Chapter 48: Stalker vs Stalker (3)
“Oh my, Miss Einarsdottir. You seem to have obtained a new violin?” “Ahh, yes……” “Good heavens! This is a Prausschlitz line, isn’t it?! Something this expensive…… no, wasn’t the last violin the same?” “Yes…… m-my uncle bought it for me.” “How enviable!”
Eyes filled less with envy than jealousy, and less with jealousy than contempt.
To Esidis it was a familiar, and also a sorrowful, gaze.
An attitude as though they didn’t even remember the past days when she had blocked the Knight Faculty new students even at the cost of sacrificing Fiddle III.
Esidis of the orchestral department was always treated this way.
Perhaps it was only natural. Droan was a great power of the United Kingdoms, but not a nation that had won that position through culture and art.
Barbarians who are backward and merely strong. That’s about the evaluation the nation receives.
Amid all that, admitted to the orchestral department with talent that isn’t particularly splendid.
And on top of that the instrument she carries is always a top-grade article, and even that she readily breaks.
She isn’t good with words, and a freak called “Uncle” enrolls as a new student and comes to see her ceaselessly.
Esidis had always been a beloved girl. Her father is a king to begin with, and beyond her nation he was a powerhouse counted on one hand across the whole continent.
To such a girl this environment was far too cruel.
“Uuu…… mmph…… sob……”
At the next class, she shut herself in the ensemble room, left alone, and sniffled.
Because no one had conveyed to her the notice of a changed lecture building, she was trembling and weeping alone.
The hand that had gripped Fiddle and pulled the bow string several times drops limply.
“Papa…… Uncle……”
She gripped Fiddle tight and blubbered, then with trembling hands put it in the instrument case and lifted it.
It’s a moment when she wants to give up.
In fact every moment had been like that. Every moment of holding an instrument and singing.
To Droan’s citizens the violin was a rather unfamiliar foreign instrument. On top of that, obtaining a proper one costs absurdly much, and for all that it’s a frail thing that breaks easily.
Droan is a dry place. Exposed to outside air even briefly, the fingerboard and body warp and its life as an instrument ends.
Tuning it every single day changed nothing. A string instrument is fundamentally a luxury item requiring delicate management by a practiced hand.
The Housecarls regarded the king’s daughter as indulging in luxury, and the teachers they went to the trouble of finding were ignoramuses no more and no less than bards.
Owing to that, she barely obtained sheet music and self-studied for a long while.
After that, how joyful she had been when she even succeeded in gaining admission to a world-class prestigious music college, St. Yansk University’s orchestral department.
“……Sniffle.”
Esidis carefully stroked the bag slung over her shoulder.
Her whole life, and always, she had wanted to give up. She’d thought it wouldn’t be bad to set it all down and quietly live a princess’s life.
But living as a king’s daughter meant being displayed as a high-priced product, silently taxidermied.
Weaving cloth for better product value, singing for a fine voice, occasionally practicing martial arts.
And as a result, marrying the warrior most suitable for continuing the king’s bloodline. That would have been her fate.
She didn’t want to live that way.
She wanted to learn an instrument. She wanted to master music. Especially, the violin.
That began from a story shared before a campfire 10 years ago from now.
From one story heard from a man whose impression is now faint.
***
Einar was a logical man. Though it was Droan’s logic, in any case he was a splendid father who wielded reasonable thinking.
Therefore he set out for the battlefield bringing along his wife and children. This had several reasons.
First, his children must face the battlefield’s air directly.
Second, Droan’s Jarls cannot be trusted.
The latter reason was more important. Einar was a great warrior, and even in that period a man who already had no match within Droan.
Should he safely finish the war and return home, there was ample possibility that any one of the Jarls would take his wife and children hostage.
Therefore, Esidis knows war.
And she knows the Hero’s Party of those days.
She remembers the retreating backs of heroes who always returned wounded. Limbs broken, at times losing part of a limb, or returning crushed.
People who wiped away the blood and wound bandages over their wounds, sat exhaustedly before a campfire, and shared drinks.
So in those days she once asked this question of the man who was always most badly wounded, outside the party.
“Uncle, why don’t you run away?” “Mm?”
A man some fifteen years younger than her father at least, yet at least 10 years older than her.
Because he was the youngest among the party’s members excepting the Saintess, Esidis often struck up conversation with this taciturn man.
The man gazed at the campfire a moment, then said with a faint smile:
“Where would I go even if I ran. The world is in the middle of becoming hell.” “Still, it’s better than going off to fight. To a place where you don’t know when you’ll die, every day, every time.” “This isn’t a story that needs early education.”
This man sometimes used terms she couldn’t understand. That looked truly splendid, so inwardly Esidis admired him.
Because young children generally think difficult words are impressive.
“Esidis. The reason your father and I take up axes. The reason Maximilien and Gilbert take up swords, the Saintess keeps our lives attached somehow, and Enrique infiltrates enemy lines at the risk of her life, is only one.” “What is it?” “Because we hope we are the last.”
