CHAPTER THREE

Huskins, of course, realized right away that this was not a normal eagle, and he seemed to understand from Col’s reaction that it was someone he knew.

That said, they couldn’t simply strike up a conversation where people could be watching. With an air of perfect nonchalance, Huskins whistled, then extended his arm toward Sharon, and though Sharon seemed somewhat bothered by the effort, she flew down to land on his arm.

“It must have escaped from a noble’s house.” Huskins pointedly spoke loud enough for any bystanders to hear, then asked Col to assist him.

Col cleared out a large, vine-woven basket, and carefully covered Sharon with it. He wanted to believe that she was deliberately staring at him right up until she was put in the basket.

When the three of them left the barn, Huskins asked, “So you are the tax collector that caused a ruckus in Rausbourne.”

Her shrill cry was less a reply and more an expression of discontent. Huskins sighed slightly and removed the lid from the basket. He then opened the door to a nearby building that looked like a large shed and led them inside.

It was a storage place for spun thread, and it smelled aggressively of wool.

“I didn’t think the golden sheep I heard of in rumors would be exactly where the legend said.”

Huskins only replied with another slight sigh at Sharon’s remark.

“I don’t suppose you’ve come bearing delightful news, have you?” Col asked.

Sharon should have been out to examine the building for the construction of the monastery about now.

“Unfortunately not. The monastery plot was in a worse state of neglect than we’d imagined, and since we couldn’t stay long, we quickly returned to Rausbourne. The second we arrived, we came face-to-face with trouble. Then it turns out you’re off on a little jaunt. Hyland’s sent a fast horse this way, but just waiting for that would waste two or three days. Get packed and be ready to head back. You’ll meet the horse along the way.”

Sharon’s true identity was kept secret from Hyland, so she must have flown here on her own accord.

“I don’t want Clark finding out I’m gone, so I want to get back as fast as possible. Keep your questions quick.”

Sharon’s true form was also kept secret from Clark. It was not that she did not trust him, but she felt that telling him of her truth would only burden him due to his kindness.

“What do you mean by trouble?”

“The Knights of Saint Kruza are in Rausbourne.”

Col’s eyes widened for a brief moment in shock, but it immediately made sense to him.

“…The cathedral doors are open now, so they likely chose it as a temporary source of support.”

“Events are like a herd of sheep. Once one appears, more are sure to follow.”

Though Sharon was rather birdlike in her expressionlessness, she still seemed puzzled by Col and Huskins’s exchange.

“We encountered a young knight-in-training affiliated with the Knights of the Saint Kruza along the way here. We found him collapsed on the side of the road, ill-equipped, and with a letter requesting aid in his pocket.”

Sharon was the vice president of the tax collection association, whom the merchants in the harbor town feared. It was likely that she had heard news of the Knights of Saint Kruza’s financial struggles, and must have guessed as much from what they told her about Rhodes.

She spread her wings and shivered in exasperation.

“So they’re not for war, then?”

“I think there is a very low chance of such, but…of course, I doubt it is simply a courtesy call.”

“Hmph. We’re connected to the Twilight Cardinal. If there was a roster of wanted heretics, your name’d be right at the top of the list. Could it be that?”

That seemed to be the reason why Sharon flew out here herself. Though she was the embodiment of an eagle, her partner Clark was a regular human, so she felt a personal responsibility to protect him.

“I cannot say that will not happen for certain, but…”

Col glanced to Huskins, and the golden sheep said, “That is hard to imagine so. If they have the resources to be hunting heretics, then they would not send a lone boy trudging through the mud with a letter seeking assistance.”

It was hard to tell if Sharon found that answer persuasive, but she no longer asked any questions.

“Doesn’t seem peaceful, either way. I’m going back first.”

“O-oh, all right. Thank you.”

The flapping of her wings disturbed the dust on the wool in the shed.

As Col coughed and tried to clear the air around his face, Sharon flew out one of the windows, left open for fresh air.

“Are you leaving?” Huskins asked briefly.

“We must. Heir Hyland will be compelled to deal with the situation, I believe.”

The corners of Huskins’s eyes wrinkled at his response, and he said, “You may be negligent of your footing, but you are heading in the right direction.”

“I…”

“Those with you are watching your footing. Be confident and step boldly with every stride. At least in my story, it always served me well.”

His tale was that of a young noble with boundless optimism and an ancient sheep who has continued to speak of ages of yore, even today, by willingly putting himself through hardship. And the two of them flew like a spark through an era long past.

Col almost said, We are not nearly as awesome, but he managed to keep it in.

Myuri wanted to incorporate precisely that type of awe into their crest.

He could not reject what Huskins said.

“I will keep that in mind.”

Huskins, who had his shoulders drawn up, patted Col on the back, then left the shed.

“Um, I suppose I must inform the escort that we will be leaving first…”

Though the escort may not outright say no if Col told him they would be returning to the city right away, he would certainly be suspicious.

“If you want to keep the eagle a secret, then tell him you feel uneasy because the statue of the Holy Mother shed tears.”

This was the Brondel Abbey—miracles that announced approaching danger were a possibility here.

“Then I shall go fetch Myuri.”

As Col was about to run off, Huskins spoke again.

“No, I will go to the library.”

“What? It’s all right. Even though I only came here once ten years ago, I still remember where the library is.”

There had been many merchants around back then, and he clearly remembered being shown a catalog of holy relics.

He had been so enthusiastic, feeling as though it was the first time he had been of genuine use to Lawrence and Holo. There was no way he would forget something like that.

Huskins still seemed as though he would say something, but he remained silent in the end.

