Catching a Thief
A person heading somewhere in the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep, with a huge bag slung over their shoulder.
The way he kept glancing around, checking his surroundings so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone else, was suspicious enough that anyone could have called it out on sight.
Running away in the middle of the night.
That was the word that came to the wizard’s mind.
“...You mean someone Max was close to? I doubt it. He was always going around saying he didn’t belong in a place like this, that someday he’d leave and become an imperial wizard.”
Now that he’d been handed the gold coins, the wizard’s attitude was completely different from before.
The lazy, put-upon air he’d had earlier was gone without a trace, and both his tone and his behavior had turned respectful, as though he were dealing with a VVIP.
He kept flicking his eyes toward Asie’s pocket now and then, but that much was understandable.
“There’s a way to make people polite without spending money, you know. Want me to tell you?”
It worked especially well on wizards.
I’d gone out of my way to be nice, and yet Asie rejected my goodwill with a tone that said the whole thing was absurd.
“No need. Take your hand off the sword.”
The wizard, who had been muttering something strange like, “Why’s the kid gotten so violent all of a sudden?” asked hesitantly, “Um, pardon me, but are the three of you from Grasis?”
“Hm? Why do you ask?”
“Your speech sounds familiar. I used to live in Grasis for a short while, you see...”
“Forget where we’re from.”
Asie cut off the conversation between Daeun and the wizard.
Then he turned to the wizard, who was scratching his head awkwardly, and said, “So you’re saying there’s no one who’d know where Max went?”
“W-well... who’d want to stay close to someone who says things like that every time he opens his mouth? At the very least, there’s no one I know who’s close to him.”
“How troublesome...”
“...What’d he say?”
“He asked if anyone was close to the man named Max, and the answer is no.”
“I see.”
Hearing that, my trust in Asie’s judgment rose even higher.
What exactly had Brondein seen in that Max guy that made him trust him enough to hand over the workshop key?
From what I’d heard, he didn’t seem to have much of a reputation, either.
If he was that kind of person, you’d think the people around him would have tried to warn him after seeing him get chummy with Max.
Could it be that Brondein doesn’t have any friends either?
Well, if that were the case, I could understand it.
Not having friends wasn’t a crime.
“Looks like we’ll have to go inside the workshop.”
While I was answering my own questions, Asie must have reached a conclusion, because he reached for the door handle.
As expected, the door wouldn’t open.
He gave a shrug and looked back at me.
“Kana. Your turn.”
“Okay.”
Earlier, I’d only rested my hand on the sword as a joke, but I had no intention of drawing it out here in the street.
If I pulled out a blue blade in broad daylight, with people milling around everywhere, I’d draw attention for sure. There was no way I’d do something that stupid.
Besides, if the thing I was going to do with my sword was break into someone else’s workshop, that made it even worse.
At the very least, it wasn’t the sort of thing you did in Valtora, city of dwarves... city of craftsmen.
So I walked up to the door empty-handed.
Then I placed my hand on it, took it away again, and turned back to rejoin the group.
“...”
“...”
“Uh, Kana?”
“Hm?”
Daeun, who had been staring blankly at me, asked in a dazed voice, “You weren’t trying to open it? Why did you just come back?”
Asie didn’t show it much, but he seemed to agree with her in spirit.
I swept my gaze over the whole group, then let out a small “Ah” and nodded.
So that was why they were all standing there looking so stupid.
“I already did.”
“...Huh?”
“Here.”
I put my hand on the door and pushed, and the door opened without resistance, as if it had never been locked in the first place.
At the sight of the workshop interior beyond it, Daeun made another dazed sound.
And there was another person who was stunned, though for a different reason.
“Wh-what, how did you—?!”
The wizard’s jaw dropped in sheer shock.
At that size, I bet his fist would fit in there too.
I looked back and forth between my tiny hand and his open mouth, then barely managed to suppress the urge to test that theory.
Still, to think a wizard sensitive to mana would even notice that.
I’d underestimated him a little because he’d looked so intimidated by Asie, but maybe he was more competent than I’d thought.
When Daeun asked what I’d done, I answered her kindly.
“I cut the lock with Sword Qi.”
“...You used Sword Qi without even drawing a sword?”
“Yep.”
With Sword Qi, you could even cut stone with a twig.
It wasn’t especially difficult; people just didn’t use it much because forming a sword out of mana wasn’t very efficient.
“If you practice, you’ll be able to do it too, Joni.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but... isn’t that a bit much no matter how you look at it?”
There was an old saying that dreams should be big, but Daeun, already worn down by reality, seemed to have forgotten how to dream at all.
What a shame.
But then—
“Setting Joni aside, why are you surprised, Asie?”
“I’m not surprised.”
“You were standing there like an idiot not even knowing it had opened.”
“I just didn’t know, that’s all. It wasn’t even visible. How was I supposed to know it had opened?”
“Why couldn’t you see it?”
“...Not everyone in the world is a genius like you.”
“Hmm.”
I remembered him as having studied the sword quite seriously, if not quite at knight level.
Maybe because he’d switched from a sword to a hammer, his skill had barely changed from what it had been years ago.
“What about alarm magic...? Anti-theft spells...?”
We left the wizard, who was still muttering in utter shock, behind and stepped into the workshop.
Open drawers, papers scattered every which way, trash spilling out of a toppled bin...
The scene that greeted us was, to put it kindly, a total disaster.
“Are wizard workshops always like this?”
Daeun frowned as she took it all in.
“Of course not.”
