The Good Days, Before the Day of Destiny 2

The affair began one autumn day when the sisters Rosa and Nana had only just arrived in Delphinad. Though it was autumn, around three in the afternoon the weather was still stifling. Delphinad was a warm city where even winter ice was hard to find.

Rosa had a talent for becoming deftly entangled in incidents even against her own wishes. When one considered it, if Rosa had not searched for a back way after being refused admission to the library, nothing would have happened.

Before beginning Rosa’s story, there are a few things it would be well to know. First, Delphinad had a library gathering the wisdom of the entire world. Later, it was also a place where we napped in corners, or secretly made snacks from plant specimens, but for now let me explain that it was a hall of learning anyone who could read dreamed of visiting at least once.

At the time, Delphinad was in its prime, to the point that later generations named it “the Brilliant Century.” I think the time when we were only in our early twenties may have been the very height of that Brilliant Century, though, well, that is something no one can verify.

Back then, in Delphinad’s back alleys stood a sinister-looking stone building called the House of the ShadowHawk. It was a substantial building, large enough for fifty-odd people, or a hundred if they lived five or six to a room like pigs. It had originally been a temple to some god. Temples whose worshippers had left being sold and put to entirely different uses were common enough in Delphinad. This house too had apparently been converted into an inn and operated for about ten years, but by this time it was no longer somewhere respectable travelers approached. Judging by its sturdy outer gate and wall, its two iron towers once used as bell towers, and the considerable weight of the door, it looked more like a fortress in the northern mountains than a temple, though much smaller. Of course, there was no reason to build such a fortress on an ordinary street corner. If anyone questioned it, people merely shrugged and said, “Who knows? Perhaps the god came from the north.”

As was often true of Delphinad’s old houses, no one knew how many years had passed since it was built. Since in Delphinad even a house a hundred years old was called new. More precisely, on the documents it was a new house built after the first year of Julia I’s reign, though I do not know whether that was a trick of Delphinad’s property agents or of the governor’s office. Whichever it was, it was clearly a scheme to swindle newly arrived students who knew nothing of the world.

Like a stone building, the House of the ShadowHawk looked worn, but its outer walls were blackened, and yellow-dried ivy covered the western wall like a blanket. Above the main gate was a bird with its wings outspread, drawn quite well for charcoal. Whenever rain fell, it had to be drawn again. The door, so heavy it was difficult to close, usually stood open, and before it two young men sat on guard with faces bored to death. They changed shifts every four hours, but a single hour was long in the middle of a summer day. The cigarette butts the guards had spat out and discarded over the years lay scattered in the dirt beneath the steps, making it an efficient place to obtain the effect of smoking without a cigarette.

On hot days, the guards sometimes looked as though they were dozing, but if anyone approached, they rose quickly. First, they shook the person a little by the collar, exchanged a few words, and then decided the person’s fate. They might strike them in the solar plexus and toss them into the nearby sewer, guide them upstairs, or, rarely, slit their throat. Not that I saw it myself. That is what the rumors said.

When I settled in Delphinad, about eighty people lived in the House of the ShadowHawk. It seemed there were no empty rooms, but with a push here and a pull there, a few sleeping places opened like holes in dense bushes. And having gone in myself, I found it was not quite as terrible a place to live as I had expected. There was even a bathhouse on the first floor. Oh, was that a horse trough?

In any case, most respectable citizens did not loiter near “Hawk Square,” which adjoined the House of the ShadowHawk. Ordinary people lived in the other houses around the street corner, though perhaps they were not ordinary in the eyes of those respectable citizens. Still, it was hardly a place praised as a promenade.

Yet to a few unusual people, that gloomy house appeared more desirable than the grand assembly hall where the governor’s birthday party was held. Such people lurked in the alley overlooking the entrance, watching the guards’ eyes. Hoping they might see the figure they wanted, even from a distance. If they really did see him, they quickly ran off and borrowed money to gamble with that evening. Later, at a drunken dice table, they shook the dice cup triumphantly and shouted, “The ShadowHawk’s blessing!”

The legend of Delphinad’s back alleys who lived on the second floor of the House of the ShadowHawk, the so-called “ShadowHawk,” looked incredulous whenever he heard such things. As I understood it, he found his fame a dreadful nuisance. But it was not something he could stop. ShadowHawk was not his name alone. Besides, the ShadowHawk had been regarded as the guardian deity of gambling tables for decades. Another man must have been the ShadowHawk before him, but a change of person was of no importance to gamblers. The simple logic that the ShadowHawk was the foremost figure in Delphinad’s back alleys, and that his luck would work upon the dice, was quite sufficient. And rumors from the back alleys that the ShadowHawk’s protection had earned them a share had been seeping out all along, in great clouds like smoke from a fireplace.

All these things have now lost even their records, but to me they are as vivid as yesterday. Third-rate poet though I may be, living by selling worthless lines, at least my memory is needlessly good.

When Rosa and Nana had just arrived in Delphinad and were sitting in a tavern, Lucius had just decided to flee the room piled high with borrowed books. A fortnight past his deadline, he had attached half an old script to the half of a new script he had managed to finish and handed it to Leonis. Expecting it would take Leonis half a day to read the latter half, he had decided to go into hiding in the back alleys. If you wonder how I know this fellow’s splendid conduct so well… It is because he is me. Lucius Quinto. Witness to the Brilliant Century.

An honest witness must conceal nothing. That is how I truly am. I am not saying this because I have had a drink.

Then shall we go back a little? To the afternoon Rosa and Gene met.