Col rushed forth, following his memory and eventually passed under the statue of a demon, placed to threaten anyone who might steal a book, and searched for the library manager.

The manager was a thin man with a long nose who tediously pointed at the users’ log.

When Col told him that he had urgent business with his companion, the manager simply shrugged.

“Then leave the books as they are, and simply bring the book key to me. You may damage the books if you try to rush when putting them away.”

Keys for books—though the practice had become less common in recent years, old libraries sometimes still kept their books locked and chained to desks or lecterns.

“I am aware, thank you,” Col responded, and the manager seemed to understand that he was someone already familiar with books, so he nodded in an exaggerated manner and opened the door.

The sudden scent of dust, leather, and ink that wafted his way filled him with a sense of nostalgia, and he pressed deeper into the thick forest of the library.

There he spotted Myuri, clinging to a lectern with a large book open in front of her.

“Myuri?”

Though there was no one else around, he called to her in a hushed voice out of habit.

She practically leaped up in shock, more concentrated than he thought she would be.

“Wh—? Ah, oh, Brother?”

“Myuri, Miss Sharon arrived not long ago. We must—”

“What? That chicken?”

Her mood had soured, but that was quickly replaced by panic when she noticed what Col was looking at.

“Oh, that’s—I—”

Even when she shut the large book, Col was already reaching out to the stack of books that sat next to her. He flipped one open, and he knew right away what kind they were.

“…These books, they’re…”

Myuri bit her lower lip and looked away, refusing to answer with her whole being.

But there was no room for her to make excuses. When he opened the third, then fourth book, he saw they were all essentially the same.

They all had illustrations of bears, and one of them clearly showed a giant bear reaching for the moon.

“…”

Myuri stubbornly remained silent. She was always tough to deal with when she acted like this, even back in Nyohhira.

She usually did this either when she was ready to resist to the very end because she was convinced she had done nothing wrong and no one would convince her otherwise, or she understood that she had done something wrong but steeled herself because she refused to apologize at all.

And her coming to secretly read stories of the Moon-Hunting Bear fell under both.

“…We need to leave anyway. Miss Sharon came to inform us about the state of Rausbourne.”

He took Myuri’s hand, and though she showed no response, she did not try to shake him away, either.

The topic of the bear was a complicated one for the both of them. Neither of them knew how to act when the subject came up.

Col believed that Myuri would follow if he tugged on her, so he began to collect the keys on the table with his free hand.

“How many did you have in total?”

“…Five.”

The number matched. He nodded and they left the library, handing the keys to the manager on the way out.

“Oh, I see.” Col realized something as they descended the stone steps outside of the library. “The reason a sleepyhead like you woke up in the middle of the night to take the sheep out was to talk with Mister Huskins, correct?”

Huskins, after all, had allowed the escort to tag along, but stopped Col. Later on, he knew that Myuri was reading books about the bear in the library, and was aware that Col would not be happy to talk about the bear at all, so he tried to stop Col from going.

And that led him to one thing.

“So the reason we came here in the first place is—”

“No, that’s not why,” Myuri said and stopped in her tracks. “…I really did want to ask about the crests.”

Col knew she would not go out of her way to lie now, and he had another reason why he did not want to believe she was lying.

Myuri had been so looking forward to receiving her own crest, and they came here to listen to stories about coats of arms because she wanted to pour everything she held dear into the design.

It would be much too sad for him if she told him they were all simply excuses.

“Myuri.” He said her name and lightly shook her hand, which weakly held onto his. “Once we leave and head for the city, the escort will be with us the whole time. And when we arrive in city, we may be caught up in another upheaval. Let us talk now.”

Myuri listlessly stood in the middle of the path, like a lost little girl, but she finally, slowly looked up at him.

“What did the chicken say?”

“The Knights of Saint Kruza have arrived in Rausbourne.”

Myuri’s eyes widened.

“But it did not sound as though they suddenly attacked the city or anything. We should have some time to talk for a bit before we start packing.”

Myuri looked away, not because she did not want to meet Col’s gaze, but perhaps because she was searching for Rhodes, who must be on the grounds somewhere.

She turned back toward him.

“You’re not gonna be mad, Brother?”

Col instead found himself relieved at her question, which was not asked in a way that said she did not want to anger him, but rather in a way that suggested she found it too tedious to deal with him if he did get angry, which was how she usually acted.

“It depends.”

Myuri frowned and sighed.

Silence was the rule in the abbey, which meant it was exceptionally quiet; the only sounds were those of the bleating sheep and the footsteps of the neophytes who worked in the fields coming and going.

Myuri sat with the crates that rested just outside the shed from where Sharon left and said, “I meant it when I said I wanted to hear stories of the kingdom and the knights from Old Man Huskins.”

Her choice of words sounded cranky, but her tone itself was weak.

She did not want Col to doubt her when it came to that fact.

Col nodded, and after a brief sigh, Myuri continued, “But it’s also true that I wanted to ask about the bear.”

The Moon-Hunting Bear was said to have put an end to the age of spirits.

The legend of the battle between the bear and the other spirits, which apparently took place centuries ago, only remained in the human world now as a fairy tale. There were even stories of valleys carved by the bear’s claws, of lakes made from where mountains were plucked out of the ground, of how the mountain was thrown into the sea to create islands.

Each sounded like fantastical stories, but when one gathered a whole lot of those ancient tales, it started to take on a different form. The bear fought with the kings of the forests and mountains, moving from land to land. In the end, it arrived at the western sea and vanished.

And a great deal of spirits died by the bear’s hand, bringing their era to an end.

Myuri’s parents, Lawrence and Holo, had gathered pieces of the story up to that point on their own journey.

