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Some naïve part of Barok had wanted to believe his fears were simply his own madness. That they were something only his eyes would see in this young man placed before him, a personal reaction stemming from his personal pain. Easily dismissed as unreasonable.
Lord Stronghart would know, of course. It’s become Barok’s current suspicion, with regard to his apprentice’s assignment: the Lord Chief Justice wants to gauge how deeply the memory of the Professor still unsettles him, his ability to work in spite of it. Lord Stronghart’s tutelage has always had an air of torture. Barok can’t begrudge him that: the law is no business for soft hearts. He thinks he’s performed well under this particular torture, considering. His apprentice completes his duties now with quiet competence, they work together seamlessly. Barok has not once lost his composure. He has never spoken to his apprentice of any of it. Not of his memories, nor his madness.
Some of it has to be truth. Though Barok has never seen above his apprentice’s lips, he doesn’t need to look upon the man to know where he comes from. The soft accent, the body language, the style of his swordsmanship to the way he takes his tea… Everything about him strikes a deep chord in Barok’s chest. On rusted strings long unplayed, strung to keys Genshin Asogi’s fingers had once danced along with virtuoso skill.
But this is where the truth ends. He will look at any Eastern man and see Asogi; Barok knows that and he knows it’s untrue. Even if his apprentice is a Nipponese man, he is an innocent one. One with no knowledge of his past, no matter how much of it his body still holds. Barok owes him an open mind.
It had not occurred to him that there were other minds that might be as closed as his.
He recalls Naruhodo’s visit to his office yesterday. Though he had been clearly struck by the apprentice, he hadn’t dared make an accusation. Had he been hiding in the same way Barok had? Convincing himself that those familiar notes were nothing but hallucination? Barok knows how easily hopes can flood the mind, perhaps even more easily than fears, and often they are just as poisonous. Naruhodo surely knows that as well.
But Miss Mikotoba… She’d called his name, in a way that made their indecision impossible. The bravest of all of them. Her voice is still in his ears. Hers, and his shocked apprentice’s, as Barok held his breath on that mangled platform and waited for the other shoe to drop.
A cup is placed on his desk. Barok starts and looks up through the tea-steam. Fragrant, strong and bitter, a scent that had violently hammered his heartstrings the first time his new apprentice had prepared him a cup.
The hooded young man stands above him across the desk, a silhouette even without the study lamps behind him. “You’ve seemed unwell this evening,” he says.
Barok snorts weakly. The true reason aside, why shouldn’t he? A close friend of his is on trial for murder. And yet—Barok finds himself distracted by the last time that one had been. Albert deserves him better than this.
“Thank you,” he says. “But rest assured, there’s no need to worry.”
A deferent nod, and Barok lowers his eyes in return. But his apprentice isn’t finished, doesn’t move.
“You know who she spoke of,” he says. “Kazuma-sama.”
His tongue finds the name so naturally it’s stomach-turning. Barok closes his eyes.
“Who is he?”
“Our learned friend’s associate.”
“Not yours?”
Barok wraps his hands around the warm teacup. He had never cared for Asogi’s bitter brew, but had felt, in his nervous youth, that milk and sugar would condemn him as childish. The last thing he’d hoped to appear in the eyes of Detective Genshin Asogi. Now, in his adulthood, he’d have asked for them from his apprentice—but the nostalgia had taken a grip on him from the moment he breathed in the steam. It had seemed a smaller indulgence than many he could have chosen.
“I never met Kazuma Asogi,” says Barok. He breathes out, shakes his head. “But I knew his father, many years ago. He was a visiting student in London law, from the Far East.”
His apprentice tilts his head.
Barok has said enough that he must say the rest of it. “A… A man you’ve brought to mind, on occasion.”
Silence.
“A keen intellect, a master swordsman, disciplined and meticulous.” Barok looks back up at his apprentice, focus drawn again to the eyes beyond the mask. In the time they’ve spent together he wants to think he’s learned how to read them, but he knows he would be kidding himself. “I gather his son was these things as well. As are you.”
“As are you.”
