bookworm

While I would have loved to say that aloud and dive into bed so I could flee to the land of dreams, our long day had yet to end. We still had business to settle, so I got everyone back on track and sat them all down at the living-room table. Mika and Miss Celia took positions on the couch, I sat across from them on the floor, and Elisa planted herself in my lap.
The Ashen Fraulein was kind enough to read the room and prepare a pot of tea so that we could enjoy a sip as we discussed. Miss Celia was terribly surprised to see a ready-to-serve tea set appear without warning, but I was too tired to explain. I just said, “It’s magic,” and left it at that; I didn’t specify whose, but I wasn’t strictly lying.
I took a mouthful of tea—of all the things she could have brought out, the Ashen Fraulein decided to serve blue mallow tea with a hint of lemon in what I could only imagine was a bout of mischief—and patted my sister on the head to try and get her to stop staring into the table.
“Allow me to formally introduce you, Miss Celia. This is my sister Elisa, firstborn daughter to Johannes of Konigstuhl canton. At present, she is studying under a magus so that she might enter the Imperial College of Magic as a full-fledged student.”
“My,” Miss Celia marveled. “The College? Hello there, little one. I am Cecilia. I am a member of the Church of the Night Goddess; I serve the merciful goddess of the moon from my lowly, unranked position at the bottom of the Circle Immaculate. I pray we may get along.”
Unranked? As surprised as I was, the more pressing matter was that Elisa was turning her cheek and refusing to answer.
I wonder what’s wrong? I’d thought she’d gotten more used to this sort of thing thanks to her time with Mika, but maybe she was still afraid of strangers.
“What’s the matter, Elisa?” I cooed. “Come on, say hello.”
“Mm... Mmgh...”
I peeked over to see my sister’s face; she was trembling and biting her lip. She seemed scared of something, but I had no idea what. Knowing that it was poor manners to display this sort of attitude to a noble, I tried rocking her shoulder, but Miss Celia raised a gentle hand to stop me.
“That’s enough, Erich. She doesn’t need to speak to me if she doesn’t wish to. Children of her age rarely do. The Night Goddess’s sanctuaries often double as almshouses, so I am well accustomed to dealing with young ones.”
“But...”
“Please, that’s enough. Don’t you agree, little Elisa?”
She smiled with all the compassion of the Mother Goddess above, but my sister turned around and buried her face in my chest. After looking at her sadly for a moment, Miss Celia raised her hands ever so slightly to signal she was done with the topic.
I looked over at Mika, but they shook their head; they were just as lost as me. Elisa’s manners had been really impressive at the parade, but it looked like I’d need to talk to her about it later in private.
Moving on from my sister’s sudden shift from merrily playing with my hair to outright sulking, we had important matters to discuss...
“The two of you have helped me more than I could ever have asked.”
...but our good dame managed to take hold of the conversation before I could.
“I cannot allow you to be swept up any further in the trouble that is to come. Despite having given me even the very clothes on my back, I have nothing to compensate you with. But mark my word, I shall repay this debt.”
Whoa there, she’s going off in the wrong direction. Still patting Elisa’s back, I glanced over at Mika; they knew where this was heading too, and answered my look with a small nod. In turn, they tried to confirm my intentions with an inquisitive blink; this time it was my turn to nod.
As short as our time together had been, we were both certain that Miss Celia wasn’t a bad person. On top of that, she’d saved my life. What reason was there to hesitate now? How could I call myself a man—nay, how could I call myself human if I cast her out out of suspicion like she was going to ask me to?
I thought it was too late for such things in the first place. We had a common saying in the Empire that an assarius and drachma were equal in the pot, similar to the Earth idiom that posited one might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. Er, well, that came off a bit gruesome—I probably should have likened it to “in for a penny, in for a pound” instead.
At any rate, the point was that we’d gotten involved out of our own free will. Whether she brought more trouble or not, we had a duty to see through what we’d started.
Talk of responsibility aside, our own feelings on the matter were even more important. I would never be able to sleep soundly at night after chasing her out after only helping her with half the job.
“Miss Celia,” I said, “I pray that you won’t ask something as merciless of us as to abandon you now.”
“My old pal speaks the truth, Celia. I’d thought that having your permission to use a nickname made us friends. Was I wrong?”
“Of course not!” she blurted out. In another moment, she would realize her mistake and cover her mouth. Alas, it was too late: she’d given her word.
“Then I see no need for secrets among friends,” I said. “We’ve accompanied you thus far, so if delivering you to safety is within our means, we would be happy to oblige.”
“Besides,” Mika added, “our parents didn’t raise us to be so heartless as to throw a young lady onto the streets with nothing more than a meager set of clothes. Please, won’t you let us face our families again with our heads held high?”
Our usual tomfoolery managed to creep into our pleas, but the sentiment itself was genuine. Not helping her here was sure to leave something terrible lingering in our hearts for years to come.
But, hey, ignoring her absence as of late, I had an absolute behemoth of a connection covering my back; our odds of success weren’t astronomically small by any means. I wasn’t sure what she’d make me do in exchange, but knowing that villain, she was sure to cook up some tremendous ordeal for me. Still, she’d probably honor my request for help: lending a hand every now and again to her ticket to Berylin was sure to be in her interests.