It was likely that the Moon-Hunting Bear did exist, and it was true that it massacred many.

But of all the stories Holo and Lawrence collected, one mystery still remained:

Where did the Moon-Hunting Bear go?

Myuri and Col had heard a bit of what could be related to the answer from Autumn, the embodiment of a whale, with whom they became acquainted in the northern islands. He had told them that there were giant footprints at the bottom of the sea.

And those footprints were consistent with a rumor that spread throughout human society.

Humans used technological power to cut down the forests, sail on boats, and expand the world map. They shone light on mysteries that were once shrouded, and those who survived the age of spirits were rapidly losing places to live. That was the age they lived in now, and new knowledge that brought reason to mystery now illuminated a new facet to an ancient tale.

And that was word of a new continent said to lie at the far edge of the western sea.

In an odd coincidence, the Moon-Hunting Bear also vanished into the western sea.

To Myuri, not only was the Moon-Hunting Bear the object of revenge, the being who killed her mother Holo the Wisewolf’s friends from her hometown, but something that signaled the start of a great adventure.

Had she latched on with only one hand, then Col may have been able to gently pry her away.

But she had grabbed on firmly with both hands, and it would not be easy to make her let go.

“You thought that perhaps Mister Huskins could tell a story of that time, right when the Moon-Hunting Bear had gone on its rampage, did you not?”

It was obvious to Col when he said it out loud, but he had not imagined that possibility at all. He was a fool who had not even thought very deeply about why they were visiting the Brondel Abbey in the first place. When the scale of the topic became so grand, much like this one, then he would lose sight of anything even right next to him.

“’Cause see, Mother said she was leisurely looking after wheat in a faraway place while that was all happening, and the whale said he was just sitting at the bottom of the ocean, and Miss Ilenia said she’s just a little older than me.”

Ilenia certainly looked only a few years older than Myuri, but Col was certain she was older than even himself, but he refrained from saying anything.

“Someone who knows what happened then is more valuable than a lump of gold on the side of the road. And Miss Ilenia said that she doesn’t get along with Old Man Huskins at all.”

Huskins had determined himself to be someone who hid himself beneath the grit in the depths of the flow of time. Ilenia, on the other hand, was a child of the new era, one who set her sights on a land far across the sea as where she would build her country for nonhumans.

Though their goals were similar, their methods and ways of thought were exactly the opposite.

The two were respectively emblematic of the old and the new.

“But if I told you I wanted to ask for stories about the bear, you’d definitely say no.”

“Well…I…”

“But then crests came up, and as I was reading books in the library, I came up with all kinds of other things I wanted to ask, like the sheep crests. That’s when I thought that you might agree with that, too.”

Just as Col had watched Myuri grow from birth, Myuri had been watching Col since the day she was born. And recently, Myuri has had the slight edge on him.

“And I think the story about the bear that I wanted to know about is different from the one you’d think of.”

“Huh?”

Myuri saw the Moon-Hunting Bear as an enemy. Col could not bear the dark eyes she had when they spoke of it and prayed that she did not involve herself with it at all.

But he saw the girl in front of him did not have eyes burning with revenge; instead, she gazed off into the distance, as though steeping herself in memory.

“I was looking at so many crests in those books when something struck me as weird. The more I read about the origins of crest designs, that weird feeling just got even stronger,” Myuri said, looked up, then raised her hand in the direction of the path.

Col turned to see Huskins.

“Crests have stories; they have reasons for the way they are. A knight order that fights at sea will have the design of a turtle with a sail in its mouth and stuff like that.”

That was the Euran Order of Knights, if memory served him well.

But he did not know what sort of relationship this had with the bear.

As he wondered why that was, Huskins approached them.

“Was he angry with you?”

The old man wore a straight face, so it was hard to tell if he was joking.

Myuri sulkily shrugged.

“She told me not to say anything because you would be angry.”

Getting cross with Huskins would accomplish nothing.

But he did have one question.

“What did you talk about with Myuri?”

The Moon-Hunting Bear.

There was something about it that had struck her as strange as she read stories about coats of arms.

“It was shocking to hear. It opened my eyes, too,” Huskins remarked, despite being very much the type that was no longer surprised by anything in this world. “How many hundreds of years ago did that happen…? The tale is like a stone on a dry riverbed—eroded by time, nothing left of it to carve away. Why would one think there was a facet of it that I had never thought of?”

This shepherd was nicknamed the sage of the plains.

The shepherd looked up to the sun as he spoke.

“But there was. Like questions I still had for the sun, which I have been looking at my whole life.”

It did not sound as though Huskins was assisting Myuri simply because he wanted to help a young girl. It was because he had seen value in doing so.

“It’s like the wolf crests, Brother,” Myuri said. “The bear was the strongest creature ever, but there are almost no crests left of them.”

“…”

The keeper at the amulet stall had said that coats of arms trends came and went.

In that regard, wolves once served as insignias in the ancient empire, and they fell out of style because they were seen as too old-fashioned.

But the wolves’ mysterious air and image as a hunter that briskly runs through the woods was still very popular with mercenaries today.

Just as how the deer was chosen as the symbol of the mountains, and the turtle was chosen as the symbol of the seas, it certainly was weird that the bear had not been chosen as a symbol of power.

The king of violence, against whom no ancient spirit could contend.

Col felt as though all the right elements were in place for the world to be overflowing with crests of bears.

“Once I started wondering about that, all the stories of the past that I’d heard just kept getting weirder and weirder.”

“I was at a loss for words myself.” Huskins turned to Col with clear eyes. “When she asked me why the legends of the Moon-Hunting Bear were always at night.”

