The Golden Platter
The disheveled blond man looked distinctly uncomfortable as Marcus approached.
“Who are you? I’ve never seen your face before.”
“Name’s Marcus. My skills aren’t anything special, but I’ve been in the mercenary business a long time.”
There was a faint undercurrent of emotion threaded through Marcus’s voice.
Mercenaries hated hearing their clients’ personal stories. Once you knew the backstory, objectivity went out the window, and without objectivity the odds of making a stupid decision shot up. And right now, Marcus was clearly operating with far less detachment than usual.
“Hey, you. You know the innkeeper’s son, right?”
“I do, but…”
“What kind of request did you connect him to? No—how many others took the job with him? Start there.”
Instead of answering, the blond man glanced around. The mercenaries who had been with him were also eyeing Marcus with clear unease.
“Marcus, what’s your problem with Dieter?”
“Just hold on a second. I’ve got questions. Looks like this bastard pulled some shit he shouldn’t have.”
Rombel, watching from the side, couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
“Elbridge. So this Dieter fellow connected the client with the innkeeper’s son?”
“That’s right.”
“Even if the boy ran into trouble, it doesn’t seem fair to blame Dieter. The client created the problem, not him.”
“No. Dieter may bear responsibility as well.”
Unlike Rombel, Elbridge understood the way mercenaries thought. He could roughly guess why Marcus was so furious.
In the end, Dieter answered.
“The innkeeper’s son, Ned, plus two of his friends—three in total. He kept begging me every day to find him work, so I linked him with one simple request. That’s all.”
“Right. Are you close with that client?”
“He didn’t seem like a bad sort. Looked like someone important.”
“Who asked if he was a good person? Do you know who he is? How many times have you done business with him?”
“…”
Marcus kept pressing.
“You must have known the innkeeper’s son had zero experience. And the unwritten rule is that you only connect beginners with reliable clients. I’m assuming you’re not going to insult my intelligence by claiming you didn’t know that.”
People liked to say mercenaries were scum. But they overlooked one important fact: terrible clients were far more common than terrible mercenaries.
Ordinary folk had no reason to hire mercenaries. The most decent sort who did were usually merchants in sudden need of escorts. Most other clients had reasons they couldn’t make public.
And those people often tried to silence the mercenaries—either to protect secrets or to save on fees.
A veteran might weigh the danger against the reward and still take the job, but a green rookie didn’t know how to be selective. The number of novice mercenaries who accepted dangerous contracts without realizing it and died meaningless deaths was beyond counting.
That was why brokers and the mercenary guild never paired unfamiliar clients with beginners. It was the minimum courtesy, simple business ethics, and an unwritten rule established long ago by the Mercenary King himself.
Marcus drove the point home.
“The other mercenaries turned it down, but the commission looked tasty, so you sweet-talked some clueless kids into taking it. Isn’t that what happened?”
Dieter’s eyes darted wildly.
“No, that’s not it at all. If I didn’t bring anyone, I was the one who’d be in trouble. The client’s mood was…”
Marcus gave a derisive snort.
“If you’re going to play middleman, you’re the one who’s supposed to shoulder that risk. Did you think only kindly clients would show up? You think the mercenary guild exists for decoration? You shoved three naïve boys down a dangerous road because you were scared of getting hurt yourself, you piece of shit.”
“By any chance… did something happen to Ned?”
So the innkeeper’s son was named Ned.
Marcus answered the question with action.
Crack.
He bent two of Dieter’s fingers backward.
“…!”
Dieter clenched his teeth and endured the pain in silence. If he screamed, every eye in the inn would turn their way. And if that happened, the crowd might very well beat him to death.
Sure enough, the nearby mercenaries were already giving Dieter ugly looks. The Mercenary King’s unwritten rule carried real weight.
Dieter clutched his broken fingers and glanced toward the innkeeper and his wife. They still appeared completely unaware. Marcus hoped their peaceful ignorance would remain intact. That ignorance was the only thing keeping Dieter alive.
Elbridge and Rombel walked over to Dieter. The other mercenaries quietly stepped aside. The situation made it obvious Dieter had caused trouble, and Elbridge’s armor clearly hadn’t come cheap.
Elbridge asked, “Dieter. Do you remember what the client who gave you that request looked like?”
Dieter seemed reluctant to speak, but he had no choice in the matter.
“Can we talk outside?”
“Fine.”
Elbridge’s group led Dieter to the border between the village and the forest. After checking that no one else was around, Dieter let out a heavy sigh.
“…He was a priest.”
“A priest from which order?”
“He was wearing the robes of the Golden Platter Order. It didn’t look fake. His manner of speaking wasn’t like us uneducated types…”
An answer no one had expected.
“Did you see his face?”
“The hood kept it hidden. I’m telling the truth.”
He didn’t appear to be lying. Dieter wasn’t the sort of man with enough nerve to spin casual falsehoods in a situation like this.
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s… ah, he had a pretty solid build. That’s all.”
“…Understood. You can go.”
At Rombel’s jerk of the chin, Dieter clutched his broken fingers and trudged back toward the village. If anyone learned what he had done, his life would be forfeit. He would likely leave town within a few days.
The three of them started talking again. Rombel spoke first.