Mika and I stared at her with passion in our gazes, waiting for a response. After a brief pause, a single tear bubbled up from those glistening ruby reds of hers, and she wound her hands together with downcast eyes.
“Thank you so much, Erich, Mika. I... Well...” Despite the hesitation still present in her tone, Miss Celia finally unveiled the reason for her escape. “You see, I am running away from a marriage. Yes, a marriage I have no desire to partake in.”
I knew it!
The ancients themselves had decided long ago that a dainty girl on the run was sure to be running from the altar. I’d seen the tale of a young maiden fleeing the clutches of a slimy old man or a calculating schemer who only wanted her for her family’s fortune countless times, in every possible medium.
This trope extended to the Empire’s tales as well. Twenty people counting on their fingers and toes still wouldn’t amount to the number of times I’d heard sagas of wandering knights and adventurers rescuing noble girls from their perilous engagements. Surely the little boys of our nation dreamed of committing such heroics themselves, whether in bed or wide awake.
That said, arranged marriages were absolutely everywhere, to the point where it was the default.
“As you can see, I have cast my lot with the Church, but this was originally my family’s intention. While I serve the Night Goddess of my own volition now, it was my father who first sent me away.”
Whether noble or common, marriage in this day and age was not something to be decided by personal feelings: it was a familial affair. The folly of a union between patrician and plebeian needed no explanation, but even the son of a wealthy, land-owning farmer would face serious repercussions for trying to pursue romance with the cute daughter of a poor family who borrowed the land on which they worked.
Questions of romance could only begin to be asked when society advanced enough to prioritize the interests of the individual; in an era where industry and the economy built on it were weak, such things skipped straight past futility into the realm of the downright harmful.
“Yet now, he demands that I return to secular life... I had thought his summons was simply to see me, as I hardly ever have an opportunity to descend from Fullbright Hill. Never in my wildest imaginations had I thought that he would sully my faith, of all things...”
Parental authority over wedding their children was more than a matter of preserving the interests of a clan: it was seen as serving social order. Trying to butt in was incredibly uncouth. Even under the lax standards of Earth, meddling in another’s marriage was considered inconsiderate at best. Done here, it would be the same as picking a fight—or in the worst case, starting a war.
“I caught wind of this plan, and made my escape just as I was being taken to his estate to be sealed away.”
The three of us could cause mayhem and destruction, getting away in a daring chase with the blocky words “THE END” preceding the end credits, but we still had the rest of our lives to live. Factoring in our futures, the problem was anything but trivial. Were we characters in a cheap novel, we could just sock Miss Celia’s father in the face and lecture him until he changed his tune, but alas.
Despite all my pessimistic grumbling, I had a feeling that we’d be able to figure something out within the bounds of the law.
We would have had no choice but to pack it up if we were dealing with a stupid girl trying to elope with a commoner: the only ways out then would be to tear down every barrier on her way to the remote edges of the frontier, or to punch her dad with a heartfelt prayer that everything would work out.
However, I could vouch that Miss Celia was not the type to let her own partiality dictate her actions without thought. While she was admittedly reminiscent of an elementary schooler excited on their first trip to a faraway land, succumbing to pangs of curiosity was different from thoughtless indiscretion. She had to have known her father would send people to chase her, and I doubted she would have tried running at all without some chance of victory.
“Thankfully, I suspect not all of my family will take kindly to this engagement. I have a gregh—ahem. I have an aunt whom I owe much, and I am certain she would convince my father to stop.”
“Now that’s reassuring!”
While I was a bit curious about her cough, having a dependable ally within her family sped things along tremendously. I knew she’d have something up her sleeve.
“With my aunt’s help, I will be able to reach the Church, whom I’m sure will also take my side. I hate to be presumptuous, but I believe myself to be regarded well amongst my peers, and the Head Abbess of the Great Chapel is a personal friend of mine. So, as long as I can evade capture...”
With religious authorities on our side, we had a real shot at pulling this off. Er, more importantly, the Head Abbess of the Great Chapel was the top authority that oversaw all of the Night Goddess’s following. What kind of acquaintance is that?!
Perhaps it was one of those stories that played off immortality. Miss Celia was a vampire who looked to be our age, which put her at least past fifty; if she’d taken care of children in her youth, it was perfectly reasonable that one might grow up to climb the ranks of the church. As curious as I was, it wasn’t exactly a pressing matter, so I decided to shelve it and maybe ask again when we had more time to spare.
The big news here was that we had Miss Celia’s aunt on our side. Since time immemorial, little brothers had been fated to bow down to their big sisters—I would know. Although her name had grown difficult to recall, the painful episodes I’d endured at the hand of my sister a lifetime ago were as fresh as ever. How could I ever forget? My birthday and Christmas had been the only chances to beg my parents for a new game, and she’d bullied me into choosing something that she’d wanted.
Maybe equating my frivolous trauma with the inner workings of a noble house wasn’t quite right, but I maintained that people were ever people, no matter the world. Besides, it was clear who wore the pants, given Miss Celia’s conviction that her aunt would make things right.