The man held the axe blade to the campfire and inspected it. The edge was dangerously nicked, on the verge of snapping.
“Living a life where one must kill an enemy’s day in order to live one’s own day holding a weapon. Because we hope such a life ends with our share of it. You and your younger siblings, the many children who will be behind us. And because we hope those children’s children take up not weapons but plows.”
The war must not lengthen beyond this. Because the United Kingdoms’ body politic won’t bear any more war.
No war must exceed one generation. Because even if one wins afterward, that isn’t victory in the true sense.
Their generation is the last limit line where people can have lives, where a nation can still function as a nation.
Bearing that meaning, the man quietly set the axe down.
“So don’t you take after your father.” “Uh…… mm. Then what should I do? I’m, uh…… I’m good with an axe!” “I know. Grow a little more and you’d startle people. Still, if possible, try holding something other than an axe.” “I’m not very good at sewing……” “You needn’t necessarily sew. Mm.”
The man looked at Esidis with troubled eyes. Owing to a lack of verbal facility, he had no confidence in providing this kid a suitably level-pitched education.
He stroked his chin a moment, then said:
“If you must hold something, an instrument would be better.” “An instrument?” “Because a weapon kills people but an instrument saves people.”
Because transcending borders and cultures and languages, splendid music in itself often becomes a bridge connecting person to person.
Should an age of peace arrive, one of the things most needed will be instruments.
Esidis gazed blankly at the man. Ash-gray hair and eyes blue enough to sting, that neat set of eyes gazing steadily at the campfire.
The young girl admired this solid man.
“Uncle, which instrument do you like best?” “Who’s to say, I don’t know this world’s instruments well.”
He stroked his chin as though troubled. A habit of his when sunk in thought.
Ah, still, there does seem to be one instrument in common. That man tilted his head and thought. Owing to having ground away on battlefields alone for 10 years starting as a conscript, he hadn’t encountered instruments often, but……
Probably, the instrument he saw when His Majesty the Great King held a celebratory banquet. That was one that existed in this world too, with the same name, as he recalls.
“Was that the violin……?” “The violin?” “Mm.”
Esidis rolled that name around in her mouth several times and memorized it.
Ten years passed after that. During that time she had gone from a great warrior’s daughter to a great sovereign’s daughter.
A world arrived where the Great King no longer needed to rule the kingdom with an axe. It became an age needing eloquence more than axes, codified treaties more than eloquence, and gold.
Just as Uncle said, a world where weapons are no longer needed had arrived.
Esidis took up the violin. Steadfastly, despite her parents’ worry and the other uncles’ criticism. Pressing the fingerboard until her hands blistered, drawing the bow string until her wrist gave out.
With the heart of someday visiting Uncle, who ultimately fell in the war, and leaving him the most perfect memorial piece.
She had heard Uncle’s remains were interred at Krasilov’s Prichenkaya National Cemetery.
And in Krasilov there is the continent’s finest prestigious music college.
Her admission to St. Yansk University was no different from fate.
So, she will not give up. Never, never.
***
Esidis wiped her tears clean, rose, and left the orchestral department main building.
Today’s class amounted to an unexcused absence, but there was ample space to practice at home too.
She will never give up.
“An instrument is a bridge connecting person to person……”
Never.
***
“Mord.” “What.” “You may stop coming out now.” “……What?”
Ivan gazed at the countless laundry items Mord had finished off and spoke quietly.
“During the time you’ve done volunteer service at my orphanage, the orphanage’s financial losses have risen significantly.” “……Guhk……!” “Are you aware that laundry means the act of washing cloth, not the act of tearing it to shreds?” “Guuhk……”
Mord bit his lip and avoided Ivan’s gaze.
But he had words of rebuttal too.
“I…… I have never done laundry in my life!” “Even someone who has never done laundry in their life should have been able to manage washing children’s underclothes in 2 months.” “Guhhhk……!!”
Ivan ignored the wounded Mord and moved his steps.
The plan of holding this fellow in order to grasp the movements of the spies Droan would have dispatched is cancelled.
Having obtained the intelligence that among “the spies Droan dispatched” is a fellow targeting Esidis’s life, there was no reason to keep hold of Mord.
Mord is a stupid fellow, but at least one who sincerely cherishes Esidis. One of Great King Einar’s closest confidants.
For Esidis’s safety, Mord must be faithful to his role again. Didn’t he truly not enroll at the university in order to attend Knight Faculty classes.
His role is Esidis’s escort.
And if Mord is at Esidis’s side, someone will certainly make contact with him.
Because as long as Mord is guarding her, Esidis’s person will be safe. If only to separate him from Esidis, someone of Droan origin will attempt contact with Mord.
The plan is to keep watch on Mord, and upon discovering such a fellow, climb up that tail and remove the body.
Ivan gazed for a good while at the middle-aged man leaving the orphanage with a sad expression, then turned his head.
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