“A priest of the Golden Platter Order unsealed it. Can we actually believe that?”
Marcus answered, “I don’t think Dieter was lying. But there’s no guarantee he knew the whole truth. If I were the one behind it… I sure as hell wouldn’t have approached him wearing my own order’s robes.”
Elbridge felt the same. Anyone who schemed went to great lengths to hide their identity. The very fact that the man had worn Golden Platter robes actually made it less likely that the Golden Platter Order was responsible.
Besides, the Golden Platter Order stood to lose more than anyone if the demon returned. They had profited the most from the demon’s disappearance; they would suffer the most from its reappearance.
“Someone who would benefit from breaking the seal… and someone who bears a grudge against the Golden Platter Order…”
As Elbridge muttered, Rombel cut in.
“I think the Combat Orders look the most suspicious.”
“The Combat Orders?”
“They’re the ones who profit most when a demon shows up. And plenty of them have always resented the Golden Platter Order. Of course, the Rusty Shield Order would never do something like that!”
Rombel hastily added the last part, clearly afraid of being struck by lightning. No bolt fell. Perhaps his precaution had been meaningful.
“Now that I think about it, the client killed three innocent young men without much trouble. That does raise the odds that a holy knight from one of the Combat Orders is responsible.”
But Elbridge disagreed.
“No. A holy knight wouldn’t have broken the seal. Their influence might grow if the demon returns, but… the first ones to die would be the holy knights of the Combat Orders.”
“Elbridge, the entire value of a holy knight’s existence is to stand against demons. Having that value taken away is a bigger issue than you think. I believe it’s entirely possible that a holy knight from a Combat Order unsealed the demon out of longing for the glory of the old days.”
Elbridge countered immediately.
“That doesn’t add up. The holy knights of this era have never experienced that glory. They can’t long for something they’ve never known.”
Rombel burst out laughing.
“They can’t long for it because they never experienced it? Wrong. Completely wrong. People can feel nostalgia for eras they’ve never lived through.”
He folded his arms.
“Fifty or sixty years after the war with the demons ended—when most of the holy knights who had actually fought them had retired or died of old age, but before the demons had fully become legend. The young holy knights of that time longed for the war against the demons more than anyone.”
“How does that make sense?”
“It makes perfect sense. They had a vague idea of that magnificent era but none of the pain or fear that came with it. That’s why they could miss it more purely than anyone else.”
It was a story the mind could accept but the heart rejected.
Could a holy knight from a Combat Order truly have unsealed the Great Demon?
It might be a wild guess. But the possibility existed.
“You don’t believe it?”
“…I’m not sure.”
“Then there’s a more accurate way to check.”
Rombel hunched his shoulders slightly and shouted toward the sky.
"O Goddess of the Rusty Shield! If these words of mine hold not even a single grain of possibility, then strike me down with lightning right here and rebuke your foolish servant!"
No lightning fell.
And this was not an hour when the goddess would be asleep.
The gods could not convey the affairs of heaven to the mortal world, and mortals did not fully understand the boundaries of that law. Yet the Goddess of the Rusty Shield might have just endorsed Rombel’s speculation—not by action, but by deliberate inaction.
Marcus took the idea one step further.
“I just had one thought.”
“What is it?”
“If a holy knight really did release the demon… was it a lone act, or not? That’s what I’m most curious about.”
If it was the act of a single fool, it would be a personal deviation. The world would bear a terrible scar, but the culprit could be punished and the matter closed.
But if it wasn’t a lone act—if an entire order, or even the god who led the Combat Orders, desired the demon’s return—then the problem became something else entirely.
And Marcus clearly believed the latter was more likely.
Elbridge shook his head.
“No. That’s too much of a stretch.”
Whether those words were wishful thinking or genuine belief, even Elbridge himself couldn’t say.
Marcus didn’t push the idea.
“Maybe. Let’s leave it here. It’s not like we have any more ways to dig anyway.”
Elbridge’s group had few clues: the client had worn the robes of the Golden Platter Order, possessed considerable martial ability, and a handful of other circumstantial details. With the clues exhausted, their reasoning had reached its limit.
At least, that was what Elbridge and Marcus thought.
Rombel disagreed.
“Why wouldn’t there be a way to dig deeper?”
“What else is there?”
“Simple. If we can’t find the answer ourselves, we let someone else investigate for us.”
“Who?”
“The Golden Platter Order.”
Rombel pointed in the direction Dieter had gone.
“No need to add extra speculation. We just spread the rumor exactly as Dieter testified—that it looks like the Golden Platter Order unsealed the demon.”
“Rombel. You’re not actually suspecting the Golden Platter Order, are you?”
“Of course not. You think I’m an idiot?”
“…Then why spread the rumor? You’d only be creating innocent victims.”
Rombel answered flatly.
“Of course there’s a reason.”
“What reason?”
“There is no such thing as a perfect secret in this world. And one in every five people belongs to the Golden Platter Order. Someone out there will have a clue.”
Only then did Elbridge and Marcus understand Rombel’s true intention.
“Rombel, you…”
Rombel gave a sly, unpleasant smile.
“Just watch. The Golden Platter Order will track down the real culprit if only to clear their own name.”