“In that case,” Mika said, “all we need to do is contact your aunt.”
“Victory is finally in sight, old chum!”
Now that we had our mark, there were plenty of ways to stick the landing. If she was nearby, we could sneak out of the capital and head straight there. If she was far away, we could hope to reach her by mail. At the very worst, we could run around Berylin and wait for her to back us up, so long as we could get in contact with her.
We had a clearly defined goal; now was the time to act. After all, we were up against nobles. They had limitless angles of attack on account of outstripping us by a gigantic margin in terms of wealth and manpower. Perfection could wait—haste was the name of the game. As the ones on the lam, our position was only going to worsen the more time we gave our pursuers to prepare.
Judging from how well-dressed the first batch was, I surmised that Miss Celia’s father was anything but underprivileged. It was best to assume he’d put his money where his mouth was and hire hundreds to search for us with a fine-toothed comb. The worst-case scenario could even entail him enlisting the guard, making the whole city a danger zone.
Gods damn the bourgeois...
“By the by, Miss Celia,” I said, “wherever might your aunt reside? Does she have an estate here in the capital? Or is her main residence close by any chance?”
I swallowed back a mysterious desire to go find a flag dyed scarlet and looked over at the vampire. Suddenly, she clammed up and averted her eyes, twiddling her fingers in silence.
“She is in...um...Lipzi.”
“What?”
Lipzi was the capital of the administrative state—formally a Regierungsbezirk—that made up the eastern reach of the Empire, and the headquarters of one of the three imperial families, House Erstreich.
But most importantly of all, the direct distance from the capital to Lipzi was one hundred and forty kilometers.

[Tips] The capital of an administrative state is the center of regional political and executive affairs, and is thus most often found in the territory of influential families. The imperials, electorate, and other members of the highest order maintain estates at each and every one, sending stipends to lesser, local nobles under their wing in a bid to maintain their influence. They then reconvene during the months where the nation’s oligarchs engage in politics from their separate estates in the imperial capital.

I was so shocked by the distance that I stood dazed for a moment. Even Mika, who was less familiar with the geography around here, was furrowing their brow.
My acquaintance with the lay of the land could be traced back to my three-month-long journey with Lady Agrippina. Thinking that it would be helpful for the future, I’d memorized a national atlas—a rough sketch that included every territory in the Empire—which gave me a decent idea of relative distance. That understanding was exactly why I was in such despair.
One hundred and forty kilometers sounds simple enough; it was about the distance from Osaka to Nagoya. Modern sensibilities would reduce the journey to roughly one meal and a really hard ice pop on a bullet train, or a two-to-three-hour road trip involving a picnic at a highway rest stop...but it was a massive distance for us.
It was too far a march on our own two feet, not even to mention that one hundred and forty kilometers only covered the distance between the two points on a map. Traveling there would require us to traverse several times that.
In case it wasn’t already obvious, the Empire was home to mountains, rivers, and rolling hills, just to name a few topographical complications. The state wasn’t some half-baked player in a city-sim game who could conjure up direct roads between key locations on a whim.
Between Berylin and Lipzi lay a sheer mountain range known as the Southern Sword. While not as harsh to navigate as the Frost Spirit’s Peaks the giants called home, normal travel gear would still leave a traveler freezing or slipping to their deaths in half a day. Obviously, no road went through them; while a path straight south would be an all-around good investment that would save time and money, oikodomurges weren’t exactly omnipotent.
Ideally they’d plow a tunnel through the mountains to make a direct path, but that remained an ideal for now. That would surely only come in the far future, when advancements in architectural technology would grant the crown the heavy machinery and sturdy materials needed for such an endeavor.
The Trialist Empire was still miles ahead of any other country, and the crowning jewel of its great transportation network was the linchpin highway, a series of stone-paved roads that connected all its most important regional capitals. However, this system did not prioritize creating optimal paths; not only did it snake around to avoid obstacles, but it also took efficiency of construction into account, meaning the intersections were structured to connect three or four different roads at once. There wasn’t any way to shrink that down to match the direct distance.
Not that we were lucky enough to even use the roads.
The Empire’s esteemed highway system laid its foundations in bedrock, complete with drainage systems and enough ruts for several lanes of traffic to run in parallel, and foliage was cleared on each side to prevent highwaymen from having a place to set up ambushes. Oikodomurges had polished what was effectively a medieval autobahn more finely than a shining mirror. Smaller roads branched off the nation’s central artery like capillaries, connecting towns and cantons to the greater Empire.
This was all in the name of national security and economic prosperity. Over five centuries of history, the Empire had laid and maintained new roads with a zeal that bordered on mania. Unlike in the Middle Ages with which I was familiar, the crown did not scoff at major highways as a path for enemies to take to our key holds; rather, they were seen as a means of rapidly deploying our own troops to any location on the front lines as the situation called.
Inversely, it followed that minor roads were not well kept. A country’s budget and manpower were finite, and the towering five-hundred-year-old behemoth was no exception. Local lords often maintained streets within their sphere of influence, but only insofar as it suited their own interests; they weren’t serving a public demand for free travel.
