Previous: Chapter 12 | Next: Chapter 14
By the time we left a couple of hours must have passed, the crisp colour of the sky having deepened a few shades. Valerie handled some of the formalities as we walked out the door, the warmth fading, but not quite gone; I was full like I hadn’t been in a long, long time.
I mostly tuned out of the soft background noise of their chatter as I walked a few steps behind them, though Senna had promised to walk me home. Or somewhere else if you feel like it, he said, somehow both conspiratorial and blatantly obvious, and Marcel and Valerie seemed at ease.
Maybe we could go somewhere. For once the city lights weren’t so daunting. I almost let my guard down.
But someone was shouting.
Behind us, I realized. We turned in unison back to the restaurant we’d just left, half a block away. The attendant at the restaurant had abandoned his post and almost caught up with us by then, running. “Wait! Mister Marcel! A message!”
“What? What is it?” Marcel asked, clearly unsettled. The attendant stopped in front of us, one hand on a knee and the other clutched around a crumpled scrap of paper.
“There was… a message on the wire, just as you were leaving!” he gasped. “From an Isme Mercure– they gave a Peaceguard pass and, um… they didn’t have many details except a code and an address. Said it was urgent.”
He rattled off a pair of abstruse phrases which must have been the information he was talking about, as Valerie and Marcel exchanged a look, only for a moment, before something flickered between their auras that made my hair stand on end. Valerie immediately spun around and started jogging down a nearby street, while Marcel paused for a second.
“Senna, go in and send a wire down that we’re on our way. Maybe ten minutes out. Get whoever else is there back on track.”
“Already on it, boss.” Senna turned to go back with the attendant while Marcel went to follow Valerie, having apparently forgotten about me completely. I reached out and gripped his sleeve before he could run off.
“Marcel, what’s happening?” I asked, and his eyes snapped to me. “Where are you going?”
“It’s– It’s nothing,” he said, then sighed. “That’s not true. It’s a bit of an emergency and we have to take care of it.” He was nervous. Before I could ask any more he cut me off abruptly. “What exactly doesn’t matter to you. Can you… can you stick with Senna? Unless you can find your way back to the house on your own. It’s doesn’t involve you, and it’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“But–”
“I have to go,” he said, and lifted my hand from him. His voice hardened. “But I’m serious. Stay with Senna. We’ll be back.”
He took off down the street after Valerie, weaving through an unsettled crowd before turning a corner out of sight. Senna and the attendant were already inside. I shivered as I suddenly realized the reality that I was standing in the middle of a crowd in the middle of a city completely alone and with no idea what to do.
I couldn’t just stand there and wait. Could I? This was what they had been afraid of. It had to be connected. If they weren’t going to tell me then this was maybe my only chance to see for myself.
I groaned, partly out of frustration and partly out of panic. Just to do something, to try to release the tension from my body, but no, how silly of me, it wasn’t gonna be that easy. Marcel and Valerie were covering a lot of ground; it wouldn’t be long before I lost track of them completely, and then the decision would be made for me.
My hands were clenching and unclenching nervously, “lunch or dinner or whatever that was” suddenly resting heavy in my stomach and the jacket around me suddenly too hot and too tight. I had to be decisive. Ignore the stares. Ignore the noise.
I grit my teeth and ran to follow Marcel and Valerie, faintly hoping that Senna wouldn’t be too alarmed to find me missing.
Obviously I couldn’t not follow them. He probably should have thought of that before telling me not to, and then maybe this wouldn’t have collapsed into such a mess so quickly. All those years here and all that knowledge, all those books, and I still had to make something like that clear to him. Hah.
I kept talking to myself as I ran. It did help, a bit.
The chase was painfully familiar, although this time oddly enough I was the one in danger of being left behind. People on the street were much more eager to move out of the way – perhaps partly because of the bright scarlet around my shoulders, partly because they had already watched the others run past moments before.
I breathed as deeply as I could while running, and I tried to focus. Not just to focus, but to tune my senses to the other immortals and them alone. To ignore the noise. I latched onto their auras and willed myself to let everything else melt away.
The feeling wasn’t unlike falling, but in that way, at least it, too, was somewhat familiar. The heat and light blurred into the background noise and in turn I let the chaos fade away, sharpening what I needed and letting go of the rest. It was like unfocusing the eyes, the sensation spread through my entire body. But I had what I needed.
Marcel and Valerie must have hopped the nearest rail line during my minute of indecision, because they were moving even faster than before; I would’ve had more than a little trouble keeping pace with them on foot, even at my best, I was sure of that. Even so, though, they had a destination, and they’d stop there eventually. All I had to do was follow the trail as best I could, and then–
I was focused so hard on not losing them that I crashed straight into the back of someone walking along, tripping us both up– I managed not to hurt them any more than that, though they were clearly shocked, shouting, almost dropping something. With a quick stumbled apology and just a second to steady them, I didn’t wait around, didn’t even look at their face. I started taking the quieter streets again.
