station. I’m only stopping by here.”

Julius was privately dismayed. He didn’t let it show, though. Shoving it down, he said, “Oh, I see…that must be rough.” He was relieved that he’d managed to answer with something that sounded understanding. But still, their schedules hadn’t overlapped once over the whole end-of-semester vacation, and now look what happened just when they finally got to see each other for the first time in a month…

He couldn’t just whine like a spoiled kid about it, though. Strings of disturbances were happening both in the upper stratus of the capital and on the streets of the ordinary residential districts lately, and the Security Forces were saddled with a whole mess of thorny problems at once. They’d been juggling madly just to keep all the balls in the air. His dad had his hands fuller than ever, to the point where Julius worried he might actually work himself to death.

“Is there anything I can help out with?”

“Thanks for the offer, but it’s not so bad that we need to bring you in yet.” He flashed Julius a cheerful smile, but his cheeks were a little pale with exhaustion. He might only be of medium height, but he’d always been relatively well-built. Now Julius thought he’d gotten a little thin—maybe “haggard” would be a better word, even. “Sorry I don’t have much time to talk. You’re going back tomorrow, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

The spring semester started in two days, so Julius had planned to go back to the seminary school dormitory tomorrow. The seminary was plenty close enough for him to commute from here, but his busy father was hardly ever at home and had thought it would be better for his son to live with friends than all alone with the servants, so Julius was living in the dorms on his advice. Not that he actually had all that many “friends,” really.

One of the problems causing a stir in the capital these days was a string of the same sort of monster incidents that had happened before in “Gate Town.” The monsters were showing up in the capital’s ordinary residential districts and on the streets of Gate Town, among other places, and there had been a rash of attacks on citizens over the last month or two.

“There was another incident today, so we’re stepping up security even more. It seems like there have been a lot of victims down in the lowest areas in particular, where the exits of the waterways are…I don’t want you going outside without being careful either, you hear me? It’s dangerous.”

“Have you found out what they are, Dad?”

His father’s face clouded evasively at his question. Even though his dad was a tough nut to crack, and Julius had the feeling it would be many years yet before he got any good at dragging his real thoughts out of him, his dad didn’t tell lies. Julius was fairly certain he had a good idea what was going on, but from this reaction, he guessed it wasn’t the kind of idea his dad could make public. Something that couldn’t be made public…Which meant there was someone out there it would make trouble for if it went public. Someone at the top, most likely.

Trouble was threatening the upper ranks of the Church from inside and out right now; a weird disquiet had been hanging in the air for months. The people who were supposed to be wreathed in light, the objects of Julius’s faith for the past sixteen years, seemed to be languishing in the same murky gray as the city itself.

Something appeared to strike his father, who’d been stroking his chin, pondering something. “Come to think of it, Julius,” he said, “there’s a little something I’d like you to do for me after all. Will you do me a favor?”

“Huh? Sure, what is it?” Julius asked quickly, leaning forward. He’d always wanted to become someone who could really be useful, but this was the first time in his life that his father had ever asked him for a favor. Before he knew it, his eyes were shining with excitement.

“Two things, actually. First, I’d like you to go visit a certain girl.”

“Girl?” Well, that’s not what I was expecting. He couldn’t help feeling disappointed. This mission seemed kind of lame. He’d been just a little bit hopeful it would be a job more like fighting the monsters or investigating them or something…His father chuckled good-naturedly, clearly reading his mind. It felt as though he was seeing right through Julius and thinking he hadn’t changed since he was a little boy who liked to go on imaginary adventures. Completely embarrassing.

“Now, don’t be like that. The second job is close to what you want. And while you’re doing that one, I just want you to go check on a friend’s daughter who’s about to arrive in the capital. I haven’t gotten word from my men, but if everything’s going to plan, she should get here today or tomorrow.”

“Huh,” Julius said disinterestedly. Even after hearing the explanation, he just couldn’t really get into it.

“She’s just about your age, you know. Look.”

Half of Julius’s mind was occupied with thinking I hope the second job is something about the monsters as he took the photograph his dad was holding out to him and casually looked down at it, but in that instant he was shocked out of his wits, and all other thoughts flew from his brain. “Huh?!”

He stared hard at the photo. A raven-haired girl around his own age, wearing a white bridal-veil-looking thing and a shy smile—the thought of what that must mean was a bit of a shock, but no matter how many times he tried to come up with some other explanation, there was no mistaking it: He recognized her.

Their final words to each other when he’d last seen her sprang to his mind.

We’ll see each other again, won’t we?

Yeah. I think we will.

He’d never imagined they’d be meeting again like this, of course.

A half-translucent floating spirit was drifting around near the ceiling. Kieli gazed up at it indifferently for a bit and then looked forward again.

She’d heard that long ago, when this had been an exile planet where prisoners who’d committed serious crimes on the mother planet were banished, this was where the prison camps had been, and the capital city was built on those foundations. The gray town walls surrounding it were supposedly left over from the prison camps, too. When people had eventually figured out that there were mineral resources on this planet, the prisoners were drafted into hard labor in the shafts of mines all over the planet, beginning with the district to the northwest.

This was God’s city, built on the graves of those prisoners who’d been used for hard labor until they died.

All the different facilities around her formed a sort of giant sprawling complex, centered on the tallest two towers in its forest of steeples: the cathedral’s belfry and the energy tower that powered the city. An ostentatious gate loomed in front of her. Evidently the pass that priest had given her was the real thing after all (which Kieli’d definitely had her doubts about), because when she showed it to the gate attendant, he completely lost his head, and once he regained his composure, he guided Kieli to the Preaching Department’s tower as if she were an honored guest.

Regular pilgrims could take the central walkway from the gate and go straight to the cathedral, but getting to the Preaching Department felt like navigating a maze. Kieli was guided down winding walkways, up zigzagging steps, down dizzying spiral stairways, and through cloisters connecting towers and buildings before they finally arrived at the Preaching Department entrance. She just knew she wouldn’t be able to find the way back by herself.

She ended up having to wait there for a while.

……She was about to finally meet (the man who might be) her father.

All of a sudden her hands were cold. She clenched them tightly at her sides.

She’d been offered a seat in the waiting room, but she’d refused. She waited standing still as a statue in the entryway to the tower. She could see priests dressed in black busily coming and going. Some of them darted funny looks at her as they went by, probably wondering what an obviously out-of-place girl like her was doing here. A little uncomfortable, Kieli dropped her gaze and stared at her feet.

“Hey,” she murmured softly…to the one presence that ought to be right nearby. The air shifted slightly in response, and she pinpointed where it was. This man could really be inconspicuous when he chose to be. He blended into any situation, faded into the woodwork wherever he went, but with Harvey and Harvey alone there was obvious bad blood.

Kieli hated him, but she had no one else to turn to right now, and she found herself striking up a conversation with him as if it were the natural thing to do. “Do you know your dad?”

After she’d asked that, she regretted it. Joachim wouldn’t know his parents any more than Harvey did.

Kieli changed the question. “…If you met your dad, what would you do?”

She knew that to him, it wasn’t even a hypothetical; it was something that could never possibly happen.

“Eh…I’d kill him,” he answered in a flippant whisper. Kieli found herself turning around slightly before she thought better of it. The lanky man with blue-gray eyes and a priest’s outfit was looking down at her with the same thin smile as always. “I mean, it’d be creepy, right? And if he looked like me, that would be the pits. Think about it: there’d be another one of me!” The way he said it, he made it sound as though he couldn’t stand even one of him existing already.

When Kieli turned her gaze forward again, he kept on whispering.

“Just so we’re clear, I’ll tell you one more time…I’m going to kill your dad, you know.”

“Whatever,” Kieli spat back without looking at him, and heard him give a sarcastic little closed-mouth laugh.