Even the furthest frontiers in my past life had been neatly tailored to bend to the whims of automobiles, but the same could not be said here. Common sense said that an attempt to travel without using the main roads was one’s own decision, and it was thus up to the individual to figure something out.
For us, that was incredibly unfortunate. Naturally, the first places anyone would check would be easy avenues of movement; cutting off any high-speed escape routes was the first step of catching a fugitive in a wide search radius. Much like how the police of Earth set up freeway checkpoints, enacted searches at hub train stations, and shut down airport boarding gates, our pursuers were sure to keep an eye on every road out of Berylin. There would be guards at every gate checking our bags, they’d forbid face coverings, and the inspection to get into the city would be far less lax than it had been. I had no doubt that they’d cast a net so tight that they wouldn’t let so much as a kitten get by without questioning.
We needed to dodge the authorities and our pursuers and hike through a couple hundred kilometers of uncharted mountains with a young lady in tow... That’s death.
If we had access to proper roads, I could have made it work. I could make around thirty kilometers of progress per day on foot—even with my stubby child legs—while stopping at the inns that dotted the land, and I could easily double that if I rode Castor or Polydeukes. Despite having an inexperienced and sheltered girl with us, I swear that I could manage similar numbers if I could get ahold of a stagecoach; there were plenty of caravans that regularly traveled between the imperial and regional capitals, so finding one that would allow us to join them would be a cinch.
But the net ensnaring us would only grow wider, and eventually, ducking under the watchful eyes of patrolmen would become impossible. I doubted they were idiots, so they were sure to close the path to Lipzi as soon as possible to prevent us from seeking help.
Uh... Are we screwed?
Had it just been Mika and I, we could have braved the perilous journey with a private letter to Miss Celia’s aunt in hand. However, in that case, we needed to worry about what to do with the damsel in question while we were gone. With the master of the house absent, we could stick her in Lady Agrippina’s atelier, but I couldn’t just leave her alone with Elisa when the madam could come back at any moment.
Though Lady Agrippina wasn’t totally heartless, she had exactly zero tolerance for anything she deemed a bother. Should she return home to find that I’d brought in a walking nuisance that she had no obligation to attend to, she would throw Miss Celia out in an instant. Worse still, I would be thoughtlessly dragging her into something that could affect her standing in high society; I would certainly be at her mercy after she cleaned up the situation as she saw fit.
And how could I complain when this really was a decision made solely on my account? That would be like leaving something out in a shared common space and getting upset when someone else threw it away.
I wanted nothing more than to have already perfected space-bending magic. If only I’d mastered that, I would have snapped my fingers and solved Miss Celia’s problems with all the ease of a fairy godmother summoning a pumpkin carriage and glass slippers.
I supposed the fact that teleportation invalidated so many scenarios like this one was exactly why it was locked behind such steep experience costs. Had I possessed the madam’s skills, this whole conundrum would have taken fewer than five days to mop up: not only could I have cut out the entirety of our sewer disaster by sending Miss Celia straight to my lodging, but I could have teleported to some random point I’d visited on our three-month journey to the capital and gotten a massive head start to Lipzi. From there, I’d just run straight to my destination and complete the mission!
Hm... This was the sort of anticlimactic story that would make a player chew out their GM for not planning against their antics, and one that’d cause the GM to shout that they should have held back.
“Um, but there isn’t any need to worry! I have a ride! I’m well aware that it’s too far to reach on foot!”
“A ride?”
Miss Celia must have caught on to our uncertainty, because she began speaking in a rush. Apparently, she had some means of getting from Berylin to Lipzi without being caught by the police.
“I cannot spare the details yet,” she went on. “But it shall arrive in three days’ time. If all goes well, I will be in Lipzi only a day after that.”
“One day?! That’s unbelievable...”
“Even dragon knights would take longer than that. Are you sure it’ll only take a day?”
My sheer surprise was joined by Mika tilting their head in tempered curiosity. Under normal circumstances, a fast horse would need a few days, and a messenger on foot would need two to three weeks; making the trek in a single day was absurd. Drakes could soar through the skies in a straight line, but they could only be handled by experienced jockeys—if one could manage to steal one of these living weapons from underneath the crown’s nose, that is.
“Yes, one day! You will have to wait and see, but from what I hear, it will surely only take a day.”
Miss Celia puffed up her chest with confidence, but her refusal to explain further worried me. More than anything else, her twinkling eyes spelled danger: whatever means of escaping the city she had, it was something that this curious lady considered fun. That same fun was why she merrily told us to wait and see; while knowing she only did so hoping to entertain us as friends left me with no room to complain, it really did not feel like she understood the gravity of our situation.
Ah well. It beats risking the hike.
“Very well,” I said. “Then we simply need to buy three days, correct?”
“Yes,” she replied. “But I suspect hiding away here...”
“Will only net us around one.”
Having a concrete goal in mind made victory seem within reach, but things were not as easy as they seemed. It sounded like we could evade detection for three days if we holed up, but that wasn’t an option when there was a very convenient and very magical way to search for persons of interest.
