The Missing Priest
That afternoon.
Seizing the quiet that had settled once everyone else had gone off to their duties, the three men gathered in Laios's office yet again.
Arendt stared steadily at Richt, whose face was clouded with unease, then broke into a wide grin and posed his question.
"Judging by the look on your face, something did happen, didn't it?"
"……."
The silence was as good as a confession.
After a moment, Richt let out a short sigh.
"It's well-known gossip inside the temple. They've only kept it from spreading beyond its walls."
"So there really was a problem?"
"Yes."
At Laios's question, asked once more for confirmation, Richt nodded heavily.
"One of the priests suddenly vanished. And from what I hear, he seems to have been involved in something dangerous…… That, I believe, is what set the High Priest and Priestess Lumiel at odds with each other."
The situation was roughly as follows.
The apprentice priests lived communally in the dormitories of their assigned temples. Then one day, a single apprentice priest had disappeared without a sound or a trace.
"Apparently his conduct had never been quite becoming of a priest. For one thing, he was caught coming and going from gambling dens several times."
The only reason he hadn't been cast out was that, gambling aside, he had led a reasonably devout and diligent life of faith.
Otherwise he caused no trouble at all — devoted in his service and his studies, a model believer — and so the priest overseeing him had apparently treated him with a measure of leniency.
"Beyond that, he truly was without fault. Until he vanished without the slightest warning, that is."
A priest's disappearance was a serious matter. Given recent events, he might well have been caught up in something dangerous.
"The Security Department conducted a search, but word came back that they couldn't find so much as a trace."
So the overseeing priest had turned for help to Priestess Lumiel, his own mentor and one of those responsible for the Great Temple.
And the matter had naturally reached the ears of High Priest Theodore as well.
"At which point…… the High Priest declared that rather than search for him, the man should simply be excommunicated, while Priestess Lumiel argued that whatever punishment came later, they had to find him first."
"Ah, so that's where it started — right in the middle of an already tense period."
Arthur nodded along.
Richt offered a bit more of his own view.
"Honestly, I can understand the High Priest's position too. A priest frequenting gambling dens…… it's the kind of thing that could stain the temple's honor."
"And a gambling den means he could have been tangled up in any number of dangerous affairs. If that's the case, one careless move could drown the entire regional temple in scandal."
Arthur chimed in, keeping time.
The puzzle pieces were slowly clicking into place.
"One more report, if I may. Priestess Lumiel wanted to request the imperial family's assistance, but the High Priest was firmly against it."
"Hmm……."
Laios murmured in thought.
He could more or less guess why the High Priest had acted that way.
"He didn't want the imperial family intervening."
"Still, that's going too far, isn't it? A man has gone missing……."
"There's no way to know whether the priest left of his own accord or if something truly happened to him. But there's one thing that puzzles me as well."
Having answered Arthur, Richt turned his gaze naturally toward Arendt.
"Why hasn't any of this leaked outside the temple yet? With a little determination, it's easy enough to uncover."
Arendt, meeting his eyes, gave a shrug.
"Easy, you say. It only worked because the person and the timing happened to line up."
"Happened to line up?"
"If you or Captain Laios had gone out of the blue and asked the same questions, Priest Benno would have done nothing but flash you a silly grin."
Richt blinked blankly.
"Now try it the other way around — imagine you'd asked a different priest the very same things. Do you think we'd have gotten the answers we wanted?"
"That's……"
"It only worked because you, a devout man who's in and out of the temple every chance he gets, went and struck up a chat with a talkative priest like Benno. If that hadn't worked, I'd have found another way."
"……."
"And if Benno had been even slightly sharp, you'd never have been sent in the first place. A man with no intuition, no flexibility, and utterly abysmal acting skills."
Before Richt had a chance to protest the stream of abuse, Arendt had already swept the conversation onward.
"In any case, the important parts have all come out. A missing priest — and gambling dens."
Arendt looked at Laios.
Laios could easily guess what was coming.
"We'll have to look into the gambling dens in the region near the temple where the priest disappeared."
"The sooner the better."
"And there it is — you've got the Captain working for you outright now."
Arthur made a strangled noise of protest, but Laios himself paid it no mind whatsoever and simply nodded.
Then, exactly two days later.
A thick bundle of documents and a single letter arrived before Cantares.
Having reviewed the contents, a knowing smile crept across the Crown Prince's lips.
"Zen."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Zereon, sorting other papers at his side, looked up. Cantares smiled smoothly and gave a brief order.
"I need to send a letter. Secretly."
"Of course, Your Highness. To whom, may I ask?"
"Priestess Lumiel."
That single sentence told Zereon everything he needed to know, and he too smiled as he bowed his head.
The reply came back quickly — before even a full day had passed.
And so a private meeting was arranged between the Crown Prince and Priestess Lumiel.
Clack.
The teacup touched its saucer with a small, delicate sound.
Priestess Lumiel savored the tea's fragrance for a moment, then lifted her eyes to the young man across from her.