“I see. Well, then, have fun at your meeting.”

His presence abruptly vanished. Just as she was about to turn around again, a loud voice cried, “Th-thank goodness!” and she heard clattering footsteps speeding toward her.

It was that young priest who’d come to the northwestern mining district as an envoy. Kicking up the hem of his robes in his haste, he ran to her the same way he had when they’d first met. One moment he was flapping both hands busily back and forth, wailing, “I couldn’t get through to your guards, and I thought you’d r-run awa—!” and the next he broke off and nervously cast his gaze all around where Kieli stood. His face went a shade paler with surprise.

“Er, what about the people…people? with you…?” he asked, interrupting and then repeating himself weirdly (now that she thought about it, Kieli supposed someone like him really might have trouble figuring out how much like “people” to treat her companions).

When she turned around at the question to look for the slate-gray man standing behind her, he’d already melted into the stream of priests coming and going and was nowhere to be seen. She guessed maybe he was done with her now that he’d so successfully infiltrated Church headquarters. Kieli didn’t feel inclined to help or hinder him, so she didn’t broach the subject.

“…We got separated,” she said, facing the priest again and explaining what had happened in a voice stripped of all emotion. When she gave him a bare-bones version about being attacked on the train by some monsterlike things (she didn’t know if he knew what they really were, so she was deliberately vague), it turned out word apparently hadn’t reached him yet. His normally pale face went even paler.

“Also,” Kieli added over his earnest promises to send help right away, “the man who was with me might be hurt, so…please look for him.”

She lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes in unspoken warning. I’ll never forgive you if you hurt him. The priest visibly flinched (during that mess in the mining district Kieli herself had resisted him pretty violently, so he seemed to be afraid of her now), then turned to a lower-ranking priest nearby and gave rapid-fire orders about how to deploy the rescue team.

As he guided her inside the tower, they ended up talking about the matter at hand again—in other words, her meeting with Father Sigri. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll probably have to wait a while longer. The Father is very busy at the moment…Well, we’re all in a tizzy right now,” the priest explained over his shoulder as they climbed the stairs. Now that he mentioned it, she’d walked through a fair bit of headquarters on her way to the Preaching Department’s tower, and it had seemed as though there was a surprising amount of uproar going on for the home base of the Church. She’d imagined someplace more solemn and dignified—or rather sedate, really.

After the broad staircase right in front of the entrance, the next set of steps was a spiral staircase along the wall. Around the time they’d climbed about three floors’ worth of it and Kieli’s legs were starting to get tired, the priest stopped and said, “Wait here for a few minutes, please,” shepherding her toward a room next to them. Two women dressed in simple black clothes stood in front of it. Kieli assumed they were lady’s maids. Leaving Kieli in their hands, the priest hurried busily off somewhere, and she was suddenly abandoned to stand all alone in front of people she didn’t know. She shied back a little.

The large, somewhat overweight one glared down at her with harsh eyes that made Kieli cringe, but she glared right back just as fiercely. She’d already decided there was no way she’d let herself be intimidated in a place like this. She figured if she chickened out or licked anyone’s boots here, it would mean she’d lost.

No way am I going to lose. I’m sticking this out until he comes for me.

The chubby, grumpy-looking lady-in-waiting looked her over sharply from head to toe, and Kieli found herself following her gaze and looking down at herself, too. She was still dressed in her travel clothes: the unrefined black duffle coat, beaten-up shoulder bag, dirty jeans, and dirty boots. She hadn’t really bothered to untangle her hair much, either. When she glanced back at the way she’d come, she saw that she’d left clear boot prints on the glossy polished floor.

No way will I lose.

That was the plan, sure, but when they dragged her into the room, peeled off her clothes, and tossed her in the bath, it wasn’t something Kieli could really protest.

In the end, it was afternoon by the time Kieli had been made presentable enough for decent company in preparation for her meeting and by the time the high-ranked man she was supposed to meet was finally free; fortunately (fortunately?), he didn’t seem to have been murdered by a mysterious man in priest’s clothes in the meantime.

Escorted by the same priest as before, who’d come back to get her, Kieli climbed up more stairs toward an office near the very top of the tower, almost trampling the hem of her skirt something like three times. It had been a while since she’d worn one. They’d put her in a black bolero jacket with just a thin strip of white at the neckline and a black skirt that fell below her knees with a fluffy white petticoat underneath. The whole outfit reminded her of the uniforms at her Easterbury boarding school. She was dressed up like a little lady for the first time in two and a half years.

I wonder how much I’ve changed since then.

She also wondered what her maybe-father would think of her when she stood before him suddenly seventeen, after they hadn’t seen each other since she was a baby.

Back when she was living with her grandmother and going to the Church kids’ program, whenever the other kids started going on about their moms and dads, Kieli had started playing all by herself outside the circle of conversation, pretending not to be interested. And the truth was, she hadn’t even been all that interested. She’d never known her parents to begin with, so she didn’t “miss” them, and since having her grandmother with her was enough for her, she didn’t spend any time wishing she could meet them, either.

But ever since she’d met her mother, Setsuri, she’d thought about her father a tiny bit more, too. Still, her mental image of him had always been really difficult to put a face to. In her mind, her father figure was blank and featureless. Kieli had sometimes hoped he was someone like Jude. The Jude in Kieli’s memories, though, never showed his face, either. All she had left was the strong impression that he had the same sort of vibe as Harvey. Making Harvey into her father figure was just insane, so she’d given up on that train of thought. She figured any kid with Harvey for a father would either turn delinquent, or go the opposite route and turn into someone who really had their act together.

And right now, the father figure she could imagine concretely for the first time…was someone who’d wrecked things for her mother and had tormented Harvey, Beatrix, Jude, and who knew how many others. Someone who was nothing more than Kieli’s greatest enemy.

Her heart beat audibly fast in her chest. She balled her cold hands into fists.

Joachim…aren’t you here?

Uneasy on her own, she found herself casting about for the gray man’s presence, but she couldn’t sense it anywhere.

“Please, come this way,” prompted the priest. They were standing in front of the door to the room he was waiting in. Kieli yanked her thoughts back on track and lifted her eyes.

Straightening her spine and steeling herself, she looked straight ahead fiercely enough to beat back anything and everything. She was no longer the slightly nervous girl who couldn’t say what she wanted to say that she’d been at fourteen. She’d come here to settle things, to protect the people she cared about, so they could all go home together.

Kieli stood in the doorway and stared straight ahead. Bookshelves crammed full of thick books covered one whole wall, and there were piles of papers sitting everywhere. It definitely looked like a civil servant’s office. Rather than the lavish office of a pompous big shot that she’d been picturing, it made her think more of a novelist’s study, packed with all the books it could hold; one little spark would send the whole place up in flames, no doubt about it. And behind the big writing desk at the far end of the room, she saw a person.

He seemed hard at work, talking about something with a middle-aged priest who stood next to the desk, until out of the blue he bellowed angrily, “Don’t bring every tiny little approval like this to me!”

Kieli started in surprise. The middle-aged priest squeaked and shrank back, too. The forms he’d brought had just been flung back at him, and he humbly apologized as he stooped to pick up all the scattered papers before fleeing as fast as his legs would carry him past Kieli and out of the office. Jumping to the side, she watched him go.

Standing up with both hands pressed against his desk, the man, Father Sigri, noticed them there for the first time.

“Er, I’ve…brought her with me, sir…” the young priest who’d escorted her said hesitantly.

“A-ah, yes.” Father Sigri coughed, looking somewhat embarrassed, smoothed out the worst of his disarranged hair, and sat back down in his chair before looking at Kieli again. The tightly coiled tension between them just kind of went slack for a few seconds, and they ended up staring at each other stupidly.