Ladies Leizniz and Agrippina sent their origami birds and butterflies my way without the messages getting lost using the same tracking system found in search magic. The fact that Miss Celia’s location hadn’t been exposed yet could be entirely chalked up to her pursuers not employing a mage. I suspected they still believed her to be a sheltered princess wandering aimlessly about the capital, and they hadn’t gotten serious yet as a result; she’d been on the cusp of capture when we crossed paths, so I doubted they wanted to escalate their efforts any more than they already had.
If a moderately trained mage—say, the apprentice of an ordained magus—began searching in earnest, we’d be caught sooner rather than later. We would have been cornered in the sewers long before getting to sip tea at this table had one been present from the start.
“An experienced magus can pick out their target amongst the tens of thousands of people in this city in no time at all,” I explained. “A strand of hair or a chipped nail will be more than enough for them to mark you for their spells.”
Search magic scoured the fabric of reality for traces matching whatever query was made. These were essentially wrinkles or stains left on the warp and weft of existence, and hiding in the deepest, darkest corner one could find would do nothing to eliminate such evidence. Secret rooms designed to shelter persecuted priests and catacombs built in the depths of the earth could not stop a procedure that dealt in metaphysical realms.
Yet it also had its drawbacks. Searching was only accurate when provided with an item that had some connection to the target.
I didn’t know for sure how much time we had before they dipped their toes into the arcane, but factoring in the requisite preparations, we had a day at best; if they’d already begun setting up, they would begin sometime tonight...and magia fit to serve noble houses were a stone’s throw away in the capital. It went without saying that I wouldn’t have been worried about three days on the run if we’d been up against the kind of beggarly house that didn’t have any connection to the College.
Which means we don’t have time to take it easy.
“Fear not,” I said. “I’d like to believe that I know a thing or two about dealing with magia.”
I was a servant, not a magus—but I was still a number-crunching munchkin to my core. I knew better than anyone that the tactics I didn’t want to run up against were also the tactics that would frustrate my opponents the most; I always kept contingencies to counter things that I found troubling.
After all, doing what one wanted while disallowing one’s enemies from doing the same was among the strongest strategies in any game, whether that be ehrengarde, a TRPG, or the sprawling game of life that used people as its pieces.

[Tips] Search magic refers to a mix of true and hedge magic that traces mystic footprints left behind by a mark, and exists in a variety of differing implementations. The simplest cantrips merely highlight particles of matching scent, but most either seek out a predetermined mark or use a catalyst to find the catalyst’s “owner.”
The masters of search magic, however, reverse engineer a target’s location by starting with evidence that the target physically existed to begin with. From there, they make semantic connections to approach their destination with certainty that no normal method can match.

Sleepless as the city may have been, the majority of the imperial capital’s denizens were tucked away as the Mother Goddess sailed on her gentle arc through the sky. In a dim, dreary room, a man heaved a heavy sigh. He was dressed in a thick, hooded robe of equally dark colors, plainly telling the world he was a magus.
“...Did it fail?” The woman facing him was the same one who had been chasing Cecilia on the rooftop. She’d changed into skinny pants and a white top, with a pelisse draped over her left shoulder so as not to offend any nobles with whom she might have an audience. Her hair, cut too short for the tastes of most, was neatly slicked back with a bit of oil.
“I’m afraid so.” On the table in front of the man lay the most up-to-date, comprehensive map of Berylin available. It spared no detail, not even the most vulnerable of military secrets; no normal person could hope to get their hands on something of this quality.
A pendulum dangled above the map, its bob a triangular pyramid cut from blue topaz. The name of the gem meant “that which is sought” in the southern tongues spoken near the sea, and the mystic formulae etched into the sides bolstered its inherent properties.
The magus had attempted to locate the girl via dowsing, a form of divination initially used to search for water and ores buried underground. In recent times, the thought of trespassing in the domain of deities who presided over the earth had put a pause on its original use—not even magia were willing to seriously anger the gods—but it was still commonly employed to find missing objects or persons.
“Was the catalyst I brought too weak?” the woman asked. “I should’ve known a single lock wouldn’t be enough...”
“No, it should have sufficed. Ordinarily, I require no catalyst at all to find somebody. For example...would you happen to know of anyone in the capital whose current location you can pinpoint?”
The knight pondered the magus’s question for a moment and then offered three names belonging to the men who’d joined her during the day. She had given them the night to rest on account of their strenuous search, so they could all be found in the servants’ quarters of her master’s estate.
“Mr. Karl is here, as is Mr. Lars...”
The man lifted his pendulum over the map, and it bent in gravity-defying ways to point at the very building the woman had envisioned her subordinates sleeping in.
“Ah, but it seems Mr. Luitpold is down in the low quarter...near the pubs, if I recall. I, too, paid these cheap dens of alcohol visits in my youth.”
That moron, the woman thought, holding back a click of her tongue.
A sudden shift in the pendulum’s angle directed their attention to the low-class bars the magus had mentioned, complete with a nearby red-light district.
The man’s skill was obvious. Of course, someone who knew whose house she served could have made an educated guess at the manor—her employer was just that famous. Anyone who hadn’t heard of him was sure to be a hick who spent their lives under a rock.
