After leaving Viscount Glaint's house, Xio hailed a carriage and headed toward the East Borough, then stepped off early and walked the last stretch to the Zemangg Gang's pub on foot.
Halfway there, she heard a newsboy sprinting down the street, papers raised high, hollering: "Tycoon Capim murdered! Over a dozen missing girls discovered in his villa! Capim suspected to be a human trafficker!"
Xio stopped dead.
She'd known about Capim's trafficking operation for some time — in certain circles, it wasn't exactly breaking news. The problem had always been a complete absence of hard evidence, and the obvious protection he enjoyed from above. She'd always assumed it would go on quietly indefinitely. She hadn't expected him to simply die out of nowhere — and with the whole operation exposed at the same time.
"Serves him right!"
She bought a paper, heart considerably lighter, and walked on with a noticeably more cheerful step.
Ten or so metres from the pub, Xio came to an abrupt halt. She didn't continue forward. Instead, she kept walking naturally past — because she had caught the scent of blood drifting from inside the pub.
The smell hit her and dragged up a memory she'd been trying not to think about: the night she'd encountered Mr. A after one of Madam Natasha's gatherings — same type of location, a pub, same heavy iron smell of blood, same cold crawl across her spirituality.
Xio turned away from the pub immediately.
She didn't leave, though. She stood at a distance and watched.
Her rational mind was telling her not to be an idiot. But the thought of the Zemangg Gang inside — her "subordinates," in a manner of speaking — made her hesitate.
She'd come to know the gang's highlanders fairly well over the past weeks. They weren't good people, exactly. But they weren't born monsters either. What they did depended entirely on what they were paid to do, and what they were paid to do depended on orders, and orders came down to money.
And she had plans for them — she'd been mentally working through a whole scheme using them for the "Sheriff" acting method she needed.
"It's probably just a pub brawl," she told herself.
"Probably just my imagination."
"Probably nothing's wrong."
With that thought, her feet moved. She went around to the back of the pub, slipped into the shadows, and crept in close using Shadow Jumping.
And she saw it.
Blood covering the floor. Bodies covering the floor.
"!!!"
They were all dead.
Every last Zemangg Gang highlander in the pub — dead.
Xio's stomach dropped. She didn't hesitate now — she Shadow Jumped immediately to leave, but at that moment a cold voice stopped her:
"Infiltrating shadows is prohibited here."
Pop — her body was forcibly ejected from the shadow mid-jump. She broke into a sprint, but a sound like a blade stirring through her skull detonated inside her head, and a wave of crippling agony hit her. Her mind went grey.
When she came back to herself, she was slumped against the wall, limbs like water. A figure in a grey robe and hood stood several metres away, looking down at her. "Why did you run?"
Because I didn't want to die, obviously.
After a brief moment of eye contact, the figure asked: "Are you one of Mr. A's people?"
Mr. A again?
Xio had no time to think. She nodded rapidly. "Yes. Yes, I am."
"Where is Mr. A? The man I sent with a message last time never came back. Have you seen him?"
"I — I don't know."
The man took half a step closer. "Take me to Mr. A."
...
Mr. A is dead. How am I supposed to take you to a dead man?
The thought flashed and was gone. She lowered her head. "All right. Follow me, please."
The two of them walked out of the blood-soaked pub and onto the street. After a moment's deliberation, Xio said, "Should... should we take a carriage? Mr. A is in the Jorwood District."
"Mm."
Xio flagged down a cab, gave the driver Madam Natasha's address, and huddled in the far corner of the carriage like a sparrow trying to disappear, afraid to twitch a muscle — while her mind was racing: Boss, please don't blame me. I had no choice.
"You don't need to be afraid of me."
The man spoke without much inflection. "As fellow members of the Aurora Order, I have no reason to harm a colleague under normal circumstances."
The Aurora Order.
So he was the same as Mr. A — a member of that evil god cult. But why did he think she was one of Mr. A's people?