Kieli certainly hadn’t been picturing a “touching reunion with her long-lost father” or anything; she’d just assumed and prepared herself for something more like a staring contest between mortal enemies. But there just wasn’t a clear sort of “now we meet” moment. It turned into a really vague, sloppy first meeting.

The man sitting on the other side of the writing desk wasn’t a nasty holier-than-thou pontiff who sat all high and mighty in his chair looking down his nose at the world, or a snake-oil-salesman sort of pontiff with a gentle manner and a fake-looking smile on his face, or even one with a greasily gleaming bald head who had gold teeth and whatnot and generally reeked of evil. No, he was a slightly disheveled, tired-looking man of medium height and slight build whose black hair was visibly starting to go gray. Beneath his thin wire glasses his eyes were lighter than Kieli’s, and the solid, heavy desk didn’t suit him, although the piles of books did—basically, he didn’t give the impression of a stately pontiff at all, whatsoever.

He seemed bewildered by the weird beginning to their meeting, too, at a loss for words for a little while. Then he pasted a highly awkward smile on his face and said, “Well…um, thank you for coming such a long way.” The sentiment was slightly out of line with the mood of the room and delivered in a tone as awkward as the smile.

Kieli stood rooted to the ground, dumbstruck. The truth was that her knees were knocking, and she felt as if she might crumple to the ground any second. Her head was swimming with confusion. He was just so—so normal.

I came here to hate you, maybe even kill you if I had to! So why are you putting on that dumb-looking smile and saying stuff like you’re trying to get on my good side?!

All of a sudden Kieli was mad. Because the ham-handed but earnest way he tried to string words together sort of reminded her of the way Harvey had been acting lately. So she was mad, because she couldn’t forgive her worst enemy for seeming like Harvey. Don’t try to act like Harvey!

“Would you come a little closer…?”

He stood up from his chair and reached out a hand to her. Kieli took a step back in defiance. Folding her arms in front of her chest to shield herself, she said, “I still…haven’t gotten the full story. You might have the wrong person—”

At her stony rejection, he gave her a blank look, one hand still stretched out toward her.

“You couldn’t possibly be the wrong person. You look just like Setsuri.”

“You don’t…” …have the right to say my mother’s name. She went hoarse before she could get the rest of the words out, and the sentence petered into nothing. Kieli bit her lip and looked down. No, no, I can’t lose, she told herself, and forcibly held on to her brave attitude. “Then why did my mother…why did she have to leave here? Mom…got killed by the Church…!”

There was silence for a few moments. Father Sigri’s voice lowered gloomily. “Yes, I heard the report.”

The instant Kieli heard that, the mental thread she’d been somehow managing to hang on to snapped with no warning, and two thick tears trickled down her cheeks and dropped to her feet. She could sense Father Sigri, and the priest standing next to him anxiously watching the proceedings, panic. Kieli summoned up the strongest attitude of rejection that she could muster and roughly wiped the wetness from her face with her sleeve. Slowly edging farther backward until she reached the doorway, she said shrilly, “I will never, ever forgive you. I hate you. I hate this place. It’s noisy, and everyone’s in a hurry, and they all look tired, and they don’t care one bit how anybody feels…and they shove you into a bath and make you wear clothes you don’t want to wear…!” Kieli clenched the hem of her skirt tightly in her fists. “It’s a lie that I was born here. It’s a lie that my mom was ever here. Because I hate this stupid place! There isn’t even a God here…!”

In the astonished silence that followed Kieli suddenly flying off the handle, her hitched, teary voice echoed hollowly. She’d come here to boldly settle things, but the way she was acting right now, she might as well be a little girl throwing a tantrum. Kieli knew that. Still, now that the feelings had exploded out of her, she couldn’t rein them in no matter how hard she tried.

“God isn’t even real…! Harvey knows, too; he said so! But all of you go around pretending there’s a God; you should be ashamed! And it’s the people here’s fault that Harvey’s had to be on the run all this time, and gotten so beaten up, and…and I hate you all! I hate everyone here! All of you—all of you just drop dead!”

At her screaming, the big, fat lady-in-waiting from before seized her and pinned her arms.

She couldn’t remember very clearly later, but she probably kept right on screeching All of you drop dead as she was dragged out of the room, and that was how Kieli’s first meeting with her “father” ended up a mess of her own making.

This particular story of the “Eleven Saints and Five Families” era was nothing more than an oral tradition now:

Legend had it that among the Five Families whose role was to serve and aid the Eleven Saints, there was one family with what you might call mage-like powers, and its members had resolved spiritual phenomena, counseled and made prophecies for the Eleven Saints, and performed other such tasks. However, the Council of Elders harbored misgivings about how this family’s influence over the faithful had steadily increased since the pioneering era, and so they suppressed its voice in state affairs. The Council of several generations ago had made a taboo of the “spiritual phenomena” themselves, until the very existence of such phenomena could not be acknowledged.

Well, it was about seventeen years ago now that Lord Sigri, who was related by blood to one of the Eleven Saints, had married a descendant of that family, Setsuri, in order to assimilate her persecuted line into his own (or perhaps Lord Sigri had intended to preserve her line by doing this), and they’d had a daughter.

Happiness didn’t last long, however. One day during worship, one of the Elders fell from the tower and died, shocking everyone, and for certain reasons the blame was laid at Setsuri’s door. Setsuri wasn’t actually sentenced to any punishment, but the Council of Elders obliterated her from all records, and she vanished from the capital along with the baby, who wasn’t even a year old yet. The connection between Setsuri’s disappearance and the fact that Lord Sigri was promoted to Elder immediately afterward was…unknown, officially speaking.

It all happened right before Julius was born, and so on paper, the only baby born during that time period with the blood of one of the Eleven Saints was a boy named Julius.

“Dad, did you know this woman Setsuri?” Julius asked his father after he heard the story. His father stroked his chin, looking thoughtful.

“I can’t say she ever talked very much, but I got the impression she had a core of strength. He took a formidable woman for his wife, I always thought…I have to say, it just amazes me that you know Lord Sigri’s daughter. It really is a small world.”

Then his father straightened his hunched shoulders and grinned at him. “Do you like her?”

“No, I—”

The way Julius blushed beet-red and fell speechless in the middle of his answer wouldn’t have fooled anyone. But instead of pressing the issue like Julius feared, his father looked away with a conflicted expression and muttered, “Mmm, blood will tell, I suppose.”

Puzzled, Julius thought over what that meant.

“Dad, don’t tell me you had feelings for Setsuri…? B-but you had Mom!”

“Now, now, that was a long time ago,” his father explained glibly, raising his hands as if in surrender when Julius angrily stepped toward him. “I couldn’t save Setsuri either.” After a long pause, he muttered, “I’m just as guilty as Sigri.”

Apparently it was after that incident that his father and Father Sigri had drifted apart.

Father Sigri was away from his office for meetings and services and whatnot, so it was the evening of the day after Julius’s conversation with his father when he finally got permission to meet with Kieli.

They’d gotten word that monsters had attacked the freight train, and Julius’s father had tried to send a rescue team right away, but his men reported that by the time they arrived, a platoon of Undying Hunters had already cleaned up the scene. His father had looked highly dissatisfied with this news. So far the Undying Hunters, who were controlled directly by the Council of Elders, always stole a march on him whenever it came to incidents related to the mysterious monsters.

Julius was led by a large lady-in-waiting so grumpy that even he shrank back from her a little to a room in one corner of the top floor of the Preaching Department tower. Most likely it was a night duty room, either for Father Sigri himself or for one of the high-ranking priests under him; it looked as though it was probably trimmed with all the comforts she could require, but it was locked from the outside. Julius frowned. “She got agitated and became a bit violent, you see,” the lady-in-waiting explained in a monotone.