This was not someone she could ever treat casually. He was the brightest star guiding the empire — and before long, he would be its master. And so she extended to him the fullest courtesy she could offer.
"Thank you for inviting me, Your Highness the Crown Prince."
"Not at all. I know how busy you are — the thanks are mine, for accepting so graciously."
Cantares answered with equal formality.
His breezy smile was impeccably polite, yet it radiated the confidence of a ruler as well.
"Did you enjoy your conversation with Sir Arendt? I trust the boy wasn't rude to you?"
"He was a most fascinating young man. I quite enjoyed myself."
The gracefully aged priestess let out a soft laugh.
Cantares smiled quietly in return.
"I'm glad to hear it. It seems the fellow managed to mind his manners for once. Then — would it be all right if we moved on to business?"
At that measured remark, Lumiel slowly closed her eyes, then opened them again.
The place to which she had been invited was the study reserved for the Crown Prince alone, and the only people present were the two of them and Zereon, the Prince's trusted aide.
What the Crown Prince would raise in such a clandestine setting was obvious. It would be, no doubt, the proposal that apprentice knight had left behind only moments ago in their conversation.
She bowed her head and offered an apology first.
"I'm sorry for making so presumptuous a request, Your Highness."
"No. It seems that is not a subject for today, Priestess Lumiel."
Blindsided mid-sentence, the priestess blinked in bewilderment.
Zereon handed Cantares a file of documents.
The Crown Prince addressed her with careful courtesy.
"First, I'd like you to hear me out. Would that be all right?"
"Oh — yes. Of course. By all means."
Flustered though she was, Lumiel nodded.
"The other night, Commander Laios de Winfried got his hands on the tail of a criminal organization. It operates on a scale even the Security Department can barely handle, and their methods are said to be exceptionally vile."
"……Is that so? That's troubling news indeed."
Still without any real grasp of where this was going, Lumiel listened attentively as the Prince continued.
"The group keeps evading the Security Department while running its own separate stronghold. It serves as a den for illegal mercenaries, and as a playground for corrupt power-brokers and parvenus of the worst sort."
"So even the Security Department daren't touch it."
Lumiel nodded slowly. Unless it was one of the Emperor's own knight orders stationed in the Imperial Capital, the Security Department alone certainly couldn't manage it.
There was still a placid air about the priestess as she spoke, and Cantares, watching her expression carefully, posed his question.
"Do you know what their primary source of income is?"
"I couldn't say."
"Large-scale gambling dens."
Lumiel's face hardened.
Cantares tilted his head slightly.
"As it happens, one of their strongholds sits near a temple where you once served for a time, Priestess. Would you happen to know anything about it?"
"……."
A troubled shadow fell plainly across the priestess's ordinarily benevolent face.
After a long pause, she spoke.
"There was a stronghold there?"
"It's no wonder you never found it. The place the missing priest Declan used to frequent would have been little more than a minor branch of the den they ran."
The moment the name Declan left the Crown Prince's lips, Lumiel shut her eyes altogether.
"Establishments like that relocate periodically to dodge crackdowns. The Security Department may well have held better intelligence — but even if they knew, they would never have informed the temple."
After all, it was not an enemy priests could do anything about.
Lumiel slowly raised her eyelids. The old woman's calm gaze settled on Cantares.
"Might I first ask how all of this came to pass?"
"Things being what they are, it's hardly surprising. Sir Arendt is far too insolent a creature to be used as a mere errand boy or messenger."
"……."
"When you explained the situation to him so nicely, Your Grace — that boy was already scheming away at all of this."
Cantares gave a wry smile as he watched the priestess stare at him blankly, at a loss for words.
Three days.
It had been only three days since she had spoken with Arendt.
All this time she had assumed he was mulling over the proposal she'd offered — never in her wildest imagination had she thought he would set such machinery in motion behind the scenes.
What she had tried to keep hidden had been laid bare without effort. All it took was involving a single apprentice knight.
After a moment of dazed murmuring, the priestess let out a hollow laugh.
"This was my mistake. I underestimated Sir Arendt far too much."
"It can't be helped. The boy exceeds imagination in every possible direction."
Having offered the priestess that brief consolation, Cantares straightened in his seat.
"Now, here is the real matter, Your Grace. Before you lies everything we've learned about the organization entangled with Priest Declan — gathered by Commander Laios over two sleepless nights."
"……."
"I could hand this over to you right now, Priestess Lumiel — but I have no wish to. Because this is not something that you, or the temple, can resolve on your own."
Cantares gave the documents in his hand a deliberate little flutter.
Lumiel answered calmly.
"A way will present itself, if we look for one."
"You know better than anyone. I am a believer myself, and I mean no slight against the temple — but sometimes, force is what the moment demands."
It was a perfectly sound argument.
Lumiel did not answer. The Crown Prince studied the silent old woman for a moment, then spoke again.
"I will move the imperial knight orders and find that priest for you."
"……I beg your pardon?"
At that single sentence, Lumiel's eyes flew wide open.
He would mobilize the imperial knight orders?
Over the disappearance of one lone priest?