Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [289]
The harbor was perfectly calm. The sailship surrounded by the windspheres was an old craft with a leaning mast. The mark of the yellow fist on its side was almost completely worn away. Practically everything on the ship was rusted. Its sails were down, and only the mainmast stood, like a sickly tree stripped of all its leaves. Still, the ancient-looking craft sat calmly on the water, rocking gently with the slow movement of the waves. The other ships in the water sailed nearby with their sails hanging limp from the masts, as though nothing had happened.
Wataru and Meena started running toward the ships. A second later, Kee Keema tossed aside his wooden door and joined them.
The wooden quay was ancient, with yawning gaps between the boards. Wataru caught glimpses of the water below. Sticking his foot through a rotted plank, he came to an abrupt stop.
“Mitsuru!” he shouted, wringing the last ounce of strength out of his body.
The back door of the captain’s cabin opened, and a small male figure walked out toward the stern. He was wearing a sorcerer’s black robe.
Mitsuru.
In one hand he held his staff. His other hand gripped the gunwale. His expression showed half surprise and half amusement. “Oh, it’s you.”
Wataru could hear the waves lapping against the quay. Seabirds that had flown away from the tornadoes in fright were slowly beginning to circle back to shore.
“What are you doing here?”
“That’s my line!” Wataru shouted back. He caught a glimpse of someone moving behind Mitsuru in the cabin. That must be the old captain.
“I’m crossing the sea in this sailship. We’re about to set sail,” Mitsuru said, his voice ringing clear over the water, even though he didn’t seem to be shouting.
“What, to the Northern Empire?”
Mitsuru didn’t answer. He was inspecting the balls of air floating above his head as one would examine a piece of machinery. The twisters that had so violently smashed their way through town just moments before were now tamed, floating in their translucent spheres, spinning in silence.
“Is there some other place I might go?” Mitsuru asked.
Wataru began to walk toward the sailship. One step, then another. Meena and Kee Keema started to follow him, but he waved them back. “Why are you going to the north?”
“Isn’t it obvious? That’s where my next gemstone is.”
In response, the gemstone atop the staff in Mitsuru’s hand begin to glimmer: first red, then green, blue, and finally, amber.
Four colors. He already has four colors.
Wataru realized all at once that his Brave’s Sword and Mitsuru’s staff collected gemstones quite differently. His sword added gemstones into the fixtures on its hilt. But Mitsuru’s staff seemed to absorb energy and power from the collected gemstones.
“Just one more,” Mitsuru said, looking at his staff. “And that’s in the north. That’s why I have to go.”
“And you were too busy to listen to what the Precept-King in Dela Rubesi had to say?”
Mitsuru’s dark eyes opened wide. “Oh, so you went to Dela Rubesi, then?”
“We did.”
“You’re too nice for your own good. I figured even you wouldn’t waste your time there.”
Wataru ignored the chiding tone in Mitsuru’s voice and stared back at him. “Dela Rubesi is gone. The Precept-King is dead.”
Mitsuru said nothing.
“The fugitive is dead too, frozen solid even while he lived. You know, don’t you?”
Mitsuru continued to remain silent, his hair blowing freely in the breeze. Wataru noticed that his hair was longer now than it had been when they met at the hospital.
“You were with the fugitive, weren’t you? You knew he was going north, so you used him to find passage, didn’t you?”
“He was a source of information,” Mitsuru said, simply. “And he did beg me. You know, he didn’t even have enough money to pay his own fare.”
“Where are the diagrams the fugitive was carrying?” Wataru asked, his eyes never leaving Mitsuru’s face.
Mitsuru laughed, his eyes narrowing. That was answer