“Seems like they’re gone,” Zel said with a sigh of relief and sheathed his sword to mark the end of the fight. “But how did you dispel that mist, Lina?”
Tessius had sounded convinced it was someone’s doing, but... “Wasn’t me,” I replied with a shrug.
“Who, then?” Amelia asked, puzzled.
I smiled indomitably in response. “Why don’t you come out already?” I called.
This was another bit of bravado I wasn’t expecting to pay off, although it’d be cool if it did. The others seemed onto me, however, as they all stood there staring in my direction.
“Okay...” Amelia said, her eyes locked my way. “Who’s that?”
“Who’s what?” I looked behind me... and there stood Alaina. “Bwuh?!”
“Bwah?!” After being startled by my exclamation of surprise, Alaina began silently flapping her lips like a fish out of water.
Curse you, Alaina! You snuck up that close to me with your presence completely cloaked?!
“What are you doing here?” I found myself asking.
She touched something like buttons on each side of her collar and began whispering. Ah... The Regulus Discs. I’d ended up selling them to her at a friend discount, and she’d attached them to her collar like fasteners. She’d probably just whispered the activation incantation.
“The forest was in such an uproar,” she finally replied via the discs as she stood back up. I couldn’t quite understand if that was an answer or not, but I guess her elf senses told her when and where things were going down in the forest.
“Hang on, if you just got here... Are you the one who dispelled that mist?”
“Well... yes...” she replied noncommittally.
At this point, Zel remarked with a curious strain in his voice, “An elf?!”
“Yeah, so what?” I asked.
“Right, I haven’t told you yet,” Zel responded, keeping a watchful eye on Alaina. “Tessius and his band are elves trying to drive humans out of the forest.”
“They’re elves?!” I shouted.
“Yes,” Alaina said, half interrupting me. “And the reason I’m here... is to try and stop them.”
At first, there was just a lot of shouting. Which was perfectly understandable. The abduction of Amelia, a princess of Saillune and an official envoy, was an international incident. Yet Gourry and I had made a few vague statements, gone off to search for her, and returned like nothing was wrong. Plus, Zelgadis looked super suspicious.
Those present included the mayor, MacLyle, Saillune’s captain of the guard, the captain of the Zephilian soldiers stationed at the old lord’s manor, the local security guy named Randa or whatever, the maids, and a few others. Then there were the four of us and Alaina. We’d all gathered in a room in the guesthouse—Amelia’s, to be exact—when the shouting began.
“This is your responsibility!”
“It was negligence of duty!”
“On whose authority?!”
“Would you like sour cream on your scones?!”
“It’s a matter of personal readiness!”
Questions, complaints, grumbles, lectures... Everyone was yelling over each other with such speed and fury that it was hard to tell who was talking to whom.
I waited until they started to get tired of the shouting before I clapped my hands together to get their attention. “Okay! It’s time we sort this all out. We’ll go one person at a time. Ready?”
“Who put you in charge?!” the mayor barked.
“Allow me to take charge, then,” Amelia declared crisply. We’d discussed on our way back to town how I’d find an opportunity for her to lead the discussion. She looked all around the room, making eye contact with each and every person present in turn, then said, “The first thing we need to do is ensure we’re all on the same page about the situation. Then we’ll figure out the enemy’s next move and how to counter it. I’ll entertain questions and suggestions, but I’ll have no more complaints or finger-pointing. Criticism of security over my kidnapping is out of the question as well. Is that understood?”
That’s a royal for you... She said it all so straight and plain, you could even feel the authority radiating out of her.
Once she said that finger-pointing was off the table, the mayor and guard captains didn’t have anything else to say. The local security guys went quiet too. And just as silence overtook the room...
“Would you like sour cream on your scones?”
“Yes, lots, please!” Amelia responded grandly.
The maids swiftly began preparing chairs and tables for a crowd. Amelia sat down, and the others began taking her lead. As the maids began serving tea and scones, Amelia spoke up again.
“Now, let’s begin the introductions,” she said, gesturing to Zel. “This is my personal undercover agent, Master Zelgadis.”
“Personal... undercover agent?” someone whispered.
A bit of a buzz ran through the room, but Amelia ignored it and continued. “Upholding justice demands the grand power of states and armies! But the fact remains that there are places even they cannot reach! That is why I gave this man free rein to conduct undercover investigations, sniffing out various nefarious activities in the vicinity of Saillune.”
This was the strategy I’d fed her—rather, that I’d proposed to her on the way back to the city. Obviously, it was a load of hooey. If we told the town the honest truth about Zelgadis, the mayor and other citizens would either blow up on him or have him arrested. No matter his reasons, and even if he was on our side now, the bottom line was that he had been part of the group that was attacking Atessa. Of course, they were unlikely to start pointing fingers while he was actively working for us, and they’d know we couldn’t afford to lose Zel as a fighter. This was a way we could cover for him, and which he could conveniently repay us for with his knowledge, his sword, his labor, and his cash.
Thing is, the story kinda fell apart if you stopped to think about it. A private investigator wouldn’t have any authority outside of their own country, after all. But when Amelia—both the victim of a kidnapping and a member of the royal family—said it, nobody was going to argue with her.
She continued, “It was a stroke of good fortune that he happened to be infiltrating the raiders’ ranks when I arrived. I shall now ask him to tell us more about them.” She cleared her throat here. “But before we proceed, I’ve asked him to refer to me without title in day-to-day life so that he’ll do the same while on missions. He’ll be doing so during his explanation as well, so do not criticize him for it.”
✦ ✦ ✦