Col also found himself at a loss. He knew the reason for the question itself, of course. If one mentioned the Moon-Hunting Bear, the image of such was so strongly tied to the night, not least of all because of the “moon” in its name.

But why would she ask such a thing? Was it not simply an easier way of speaking about a being so terrifying?

That did not seem to be the case for Myuri.

“Brother, the Moon-Hunting Bear was big enough to sit on a mountain. Nighttime aside, how is it supposed to hide itself during the daytime?”

“…”

“The thing was supposed to be doing evil deeds left and right, making everyone hate it, but then it would never be able to just take a nap during the daytime, right? If not, then we’d have fairy tales everywhere of a bear bigger than a mountain sleeping on a mountain. The bear’s supposed to be big enough to reach the moon if it stretched out, after all.”

Col had no words, but if he were to say anything, the first thing that came to mind was how it was nonsense to question things like that in a fairy tale.

He himself was so astounded by the reason he said nothing.

That was because right in front of him stood the golden sheep of legend, the one who had lent a hand in establishing the Winfiel Kingdom.

Huskins, the man of legend, said quietly, “Was the moon-hunting name an exaggeration?” He shook his head in response to his own question. “As my companions and I ran from it, this is what we thought: No matter how much we ran, we never felt as though we were distancing ourselves from it. Its black shadow was always there. It stood in the glow of the moon and was much like the moon itself. That is how massive it was.”

It was big enough for him to lose his sense of distance, but again, his story took place at night.

“What the bear did during the day, and where it slept…?” There was a half-smile on Huskins’s face. “I cannot even imagine. We never even considered it as something that sleeps.”

Perhaps there were things one could not see when something was too close.

“But when she brought it up, I knew she was right—others would have seen the thing. People around the world like me, who are still here today, who lived at the time.”

There were apparently still stories of sightings of Myuri’s mother, Holo the Wisewolf, from when she ventured north to south.

Which meant it would be a given if a clearer picture of the Moon-Hunting Bear was still around today. There had to have been kings who marveled at its boldness, who wanted a share of its godlike presence.

“It’s sad that there aren’t a lot of wolf crests, but there are solid records showing that there used to be a lot long ago, and there are people who still use them today. But there are so little of bears. If the story of the Moon-Hunting Bear is true, then that’s even weirder.”

Myuri brought up a valid question. Something was not quite right.

The bear was a synonym for strength, so much so that there were old sayings that went as strong as a bear and whatnot. That was a perfectly good reason for a bear to be used in a design for a coat of arms.

Even now, a regular bear spotted in the forest was much more dangerous than a whole pack of wolves.

“So when I started looking up bear crests, so many of the families that used those crests died out a long, long time ago. It was like they were cursed.”

“What?” Col asked in return, and Huskins replied, a bit of enjoyment in his voice.

“I knew this young child would come up with an unbelievable idea.”

Myuri’s red eyes widened, and she turned to look at Col.

Her young eyes were intelligent and overflowing with imagination.

“What if the Moon-Hunting Bear could turn into a human?”

Even when the answer was right before their eyes, it could not necessarily be put to use.

“That answers what the bear was doing during the day. It was probably just sleeping like a normal person. But then the story about it disappearing into the western sea gets kind of strange.”

Myuri, whose youth knew no fear, did not even hesitate in an imaginary world.

“It might’ve just wanted to lay low.”

After a terrible war that put an end to an era, the victor, for some reason, vanished into the sands of time.

When he asked why, he knew the easiest answer was that it vanished via its own will.

But if that were the case, then it would give an eerie answer to all the strange questions Myuri had just asked.

“Which means…the reason why there are so few houses that use bear crests is…”

“Exactly.” Myuri grinned. “Because the Moon-Hunting Bear went around killing them. To keep itself hidden.”

“Well, that’s…”

Myuri’s take would explain the bear’s perplexing story, but it did feel like a stretch. The biggest reason was the question of why it wanted to do such a thing. It made sure to only ever appear at night, it put an end to an entire era, and it left its literal claw marks on the world only to leave it unconquered and vanish across the sea to the west in order to hide itself. It even went around killing the humans that worshipped it so that the memory would not live on in the human world…

And it seemed that Myuri’s intelligence was not in a place Col could ever reach.

Of course she had thought of that possibility.

Instead, as he looked at her shining face, he understood that was the most crucial part to her spirit.

“Sheep and wolves see different worlds. No, I suppose when it comes to this girl, it is more apt to say that the number of stories we have encountered differ,” Huskins murmured.

In response, Myuri, who loved stories more than anyone else in Nyohhira, said, “Brother, listen. Once the Moon-Hunting Bear put an end to one era, who was it that took over the next?”

It felt like the ground beneath Col’s feet had opened up to the depths of hell.

That could not be.

Myuri asked, “Have you ever met God, Brother?”

He had been dropped into a nightmare with his eyes open.

It was that powerful a shock; Myuri sounded as though she was far away.

There was no proof to say her thoughts were correct, of course. He could ignore it as a child’s fantasy, something not even worth laughing off.

But Huskins then said, “The scripture is a collection of God’s word, penned by several humans. But there are no tales of anyone ever seeing God himself. And there are some odd inconsistencies, as well. I believe you were doing some translating work of the scripture into the vernacular, but has it never struck you, Twilight Cardinal? God is supposed to have created all things, so why does the Church regard nonhumans as enemies?”

There was once a bear who fought against nonhumans. It, for some reason, went around killing the spirits of the forest.

Though their personalities were polar opposites, both Myuri and Huskins stood on the same side.

How was he to withstand this?

