Pursuit (2)

Every kind of human being ends up in the imperial capital’s black market. Thieves, swindlers, fences, thugs… the discarded and the forgotten, and the misfits who walked out of society of their own free will.

Ask which of its pits is the darkest and the worst of all, and ‘the Nest’ is on everyone’s list without question. Together with ‘the Valley’, the foulest drug den there is, and ‘the Furnace’, where the arms dealers gather, it’s counted as one of the three great dens.

It’s a labor office, and only those who’ve already got blood on their hands may walk in. Serial killers, contract killers, illegal mercenaries, assassins: everyone who makes ‘killing’ their trade comes together there, under dim lights, in a thick haze of drugs and cigarette smoke and the stink of stale liquor. In every season the place reeks of blood off rusted weapons that nobody bothers to clean.

…In short.

From any angle you cared to look, this was no crowd for a well-turned-out ‘young lady’ to be joining. So it was hardly surprising that every eye in the place turned the moment the door banged open.

The young lady in the doorway wore vestments that announced her breeding at a glance, and she had no place in this scene at all. Yet in she came, trotting along with a brisk, cheerful bounce, and looked around with a grin. To anyone watching, she had the air of a child out on a picnic…

“Who here’s done the most bad things? Hands up if you’re sure it’s you.”

…She’d already stolen every eye in the room just by walking in, and now she’d thrown out a question that was anything but ordinary.

“…”

“…”

Every soul in the Nest sat blinking at a sight no common sense could explain. The young lady who’d asked frowned faintly and looked around once more.

“No one?”

“…”

“Is this the best this place has got? You’ve got weaker nerve than the two places before.”

…Nobody had the faintest idea what ‘the two places before’ was supposed to mean. Even so, a remark like that was bound to scratch at least one man’s pride, and at the bang of a weapon slammed down hard, every eye swung toward the sound.

“If you’re that eager to die, I won’t stop you.”

The moment they saw who’d said it, every man there shrank back as one.

He was a giant, stripped to the waist, and his upper body was covered in scars that had plainly been cut there with a knife. He was a contract killer well known in these parts, and better known still as the madman who carved one scar into himself for every man he’d killed.

“Go poking around like that and they won’t find enough of your corpse to bury, little lady. Hm?”

He flicked his tongue out and sneered, his eyes unfocused, and everyone around him shrank back further. Even by the standards of the monsters in this room, get tangled up with him the wrong way and he’d twist your life out of shape. Nobody even wanted to meet his eyes…

All but one.

The woman who’d asked the question tilted her head and trotted right up in front of him.

“You. Are you the worst guy here?”
“…I don’t think I’ll be getting a model-citizen award, no.”
“Yeah?”
“Hey, if you want, I could prove it on your body myself.”

The woman nodded.

“Yep, the way you talk, you definitely are.”

Then she laid her small hand lightly over his.

“What’s this? Don’t tell me you’re offering it up volun—”

A knife came driving down onto it without a flicker of mercy. It punched through the back of the woman’s hand, through the man’s hand beneath it in the same stroke, and buried itself in the wooden table with a crunch.

“—!!”

Blood sprayed in every direction. As the man let out an ear-splitting scream, the people nearby shot to their feet and pulled their weapons.

“…You, fucking—!”
“I’ve got a few things to ask. I’d like honest answers. A friend asked me to look into it for him.”

The woman who’d actually done it was still smiling, her chin propped on the table. You could almost have called it taking her ease.

“The hell are you talking about, you bi—”
“Doing a lot of bad things means you got a lot of work here. Which means you know a lot, too. Right?”

Yet not one person in the Nest could so much as think of rushing her. As she spoke, a flame of ultra-high temperature had risen around her body and heated the room to the middle of hell in an instant, and they all knew what it was.

“…Divinity?”

Anyone who wielded a supernatural power like that was a Paladin at the very least, and royalty of the Holy Kingdom at the most. That was more than enough to make a man think twice about taking her on.

Meanwhile the one who’d created that atmosphere went on talking without a shred of hesitation.

