However, in this battle of stamina, his guards refused to part with him and answered, “With all due respect.” Should their master endure pain, then they would do the same.
“Then, the rest of you, prepare the meals.”
They had been standing in the same place all day, so Col felt like his knees and back were no longer his.
Myuri faltered as well, and Col supported her slim frame.
“Are you all right?”
“…I want to take a bath.”
“Me, too,” he responded lightly with a smile. Outside of the office, everyone was bending their knees and stretching. There were no friends or enemies in these shared actions. Though there was a hint of sourness between the chamberlains and Hyland’s attendants, they all shared sympathy for each other.
That being said, it seemed they preferred not to be seen going to the market together, so the chamberlains took the back entrance while Hyland’s attendants used the front gates. Col and Myuri had to buy food for themselves as well, but Myuri’s legs seemed like they hurt, so they decided to rest in the corner of a hallway along the way.
“That was awful.”
Myuri sat on a stack of crates along the side of the passageway and spoke with a smile.
“That blondie really has a nasty personality.”
Col unwittingly looked around, but no one was there. The assistant priests who were busily running around inside the church were probably in the main hall for evening prayers. And he detected a kind of respect in her words.
It was as if she was impressed.
“If you were sitting there, Brother, you would have given up before that old man got to the third page.”
And never mind all the subordinate priests’ emotions resting on his shoulders. It was impossible and out of the question.
“But what are those guys planning?” she mused.
He was less concerned about her acerbic manner of speech than about who exactly she was referring to.
“‘Those guys’?”
“Blondie and the old man. They both have a chance of winning, after all.”
“I thought about that, too.”
Hyland was waiting for the people to grow angry while the archbishop was waiting for the people to lose interest in the fight.
When he informed her of this, Myuri was extremely exasperated.
“See, Brother, that’s why you’re no good.”
“N-no good, why?”
Myuri raised her foot onto the crate and rested her chin on her knee. She looked like the boss of a children’s gang, about to lay out her plan to beat up the kids in the next village over.
“You’re good at archery and you’re stubborn, so walking around and hunting deer with a bow and arrow suits you. But you’re bad at hunting for numbers and traps.”
He did not know what she was talking about all of a sudden, but it was true. He would sometimes take his bow and arrow out into the mountains and shoot deer. His hunter acquaintances would applaud his results. However, when Myuri hunted in the mountains, they would grow heated, calling it an infringement on their territory. That was because she could catch enough squirrels and rabbits to live off any profits from their furs.
“Hunting with traps tests how nasty you are.”
“…Nasty?”
“You make lots of traps, then you create a path that forces and chases prey into it.”
Myuri was brilliant with such things, and Col himself was not. He knew nothing of the routes of squirrels and how the rabbits returned to their holes. He had a hard time efficiently looking at the big picture.
“It’s because you’re kind and honest.”
Myuri smiled.
“And that blondie must be plotting something because it’s obvious that old man has no one to turn to. The yelling strategy caught that man off guard yesterday, remember? That’s the makings of a hunter there. There’s no way that happened randomly without any preparation.”
“And so?” he asked, and Myuri shrugged.
“That blondie knows that it’ll take something more fundamental than a cheap resolution to turn the tide and make the old man give up. If not today, then tomorrow.”
Just then, his memory jumped to that dark night.
“No…way.”
Maybe that commotion, that boiling malice had not happened naturally.
To think that Hyland would do such a thing—that he would devalue the Church’s authority.
Col was at a loss for words from the shock, while Myuri merely looked on sadly.
“No matter how kind you are to the world, it doesn’t mean the world has to be kind to you.”
She appeared the same as she did when he was braiding her hair in front of the world map.
At that time, she was trying to hide her beast’s ears, her tail, and that she was a girl. No matter how curious she was about the outside world, the world would surely treat her cruelly.
Myuri had already realized that many years ago when she was very little.
“Blondie knows that in a few days, the town will be in a riot, which explains the confidence. But then, Brother.”
Myuri was gazing straight at him.
“That would be weird.”
“Weird? What could be more than…?”
“You remember, too, don’t you? It’s easy to make someone angry, but much harder to calm them down.”
Myuri suddenly grinned mischievously, and Col in turn smiled weakly. He remembered how much trouble it had been in the past to handle Myuri something had set her off.
“That’s…true.”
“But I don’t think that old man has no plan, though. He has to have something up his sleeve, too. But I have no idea what it might be. Your plan is too easygoing. It’s like fishing without a lure and just hoping some fish will bite it by accident. That’s why he must have some sort of strategy to deal with the crazy townspeople.”
Once she mentioned it, that sounded possible.
Both the archbishop and Hyland had large burdens to bear. There was no way either of them would wait placidly. He did not want to imagine that Hyland had deliberately conspired to create such a dark atmosphere in town for such purposes, but it made sense logically. Then what about the archbishop? What was he waiting for?