Just one room, with a bed and a desk by the wall. The lighting was rather low, with city lights shining faint beams through the arched window. Beside the window stood a girl in black clothes with long black hair.

Looking at her profile as she glanced out the window with downcast eyes, Julius’s heart jumped just a little in his chest.

“Juli,” the girl said calmly when she noticed him, not sounding especially surprised as she turned to face him. Her voice was hard, as if rejecting something. And yet at the same time, her black eyes were slightly misty; she looked as if she might cry any second. Julius forced a soft smile onto his face.

“Are you okay, Kieli?”

The girl nodded wordlessly.

Instructing the lady to wait in the hallway, he entered the room alone and closed the door. Kieli was waiting by the window. He didn’t know if it was because it’d been almost six months since he’d last seen her and he’d gotten a little taller in the meantime, but when he faced her, this girl a year older than him seemed smaller than he remembered, for some reason. Still, he was sure he didn’t come close to that guy’s height.

“This really surprised me. For a lot of reasons.”

“Me too,” Kieli agreed, looking downward. “That big-shot Church Soldier really was your father, huh?” Big-shot Church Soldier?…Oh, she means Dad. Around the end of winter his father had been gone from the capital for more than a week; Julius had since been told that he’d gone at Father Sigri’s request, as protection for the envoy sent to meet Kieli. From what his father said, there’d been a redheaded Undying with her, but…

“Where is he?” Julius asked hesitantly.

“He’s coming for me later,” came the answer immediately, in the most stubborn voice he’d ever heard her use.

“‘Later’? Kieli, security is tight right now. He won’t have an easy time getting into the capital without a pass.”

Kieli just said, “He’s coming for me,” and shook her head. “He promised me.”

She insisted so stubbornly that, without thinking, Julius grabbed her shoulder a little roughly, intent on making her see sense. “Kieli!” She flinched away and glared at him with hostility. “Oh—I-I’m sorry.” He hastily withdrew his hand. Angry with himself for frightening her, he tried to somehow change the subject.

“Sorry…Um, tell me if there’s anything you need, or if you’ve run short of anything, okay? I have to go to school tomorrow, but I’ll come back again the day after.”

Kieli only shook her head to show him she didn’t want anything. Then she lowered her head and said softly, “I’m sorry…” Julius didn’t know what she was apologizing for at first—not until she continued.

“I know I said you were like the prince of some noble family back then…but, you know, I wasn’t jealous of you at all. I don’t need the Church’s God. ‘God’ never does anything for us. See, Juli, a little while ago I told everybody here to drop dead. And I meant it. And…that included you, too. So, I’m sorry…I can’t let you be nice to me. I don’t have the right.”

Her words were a stab straight through his heart.

She wasn’t to blame for that, though. It was just coming home to him how naive and thoughtless he was.

The truth was, when Julius had found out there was a kid his own age with the same kind of family name he had, and that it was Kieli, he’d been overjoyed. He’d thought it was perfect, in fact. He’d wondered before whether, if Father Sigri had had a child, they could’ve been friends. And then his fantasy had come true, and as if that weren’t enough, it was Kieli of all people.

So the truth was, he’d come here to see her feeling kind of on top of the world. And now he felt as though someone had pushed him off a cliff. It came home to him how he’d been thinking only of himself. From Kieli’s perspective, the truth about her birth had been shoved in her face out of the blue, and the only feelings she had about it so far were disorientation and rejection. Now she was shut up in this tiny room all alone, and she’d been trying her hardest to hide how lonely and scared she felt with that stony attitude. He finally realized that now. Painfully clearly.

Ugh, I was just happy for myself. I didn’t have a clue how she felt coming here, what she must have prepared herself to risk entering enemy territory like this. He’d grown a lot taller than her by now, but he was still far from an adult; he couldn’t think of anything to say to this isolated girl. Kieli stayed obstinately silent.

“I’ll come back the day after tomorrow…” he somehow managed to force out. Then he left the room.

“Dammit,” he swore after he’d made it into the hallway. I’m no match for him. It stung—it was really infuriating—but he couldn’t be enough of a support for her. He was acutely, painfully aware that he just couldn’t take that guy’s place. Not that Julius could see what was so great about him, frankly. But even still…he was no match for him. He never would be, no matter how tall he got or how many years passed.

Where the hell is he?

From what he could tell, they’d gotten split up when the monsters attacked the miners’ train. As he pondered whether he could use his father’s connections to track the guy down, he directed his feet not toward home, but to the office of the person in charge of the entire Preaching Department.

He spotted Father Sigri right outside his office, evidently just coming back from some meeting or other.

At his call of “Lord Sigri,” that man far, far out of Julius’s league—a member of the Council of Elders, the highest organ of Church authority—turned to face him. Another priest whose name Julius didn’t know trailed after the Father off to one side. An aide, by the look of him. He was the same priest who’d made the arrangements for his meeting with Kieli. For a moment Father Sigri’s expression said he didn’t know who Julius was, but then he gave a friendly, if tired, smile. “Ah, Julius. That’s right, you came to check on her, didn’t you? How was she?”

Julius ignored the question. “My father instructed me to come here,” he announced in a hard voice. This was the other job his father had asked him to do. Father Sigri tilted his head somewhat warily.

Julius took a breath, firmed his resolve, and said it in a clear voice:

“Why is the Council of Elders covering up the monster incidents that have been cropping up recently?”

Instantly, all expression quietly disappeared from Father Sigri’s face. The priest hovering behind him jumped up, pale-faced and obviously about to say something along the lines of How dare this child say such a thing?!

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time to sit down and chat with you. I have another meeting…yes, a meeting to discuss Father Gus’s funeral arrangements. I have to go.”

“This is a message from my father.”

Father Sigri turned on his heel to leave, keeping his composure but very obviously evading him. Julius circled around in front of him and spread both arms wide to block his path. Staring seriously up at the Elder, who was a bit taller than he was, he called his father’s lines to mind and delivered them verbatim, careful not to leave out a single word.

“None of the Council geezers were long for this world in the first place, so why are you wasting your time burying them instead of dealing with what’s killing people in this city right now?” He took a deep breath. “Forget about a few senile old fools who were practically dead anyway, and do some work!”

Julius left his father’s last line as a parting shot and then turned around and fled as fast as his legs could carry him while Father Sigri was still speechless with shock.

Man, that felt good.

“Wh-who does that boy think he is?!”

“He’s my friend’s son.”

The priest raised his voice harshly. “Be that as it may, the language that he used—”

“No, it’s fine. Let him be,” said Father Sigri calmly enough, although his face had lost some of its color. The priest was bristling with anger at the retreating boy, but at that, he had no choice but to back down.

“Would you go check on my daughter for me? I have to go back out again right away.”

With that final order, Father Sigri went into his office. The priest said to his retreating back, “Y-yes, Father. I will,” bowing hurriedly and setting out for the young lady’s room, thinking, “Practically dead”…he’s got a point.

He couldn’t stifle a chuckle, and although no one was watching, he quickly schooled his features. The truth was, he actually felt a strange sort of respect (just a little, of course; nothing too drastic) for the boy who’d delivered that line no one could safely say out loud in the capital and then bolted.

