Hey, what color is God? Julius had once asked his nursemaid. As a small child he’d had an endless need to know things; he wouldn’t rest until he’d cleared up whatever question was bothering him. Well, young master, color is essentially light. God is light itself. He holds all colors within him, so He doesn’t have one particular color He has to be. That was more or less how her answer went, he remembered. At the time he’d been totally awestricken, and he’d accepted the answer without question, but thinking back on it now that he knew something about the principles of color, wouldn’t mixing all colors together make Him virtually black? It would mean God was black, a jet-black that swallowed up the light. This is a silly argument… Gazing down at the dark-gray city below him, Julius sighed and left off thinking about stupid things. The view from the windows of his family home was a steel city that looked almost like a great collection of steam locomotives, making extravagant use of the scant mineral dregs that could still be gotten from the mining district to the northwest. Thick smog belched unendingly from the exhaust pipes sticking out of every corner of every building. If you looked down on them from this mansion near central headquarters, the ordinary residential districts in the middle and lower strata looked like gray miniature gardens dim with smog. He heard one of the servants say “Welcome home, sir,” and things got noisy down on the first floor. He turned away from the window on the landing halfway up their staircase that he’d been gazing at the skyline through and jogged down the steps. He could see his father in the entryway, surrounded by servants. Julius had been waiting ever since he’d heard that his father would be able to make it home today. “Dad.” “Ah, Julius. Did you get taller again?” his father said as soon as he saw him, taking off his greatcoat and handing it to one of the servants. “I was hoping we could have dinner together, but it turns out I have to go right back to the station. I’m only stopping by here.” Julius was privately dismayed. He didn’t let it show, though. Shoving it down, he said, “Oh, I see…that must be rough.” He was relieved that he’d managed to answer with something that sounded understanding. But still, their schedules hadn’t overlapped once over the whole end-of-semester vacation, and now look what happened just when they finally got to see each other for the first time in a month… He couldn’t just whine like a spoiled kid about it, though. Strings of disturbances were happening both in the upper stratus of the capital and on the streets of the ordinary residential districts lately, and the Security Forces were saddled with a whole mess of thorny problems at once. They’d been juggling madly just to keep all the balls in the air. His dad had his hands fuller than ever, to the point where Julius worried he might actually work himself to death. “Is there anything I can help out with?” “Thanks for the offer, but it’s not so bad that we need to bring you in yet.” He flashed Julius a cheerful smile, but his cheeks were a little pale with exhaustion. He might only be of medium height, but he’d always been relatively well-built. Now Julius thought he’d gotten a little thin—maybe “haggard” would be a better word, even. “Sorry I don’t have much time to talk. You’re going back tomorrow, is that right?” “Yeah.” The spring semester started in two days, so Julius had planned to go back to the seminary school dormitory tomorrow. The seminary was plenty close enough for him to commute from here, but his busy father was hardly ever at home and had thought it would be better for his son to live with friends than all alone with the servants, so Julius was living in the dorms on his advice. Not that he actually had all that many “friends,” really. One of the problems causing a stir in the capital these days was a string of the same sort of monster incidents that had happened before in “Gate Town.” The monsters were showing up in the capital’s ordinary residential districts and on the streets of Gate Town, among other places, and there had been a rash of attacks on citizens over the last month or two. “There was another incident today, so we’re stepping up security even more. It seems like there have been a lot of victims down in the lowest areas in particular, where the exits of the waterways are…I don’t want you going outside without being careful either, you hear me? It’s dangerous.” “Have you found out what they are, Dad?” His father’s face clouded evasively at his question. Even though his dad was a tough nut to crack, and Julius had the feeling it would be many years yet before he got any good at dragging his real thoughts out of him, his dad didn’t tell lies. Julius was fairly certain he had a good idea what was going on, but from this reaction, he guessed it wasn’t the kind of idea his dad could make public. Something that couldn’t be made public…Which meant there was someone out there it would make trouble