I promptly bid farewell to Lady Fillia and headed to see the Gardener Cats.
Once the carriage was close enough, I could make out a group of people gathered around the fence. They appeared to be onlookers who’d caught a glimpse of the commotion.
The Gardener Cats on the other side of the fence had their fur puffed up as a warning sign directed at this crowd.
I asked the onlookers to leave and began to get the full story out of the Gardener Cats.
“Meow! Meow! Meow meow meow meow meow!”
They howled their grief at me, as if they couldn’t process their own resentment.
To summarize what they told me…
The Gardener Cats had been tending to their field like normal, when Princess Ileze’s maid essentially threw her hat into the field across the fence. When she tried to enter the field, the cats naturally gave her warnings using their cries and gestures, but she trespassed as if they weren’t even there.
Even so, the Gardener Cats were anxious about harming my reputation. They tried not to put their paws or claws on her, fearing it would cause an incident, until…
“A rock went flying at you, so you got scared and scratched the maid next to you. Do I have that right?” I asked.
“Meow!”
“This is the rock,” Wheat told me. He presented me with a round, black pebble slightly smaller than a marble.
This pebble flying straight at the Gardener Cat was enough to finally send him from “alert” to “panicked.”
“Who threw the rock, and where did they go?” I asked.
The Gardener Cats all shook their heads.
It seemed none of them had witnessed the culprit or their path of escape. Most of the cats were sent into a panic once the rock came their way, so chasing the culprit was the last thing on their minds. They said it came at them incredibly fast—so fast that, even with their excellent kinetic vision, they only had a vague sense of which direction it came from.
The Gardener Cats pointed their paws toward a grove of trees just outside of the fence. It would definitely have plenty of space for someone to hide.
Some of the cats told me that they heard a loud bang and caught a glimpse of light in the grove just before the rock went flying. It was possible someone had used a crest tool to shoot the rock out at a high speed.
Not even beastfolk should be able to throw a rock fast enough that the Gardener Cats couldn’t track it.
“…I don’t see anything suspicious.” I searched the tree grove for evidence, but was left empty-handed.
Princess Ileze will have to drop her act if I can find proof that someone provoked the Gardener Cats…
“I suppose I’ll just have to ask the Bureau of Magic for help.”
There should still be traces of magical energy lingering about if someone used a spell. The bureau possessed crest tools that could detect minute amounts of energy too faint for humans to perceive. Perhaps we could find some sort of clue that way.
I went straight to the bureau to speak with Director Bodorey, but he was away on business, and since the sun was already starting to set, I decided to wait until tomorrow to begin the investigation.