JUST over the bridge spanning the Kenu River, to the east of the town square, was a two-story building with a red-tiled roof that Unen called home. Though dusk was already setting in, there were still several people waiting in line for medical care in front of its first-story, where a sign that read “Clinic” hung from the eaves.
From the building a man with a bandaged hand shouted over his shoulder as he exited, “Thank you!”
After which, a blond young man in an apron poked his face out from the door and called, “Will the next person please come in?” to the small crowd.
Yet, upon noticing Unen and Irena, he went outside to meet them, passing right by the next patient who entered as he left. Cane in hand, he jerkily dragged his right leg behind him as he made his way over to the girls.
“Sorry for always leaving everything to you, Irena,” he said, “You wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble if I wasn’t in this state.”
“Why are you acting like we aren’t close, Simon? I’m just doing whatever it is I can do, just like you and Unen. And don’t say stuff like, ‘in this state.’ I’ll hit you.”
“If I thank you now, it’ll feel like I’m asking you to hit me anyway.” The young man, Simon, brought his left hand to his mouth and softly chuckled. Illuminated by the sunset’s afterglow, his untanned cheeks were dyed red.
“By the way, did you find a guard?” He watched Unen and Irena exchange looks, a frown creasing his brow. “Something go wrong?”
“Simon!” A gravelly voice rang from inside the clinic, spilling beyond its walls. It was his father and the clinic’s owner, Doctor Milosh. “Why’re you playing around, boy?! Get your butt back in here already! Help me out!”
“I’m going to go use the privy for a bit!” Simon shouted back at the doorway with an indifferent face. Then he invited the girls to follow him to the back of the building.
Irena settled in the quiet shadows of the outhouse with an unusually grim expression that had nothing to do with the heavy stench of the outhouse itself. “Some suspicious guy was searching for Sparrow Eyes,” she started.
“He wasn’t there with a job?”
Unen gave a big nod in response to Simon’s question. “Yeah. He clearly said he didn’t come to hire Sparrow Eyes when Irena asked him upfront.”
The girls took turns narrating the events that took place in the saloon to Simon.
“When it comes down to it, if you want to ask somebody something, you should start by introducing yourself!” Irena complained in exasperation. “And then the guy had the nerve to seize Unen’s arm! He yanked on Unen like a mutt with a piece of meat! How dare he knock her over like that?! What right did he have to touch Unen?!”
After ranting on and on for a good few minutes, Irena’s expression grew significantly more cheerful than before, evidently satisfied to get that off her chest. However, Simon took up her anger instead, and he began to curse the rude stranger he had yet to meet.
“What a violent man! What he did is inexcusable!”
Irena agreed. “His outrageous rudeness made me kick his legs out from under him, but I never would’ve thought Unen would be the one to land the finishing blow.”
“I didn’t land any blow on him!” Unen protested.
“Didn’t you say you stepped on him?”
“…Yes, ma’am.”
Recalling the questionably soft-yet-firm sensation under her boot, Unen hung her head with a bothered face. In the rush of being dragged away from the stranger, she had been scared and closed her eyes, so she didn’t know exactly where her foot had landed, but she prayed it wasn’t anywhere that caused him intense pain.
“Don’t sweat it! That guy looked as sturdy as a rock! Someone with your weight wouldn’t leave a dent in him!” Irena laughed, before suddenly turning grim. “Still, he bothered us about surveying and mapmaking… It makes me wonder what he wanted when he demanded to know who taught Unen how to make maps.”
Unen silently stared at Irena’s furrowed brow, then observed Simon’s reaction. Simon leveled Unen with an equally serious gaze in return.
“I mean, sure, Unen’s maps are incredible, but there’s not much of a need for such precision in reality. It might be a different story for somebody who owns land—a lot of land at that—but those families are few and far between. Not only is mapmaking a hassle, but it comes with a total lack of work too—”
“Not everyone who commissions a map has it made for their own lands.” Irena’s rambling on the pointlessness of mapmaking was interrupted by a familiar male voice. “Some have a map commissioned in order to make the land theirs.”
Stepping out of the outhouse’s shadow was none other than the young man Unen had stepped on in the saloon. Taken by complete surprise, Irena froze, her mouth and eyes opened wide. Unsure of how to react, Unen stood there stupidly staring at him.