for if it went public. Someone at the top, most likely. Trouble was threatening the upper ranks of the Church from inside and out right now; a weird disquiet had been hanging in the air for months. The people who were supposed to be wreathed in light, the objects of Julius’s faith for the past sixteen years, seemed to be languishing in the same murky gray as the city itself. Something appeared to strike his father, who’d been stroking his chin, pondering something. “Come to think of it, Julius,” he said, “there’s a little something I’d like you to do for me after all. Will you do me a favor?” “Huh? Sure, what is it?” Julius asked quickly, leaning forward. He’d always wanted to become someone who could really be useful, but this was the first time in his life that his father had ever asked him for a favor. Before he knew it, his eyes were shining with excitement. “Two things, actually. First, I’d like you to go visit a certain girl.” “Girl?” Well, that’s not what I was expecting. He couldn’t help feeling disappointed. This mission seemed kind of lame. He’d been just a little bit hopeful it would be a job more like fighting the monsters or investigating them or something…His father chuckled good-naturedly, clearly reading his mind. It felt as though he was seeing right through Julius and thinking he hadn’t changed since he was a little boy who liked to go on imaginary adventures. Completely embarrassing. “Now, don’t be like that. The second job is close to what you want. And while you’re doing that one, I just want you to go check on a friend’s daughter who’s about to arrive in the capital. I haven’t gotten word from my men, but if everything’s going to plan, she should get here today or tomorrow.” “Huh,” Julius said disinterestedly. Even after hearing the explanation, he just couldn’t really get into it. “She’s just about your age, you know. Look.” Half of Julius’s mind was occupied with thinking I hope the second job is something about the monsters as he took the photograph his dad was holding out to him and casually looked down at it, but in that instant he was shocked out of his wits, and all other thoughts flew from his brain. “Huh?!” He stared hard at the photo. A raven-haired girl around his own age, wearing a white bridal-veil-looking thing and a shy smile—the thought of what that must mean was a bit of a shock, but no matter how many times he tried to come up with some other explanation, there was no mistaking it: He recognized her. Their final words to each other when he’d last seen her sprang to his mind. We’ll see each other again, won’t we? Yeah. I think we will. He’d never imagined they’d be meeting again like this, of course. A half-translucent floating spirit was drifting around near the ceiling. Kieli gazed up at it indifferently for a bit and then looked forward again. She’d heard that long ago, when this had been an exile planet where prisoners who’d committed serious crimes on the mother planet were banished, this was where the prison camps had been, and the capital city was built on those foundations. The gray town walls surrounding it were supposedly left over from the prison camps, too. When people had eventually figured out that there were mineral resources on this planet, the prisoners were drafted into hard labor in the shafts of mines all over the planet, beginning with the district to the northwest. This was God’s city, built on the graves of those prisoners who’d been used for hard labor until they died. All the different facilities around her formed a sort of giant sprawling complex, centered on the tallest two towers in its forest of steeples: the cathedral’s belfry and the energy tower that powered the city. An ostentatious gate loomed in front of her. Evidently the pass that priest had given her was the real thing after all (which Kieli’d definitely had her doubts about), because when she showed it to the gate attendant, he completely lost his head, and once he regained his composure, he guided Kieli to the Preaching Department’s tower as if she were an honored guest. Regular pilgrims could take the central walkway from the gate and go straight to the cathedral, but getting to the Preaching Department felt like navigating a maze. Kieli was guided down winding walkways, up zigzagging steps, down dizzying spiral stairways, and through cloisters connecting towers and buildings before they finally arrived at the Preaching Department entrance. She just knew she wouldn’t be able to find the way back by herself. She ended up having to wait there for a while. ……She was about to finally meet (the man who might be) her father. All of a sudden her hands were cold. She clenched them tightly at her sides. She’d been offered a seat in the waiting room, but she’d refused. She waited standing still as a statue in the entryway to the tower. She could see priests dressed in black busily coming and going. Some of them darted funny looks at her as they went by, probably wondering what an obviously out-of-place girl like her