“And, Brother, this was a question that I was thinking about, so I asked Old Man Huskins.” Myuri cleared her throat. “I asked, have you ever met a bear avatar?”

Col turned to Huskins, and he saw the answer was clear. The old man looked as though he had found the key to his shed that he had dropped in the field a hundred years prior.

“Never. I have never met a bear avatar.”

Holo was not the only embodiment of a wolf. Huskins was not the only embodiment of a sheep.

The same could certainly be said for deer, for rabbits.

Which meant that bears should be the same.

“Ten-odd years ago, an odd troupe of folk came bearing interesting stories, but I believe you have them beat in that regard.”

Was it an absurd story, or if not, a grand idea? Either way, it was a dimension to the story that no one had ever considered, a way of thought that no one had ever even attempted.

Col felt dizzy, as though heaven and earth spun round and round, but his eye remained fixed on one point, like the north star.

“So the story about the new continent…is a lie?”

Perhaps the footprints at the bottom of the sea, thought to belong to the Moon-Hunting Bear, was a distraction made to convince others that it vanished into the west.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence that word of a new continent seemed to tie in with the bear.

When Col asked the question, Myuri pointed to Huskins.

“I remembered what Miss Ilenia said, and she doesn’t get along with Old Man Huskins.”

“…That lamb is more insolent than your mother.”

It was already impressive how Ilenia, whose fluffy, black hair gave a striking impression, and Huskins, who caused even Myuri to flinch, broke in disagreement after an exchange of opinion, but it sounded as though she was harder to deal with than Holo.

“This is how I see it,” Huskins continued. “First, the Moon-Hunting Bear tried to build a country just for people like him.”

The assumption was persuasive, considering how it had started such a big war. And though their methods were different, both the old man in front of him and Ilenia had the same goals.

“But after the war it built the Church, either because building a kingdom just for bears was too much, or it thought that manipulating the human world from the shadows would be much easier. But that was ultimately only the next best thing, as it truly wanted a new land just for bears to live in.

“Even the humans in the northlands at the time were starting to beat back the darkness of the forests. Through their sheer numbers and special power their technology brought, they started to have an influence that didn’t exist in our world.”

“…And that was when they set off in search of a place without humans?” Col asked.

Neither wolf nor sheep responded, simply staring at the only human before them.

It was as though they were telling him to squarely examine the silly story.

Because if their story was correct, then that meant the god they worshipped was not just a sham, but a bear.

Col gripped the Church crest that hung from his neck, clinging to it.

“You believe that is true?” he asked Myuri.

He asked her not as his adorable little sister, but as one who was on the brink of denying his entire faith.

“I don’t think all of it can be true.”

It did not sound as though she was laying down her arms because she knew how earnest he was.

Myuri was smart, enough to leave him speechless at times, and she showed a cool-headed side that rivaled that of Holo the Wisewolf when she thought seriously about something.

“Especially the part about the Moon-Hunting Bear creating the Church. It’d be so funny if that was true. You were shocked, weren’t you, Brother?”

She grinned impishly at him, and he no longer knew if he should be angry with her.

“But if the bear itself was God, then wouldn’t it be more natural for bears to just gather in the Church in droves, like this abbey? But then I wondered if it was possible that someone as old as Old Man Huskins had never met one before.”

The pope sat at the top of the Church, and right beneath him were several people that went by the title of cardinal who act as his administration. The world map was partitioned under their command, and the people who participated in their hierarchical system with titles like archbishop and bishop ruled each of those regions.

Every position on the ladder would frequently be in contact with others, and that was also true for the inquisitors.

If two nonhumans happened to pass each other in town, they would surely recognize each other.

It was impossible to think that no one would notice.

“What is possible is that maybe the Moon-Hunting Bear crossed the sea and found a new continent right away, then went over with the bears who built the Church. If that happened, then that would explain why Old Man Huskins’s never met a bear. And…” Myuri, whose hands were folded behind her back, tilted her head and grinned mischievously at Col. “…the reason why you’ve never met God, Brother.”

Col grew visibly cross, and Myuri theatrically covered her head and stepped back.

But he had nothing to say in his anger, of course.

To treat such a fantastical story as legitimate was like seriously responding to someone who was sleep talking.

“I’m not gonna ask you to believe me,” Myuri said, smiling lightly. “But isn’t it a great story?”

If her ears and tail had been out, they would be whipping all over the place.

She was acting with such innocence that it shocked him.

“Real events inspired the oldest fairy tales, which means there are inconsistencies to them, but then there are also new rumors about them. And not only that, but when you put them together, they practically seem to fit. It’d be a total waste if I just ignored it all, right?”

“You…” was all Col said, as he had nothing else to say.

Everything was a plaything to Myuri.

But when he looked at her, he suddenly remembered something.

Very soon after leaving Nyohhira, Myuri had mentioned something as she stared at the world map that hung on the wall of the trading house—she wondered if there was a land out there where she did not have to hide her ears and tail.

Despite how big the world was, it was a cold place for a girl like her.

A sad face and tears did not suit her at all.

Instead, using the whole world as a plaything and getting excited over unbelievable tall tales was like her way of getting back at the cold world, and that gave Col relief.

“There are two things you must promise me when it comes to the Moon-Hunting Bear.”

“Hmm?”

Myuri blinked as she looked at him.

“One is that you do not think of revenge for the wolves of old.”

When Col said that, Huskins also looked at Myuri. Myuri was more conscious of Huskins than she was of Col, so perhaps he had mentioned something about revenge to him.

He was an old sheep reprimanding a young wolf, just as he was for Holo.

“And…the second?”

