Aromaa (1)
"A warrior said that once. He was a mage-hater."
The off-topic conversation died quickly, and they returned to the matter at hand.
"Katan, that old man. He experimented on his own body with this and that until his genes got all mixed up, didn't he? Someone at that level is hard to judge by common sense. Would you call it a screw loose?"
A strange light flickered in Taylor's eyes, and he studied Alan in silence. It was gradually becoming uncomfortable.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing. Let's get some sleep."
Each of them lay down in their own bed. A few days later, Shiva returned to the tent.
"It grieves me, but things are being resolved step by step, so I am gladdened as well."
"They never expected the Mother Church to respond this fast. Or maybe they meant to mop things up quick and bolt, but the operation dragged on instead. Where to next?"
"Thanks to Brother Alan, our brothers and sisters are tracking the enemy. Their anticipated route is..."
Light poured from Shiva's eyes, and a flat map rose into the air. Kamiro's terrain and its cities were marked upon it. The arrows that had moved across every corner of Kamiro all pointed toward the port city of Aromaa.
"Planning to run by sea? What about the gold they've confiscated?"
"That, I do not know."
While listening to their conversation, Alan fiddled with the elf's artificial eye. There was nothing else that could resonate with his own eye — though it was currently ruined by the explosion.
The other disciples were of the same breed, so the odds were high that they carried similar magicware or enchanted devices.
Are they all artificial eyes, I wonder?
It was entirely plausible. The lifelong dream of every magitech engineer was the Eye of Akasha, the eye that comprehends all things.
Even as he thought this, Alan's gaze stayed fixed on Aromaa. The slave trader would know something about pirates.
The moment Alan woke, he opened the window. A breeze laced with that unmistakable smell of the sea swept in at once.
Aromaa was built in the shape of mountains embracing a harbor — flat ground near the water, sloping terrain everywhere else. Buildings had been carved into the hillsides in terraced tiers, so most homes commanded a view of the ocean.
Far below lay the port. Ships and vehicles coming and going breathed life into it. The citizens of Aromaa loved their leisure, but at the harbor they were a different breed entirely.
Aromaa was a port city, adjacent to the open ocean and the routes it offered in every direction, so trade thrived. Where money flows, people gather — which was why the city had grown larger than Pisto and Abaro combined.
Why bring all this up?
"Where the hell are these bastards hiding? They're definitely here, but the city's too damn big."
Freshly woken, Taylor muttered as he gazed at the same view as Alan. Several days had passed since they arrived in Aromaa, and not so much as a whisker of the mages had shown itself.
Still, Taylor had his reasons for certainty. The Mother Church had sealed the city. With the navy's cooperation they had corked the sea, and even the wealthy who owned private aircraft had cooperated.
They had even brought in a Spatial School mage to preempt every conceivable contingency — the enemy were, quite literally, rats in a cage.
"Long-range Spatial Gates aren't exactly easy magic, and this side's performance is superior anyway. No need to worry."
"The problem is that they could still pull what they did in Abara. Though honestly, doing that would mean choosing to die."
"And if they try it anyway?"
"Even Abara, small as it is, required them a great deal of time. Aromaa is far larger — need I say more?"
With the pursuers keeping sharp watch, the slightest anomaly would likely be caught at once.
"The Mother Church's influence really is something."
"Healthcare itself is power. I'd say that aspect runs even stronger than faith in the divine, wouldn't you?"
"Fair enough. Even the rich appreciate having a healer or physician they know standing by when something goes wrong with their body. Clerics are people too, and given the choice, they'd treat their own connections first."
"Ahem!"
Shiva, still lying in bed, coughed pointedly — but since it was a truth he shared, he said nothing more.
Alan finished preparing to go out and stepped beyond the lodging.
"I was thinking of making a few other stops today. We've been working for the Mother Church all this time, so I figure I can take a little time for myself, can't I?"
"Beats wasting our lives hunting for bastards we can't see. A change of direction might do us good."
"I agree as well."
The moment the party consented, they moved. The first stop was midway up the hillside, where Novak's clinic stood.
Even from a distance, it was plainly abandoned. The walls were swallowed in vines, grass ran wild across the lot inside, and beyond the shattered glass, glimpses of green flickered everywhere.
"This is the place?"
"Yes."
"So, how does it feel, looking at what you accomplished?"
"It looks great to me."
A man in a Power Suit, a hulking old man, and a solidly built dwarf gathered together made the citizens quietly detour around them. Of course, there was always someone who couldn't mind his own business.
A second-floor window on a nearby building swung open, and a middle-aged man poked his face out.
"You here for magicware repair?"
"Yes. I followed a map, but there's no shop."
"Someone must've sold you old information. That place has been dead a while now. One night there was this racket of drunken shouting, then all the workers came pouring out in a rush. Never saw Boss Novak after that, so he's gotta be dead. He used to do repairs cheap, too. Real shame."
The man seemed to genuinely mourn Novak's death. Or perhaps he was mourning the loss of his own bargain repair shop.
Another window slid open, and a weasel Lycan poked his head out. He looked back and forth between Alan and the older man.
"I heard his back room was dirty."
"You see it yourself?"
"Saw him talking with gangsters. Definitely some kind of deal going on. Him keeping that many assistants around was suspicious too, wasn't it?"
"Don't go slinging guesses about a dead man. The cartel might've been blackmailing him."
While the two, who seemed to be friends, argued back and forth, Alan slowly drifted away from the clinic.
He had no particular intention of revealing the truth about Novak. Would strangers believe it just because he said it? In any case, hearing that the other assistants and the children had escaped safely put his mind at ease.
Novak, after all, had never had a spare moment to worry about him while chasing him down. And afterward, he'd been near death besides.
As similar accounts echoed from the mouths of the citizens, Shiva murmured.