I do sort of believe in a deity that might be... adjacent to an evil god. But that's a different one from whoever the Aurora Order worship, isn't it?
She kept every one of these thoughts carefully on the inside, and simply kept nodding on the outside.
The cab fell quiet. Nothing but the low rumble of wheels. The man closed his eyes and said nothing more.
Meanwhile, Vincent had left Capim's villa and made his way back to the Prosecution Office, where he found the elderly Montbarton dozing in his chair. "Mr. Montbarton."
The old man lifted his head with bleary confusion. "Hm? Is it time to go home already?"
"Looks like everyone else has already left."
Montbarton made a grumbling sound. "Those miserable so-and-sos. Didn't even wake me up."
"Mr. Montbarton — you said this morning that Ellie came to ask for the day off. Could you tell me how she made that request?"
In the Lord of Mysteries world, there were no telephones. Asking for leave would normally require showing up in person — or possibly sending a telegram, but that seemed unlikely.
"Oh — when I came in this morning, there was already a note from her on my desk. 'Mr. Montbarton, I'm exhausted today. I'd like to take a day off.'"
Montbarton rummaged through the chaos of documents on his desk and produced a slip of paper. The handwriting was unmistakably Ellie's.
"Could I have that?"
"Take it. Sure." He yawned. "Nothing else? Then I'm heading home."
Once the old man was gone, Vincent took the note and flipped a coin. "Was this note written by Ellie in her own hand?"
Heads-up. Affirmative.
The note was indeed in Ellie's handwriting.
He flipped the coin again. "Was this note written of Ellie's own free will?"
Clink — the coin slipped from his fingers and landed on the floor, standing upright on its edge.
Divination failure. Either there was an anti-divination ward in play, the question couldn't be answered through divination, or the evidence was insufficient.
"According to Capim, the ones who warned him were from MI9 — which means they answer to the Loen royal house. Could Ellie be royalty?"
The thought brought back what Bernadette had said a few days ago — she'd practically made a bet that Ellie's identity was anything but ordinary, and she'd made the comment more than once, reading Ellie's behaviour with what seemed like pattern recognition.
Could she actually be... a princess?
"If that's the case, then whoever abducted Ellie has nothing to do with Conris or the trafficking operation. They went after her for who she is. But even if she's a princess — so what? King George III doesn't exactly place any great value on his children. Trying to use a 'princess' as leverage against him would be laughable — nothing like using Bernadette against Roselle, which would have been a direct strike to his one true weakness."
"Let's find Vivian and Xio first, and see if they can identify the manor."
Vincent went to the Caesar Restaurant first, then swung by Xio's lodgings, where only Fors was home — stretched out and doing absolutely nothing industrious. He picked up one of Xio's belongings and used the Dowsing Rod method to track her down.
"Hmm?"
Halfway there, he noticed the direction he was heading seemed to be pointing... toward his own house.
About ten minutes later, he was back on Skirt Street in the Jorwood District, No. 22. And almost simultaneously, a carriage pulled up along the kerb.
Vincent's spirituality gave a sudden lurch. He turned to look.
A hooded figure stepped out of the carriage. Xio followed behind him, head low, and when her eyes landed on Vincent, they went wide for one startled second — and then she understood. The man in front of her was the disguise Madam Natasha always used. She blinked once, and her gaze flooded with a desperate, urgent plea: Boss. Help. Please.
But Vincent didn't catch it. He was staring at the hooded figure.
Their eyes met. Vincent felt every nerve pull tight — and the hooded man's gaze dropped to the cross on Vincent's wrist.
They held each other's gaze for a full half-minute. Then the hooded man reached up and pushed back his hood, revealing a face that was genuinely striking — the second most beautiful man Vincent had ever seen, after Mr. A himself.
The beautiful man smiled, stepped forward, and stopped three or four metres away. His right hand pressed over his heart. He gave a small bow.
"I've finally found you."
To be continued…
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