Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 602

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 45.
The Velvet-Lined Invitation (15)
Giscar asked, his expression clouded with confusion.
“I beg your pardon, but how did you know?”
“That is… no, I shall explain that later. For now, I have only one thing to tell you. Sell it immediately. Through the channels I am about to describe, it will be safe. Your daughter must not continue to possess it under any circumstances.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying someone is after it?”
Liza shook her head slowly, then nodded. Her eyes trembled faintly as she gazed at Giscar.
“Yes. That is correct. Someone is after it. But you must forget that part of the conversation. Whoever seeks it—that is something you never knew. Do not even attempt to learn. Simply allow your daughter to part with it, and nothing will happen. She will be safe. You are merely disposing of a small trinket. No one will come asking questions. Is Bernard not already dead?”
In Liza’s manner of speaking, the meaning was unmistakable: truth is dangerous, so take the easier path. It was essentially a notification, or rather, a threat. An extraordinarily unusual situation. Though I had known Liza for a long time, and had encountered Nightwalkers countless times, I had never experienced anything like this.
Regardless of its origins, Nightwalk was now an organization belonging to the Friends of the People—more precisely, merely a committee within the Information Division. Though it was a committee of unimaginable scale, when one considered such things, telling Giscar, who served as the ideological mentor to the Friends of the People, “it is dangerous, so do as you are told” was, even if born from personal goodwill, an affront of bewildering rudeness and an overstepping of authority.
Above all, Giscar was not the sort of man who would simply obey and then comfortably forget. Had he been such a man, he would have been born into a station where he could spend his life on trivial pursuits like horse breeding or patronizing artists—he would never have built such a perilously dangerous organization in pursuit of republican revolution. Liza must know this well. Yet why was she doing this?
At length, Giscar answered quietly.
“I do not understand why you would say such things.”
“The Master is concerned for your safety.”
Liza had never before spoken so plainly of something being the Master’s will. Rather than surprise, Giscar offered a bitter smile.
“I am grateful for the concern, but surely I am not so pitiful a creature as to open the greenhouse door, discover it is the depths of winter outside, and freeze to death?”
Though I knew the sickness was of my own making, I have never regretted stepping beyond the world I was born into. Giscar spoke indirectly as was his custom, but Liza was not one to misunderstand his meaning. He had made it clear he would not accept such a request without understanding its purpose. Even after hearing words that amounted to an ultimatum, Liza persisted a moment longer. The words that barely escaped her were these:
“You are far too important to us.”
“If the Master wishes to place me in a cradle and protect me, I suppose I can rest easy for the next hundred years or so—though I confess it would grow rather tedious.”
“Please, Councilor…”
At last, Liza’s voice wavered. Giscar waited and considered. If Liza’s exceptional demeanor reflected the Master’s will, what in the world had happened to Nightwalk?
“I understand you will not comprehend this easily. I know it is extraordinarily rude. I knew it before I opened my mouth. But I cannot speak of it. I absolutely cannot. I can only earnestly beseech you to heed our words. It is a matter of life and death. Your daughter, yes, but above all, you yourself… please, do not even touch that object.”
Giscar smiled with deliberate intent.
“Ah, but you know, for children, a toy placed on a high shelf by adults becomes the most fascinating thing in the world.”
“Surely you are wise enough to understand that there exist dangerous things in this world that must not be touched?”
“I believe I have grown old enough that someone might explain why a toy is dangerous.”
“No. No, that is not so. Regardless of age or wisdom, most things in this world need not be known. How I wish I had never learned… Had you been anyone else, I would not have come here with such words. I would simply have pretended ignorance. That we have come to you in this manner is an act of reckless danger—in truth, we have wagered our lives. That is how precious you are to us.”
Giscar understood that Liza spoke from her heart. Yet at the same time, he did not believe himself to be a creature who should be sheltered in safety. He was but a single component existing for the Friends of the People. He could not rest easy leaving a dangerous secret in another’s hands. And moreover, it was because Giscar, as a father figure to the Friends of the People, did not entirely trust Nightwalk—that oddly brilliant younger sibling, as it were.
Giscar leaned back slightly, drew in his chin, and spoke quietly.
“I am rather unsuited to handling information, but if matters proceed thus, I shall have no choice but to investigate what that revolver is myself.”
