Chương 115: Testimony of Those Who Came Back to Life

The testimony table was set where the tea tent had stood. There was no roof, so sunlight came straight down. Seria opened the ledger, and Theor pressed the papers with his good hand. The first person to come was the human soldier who had shot Seru. He stood before them with his quiver on the ground.

"Why did you shoot?" Seria asked.

"I thought it was an enemy messenger."

"Did you see the ankle mark?"

"I saw it late."

"Who told you to shoot?"

"No one." The soldier opened and closed his hand.

"I heard that the commander was colluding with thieves. I thought an enemy owl had come to steal orders."

"Do you still think so?" The soldier looked at Seru perched on a beam above the treatment station. The cloth Kichan had first wrapped still covered Seru's left wing. Fresh bandages had been layered over the place where the arrow had pierced its chest.

"No."

"Then what did you do?"

"I cut off the withdrawal order." Seria wrote down the soldier's words exactly. Lauren, the human army operations officer, sat down next. The insignia removed from his arm lay beside the authorization.

"Why did you hand the grimoire to Kichan?"

"The contents were real. I judged that the truce would not last long, and that securing the northern artifact first would keep the kingdom from losing ground in negotiations."

"So you took Kichan's party away from the border?" Lauren looked at his own seal for a while before answering.

"If they had been there, they would have stopped the limited reconnaissance. I believed that inspecting the position before the other side rearmed was the way to protect our soldiers and the people at the border."

"What did that judgment do?"

"My signature moved troops first." Lauren looked in turn at the red knot, the document tube stained with Seru's blood, and the firing timetable.

"My direct subordinates, acting under my command, blocked both routes carrying the commander's withdrawal order. My authorization alone did not raise the red signal or bind the other side's messenger. But that does not erase the fact that I created the opening." Seria made four columns beneath Lauren's name. In order, she recorded the grimoire he had provided, the limited reconnaissance he had authorized, the reason for his judgment, and the number of troops moved first.

She kept the list of the dead outside those four columns. After them, she left blank lines for testimony about the red signal and the messenger's seizure, then attached the order suspending Lauren from his post. Next came the demihuman messenger. The messenger with rope marks still on his wrists stood at the same table with the chief who had ordered him seized.

"I could not deliver the order."

"Why did you not draw your sword?" The chief asked. If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Because if I cut you down to deliver it, the order itself would become an attack."

"I believed the commander had been bought by the enemy."

"So you must have thought you were saving the army." The messenger placed the red knot on the table.

"The bridge still collapsed." The chief did not apologize. The messenger did not say he forgave him either. Each entered his own account in the ledger. That chief had also ordered the red reinforcement signal. Grad placed the chief's command plaque and the armbands of the three guard captains who had bound the messenger on the table. Until the public investigation ended, all four were barred from moving troops. The summons for the next witness came through the new joint messenger route.

A human army messenger and a demihuman messenger carried one copy each and crossed together on the temporary ferry beside the broken bridge. No checkpoint could detain only one of them. Ern and Karun, who had come back to life in the river, showed the rope marks on their wrists. Ern remembered cold water and curses. Karun said Ern had not let go of his belt until the end.

"The moment you died?"

"I breathed in water."

"Did you hear the song?"

"At first, I didn't hear it." Karun answered.

"When my breath came back, the first thing I heard was that man cursing again."

"You did it first." Seria wrote their testimony on the same line while the two argued. Tira sat in the chair and swung her feet.

"What do you remember?"

"The tea lady pushed me."

"And then?"

"Bang."

"The song?"

"Kichan's voice."

"Do you remember the lyrics?" The child shook her head.

"Then how did you know it was Kichan?"

"Because it was Kichan's voice." Marena came carrying the shards of the broken cup wrapped in cloth.

"What do you remember?"

"I pushed two children toward Seria."

"And then?"

"There was an elder left in the supply depot. I brought them out, and I thought someone else was still inside, so I went back." Marena touched the white and red thread on her wrist.

"I heard the cup hit the wall. After that, nothing."

"What did you see when you came back to life?"

"Kichan." A royal recordkeeper raised his brush.

"The gold ring or wings?"

"The first thing I looked for was whether the knot was on the wake-up rod."

"Do you mean a sacred object?"

"The proposal knot I gave him." Marena wrapped the broken cup shards again and stood.

"Write it that way." The merchant from the stony fields opened his palm. New wounds overlapped old calluses.

"I thought I'd come back with a new body, but it's the same." The royal recordkeeper asked,"Does that mean the miracle was imperfect?"

"What's imperfect about my hand?" The merchant struck the table with his palm.

"I remember dying under the stones. After I came back to life, the stones were still there. Write that." Seria did not use the word miracle. She wrote that he had stopped breathing under the stones and returned with the same hands and wounds as before death. Theor sat for his turn with his broken arm tied to his body.

"Who broke your arm?"

"A blade cut it first. It broke completely when the gate came down."

"Why did you not let go?"

"There were people behind me."

"Did you believe Kichan would come back?" Theor looked briefly at Seria.

"I never said he would solve it for us when he returned."

"Why not?"

"Because we had already put too much on him." He placed his good hand on the table.

"At that moment, the only thing I could hold with my own hand was that gate." Seria wrote only the last sentence exactly. The two commanders testified last. They did not sit separately. Marten stated his responsibility for failing to stop the limited reconnaissance. Grad recorded his responsibility for failing to dismantle his own camp's signal system in advance.

"There is talk that the two of you exchanged medicine and letters for a long time." The royal recordkeeper said.

"It is true." Marten answered.

"Were you preparing peace?"

"I sent medicine to a man who was sick."

"Did that friendship stop this war?" Grad set the molly pouch in his hand on the table.

"It did not."

"Still, the two of you saved each other."

"Before that, we failed to stop our own armies." On the same line, Seria recorded the secret letters and medicine pouches, their attempts to save one another, and their failure to stop the war. Seria and Theor did not split the testimony between two ledgers. They pasted the human army's records and the demihuman army's records into one ledger. They also wrote, in the same sequence, the names of those who had died and returned, those who had been wounded, and those beyond the song's reach who had not returned.

At the very front, they placed the names of those who had not returned. They did not write a sentence saying Han Kichan ended the war. They did not yet write a sentence saying the war was over. Instead, they wrote who had blocked which order, who had opened which door, and who had held whose hand in the water. As the testimony drew to a close, Marten said,"From now on, we will bear it." Grad stamped his own mark beside it.