A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 7 (28 page)

In contrast, Kamijou continued to speak without thinking about it too hard—as if saying the problem was so easy it didn’t need much deep thought.

“It’s not like I’m taking sides with Index’s church or anything. It just so happens that Index is part of English Puritanism, so I’m their ally for the moment.”

He heard the pitter-patter of footsteps from down the hall.

That’s probably Index
, he thought absently, continuing—as though confirming whose side he should have taken.

“If Agnes asked me for help sometime, I’d probably go help her. She just happened to be the bad guy this time, but there’s no rule saying she has to keep doing bad stuff,” he declared, smiling.

Kanzaki made another surprised face, then smiled, a little worried.

The reason he had for acting was so immensely simple that it almost sounded absurd.

But because of that, Touma Kamijou would never stray from his path.

Never.

England didn’t have a rainy season or a dry season—instead, the weather changed from one thing to the other fairly easily all year round. In this city, it was common knowledge that the weather could shift in just four hours, so there were plenty of people walking around in broad daylight with fold-up umbrellas.

For these reasons, a sudden shower was currently hitting the city of London after being clear not too long ago. Nevertheless, the people of the city didn’t consider rain a reason to stay indoors. The road was already narrow, but it was packed to the brim with a rainbow of umbrellas.

As the rain, almost a faintly damp mist, came down, Stiyl Magnus and Laura Stuart walked along next to each other. His umbrella was black as a cockroach, while the one Laura held looked like a teacup, white with gold embroidery on it.

“If we’re just going back to Lambeth Palace, we should have just called a taxi.”

“Those who cannot take the rain cannot live in this conurbation,” said Laura, gleefully spinning her umbrella around. There was no doubt, however, that he was biased. Stiyl wasn’t currently enjoying this mist-like rain very much. He was getting wet despite having an umbrella, and it made his cigarette wet—it was nothing but bad things.

He glanced at the tip of the cigarette, which he was finding difficult to keep lit, and sighed.

At the moment, he was following Laura, who was on her way back to her residence, delivering his final report on a certain incident as they went. The great and powerful English Puritan archbishop was the freewheeling sort who went to the cathedral when she liked and went home when she liked. She didn’t seem to like staying in one place very much, so it was quite often the case that reports and war councils would be held during these walks.

There was no helping that Stiyl thought it troublesome to set things up to prevent sudden attacks and monitoring. There was a little trick on their umbrellas even now, making the area around them function like a telephone booth. It caused the umbrellas’ fabric to shake and converted those vibrations into voices, while at the same time making it so that the voices didn’t leave the “frame” of the umbrellas.

“
That should give you a basic idea of the incident. They intend to settle by claiming this was an independent armed action conducted by Agnes Sanctis and two hundred fifty under her command. By making it something they did on their own, the Roman Orthodox Church seems to want to defend themselves by saying they never wanted to assassinate Orsola.”

“If they cannot rein in their own subordinates, they cannot get away with nothing, however,” said Laura, giving a wry grin and fingering her hair. Her beautiful hair could be called majestic, and with the raindrops forming spider thread–like patterns, it evoked fascination.

Stiyl gave a quick glance at her face next to him and said, “…Did you need to go that far?”

“Mm-hee-hee. Does it concern you, Stiyl? That I have welcomed into the English Puritan Church the esteemed Orsola Aquinas and the fellows in the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church?”

“We don’t need to protect her—now that they’re officially saying they had no intention of killing her, they can’t recklessly bring harm to her now. If a sudden, unnatural death were to befall her in this
situation, I believe it would escalate into an international Church problem.”

“Then they needst only accomplish a natural death, I suppose.” Laura gave a barbaric smirk like a pirate.

The difference between her face and her expression gave Stiyl pause. “Come to think of it, you knew the Roman Orthodox’s true intention all along, didn’t you? Why didn’t you just order me to save Orsola Aquinas from the Roman Orthodox Church in the first place? What a pain.”

“Not
everything
. I hadn’t surmised so far as Orsola having mistaken the decoding method. But,” she continued, “for me, either way would have been fine.”

Stiyl looked at her.

She twirled her pure white umbrella. “Just hypothetically, Stiyl. If we had blundered in our deliverance of Orsola, would the situation have changed? If she had been returned to Rome, she would have been put to death. Whether we succeeded or failed, either way, the
Book of the Law
would not have been decoded.

“So it didn’t matter which came to pass,” she concluded.

Whether Orsola lived or died was a small problem and didn’t concern her.

Stiyl exhaled, unsatisfied, and said, “Then why did you give me a personal order to give Orsola a cross? You gave me more to carry out in an already urgent situation. You can say what you want, but you intended to save her right from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“Urk.”

“The complete lack of reinforcements bothers me, too. You probably had a big Necessarius force positioned on the shoreline of the Sea of Japan, which is why you couldn’t spare any personnel, right? You used the cross incident as an excuse and put them there to raid Agnes’s forces while they were taking Orsola to Rome. You really are embarrassing, you know that?”

“Mmgh! Th-that is most certainly not factual! I interceded in this altercation purely for the English Puritan Church’s benefit!!”

Laura spouted denials, looking like steam was going to come from
her ears, but Stiyl didn’t bother to argue. The fact that she was the only one who was angry must have really gotten to her, because her face rapidly reddened.

“So what are these benefits you’re referring to?”

