"Aren't we going to deal with that man?"
Magic Miss remarked casually, not even glancing at the innkeeper as she followed Jenkins up the stairs.
"No need. We'll be gone once our business is finished. He'll never cross paths with us again in his life."
With that, they reached the third floor. The stairwell was narrow, and the hallways on each level were cramd with piles of assorted junk, perfectly fitting the image of a shabby, back-alley hotel.
Confirming their target wasn't an Enchanter, Jenkins motioned for Magic Miss to step back. He used the blood-veined tulip in his hand to reconfirm that this was the correct, unremarkable door. Then, placing his hand over the doorfra, he effortlessly burned through the bronze bolt latched from the inside.
The mont he pushed the door open, a muffled thud echoed from within. He saw a wide-open window, its curtains billowing in the wind that gusted into the room. Loose pages of notes scattered across the floor swirled up and flew toward the entrance.
Snatching the fluttering pages out of the air, Magic Miss hurried to the window and peered down into the alley. A few seconds later, she turned back and shrugged in disappointnt.
"No one."
"He can't have gotten far, then."
Reaching that conclusion, Jenkins turned and walked to the wardrobe. He eyed a greasy stain on the handle with disdain, then pulled the doors open, exposing the man hiding inside to the warm sumr air, which carried a faint, acrid sll.
"The 'Chemist,' I presu?"
Jenkins asked, sizing up the tall, thin, middle-aged man huddled awkwardly in the wardrobe. The man wore thick glasses, and despite his ssy hair, he had a scholarly air about him. If Jenkins had to give a first impression, it would be that of a dejected guidance counselor from a technical college.
"I was expecting you to be waiting in there with a gun."
"I was asleep. I didn't notice in ti that soone was here. I do have a gun; it's tucked under the blue-covered notebook on the desk..."
The man said with a tone of resignation. He climbed out of the wardrobe under the strangers' watchful eyes, nearly tripping over his own plaid shirt.
"Alright, who do you work for? Why are you here? Or are you hoping to buy sothing... interesting?"
He sat on the edge of his bed and lowered his head, his words tumbling out in a low, flustered rush. He was clearly nervous.
"We're not here to buy anything. We ca to ask if you know about the recent murders of the royal heirs."
Silence descended upon the room. It was broken only when Magic Miss, annoyed by the curtains flapping in the breeze, shut the window. Only then did the "Chemist" speak, his head still lowered.
"I knew it. I never should have taken that job."
His voice was laced with regret.
"What job?"
"Promise one thing. When I've told you everything, kill . But leave my family alone. They've already taken the money and left Nolan."
"You're that eager to die?"
"I'm a dead man either way. If you don't kill , my employer certainly won't let his secrets be compromised. It would be a relief if you were the ones to do it."
"Very well. Tell us what you know. For instance... how did it all begin?"
"About two weeks ago, an acquaintance told about a big business opportunity. I t with a man who had the air of a soldier. He asked if I could separate blood serum."
"Separate serum? You have a centrifuge?"
Jenkins asked, surprised. But the "Chemist" looked even more astonished than he was.
"You know about that? Yes, I have one. It's my own design, a hybrid of manual and chanical power. A friend from the Church of Creation and Machinery helped get the key parts, and I paid a small fortune to have a miniaturized Mark VI steam engine shipped from Cheslan. I usually use it to separate so... synthetic compounds. In any case, I'm likely the only person in this entire city who can do this."
From this, Jenkins inferred that the man who hired him wasn't connected to any Benefactor organizations. An Enchanter would have far easier ways to separate blood serum.
"And you accepted the job?"
"Yes. The pay was high... very high. But for serum, it's best to draw the blood from a living subject and then imdiately preserve and separate it. So, the man took to the targets..."
He finally lifted his head, revealing deeply sunken eyes under his disheveled hair.
"It's not that I haven't killed before, but I know who the recent victims were, so I know how this ends for . I'm just an ordinary man. I never wanted to get involved in the kingdom's power struggles, and I'm not equipped for it. That's why I ran at the first opportunity. Clearly, I didn't run far enough."
This only confird Jenkins's suspicion that the employers weren't Benefactors. If they were, they could have easily found the man in Nolan with a simple divination spell; they wouldn't have let Jenkins and Magic Miss get to him first.
"But what about the anti-divination and anti-spirit-channeling asures?"
Jenkins wondered silently, then asked aloud:
"What else do you know?"
"That's all I know. They didn't tell anything else, and I didn't know anything else. They hired to draw blood from the victims and separate the serum. You probably heard about all the needle marks on the bodies—that was all to conceal the real one, the one used for drawing blood."
The chemist concluded, his voice full of despair.
Magic Miss stepped up to Jenkins's side and posed her own question.
"Do you have anything they gave you? Not banknotes—sothing too many people have handled. I need an object that only your employers have touched."
"Yes. It's in that notebook."
Jenkins walked to the desk and found a piece of paper tucked inside the notebook, folded into quarters. It was covered in handwritten pencil notes—data and rough sketches detailing the requirents for the serum separation.
Magic Miss took the paper, glanced at it, and nodded at Jenkins.
"This will work."
"Good."
Jenkins reached out and touched the bewildered man's forehead. As he activated [Blasphemous Creation], the man's body slumped backward onto the bed. He was still breathing, but he would never wake again. Because he had died by this specific ability, no one would be able to perform divination or spirit-channeling on his "body." His wife and children, so long as they moved to so remote corner of the countryside, would be incredibly difficult to find.
The pair swiftly departed from the hotel. In a secluded alley nearby, Magic Miss used the pencil-marked paper to perform a tracking ritual. Jenkins had been concerned it might fail, but to his surprise, the manuscript's owner had made no effort to counter such tracking. It was easy for Magic Miss's ritual to forge a link between the paper and its author.
Reviews
All reviews (0)