Asie denied her guess and surveyed the workshop.
I followed him, checking every corner of the place for anything that might serve as a clue.
“Hmm...”
I picked up a sheet of paper from the floor and let out a low murmur.
...Yeah, I can’t read it.
Done in by the combined attack of magic and Arkish, I put the paper back down obediently.
The workshop was full of traces left behind by the wizard named Max.
Which was only natural, considering it was his workspace.
“This is...”
Asie found something and picked it up.
Daeun, who had been nosing around nearby, hurried over.
“Did you find something?”
“It’s something my master made a while ago. He’d taken a commission for it, but I remember him saying it had broken while he was engraving the magic circle, so he made another one. But the fact that it’s here means...”
“No matter how you look at it, that doesn’t sound good.”
If he hadn’t delivered the finished item, Brondein would have been contacted about it too, but since he wasn’t saying anything of the sort, that probably wasn’t what had happened.
The more likely theory was that he’d lied about it being broken and gotten another one out of him.
And what he gained from that would, naturally, be money.
We also found other things—unfinished magical tools, fragments broken while inscribing magic circles—but nothing that would help us track down the missing man.
If I had to name the one useful thing we’d gained, it was that Max now seemed much more likely to be the culprit.
“Nothing here that’d make money, either.”
Maybe the reason the room had been thrown into this state was that, even in a hurry, he’d been greedily sweeping up anything valuable he could grab.
Was that what you called being thrifty?
The three of us, now standing there empty-handed, put our heads together and discussed what to do next.
“What should we do now?”
“Shouldn’t we go after him now? Or... if he left last night, maybe it’s already too late.”
“The mountain is dangerous at night, so I doubt he left yesterday. Even if he did leave the city, it would have been after daybreak.”
“...The mountain night is dangerous? Why?”
“You just stay quiet.”
As the three of us stood there, bent over the problem and thinking hard, a voice called out to us.
“Um...”
At some point, the wizard who had followed us inside and been looking around the workshop softly called out to us.
“You do want to find Max, right? Then there is one way, though...”
“Yes?”
Asie’s head turned so fast it looked like it might snap off.
The wizard flinched at the force of it and hurried on at Asie’s urging.
“There are guys who’ll do anything if you pay them. They’re not exactly a high-quality bunch, mind you.”
“...Could it be.”
“Ah, you already know about them? If so, this’ll go a lot faster.”
At the wizard’s words, Asie made a sour face.
Of course, since I had no idea what they were talking about, I couldn’t tell why.
* * *
There was a teleport gate in Valtora too.
But using it from Valtora cost a great deal more than it did in other cities.
That was because the city was a long way from the cities where the teleport gates were installed.
Would a man who’d plotted to steal a Dragon Orb for money, then hurriedly fled while scooping up anything valuable he could carry, really be willing to swallow that kind of teleportation cost?
The answer was, of course, no.
No matter how expensive a teleport gate might be, it was a drop in the bucket compared to a Dragon Orb.
For a modest price, he could have bought both safety and security, but Max, blinded by money, had chosen another path.
Thud.
“...Hah!”
The hand that landed on his shoulder made Max jump in fright.
“Why’re you so jumpy?”
“N-no. ...Nothing.”
“Well, now.”
The mercenary who had put a hand on Max’s shoulder scratched at his filthy hair.
Seeing dandruff rain down everywhere, Max frowned before quickly smoothing his expression again.
No matter how filthy and lowborn these men were, he was the one in need right now.
If he needlessly provoked them and caused friction, he wouldn’t get a pleasant outcome.
To get out of the city, Max had chosen to put himself under the protection of a mercenary band based in Valtora.
They were the sort of low-grade mercenaries who openly advertised, “We’ll do anything if you pay us,” and were so shameless they boasted about it themselves—but their skill was the real thing.
If it came down to it, they’d kill anyone Brondein sent after him without asking questions.
Though that was unlikely.
Feeling the leather pouch tucked inside his coat, Max let out a faint smile.
The stupid Brondein would never, in his wildest dreams, imagine that Max was the culprit.
But that bastard... the one called Asie is different.
He’d disliked Max for a long time, so he might figure it out and gather people to chase him down.
The mercenaries were insurance for that very possibility.
He wasn’t exactly unconcerned about betrayal, but he’d proved he was an imperial noble, so it should be fine.
They wouldn’t want to make the Empire their enemy, after all.
“So, as long as we just get you to another city, that’s enough, right?”
“Yes. Do that, and I’ll see that you’re properly rewarded.”
“Well, if we can make money off a job this easy, that’s good enough for us.”
The man with filthy hair said that as he draped an arm over Max’s shoulder.
With the air of a close friend, he leaned in and said in a low voice, “Looks like you did something pretty shady, huh? What was it—kill somebody?”
“...Something like that.”
“Damn! You’re a scary bastard, huh? We’d better be careful too.”
Max wanted to shove off the man acting overly familiar with him on the spot, but he held back.
Kill somebody?
There was no way he’d do such filthy work with his own hands.
But if he said he was running off after stealing something from here, who knew what these greed-soaked men might do?
If it came to that, it was better to be treated the same as them and say it this way instead.
The man laughed, “Puhaha,” but looked at Max with eyes that gleamed faintly with a red, murderous light.
“Anyway, just leave it to us. No matter what happens, we’ll protect you.”
The man’s arm slipped away.
Once he was sure the man wasn’t looking at him, Max finally sighed and brushed the foul smell off his shoulder.