Yet Myuri was smart enough not to reply with the first thing that came to her mind.

Col had no choice but to say the second thing.

“There is a god,” he said. “Probably,” he added with a mutter.

Myuri’s eyes widened, and she almost laughed, but she of course knew that she should not, and managed to contain herself.

She cleared her throat and shrugged.

“I think it’d be better if there wasn’t a god. Then you’d look at me all the time instead.”

Col wanted to ask what made her so confident about that, but one could say the answer was also Myuri.

And their banter was also a point of compromise.

“Also, do not deceive me when you are collecting stories about the bear.”

“But you said two things!”

Myuri frowned, scratched her head, then looked to Huskins.

Huskins was expressionless as he always was; he shrugged and looked up to the sky.

“Fiiine.”

She then apathetically grasped Col’s outstretched hand.

She was the rambunctious girl who was sulking once her mischief had been uncovered, like she always was.

“If I may suggest a crest…”

“Hmm?”

Myuri looked up at Col.

“What about a wolf looking away in a huff?”

“You what?!”

Myuri angrily struck Col’s arm.

Col accepted her attacks, but he also didn’t think that image would be so bad.

He thought of a wolf sitting with its paws together, its face to the side, staring off into the distance.

It looked like an animal searching for something interesting, always looking toward the future.

It sees a world that no one else could have ever imagined, sitting tensely as though about to dash away at any moment.

Col could not imagine a design that suited Myuri any more than that.

“Brother, you dummy!”

She was a girl more grown up than him, who sometimes said the most outrageous things.

Her jeers echoed throughout the quiet abbey.

They packed their things and quickly left the Brondel Abbey.

As they were getting ready, Myuri seemed to have the book she had just started reading and Rhodes on her mind, so she asked Huskins to take care of both for her. He seemed to have taken a liking to her.

So, along with their escort, Col and Myuri set off. And at noon on the second day, they came across a messenger from Hyland along the road, just as Sharon had said. When the messenger saw how leisurely they looked riding in a cart, he urged them to ride on horseback in order to pick up the pace. Col thought Myuri might refuse, considering what a terrible time her rear had before, but the place they were staying at during their trip was in the middle of shearing all their sheep. Myuri had received a bag stuffed full of wool, and she insisted that she would be all right this time around.

Myuri did not make a peep when they switched to horseback, either because of the wool stuffing, or because her bottom had built up a tolerance, and on the night of the third day they arrived at the Rausbourne city gates. Col thought they might be made to wait until the next morning, but they were quickly granted passage into the city when they showed the pass Hyland had written for them.

“This is the greatest order of knights from the Church, which means they oppose the kingdom as well. We must be careful.”

Despite how restless Myuri seemed on her fluffy sack of wool, she still nodded.

Though the messenger stated that it did not seem like a particularly delicate situation when he left, they did not know what the situation was like now.

They passed through the rather lonely old town, crossed the river, and entered the new side of the city.

It was night. The sun had set long ago, and those at the Brondel Abbey would be fast asleep by now. But despite the time, Rausbourne seemed unusually lively.

Torches stood along the roads and people were milling about, waving around what looked like swords.

But they did not seem like they were on high alert with a knight order from the Church having entered their walls whatsoever.

“Whoa, Brother, look at that. Is that armor made of wood and cloth?” Myuri said as she pointed to a street corner from atop her horse and her fluffy woolen sack. There stood men wearing flimsy armor, striking their tasseled swords together, yelling lines, then striking their swords at one another again.

“Those are lines from the famous Battle at Tardanc.”

It seemed to be a well-known program that illustrated the famous battle.

Despite how one would think a street-corner performance would be shut down so late at night, the people were lively, with some playing instruments here and there. What they all had in common was that each performance had something to do with knights.

Col wondered just what was going on as they arrived in the elegant district where the manors of nobles stood in neat rows; it was quiet here, of course, but they passed well-dressed people who were headed toward the lively festivities along the way.

Perhaps it was because they had just passed the chaotically lit center of town, but when they arrived back in Hyland’s manor for the first time in several days, it felt terribly still. That did seem to be simply a trick of the mind, however.

When the servant brought them in, both the messenger and escort, who had guided them along the way, raised their voices in surprise, and then rushed outside.

Col and Myuri exchanged glances, and when the door opened, they saw an unexpected face.

“Well, that was absurdly fast.”

“Miss Eve?”

The master of Hyland’s manor was gone, and there in her place was a great merchant with a beautiful girl in tow.

Standing next to Eve was a lovely girl who wore a constant smile on her face. She was said to have been born in the desert, and she was the one who held the colorful umbrella for Eve whenever she went outside. Once she had brewed a tea that was popular in the south, she served some fresh grapes to Myuri. Col had no idea where on earth she might have gotten fresh grapes at this time of year, but Myuri was delighted, and she joyously gobbled up the little green things, skin and all.

“I’m here to watch the place,” Eve said. In her hands she held the stuffed sack of wool, the one that Myuri had sat on the entire way here. She was checking the wool on the inside, so perhaps she was thinking about purchasing it.

“Is Heir Hyland at the cathedral?”

Many of her maids and servants must have accompanied her, which explained why the manor so quiet.

That said, Col still wondered why the escort and messenger went pale and rushed out of the manor.

“Sure, you could say she’s been continuing talks with the knights at the cathedral, but she’s virtually a hostage.”

Col almost stood from his chair in shock, but Eve was of course nonchalant, and Myuri leisurely continued to munch on her grapes.

“She’s probably fine right now, right?”

“Well, but…”

She swallowed her grape and shrugged.

