Chapter 5:
Search
THE PAST FOLLOWS ME wherever I go. I thought I’d reflected on my actions, but in the end, I suppose I hadn’t.
No. I did, and I still do. But when it came to the things I didn’t recognize as failings right away, I could be dense. This time around, it turned out that I’d averted my gaze from what actually mattered.
How often have I thought I needed to reflect more? This was another such moment. It was too late to regret my behavior and wonder what would’ve happened if I’d noticed sooner.
Aisha and Arus were gone.
—Passage from The Book of Rudeus, Volume 29
✦ ✦ ✦
The moment I saw the letter, I rushed out of the house in a panic. Even if I found Arus and Aisha, I wasn’t suddenly going to convince them I was right, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t go looking for them. I focused on searching places around the town that they might have gone—places that Aisha might have, in particular.
They were nowhere to be found. I searched for the whole day but didn’t find them.
I went to the Ruquag’s Mercenary Band HQ, Cliff’s former residence, the magic university, and all the places where there were mercenary band storehouses. The cafe Aisha went to often. The clothing boutiques. The fabric stores. The general stores. The wholesalers. I even went to Orsted’s office, though he wasn’t present. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find them. It seemed to me like they’d left town.
Well, there were sightings. They left from the town gate early in the morning, or they boarded a horse bus early in the morning, or they borrowed horses from the stable and left early in the morning. There were a number of other similar sightings, but they all contradicted each other in some way. Had they actually left town, or was that false information covering that they were still in town? I had no idea. I imagined Aisha was behind the mix of info; she was fully capable of doing something like this.
But there was so much—too much for her to have spread on her own. Who had helped her? Who could she use without question?
There was only one answer: the mercenary band.
As soon as I realized this, I doubled back to HQ. I was going to question Linia and Pursena.
“The first rule of Ruquag’s Mercenary Band!”
“Always greet the bosses! Make sure you bend your waist and bow your head!”
“The second rule of Ruquag’s Mercenary Band!”
“Straighten your back and speak clearly!”
“The third rule of Ruquag’s Mercenary Band!”
“Always show respect to your client!”
By the time I got back, Linia and Pursena had the members of the mercenary band lined up in the open square and were acting like big shots.
“You better nyat forget any of that!”
“Burn it into your muscle memory!”
Or rather, they were making the members recite the band’s precepts. It was a lot like what you saw at exploitative companies in my old world.
Aisha probably made them recite these. Actually, she’d never make them do something so pointless! I bet these two were doing it on their own.
“Linia, Pursena, can I talk to you for a sec?” I asked.
“Meow? You’re back, Boss? Like I told you earlier, the advisor hasn’t come in yet,” Linia said.
“I was hoping to hear about that in more detail.”
“All right. Everyone, we’re done here. Make sure you work hard today!”
I watched the members of the mercenary band leave out of the corner of my eye, then accompanied the pair to the executive office. The room was fitted with an expensive-looking table and chairs, and there were a number of feel-good, cutesy animal decorations scattered around. There was also a trophy of a buff monster and a giant fish model, as well as a magic fridge I’d given them that was good for storing meat. The room had a mix of things Linia, Pursena, and Aisha liked.
Indeed, despite how restrained she was, Aisha loved cute things. She didn’t have the sense to make her own works of art, but she was good at picking them out.
I sat Linia and Pursena down and questioned them. “Arus and Aisha have eloped. Have they told you anything?”
“W-we don’t know anything,” Linia said, and then she started whistling.
“Yeah. We weren’t told a thing! I didn’t get any meat or nothing.” Pursena dropped a chunk of meat she’d been holding as her eyes darted all over the place.
They definitely knew something.
“You know where they went, don’t you? Tell me. Right now,” I demanded, with the scariest look I could manage.
They clung to each other in fear, shaking their heads at me.
“We don’t knyow where they went!” Linia cried.
“We really don’t!” Pursena insisted.
“They just came to the office early this morning and told us to spread some info around, mreow!”
“Please believe us! We don’t have any proof we’re not lying, but…”
They gave up the goods right away.
No proof, huh?
In other words, they didn’t know what info they’d been given was true and what was false. Aisha would never have made herself easily trackable in such a boneheaded way.
For now, what I had was Linia’s and Pursena’s word. Aisha had come here. She could use the mercenary band as she wished, so she’d come here in the early hours of the day, had them spread false info around town, then picked a route and left. Or she didn’t pick any of those and left in a completely different direction. That was the sort of trick someone as smart as Aisha would pull.
That probably wasn’t the extent of her plan. If I followed any of these leads, she’d almost certainly have second and third traps set for me.
Did she really think it was pointless talking to me now? Was the family meeting enough for her to think that, or had she felt like I was a lost cause before that happened?
The strength drained from my body.
“Okay, I believe you two. In return, I want you to help me look for Aisha.”
Was asking the mercenary band for help the right move? Wasn’t it possible they’d say they were looking but only pretend? What if there were Aisha sympathizers in the band? That was definitely possible. It wasn’t uncommon to think that the request you made would help, only for it to end up being a net negative, but I was grasping at straws.
Linia and Pursena looked reluctant.
“Um, we’d really appreciate it if you didn’t nyask that, Boss,” Linia said. “The advisor made sure to really hammer home who we should side with if something like this ever happened.”
“If word got out about that one thing, I’d lose all my authority. I’d end up homeless and become a stray dog,” Pursena added.
Apparently, Aisha had dirt on both of them.
“There are a bunch of people in the mercenary band who wouldn’t be happy making an enemy of the advisor.”
“She’s got dirt on everyone.”
It wasn’t just them, huh? Most of the people here at HQ were essentially at Aisha’s mercy, which meant these two were leaders in name only.
“I’m not going to do anything bad to Aisha. I just want to talk to her,” I assured them.
“But, mreow…” Linia murmured.
“I don’t know what I’m going to say, but…” I paused. “Wouldn’t it be way too sad if I never saw her again?”
It was weird for me to say, but just thinking about potentially never seeing Aisha or Arus again made my heart feel like it was about to be torn apart.
I just wanted to talk to them—to say what was in my heart. Even if, at this point, things would probably go down like they had yesterday.
Maybe that’s why Aisha doesn’t want to talk to me.
“Please,” I said, prompting Linia to give Pursena a look.
Pursena still looked reluctant, but her ears drooped down, and she nodded slightly. Linia cleared her throat once.
“All right, mreow. If the advisor is really trying to get away, I doubt we’re gonna be of much help, but we’ll do what we can.”
“Are you sure?”
“When we were enslaved, we really thought we’d never see our families again, so I get where you’re coming from, Boss.”
Right. Had they already paid back all their debt from back then? I’d left that for Aisha to deal with, so I didn’t actually know. If there was still some left, I was going to wipe their slates clean.
“I really appreciate this,” I said before I left.