Sponsorship (2)
***
The lazy afternoon sun was beginning to fade.
In a small room shielded by some special magic, so quiet that it rang faintly in the ears, a middle-aged man and a young man faced each other.
At a glance, they might have passed for father and son, but the wariness and hostility living in their eyes made it plain that their relationship was anything but warm.
It was the young man who spoke first.
"[Jeres], what has become of our agreement?"
He hurled his informal speech at someone who looked old enough to be far his senior — and not out of youthful recklessness, either, but with the casual ease of someone who considered it only natural.
Jeres, the middle-aged man, did not so much as remark on the insolence. Instead, he answered in the respectful register.
"And which agreement would that be?"
"…By plan, the full truth of the disappearances should still be buried. We agreed not to hand the job to high-ranked adventurers, did we not? The [Bishop] was a talent too precious to die in a place like this."
"Ah, I understand. Organizations plagued by manpower shortages like yours are rare, after all."
"How dare—"
Wuuuum!
The instant the young man's eyes flared with rage at Jeres's words, the objects around the room crumpled inward, as if crushed beneath some enormous weight.
But Jeres merely crossed his legs behind a faintly shimmering barrier and went on, utterly unbothered.
"Spare me the theatrical anger. Shall we discuss something constructive instead? Time is a finite resource. Well… I suppose I can't say for certain whether that applies to you."
"…I am a mortal like any other. Yes — constructive. Fine. Then first, explain this incident. Was it not deliberate?"
"How could it possibly have been deliberate? The Guild responded to the case exactly as it always does. That an out-of-spec party happened to take the commission… was an unfortunate accident. Besides, wasn't the plan built with a certain margin of uncertainty in mind?"
"…"
"Those friends of yours are remarkably capable, I'll admit. They only barely qualify, but they're around Rank 6, I'd say. At that level, with fortune on their side, taking down a Bishop isn't out of the question, is it?"
The young man stared at Jeres without blinking.
As if staring hard enough might wring the truth out of him.
Apparently satisfied as to whether Jeres's claims held water, the young man spoke again, his tone composed.
"Good. So it wasn't deliberate sabotage. But the fact that our order intervened in this abduction has been dragged into the open for all the world to see. Worse, we fumbled the count's daughter we worked so hard to secure. The count must be furious — he'll be launching a full-scale search before long. If it came later, I'd welcome it, but right now it's a problem."
"How long if you prepared with all possible haste?"
"A month. Perhaps three weeks. The [Ritual] must be prepared with great care — I cannot shorten it beyond that."
"Hmm… I believe I can buy you at least that much time."
"…With your abilities, I'm sure you can. But see that it's no empty boast. If our secret arrangement ever comes to light, it's your head on the block, not mine."
A veiled threat.
Jeres let it slide right off him, as lightly as if it had been a passing greeting.
"Haha. How many worries you carry. All you need concern yourselves with is preparing the payment faithfully."
"The payment… is the item you first mentioned sufficient?"
"How oddly formal of you."
"…No matter how I examine it, it seems to be nothing but a common relic that absorbs blood. It's clearly no ordinary object, but… I confess I can't tell whether it truly merits accepting such a dangerous bargain."
The young man tilted his head.
Apparently, whatever Jeres had demanded of them made no sense to him.
Jeres only smiled, sly as a fox.
"Everyone values different things, don't they? For all you know, that relic's historical worth could be beyond measure."
"…Is that sincere as well? Truly, I can't make you out. I have lived hundreds of years, yet I've never met a man shaped quite like you."
"Thank you for the compliment."
"That was no compliment."
Try as he might to rattle him, the young man seemed slightly wearied by Jeres, who answered every probe with the same unchanging smile.
He looked like the most ordinary middle-aged man you might pass on any street corner, and yet he could withstand this level of pressure.
And he wasn't even an Awakened.
Could a man drunk on power really twist himself into something like this?
'No — more likely this one was simply mad to begin with.'
The young man gave up on further probing.
Against someone who slipped through every word like a reed in the wind, pressing further would only cost him.
Sighing, the young man rose from his seat.
"I'll take my leave. You'll deliver that relic at the site when the great work of our order comes to pass… Ah, you have prepared your means of escape for that day, I trust? You might well be caught up in it otherwise."
"Naturally, it's arranged. Have no fear."
"Hmph. It isn't fear, merely caution. Cooperative allies among a guild's upper ranks are hard to come by, that's all. Though I wonder — can you truly keep your position as branch manager after pulling a stunt like this?"
"It was rather an audacious act of unilateral initiative on my part, but I suspect they'll be pleased. As you well know, Count Bornier is…"
"Ha! With the First Prince, yes. Enough. Politics is a truly loathsome business. It never changes. I'm off."
"Travel safely, Lord [Archbishop]."
Shuuuuk!
With the sound of air being sucked into a vacuum, the remaining documents in the room swirled up on the gust.
When Jeres lifted his head, no one remained in the room.
***
I turned the iron ball over in my hands, thinking.
On its face, this looked like a simple commission — all I had to do was meet Jeres while carrying the thing. But the meaning packed inside it was anything but simple.
'It's a kind of yardstick. If I accept this request, it means casting my lot with Harrington's faction.'
I had volunteered to hear him out at my own risk, but everything touching Jeres was dangerously classified. Having already heard the full story, if I didn't choose which faction to serve, there was no way I'd be walking out of this estate with my memories intact.
This, too, was a test.
Would I remain a mere sponsored client, or become something far closer?
