Chapter 41: Your Worth Is

"—Yes, I kept it from you. It was my decision."

Faced with the accusation head-on, Russell showed hardly a flicker of unease; if anything, it was Subaru, the one doing the pressing, who ended up rattled. Hot on the heels of the back-to-back declarations of resolve from Melty and then "Black Dog", and the crucial fact that had come out in the middle of them, Emilia and the others' escape from the royal castle, he had just put the question to Russell.

"For the time being, I have parked the castle above the clouds. Between raising it to its altitude limit and the effect of Perception Inhibition, we should be able to buy ourselves some time. Meanwhile, we will settle our next move and our course of action. Is that agreeable?"

So Russell had decided, after taking his hand off the black sphere that steered the castle, the Sky Control Orb, and bringing Kugelschreiber Castle to a standstill high in the sky. It should be added that Subaru had campaigned to name the orb the "Ball Handle," only for Beatrice to veto it on the grounds that it already had an official name.

"Betty would like to take your side, Subaru, but she can't ignore a name Mother gave it first, in fact. Betty will teach you all sorts of things about this castle later, I suppose."

"It's a promise. Come to think of it, picking up the thing you left behind kind of fell by the wayside too."

In the first place, before the Beloved Children attacked, Subaru and the others had been on their way to retrieve something Beatrice had left in the castle four hundred years ago. It was a gift from her mother, she'd said, and he had to make sure it made it back into Beatrice's hands.
And for that, too—

"I was kind of hoping we could clear the air between us, once and for all, right here..."

"I agree. As long as one has something up one's sleeve, it is no easy thing to open up to one another. I have always wished for a world in which everyone could show their cards to one another."

"Everyone except yourself... in fact? Always wanting to hold a trump card nobody else has, that's just the kind of thinking you'd expect from a friend of Roswaal's, I suppose."

"Hmm. I understand he is someone close to you, but I must say it is a bad habit, measuring me against Roswaal no matter what I do. Librarian, that may lead you to misjudge the true nature of things."

"H-h-how could this be, in fact...!"

Called out on it, Beatrice looked back over her own words and was stunned.
Subaru had assumed she was doing it on purpose, but apparently it had been unconscious. Patting the head of a frozen Beatrice, who had just realised she'd been thinking about the absent Roswaal the entire time, Subaru put an edge in his voice. "Russell."

"—'Silver Fox,' if you please. Even with no one else around, one should not let one's guard down."

"Sorry. But on this one, I'm doing it on purpose, kind of. Isn't it about time we talked straight with each other too? Melty and 'Black Dog' did that much for us."

"And so you have come to plead your case directly, in place of those two?"

"I hear for them, even barging in on the boss is risking their lives. And it's not like they're using me or anything."

"I see. Sensible. —However, 'White Sheep' and 'Black Dog' both had their Curse Seals inscribed knowing full well the risks. Raising objections after the fact is out of line."

"Making it so they can't spill secrets, fine, I can swallow that much, but shutting down any pushback is going too far. Dictator or one-man company boss, when the guy at the top screws up the steering, it's game over... and if what's riding on it is a whole country, you could stand to be a little more careful."

"Careful, you say. —I believe I am being as careful as can be."

His voice dropping slightly, Russell slowly shook his head.
Something in the complicated shades of feeling behind that murmur snagged at Subaru, and he furrowed his brow. But before he could put the snag into words, Russell met his eyes.

"Those two... 'White Sheep' and 'Black Dog' lean toward goodness at heart. If they spent a long stretch of time with you, I could easily picture them warming up to you. And picture you taking their side as a result. It does not surprise me."

"So you can't get along with us because you figure you lean toward villain?"

"No, I do not consider myself a villain. —If I had to name it, I am nothing."

"...Nothing?"

When Subaru echoed it without thinking, Russell silently drew in his chin and looked around the room.
The place where Subaru and the others were now talking with Russell was the laboratory of Echidna, the Witch who had once been mistress of Kugelschreiber Castle: the room where they'd put the documents they had once tried to carry off back where they belonged, deciding instead to take the time to read through and examine them properly.
It was creepy, but Crusch and Ferris were already using the decent guest rooms, and he couldn't think of anywhere else suited to a private talk. That was the reason it got picked.
Looking around that room without a trace of feeling, Russell went on, not meeting their eyes.

"I sent several bird letters to begin with, in case some failed to arrive. The one who tipped you off was 'Black Dog', I take it. That came very close to breaching the terms of the Curse Seal... but those two never swore loyalty to the kingdom in the first place. A little slipping through the gaps is within bounds."