“…You’re so quick to turn me aside. I mean Kaori Kanzaki,” she moaned in a huff. “This incident served as a good example. Kanzaki has immense power, and because of her upstanding sense of justice, she could always take independent action. Despite naught having occurred this time, she was actually still in a fairly dangerous position. We needs must obtain a new set of shackles if we are to stop that from happening again.”

The relaxation left Stiyl’s face.

Laura’s expression, too, had suddenly become more mature. “We canst not stop her with force, yes? Well, we could if we put our minds to it, but we would definitively sustain much damage as well. You have perused the report telling what fate befell those Knight fools, yes?”

Stiyl recalled the details of the report from the separate force.

Twenty-one fully equipped knights had planned on their own to kill the members of Amakusa, but somebody single-handedly drove them into submission.

“And that is why she needs shackles that don’t involve force. She possesses an ample bond with Amakusa. Therefore, we cannot use negative shackles like threatening her harm if she does not listen, but rather positive ones, like offering her protection from the Roman Orthodox Church if she listens. If we emphasize such negativity involving Amakusa, she may rebel against us, but if we offer something positive, she wouldn’t do so. Right? What a delicious benefit that is.”

Laura smiled happily—and it gave Stiyl a cold shudder.

Though she might have seemed thoughtless at first, she was still the leader of English Puritanism, and the cruel administrator and constructor of the system of the Index of Prohibited Books.

She created the rule that they needed to erase her memories every year.

She created a body that required maintenance from the English Puritans.

She lied that it was beneficial to the Church to keep Index from turning traitor.

She lied that she would die if they didn’t, thus keeping Stiyl and Kanzaki from rebelling as well.

No one was more used to tinkering with all of the scales deciding a person’s sense of values—their emotions, their reason, their sense of profits and losses, their ethics—than she. It bolstered the caution Stiyl felt toward her once again, but he was well aware there was nothing he could do about it. If he were careless, Laura wouldn’t flinch to give punishment—
not
to Stiyl, but to Index. That’s the kind of person she was.

Thump
—Stiyl’s shoulder bumped into a passerby.

It was a student trying to worm his way in between the two of them.

Whoops.
By the time Stiyl’s body recoiled, Laura was nowhere to be found.

The communication spell connecting their umbrellas was already cut off.

He hurriedly looked around—what had she just done? He just barely spotted the white, teacup-like umbrella with gold embroidery far away. And the wave of people eventually swallowed up that, too, and it disappeared completely.

“…”

Stiyl, caught completely unawares by the whole business, gulped.

He got another chill at the sight of the enigmatic leader of all variety of suspicious sorcerers, and thought.

She had helped Amakusa to cleverly prevent Kaori Kanzaki from acting.

He understood that.

Then why, in the end, did she save Orsola Aquinas?

He didn’t understand that.

The way Orsola came up with to decode the
Book of the Law
was
just a mistake, so there was no need to go through with securing her anyway. And saving her didn’t bind anyone to her like she was doing with Kanzaki. She may have been an accomplished missionary worker—great enough to have a church built in her name—but she didn’t seem to have the sort of charismatic attitude that could bring together whole groups and organizations like Kanzaki did. If she had, they wouldn’t have been able to easily plot to assassinate her out of fear of riots and secessions.

“…She’s damn devious,” said Stiyl spitefully.

If he were able to think of even
one
calculated reason she’d saved Orsola Aquinas, then he would have been able to assert positively that she was evil. But this was another thing about Laura that was difficult to deal with—there wasn’t enough for him to go on to say whether she was a good person or a bad person. In fact, she practiced both good and evil equally—truly as though keeping them in perfect balance upon scales.

The scales, of course, wouldn’t tip one way or the other. With such a precise equilibrium being maintained, one couldn’t judge her to be good or evil—no matter how much weight rode on either tray.

Thus, Stiyl couldn’t say one way or the other, so he ended up slinking along under the English Puritan Church.

Or maybe that was her plan
, the runic sorcerer speculated briefly before disappearing into the drizzle on the city streets.

For those readers who can easily read seven books straight through—pleased to meet you. For those readers who have been sticking it out since volume one—it’s nice to see you again.

This is Kazuma Kamachi.

I’ve just been going along, taking it easy, but before I knew it I’d come to the seventh volume. Today, on September 8, I’m going at a slow, steady pace as always. The series has been bringing you fights on an individual level, but this time there was a teeny bit of organized combat involved.

The occult keyword this time around was
grimoire
. Well, actually, I sort of felt like I should have brought the topic up before now, seeing as how the heroine is a whole library of them. In any case, I had grimoires show up in all sorts of ways and places here.

Other than that, I tried to greatly emphasize the unique traits each organization has. Please, mull over each one and the crazy attacks they use and thoughts, circumstances, and ideals they bear. It would make me happy.

Mr. Haimura, the illustrator, and Mr. Miki, the editor, you’re always doing so much for me—I may not ever get anywhere, but please, I look forward to working with you in the future.

And to everyone who picked up this book to read—I may not ever,
ever
get anywhere, but please, I’d like it if you watched over me, humoring me, as I continue worming forward in my vain struggle.

Now then, as I thank you all for the good fortune I’ve had to publish seven whole volumes,

and as I hope I’ll be able to continue writing more without stopping,

today, at this moment, I lay down my pen.

Whenever the subject is sorcery, Mikoto and Miss Komoe don’t show up!

Kazuma Kamachi

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