Simon took a step toward the young man to shield the girls. “To make the land yours? Are you planning to start a war?”
“I was speaking in general terms.” Smoothly evading Simon’s thorny gaze, the young man glared at Unen, then Irena, then…surprisingly, apologized. “My actions earlier were rude and inappropriate. My name is Ori. I asked about the map because I’m searching for someone.”
“You’re searching for someone? Someone other than Sparrow Eyes then?” Simon demanded.
The young man—Ori—turned to face him. “I am. I don’t know what name he goes by now, but the name my employer said was Hereh.”
Sweat drenched Unen’s hands. Aah, I knew it.
Ori proceeded to explain the details of the wanted person with matter-of-fact precision. “Age forty, blue eyes, hair the color of hay, his height is…” He cut his hand through the air to compare Hereh’s height to Simon. “About the same as you.”
Simon wasn’t short by any means, but Ori stood a good ten centimeters taller than him.
Simon didn’t even try to hide his irritation as he asked, “Why are you after that person?”
He’ll probably just deflect the answer again, Unen thought—
“He’s a thief.”
—she gasped loudly at his unimaginable reply. He quickly revealed the reason, completely unlike the men three years ago.
Simon was equally stunned. Unen heard him mutter, “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
But… Unen bit down on the inside of her cheek. Taking only one side of the story as the whole truth is the manner of fools. Determined to ascertain the truth, Unen turned a powerful gaze on Ori.
Noticing her stare, Ori directed his attention away from Simon. “I’ve been told he stole a troublesome Book of Secrets from a certain high-ranked mage’s library fifteen years ago,” he told Unen. “It’s a treasured book that was never meant to be removed because it’s filled with mysterious knowledge the rest of the world doesn’t know.”
He spoke with indifference as he took Unen’s map out from his pocket once again. “This map that you supposedly made reproduces geographical features to an unbelievably accurate degree. It’s as if you borrowed the eyes of a bird to scope out the lands.” He eyed her. “My employer confirmed that Hereh was in this town three years ago. Is it possible you learned surveying from him?”
The question she had been dreading ever since he asked her about mapmaking in the saloon slammed directly into her gut. Shaken, she tightly pressed her lips together as she prepared herself for what she would have to say next.
But before she could say anything, Simon slipped in front of her. “It’s true a person by the name of Hereh was here for a short time.”
“For a short time? He’s not here now?”
“He’s been missing for three years,” Simon said, pointing to the east submerged in the heavy shadows of dusk. “The person by that name moved to the middle of the eastern forest nearly ten years ago. He lived quietly with his child there without ever getting involved with the town, aside from when he came to sell my dad, who’s a doctor, some medicines we’d never heard of before. But when his child died in the major earthquake three years ago, he left this town for good…”
“So he did have a child…” Ori spat out in a hoarse voice, then sighed. He dropped his gaze for a moment before refocusing his attention sharply on Simon. “How old was the child? Who was the mother? Was he married?”
“I’m not sure about the age, but I think the child was around ten when the earthquake hit. Of course there was no mother around; I don’t even know if he was ever married. He was almost always alone when he came to town, and he always left right after he finished his business here.”
“Is that so?” Ori muttered, dejected.
Simon quietly continued, “He helped my dad out during all the chaos after the earthquake. During that time, he took more care of us than we did him. We were more than saved by him. So all the unimaginable medicine and healing knowledge he had was thanks to that Book of Secrets, huh?”
“What it means,” Ori frostily enunciated, “is that he should’ve never been in possession of that knowledge.”
Hostility flared in Simon’s eyes at Ori’s tone. “She and I only survived thanks to him,” he growled in a low voice. He lightly tapped his right leg with his cane, making a dull thud that only comes from wood hitting wood. “If he hadn’t possessed that knowledge, we wouldn’t be alive right now.”
Inside, Unen strongly agreed with Simon. Hereh had saved her from the isolated, dreary world she had experienced as she slowly approached death. The only reason she lived surrounded by caring people while working as a transcriber was because of what he did for her.
Ori fidgeted uncomfortably, though his expression remained unmoved. His gaze shifted from Simon while his right hand scratched at his head like he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.
Then, as if finally registering what he had just heard, Ori turned once more toward Simon. “She…?”
“Yeah, she.” This time Simon gestured to Unen with not just his eyes but his hand.