Do As You Please
"If you ever tire of knightly life, do let me know at any time. I would gladly find a place for you in the guild."
Neumann said it half in jest as he set a tray of tea and pastries down on the table.
Arendt answered without lifting his eyes from the documents he was reading.
"Hmm. I don't think merchant work would really suit my temperament."
"On the contrary, from where I stand, Sir Arendt has talent to spare."
"I *am* rather exceptional, it's true."
Even as the banter drifted back and forth, Arendt's attention remained fixed on the report in his hands.
What he was skimming was a distilled summary of the intelligence that had recently flowed into the guild. Ever since he'd heard about the riot in the Lucain Kingdom, Arendt had installed himself here every free moment he had.
"Sir Arendt, would you mind if I asked what you're searching for?"
"The woman who supposedly led the mobs in the Lucain Kingdom. I'm looking for someone cut from the same cloth."
"I see. Chasing down leads is all well and good, but..."
Tap, tap.
Only when Neumann rapped his knuckles on the table did Arendt finally raise his head.
"Won't you rest a moment? Chat with me a little, at least. You've been at it for hours. It would be a shame to let the tea I went to the trouble of preparing go cold."
"..."
Lips pursed, Arendt set the papers down on the table with a soft thwap. Only then did Neumann settle into the seat across from him.
"Had you mentioned it beforehand, I could have had the others dig up eyewitness accounts separately, you know."
"If you want to find something specific, it's better to do it yourself."
Because he had to cross-reference it against the information from the novel still rattling around in his head.
That, too, was one of the things he couldn't tell Neumann.
"Have you had any results?"
"To some degree."
Arendt shrugged as he lifted the teacup, still faintly warm.
"But nothing conclusive yet, so I'd like to borrow one of your investigators a bit later, if I may."
"Say the word and he's yours."
Having tossed off his round of pleasantries, the guildmaster took a light sip of tea and eased into the real business at hand.
"Any word from Warren and Prince Llewellyn?"
"They're still at Count Stadler's laboratory at the moment. From what I hear, they plan to leave the Empire as soon as the next round of investigations wraps up there."
"That's probably for the best, as far as Warren is concerned. He fled the Evil God Cult, after all—if he draws the wrong kind of attention while he's still inside the Empire, he could very well end up a target."
"It felt like you'd taken on a bomb, didn't it?"
At Arendt's mischievous grin, Neumann answered with a smile of his own.
"Gaining capable employees is a fine thing, but this was the sort of situation that could just as easily have sunk the entire guild."
"If you worried about that sort of thing, you wouldn't get along with me half as well as you do. That was just your un-guildmaster-like sense of decency kicking in, wasn't it?"
"Hahaha. Couldn't the same be said of you, Sir Arendt?"
"I'm not nearly that kind-hearted."
With a slight pout, Arendt—who had apparently finished reviewing the documents—swept the stack of papers away from in front of him and began to sip his tea with perfect elegance.
Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Neumann's expression turned serious.
"If you're asking to borrow an investigator, that means you've found something suspicious. Are we talking about the walking corpses... ghouls?"
"I can't claim certainty, but let's say a few things have been nagging at me."
Arendt reached out, picked up a pastry, and popped it into his mouth.
Even that gesture was possessed of a completely unnecessary elegance.
"The sudden riot in the Lucain Kingdom... The mob was made up of locals who'd lived in the region all along, and the one who incited them was a scar-covered mercenary of unknown origin. According to the intelligence you passed along to me, at any rate."
"That's right."
"And once they were captured, every last one of the rioters slipped into some kind of mental derangement. Do you know what that means?"
"...?"
Instead of venturing an answer, Neumann simply blinked.
Arendt picked up a second pastry and continued.
"It means they'd been preaching in the meantime."
"Why do you say that?"
"You've heard the rumors, surely? Those damned Evil God Cult fanatics tamper with their believers' memories to control the flow of information."
"Yes."
When Neumann nodded, Arendt swung his legs idly under the table as he went on.
"And here's the truly fascinating part—that magic seems to take hold only in those who possess genuine faith."
It was a thought he'd had while infiltrating Rebecca's castle, but it was probably very close to the truth.
"So those rioters believed, sincerely, in the evil god—Chernion. They must have regarded the ghoul leading them as something like an apostle of their god."
"Then..."
"I did some rough reading, you see. The region where the riot broke out has poor land and had reportedly suffered chronic food shortages for ages. Not so dire that people were actually starving to death, so the royal house never saw fit to send any support."
"So resentment toward the crown had piled up over the years."
"Exactly. That's the angle the cult worked."
Arendt nodded at Neumann's observation.
"Let's try a thought experiment. Say there's a village scraping by on next to nothing. Not starving, but hardly comfortable, either. Gradually, grievance accumulates—just shy of the point where it boils over."
Prayers to Luce, the God of Light, do little to improve their lot. No help can be expected from the crown, either.
"And then?"
"Then, into the middle of all that, a stranger appears. He goes around telling anyone who'll listen that this land has been abandoned by God—and that he has come to save it."
"I doubt they'd swallow that so easily."
"You're right. But what if that man performs a miracle?"
Miracle.
At that word, Arendt's voice dropped slightly.