"His reputation was better than I expected."
"People don't care about anything outside their own affairs. The world grew wider with the coming of the virtual space called the Samramansang, yet strangely, our field of vision narrowed."
"Those you meet in the Samramansang part ways again soon enough, so there is no burden there. But people in the flesh are different. Etiquette, the other's missteps, reputation — so many things demand consideration. Brother, where to next?"
"There, I think."
Taylor spoke up as though he'd already figured it out.
"Yes. We're going to see the slave trader."
"Slavery..."
Shiva let his words trail off. A long time had passed since the institution was abolished, yet it plainly persisted even now. People who were citizens in name alone but lived as slaves were hardly rare.
"What do you intend to do?"
"Hard to say. To be honest, it's a side trip, so I can't give you a firm answer yet."
The Mother Church did run the Purification Volunteer Corps, but its members were clergy after all — people devoted to uprightness — and that placed many constraints on their actions.
Slave traders, however, lived in the shadows, which meant they likely held information that was difficult to reach through official channels.
It was a point Taylor could sympathize with as well.
"Flipping the place over would be damn convenient. They always come crawling out on their own, one by one. Some of them are bound to know what's become of the mages."
Alan entered a weapons shop on the market street near the harbor. Revolvers, swords, bombs — it was crammed with every mana weapon imaginable. It was common sense to keep at least one weapon to defend oneself, so even customers who looked utterly unaccustomed to exertion came and went.
He cast a casual glance around, then approached a clerk polishing a mana stone. When Alan came to a stop before him, the employee flashed a grin. Gold teeth gleamed.
"A Power Suit, hm. That's a serious level of armament. Even so, we carry merchandise here that would satisfy you. If we don't have it on hand, we can procure it on request."
"I'd like to buy target sheets."
"As it happens, we have a practice range in the basement. We keep targets there, along with straw dummies for bladed work."
"Do you have anything in the way of lively targets?"
"What kind, precisely, are you—"
"Something that walks on four legs, ideally only in the morning."
"Ah. In that case, follow me."
The clerk set down the mana stone and guided Alan's party toward a secluded corner. There was a changing room where one could put on combat gear and the like.
When the clerk, who had entered first, gave a hand signal, Taylor opened a comm channel.
[Was that a code just now?]
[Yes. That's a changing room, but it doubles as an elevator. The basement here connects to the harbor.]
[So the slave trader's underground.]
Secret business had always been best conducted underground, and that held true everywhere. The powerful kept slaves quite openly, but it was still technically illegal — better to stay out of sight if one could.
At last, the door disguised as a changing room slid open. A corridor painted in deep gray stretched out ahead.
"I'll go ahead and open the gate."
The clerk darted off and unlocked the door facing the elevator. But far from waiting, he slipped straight inside and shut it behind him.
[Looks like he botched the passphrase.]
[Seems it's been changed.]
The guess proved right, for the clerk's voice came crackling through a speaker.
"Who the hell are you people?"
"Here to trade, obviously."
"Cut the shit. Did you think reciting the old passphrase would get you a polite 'please be more careful next time'? You clearly don't understand the situation you're in—"
With a grinding whine, automatic turrets sprang from the ceiling and walls, their mana-churning muzzles leveling at Alan.
"Ready to talk now? Wait — you bastards aren't Mother Church lapdogs, are you? Those pricks have been crawling all over the place, ruining business. Perfect timing, actually. I'll just blast you first, then ask questions."
"We think alike, then."
"You're insane. You don't even grasp your own—"
The clerk's words cut off. The turrets that should have been trained on them swiveled their muzzles toward the door instead. However sturdy a door might be, sustained bombardment would open it soon enough.
The clerk stumbled backward, tripped over something, and crashed to the floor.
"Wh-what?!"
Grrrr.
At the low growl, the clerk's body went rigid. In fact, the mana carried in the sound itself had locked his muscles stiff.
An enormous mechanical panther had appeared before his eyes — out of a scene that, until that very moment, had been perfectly ordinary.
"Where the hell did that— urk!"
The panther's forepaw caught him across the cheek and he crumpled. The gold tooth popped clean out of his gaping mouth.
Having finished the takedown, the Panther plugged its tail into a terminal. The door opened, and Alan stepped inside.
"Where is the boss?"
"..."
At Alan's glance, Box — in the middle of collecting the gold tooth — seized the clerk's throat with its grabber claw. His body rose until he was eye to eye with Alan.
"Do you have any idea where you—"
"I do, actually. A slave shop run by a shipborne elf."
"Eat shit. Pah!"
Alan rewarded the clerk's loyalty to the very end. His body suddenly shook violently, sparks burst from his artificial eye, and foam bubbled from his lips.
"Is he dead?"
"No. But I've wrecked his artificial eye and his Brain Expansion Device."
"So he gets to feel like he's alone in a pitch-black room."
"Let's move."
Alan's party advanced first, and Box — still rummaging through the clerk's belongings — hurried after them.
The same pattern repeated itself again and again. Every employee who tried to bar Alan's way dropped like a struck bird, thudding to the floor one after another. The security installations, for their part, turned their guns on their own staff instead.
Thus they arrived at the boss's office. Taylor raised his foot to kick down the firmly sealed door when—
"Wha—huh?"
The door swung open on its own, and he lurched, losing his balance.
"Alan, you could've warned me."
"I didn't know you were going to charge in first, sir."
"Ahem. Let's just meet this boss of ours."
The shipborne elf wore a display rig over his head and was absorbed in viewing something.
"Completely lost in it, I see. No wonder he didn't notice the city tearing itself apart out there."
When Taylor yanked the device off him, the elf shot up from his chair.
"You motherf— which sons of bitches—"
"Put your pants on first."
Ta—