366 - Leonardo's Perspective, The Day After the Nightmare
This is mainly Leonardo's perspective, the 10th chapter of its kind. Please be aware.
I send out word to the forts along the border, blocking off escape routes for whoever burned down the pier warehouses. I have a premonition that Tina was taken, but it's not confirmed yet. My gut tells me the woman's burned corpse is Kalisa, but that's just intuition too. When Alf, who was supposed to have gone to the Sedovara Church to pick up Tina, returns, maybe he'll tell me all these hunches were wrong, and Tina and Kalisa are safe in their warm beds.
...This time, I hope my instincts are wrong.
Thinking such thoughts, I gather what information I can from the burned remains of the warehouse. By the time I was occupied with putting out the fire, I had already fallen behind by more than a step. I cannot afford to overlook any clue the bodies left behind and let the culprit slip away.
While managing the cleanup and gathering information simultaneously, I also send messengers to the fort. No word from Alf yet, but I cannot just sit around waiting. Some of the men have been working since last night and are starting to show signs of fatigue, so I need to rotate them out for rest in shifts.
"Commander, she is said to be the pier caretaker's wife," someone reports.
The woman led before me is somewhat plump. She seems startled by the Black Knights running around the pier early in the morning, constantly glancing around nervously.
"Um, have I done something wrong? And all these Black Knights... did something happen? I just came to bring my husband his breakfast..."
At the word breakfast, I check the contents of the basket she is carrying. Inside are a canteen wrapped in cloth to keep it warm and bread with thin slices of ham. Just a simple breakfast, truly. It does not seem like the caretaker's wife is involved in this incident.
I lead the caretaker's wife to where the bodies are laid out on the ground and have her identify the faces. Unlike the burned corpse, the pier caretaker and the warehouse keeper were easily recognizable.
...Kalisa's face was mostly crushed.
Kalisa had kept her mouth tightly shut, hiding what seemed to be the culprit's fingers inside. The culprit must have tried to retrieve his own fingers. She was beaten badly, her nose twisted, her cheekbones shattered. Even so, she secured a part of the culprit as evidence and protected it through the fire. Kalisa was a maid too capable for her own good. She must have fought against the culprit to protect Tina until the very end.
...I will count myself lucky her head was not taken along with it.
Thanks to her, the clues leading to the culprit remain in my hands. Some of the burned corpses had their heads separated from their bodies, so I cannot believe the culprit had any hesitation about resorting to such brutality. If the culprit had wanted to, they could have taken Kalisa's head along with their severed fingers. The fact that they did not means there must have been a reason they could not.
...Did they start the fire first, and the fire spread faster than expected?
Either way, even if slim, clues connecting to the culprit remain. What I need to do now is not panic, not rush, not hurry, but calmly pick up each piece of evidence one by one.
I wait for the wife, who has been confronted with her husband's body, to compose herself before asking about what happened last night. I also ask going back several days about anything unusual, but nothing particularly strange comes up. The pier caretaker spends the time from evening when the pier closes until morning in the caretaker's hut, and during the day he goes home to sleep since the warehouse keeper and merchants using the pier are around. Apparently, since that is his routine, his not coming home at night did not seem unusual to her at all. She thought it was normal.
Around noon, Alf finally appears at the pier. Seeing the fatigue on his face, which makes it clear he came on foot without riding a horse, I cannot help but furrow my brow. It is strange enough that he came on foot, but the direction he came from was even stranger. If he had come from the city of Grenore, he should have appeared from behind me, but Alf showed up from the front, where the river is.
"What is all this? What happened?" Alf asks.
"Three warehouses burned down. One had four burned corpses, and the pier caretaker and warehouse keeper were killed as well. ...What happened on your end? You were supposed to go pick up Tina."
"Tina disappeared from the Sedovara Church. I followed a waterway that seemed to have been used as an escape route, which led to the river, and followed the footprints from there..."
If the commotion at the pier where his trail of footprints led is this, then the two incidents must be connected. The only thing I have learned from connecting them is that the worst possible situation has occurred. Tina has vanished from the Sedovara Church.
"After I parted ways with you, I went straight to the Sedovara Church. I had heard beforehand that she would be in the research lab, so I headed there directly... but no one was there."
Finding it suspicious that not only Tina but also Aaron and Kuroshiba (Kokumaro) were gone, with no message left behind, he searched the places Tina might have gone. He had heard that recently she had been making soap with Mirshe's help, so he thought she might be in the room where they were drying the soap. He moved there, and when he entered Jasper's research lab, the scent of perfume was overwhelming, apparently. Alf's view was that the obviously abnormal intensity of the scent was not the culprit wearing perfume, but rather something scattered to counter tracking by guard dogs. Beyond the perfume room, there was still no sign of Tina and the others. Realizing something was seriously wrong, he left the room once to gather people, bringing pharmacists and Black Knights back with him. According to the pharmacists, there was a waterway, so when they entered the entrance to the waterway, white powder had been scattered around the area. It is strange to say thanks to Chadwick, but Alf, who is hypersensitive about drugs, quickly covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and avoided harm. The pharmacists also handled it similarly in case there was some strange powder, so they were safe. However, the Black Knights, who did not have the presence of mind for such quick action, apparently fell victim to the powder.
The Black Knights found dog and human footprints on top of the powder and followed them, but after a while they collapsed. Pathetically, they inhaled the powder stirred up by walking around and fell one after another, apparently. Leaving the Black Knights to the pharmacists, Alf went a bit further into the waterway and found Kuroshiba collapsed, frothing at the mouth. A person could cover their mouth and nose with their hands to deal with it, but a dog's paws would not be able to manage that. Considering that footprints remained on the powder, the powder must have gotten on both Kuroshiba's paws and Aaron's feet.