Solace was, in a word, big. Yesterday the skyline had seemed daunting, sure, but up close and personal there was so much more to it than that. The city was a mishmash sprawl of winding roads, trolley lines and well-trodden dirt tracks spanning the large swathes of relatively-untamed nature that broke up the middling urban buildup I was used to. Styles and shapes and sizes of buildings flowed and tangled together like roots; some old and worn, some new, some harsh and sterile and many more crawling with latticed ivy and painted with greens and blues.
Parts of the sprawl were ordered in blocks and right-angled corners, but outside those newer sections the city’s veins spread more akin to cracking glass, splintering across grassy hills and past the riverbank. The constant in the dimming afternoon sky was the Court’s tower, of course. Much like Home in many ways.
Marcel and Valerie’s momentum slowed, and they descended, just slightly, towards ground level. I didn’t even try to figure out how much time had passed when the space itself was as confusing as it was already, but eventually I passed fewer and fewer startled onlookers.
We were a long way from the city centre. The air changed as I crossed from a stretch of regimented stone buildings to one much lower, quainter, quieter. It crispened on my tongue with the faintest scent of woodsmoke.
I knew which house it was before I could even see it; after all, both of them were already inside. Immediately I could tell, though, that it wasn’t just the three of us. There were more mortals around, obviously, a couple in Balancia’s uniform, several others not, but this… didn’t feel like them, either. Some odd aura like I hadn’t felt before. Something wrong.
Before approaching, I hesitated, but I reminded myself that that was stupid. I already knew something was wrong; I was way past that. I was here to go and see it for myself.
The shadow of the city’s wall cut the misty air in half, the darker settling to the surface of a long pond the road sloped gently down to meet, the lighter blending into a sky already pierced by electric lights. The old, squat house was nestled into the shore, between scattered trees and outbuildings; rather far from its neighbours in either direction. A hum of activity rose from the handful of Court uniforms around the front door, while shadows passed in front of the sole lit window.
As cautiously and nonchalantly as possible, I put one foot in front of the other and approached the congregation around the front door, but I definitely didn’t go unnoticed. I recognized the nearest face almost at the same moment he recognized me.
“Oh, Lords.”
Balancia jogged over to stop me; of course he wouldn’t have known I was coming. The two other mortals that were with us on the flight looked up, too – Victor and… not-Victor – from where they were gathered around a small box attached to the wires hanging from the brickwork of the house.
“Adeline! Ma’am!”
“That’s me,” I said.
“What, uh, what are you doing down here?” he asked. “This is a sensitive area, at the moment, and when Marcel arrived he left us with the impression that–”
“I know he told me not to come, but I– I did. And I’m here, now. Too late to change it. They’re inside, aren’t they?” I asked, rhetorically, gesturing to the open door. I could sense them both in there, just like they could probably sense me. And again, that third presence. Something else. What in the world is that?
“Yes, they went in a few minutes ago, but they really shouldn’t be disturbed. Like I said, it’s a– a sensitive matter. You really can’t be here.”
I stared past him intently, most of my focus still fixed on the shifting energy in the atmosphere. “Is this what you were talking about, earlier? Bigger problems?” He cleared his throat. “What’s going on?”
“Well, for the sake of honesty, in some ways yes, ma’am, but that’s not–”
Then Marcel appeared just on the other side of the doorway and called, wearily, “Balancia.” He quickly whirled around to face him, and I met his eyes too. He leaned one arm on the open frame, the other crossed over his chest, his posture tense. His face yet unreadable, but his aura… strained. In a way that suggested, if anything, that he should’ve had far more wounds on his body than he did.
But he said, “She didn’t come all the way here to be turned away, I’m sure,” and waved, turning around without even looking whether I was about to follow. “Just come inside. Quickly.”
Without another word I slowly side-stepped Balancia and approached the house, passing through the small gathering of mortals. Marcel slipped back inside. He knew as well as I did that I would be right behind him.
Walking through the doorway wasn’t unlike hitting a wall of hot air. That third presence sharpened so drastically I had to reach a hand out and brace myself against the wall. My head was already swimming. Like an electrical discharge was muddying the energy in the air, in certain ways, but in others… not quite. It wasn’t just electricity. It wasn’t exactly like an immortal, either. It was hard to pinpoint and hard to discern but equally consuming of my attention, a knot in space, a void. Both.
At first I thought Marcel hadn’t even noticed, and for a brief moment I was consumed by the possibility that I was actually losing my mind– but he staggered, too. He didn’t show it, but he was immersed in this just like I was.
We tiptoed around the mess of broken glass and splintered wood in the hall to reach where Valerie and the other thing still were; by then there was no doubt at all that they were together in that room, the door cracked ajar and the harsh light of incandescent fires pouring out.
“I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m not exactly disappointed, either,” he whispered over his shoulder to me, just loud enough that I could hear. “Since you’re here… it shouldn’t do any harm for you to see. But beyond this point, you absolutely cannot interfere. Stay back and watch. Don’t touch anything. Don’t do anything. Let us handle this.”
I nodded, but he turned back to stare at me, far too intense in our close quarters. “Tell me that you understand.”
“Yes,” I said, and swallowed. “I won’t.”