"He's slashed and stabbed, but not only does he not die—he doesn't even feel pain. It's entirely possible his body would regenerate even if it were cut apart. Faced with a sight they'd never witnessed in their entire lives, of course people's eyes would go wide."
"..."
"And then he speaks. He says this body that knows neither hunger nor fatigue was a gift from the god Chernion. Follow me, he tells them, and you can be like this too."
No stagecraft was more effective than a miracle laid plain before their eyes.
"Are you saying that's how those people became a mob?"
"It's only speculation. But it's not a possibility without any weight to it."
Arendt shrugged.
"In that case... might what you're looking for be...?"
"Places that mirror the conditions of the region where the riot occurred."
It came with the limitation that he could only survey territory within the Neumann Merchant Guild's reach, but for now, that would be enough.
Moistening his throat with tea once more, Arendt continued.
"First, they need to be far from temples of Luce. Devout followers of Luce are hard to win over, after all."
"And after that?"
"After that, regions in a delicately precarious situation."
Places where no support from the state could be expected, where people scraped by on their own labor, yet where any sign of improvement remained invisible.
Arendt added an explanation.
"Regions struck by outright catastrophe—where immediate survival itself is at stake—would actually be difficult to touch."
People struggling to put so much as a mouthful of food in their bellies would have no strength left to reach for a new god.
Staging a spectacle of slicing and stabbing himself before a crowd that had spent years going hungry would earn nothing but a response of 'so what do you want us to do about it?'
"Certainly true. Once things deteriorate that far, the temple or the state would be forced to act."
Neumann burst out in genuine admiration.
"To think of it in those terms. Remarkable. Frankly, it's because you're Sir Arendt that I can say this, but the people at the top rarely understand what goes on at the bottom."
"It's not that difficult. It's all a matter of taste."
"Taste, you say?"
"Two buyers may walk into the same shop, but what a young person wants and what an old person wants are different things. In the same way, what each person seeks from their god differs."
Proselytizing and theater shared one essential trait: both were meaningless unless they moved the hearts of the audience.
To draw the desired reaction from an audience, you first selected the target demographic, set the stage and direction to suit them, and then unrolled a scenario tailored to the audience's palate.
As noted above, preaching, in a sense, worked the same way.
"In any case, sifting through it that way turned up several candidate locations. Now, let's see..."
Pastry clamped between his teeth, Arendt rummaged through the haphazardly scattered pile of documents.
"You're dropping crumbs."
"It's not as though you're the one who'll be cleaning it up. Oh—here it is."
Brushing off the brief scolding, Arendt picked out a few sheets and handed them across the table.
"Are these the candidate sites you identified, Sir Arendt?"
"I've only done a rough pass, so they'll need closer investigation. Some of them may have already gone up in flames, for all we know."
Even filtered, the list was fairly long.
Neumann ran his eyes over the place names and nodded.
"Understood. I'll contact the nearby branches and send people out."
Neumann gave his answer, but Arendt still didn't look entirely satisfied.
Watching him quietly, Neumann spoke first.
"The regions you've just shown me are all foreign territory, aren't they? Will you survey the Empire's interior yourself, Sir Arendt?"
"No. Not yet."
Right now, there was insufficient justification for the Imperial Knights to move directly. On the surface, nothing had happened yet.
Moreover...
If the temple gets involved, things get complicated.
After a brief moment of deliberation, the apprentice knight spoke again.
"Is Mr. Declan at the main branch?"
"Yes. He spent some time at other branches and returned just a few days ago."
"Hm."
After chewing it over for a long while, Arendt lifted his head again.
"Then send Mr. Declan out there. If it's him, no amount of snake-oil preaching from those Evil God Cult frauds will get through."
He'd been a delinquent priest with a taste for gambling, but his faith had been genuine—and for this kind of work, that sort of priest was all the better suited.
Neumann's smile spread warm and wide.
"I'll pass the message along. He'll be delighted to be of service to you, Sir Arendt."
"Tell him not to get too pleased—it's dangerous work. And I trust I don't need to remind you: even if something seems to happen, he is under no circumstances to interfere directly."
"Understood."
With the matter settled, Arendt drained the rest of his tea in one clean gulp and set the cup down.
"Will you need anything else?"
"This is plenty. I'll stop by the temple briefly on the way back, though."
"What business do you have at the temple?"
"There's something I need to ask Priestess Lumiel."
"Always so busy. Youth is truly a wonderful thing."
Neumann saw the young apprentice knight off with a gentle smile.
"Still—next time, I do wish you'd leave the documents and work behind, and come for nothing but the tea and good pastries."
"Can a merchant really afford to talk like that?"
Shrugging with practiced nonchalance, Arendt made his unhurried way out of the Neumann Merchant Guild.
As he walked along the main road, Arendt set his mind turning once more.
The story has changed considerably.
This time, too, the contents of The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword had served as a partial hint.
That damned novel—revealing Chernion and the evil god while giving away none of what actually mattered—but on this front, at least, it had remained reasonably useful so far.
Still, it'll hit its limit sooner or later.
He was altering the flow of events with his own two hands, which meant the day would come when even that well ran dry.
But that was no problem. It was the same as everything he had invested in preparation for that inevitable moment.
What he had to do from here on out would not change.
Once you stepped onto the stage, you kept acting until the audience rose in applause and the curtain fell.
With his life on the line.