However, she knew her talented yet foolhardy subordinate well, and he was an ardent lover of liquor and women. It was easy to picture him ignoring her orders to get some rest; he had once coerced a young boy from a branch family into sneaking out to the red-light district with him so he could save on paying from his own pocket. Seeing an idiot like him sneak a drink to soothe his aching body was as sure as the roosters’ cry in the morning.
Engraving a mental note that she’d make him write up a report and do fifty laps around Berylin when they next met, the woman’s attention moved on to the wavering pendulum.
“But this,” the magus said, “is the young lady in question.”
“What in the world?”
Until now, the thread had been taut, pointing straight at a single location; now it began aimlessly tugging every which way. Every few seconds, it would stop in place for a moment before zipping away to a new spot. The places it pointed to had no rhyme or reason to them: it ventured outside the city walls on several occasions, and once it even came to rest directly on the imperial palace.
“Ordinarily, even a failed attempt won’t produce such erratic results. With my skills, I would say...at worst, the marker would restrict itself to a single district. Considering I have her hair, I was confident I’d be able to pinpoint the very building she is in.”
“Then what is this?”
“At the risk of repeating myself, may I ask if the young lady is versed in the magical arts?”
“That’s preposterous.”
The woman was in such disbelief that she let a minor faux pas slip under her breath, but the magus did not react in any way. Instead, he continued his questioning by asking if the Night Goddess provided any miracles that could impede his spell.
This time, she could not be so sure. Every member of the family she served paid tribute to the Mother Goddess—though the degree of their faith varied by person—and their retainers had all converted as a matter of course. Yet she personally knew little about miracles: they were gifts from divine to devout meant to protect the faithful, and the clergy of each religious order guarded their unparalleled rewards from the public eye. Modern churches placed great emphasis on written record, but the secrecy surrounding miracles meant that they alone were passed down via oral tradition.
Those unconnected to a church thus had no means of learning about its miracles. While most had a general idea of which gods had power over which domains, the technical details remained a blur. The woman didn’t know whether the religious leaders of old had wanted to avoid being used by statesmen for their powers or their gods had explicitly sworn them to confidence, but regardless, she was merely a lay churchgoer with no means of finding out.
The Night Goddess was said to lend Her strength primarily in the name of healing, protection, and guardianship; it was difficult to tell if hiding oneself fell under those categories. While the veil of night certainly helped conceal those in the shadows, Her true nature was the moonlight that offered solace within that darkness.
At an impasse, the woman had no choice but to answer that she didn’t know; the magus then stated that it was unlikely anyway.
“In which case,” he went on, “would you happen to know of any powerful connections she may have in the capital? Specifically, a magus or someone adjacent?”
“That also seems unlikely. My lady spends nearly all of her time praying atop Fullbright Hill, and her only friends within the city should be a handful of religious officials.”
Fullbright Hill was located in the southern reach of the Empire, near the mystic Frost Spirit’s Peaks. “Hill” was a misnomer: it was a mountain. Its name came from its gentle slope that stretched out for miles and miles, but its peak was the highest of all the holy mountains in the nation.
Legend had it that moonlight shone more brightly at the summit than any other place in the country, which was why followers of the Night Goddess had planted their head temple there. Peoples seeking protection from Her or Her believers then began gathering at the base of the mountain, giving rise to the churches and towns in the surrounding area.
Limited were the opportunities for a dedicated priest to leave such a location. Evangelist missions weren’t unheard of, but the girl they were searching for would never have been chosen to go on one. Barring her fellow believers, there was no way for her to have an acquaintance in the capital, let alone a friend.
The woman asked the aim of the magus’s questions. Catching the swinging pendulum, he answered that this result was anything but natural.
“Say, for example, that I cast this spell to search in a completely mistaken area, or to try and find something that doesn’t exist. The pendulum would not budge. On the other hand, even when tasked with searching for someone I haven’t met, whose name I only know by hearsay, and whose face is unimaginable to me, the marker will point somewhere, with enough mana and skill.”
“But that isn’t what happened. Which means?”
“We’ve been challenged to a counterspell war.” Confused by the unfamiliar turn of phrase, the woman asked the magus to explain, so he added, “We magia tend to fight magic with magic of our own.”
In essence, he was saying the girl had a mage or magus assisting her getaway.
“That’s absurd! My lady shouldn’t know anyone of the sort! She had no more than the clothes on her back—not even a coin purse—when she escaped!”
“Which makes it unlikely that she hired a mage... Pardon me asking, but is the young lady...well, how shall I put this? Is she blessed in manners of appearance?”
“I... Well, my bias as her loyal attendant aside, I believe her to be exceedingly attractive.”
“Then I suspect some troubled lad has fallen for her at first sight. Every boy has dreamed of saving a pretty damsel in distress at some point in their lives, you see.”
The magus slipped off the ring linked to the pendulum with a sigh and rolled up the map. Sifting through a drawer at his desk, he pulled out something that glimmered in the candlelight.
“The current reaction is that of the young lady’s presence being scattered all throughout town.”
As soon as she heard the word “scattered,” the girl’s servant lost all color in her expression. The only thought that had come to mind was her charge being cut into pieces and hidden away all around the city.
