These Reincarnators Are Sus! Sleuthing in Another World

The Mayor Gorwin of Venlind was in a predicament.

For years, the mayor had watched over the child of one of Venlind's residents—a youthful woman who'd settled in their small village, not even twenty when she'd arrived, escorted by knights.

There was an exhaustion in her eyes that seemed beyond her years. What manner of tale did she carry upon her shoulders? Her eyes naturally stirred the villagers' curiosity, yet, daunted by the knights, none dared to pry—not even he, the mayor.

As soon as the knights had brought her, they built her a home and departed just as swiftly, returning only on occasion to check on her welfare. Ciel had drifted into the village like a seed swept along by the breeze.

Despite her gloomy disposition, she had an industrious nature, acting as the apothecary that the village lacked. Her roots found purchase, and she quietly bloomed.

Then she had a child.

The father was no stranger, though his identity remained a secret to the villagers—a young and handsome knight who had begun visiting her a few years after she'd arrived. Seemingly ill-prepared for fatherhood, he neither joined her in Venlind nor became a part of their child's life.

The only thing that could be said in his favor was that he had the decency to provide for her.

Given her difficult circumstances, Mayor Gorwin was more than happy to watch after her child while she went to pick herbs in the mornings and the afternoons. He had a child of his own—a son, twelve years old—who, despite his complaints, kept an eye on Bea for Gorwin.

Today, however, his son had failed him.

"Yer jestin'! Takin' me for a fool!" Gorwin yelled at his irascible son as he stomped to his bedroom.

Tired in the early mornings, Bea often slept in his son's bed. Gorwin threw the covers off, revealing only a cluster of pillows arranged to look like a sleeping child.

Gorwin threw the covers back on. Then he ripped them off, as if the second time might be the charm.

He started to sweat.

"God's wounds, Iain, ye witless clot!" Gorwin turned on his son in a frantic rage. "I told ye plain—watch the lass while I see to the constable and the nightwatch! I gave ye charge of her!"

"How about ye watch her yerself instead of blamin' me, old man?!" Iain shouted back, just as panicked. "I know ye just went for a mornin' drink!"

"I was seein' to the restitution of a drunken brawl from the wee hours!" Gorwin moaned. "Forgive me havin' a drop of cider!" The man shook his son. "What were ye even doin'?! How hard can it be for ye to watch a 'lil bairn?!"

"...Johann and Katalin wanted to go for a swim in the pond up in the crags," Iain admitted, cheeks flushed with shame. He kicked at some dust on the floor. "Ye know all Bea likes to do is play with her dolls and sleep… I thought goin' out for a small breather would be jus' fine…"

"A small breather—" Gorwin balked. "All ye do is naught but play with yer friends! When I was twelve, I'd be haulin' water from—"

Downstairs, they could hear the door opening.

"Mayor Gorwin?" Ciel's voice could be heard downstairs, calling softly. "I've come to pick up Bea…?"

Whoever was at fault, father and son both went equally still.

A courier had been sent ahead of Ailn's party, to arrive at Calum just a day faster. This was intentional. A day would give ample time for Calum's preparations, but little time for interference from malicious actors. Informing the retainers of ark-Chelon that The Dragon's Promise was in Ailn's possession was tantamount to a public announcement.

Should it prove to be the authentic article, the entire empire would soon be buzzing with gossip and intrigue. And so long as the ring remained on Ailn's person, the entire eum-Creid family—and perhaps all of Varant itself—was exposed to needless danger.

Hence, the plan was to promptly store the ring as soon as it was identified. Like the rest of ark-Chelon, Calum's chief industry was the mining of precious metals. Vaults the duchy-wide were renowned for their security, but Calum's stood a cut above.

If Sussuro was where nobles and merchants broke bread, then Calum was where the highest of nobility could be convinced to put away the knives they'd kept behind their backs. The city's reputation as a political neutral grounds naturally led to the use of its vaults in deals cut between nobles. In time, the city became the empire's most trusted guarantor of deals, debts, and oaths.

When it came to storing something as important—and potentially incendiary—as The Dragon's Promise, there was no better place.

"Didn't expect to see architecture like this…" Ailn muttered.

Ailn wouldn't have been surprised if he were in the capital of the empire itself. Even out here, on the city's periphery, each of the offices for the city's guilds could have rivaled the Cathedral of Saintess Celestia.

But as Ailn made his way through the city, three buildings in particular stood out.

Varied in style yet nearly uniform in material, each structure seemed determined to outdo the others in artistic flair and creativity—an unspoken contest to wow the viewer with marble and metal.

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Ailn guessed each building's distinct personality roughly reflected the ethos of its guild. One, powerful and sleek, sported a dark marble facade traced with sweeping arcs and diamond patterns in a shimmering silver.

Almost directly across from it stood a structure slender yet towering. Its pure white marble exterior had curves which almost seemed to sway, while rose-gold gilded cornices crowned it like a tiara.

The last dwarfed the others in size, yet its design was comparatively understated. Its marble—a pale, almost silvery gray with dark veining—was unadorned, its form simple, its columns left bare. The frieze in its pediment spoke for itself. Cast in a dark, almost matte metal, the frieze depicted the trifecta of a scale, a hammer, and a key, encircling a flame, which itself was inlaid with a second metal of fiery red gold.

"I had heard that mythril was as plentiful as iron in Calum, yet I never imagined this," Kylian awed. He frowned. "One almost feels as if…"

"The Azure Knights get ripped off buying their own swords?" Ailn asked. "Yeah, I don't get the economics either. Especially when we own some orichalcum mines."

Kylian averted his eyes, but the look on his face seemed discontented. Perhaps he was thinking about his salary.