“Lately there’ve been people poking around the black market for this and that. I’d like to know where they are.”
“Hhk, haaagh—”
“Hellfire bombs, Suppression Pillars, and roots for formulas. There’ll be people who’ve had their hands on all of them. They aren’t ordinary goods, so word’s bound to have spread. Know anything about any of that? Tell me everything and I’ll pull the knife out and let you go.”
“Don’t talk shit…! I’ll kill you, you goddamn…!”
“Mm, sure, sure. They said that at the two places before this, too.”
“…What?”
“You know… the Valley? The Furnace? Some cute name like that.”

“…”

“The guys there reacted the exact same way when I did this.”

She’d let the names of the most notorious organizations in the capital’s black market, the Nest aside, come spilling out just like that, and everyone else went blank. Just from the way she talked, it was plain she’d already gone barreling into the other places in exactly this way.

“…”

“…”

The men who’d drawn their weapons stole awkward glances at one another.

Honestly, the sensible call was to write it off as a bluff. Gangs of criminals that they were, the three great dens were hardly on friendly terms, but word that one of them had been hit would normally reach the others at once. Give it half a day at most and the rumor would be everywhere.

Which is to say. Put another way.

This woman had burned all three of the black market’s great dens to the ground in under half a day.

…Does that even make sense?

Every one of them was probably thinking the same thing.

But.

The trouble was the air about the woman as she said it.

“It’s fine. They all talked in the end.”

“…”

She said it as though it were nothing at all. There was no swagger in it and no threat, only the tone of someone stating a plain fact. Still smiling, still cheerful, she went on.

“Usually I start with the hand, and by the time I’ve burned up to the arm, they all start talking.”

At once she set the flames around her moving. The man whose hand had become a knife block went blue-white in the face, while her own face, shadowed by a colorless flame that seemed to drink the light around it, was still beaming. Of course, by now that expression was starting to look like something else entirely. Call it a demon, plainly put, and nobody could have argued.

“—Y-You fuc—!”

But everyone in that room killed for a living, so cornered this far, they’d at least fight back. The man drew a curved blade with his free hand and swung it through a half-circle, and in the blink of an eye the neck of the woman sitting there was cut clean through.

And then.

…The woman gave a quiet snort.

There was no scream, no spray of blood, nothing you could call a reaction at all. It was as though he’d cut through empty air.

“—Mm.”

They watched the severed surfaces slide smoothly back together, and every one of them recoiled in horror. The cut sealed itself in an instant, the way the two halves of a clay doll press back into one, and to anyone’s eyes it was grotesque beyond words.

Still.

She was smiling.

“If you were going to cut something, you should’ve cut off your own wrist, not me.”

Then.

With her other hand she tapped the back of the hand the knife was driven through, and let the words drop.

“I’m not pulling this out until I’ve heard what I came for, you know.”

“…”

“Not talking?”

“…”

“Then I’ll start burning now, okay? Tell me when you can’t take it.”

And at that sight.

Everyone there must have realized the same thing all at once.

This woman.

Her talk of tearing through all three great dens was no bluff, nothing of the kind. She was a monster with every bit of the power to do exactly that…!

“—I-I’ll talk! I said I’ll talk!”

As the flames came creeping slowly toward him, the man broke out in a cold sweat all over and cried out in terror. The moment she heard it, a look of disappointment came over the woman’s face.

“…You really do have the weakest nerve of the lot.”

…The words implied that she really had just come from burning people. The man went paler still, and soon he was meekly answering her questions.

She nodded along as the murderous question-and-answer went on, and then the door at the entrance banged open once more. The men, too overwhelmed by the woman to move from where they stood, all turned to look at once. Could it be the monster’s associate? And if it was a worse monster still, what on earth were they supposed to do…!

“Are you done?”

…Happily, and contrary to their fears, the one who came in was a man of the most ordinary sort imaginable.

The trouble was.

“Ah, just now!”

the way that monster behaved the moment she saw him. A breath earlier she’d been overpowering the room like something possessed, yet that ghastly air fell away from her the instant he showed his face.

The man frowned and gave the room a quick look over.

“You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Ah, all I did was stick a knife through my own hand!”
“…And why exactly do you have to go hurting yourself.”
“They get more scared that way!”