was doing here. A little uncomfortable, Kieli dropped her gaze and stared at her feet. “Hey,” she murmured softly…to the one presence that ought to be right nearby. The air shifted slightly in response, and she pinpointed where it was. This man could really be inconspicuous when he chose to be. He blended into any situation, faded into the woodwork wherever he went, but with Harvey and Harvey alone there was obvious bad blood. Kieli hated him, but she had no one else to turn to right now, and she found herself striking up a conversation with him as if it were the natural thing to do. “Do you know your dad?” After she’d asked that, she regretted it. Joachim wouldn’t know his parents any more than Harvey did. Kieli changed the question. “…If you met your dad, what would you do?” She knew that to him, it wasn’t even a hypothetical; it was something that could never possibly happen. “Eh…I’d kill him,” he answered in a flippant whisper. Kieli found herself turning around slightly before she thought better of it. The lanky man with blue-gray eyes and a priest’s outfit was looking down at her with the same thin smile as always. “I mean, it’d be creepy, right? And if he looked like me, that would be the pits. Think about it: there’d be another one of me!” The way he said it, he made it sound as though he couldn’t stand even one of him existing already. When Kieli turned her gaze forward again, he kept on whispering. “Just so we’re clear, I’ll tell you one more time…I’m going to kill your dad, you know.” “Whatever,” Kieli spat back without looking at him, and heard him give a sarcastic little closed-mouth laugh. “I see. Well, then, have fun at your meeting.” His presence abruptly vanished. Just as she was about to turn around again, a loud voice cried, “Th-thank goodness!” and she heard clattering footsteps speeding toward her. It was that young priest who’d come to the northwestern mining district as an envoy. Kicking up the hem of his robes in his haste, he ran to her the same way he had when they’d first met. One moment he was flapping both hands busily back and forth, wailing, “I couldn’t get through to your guards, and I thought you’d r-run awa—!” and the next he broke off and nervously cast his gaze all around where Kieli stood. His face went a shade paler with surprise. “Er, what about the people…people? with you…?” he asked, interrupting and then repeating himself weirdly (now that she thought about it, Kieli supposed someone like him really might have trouble figuring out how much like “people” to treat her companions). When she turned around at the question to look for the slate-gray man standing behind her, he’d already melted into the stream of priests coming and going and was nowhere to be seen. She guessed maybe he was done with her now that he’d so successfully infiltrated Church headquarters. Kieli didn’t feel inclined to help or hinder him, so she didn’t broach the subject. “…We got separated,” she said, facing the priest again and explaining what had happened in a voice stripped of all emotion. When she gave him a bare-bones version about being attacked on the train by some monsterlike things (she didn’t know if he knew what they really were, so she was deliberately vague), it turned out word apparently hadn’t reached him yet. His normally pale face went even paler. “Also,” Kieli added over his earnest promises to send help right away, “the man who was with me might be hurt, so…please look for him.” She lowered her voice and narrowed her eyes in unspoken warning. I’ll never forgive you if you hurt him. The priest visibly flinched (during that mess in the mining district Kieli herself had resisted him pretty violently, so he seemed to be afraid of her now), then turned to a lower-ranking priest nearby and gave rapid-fire orders about how to deploy the rescue team. As he guided her inside the tower, they ended up talking about the matter at hand again—in other words, her meeting with Father Sigri. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll probably have to wait a while longer. The Father is very busy at the moment…Well, we’re all in a tizzy right now,” the priest explained over his shoulder as they climbed the stairs. Now that he mentioned it, she’d walked through a fair bit of headquarters on her way to the Preaching Department’s tower, and it had seemed as though there was a surprising amount of uproar going on for the home base of the Church. She’d imagined someplace more solemn and dignified—or rather sedate, really. After the broad staircase right in front of the entrance, the next set of steps was a spiral staircase along the wall. Around the time they’d climbed about three floors’ worth of it and Kieli’s legs were starting to get tired, the priest stopped and said, “Wait here for a few minutes, please,” shepherding her toward a room next to them. Two women dressed in simple black clothes stood in front of it. Kieli assumed they were lady’s maids. Leaving Kieli in their hands, the priest hurried busily off