“If we can figure out the archbishop’s plan, then we will be able to help Heir Hyland…”
“Well, what we do know is that it’s not something you’ll be able to figure out.”
He shot her a frown, and she replied, “That just means you’re a nice person.” It did not cheer him up. After teasing him like that for a while, Myuri stood up from the crate, the weariness in her legs now gone, and held his hand.
“I’m hungry.”
“All right, all right.”
They then retrieved their meals from the square, and since both their food and breath seemed liable to catch in their throats if they ate in the office, they quickly took their meals at the side of the church. It was too early to call it nightfall, but the sky had turned cinnabar red, and the languid comfort that came from finishing work settled over the town. The more impatient stalls were already beginning to close down, and bars began lighting the candles in stands outside their shops, preparing braziers and tables.
However, once the sun set, the atmosphere in town would change dramatically. Once the warm, lively, and bright daytime fell away, the cold, chaotic, torch-lit night would come.
It did not seem that Hyland would leave once evening arrived, so at night the fight would really begin.
“Are you finished eating?”
Myuri nodded as she licked the pad of her thumb.
“I do not mind if you slip out if you start to feel unwell,” he reminded her, and Myuri cheekily shrugged her slim shoulders.
“And be sure not to collapse when someone is mean to you, Brother.”
With an attitude like that, she would be fine.
Then, they returned to the church once again, for the sake of God’s correct teaching
s.
When they returned to the office, the atmosphere had mellowed, most likely due to the meal break. The elderly priest who collapsed earlier still seemed pale but was sitting in his seat. Most of the priests’ chamberlains were present, and Col and Myuri were a bit flustered when they entered the room. They could tell they were among the last.
However, when Col noticed the archbishop turning the pages of the parchment, reading the rest, he was blown away. What sort of change of heart was this?
He could not imagine that the archbishop had been so enthralled by the teachings of the scripture that he could not stop reading. More plausible was that he was planning to move on to the next step in order to prevent the priests, who were his underlings and companions, from feeling even more alienated by the test of endurance.
The question was what that plan was.
Hyland’s strategy involved using the demeanor of the townspeople. He did not want to think that he was directly agitating them himself, like Myuri had said, but he had enough incentive to do so. Once night fell, the archbishop was the one who would have to concede in the face of the atmosphere created by the people abusing the name of the Church in the square.
Then what was the archbishop after?
In any case, there was no mistaking that everyone here was trying to outsmart the other. What were the angels thinking as they gazed down at them from the walls? Perhaps they thought it was too late for much of anything.
As Col pondered this, the chamberlains on the priests’ side looked around the room, counting everyone present before closing the door that led into the office. It was like placing a lid on the room to ensure the miasma would not seep outside.
Everything fell silent once again, and the archbishop continued reading. He was not simply moving his eyes along the page, but was obviously reading it carefully. As one of the translators, Col was simply nervous. What part was he reading now? What did he think of the quality of the translation? Was anything that he learned useful in the real world?
Col understood that ambition was not easily quenched.
Then, he finally felt he appreciated a small fragment of the archbishops’ feelings as they desperately clung to the privilege within this magnificent cathedral, no matter what others said, and no matter how far they strayed from the teachings of God.
It was unlikely that Col’s thoughts had reached the elderly clergyman, but the archbishop’s eyes suddenly paused at one part of the parchment. He reread the previous line, as though something had caught his interest, and read it over again.
It was clear from how he showed it to the priest next to him that it was not simply a way of wasting time. That priest looked at the indication section, and his eyes widened. He then showed it to the priest next to him.
Col desperately wanted to know which part they were talking about and why.
Judging by its place in the stack of parchment, there was no doubting that it was a part that he translated.
He stood on his toes and leaned forward, trying to take a peek, to get just a hint of which part they were passing around. The moment he saw the contents of the parchment as it slid onto the table, a chill ran down his spine. It was clearly his writing. He gulped, knowing that those with status and power were reading the words he had written.
Consumed by an inexplicable excitement, Col found his feet subconsciously moved forward. Myuri pulled on his clothes and stepped on his toes, and Hyland was smiling faintly at him over his shoulder.
He felt like he was the only child in the room.
The parchment circulated as this was happening and made its way back to the archbishop.
The archbishop placed it carefully on top of another pile of parchment and cleared his throat.
“I am surprised that this is the common-language translation of the scripture that the world is seeing.”
Everyone in that room understood that it was not simply an opinion.
Hyland responded politely. “We wish for at least some of the people of the world to know of God’s teachings. I’m sure you’ve understood that it is not something meant to rile up the people.”
The archbishop nodded slowly at his answer.