"You've already figured it out, so I'll spill: 'Black Dog' said he snuck a look at a bird letter. ...If it's an important report, doesn't sending a bunch of them just multiply the risk?"

"Bird letters have conditions for opening. To open a 'Six Tongues' bird letter, one must bear the same Curse Seal. That is a condition not even the 'Beloved Children' can meet."

"...A Curse Seal is an oath that binds the soul of whoever bears it, I suppose. If the 'Six Tongues' seal has rules all its own, imitating it is next to impossible, in fact. Perfect for security, I suppose."

Beatrice added this to Russell's answer to Subaru's concern. She seemed to have more or less recovered from the Roswaal shock, and Subaru gave her a firmer hug while he made sense of how "Black Dog" had managed to intercept the bird letter. Still, as Russell said, it must have been a close call.

"Just out of curiosity, what if it hadn't been a close call? What if he'd crossed the line?"

"The whole body is wracked with unbearable pain. Should one leak a secret that must not be revealed, not even one's life is exempt. By these rules... these regulations, we have held our own against the 'Beloved Children.'"

"And because you're steeped in all that, nothing that happens to anyone fazes you, Russell? Is that why you call yourself nothing? But the human heart isn't that simple."

That was right. A heart wasn't some handy tool that stopped cracking once you decided what it was. Even people like the Sin Archbishops and the "Witches", with values no ordinary person could grasp, surely couldn't escape being bound by their own hearts. But—

"When the world one sees is different, what takes shape upon it changes as well. Humans have the logic of humans, spirits the logic of spirits, beasts the logic of beasts. None of them apply to me. Neither spirit nor beast, and inhuman besides... no. A slave to the mechanism."

"The mechanism... You're saying you're a slave to the system?"

"I don't ask for sympathy. Nor for understanding. When two paths are weighed against each other within me, the one of greater value is chosen. That is the one sure compass I carry."

"...So that's your excuse for keeping what happened to Emilia and the others from us."

"It is a disclosure of my criteria. You are free to judge it an excuse or a whitewash."

Subaru sensed a deep, wide line being drawn between them. He didn't think Russell was trying to throw smoke in his eyes with some hollow, incomprehensible logic. Russell was probably dealing with them with his own brand of sincerity. It was only that, as he himself admitted, his criteria were vastly different from Subaru's and the others'.

Position and circumstance shape a great deal of who a person is. But more than his post as director of the "Six Tongues", the biggest thing defining who Russell was had to be his Blessing of Evaluation.

"—They say the famed Hoshin of the Wilderness had the same Divine Protection, you know."

That had come up in passing once, during some idle chat with Russell. Hearing it had left Subaru with very mixed feelings—because he had suspected that Hoshin, the man who founded the Kararagi City-States, was someone transported from another world, just like him. But if Hoshin was a Divine Protection holder, that theory got pretty shaky. If it was a case like Subaru's, an Authority sprouting later on, or if it wasn't transportation at all but full-on reincarnation, that would change things—but that line of thought could wait.

The role played by Hoshin of the Wilderness, holder of the Blessing of Evaluation, was enormous, a staggering achievement handed down across hundreds of years. Anyone capable of a feat like that was bound to have a different eye and different values from other people, and the same could be said of Russell. That was why he didn't ask to be understood. Because—

"Whether to ask for understanding or not, you've already weighed that too. You already came up with the answer."

"—Yes. That's exactly it."

Russell's lips softened into a smile and he nodded at Subaru, who had said it with a shiver. Even that smile, without a trace of malice, never inviting resentment... when Subaru considered how differently it had come to take shape than it would for anyone else, the harshness of the road Russell had walked filled him with something close to awe. It was like slipping in among a throng of aliens who saw and felt the world differently from you, and living every day so they never found out you weren't one of them. And if he had relied on his blessing to judge even whether he was pulling that off—

"Please don't expect me to change. This is who I am. That will not waver."

"—"

"—Not even a spirit can stay unchanged. Your way of thinking is far too lopsided, in fact."

Having listened to Russell's conclusion, Beatrice, who had lived a very long time, spoke with a bitter expression. Her argument, however, only carried weight because Beatrice herself had the will to change. The truth was that it didn't reach Russell, who saw no value in that. Feeling the gulf between them keenly, Subaru let out a long breath,

"I get why you kept it quiet. And I get that there's no point poking at it and asking why. So at least give me the details. You've got them, right? Stuff that's more detailed and more up to date than what 'Black Dog' had."

"Having hidden information from you once, do you not consider that I might falsify it next?"

"Sure I do. That's why I'm asking you to give it up already. From here on, it's a matter of trust. And on that trust, I'm telling you I won't believe it if you say you don't know what happened to Emilia and the others after that."

