Only What the Wage Covers
When it became clear no more information was coming, Chris let out a groan.
"Mmm."
Ortin spoke.
"He's coming around."
Hammonds bent at the waist toward Chris's head.
"Hey. You with us?"
Chris forced his eyes open.
"Vice... Vice-Leader, sir..."
"What were you doing in the freight wagon in the middle of the night?"
"Taking a piss."
"Useless fool. Why would you piss in the wagon?"
"Not in there. Against the stable wall..."
"The stable's no better."
"The porters' latrine I use is filthy, and it stinks... and it's far, and scary..."
Hammonds bellowed.
"You're a grown man! What's there to be scared of?"
"They say a ghost comes out in the latrine."
"Idiot."
He was winding up to heap on more abuse when Ortin stopped him.
"Vice-Leader. That isn't what matters right now."
Having checked Hammonds, he turned a milder eye on Chris.
"The stablehand says he saw people fleeing the wagon before he found you. Did you see anything yourself?"
Chris widened his eyes on purpose.
"A man in a mask was rummaging through the cargo. So I crept up to catch the thief, and then..."
"And then?"
"I don't remember anything after that."
Ortin's brow creased.
"That's all? You didn't see anything else?"
"No, sir."
"The thief... is there anyone you suspect?"
"No one."
"Think carefully."
Chris only blinked, blank as a fool. Determined to wring out even one more scrap, Ortin kept at him.
"Height?"
"Ordinary, I think."
"What do you mean, ordinary?"
"Just average height."
"Build?"
"That was average too."
"The feet? Big, or small?"
"Average."
"Hands?"
"Average."
"No missing finger? Nails grown long, dirt under them, rough hands? Nothing like that?"
"Average."
"Hair? Long or short? Curly, straight? Blond, silver, brown, black?"
"He was wearing a mask. I couldn't see."
"Smell? Body odor? Perfume?"
"Average."
Hammonds exploded.
"Is ordinary the only word you know?"
Chris said it with emphasis.
"I'm not ordinary."
"Then what are you?"
"I always take a double portion at meals."
Hammonds was struck dumb.
"Leader, I don't think we'll get anything more out of this one."
Ortin nodded.
"So it seems."
He fixed Chris with a stern look.
"What happened today is a secret. You will not breathe a word of it."
"Yes, sir."
Leader Ortin had called it a secret, but a secret it could not remain. While Chris lay there pretending to be unconscious, the stablehand had seized everyone he saw and blurted that he had seen the thief. Thanks to that, Chris became known as the fool a burglar had beaten senseless.
Lapin came up to Chris, who was tearing into a piece of bread, and clicked his tongue.
"Kid, you see a thief, you catch him. Getting yourself knocked out like an idiot."
Chris rubbed the back of his head and grinned.
"Heh heh."
"Don't smile. You haven't earned it."
"I almost had him."
"I could say that much myself."
"But, well."
Chris dropped his voice and put on a meaningful look, and curiosity pulled Lapin in close.
"What?"
"I did see the thief."
"Didn't you say the mask hid his face?"
"I saw his build."
Lapin swallowed.
"And?"
"The thief and you, Supervisor... your builds might be similar. Or they might not."
Lapin went pale.
"You little—saying something that'll get a man killed."
"Heh heh. Or maybe not."
"'Or maybe not' is how you get someone killed. Don't ever say that again."
"Yes, sir."
The Senfo Merchant Guild's transport unit opened a market in the next village they reached. They sold cloth and spices and bought the local specialty, grape wine. The leader and the vice-leader accepted the village chief's invitation and went to his house, while some of the staff rented an inn and unpacked.
The porters, Chris among them, and the ordinary clerks halted the wagons in the middle of an empty lot in the village and pitched tents around them. The rule was to sleep at an inn whenever there was a place fit to store the wagons, but the break-in had made that impossible, so they camped in the open.
The day was not cold enough to need a campfire, but they needed light against the dark, so they lit one anyway. Chris was staring blankly into the flames when Lapin smacked the back of his head.
"Kid, don't watch the fire. Watch the wagons. The wagons!"
"I am watching."
Lapin twisted his mouth and mimicked him.
"I am watching."
Then his face went hard.
"Watching, my ass. From where I stand, you're nodding off."
"I'm not nodding off."
"Quit slacking and stand your watch properly."
"Yes, sir."
McKeon tugged at Lapin's sleeve.
"Leave the kid alone and let's go."
The two set off toward the inn. Once they had gone far enough, Art came and sat beside Chris.
"Kamin, Supervisor Lapin's awfully prickly, isn't he?"
"Yeah."
"He's especially hard on you. Doesn't it make you angry?"
"It's fine."
The boy grumbled.
"The supervisors will be sleeping easy in beds. Because of some thief, we're the only ones suffering."
"I should have caught him."
"I'm cursing the thief. I'm not blaming you."
"That so?"
"Yes."
"We've a long road tomorrow. Go in and sleep."
The boy said good night and went into the tent. Chris let the time pass, reciting the Acrian Magic Book silently to himself.