For reasons undisclosed, her lady was resilient to death, but she could still be physically destroyed, and her natural powers of regeneration could be delayed. The most brutal and horrific means of doing so would be to dismember her and carry off each piece to a different place.
“Rest assured, I do not mean that in a physical sense. Rather, the spell would have given no feedback at all had she been killed.”
“Th-That...is good to hear. If anything were to happen to her, my blood would skip past running cold and freeze solid.”
As he beckoned his pale-faced companion to relax, the magus took the lid off the shining silver thurible he’d fetched from the drawer. All the while, his mind cynically drifted to wonder whether the woman’s reaction was one of loyalty or self-preservation.
“If one were to put mystic pursuance into simple terms, it would be the art of scanning through the skein we call reality in search of a stubborn stain—that is, a person. Our ‘eyes’ are driven toward the most notable of blemishes, but a smattering of smudges made in a similar hue will cause our attention to wander.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying that a dense gathering of closely related family members might make the process more difficult?”
“That is one possibility. But more commonly, search spells catch traces left by the person themselves: fallen hairs or well-worn articles and the like.”
“Then what point is there to using magic?!”
“Of course, this is an issue encountered only by novices. As little as it may mean, I consider myself a specialist in the field, and my formulae reject the noise that lesser spells may snag on. However, the accuracy of my means is sure to drop when encountering decoys of stellar make.”
“Decoys?”
In response to her question, the magus raised his hand and began counting down examples: something soaked in blood, the most powerful mystic trail of all; a prized trinket that one carried around at all hours; a loose tooth, or any body part greater in importance than a single hair; or a body double specifically made to stand in for the person in question.
“A body double?” the woman repeated in awe.
“They’re employed by more nobles than one might expect. Having one’s location known can often lead to trouble, after all.”
The magus reached back into his desk to produce a mortar and pestle. He pinched a bit of ash from the thurible and placed it into the bowl, and then opened a tiny box, throwing in the bundle of hair found inside as well.
The warrior had procured that from her lady’s bed and comb. Though the girl inherently produced little waste on account of her people’s efficient metabolic processes, no amount of careful cleaning could eliminate her footprint entirely. While the woman considered her actions a terrible transgression, she’d rushed to collect as much as she could when the magus had informed her of its utility.
“‘Body doubles’ are simple charms,” the magus explained. “Take a slip of paper with an arcane formula, have the person write their name on it, and wet it with a few drops of blood. That will suffice to draw a great deal of mystic attention away from the target. Not only are they trivial to produce, but they are easy to carry around. I suspect a great many people have elected to employ them—not that they impede someone of my skill, of course.”
The man ground the hair and ash together. Though hair wasn’t usually something that could easily be broken up, the clump immediately crumbled into dust, combining with the ash to create a fine black powder.
“Paper substitutes are then often delivered to body doubles of the traditional kind to lend their disguises credence. They’re beyond common in this line of work, but there is an alternative that outstrips its deceptive capabilities.”
Tapping the bowl to accumulate all the powder in one spot, the magus placed it down and pulled a pipe out of his inner pocket. He gracefully opened the tobacco box on his desk and plucked out a few leaves from the countless varieties stuffed inside. After packing them in, he took a drag and they glowed red without a flame in sight.
“...Which would be?” the woman asked.
“A doll.”
He exhaled a cloud of smoke with no regard for the woman’s scrunching nose, and dumped the leaves into the thurible after finishing his first puff. The embers slowly spread into a fire that filled the chamber, producing a smoke with a curious scent. Finally, he poured the black powder from his mortar into the thurible, causing a massive pillar of flame to shoot straight up.
Not expecting the sudden flash, the woman covered her face and instinctively reached for her dagger; in the next moment, she realized the heat was gone. She looked up to see the fire pillar had been replaced with a dark smoke cloud hovering in one place. The cloud began to swirl above the thurible, eventually stretching itself into a new shape: that of a raven.
The bird fluttered its massive, smoky wings and landed on the desk; unbelievably, it began to preen itself.
“Be off.”
At its master’s order, the raven flew away in peculiarly lifelike fashion. Though it disappeared upon slamming headfirst into the door, it did not dissipate; instead, it slipped through the cracks in the frame.
“With this, we shall find her in a few moments’ time. Would you care for any tea while we wait?”
Placing down his pipe, the magus walked over to a cabinet in the corner of his room, pulled out a set of cups, and leisurely began preparing tea. Still dazed by the fantastical display, the woman had to pull herself together to politely accept his offer.
Instead of the usual red tea, he handed her an herbal blend made up of soaked dried leaves. The soothing fragrance helped the woman unwind after a long day of running around; his attention to detail even in softer matters heightened her opinion of him—it had been worth sending away his apprentice in search of a true professional.
After getting halfway through her cup, the woman looked up to ask the magus how long the process would take. Yet her eyes rose to see him frozen, teacup in hand, with a profoundly grave expression.
The man’s breathing was shallow, and he coughed violently as if some terrible pain had possessed him. The woman could not bring herself to call out to him, but the abnormality of his demeanor dragged her back out of the relaxation she’d finally attained.
Just as she regained enough wit to hurry to his side, he yelped in pain and threw his cup onto the floor. The teaware was clearly expensive and well used, and his carpet was equally as luxurious, but he didn’t care at all—he couldn’t. The magus was too busy clutching his chest in a desperate bid for air.