"Hmm. May I ask why?"

"The 'Six Tongues' already lost track of my friends once. You're not the type to make the same mistake twice. Besides, you must've had the watch on the castle cranked up as high as it goes."

If the "Six Tongues" had been founded to protect the Kingdom of Lugunica, then the safety of Emilia and the others, as candidates in the Royal Selection, had to be one of its highest priorities. At the very least, they could never have adopted a policy of neglecting them. There must have been more than enough eyes watching over them. Under Subaru's steady gaze, Russell stayed silent for a while before he began to speak. What he said was—

"—Lady Emilia and Lady Felt, who were confined in the royal castle, escaped with the help of Captain Marcos Gildark of the Royal Guard Knights, and are currently on the run. For some reason, the new Royal Selection candidate, Lady Filore, is said to be accompanying them."

"—! That scary-faced captain got Emilia and the others out? And Filore's with them too... Is that, uh, okay?"

Presented with this unexpected turn of events, Subaru stared, eyes wide. Marcos, the man who had supposedly taken Emilia and the others out, was the captain of the Royal Guard Knights. In other words, he was Reinhard's and Julius's superior, a man in an important position even by the kingdom's standards. If he had defied the royal castle's orders and fled with Royal Selection candidates, chaos in the capital was a certainty. On top of that, Filore being with them—

"Melty seems to have decided Filore's clean, as far as the Church of the Divine Dragon goes, and I don't think that girl could scheme anything either, but..."

"It appears she has joined them not as the Saint of the Church of the Divine Dragon, but as a private individual. That said, her First Knight is apparently with her."

"Filore's First Knight, that'd be..."

"—As you know, Heinkel Astrea."

That too was a fact that had come to light in the two months since Filore became a Royal Selection candidate, and one of the more shocking pieces of news surrounding the Royal Selection. Subaru's impression of Heinkel as a person refused to settle. It was true that the first impression had been the worst possible, but between his work in the Vollakia Empire and the suspicion that he had sided with Al while Subaru and Beatrice were sealed in the black orb, he was a man who could hardly have been harder to judge. Still, Subaru had a feeling it wasn't a case of Heinkel worming his way into Filore's good graces so he could use the good-hearted girl however he pleased.

"Then again, that's just a gut feeling mixed with wishful thinking. And things are gonna get super awkward between that old guy and Emilia-tan and Felt."

"If you mean conversation not flowing, the captain of the Royal Guard Knights gives him a run for his money, I suppose. ...Even knowing the details, there's still no end to the worrying, in fact."

"I'm sure Mr. Marcos is strong, no question there, but..."

Clashing with the Beloved Children firsthand had made it clear: what made them so troublesome wasn't raw fighting strength, but the wickedness of the underhanded tricks they pulled with their strange powers. And this was a theory Natsuki Subaru had arrived at over the course of his life in another world: the people in this world with real combat strength were weak against tricks. Because for them, a fight was usually won by whoever hit harder first. Which was why Subaru considered his own role to be seeing through the enemy's tricks, and then sending his allies out to the right positions, the ones where they could hit the enemy harder first.

"Put a winning hand where it can win. Like making them play rock-paper-scissors they can't lose. And for that, I really need to meet up with Emilia-tan and the—"

"—If you intend to defect in order to rejoin them, I will activate the Curse Seals of 'White Sheep' and 'Black Dog.'"

"Huh?"

Subaru, his face flushed with anxiety and eagerness in equal measure, couldn't keep up with Russell's next words for a moment. What had Russell just said? —Activate the Curse Seals on Melty and "Black Dog"?

"...That makes no sense, I suppose. Killing the two of them gets you nothing at all, in fact."

"I don't recall saying anything about taking their lives. Activating the Curse Seals... does nothing more than inflict the unbearable pain I mentioned earlier. A torment like having your soul torn apart. Not something one would care to taste twice."

"The way you say that, it's like you've..."

"I have. Do you imagine I've held my current position since the day I was born? I, too, was once like the 'White Sheep' and the others... in the position of receiving rather than giving. That is why I know. Just how great that pain is."

"—"

Russell spoke flatly, in a tone that left no room to suspect a lie, and a cold sweat ran down Subaru's cheek. It was an unmistakable threat, and just as plainly not an empty one. There was an inhumanity to Russell that left you certain he would go through with it. To borrow Beatrice's words, that was exactly what you'd expect from Roswaal's best friend. And then—

"...Our answer is the same as before, I suppose. Even if you only hurt the two of them instead of killing them, it means nothing to Betty and the rest of us, in fact."