Really, he was supposed to be starting his job as a part-time lecturer at the seminary at the beginning of the school year that began this spring; but since he’d been made Father Sigri’s envoy to his daughter, he’d just sort of become the man’s unofficial aide over the course of things, and in the end he was still trailing after the Elder everywhere he went. Most of his duties involved taking care of the Elder’s daughter, who’d just arrived in the city, and guarding the woman Undying currently imprisoned in the Elder’s house (maybe “running errands for her” would be more accurate). He was in charge of all the Elder’s personal problems, basically. Most likely serving at an Elder’s side was a far better shortcut to promotion than being some part-time lecturer. Although if the Elder were to fall from power, he’d be falling right along with him…

So far this information was need-to-know only so as not to confuse the average believer, but right now the upper echelons of the capital were in chaos. The thing was, starting with the First Elder’s peaceful death last fall and continuing in the first months of this year, four (practically dead) Elders had dropped dead in rapid succession. The first two deaths had been from heart failure, and considering the Elders’ ages, there hadn’t been much of a stir beyond the usual fuss over who would replace them—but the third and fourth deaths had been abnormal. The third Elder had died suddenly after vomiting blood. And the fourth…a lady-in-waiting had discovered him one morning hanging from the ceiling fans in his private rooms. That Elder’s death hadn’t been made known yet, nor had there been a public funeral.

All sorts of rumors were circulating—some said an assassin was targeting the Elders, and some even whispered about taboos like a curse by the First Elder from beyond the grave. That was when the atmosphere in the upper levels of the city had begun to grow uneasy. Aggravating the situation even further was the Council of Elders’ internal rivalry over who had the right to use the unexploded bomb brought in from Westerbury.

Before he knew it, the very echo of his own footsteps in the darkened corridor spooked him. These days they might all be doing their jobs as if nothing were wrong, but beneath that veneer of normality the rumors about the Elders’ deaths and the fear hanging over them all never ended. The armed guards dispatched by the Security Forces were crawling around everywhere, even inside the Preaching Department, and the fact that the two departments didn’t exactly get along just served to strain the atmosphere even further.

And add to that the spate of monster attacks in the streets…Looking back on it, he felt as though the Elders had started dying off and the monsters had started attacking right around the same time that unexploded bomb had been carried into town…Well, maybe he was overthinking things.

Compared to the job in the country he’d always complained about being so bored with, he’d been living on the scene of unbelievable storms and conspiracies ever since he picked up that woman Undying.

He couldn’t say whether it was good luck or bad luck that had summoned him to the capital when all this was going on…

It was two days after the young lady had arrived here that the priest took her out and showed her around headquarters. She appeared to have calmed down some, and it didn’t seem fair to keep her shut up in her room all the time. “Please let me see Beatrix. Is she okay?” she’d pressed him several times, her attitude still stiff. But he didn’t have Father Sigri’s permission for that yet.

“She’s so okay, she’s a little too okay,” became his answer each time. It was the honest truth, after all.

At that hour, the morning worship service was being held in the cathedral (exactly as it always was, without betraying the slightest trace of the chaos in the upper levels of the capital), with the various pilgrims from distant lands in attendance. Looking down from the choir balcony a level higher up from where he usually sat, he could see that the great hall was covered from end to end with the heads of so many people dressed up in the dark hats and shawls appropriate for worship that he could imagine making some sort of game out of whacking them down. Even though this was a time of silence, with a crowd this large gathered in the cathedral there was always a hushed rustling of people. A semicircular balcony jutted out of the upper part of the tower-like pillar adorning the center of the front wall; it was from there that Father Sigri, dressed in long pure-white robes trimmed in gold, was delivering his sermon. The majestic stained glass making up one wall cast faint colored light on the Father’s back.

As always, Father Sigri’s sermon filled him with admiration. Most of the time the Father wasn’t the kind of person you could exactly say exuded authority (no offense intended), but he was technically an Elder (…no offense intended), and his lectures on the holy book were very understandable and compelling even to people with no special schooling in the subject. When he stood at the lectern, Father Sigri’s voice rang low and gentle throughout the room, soaking into his audience.

“What do you think?” he asked, glancing at the profile of the young lady watching the worship service with him from the shadows of the choir.

“It’s a lot bigger than the chapel in Easterbury,” she answered, deliberately misunderstanding him.

After some hesitation, he tried again a little more directly. “What do you think of your father’s work?”

“I still don’t believe he’s my father,” she replied in a hard voice as she stared with her striking dark eyes, almost glared, really, at the central balcony. She might not lash out anymore like she had on the first day, but she still had that same old stubborn attitude. It made the priest wrinkle his nose a little.

She seemed to lose interest halfway through the service, abruptly turning her eyes away and striding off. Since he couldn’t very well leave her alone, the priest caught up with her and walked beside her. Worship was still under way, so once they left the cathedral there was no one else in sight; the corridor was wreathed in tranquillity. From behind him he began to hear the voices of the choir.

They didn’t especially have anything to talk about, and he knew that even if he tried to strike up a conversation he’d only get shut down with a gruff, curt reply; so the two of them walked side by side in uncomfortable silence for a while.

To test us, the Lord gave to us

a planet of sand and barren fields

O ye children traveling the planets, plow the wilderness and grow wheat

“…I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

He was casually listening to the faraway singing when the girl spoke up of her own volition for once. “Hmm? Ah yes, what is it?” he replied, faltering a little at the suddenness of it. By now he’d grown nervous of her in spite of himself. The way he saw it, she was a highly dangerous character who might attack at any time.

Without preamble, she shot a glance over his shoulder and said, “Who is that behind you?”

“What?!” he shrieked before he could stop himself, dodging to one side and turning to look back on where he’d been standing moments ago. Naturally there was no one there, but he remembered that woman Undying saying something similar to him, and a shiver went up his spine.

The girl, on the other hand, was the very picture of calm as she continued. “Has anyone close to you passed away recently?”

“N-no!” the priest cried at once. She said only, “I see,” but she was still staring intently at something behind him, tilting her head a little in thought.

“Wh-what is it…?”

“I don’t think you have to worry about it. You’ve just got somebody watching over you, that’s all.”

That was all she said before abruptly turning her eyes away.

“Hey, wait, it seriously worries me when you say that!” he wailed, all the blood draining from his face, but by then she’d already started walking indifferently away. “W-wait a second, please!” The priest scurried after her, darting frequent glances over his shoulder.

Please, give me a break…

It came home to him all over again that this girl was dangerous. This is not funny!

Somebody watching over you—

As he followed the raven-haired girl’s rapidly retreating back, turning around every few paces to look behind him, something clicked in his memory.

The nice old folks in that hick town who’d brought by food for him all the time and treated him like their own sons or grandsons when he moved to its tiny old Church outpost to live by himself. In the beginning he’d had a hard time getting used to his job, and he couldn’t adjust to the country life at all, but they’d generously accepted him into the fold. Over the five years he’d worked there, he’d sat by the peaceful deathbeds of a few of those old folks, too.

I’ve lived long enough. I’ve got no complaints. I’m glad you’re here at the end to see me off.

I’ll be watching over you, you hear? Hang in there…

All his seniors in life who had passed peacefully into the next world.

He’d been bored out of his mind. All he could think about was escaping. And yet, he had to admit it had been a simple life full of peace and quiet. His dream of running away had come true, with the result that here he was on the outer fringes of elite capital society, a tangled jungle of conflicting interests.

Why had he wanted so badly to get out of there back then, exactly? Had he really wanted this? Maybe he’d only been longing for the grass on the other side of the fence.

Was he lucky or unlucky right now?

“How was she today?” Father Sigri asked him as usual when he finally made it back to his desk that night after yet another round of annoying meetings. He could just go see how she was for himself, but ever since his daughter had rejected him so harshly on that very first day, the man hadn’t tried to meet with her again. Come to think of it, the priest’s own long-dead father had been ham-handed dealing with children, too, he remembered.

“She’s a formidable young lady,” he confessed honestly, thinking of that afternoon.

“She takes after her mother,” the Father said with a wry, conflicted-sounding laugh.

“Um…would it be all right if I asked why your wife was banished from the capital, Father?”