The two of them traded it back and forth as though it were nothing, as though they were close, as though a monster of that caliber were someone he could put on the ‘same level’ as himself.

“Well, if you’re done, let’s go. This was the last one.”
“What, there’s no more…?”
“…Sadly, there are only three places this sleazy.”

The woman smacked her lips, apparently in genuine regret. Having answered her, the man gave the room a slight bow of the head.

“Ah, have a good day.”

With that parting greeting, he tucked the woman clinging fast to his arm under one side and trudged out of the building.

“…The hell were those two?”

Probably everyone there had much the same impression. That crazy woman was crazy enough, but a man who could keep company with a woman like that, ‘like friends’ at that, was absolutely not normal either.

Aiden sighed and struck out the last name in his notebook.

…And that’s the last of the dens done.

If you want to find a needle on a beach, you bring in heavy equipment and clear out the whole spot where the most ‘sand’ has gathered. As if to prove how efficient that was, sweeping out the places called the most dangerous and filthiest in the Empire in under half a day had paid off tremendously. By rights he’d have had to sit around for weeks or months gathering information delicately, but by collecting it this violently, hadn’t he brought the outline of the ‘lackeys’ almost entirely into focus?

He could never have managed it without Katya, who loved doing things violently. He’d already lost count of how many people she’d put in the hospital in that short span. …And that was exactly why he couldn’t bring Noelle along.

As he was thinking it, he noticed Katya beside him, staring.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Nothing, just thinking that when you cause trouble, you don’t hold back either.”

“…”

“Normally you just look like some guy with no nerve, but when you go for it, you really go for it, huh?”

…Hearing that from her of all people stirred up all sorts of complicated feelings. Sadly, he couldn’t argue.

“When you have to, you have to. Catching guys like that is all about speed.”

The whole reason he was going around stirring things up this violently was that if word spread and the other side went to ground, he’d be in trouble.

“…Though honestly, that’s not quite the right way to put it.”
“Hm?”
“They’ll already be getting ready to disappear. Guys who take orders straight from the higher-ups can’t be bad at gathering information.”

However fast he’d moved, three organizations had been smashed. Word would be spreading about now, so the other side would have started responding. He hadn’t built his criminal career for nothing, and he had a decent grasp of how this kind of organization worked: destroy the evidence, scatter every which way, pull out, get ready to vanish.

“So in that sense, the job isn’t over yet. Are you all right with that?”
“Of course I’m all right. It’s the best.”

“…”

“Nobody complains when you torment bad guys. I get my hobby in and I help a friend.”

She said it with a grin all over her face, and while he sat there lost for words, a window floated up before his eyes.

…Well.

It did seem true that people don’t change easily. However docile a pet she turned into around him, a temperament that treated beating, breaking and grinding people down that violently as nothing more than stress relief still looked a long way from corrected.

Still, he thought it lucky this had come up at such a timely moment, because what he was about to say had a very good chance of rubbing her the wrong way. In a good mood, she’d at least hear him out.

“So, Katya.”

Aiden scratched his head.

“From here on I’m going to need a bit of help from Dame Noelle.”

“…”

Sure enough, the grin Katya had been wearing died in one stroke. The change of mood was abrupt enough to call it being thrown from heaven straight down into hell.

“…Why that woman.”
“Now, now.”

“…”

“I told you to get along with Dame Noelle, didn’t I?”

“…”

“Katya. You need to answer.”
“…Fine.”

She said it with her lips pushed out, and before he knew it he was laughing inwardly. It was something like being a father talking round his teenage daughter.

“Anyway, you owe me an explanation. Why are you really calling that woman in?”
“Ah, that?”

In truth, now that he knew where they were, what came next mattered more. Catching the lackeys was ultimately a way to screw over the Prince and the Administrative Minister, and for that he had to get hold of ‘evidence’ tying them to that side. That meant coming face to face with those people directly, and that was a necessity, not a choice.

And the method he’d chosen for it was…

“…First, Dame Noelle has to get seriously angry.”

“…”

He could not say for certain, but.

Just hearing that Noelle would be angry had plainly put Katya in a good mood.