"—Do you truly believe that, 'Librarian'?"

At the question, Beatrice's shoulders shook at Subaru's side. Her eyes flicked to Subaru standing beside her, and she bit her lip in frustration. He had tried as hard as he could to keep it off his face. But it was no use. It showed. —That Russell's threat had hit Subaru exactly where it hurt.

"I told you. I could easily imagine those two growing close to you."

"Then the reason you didn't make that threat sooner..."

"Is that it would not have had its full effect until you... strictly speaking, until 'Gray Star' had grown attached to those two."

"You really are Roswaal's friend, I suppose."

"For now, I will accept that assessment without complaint."

Beatrice spat the words bitterly, but Russell didn't so much as change expression. And in truth, his plan had all but worked. Knowing that his own actions would put Melty and the others through pain bordering on torture, Subaru couldn't choose that. But sitting on the other side of the scales was none other than Emilia.

"Russell...!"

"I won't tell you this is a move I didn't wish to make. When something is necessary, I turn over the necessary card. My criteria are as I have already explained."

"...A Curse Seal is bound to the soul. Since carving one requires the bearer's consent, undoing it from the outside is impossible, in fact."

Russell's answer to Subaru's teeth-gritted glare was cold, and Beatrice answered ahead of the next move Subaru was likely to want. The Curse Seals couldn't be removed, and Russell's values, like his very nature, couldn't be changed. —But Subaru had his own impossibilities, his own things that couldn't be changed.

Turning Natsuki Subaru into someone who could give up what mattered to him was impossible. So—

"—"

He thought. He thought until his mind seared and his brain cells boiled. In the recent battle against the "Beloved Children," he had forced the burden onto Crusch and Ferris, onto Melty and "Black Dog," and done nothing but nearly die. Now was the time to make up for all the time he'd spent lying flat, unable to do a thing, for the stupidity of not noticing that Emilia and the others were in danger. That was—

"—Take away my petty smarts and dirty tricks, and what've I got left?"

Subaru squeezed Beatrice's hand tight and, with his other hand, gripped the black orb at his chest. What he clutched in each hand was resolve and determination, and with them he set his soul burning and faced forward. Natsuki Subaru didn't change. And if Russell Fellow was the same—

"—Beako, got anything to write with in here? A brush, a pencil, a crayon, whatever."

"—! A crayon, I really wouldn't know about, I suppose. But we have something, in fact!"

Seeing Subaru's profile as he faced forward, Beatrice set her twin tails bouncing and dashed off. From a small room at the back of the laboratory, she brought back something like a black brush,

"Use this, I suppose! It's a brush Mother used, and its ink never runs out, in fact."

"No idea how that works, that's terrifying! But thanks. Next... I can use the back of this, right?"

Unexplained brush in hand, Subaru pulled a sheet from the documents piled on the nearby workbench. It was one that Russell had already appraised and judged worthless. After checking that the back of the old paper was blank, Subaru set the brush racing across it.

"—? 'Librarian,' what is 'Gray Star' doing all of a sudden...?"

"Hmph, even Betty doesn't know, I suppose. But this much I do know, in fact. —Subaru is about to knock you flat on your back, I suppose."

"—"

Unable to grasp what Subaru meant to do, Russell narrowed his eyes at Beatrice's air of certainty. If only to repay Beatrice's faith, Subaru had to blow him away. —And even if he couldn't, all he could do was believe this would work.

—Russell made the value his Blessing of Evaluation revealed, how great or small it was and how it shifted, the central axis of every judgement he made.

He had pinpointed the entrance the "Beloved Children" used to invade Kugelschreiber Castle by a plunge in value, and he applied it to choosing strategies and options as well, so its accuracy had to be high. The fact that he had held his own against Capella, about the worst enemy imaginable in a war of intelligence, proved as much. But precisely because of that, Russell should be unable to lie to his own Divine Protection. In which case—

"—This one ought to work on you!"

With that, Subaru folded the paper he'd been scribbling across, tore it in two along the crease down the middle, took a half in each hand, and turned back to Russell. Then he thrust the papers in his left and right hands out in front of Russell's face. What was written on them was—

"A comparison of Natsuki Subaru if he saves Lady Emilia, and if he does not...?"

"That's right! This one's me if I save Emilia! Rock-solid peace of mind, and sky-high trust in Russell for sharing his info! More fighting power, more options, that's this me! And on the flip side, me if I don't save her is..."

"Extra helpings of paranoia and worrying, and his trust in you, given you're willing to resort to threats, is in the negatives. Fighting power unchanged, and his head's somewhere else entirely... a Subaru with nothing going for him, in fact."