“Sir! Are you all right?! What’s happened?!”
“Agh! Aurgh! Hrgh...gah!”
She rushed to hold him as he writhed in agony, but his frantic dance was so violent that he pushed the trained warrior off and flung her back into her chair. He stumbled about, shattering his teacup underfoot and kicking the shards in every direction. Yet all his squirming did nothing to ease the pain, and he began frothing at the mouth...when an earsplitting noise erupted from within his desk.
“Grah?! Hah... Hah...”
The sound signaled the man’s emancipation from his torturous pain; he collapsed onto his knees with labored breath. His right hand continued to hold his breast tight, while his left clung to the table for purchase.
“Are you okay?! What in the world happened?!”
“Ugh... Is this...recoil?”
With the woman patting his back, the magus stumbled to his desk, fighting a coughing fit the whole way. He opened a drawer to pull out a clump of wood from its depths: a clump that had once been a doll made in his likeness.
“Recoil? Recoil from what?!”
“Within defensive...magic,” he heaved, “there exists...a subset of curses... Ugh... That attack anyone...trying to peer into a location...”
The doll had been a stand-in for the magus. It had been modeled closely after him and engraved with his name, and he’d carried it around with him for a considerable length of time to ensure it would make a compelling mystic substitute. In fact, it bore such a connotational resemblance to him that it posed a risk of its own: damage dealt to it could feed back to hurt him. But a long career spent ferreting out the lost and that which does not want to be found had convinced him the dangers were worth it.
Tonight, that assessment saved his life. Had this doll not exploded in his stead, his body would have taken the whole of the fatal attack.
He surmised that his seeking spell had snagged somewhere, earning the ire of whoever resided at the location. They then responded with a curse so lethal that it would not serve as a warning—its sole intent was to kill. The hex was close to the upper bound of human capability to withstand. This was a matter for the best of the best, grounds only meant to be trodden by those who had one foot out the door of mortality: the professors of the College.
“I apologize. It brings me great frustration and even greater shame to admit this...but your request is more than I am able to bear.”
“I... I see,” the woman said. “And are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“Worry not. I won’t die from this...but I humbly request to be relieved for the night.”
Although her mission was of the utmost urgency, she couldn’t whip the magus into working after seeing his condition; he was trying his best to seem healthy, but one glimpse at his complexion made it clear he was inches from death.
“O-Of course,” she said. “Please get some rest and take care of yourself.”
“Thank you very much for your benevolence... Forgive me, for I shall pen my master tomorrow morning.”
After being seen out of the wobbly-legged magus’s atelier, the woman entered the College elevator and began ruffling her hair in frustration. He’d been the best magus she personally knew. Finding someone that outstripped him would mean going through an intermediary within the clan, but the most influential were all at their personal estates preparing for the upcoming harvest in fall. It was too far removed from the political season for anyone notable to remain in the capital.
Those that remained were hardly any better than herself, and absolutely none had as much expertise as the collapsed magus. Of course, that didn’t include her employer, who would have been the most dependable help she could have asked for...if he weren’t in the midst of partaking in his favorite hobby. No matter how many messengers she sent to retrieve him, the man refused to respond.
Oh, how unimaginably blissful it would be for her to throw up her hands, exclaim, I tried my best! and collapse backward onto a fluffy bed. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. While she was displeased to see her lady forced into an undesired position, she couldn’t ignore the plans of the main family. Few could survive without ties of kinship in this day and age.
No matter how exhausted she was, the retainer could not give in. More than anything else, she simply couldn’t stand the thought of her master wandering unknown lands alone; the appearance of an unknown mage only worsened her fear and confusion.
“My lady,” she whispered, “your Mechthild is coming. I beg of you, please be safe.”
Up, right, left, and down; the elevator’s wild swings in unthinkable directions made Mechthild dizzy, but she remained cool as she reached into her breast pocket for a small vial. She tore off the seal—including the warning label that stated only one was to be administered per day.
One sip of the mysterious drug sufficed to banish drowsiness, but she downed the entire bottle in one gulp. This was her third vial of the day, and she had two left; they would no doubt be gone by sunrise too, but insomnia, minor paralysis, and complaints from the mage who’d written the prescription were a price she’d gladly pay for her charge’s safe return.
The instant the elevator dinged, Mechthild squeezed herself past the slowly opening gate and bolted out. At the same time, the elevator beside hers began to move.
Though it was odd for someone to be around at this hour, she ignored it and tore through the empty Krahenschanze halls to burst through the front gates, ordering the night watchman to prepare her a horse.
Her first order of business would be to return to the palace and hear the imperial guard’s report. From there, she’d need to visit the head of the city guard; then she’d return to the manor to organize her own men, and...the list kept going on.
Steeling herself for a long night, the woman looked up at the heavens. Her master’s object of worship had sailed over half Her nightly course, and she offered the moon a silent prayer.
May my brave lady be safe.
Whether the Goddess above knew the praying servant or the runaway master mattered not; Her heavenly form remained silent, bathing the lands below in the clear glow of night.