"Even the roads here are nicer than Varant's…" Ailn said, glancing down at the ground. "Bet the carriages ride smoother here."

The paved roads were a far cry from Varant's bumpy, uneven cobblestones. Ailn guessed they were made of basalt. Each paver seemed almost perfectly uniform in shape—so precise that he couldn't tell if it was the work of master stonemasons or something mechanized. Given what he'd already seen, he could believe artificers had achieved that level of technology.

After all, Calum was sometimes called the dwarf capital of the empire.

As Ailn mulled over the roads, a certain little girl stowing away in their supply cart was experiencing exactly what he'd described—respite, on account of Calum's finer roads. Given her tiny stature, and the treacherous ride down the mountain, she'd been thrown about the supply cart with her own retinue of stuffed animals.

She'd kept it simple, opting to bring her most trusted moral advisors: Cant the dog, Aristurtle the tortoise, and Bent Ham… the pig.

"I don't want to steal, Bent Ham…" Bea said. "But… they probably wouldn't notice…"

Bea salivated, wondering what kinds of treats knights ate. Earlier, when the knight who'd guarded the cart came back, he'd brought pouches and pouches of salted pork. It wasn't food Bea particularly liked, but she hadn't eaten since the early morning.

Another potential meal had caught her interest, however.

"I heard they had cake in here…" Bea whispered, staring at a wooden crate. She stole a guilty glance at Cant, propped up against some water skins and staring at her judgmentally. "I know, but… my tummy hurts so bad, Cant…"

Using all of her strength to pull off the top of the wooden crate, Bea reached in to grab one of the linen-wrapped knights' cakes she'd heard so much about.

Gingerly peeling away the cloth Bea bit into the survival food with a great deal of expectation and…

Made a sour face.

"This cake tastes bad…" Bea whined. But she was too hungry to snub the sugarless 'treat.' So, she kept nibbling away while thinking about how knights must be easy to please.

The cart came to a sudden halt.

"Ack!" Bea, who'd been standing, fell down, bumping her head on the crate. She blinked away her tears, sniffling. "That hurt…"

Without a moment's hesitation, however, she threw the top of the crate back on, and disappeared into the corner of the cart underneath a loose tarp—making sure to bring her stuffed animals with her.

"Bea is… gone…?" Ciel asked slowly, her face completely devoid of emotion save for the trembling of her lips. Her breaths were shallow, yet punctuated, as if she could hardly bring in air. "Bea! Bea!"

In a panic, Ciel ran downstairs, shouting for her daughter louder than Gorwin or Iain had ever heard her.

The grief and terror in her voice almost too much for them to bear.

Iain looked to his father for direction, shame and distress clouding his eyes. Still clammy with a cold sweat, Gorwin hesitated only a moment before rushing down after Ciel.

"Ciel! Ciel, just try to catch yer breath, aye?" Gorwin said, trying to calm her down. "We'll find her, aye? We've blundered like oafs, but we'll fix it—even if Iain and I have to scour the whole mountain for three morns an' nights."

The truth was, he wasn't anywhere near calm himself. But it wouldn't do anyone any good for him to show his panic when it would only exacerbate hers. "Keep yer spirits high, and yer chest steady, and we'll find Bea soon enough. I swear it."

He didn't get much in the way of overt acknowledgement from Ciel, but her breathing slowed a pace. She met his gaze, and gave him a curt nod accepting his and his son's help, before dashing outside and yelling once again for her daughter.

Wiping his brow with the long sleeve of his tunic, Gorwin steadied his own breaths now that Ciel was out of sight and earshot. Then, grasping his son by the shoulders, he looked him firmly in the eye. "Go get yer friends Johann and Katalin."

"Ye think they'd shirk this?" Iain asked, sounding a little offended. "Of course we'll help—"

"Yer wrong," Gorwin said, shaking his head. "Far as I'm concerned, it's on all of us in the village to set things right. I'm asking ye and yer friends to think like a wee kid, and figure out where she might've scampered off to."

"...Aye," Iain hesitantly nodded.

"Don't fret, Iain, there'll be no punishing from me," Gorwin sighed. "'Cause if we can't find that little girl, then fer me the gallows would be too kind." He squeezed his son's shoulder. "Just keep yer mind on seeing her safe—naught else."

From the outside, the ark-Chelon estate seemed rather old-fashioned compared to the guild halls Ailn had passed on his way to the heart of the city. It was a thick, granite structure, built like a fortress—not unlike the eum-Creid's castle in Varant—and while it wasn't cracking, its facade had lost its luster through the centuries.

The interior, however, had clearly been remodeled from the ground up. With its high ceiling and polished onyx floors, the atrium where Ailn currently waited to be received felt like the lobby of a modern hotel—the scent of mint even drifted through the room.

In a way, this seemed to be the story of Calum itself.

For a city renowned for the architectural and artificing excellence running through its marbled veins, it was rather surprising that it lacked walls. But as he'd passed through the aristocratic quarter, he'd spotted their aged remains.

Calum had simply outgrown its walls. Similarly, the ark-Chelon estate housed a family whose power lay more in finance and diplomacy than war—and its interior reflected that, while its exterior stood as a fading monument to a bygone militaristic era.

A granite palace certainly would have seemed grand, once upon a time. Now it was just quaint.

Meanwhile, the leather armchair Ailn was sitting in was so comfortable he thought he might fall asleep. When was that retainer going to arrive?

"Ailn eum-Creid, I presume?" a voice called out.

A man with a smile that could only be described as disarming made his way down the atrium's focal staircase, with a gait that struck Ailn as a little too confident for a servant or vassal. Then the man held out his hand.

"I'm Ashton ark-Chelon," he said, keeping his smile. "A good friend of your brother's."