The Dark Cabal (3)
Yona felt like she was losing her mind.
Every time she closed her eyes, Rubina's face flickered before them. No matter how many times she muttered that it should never have happened, acquaintance or no acquaintance, and no matter how deeply she regretted it, Rubina was nowhere to be found.
Even as they returned to the inn and Alec explained the situation to Kayak and James, Yona sat there with her soul half out of her body. She'd thought the trip to the guard post had cooled her head a little. But while listening to Alec's explanation, the self-blame clung to her ankles like mud all over again.
"Let's go."
Kayak's hand ruffled Yona's hair roughly. When she still couldn't bring herself to move, Alec quickly helped her to her feet.
"Finding lost little ones is my specialty. Leave it to me and don't you worry."
James grinned, his molars glinting under the lamplight as his lips curled back.
"Kids go missing all the time when you're raising them. Might as well call it kidnapping."
He patted Yona's limp back, murmuring the words like a whisper meant only for her. He carried himself with the easy confidence of a man who'd raised more children than he could count.
"Course, if we're calling it kidnapping, there's a certain procedure involved. Not that it's a difficult one."
"A procedure?"
Alec asked, not following. As if he'd been waiting for exactly that question, James gave his bow a couple of taps.
"The procedure of cracking open the kidnappers' skulls."
"That's right. A strictly necessary procedure."
Kayak slung his axe across his back and opened the door.
"Let's move. Imagine how scared the child must be."
Before long, the four of them arrived back at the place where Yona and Rubina had last been—the bench. A few people were already seated there, but when four figures radiating a murderous aura bore down on them, they scrambled away in alarmed haste.
"This is where you handed Rubina over to that guard... the one called Neris?"
"Yeah, yeah... I must be out of my mind... why did I..."
Yona had started spiraling into self-recrimination again. Alec jabbed her sharply in the side.
"Ow."
"What's with the hole-digging? All that matters now is finding her fast."
"Nothing here that'll serve as a clue, I'm afraid."
James scanned the ground this way and that, bow slung over his back. Then he picked up some soil that hadn't yet dried and rubbed it between his fingers.
"Is this where the shaved ice was dropped?"
"That's right..."
Yona nodded weakly. She was certain of it—she'd seen bits of fruit scattered across the wet patch.
"Well, then... let's see... thankfully it's still night, so it hasn't dried yet. Which means... here."
James dropped flat to the ground and began examining the footprints around them. A child's prints were mixed up in a jumble of adult ones, but James rubbed each and every one between his fingers.
"These look like the ones. Can't say for certain whether Rubina stepped in the spilled ice, but if she did, she went that way."
James raised a finger and pointed to the far side of the plaza. The night market was still in full swing, but the direction he indicated was opposite the guard barracks—and a considerable distance from the inn where the party was staying as well.
"The footprints lead that way. I don't think anyone dragged her off. Her stride is even, and the depth is consistent too. And right beside them—boot prints. Let's go."
Kayak nodded. With crowds this thick at this hour, neither Kayak nor Alec nor Yona had any other basis for a guess. With no choice but to trust the words of James, an archer trained in tracking, they set off toward where he had pointed.
As they moved into the quarter James had indicated, the streets grew steadily darker. Buildings blocked the light spilling from the plaza at strange angles, their shadows crisscrossing into deep gloom, and the alleys twisting through them were steeped in an oddly sinister air. Underfoot, too, the packed earth gave way to cobblestone—ground that held no footprints.
The moment they entered one such alley, James stopped.
"From here on, I'll go ahead and scout. You three would do best to spread out and search as well. If you find anything the least bit strange—"
James rummaged through the sling bag at his waist and drew out four small orbs, handing one to each of them. Yona and Alec both knew exactly what they were. Luminous orbs—essential equipment for any dungeon dive. Crush one in a tight grip and hurl it, and it bursts forth with a blinding, searing light.
"Throw these straight up into the sky, then everyone gathers toward it. Understood?"
The party all nodded. James vanished into the darkness first; behind him, Kayak glanced back at Alec and Yona, gave a light nod, and slipped down another alley in the opposite direction from James.
