Erk! Curse your powers of observation, Amelia! You really have grown!
There was no way I could play dumb after that. I scratched the back of my head and confessed, “Yep, sure did!”
“Take this seriously!” she shouted out for some reason, and I felt a little abashed.
“Hey, calm down, Amelia. It’s not like I went out and picked a fight on purpose. Anyway, this isn’t like the Hellmaster thing where it renders particular spells unusable, so it shouldn’t have any effect on your message. Don’t worry.”
She gazed at me in silence for a while, then gave me a strained smile. “So, Lina, what exactly did you do?”
I averted my eyes. “Ah, well... We dealt Dynast Graushera a pretty heavy blow and defeated another avatar of the Dark Lord...”
I heard a dull thud, and when I turned to look, I found the princess slumped over the table.
“Hey! A-Are you okay, Amelia?!”
“Well... I think...” She sat up unsteadily and pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’m going to pretend I never heard that... Okay, I can’t do that, but it sounds like a long story, so we’ll save it for later. There’s something else I want to confirm first. Who were you fighting in the forest?”
“Hmm... To be honest, we only just took on the job today. Apparently some weird raiders have been attacking Atessa for a while, causing all kinds of mayhem.”
“Raiders?” Amelia parroted dubiously.
“The guy who hired us called them bandits, but...”
“They can’t be,” she said easily, her expression unchanging.
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, obviously...” Amelia responded in surprise. “If there had been any fatalities, my soldiers would have brought them in or reported it. The fact that they didn’t tells me there were no such casualties, and for those people to have escaped a fight with you two alive tells me that they cannot be mere bandits.”
Her logic was sound. I smiled awkwardly and shrugged a little. “Well, we’re in agreement there, but...” I glanced over at Gourry. “What did you think of the guys we fought in the forest?”
“Hmm...” Gourry sipped his tea as he thought. “Boring fashion sense.”
“I’m not asking about their clothes! I mean, what did you think of fighting them?!”
“Oh, that? Aside from the ones who came right at me, the others were throwing knives from a distance to keep me in check. I had my hands full dodging that...”
Needless to say, Gourry’s skills were on another level for him to hold his own in a four-on-one fight. But normally, he still would’ve been able to find a weakness in the opponent’s defenses and break through. The fact that he hadn’t this time told me his opponents had quickly taken his measure and countered accordingly.
“Well, it was four against one, but even so, it’s pretty impressive they could go toe-to-toe with you,” I remarked.
“I suppose this is all going to be rather complicated...” Amelia frowned as she listened to our story.
The sun hung in the western sky. When Gourry and I left the guesthouse, it was too late to be called afternoon but too early to be called evening.
We’d explained the rough particulars of the story to Amelia, and that was that. We hadn’t had time to go into depth about Dynast and the Dark Lord, and we didn’t know much about the situation in town either. We had plenty of smaller stuff to chat about, but we didn’t want to stay too long and annoy her bodyguards, so we’d decided to cut things short.
“So, what do we do next?” Gourry asked.
“Hmm... I think something happened earlier, so I’d like to find out what, but...” I said thoughtfully in response. We still had a while before sunset, but not long enough for us to leave the city and investigate. “Okay. Let’s get back to Master MacLyle’s place and—”
“Eat?”
“That too! But first, I have some things I want to ask him.”
For our lodging, we were staying at MacLyle’s Silver Leaf Inn. Part of the reason was that, when we decided to take the job, he’d offered to let us stay for free and given us 20 percent off our meals. But MacLyle was also the head of the local security detail, which made the inn our home base for reporting our findings. It was just convenient for us to set up camp there.
It was now the hour most folks were out and about shopping for dinner, so people were coming and going all through town. The sound of pounding metal from near and far was a natural part of the ambiance in the city of blacksmiths. The people who lived in towns like this tended to be the blustery sort, but the atmosphere right now was far from jolly. The raiders’ presence must have cast a pall on everything.
On our way back to the inn, I was struck with an idea and took a detour for some shopping myself. When we at last returned to the Silver Leaf...
“Hey,” MacLyle greeted us as we came through the door. It was still a bit early for dinner, so there were no customers in the first-floor eatery. The indoor lamps weren’t lit yet, and the weakening late afternoon sun streaming in the windows painted shadows from the aged pillars, chairs, and tables. MacLyle was set up behind the counter. The aroma of delicious stew, or something like it, wafted through the restaurant as he prepared for the dinner crowd. “Welcome back. Did you finish your talk?”
“More or less. We didn’t get to go into details, but we covered the gist of things. You’re not attending the banquet, Master MacLyle?” I asked.