Taken aback, Barok clenches his jaw. How he’d have been honored by the thought, long ago! But now… He’s spent years purging Asogi’s influence from his demeanor, his thoughts—his very sense of self. His description had been vague, but he still finds himself enraged to be likened to it.
“Genshin Asogi killed five men,” he says evenly. “My elder brother among them.”
His apprentice lowers his gaze in contrition. Barok is unsure whether the young man had known he’d had a brother at all until now. In three months he had never asked whose portrait they worked under. He’d asked very few questions. At the time Barok had been grateful to have no need to give answers.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for thinking I ought not to trouble you with the comparison,” he says.
After long moments, his apprentice looks back up. He stares down at him, inscrutable as always, and as always Barok has to force himself not to speculate on his thoughts.
“You should have told me,” he replies.
“You are your own man,” says Barok. “I felt I owed it to you to treat you as such.”
“I don’t care to be kept in the dark.”
Barok swallows. This unfortunate man before him has had so little aside from darkness—how could he not have lit every lamp in him he could? “No,” he mutters uncomfortably, “I… I don’t imagine you do. I apologize.”
Several seconds of silence, and then his apprentice speaks again.
“Was she correct?”
Barok stands. He reaches out without thinking, and quickly grasps his apprentice’s shoulders to keep his hands off the elegant curve of his jaw.
“I can assure you unequivocally that you are not Kazuma Asogi,” he says, as emphatically as he can. “The hopes of his friends aside, I’m afraid—that he’s dead.”
He stares into the eyeholes of the mask, desperate to decipher anything at all behind them. Any disgust, any disappointment, any despair. He cannot.
“Please don’t let it trouble you,” he says softly. “I don’t want you beholden to a…a mythical self that you may never discover. I want you to be only the man you are at this moment, and feel no obligation to consider yourself otherwise.”
His apprentice nods silently once more.
Barok releases him. “Please sleep well,” he says. “I need you ready for court tomorrow.”
“Likewise, My Lord.”
“Of course.”
The young man turns. As he watches him leave, Barok finally brings his tea to his lips, and he holds the first sip on his bitter tongue.
Kazuma Asogi is dead. He’s dead. His neck was broken in the China Sea. And yet, now that Naruhodo has insisted upon opening Pandora’s box, Barok cannot keep his eyes from his apprentice every time the Professor’s name crosses his lips.
If Asogi’s son truly stood beside him, surely this talk would arouse some memory? It becomes a test. How graphically can they discuss the Professor’s crimes, the Professor’s death—and Barok’s apprentice shows no sign of recognition? It becomes more thrilling to see his expression unchanged the deeper Naruhodo digs. But—also more unsettling, the more deeply Barok realizes how desperate he is for the man at his side to remain no one.
The moment the waxworker had admitted to sculpting the Professor’s true face, he had known how far he would need to push.
He pulls her aside after the trial, after instructing Naruhodo and his assistant to meet him shortly. “Madame Tusspells, a word?”
Considering the murder trial she’s just been a key witness in, she looks remarkably at ease. She smiles up at him from the antechamber bench. “Bonjour, Lord van Zieks.”
He clears his throat and lowers his voice.
“Beneath the Professor’s mask… You truly carved the face of the man in the grave?”
She nods. “I would not be able to call myself a Tusspells, had I not.”
Barok swallows. “Then…please, Madame, if I may ask to borrow your work for just a moment longer?”
“Only if I may ask what you plan to do with it?”
“I believe it’s time Mr. Naruhodo was made privy to the knowledge we share, regarding the Professor’s identity,” he says. “Considering what will surely lie ahead.”
Eyes glimmering, Esmeralda Tusspells slips a tiny key into his hand.
His apprentice has waited in the courtroom at his instruction. Barok knows, as he tells Naruhodo and Mikotoba his story, that behind the mask he is listening. He listens to everything, even if he reacts to little. Barok’s eyes flick over to him as they had in court. Searching for anything, hoping to see nothing.
He steps up to Asogi’s waxen frame. He turns the key. He holds his breath again, like he had on the exhibition platform, waiting for the other shoe that had never dropped.
And then, back at his bench, a scream that snaps Barok’s brittle strings.