"Let's stay together. You on your own—I don't like it."
"...Yeah."
It was a bitter pill, but Yona's own combat ability was, for all practical purposes, nonexistent. If it came to a fight, there was nothing she could do.
Yona nodded, suppressing the strange pounding in her chest that had started a while ago. Her breathing was quickening. This feeling—it wasn't the first time.
"Then let's g— no, wait. Yona, are you feeling sick?"
Alec peered into her face. Her cheeks were definitely flushed, and her breathing was ragged enough that she looked like she was in considerable pain.
"No, I'm not sick. I'm just... a little out of breath."
"That may be, but your face is red and your breathing sounds off."
A sudden sense of déjà vu washed over him. He'd seen Yona looking like this before. Back in James's village, on the way to the Sacred Tree—that was probably it.
"Let's just move fast. We have to find Rubina..."
Alec had his doubts about whether the panting Yona was truly all right, but he nodded. In any case, there was no time for brooding now. Finding Rubina came first.
An adventurer must always remain calm.
That had always been James's motto. When your trade meant constantly colliding with the unexpected, what other profession demanded composure the way an adventurer's did?
By that measure, James would have to be judged unqualified at this very moment—because James was furious.
He'd always been fond of children by nature, and he doted on his own with everything he had. Rubina wasn't his daughter by blood, but over the near month of travel, the girl had wormed her way deep into his heart.
And someone dared to kidnap her.
There were all sorts of reasons people abducted children—
But first, we find her.
James forced down his ragged breathing with a shallow breath, eyes sweeping their surroundings sharply. Every building that showed even the faintest hint of something off, he scrutinized in closer detail. He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, clambering up the opposite building to peer down below—this went on for quite some time.
Two men.
Two men were guarding the entrance to a building. It wasn't the first such building he'd seen. Not many, granted, but he had passed structures with guards at their doors before.
But James had his reasons for watching these men so intently.
The small pendants hanging from their necks. Unless one was another species like James himself—and even among the other races, only an orc blessed with exceptionally keen senses, and an archer on top of that—no one could possibly have made out those tiny pendants.
A rising sun at the top, held aloft by a vertical pillar. And a horizontal bar crossing that pillar. This was the sigil of the Heavenly God Church: the sun-like Heavenly God borne up by humanity, and the faith that sustained those humans, given form.
But the pendants these men wore bore the Church's sigil inverted. The sun—the symbol of the Heavenly God—placed at the bottom, a design that depicted humanity trampling the god beneath its feet.
Suspicious bastards.
James vaulted onto the building across from it and climbed the wall, planting his feet in grooves in the stone. Silent as breath, he crested the rooftop and peered down at the building below. Not a whisper of candlelight escaped the windows, every one of them boarded tight with wooden planks. Only on the first and second floors did a faint, murky glow seep through.
How do I play this...
He deliberated for a moment. Call his companions together, or strike alone? But the deliberation didn't last long. Something about that inverted sigil of the Heavenly God Church had felt deeply wrong to him. If he gathered the others, who knew what might happen in the meantime—and if things got loud, he worried Rubina might come to needless harm.
James made up his mind quickly. If he wasn't spotted, nothing else mattered.
He scrambled back to the rooftop of the opposite building. Drawing two arrows and setting them down, he dug through his sling bag, pulled out two blunt arrowheads, and swapped them in. Killing them outright would be simple enough—but then it would become murder. Strange as their business was, James was an adventurer, and their disposal was not his to decide.
James loosed the arrows one after the other in rapid succession. Each struck one of the two guards square in the forehead; their eyes rolled back white from the impact, and they crumpled where they stood.
The sooner the others get here, the better.
Propping the unconscious men against the wall, James seized a luminous orb and crushed its core. He hurled it straight up into the sky, waited until he confirmed the flash blooming overhead, then unclasped the pendant from one man's neck and hung it around his own.
"Let's pray these bastards aren't damned species-supremacists," he muttered, and slowly pushed open the door, slipping inside.