'Not bad. For now, at least, it's a straightforward request — what comes later is another matter. And Harrington doesn't strike me as the cold-blooded type.'
I chewed it over from every angle and reached my conclusion.
It made me uneasy not to consult Noah first, but then, this one-on-one conversation had probably been arranged precisely to see my judgment on its own.
"Understood. If the opportunity to meet Jeres arises, I'll make sure to seize it."
I slipped the iron ball into my pocket.
Watching me, Harrington seemed to see straight through every worry I'd turned over — and he looked far more delighted than a man who had merely handed off a simple errand had any right to be.
Apparently, I'd passed the test.
"Truly wise of you. Might there be noble blood in your line, I wonder?"
"Ah… well. I know nothing of my ancestors, to be honest."
"They must have been remarkable people, then. Hmm… I'll arrange separate compensation for this commission as well. Let's go inside and settle the details."
Harrington rose from his seat, saw me up personally, and began leading the way back along the path we'd come.
I followed him in silence until a question occurred to me.
We were on the same side now — no harm in asking about sensitive matters.
"By the way… how did Lady Catherine end up being abducted? I never imagined she'd be held hostage in a place like that."
Usually this sort of thing follows a tired old cliché: the naive young lady slips out behind her escorts' backs and gets snatched.
But Catherine was far too kind-hearted for such thoughtless behavior.
I simply couldn't picture her in disguise, slipping out through some drain hole.
Harrington considered for a moment, then wrapped a hand around his head as if the very thought pained him.
"It's confidential, of course, but you're a party to this yourself now, Mr. Ha Jun, so there's no reason I can't tell you. She was abducted from the inner keep — from within the lord's own mansion."
"…That's possible? What about her escorts?"
"Three knights were assigned to her. All three are dead. And they were seasoned men who had served the family for many years."
"Isn't that… an extraordinarily serious matter?"
Bolston was, in name and in fact, the lord's domain.
His daughter, of all people, abducted from her own home?
It was utterly absurd.
"Worse, they exited Bolston without leaving a trace worth the name. Which means whoever did it knows the mansion's and the inner keep's layouts intimately — and that left far too many suspects for comfort."
"The other nobles fell under suspicion, then."
"They did. But investigating nobility without a shred of hard evidence would carry an enormous political cost even for the count. So the inquiry was kept quiet — and then you brought them in so neatly, Mr. Ha Jun."
Listening to Harrington, I finally understood why Bolston had stayed so quiet despite the lord's daughter being taken.
The count never dreamed the kidnappers might be tied to a heretic cult.
He'd simply been quietly investigating the nobles of his inner keep.
"Precisely. If we'd let things drag on much longer, the count would have lost all reason and ordered a forced search of every noble estate in the castle. That said… it's becoming genuinely disturbing to think which nobles have been colluding with the cult. Ah — but that line of investigation will be handled by someone else."
"I see."
"You may look forward to a reward coming down before long. The count is a generous man. In a good sense — and in a bad one."
"Oh…"
***
Back at the mansion, we hashed out the fine print of the [sponsorship].
This sort of work could have been delegated to subordinates, but Harrington pressed through it to the very end, poorly concealing his fatigue.
I suppose it was his way of showing sincerity… though honestly, the legal clauses might as well have been written in another language.
Fortunately, Noah screened the terms for us and filtered out any poison pills, so the discussions moved quickly.
And just as the talks were wrapping up and the atmosphere had turned at its most pleasant, I casually, almost in passing, raised the subject I'd been saving for Harrington.
"Um… there's one thing I'd like to ask, if you don't mind."
"Ah, by all means."
"The truth is, one of my party members has gotten tangled up in a rather strange problem…"
I rattled off the whole business of Lena's debt in one breath.
Stripping out anything subjective so as not to color his judgment and laying out only the dry facts kept it brief.
When he'd heard me out, Harrington frowned.
"Do you still have those documents from the [Skyward Association]?"
"Yes. Here…"
Srrrk.
I handed over Lena's debt papers, which I'd remembered to bring along.
One thing I'd gathered from the sponsorship negotiations: Harrington was surprisingly well-versed in legal matters, too.
After studying the documents for several minutes, he spoke.
"Hmm… At a glance it looks like a perfectly ordinary contract, but several things strike me as off."
"Ah! I knew it!"
"First, the seal stamped on the papers is wrong. Any promissory note above a certain value is required to bear the seal of a department head or higher — but going by the pattern, this one comes from a rank below that. And there's more…"
Portions of the documents written at what should have been different times shared an identical hand. The papers bore no connection to the department that manages a guild member's estate, and the standard guarantee clauses were absent.
Harrington flagged flaw after flaw that no one outside the affair could possibly have caught.
When he even examined the condition of the very first debt record and remarked that it appeared to have been artificially aged, I could only marvel.
"Shouldn't you be working as an appraiser rather than a technician…?"
"Hahaha… I've always taken a keen interest in my family's history, you see, and that interest naturally grew to cover old objects in general. I flatter myself that I have a decent eye."
"'A decent eye,' he says. It's genuinely superb."
"Ahem! Well… in any case, one look is enough to tell these documents are forgeries. Leave them with me and I'll see them dealt with properly."
"Please do."
I had only asked for advice, and with a single stroke Harrington resolved the debt papers that could have driven our party's finances straight into bankruptcy.
So this was the power of a noble…?
When Lena heard Harrington's assurances, her face lit up like a sunrise.