Father Sigri looked up from his desk. Realizing he must have been indiscreet, the priest said, a bit panicked, “Forgive me, Father!” This is something the Council of Elders erased from its records! If I ask about it, I might be obliterated, too! He tried to take back the question. “If it’s something I shouldn’t have asked…”

“No, it doesn’t matter now. If you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

The Father let his eyes lightly roam the empty air as if recalling something, and then, in that same penetrating low and gentle voice with which he gave his sermons, he began to speak.

That girl’s a little creepy, you know.

Sometimes she’ll reach her hand out when there’s nobody there to reach for and just burst out laughing. I tell, you it scares me…

She heard a group of women whispering. The whole conversation had a bad vibe about it: the vibe of people trying to exclude anyone different, like when they traded mean gossip about a neighbor. It reminded her of the people in her apartment building when she lived with her grandmother—I hear that old woman on the third floor took her “granddaughter” in off the streets—and it filled her with unconditioned revulsion.

The whisperers now were servants dressed in black and carrying piles of balled-up sheets and silver tea trays and such, apparently on the job.

Suddenly their chatter stopped. When they all turned around at once, a woman was standing there behind them, holding a baby. A woman with her long black hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing even simpler black clothes than the servants. She subdued the gaily gossiping crowd with a mild-mannered gaze that still managed to be strong and commanding.

Is that…me?

“Lady Setsuri,” said one of the women, and Kieli quickly realized that no, it was her mother. Which means that baby fast asleep in her arms all wrapped up in the baby blanket is me.

As the servants maintained an uncomfortable silence, Setsuri kept right on walking, looking undaunted. When she passed through the center of their group, the sleeping baby suddenly started fussing. Inky black eyes very like her mother’s flickered open. She stared off into space for a while, as if she were following something floating through the air with her eyes and then giggled happily.

The images blurred away into nothing, revealing a painting hanging on the wall where they had been. It depicted in painstaking detail ten or so people praying over the bread on their table. Kieli recognized it from her textbooks back at the boarding school as a religious painting that illustrated a scene from the holy book. In the dimness of the low-lit room, the people’s eyes were dark and clouded, and their white skin stood out in sharp relief.

That was…

She was currently sitting on the edge of the bed in the tower room she’d been assigned for her stay, gazing at a painting on the wall. The sound of silence hung in the air of the empty room.

One of the people in the painting seemed to laugh all of a sudden.

Tee-hee-hee…

Kieli could hear laughter coming from inside the painting. Just as she was leaning forward to give it a harder look, a sort of white shadow leapt out of it, and she quickly shrank back when it seemed about to hit her.

This time the laughter came from off to Kieli’s side.

When she shifted her gaze toward it, her head still lowered defensively, she saw a girl standing in the corner of the room. A raven-haired girl in filmy white robes that looked almost like underwear. She looked sort of like Kieli. “Um…” Kieli called to her, but before she could say anything, the girl whirled around and vanished into the darkness.

Tee-hee-hee…

Laughter again, from a different direction.

When Kieli looked for the source of the voice, that same girl was standing in front of the door to her room this time. Giggling in a breathy whisper, she slid away through the door. The hem of her white slip fluttered like wings as it vanished through the crack between the door and the jamb.

Kieli climbed barefoot out of the bed. She didn’t know if the lady-in-waiting had forgotten to lock the door or what, but when she tried the knob, the door opened with a creak. She tentatively craned her head out into the hallway. This late at night, there was nobody in sight there. A dull, murky light shone from the electric lamps placed at wide intervals.

With a soft tap of her toes, Kieli left the room with the same bare feet and white slip as the other girl had.

Tee-hee!

She turned in the direction of the voice. She saw the hem of a slip fluttering down the hallway for just an instant before it melted away into the gloom. Kieli pointed her feet in that direction as if drawn by a magnet. Strangely, she had no hesitation or fear. For some reason she felt as though she’d known this bizarre girl for a long time.

The inside of the tower was like a maze, but whenever she seemed about to get lost, the girl’s voice beckoned her. Kieli padded obediently down the cold hallway floor as she was beckoned. After several winding corridors and staircases, she came out into a wide, straight hallway with a vaulted ceiling. Engraved pillars lined the walls on both sides, with religious paintings between each one that were much larger in size than the picture in her room.

That was where Kieli came to a stop.

That girl from before was standing on the other side of the hallway; it was just like looking into a mirror. Her white slip stood out in the gloom.

“Who are you?” Her own voice echoed softly against the ceiling.

“You forgot? You always used to smile whenever you saw me.” The girl pouted her lip, miffed. Then she giggled again and spread her arms wide, reaching both hands out to Kieli. The hem of her slip fluttered high up in front of her, and then she said, “Welcome home, old friend…”

Foosh—

Though they were indoors, out of nowhere a strong wind hit Kieli straight on, and she turned her face away and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

Psst psst psst psst…

She began to hear people whispering to each other. The next time she opened her eyes, the pictures lining both walls all began spinning at once like rewound reels of time, playing scenes from the past. Too many images flowed into Kieli’s mind for her to sort through them all, giving her vertigo.

The scene in all of them was the cathedral she’d been shown today. The whole throng of people inside talked uneasily among themselves. All eyes were riveted on a spot directly below the balcony that jutted out into the main hall, where a sea of blood was forming around someone on the ground wearing the long white ceremonial robes of a clergyman. Kieli thought he was an old man, but his face was too horribly crushed to look at, let alone tell anything from. His pure-white robes were dyed crimson before her eyes, and the sea of blood oozed steadily outward like a living creature. The crowd circling him drew back fearfully.

What happened; why did he fall all of a sudden like that…?

Did he slip?

No, I saw it! I saw someone push him!

Kieli could hear their unsettled whispers. The expressions of all the people in their buzz of conversation showed from different angles in each of the paintings lining the wall. The priests had begun working to clear the bustling congregation from the room. Kieli even saw Father Sigri and Julius’s father in one of the paintings, guiding people outside. They were both a lot younger than they were now. She could make out Setsuri standing next to Father Sigri, holding a baby.

Soon after the people started to follow the priests away, an enormous shadow fell over the electric lights illuminating the great hall.

Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh! Kyahahahahahaha! Shrill, crazed laughter echoed over the heads of the people. The torches adorning the walls crackled and burst, and everyone began running around in terror.

Gya-ha!

A lone innocent giggle rang out, out of place in the midst of the confusion. The baby in Setsuri’s arms alone seemed happy, squealing with laughter and waving her tiny hands toward a shadow where there was nothing to be seen.

“That child did it! She’s demon spawn!” someone yelled, pointing at the baby. The hysterical shouts wove their way through the crowd, spreading like wildfire among people who were already at the height of fear. They fell into a frenzy and mobbed Setsuri, surrounding her and jostling as they tried to snatch the baby she protected.

Mom! Stop it. My mom—somebody help my mom! Kieli shouted with all her breath at the scene flowing into her mind, reaching out her hands. But naturally, neither her hands nor her voice could reach it. It only glided along the surface of her consciousness and then away. The baby—the baby Kieli, who’d been laughing up until then, burst into ear-splitting wails. The shrill, grating cries only spurred on the people’s panic.

As she cradled her baby protectively to her chest, Setsuri scanned the crowd, looking for someone. Finding that someone, she extended a pleading hand for help. Kieli mentally followed the line of her mother’s gaze.

Standing there a little apart from the confusion was Father Sigri. He seemed rooted to the spot, just looking on blankly as the agitated crowd elbowed him violently this way and that. He took in the frail, outstretched hand of his wife, who stood holding his daughter—and Father Sigri bit his lip and abruptly looked away.

The last thing Kieli saw before the images of the confusion went dark was Setsuri’s sad black eyes.