“I hope you do not mind me asking, but who was the one who translated this? A famous theologian of the Winfiel Kingdom, perhaps?”
At that moment, he sensed that Myuri’s hair, which was simply tied back, was bristling like the fur on her tail did sometimes. There was no doubting that the handwriting on the parchment that had slid across the table was Col’s. That part was his.
“No, the young scholar here was the one who worked on the part you are holding now.”
Hyland introduced him, and Col stretched his back as high as he could and raised his gaze. By no means could he take in all the priests’ gazes. He instead turned toward the crest of the Church that hung on the wall in front of him. It was as though God was blessing him for all that he had learned by granting it some small meaning, here in this great house meant for spreading his teachings.
“I see. And you were the one who asked this young scholar to do the translation?”
“Indeed. We in the Kingdom of Winfiel do not wish to keep the teachings of God to ourselves, and certainly God wishes for the same.”
That was the first strike, but the archbishop simply let it pass.
“Mm. Well, if this is the result of Heir Hyland, and by extent, the Kingdom of Winfiel’s careful consideration, then there is nothing to be done.”
The archbishop sounded impressed, but Col could not understand the meaning of his words.
He could just barely see Hyland’s expression ahead of him, and he was keeping his composure, so perhaps Hyland was supposed to understand, as well.
As he considered this, a grave question came from the archbishop’s mouth.
“Very well, may I consider what is written here the responsibility of Heir Hyland and of the Kingdom of Winfiel?”
Something was odd about the situation.
Hyland seemed flustered because the archbishop’s actions were going further than expected.
There was only one reason for him to say such a thing after passing around the parchment. There was plenty of room for debate, because to translate the words and phrases of the scripture was to give it particular meaning. However, by Hyland’s judgment, the archbishop of Atiph had probably never thoroughly read it. Could it be that he was going to quiz them on matters of God’s teachings, after all?
He wondered if there were obvious mistakes, but he corrected himself—no. He had looked it over countless times. And there should be no place that could be easily attacked.
One of the chamberlains brought the parchment to Hyland. From this close distance, he could tell that the familiar writing was his, and it was a part where the prophet’s words were praising God. There was nothing here that could be open to interpretation or a metaphor.
Hyland, too, seemed to be able to tell exactly which part of the translation it was at a glance and handed it to Col without reading anything in particular.
“Is there something wrong with this?”
He received the parchment from him and began reading the beginning of each line. There were no mistakes, as he expected. As he read his own writing, he recalled his excitement and happiness and his battle with sleepiness in the middle of the night and the pain in his back as he wrote it.
But Myuri pulled on his clothes.
She approached the document looking not at the letters but the parchment itself.
“This…”
She began to speak, but the archbishop spoke at roughly the same time.
“The line fourth from the bottom—is it not a moving passage in the original scripture that repeats praises to God many times?”
Fourth from the bottom?
He began reading backward.
Then, he unwittingly raised his voice.
“What?”
He could feel Hyland turn around, but that was not what bothered him at the moment.
He could not believe his eyes. His balance faltered, and he felt bile rising in his throat.
What was this?
“Col, what’s wrong?”
He could not even move his eyes. Hyland stood from his chair and snatched the parchment from him. He then immediately flinched and looked up. The man who had spent the entire day unfazed by the soul-crushing test of endurance was now reeling from head to toe.
But he looked not at Col—but at the archbishop.
“No…What? How…?”
That word saved him. Indeed—how?
It was impossible that was his own mistake. The passage that should have been singing praises of God described him as a pig, and all his wisdom was replaced with nothing but pig noises.
“There is no cause for shock; the writing is all the same. There is no mistaking that young scholar wrote these words under your patronage.”
At the archbishop’s words, Hyland looked down with a pained expression at the parchment in his hand. The writing did indeed match.
It was so perfectly, so eerily Col’s handwriting.
He could only imagine that a demon snuck in during the night and wrote those things at its leisure.
Then—
“Brother, it smells like the scribes.”
When Myuri whispered to him, Col understood everything.
He had asked three scribes to do the copies. One of them could not read. However, that actually meant he was a skilled scribe. Why? Because letters were just like pictures on a certain level, and copying them perfectly was a job well done.
Then, with the ability to reproduce any writing, they could forge anything by simply rearranging words. A wolf could hide in plain sight under sheep’s skin. Someone had snuck into Col and Myuri’s room. It had all been planned. Myuri’s warning was correct.
Col regretted deeply that he had not checked more carefully, but it was too late.
“The only ones you should blame are those who would use such underhanded tricks, Col.”
It was at that moment Hyland called out to him. Their eyes met, and the young man nodded.
“And someone may have switched them while we were not watching during the break. We were not cautious enough.”
Wolf & Parchment, Volume 1 Page 15