Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [286]
Chuckling to himself, the boy sat on the tattered sofa, dangling his feet over one of the armrests. “Don’t get any ideas,” he said. Then, just as suddenly, the desk jumped back to where it had been before. A jar of ink and an old pen stand clattered to the floor.
The gemstone on top of the staff glowed: first red, then a light green, then blue, and finally amber.
Furiously mumbling a prayer to the Goddess under his breath, the captain fled the room. He really is a sorcerer. That really was magic. Oh, what have I gotten myself into?
Already it had been five days since these two strange clients had arrived.
Opening the door to the warehouse and going inside, the captain drew the security bar firmly shut behind him. This was his custom whenever he had clients. He began the climb up to the second-floor office.
Word had come at last. They would leave after sunset that night. To be honest, the captain was relieved. He wanted to get these two out of his office as soon as possible. On the other hand, the thought of spending two weeks at sea with the young sorcerer gave the captain indigestion. It may be high time for me to start looking for another profession.
He had made it to the first landing on the stairs when he heard someone yelp in pain. The captain froze. What was that? Whose voice was that? What is that little sorcerer up to now?
For a moment, he didn’t know what to do. Should he run upstairs to see what the problem was? Or should he run downstairs to safety? In that instant of indecision, he heard another sound, this time more like a sobbing sigh. Then there was a shout, and the tinted glass window of his office shattered. A moment later, the door itself swung outward, slamming into the wall. Shards of glass fell down the stairs, coming to rest at the captain’s feet.
The captain looked stunned. If a cold wind—impossibly cold—hadn’t blown down from the top of the staircase, he might have stood there forever. As it was, the brisk sting of the wind on his face brought him back to his senses. He began crawling up the stairs on all fours, brushing shards of glass off his face, out of his hair and whiskers.
“Wh-what in the name of chaos was that?!” he shouted, fearfully sticking his head through the office door. Then, he sneezed. A wind cold as ice was blasting against his face. It felt like his ears would freeze off.
The boy was standing against the wall. Something was curled up at his feet.
A lump of ice.
It was shaped like a person. The body was twisted, and the expression on his face was one of abject fear.
“What…is that?”
The boy shrugged. “Your customer.”
“Th-th-that young man?”
“Did you have another?”
Still on the floor, the captain crawled like an infant over to where the boy was standing. “What happened? Why did he freeze? Why is it so cold in here?” The captain looked up at the sorcerer, his eyes wide. “Did you do this? Y-you cast a spell on him, didn’t you?”
“Not I.” The boy sorcerer shook his head. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was judgment.”
“Judgment?”
“Yes, you know, the wrath of the heavens and all that. Looks like the Goddess finally passed judgment on Dela Rubesi and this one here tried to escape. Quite clearly, he failed.” The boy sorcerer turned with a whirl of his black cloak and picked up the bundle of papers from beside the frozen man’s pillow.
“You can’t take that…”
“Why not? It’s certainly not doing him any good now. But I may have some use for it.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t belong to you, boy,” the captain said, deciding that perhaps this boy was just a boy after all, and in need of a scolding.
The black-haired sorcerer raised an eyebrow. “Nor to him,” he said, pointing the rolled bundle of papers at the block of ice on the floor. “He stole it from someone else. He