After a period of blankness, she began to hear subdued murmurs from inside the paintings again. “Who will fill the late Eleventh Elder’s seat?” “Lord Sigri was the prime candidate, wasn’t he?” “But there are rumors that his daughter is a demon child…” Against the backdrop of the people’s murmuring, the image of a lavish room with a heavy round table in the center formed itself within the painting. Old men sat around the table in long, adorned black robes.

Next to the lowest seat at the table, where the old men all turned their harsh looks, stood a man.

“Well, Lord Sigri?” asked the old man in the highest-ranking seat.

“Would you like to add your name to the list of men who have sat in that seat at this round table?” asked another old man.

“Are you prepared to forsake your wife and daughter?” asked another.

The ten men’s twenty eyes all focused on the standing man. There was silence for a little while.

And then the man, staring straight ahead, said, “Yes.”

All the religious paintings on the wall were back to regular, unmoving pictures. The girl who’d appeared from out of the painting in Kieli’s room was gone, too. A cold wind blew in from the far end of the painting-lined corridor where she’d been standing just moments ago.

Kieli made her way toward that end with quiet footfalls like cold waves lapping at a shore.

The moment she stepped out of the hallway, a violent gust of wind crashed into her. Before her stretched a colonnade completely open to the elements, connecting this tower to the next one. In the gaps between the fat, evenly spaced columns she could see the towering, inky shadows of the mountains. Cold mountain wind riffled her thin slip. Her exposed skin was freezing in no time. Kieli cringed, folding her arms over her chest for warmth.

Someone was walking up the cloister toward her. Someone about medium height and skinny, wearing long, black robes that melted into the darkness around him and carrying books and papers under one arm. The long, thin edges of his glasses caught the faint outdoor light and gleamed silver, telling her who he was. Perhaps her white slip stood out in all the darkness; he noticed Kieli right away, too, and halted, seeming surprised.

Kieli spun around 180 degrees and started to flee, but a voice called after her, “W-wait!” and she slackened her pace automatically. Sigri caught up to her and grabbed her arm from behind. Momentum sent her stumbling forward, and they both ended up falling. Papers scattered over the floor, rustling. “I-I’m sorry. Are you hurt?” Apologizing clumsily, he reached down to help her up, but Kieli slapped his hand away. They both sat there for a little while at the edge of the colonnade, wordlessly catching their breaths.

Turning her face away from the man in front of her to glare at him out of the corner of her eye, Kieli said coldly, “You’re still working so late?”

At her question, Sigri looked down for a moment at the papers and books littering the floor.

“Yes…there are…a lot of problems happening right now, so things are busy…”

He wore a tentative smile on his haggard, tired-looking face as he answered. Kieli lowered her eyes and tightened her fists in her lap.

“Did you want to be an Elder that badly? Badly enough to throw away Mom and me?”

Her murmur trembled a little. She could tell that Sigri was speechless. Kieli squeezed her fists even harder, tightly enough to cut off the blood to her fingertips.

After a long pause, a short, grief-choked answer came.

“I’m sorry…”

At the sight of one of the top men in the Church meekly bowing his head without a trace of dignity, Kieli felt bitterly disappointed. Not in what he looked like making his pathetic apologies. In what he didn’t, more likely. “Stop it, please. Apologizing to me won’t do anything. If you’re going to apologize, apologize to Mom. Mom was…Mom was—a strong person—but…!”

Kieli remembered the images she’d seen just a little while ago.

Her mother’s despairing face when her father deserted them.

“…But I’m sure she wanted you to help her that day!”

She couldn’t bear to let this man see her cry, so she lowered her head and held back the tears. One of them escaped anyway, falling with a tiny splat onto a clenched fist. Sigri covered it with his own big, thin hand. “Let me go!”

“I’m sorry…!” Kieli tried to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go. He lowered his head until his brow rubbed against the back of her captured hand. “I’m sorry, I’m so truly sorry…”

“Apologizing to me won’t bring back Mom. I don’t accept you being my father.”

Kieli forcibly snatched her hand out of Sigri’s where he bent over it in humble contrition, apologizing over and over. She whirled around and half-ran, half-stumbled back the way she’d come, leaving Sigri on the floor where he sat.

She was so disappointed. This was just unbelievable.

A top Church official was supposed to be more stuck-up, more high and mighty, more like the cocky bad guy behind the snake-oil salesman who trumpeted the teachings of some nonexistent God to mislead the public. He was supposed to be the great wall of evil blocking her path. It wasn’t okay for him not to be. He’d killed Jude, he’d killed her mother, he’d hurt Harvey so badly, and he’d captured Beatrix—and it wasn’t okay for the ringleader behind all kinds of unforgivable things, Kieli’s most hated enemy, to be just an exhausted, normal man like that. The people Kieli loved had been tormented all this time because of a stupid little enemy like this? No, she refused to accept it. This wasn’t enough to get her to forgive him. He didn’t get to just make an easy apology. If an easy apology like this settled things, I wouldn’t even know what I came here to fight!

Kieli ran barefoot back down the hallway. By the time she made it back to her room, she was panting hard.

She shut the door and dived straight into the bed.

Hurry up and come get me, Harvey…! she wailed at him silently. I thought I’d reached the end of my rope. I don’t want to be in this stupid place. Let’s just rescue Beatrix and go home. Let’s go home, right away. Can’t we all go back to Easterbury and live a happy life there without ever having anything to do with these people again?

“Harvey…Corporal…”

Her face still buried in the pillow, Kieli’s murmur and her muffled sobs were swallowed up by the silence of the room.

Even as she wished for that future in her heart, she knew no amount of wishing was likely to make it come. Harvey’d said they should live in the house at the transfer station, but he definitely wasn’t really picturing a future like that. Before she knew it was happening, the happy time two and a half years ago when she was fourteen, when she’d just met them and felt so sure she’d found her place to belong, had drifted far away from her. She could never get it back now.

“Yo. Whatcha crying about?” asked a voice above her suddenly. When she lifted her face from where she’d buried it in her pillow, a pair of dark blue-gray eyes, hardly distinguishable from the dimness of the room, were looking at her. When did he…I guess he must have come into the room while I was out there. A tall, lean man in priest’s garb was squatting neatly with his hands around his knees by the decorative molding at the head of her bed.

Kieli shot up from the mattress and jumped to the far side of the bed. She wiped her eyes and glared at him, clutching her pillow in front of her like a shield.

Three days had gone by since he’d disappeared on her first day here.

“Where have you been?” she asked. And then, a beat later, “I thought you were going to kill him?”

Her words sank nastily into the murky dimness of the room.

“Hmm, true…I figured I’d be nice and wait till you finished your touching reunion with Daddy before I tore him apart, but your meeting pretty much bombed…” the man answered with a thin smile. Half of that might be true, but Kieli guessed that it was at least half a lie. In what little light there was, she could make out that the skin of one cheek was green and mushy. She bet he’d been crashed out somewhere, unable to move again.

“So, whatcha crying about?” he inquired again insincerely, and grinned. He must know why already, too, the jerk. She sniffed, embarrassed. Then she scowled at the floor and quietly began to answer him. Kieli didn’t understand herself what made her speak so openly to this jerk, but a part of her actually felt as though he was exactly the one she could confess something like this to. “…I was so sure there was a big enemy here, and that if I beat him, all my problems would be solved. But there isn’t one…” Just a normal, tired man who regrets what he did. “It’s not fair! What am I supposed to hate now…?”

As she spoke, she realized that she was the same as that old engineer on the miners’ train, that there was a darkness deep inside her heart, and it crushed her. She was like that crotchety old man who could only cope with the pain of losing someone he loved by hating someone else and taking it out on them.

Kieli must be the type who needed to have an enemy, too. The people special to her kept being lost one after another, and she couldn’t rest until she’d made that someone else’s fault. Even though she was sure Harvey didn’t see it that way. Harvey was someone who could forgive those who trespassed against his own interests without any trouble. She was so small-minded compared to him.