somewhere, and she was suddenly abandoned to stand all alone in front of people she didn’t know. She shied back a little. The large, somewhat overweight one glared down at her with harsh eyes that made Kieli cringe, but she glared right back just as fiercely. She’d already decided there was no way she’d let herself be intimidated in a place like this. She figured if she chickened out or licked anyone’s boots here, it would mean she’d lost. No way am I going to lose. I’m sticking this out until he comes for me. The chubby, grumpy-looking lady-in-waiting looked her over sharply from head to toe, and Kieli found herself following her gaze and looking down at herself, too. She was still dressed in her travel clothes: the unrefined black duffle coat, beaten-up shoulder bag, dirty jeans, and dirty boots. She hadn’t really bothered to untangle her hair much, either. When she glanced back at the way she’d come, she saw that she’d left clear boot prints on the glossy polished floor. No way will I lose. That was the plan, sure, but when they dragged her into the room, peeled off her clothes, and tossed her in the bath, it wasn’t something Kieli could really protest. In the end, it was afternoon by the time Kieli had been made presentable enough for decent company in preparation for her meeting and by the time the high-ranked man she was supposed to meet was finally free; fortunately (fortunately?), he didn’t seem to have been murdered by a mysterious man in priest’s clothes in the meantime. Escorted by the same priest as before, who’d come back to get her, Kieli climbed up more stairs toward an office near the very top of the tower, almost trampling the hem of her skirt something like three times. It had been a while since she’d worn one. They’d put her in a black bolero jacket with just a thin strip of white at the neckline and a black skirt that fell below her knees with a fluffy white petticoat underneath. The whole outfit reminded her of the uniforms at her Easterbury boarding school. She was dressed up like a little lady for the first time in two and a half years. I wonder how much I’ve changed since then. She also wondered what her maybe-father would think of her when she stood before him suddenly seventeen, after they hadn’t seen each other since she was a baby. Back when she was living with her grandmother and going to the Church kids’ program, whenever the other kids started going on about their moms and dads, Kieli had started playing all by herself outside the circle of conversation, pretending not to be interested. And the truth was, she hadn’t even been all that interested. She’d never known her parents to begin with, so she didn’t “miss” them, and since having her grandmother with her was enough for her, she didn’t spend any time wishing she could meet them, either. But ever since she’d met her mother, Setsuri, she’d thought about her father a tiny bit more, too. Still, her mental image of him had always been really difficult to put a face to. In her mind, her father figure was blank and featureless. Kieli had sometimes hoped he was someone like Jude. The Jude in Kieli’s memories, though, never showed his face, either. All she had left was the strong impression that he had the same sort of vibe as Harvey. Making Harvey into her father figure was just insane, so she’d given up on that train of thought. She figured any kid with Harvey for a father would either turn delinquent, or go the opposite route and turn into someone who really had their act together. And right now, the father figure she could imagine concretely for the first time…was someone who’d wrecked things for her mother and had tormented Harvey, Beatrix, Jude, and who knew how many others. Someone who was nothing more than Kieli’s greatest enemy. Her heart beat audibly fast in her chest. She balled her cold hands into fists. Joachim…aren’t you here? Uneasy on her own, she found herself casting about for the gray man’s presence, but she couldn’t sense it anywhere. “Please, come this way,” prompted the priest. They were standing in front of the door to the room he was waiting in. Kieli yanked her thoughts back on track and lifted her eyes. Straightening her spine and steeling herself, she looked straight ahead fiercely enough to beat back anything and everything. She was no longer the slightly nervous girl who couldn’t say what she wanted to say that she’d been at fourteen. She’d come here to settle things, to protect the people she cared about, so they could all go home together. Kieli stood in the doorway and stared straight ahead. Bookshelves crammed full of thick books covered one whole wall, and there were piles of papers sitting everywhere. It definitely looked like a civil servant’s office. Rather than the lavish office of a pompous big shot that she’d been picturing, it made her think more of a novelist’s study, packed with all the books it could hold; one little spark would send the whole place up in flames, no doubt about it. And behind the big writing desk at the far