“If you do so, Councilor, we will have no choice but to steal it from you.”
They looked into each other’s eyes. The smiles had vanished. Giscar understood that Liza had no intention of ever telling him why she feared that object. And in this moment, he understood that Nightwalk possessed secrets it did not share with the Friends of the People. This was a grave schism.
A gaze cold and aristocratic, one that none of those close to him in recent years had witnessed—the look Giscar had worn in his twenties—pierced through Liza’s eyes.
“Should you proceed thus, this matter will be elevated to the Investigation Division.”
“….”
To say it would go to the Investigation Division meant it would be handled by the Exile Council, the leadership of the Friends of the People, and could become a matter of organizational betrayal. Coming from Giscar’s lips, this was no jest.
Liza rose from her seat.
“The Master said you would not easily be persuaded, and indeed you are not. Of course, there was a way to provide some fabricated reason. But that would have been an insult to the respect we hold for you. Now, forced to weigh respect against your life, I find myself regretting the choice I made at the outset. Very well. As you wish, I shall place truth and death together in a single box and present them to you.”
Liza’s eyes were red. Her lips trembled. The nails of her clenched fists dug into the skin of her hands. She trembled because she was afraid—afraid of the Nightwalker who had killed and remade herself countless times and walked through life with an unmoved face—and could not suppress herself.
“There is one who seeks that revolver. That person is… the nightmare of every Nightwalker… one without humanity, without compassion, without even the base emotions of a beast… one whom it is difficult to believe was born of human flesh. We do not call that person by any name, but when necessary, we refer to them as ‘the Ancient One’… and no one knows their true name… they are known only by the epithet ‘Ironface.'”
Giscar listened to Liza’s voice—as if it had been drawn from a black void—with the expressionless composure of marble. It was as though darkness came rushing toward the realm of reason and collided with it. One could not truly comprehend the terror that ancient peoples felt witnessing nature’s indiscriminate rampage by studying illustrations in glossy picture books. The more violent the brushstrokes, the more awkward and absurd they appeared.
If this had been the thought of Liza alone, one might have dismissed it as the peculiarity of a single mind. But that so many Nightwalkers—so many people—harbored such terror toward one person defied all rationality. His colleagues in the Friends of the People, who prided themselves on logical judgment, would have been merely bewildered. Or they would have attempted to calm her.
But Giscar was different. He was both theorist and artist, and above all, he was Orlannese. The Orlannese grew up sitting by warm hearths, listening to eerie folk tales that pierced through their safe world. Such tales never ended in rational conclusions. They always spiraled toward unforeseen catastrophe.
One meets a fairy and receives a gift, but upon seeking explanation, transforms into a Tree Root. Threefold kindness is repaid with threefold curse. An abandoned child hears the severed head of the family they desperately sought cry “Flee!” from within a box, only to realize it is already too late.
Fairies are seized by madness, Mages fall prey to wicked temptation, talking beasts seek to steal human souls, and beautiful treasures are merely traps laid by Monsters. That world was said to exist somewhere beyond the Northern Sea of Orlanne, or in Orlanne thousands of years past. Some claimed it dwelt within the minds of the Orlannese themselves.
Because he was Orlannese, Giscar dimly understood the terror Liza had attempted to convey. It was like holding a grotesque picture book from a folk tale, hesitating over how far to turn its pages. If he turned to the end, he would enter the world within the book.
What Liza had said was, in truth, nothing remarkable. Merely a tale of one wicked criminal. Such creatures exist everywhere, in every age, a few in each generation. Yet Liza was seized by something more—a fear that, if such a phrase were permissible, might be called “Orlannese” in nature. What had she glimpsed in that person to warrant such dread?
As Liza’s trembling subsided, she continued in a low voice.
“That revolver must simply disappear by chance. You must not hide it. He is not one to leave alive anyone who knows what they are searching for. From this moment onward, you stand in the same position as I do, Councilor. Please, I beg you—dispose of the revolver according to the method I describe. That is your only chance to survive.”
Giscar looked at the hourglass resting on the table. Seeing that the sand had nearly run out, he rose and extinguished the candle. With a soft sound, faint dawn light seeped through the darkness beyond the chamber. It was time for them both to leave.
With his face half-shrouded in shadow, Giscar asked.
“Did that person kill Bernard?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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