Leaving Kuroshiba behind and proceeding through the waterway, Alf then found Aaron collapsed near the exit. He had apparently succeeded in chasing the intruder to the waterway's exit, but that was his limit. He was conscious, but his limbs would not move as he wanted, and he had apparently been struggling to see if he could somehow crawl forward. Alf left Aaron to the pharmacists who caught up, followed the footprints alone, went up the river, and finally reached the pier around noon.
When Alf asks about the situation here, I tell him only what I know. As I voice it to Alf, things start to organize a little in my own mind.
"I think one of the bodies is Kalisa."
I do not have any solid evidence, but I cannot think of it as anyone else. In terms of combat capability being useless, Giselle would be more likely, but I am certain of this. That body is Kalisa.
"About the finger and ring that Kalisa left behind, which seem to belong to the culprit..."
Since it was too bloody to see clearly, I thoroughly washed the blood off the ring. The ring, clearly made of gold, has its crest part slightly warped, perhaps from Kalisa's teeth when she bit the finger off. Even so, ignoring the teeth marks, it is possible to discern what design it had.
"It is a bird crest facing west. The shape of this beak... is it an Adorutoru? Adorutoru is a common crest in the Saenard Kingdom, but..."
Speaking of the Saenard Kingdom, it suffered a major defeat against the Ivizia Kingdom in last year's war. It is not unthinkable that this incident might be an act of spite related to that. It is not impossible to consider, but I cannot believe any fool still alive would do something to earn my hatred even further, when last year's wounds have not even healed and new fear was just carved into them. In any case, in last year's war, I made sure to thoroughly beat them with the grudge of being separated for eight months from a sister (Tina) who might be married off in a few years. If they value their lives, they should not think of standing before me for a while yet.
"Commander, the caretaker's son counted the boats moored at the pier, and one is missing."
We continue the investigation with the help of the son, who came to check on his mother when she did not return after bringing food to his father, taking over for the mother crying beside her husband's body. The pier caretaker's son, being the caretaker's son, knows how many boats are normally moored at the pier. Since he keeps track of how many ships are scheduled to arrive and depart on any given day, he is extremely helpful for finding what is different from usual.
"...Did they escape by boat?"
The moment I think that, my feet move forward, but Alf grabs my shoulder. Not yet, he says.
"Calm down. Even if they moved by boat on the river, we do not know where they went."
"If they go downstream, it is Lagarette or Tior, or even crossing into the Saenard Kingdom. We can catch up immediately."
"They could have gone upstream to make it look like they went downstream. Just calm down."
He says he understands I want to get Tina back as soon as possible, but we have too little information. Moving immediately would be dangerous due to potential oversights, Alf says. I know that much myself. I do know it, but I cannot seem to stay still.
"If they definitely escaped by boat on the river, we need to pursue, but right now it is just a possibility. It would be better to send messengers to the city of Tior and Lagarette to set up checkpoints."
"Then I will be the one to deliver those messages."
"The lord of the fort running errands? That is something you say in your sleep."
"You complete idiot," Alf narrows his eyes. I know he is exasperated, but I am frighteningly unsettled myself. Until now, without someone I could entrust the situation to, I kept myself disciplined and restricted to investigating the pier. But now that someone reliable has arrived, I want to leave things to that reliable person and go running off to find Tina. Tina always prioritized work and allowed me to do the same, but she once said this to me.
—Someday, when you are truly faced with a difficult choice, I hope you will choose me above all else.
Back then I replied, "I cannot promise above all else," but this feels like that time. With reliable Alf here, the fort has a replacement for me. Even if I abandon the fort, the worst that happens is I lose my position as a knight. But there is no replacement for Tina. If I put Tina and my job on a scale, the side with Tina tips it. The only reason I could prioritize work was because Tina was in a safe place.
"Alright, I have got it. Then you become the lord of the fort. I will go find Tina—"
Before I can finish saying I will dump the whole fort on Alf and go search for Tina, Alf slaps me across the cheek. The surrounding Black Knights turn to see what is happening, but Alf pays them no mind.
"I just said that is something you say in your sleep. Go cool your head."
Alf says that to get Tina back, rather than me rushing off alone, working as the fort's lord and using the other knights as my limbs and hands would give a higher success rate. My counterargument, that I cannot borrow the knights' hands for the personal reason of searching for my sister, is compensated by Tina's special background as a reincarnator. Rather, Tina is a reincarnator who can read Japanese, a national treasure. We need to search for and retrieve her using not just Black Knights but even the Silver-White Knights. Even if there are overly personal feelings involved, retrieving Tina will be treated as public work, he says.
"Commander-dono should rest in the fort's nap room for a while. ...Take him away."
"Yes, sir!"
My murmur that I am the Commander here is silently ignored by Alf and the Black Knights flanking me. It is Alf's judgment that I cannot be entrusted with the squad right now. Even I know that rationally. I have completely lost my cool right now.
"Leave the selection of who to pursue the missing boat to me. You go back to the fort, take a two-hour nap, then eat something. Once you have cooled your head, organize the search party and report on the gathered information. I will go back through the waterway to check for any oversights. Status report around evening."
"...Understood."
I apologize quietly with a small "sorry," and finally Alf's expression softens a little. Then he says that in times like this, "thank you" or "I will leave it to you" is enough, and slaps the horse's rump to send me off.
And so begins the 10th chapter. Since it is from another character's perspective, it is essentially a side story-like 10th chapter.
Will fix typos and errors at a later date. Found and fixed the typos and errors I noticed.