“Look how lively the city is. I don’t think the knights are cooped up in the cathedral. They’re probably going out sometimes.”

“…”

She sounded so confident, as though she had seen it for herself, so with nothing to say in return, Col turned to Eve.

“It’s like you’ve seen it yourself,” Eve said, then handed the wool sack she was playing with to the umbrella girl. “You’re actually correct. Before the knights came into the city, they very properly sent out an official messenger to the cathedral, and only after they got permission from the city council did their ship appear offshore. Their march into the city was so thoroughly polite. Word of how wonderful, how courteous the Knights of Saint Kruza were, immediately began to circulate.”

“Is…is that so?”

“They’re giving lessons to any guards who want them in front of the cathedral, and all the city girls are placing wreaths of flowers on the heads of the young knights. Knights that fight with the Knights of Saint Kruza are a bit like legendary heroes, you see. And there are some of them that are from the city of Rausbourne, too, so of course the people would get riled up about it. My house used to be on this street, stuff like that. I bet all the people who are celebrating them are feasting in droves tonight again.”

Something stung in Col’s chest when he heard that.

Rhodes had been born in the region where the Brondel Abbey sat.

But Rhodes had been sent far away from home when he was very young, all so his family could have fewer mouths to feed.

“Well, just as you’re making that glum-looking face, I bet some of the knights themselves have some mixed feelings. You heard about that from the little knight-in-training you picked up on the side of the road, didn’t you?”

They had already told her about Rhodes.

Col nodded with a sigh, and Eve took a sip of her tea.

“The royal court gives their patronage to the Knights of the Golden Sheep, so they likely could marry whatever girl from whatever regional lord they like. Even if not, there are plenty of places they are free to pop in on. But this is the Knights of Saint Kruza we’re talking about. How many people out there can draw where the Island of Kruza is on a map? Even the most seasoned merchant would have a tough time.”

“They give everything to God and join the monastic knightly order of Saint Kruza, right?” Myuri asked.

“They have to make vows of lifelong celibacy, all so they don’t have children elsewhere and spark a conflict over inheritance. And so in a way, they work to send home a different kind of currency. They’re not earning money, but honor.”

“Honor?”

When Col asked in return, Eve cleared her throat.

“Oh, your youngest brother has gone off to the Knights of Saint Kruza, has he? My, how outstanding. I would not mind entrusting my daughter to such a family, oh ho—do you get it now?”

Myuri burst out laughing when Eve made her impression of a high-society woman.

“It’s always the older brothers that get to relish in the younger brothers’ activities. Then he’ll marry a good woman, earn a good reputation as the head of a pious household, and then smoothly make his way up in the world. And in the meanwhile, the younger brother gets to drearily swing around a sword on a rocky island that’s hot year-round and doesn’t even have any trees.”

Col understood what Eve wanted to say, but earthly profits alone could not bring one happiness.

Rhodes was certainly the type of person who would find peace not in counting his coins, but in turning the pages of the scripture. There were a good handful of people like that who gathered in the Knights of Saint Kruza.

That was the very reason why it was so painful for their faith to be questioned simply because they happened to be from the kingdom, which now stood opposed to the Church.

“The one who commands the company of kingdom natives in the knights is from a somewhat well-known family called Wintshire. He’s very considerate of his men.” Eve narrowed her eyes slightly, and the corner of her mouth twisted upward in a smile, as though she was trying to withstand pain. “He wants to give them a taste not of a last supper, but a last triumphant return.”

“…”

There came the snapping noise of Myuri biting into a grape.

“So they’re being disbanded?” she asked, but Eve did not look up for a spell.

Eve was also once a noble from this country who fell from her position due to bankruptcy.

What she perhaps saw in her mind’s eye was the sight of last time she bid farewell to her birth home.

“Donations stopped coming in from the kingdom, and the pope and their fellow knights now see them as an enemy. I doubt that’ll change over the next few years, and it doesn’t necessarily mean things will get better, either. Even the knights that walk in faith get hungry and need to replace their worn-out equipment. If they got a hold of some great, eccentric merchant, they may be able to cover their living costs for the time being, but would you still be able to call them the noble Knights of Saint Kruza after that?”

And that would lead to disbandment.

As a parting gift to his men, the commander brought them home to the kingdom while they still retained the structure of a knight’s order, so that they would have a chance to be welcomed back as such by the people.

It was an attempt to divert the honor that their families had enjoyed all this time to the knights themselves right at the very end.

“Then does that mean Heir Hyland is stationed at the cathedral as a sort of welcoming party?”

Though she was a collateral relative, she was still royalty, so when Hyland appeared, the knights would most likely stand for her.

“I see the gears in your head are starting to turn a little quicker now. You’re right. At least from the people’s perspectives, they see it as treating the knights to hospitality if there’s a member of the royal family with them at all times.”

There was something suggestive about her tone, and Col furrowed his brow. He knew he was not imagining things because it was abundantly clear how Myuri was looking at Eve inquisitively.

But Myuri was still munching on grapes in the meanwhile, so it seemed she got a bit distracted.

“Do you mean to say there is a hidden reason as to why the knights have arrived in the kingdom?”

Col tried to pluck a grape from Myuri’s hand, but she fiercely denied him.

“That’s what I think, but that might be because of my rotten personality. And I have plenty of grapes.”

“Oh, no, I do not want to eat them, particularly…”

Myuri stuck out her tongue and popped another one in her mouth.

“Which means they must have received some secret orders from the pope, then. But…it does not seem like this will lead to war.”

Col thought of the unlikely possibility that they might be messengers of reconciliation, but that did not account for Rhodes’s presence in all this.