"Yeah, that!"

What was written on the papers split between his right and left hands was, to put it plainly, a choice. Depending on the decision made here, Natsuki Subaru could become either Natsuki Subaru. The paper laid out the differences in a little more detail, and the wording was somewhat exaggerated, but none of it was a lie. Of course, pressing on with no idea whether Emilia and the others were safe, throwing himself into the search for people he couldn't find and hoping that would pay off, wasn't out of the question as a course of action.

But even so, Natsuki Subaru was certain of one thing. That he was the kind of person who could be stronger when he was with the people precious to him than when he was worrying about them—.

"Well, Russell? You've trusted that Divine Protection of yours all this way. So use your Blessing of Evaluation, take a good hard look at which me is worth more to you, and choose your next words."

"—"

"Don't you dare lie... no, you probably can't do that anyway, so there's no need to worry, I suppose. Either way, there's someone else waiting in line, in fact."

As she said this, Beatrice, just like Subaru, held up papers in both hands with her own two futures written on them, and stood in front of Subaru so that they lined up with Russell's gaze. Of course, neither Subaru nor Beatrice had any guarantee which of the options they'd prepared held "value" in the universal sense. —They simply believed. And then—

"Come on, Russell." "Well? Answer us, I suppose."

"—. I have lived with these eyes of mine for over thirty years now, but..."

"—"

"You are the second. No, the third, if we count the Librarian."

As Subaru and Beatrice leaned in, demanding an answer, Russell suddenly spoke. Having said that much, he rubbed the spot between his brows with his fingers for a while, as though torn. It was the gesture of a man doubting whether what his own eyes had shown him was true, and looking again.

"—"

But after taking ample time and opening his eyes once more, Russell let out a short sigh. —Apparently, what his eyes showed him was the same as a moment ago. In other words—

"Using the value my own eyes have seen as their reason to make me swallow a decision so far removed from my own thinking... of the fearless ones who have tried."

It was an answer that made plain which of the options Subaru and Beatrice had presented looked more valuable in his eyes.

△▼△▼△▼△

—The instant she thought she heard a tremendous roar, Emilia had already leapt down from the bed of the covered dragon carriage.

"—Keep going! Don't stop, just run!"

She landed on the ground, half tumbling, and called out sharply to everyone around her. But she couldn't tell whether her voice had really reached them all. Because the shattering noise that had started ringing out was mixed with tremors, and they had begun violently shaking the whole of the Miresta Dragonback Bridge. The vibration coming up through the soles of her shoes started somewhere deep and far away, but it closed the distance all at once with a force like something thrusting upward, until at last it exploded with a boom.

"—Ah! No!"

Her desperate cry was drowned out by the screams and angry shouts that went up at the same moment. The people who had been crossing the Dragonback Bridge, and the land dragons carrying them, cried out one after another, loudly voicing their panic at the terrible thing that had befallen them. Emilia understood exactly how they felt. But that wouldn't do. Stopping and calling desperately for help was no use when everyone around them was caught in the same trouble. And then, with a force that swallowed up all of their screams, the one that wailed the loudest was none other than the Miresta Dragonback Bridge itself.

"No no no no! This is bad, Emilia! I can't explain it right, but it's super bad!!"

Louder even than the bridge's grinding shriek was Filore's enormous voice. Emilia looked and saw Filore leaning out of the back of the dragon carriage Emilia had jumped from, pointing behind her, pretty red eyes wide, flapping her arms about. At the same moment, Emilia felt the death throes of the violently shaking Dragonback Bridge running up right behind her—

"—Icicle Line!"

In an instant, white cold swirled, and pale blue ice dammed up the paving stones that were peeling away and about to drop through. The white frost spread with a sound like the air itself cracking, catching the wheels of dragon carriages that should have spun on nothing and sealing the holes that would have swallowed them, land dragons and all. One patch of emergency repair on the bridge, two, three—far too many to count.

"Honestly! Doing something this awful just to find us...!"

The hem of her robe whipping in the gusting wind, her long silver hair dancing, Emilia fumed. Before her eyes, on the Dragonback Bridge where the cracks of its breaking were still spreading, more than fifty dragon carriages had been travelling besides the one Emilia and the others rode in. Counting the people crossing on foot, there could have been anywhere from several hundred to well over a thousand. And all of them—

"I won't let you! I'm really, really angry, you know!"

Against pursuers who would stop at nothing and mercilessly take the lives of more than a thousand people, Emilia readied herself, burning with fury.

It was the opening of a battle on the final day of the Miresta Dragonback Bridge, which boasted more than three hundred years of history since its construction—the last time anyone would see it standing proud.