Prologue

Prologue

It seems I had spent more time than I thought on the creation of my report. I looked out the window to find I could already see the crimson of twilight. Soon it would be full dark. It was the new moon today—a portable lamp would be necessary to get around outside. Although I enjoyed a modicum of night vision, absolute darkness would still make it all too easy to trip and fall, especially on a cloudy, starless night like this.

“About time to go, I’d say.”

We had agreed to leave after the sun had completely set—but going at twilight would be better. Walking around at night inherently made you conspicuous. When we got back, it would be the middle of the night: fewer people awake, less chance that we would be spotted and questioned.

I slipped out of my military uniform and into civilian clothes, then grabbed a jacket hanging on the wall. This region was given to large swings in temperature, nights often turning cold without warning. What was more, the jacket would help hide me. It was long enough to keep my tail out of view, and if I pulled up the hood, it would cover my ears as well, to say nothing of my face. Nobody would know who or what I was.

“All right.” I tapped the lamp gently to wake up the sprites inside. They began to produce a soft, white glow, when suddenly—

“Hm?”

I turned at the sound of knocking on the door. It wasn’t loud, but it was rapid, no pause between one knock and the next. The note of panic was obvious; it was the sound of someone desperate to avoid being seen.

“Who’s there?” I growled, moving toward the door. I kept my voice low, as if I were shoving the question at the person on the other side.

“It’s Clara. Big sister...!”

“Clara?”

I narrowed my eyes. Not because I didn’t remember her, of course. Clara was my military subordinate. Practically my right hand. She had such respect for me that we often shared meals and spent time talking together even when we weren’t on duty.

And today, tonight, we planned to go to our meeting together.

The plan, though, had been for us to rendezvous only outside of town. So why had she come to my house? Clara was young, but she was an excellent soldier. She wouldn’t have gone against our agreement without good reason. Which meant...

“What’s going on?” Something must have happened. Something so significant it had driven Clara to come here instead of waiting for me outside the city.

The moment I cracked the door, Clara all but spilled through the gap, as though she couldn’t even wait for me to open it all the way.

“The military police are on their way here!”

“The MPs?”

“Yes.”

Clara rarely betrayed much emotion in her face or voice, but paying close attention to her ears and tail often gave away how she was feeling. The fur on the thin, graceful tail characteristic of weretigers was standing straight up, and her ears were twitching restlessly.

Urgency, fear. That’s what it looked like to me.

“I don’t know much about it. All I know is that when I was at the guardhouse to return my equipment, I heard one of the MPs talking about how they were going to arrest you...”

Clara glanced back through the still half-open door, back the way she must have come. The road was nearly empty; all I could see was quiet, Bahairamanian-style residential houses. At least for the moment, there was no sign of any oncoming officers.

But Clara wasn’t the type to make such things up.

“No... Have we been discovered?”

I knew in my bones that I had done nothing in my duties to warrant arrest by the military police. Something outside of my duties, then?

It was true that at that moment, I was about to engage in something that could very well be taken as treason, depending on how you looked at it. I didn’t feel as if I was betraying the Kingdom of Bahairam—in fact, I felt I was acting with its future in mind—but routinely sending and receiving letters and goods to someone in another country without telling my superiors could understandably invite suspicion.

Suspicion that Amatena Harneiman was a tool of cultural invasion.

“Big sister—we have to run.” Clara took my arm. She must have imagined there was no way we could defend ourselves against such a charge, and I agreed. If the military police were going to all the effort of coming here, then they had no doubt already searched my house from top to bottom. And if so, then they would have found the letters from that man—the strange outworlder who seemed to have the royal love of the Eldant Empress—along with the “samples” he had sent me.

More than proof enough of my traitorous intentions toward this nation. I doubted there was time to dispose of everything.

“We have to go, quickly.” Clara kept glancing back toward the street. She seemed to feel the MPs might come bursting onto the scene at any moment. If we saw them, it would be too late. Escape would be impossible. If they had determined to capture a beast person, they would compensate for the target’s superb physical abilities by including beast people among the officers, along with magic users.

“I understand. Let’s go.” I left the house with Clara, then we set off running for the edge of town. “But...” As strange as it sounds under the circumstances, a wry smile crossed my face. “How convenient that the police should come today, at this very moment.”

“Big sister—!” Clara blinked at me. How could I say such a thing at a moment of crisis like this?

“To have a guide who knows the geography so well, just when I’m trying to flee—how reassuring,” I said.

“Ah...” She finally seemed to understand what I was implying.

Yes. Very convenient.

To escape the military police, our only choice would be to go where they had no authority.

To the Eldant Empire, for example.

We had been into their territory on several small expeditions in the past, but when one was planning to go to ground for a long time, it would be invaluable to have someone who knew the lay of the land. And today just happened to be the day when the “delivery person” from Eldant would be here.

I had my doubts about this delivery person as a co-conspirator—I questioned their personality and their physical abilities. But I was a beggar now, and couldn’t be choosy.

“I say we make a push to get out of the city, then hide in the usual place until the sun goes down.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Clara nodded. Then she and I ran full tilt through the twilit town, toward our meeting with the delivery person.