If the treasure in the wagon had been his, he would have laid alarm magic on every side, settled into meditation, and the moment someone intruded, set stealth magic on himself and dropped out of the sky on flight magic like a hawk. It was someone else's cargo, so he did not go to that much trouble.
Nor did he mean to steal the treasure and run. Once he had learned what mages truly were, Chris had settled on a principle: he might never manage to be a good man, but he would at least refuse to become a villain. So he would do a guild porter's work. As much as everyone else did, and no more.
Stand the watch, and raise the alarm if a thief comes. That much I'll do.
Past two in the morning, around the time he was meant to hand the watch to the next man, something happened. The mana around him rippled, unsettled.
Someone's casting...
Thirty paces off, the head of the porter on watch tilted. The watchman beside him did the same.
Sleep magic.
The fiend Tenbo had been no passionate teacher, and their time together had been short, so Chris had never learned every basic spell. The Acrian Magic Book did not cover fundamentals such as sleep magic either.
Watching the movement of the mana with care, he let his head droop and pretended to have fallen asleep. About a minute later, three mages descended from the sky.
"Word is spreading. We have to find it before the high mages come swarming."
"I know."
They scattered in a hurry. They were speaking aloud rather than in Thought Language—mages of the Jenyeom realm, Thought Formulation.
Chris cracked his eyes and watched them. The thief at the inn had unpacked with care, not wanting the search discovered. These three tore into the cargo at random. Putting it back the way it had been would be impossible.
They don't mean to hide the theft. If mages want it this badly, the treasure is something tied to magic... a top-grade mana stone? Or a special seed Evaluation Paper?
Turning it over, that didn't seem right. They were worried about high-ranking mages appearing. High mages would not come in a pack for a handful of top-grade mana stones. Something more precious than what he had just considered was packed somewhere in the cargo of the five transport units.
What is it?
Chris was desperately curious about the treasure's true nature.
The thief-mages spoke.
"Found it?"
"No. You?"
"Me neither."
"If you found it, don't lie and pretend you didn't."
"Worry about your own lies."
From their talk, Chris took a strong impression that whoever found the treasure would swallow it in secret. To him, a mage's word ranked lower in trust than a philanderer's claim that he had not cheated.
His view was limited, and watching with his eyes only went so far. He set his will behind his mana and moved it with care.
A Jenyeom mage won't notice.
He tracked them through the mana. They searched for more than two hours, and when the treasure still failed to appear, he could feel them growing frantic.
"Shit, where the hell did they hide it?"
Desperation had them cursing.
"What if it isn't in the wagons?"
"I heard they loaded it disguised as ordinary goods."
"And if that was false information?"
"What are you saying?"
"Hauling something precious in with ordinary freight doesn't make sense, does it? The leader will have it on him."
"Could be."
"Let's kidnap him."
"That makes this a much bigger mess..."
"You want to give up like this?"
He hesitated, then answered.
"Fine. One more hour of searching. If it still doesn't turn up, we take him."
They left the wagons in ruins and departed on flight magic.
Jenyeom. Slow.
When they were gone, Chris lifted his head and weighed it.
Let them kidnap the leader, or help him?
Saving the leader meant fighting three mages. Three Jenyeom practitioners he could handle without using magic at all, but that would draw the attention he was determined to avoid.
Asked why a master-class knight was disguised as a worthless porter, he would have no good answer.
He remembered how, when he had played at being clubbed unconscious by the thief, the man had left him lying on the bare ground, and he let his head drop again.
If he'd so much as laid me on a carpet, I would have saved him.
Chris decided he would work exactly as much as his wages paid for—no more, no less. Making that excuse to himself, he fell asleep for real this time.
When day broke, chaos erupted. The transport unit's supervisors, out at the camp early because of yesterday's theft, took one look at the goods rolling on the ground like trash and panicked. They ran about like foals with their tails on fire.
Those who grasped what had happened split into two kinds: people who cleaned up and sorted, and people who got angry first. Supervisor Lapin belonged to the latter.
Lapin found someone to take it out on and slapped his cheeks in turn. Singled out to bear the blame, Chris's face snapped left and right with every swing of the hand.
"Thieves got in, and you were dead asleep!"
Smack.
"I begged you to stand your watch properly!"
Smack.
"You little bastard, how are you going to answer for this?"
Smack.
A supervisor who spent his days twirling a pen in an office was never going to have much strength in his arm. Supervisor Lapin wore himself out hitting him and stood there panting.
Chris was not even irritated. The situation was only a little ridiculous. After huffing for a while and getting his strength back, Lapin was about to slap him across the face again when Art spoke.
"Supervisor."
"What?"
Lapin's voice was as irritable as a man who had gone two days without food. Art flinched at the shrill tone, but he steeled himself and opened his mouth.
"The whole watch fell asleep. Blaming only Kamin is a bit..."
The anger moved from Chris to Art. Lapin raised his hand to strike the boy, and Supervisor McKeon shouted.
"Lapin! Cleanup comes first. Get over here and check the cargo against the ledger."
Lapin glared at the two of them in turn, sour and unsatisfied, spat, and left. Following another supervisor's orders, the pair sorted the goods and counted them.