With no warning, someone was messily ruffling the hair on her lowered head. She hadn’t noticed him moving, but all of a sudden Joachim was crouching right in front of her.

“There, there, no need to cry,” he said, as if he were soothing a baby. Kieli stiffened uncomfortably, but she didn’t resist. Though she didn’t know why, his voice made her want to cling to it like a lifeline. It sounded calm and kind, but at the same time it had a sort of darkness to it like the sky at night. Her ears soaked it up.

“You and I are birds of a feather. So you know what? I’ll give you a hand with this. I’ll kill your enemy for you.”

When his voice disappeared, all sense of his presence had bled away into the darkness again, too.

Hugging her pillow with her head bowed, Kieli stayed unmoving for a while. She felt sort of delirious, as if she had a fever. Nebulous half-formed thoughts swirled around and around in her head.

I’ll give you a hand with this. I’ll kill your enemy for you.

And she hadn’t told him not to. She’d kind of felt that if someone would do that for her, she really wouldn’t mind.

An image of Harvey’s face flitted through the back of her head. Those coppery eyes always looked about to cry whenever Kieli made a mistake. Right now, one of them was dark brown instead…. It’s no good.

Clutching her pillow tightly, she thought with conviction, It’s wrong, I just know it. I’m about to make another mistake.

“Joachim…!”

Kieli finally came back to her senses and looked up. She was the only presence left now in this room ruled by darkness. After stiffening for just a split second, Kieli slipped out of bed. Before she shot out of the room in her bare feet, she tossed the pillow she was still hugging back onto the mattress.

His soul is too starved, it’s not tasty…

Would it at least make a decent snack, though…?

Maybe we’ll eat him…

Whispering raspingly to each other, the shadowy people-shapes slithered out of a corner of the room on their bellies. They crawled along the floor with eerily long, crookedly bony hands and feet toward the man standing in front of the writing desk. They stopped short midway there, though.

You again…Are you getting in our way?

You don’t have a soul. We can’t eat you. You’re only in the way…

When Joachim spared them a glance, they withdrew to the corner of the room again, leaving accusing whispers behind them as they melted away into the darkness.

The man in long robes who’d just set his pile of documents on the desk noticed someone else in the room with him and moved to turn around. “Don’t turn.” Joachim cut him off by seizing one of his arms from behind and twisting it up, thrusting the folding knife against his throat. The man stopped moving with a tiny moan.

In a reedy voice, he asked, “Who are you?”

“The grim reaper,” Joachim answered coolly.

The man’s shoulder joint creaked audibly. Contorting his body, he managed to bear the strain, though it was difficult, and when he spoke, his voice sounded pained. Still, he resolutely asked again, “You’re the assassin, then…?”

“Aw, you’re giving me too much credit. But hey, if you people want to make the criminal a human you can see with the naked eye, I don’t mind taking the credit.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Yep. Do you want to beg for your life?”

It was almost an innocent question, really. Still, even as he sweated greasily from the pain in his shoulder, the priest neither pleaded nor fought back. Joachim didn’t know if the guy was acting tough or what, but the unexpectedly calm response took the wind out of his sails a little. That greasy old geezer he’d killed last time (well, no, he’d wormed his way into the man’s good graces while intending to kill him, but the ghosts had beaten him to the punch and cursed him to death first) had begged plaintively for his life even after he kicked the bucket. Joachim had a hard time understanding why this man wasn’t getting scared and begging for his life like that.

“Come on, beg for your life,” he whispered, drawing his face in close to the neck he pressed his knife against. But the man only gazed at the floor with a resigned, philosophical expression on his face. He had this vibe that said he’d taken it upon himself to carry a load of fruitless, pointless guilt around with him everywhere when nobody’d ever asked him to—a vibe a lot like that bastard’s, which made Joachim abruptly pissed off as hell.

Snik.

An incongruous, dry, inane sound. He’d given the priest’s twisted arm another hard twist and dislocated the shoulder joint.

A thin cry escaped the man’s mouth. However, he still didn’t resist.

Joachim found himself being questioned again instead. “…What are you trying to accomplish? What are you doing these things for?”

“What am I doing them for?” Considering who was the killer and who was the victim here, Joachim didn’t see why he was the one being interrogated—and anyway, at the moment he wasn’t actually the serial Elder killer; it was the evil ghosts who were cursing them all to death…But the question intrigued him a little. He experimentally tried answering from an assassin’s perspective. “Because I want to kill people. They piss me off, so I’m gonna tear them all apart.”

“Mm-hmm…And? What are you going to do after that?”

Joachim was so thrown off by the unexpected question that he broke character. “What do you mean, ‘after that’?”

A line of blood welled up from the man’s neck where the blade touched him. Beg for your life. Plead pathetically like all the other old geezers, he thought, pressing down on the knife, but the man’s voice was quiet even as his face twisted against the agony in his dislocated shoulder. Joachim even saw him give a self-mocking smile.

“I had something I desired, too, once. I’ve sacrificed all kinds of things to get it. But once I reached a position where I could actually get it, all of a sudden I couldn’t figure out what it was I’d wanted anymore. I realized all I’d been doing was grasping after a stupid ideal that didn’t exist…And by that time, I’d already sacrificed something that couldn’t ever be gotten back.

“I was a fool…I was a fool for hoping I could go back and atone for my sins after all this time, for ever hoping for even one minute that I could get her back…”

Joachim had left the room and pushed the door closed behind him when he heard the slap of bare feet running toward him. The girl who appeared from the end of the hallway caught sight of him and came to a stop.

She caught her breath and swallowed once before asking, “Did…did you kill him?” Her face was white as a sheet. Joachim shrugged one shoulder and gestured to the door behind him with his eyes.

“His shoulder’s dislocated, so why don’t you go take care of him?”

The girl turned her gaze to the door. She took a step, then changed her mind and stopped. After hanging her head, looking undecided for a bit, she turned back the way she’d come. “I-I’ll go get someone to come…!” Joachim merely spared her a glance before he started walking in the opposite direction.

“Joachim—” she called tentatively. He turned a little. She’d stopped, too, and turned toward him. She opened her mouth to speak, but then she got a conflicted look on her face, as if she couldn’t decide what she wanted to say in the end. Joachim clicked his tongue deliberately loud enough to hear.

“You’re nothing like me after all.”

Then he abruptly broke eye contact and resumed walking. She called his name one more time, but he didn’t turn around again.

What’s your deal? he thought. You got worried and came running! I was going to do it for you because it was what you wanted, and you really didn’t want me to after all! He felt pissed off. At everything around him. At that girl, and that man who gave pompous, complicated speeches instead of begging for his life, and that idiot who always managed to hover like a shadow at the edges of Joachim’s consciousness even when he wasn’t around.

But you didn’t kill him, either…

Why didn’t you kill him…?

The ghosts were whispering mockingly from a corner of the hallway. When he shot them a glare out of the corner of his eye, they slipped away into the wall, their mockery still hanging in the air. His own footsteps echoed in the shadows as he walked alone down the deserted hallway. The heavy plop, plop of the sticky substance dripping from the fingertips of his dangling left hand accompanied them. A little while later he started to hear the bustle of a crowd forming behind him.

What are you trying to accomplish?

He hated everything, so he’d figured if he destroyed everything, the world would become something that pleased him.

And? After that?

What do you mean, “after that”?

He experimentally stretched his left hand out in front of him. Hyperactive cells welled up from between his fingers and plop, plopped down to the floor in rotting clumps. His fingernails had already lost their original shape. He glimpsed exposed bone at his knuckles.

What I wanted…

He watched the mushy cells dribble from his fingertips for a while, with no expression on his face.