end of the room, she saw a person. He seemed hard at work, talking about something with a middle-aged priest who stood next to the desk, until out of the blue he bellowed angrily, “Don’t bring every tiny little approval like this to me!” Kieli started in surprise. The middle-aged priest squeaked and shrank back, too. The forms he’d brought had just been flung back at him, and he humbly apologized as he stooped to pick up all the scattered papers before fleeing as fast as his legs would carry him past Kieli and out of the office. Jumping to the side, she watched him go. Standing up with both hands pressed against his desk, the man, Father Sigri, noticed them there for the first time. “Er, I’ve…brought her with me, sir…” the young priest who’d escorted her said hesitantly. “A-ah, yes.” Father Sigri coughed, looking somewhat embarrassed, smoothed out the worst of his disarranged hair, and sat back down in his chair before looking at Kieli again. The tightly coiled tension between them just kind of went slack for a few seconds, and they ended up staring at each other stupidly. Kieli certainly hadn’t been picturing a “touching reunion with her long-lost father” or anything; she’d just assumed and prepared herself for something more like a staring contest between mortal enemies. But there just wasn’t a clear sort of “now we meet” moment. It turned into a really vague, sloppy first meeting. The man sitting on the other side of the writing desk wasn’t a nasty holier-than-thou pontiff who sat all high and mighty in his chair looking down his nose at the world, or a snake-oil-salesman sort of pontiff with a gentle manner and a fake-looking smile on his face, or even one with a greasily gleaming bald head who had gold teeth and whatnot and generally reeked of evil. No, he was a slightly disheveled, tired-looking man of medium height and slight build whose black hair was visibly starting to go gray. Beneath his thin wire glasses his eyes were lighter than Kieli’s, and the solid, heavy desk didn’t suit him, although the piles of books did—basically, he didn’t give the impression of a stately pontiff at all, whatsoever. He seemed bewildered by the weird beginning to their meeting, too, at a loss for words for a little while. Then he pasted a highly awkward smile on his face and said, “Well…um, thank you for coming such a long way.” The sentiment was slightly out of line with the mood of the room and delivered in a tone as awkward as the smile. Kieli stood rooted to the ground, dumbstruck. The truth was that her knees were knocking, and she felt as if she might crumple to the ground any second. Her head was swimming with confusion. He was just so—so normal. I came here to hate you, maybe even kill you if I had to! So why are you putting on that dumb-looking smile and saying stuff like you’re trying to get on my good side?! All of a sudden Kieli was mad. Because the ham-handed but earnest way he tried to string words together sort of reminded her of the way Harvey had been acting lately. So she was mad, because she couldn’t forgive her worst enemy for seeming like Harvey. Don’t try to act like Harvey! “Would you come a little closer…?” He stood up from his chair and reached out a hand to her. Kieli took a step back in defiance. Folding her arms in front of her chest to shield herself, she said, “I still…haven’t gotten the full story. You might have the wrong person—” At her stony rejection, he gave her a blank look, one hand still stretched out toward her. “You couldn’t possibly be the wrong person. You look just like Setsuri.” “You don’t…” …have the right to say my mother’s name. She went hoarse before she could get the rest of the words out, and the sentence petered into nothing. Kieli bit her lip and looked down. No, no, I can’t lose, she told herself, and forcibly held on to her brave attitude. “Then why did my mother…why did she have to leave here? Mom…got killed by the Church…!” There was silence for a few moments. Father Sigri’s voice lowered gloomily. “Yes, I heard the report.” The instant Kieli heard that, the mental thread she’d been somehow managing to hang on to snapped with no warning, and two thick tears trickled down her cheeks and dropped to her feet. She could sense Father Sigri, and the priest standing next to him anxiously watching the proceedings, panic. Kieli summoned up the strongest attitude of rejection that she could muster and roughly wiped the wetness from her face with her sleeve. Slowly edging farther backward until she reached the doorway, she said shrilly, “I will never, ever forgive you. I hate you. I hate this place. It’s noisy, and everyone’s in a hurry, and they all look tired, and they don’t care one bit how anybody feels…and they shove you into a bath and make you wear clothes you don’t want to wear…!” Kieli clenched the hem of her skirt tightly in her fists. “It’s a lie that I was born here. It’s a lie that my mom was ever here. Because I hate this stupid place! There isn’t even a God here…!”
Chapter 104
23 min read