As satisfied as he could hope to be, he nodded, pushed his way into the room and rushed immediately to Valerie’s side. I stepped in after him, pressing myself against the wall. It was even worse in here, but I had to see this through.
Valerie sat on the floor, cross-legged and silent, a small array of wires and equipment strewn around him; and across from him, huddled in the corner, was the source I’d been feeling since I first set eyes on this place.
They weren’t an immortal like any I had met, that was certain. But although they looked like one, they weren’t precisely mortal, either. What should have been the normal flow of energy firing and flowing through the body was… twisted, somehow. Every heartbeat stuttered, every breath shook, every synapse flickered. Their skin and hair shone with sweat and what I could see of their face was downturned, sunken.
And above all, drowning out everything else, that knot. That void. In Marcel and Valerie, like the others, I felt something similar: the wellspring from which their (our) power was drawn and through which we sensed and pushed at the fields around us.
This wasn’t like that. Valerie seemed to be doing his best to keep its influence contained, but it wasn’t enough to deaden it entirely; If an immortal’s heart was a rock in a stream, this was a whirlpool. Dragging and tearing and tangling and ripping at the threads of energy around it. A hole that refused to be ignored. I could hardly even look away. I’d never imagined anything that felt so abjectly awful.
The haze was creeping from my head to my eyes, dizziness threatening to overtake me. I clung harder to the wall. The white lamps brought back memories of Vermiles, painful ones, but more than that, too. Every time they shifted that pain in my head deepened. The person in the corner didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if they were even breathing.
Something was very, very wrong here.
“Marcel,” I whispered hoarsely, finally tearing my eyes away and squinting against the light, sweat beading on my skin. He didn’t give any indication he’d heard me. “What is that?”
He rested one hand on Valerie’s shoulder as he checked a box connected by wires running out of the room, tapping a finger against the glass display. Whatever it read, he didn’t look happy about it.
“...This is Anton Joseve,” he said. “He is who we’re here for.”
“He’s…”
“He’s mortal. He’s just… sick. Very sick. I’m sure you can tell.” It wasn’t any sickness I had ever encountered, or even imagined, but I couldn’t exactly argue.
“What are you going to do to him?” I asked.
“Nothing. We’re going to wait here a few more minutes until our doctors arrive to take care of him, and in the meantime we’re going to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or anybody else. That’s it.”
Anton Joseve didn’t seem like he was posing a threat to anybody at all. He was shaking in a corner with his head in his hands. I had no idea what that thing inside him was, what he might do because of it, but… seeing him like that stirred up feelings I didn’t like remembering. It was painful to think about in more ways than one.
Aside from suppressing the twisted field of energy, and occasionally checking the equipment, they really weren’t going to do anything. Anton was barely alive and they were content to wait. Couldn’t they bring him to a doctor themselves? Couldn’t they do anything? Couldn’t I?
I felt sick. (That’s what I get for indulging like that, I thought. Everything I had eaten felt like it could come back up at any moment.) I swallowed down bile. The searing incandescents flickered.
“There must be some way we can help,” I said.
“We are helping,” said Marcel, slow and soft and measured. “You don’t know this like we do. I can explain, I promise, but right now you have to understand. This is an extremely volatile situation and you don’t know what you’re dealing with. Keep your word to me. Don’t interfere.”
“...You thought all that about me, too, at first. Marcel, I’m not dangerous. He doesn’t seem dangerous. If you can–”
“We can discuss this later.”
His voice quivered.
“He’s here now,” I insisted; I could hear the tremble in my own voice, too. My own breath was trembling. I pulled at River’s scarf again before lifting my other hand from my side, reaching out towards the body in front of us, a weak gesture. “I– I–”
Anton’s head snapped up, and suddenly Valerie’s concentration was broken, he was keeling over and swinging a hand to the side of his head– in the moments he had to react, Marcel clumsily reached out to hold him as he half-collapsed to the floor. And in that time while they were distracted, which felt so much longer than it must have been in reality, Anton haggardly turned around and looked directly at me.
His eyes were black and hollow and listless, his body slack and clearly struggling to hold itself upright, but he looked at me. I didn’t know what I’d done. I didn’t know what I possibly could do. All my thoughts were suddenly rent apart, my focus and my senses dissolving until I was utterly frozen in place, hand outstretched and shaking.
The aura exploding from him wasn’t checked any longer, and I almost collapsed myself from the onslaught. It was a tempest, uncontrolled; it didn’t bother him, though. He just kept moving, blindly and with singular purpose. I didn’t know what purpose. He didn’t say a word.
The knife twisted in my head. The lights sputtered and died, but the afterimage was still burned into my eyelids. It was all so… familiar.
He reached out a hand toward my own, and I couldn’t do anything but watch as he approached. Our fingers almost touched. He was cold.
With a grunt Marcel leapt and wrapped one arm around Anton’s torso, but it was a fragile image, seen as if through rushing water. His other arm gripped Anton’s by the wrist, fighting to pull him away, and it was almost funny that he was trying to interfere. He was so far away. So cold. So… so…
And then I blinked.
Previous: Chapter 12 | Next: Chapter 14
コメント