Would those sent as messengers of reconciliation rush down a road, bearing a letter requesting aid?

“War comes in many forms. An easy example would be how merchants fight over territory.” Eve, who had been gazing in enjoyment at Myuri’s antics, leaned back in her chair as she spoke. “Let’s say we have two opposing companies, and one wants to start making inroads into the other’s sphere of influence, which is, for example, the fresh grape import industry.”

Myuri must have thought it a captivating topic. She straightened herself in her seat and regarded Eve with interest.

“The two companies don’t get along at all. Even if the company that wants to get into importing grapes raises the money for their importing rights, they’ll be blocked, or paid no mind at all and won’t be able to participate in the industry. This happens a lot. Associations and unions are specifically meant to provide aid in times like that, you know.”

It was not uncommon to hear stories about newcomers being obstructed in such a way.

“In scuffles like that, it wouldn’t be unusual for the company being blocked to visit the company getting in their way, fully intending to dole out a beatdown. That’s settling things by force.”

Myuri’s eyes sparkled at the whiff of battle, and Col, as the concerned older brother of a young teenage girl, sighed.

“But that opens you up to big losses, too—that’d be their reputation in town. So what do you do then?” Eve clapped her hands and rubbed them together. “You say this to a small company under your patronage: Hey, go import some fresh grapes!”

“Um…?”

After being denied entry into the import industry, they would use another company to import in secret.

It was a simple solution; making a smaller company do it would mean the profits would not be very significant.

“It does make me feel as though that would bring about a problem, however,” Col remarked.

“That is exactly the point,” Eve said, grinning. “When the small company imports the grapes, they’ll be immediately found out and denounced. That’s when the first company appears and says: What is it you are quarreling about? Oh, I see, to think a friendly company of ours would do such a thing. We are terribly sorry. Why don’t we have a little chat about imports so that this doesn’t happen again…See? Then finally, the other company will realize they’ve had the negotiation table forced on them. Even if they know the standard routine, they’ll start to think about what to do about the small company’s imports.”

The topic was the kind that would set Myuri’s tail whipping back and forth if it was out. The metaphor here was probably that the small company was the knights, and the two companies in opposition were the kingdom and the Church.

“So the knights are here to start a fight?” Myuri asked.

“The kingdom mobilized their forces during the last disturbance here in Rausbourne, remember?”

It seems this merchant had caught wind of the royal court’s circumstances. The sharp-eared Eve sighed as she replied.

“Yes. We borrowed some of your time to go out because of that,” Col said.

“Fire has already been set to the underbrush, and it’s the Church’s camp that’s burning. For them, when they are under heavy social scrutiny and already have people internally calling for reform, the ground beneath their feet is only going to crumble even further as more time passes. I bet it would be much easier on them if the whole commotion in Rausbourne turned out to be the spark that started a war. That’s why the king’s choice to wait was a clever one. Well, I guess it was the elderly king who sent his military forces to subdue the tax collectors in a panic, so it might be the crown prince who’s the smart one,” Eve said, sitting up straight, then improperly leaned over the table and plucked one of the few remaining grapes in the bunch Myuri held and popped it into her mouth.

Myuri was well-behaved enough not to complain, of course, but she turned to Col as though she wanted to tell him something. Perhaps she wanted him to say something.

“You have the whole world looking at them, so it won’t be easy for the Church to get the gears turning on a war, given there’s no big reason for them to start anyway. That said, the situation will only get worse for them at this rate, so they need to pull the kingdom into a spot of conflict. So they send their own army to take a look around and find something that works in their favor.”

“And those are the knights…”

“Exactly. The war with the pagans has just ended, and it doesn’t seem like they’ll have much time to shine. Not a bad choice for a last hurrah. The knights from Winfiel, at least, have the excuse of coming home to the kingdom. They’re being told to go back home and make some sparks.”

The inside of Col’s mouth went bitter because, even though he understood it logically, he did not want to comprehend it emotionally.

Eve sat at the opposite end of the table, her expression cool.

“Things would start out like this with the pope pulling the strings in the background. You making that face means a good handful of people in the kingdom would be willing to make concessions for the knights with that same face.”

Perhaps without Rhodes in the picture, Col would not have thought that possible.

But the boy and his letter of aid had been tossed out into terrible, winter-like conditions in such thin clothing. There were surely other trainees like him on the roads throughout the kingdom, muddied as they made their way to their destinations.

“Does Heir Hyland think the same?”

“She’s good to the bone, so even though she can’t possibly imagine a thoroughly rotten scheme, she probably thinks that they’ve been forcefully but partially ordered to do this from the pope. That’s probably why she’s put me here in her place.”

“Which means…?” Col, still not clear, asked, and Myuri spoke up.

“She’s a bad merchant. She was originally supporting the king’s enemy, remember?”

Col gulped in recollection. Indeed—Eve had been supporting Heir Klevend, who was second in line for the throne, and who would also not stop at internal strife to claim the throne for himself.

Which meant that Hyland must have wanted to leave her under a watchful eye all so that she would not take advantage of the chaos and start scheming with Heir Klevend, but Col thought it was a bit much to bring her into own manor. This would make it obvious and overt surveillance over Eve, and Col did not understand why Eve would willingly follow along.

All he could think of was that Hyland was so suspicious of Eve, that Eve determined it would be best to follow her request.

The king. The second prince. The Knights of Saint Kruza.

When he placed these three parties next to each other in his mind, he realized something.

“The enemy of my enemy is my ally?”

“The king wouldn’t want both of his enemies working together, so they need to keep a watch on the one who may play mediator between them.”

That also was a possibility as to why the knights came to Rausbourne in the first place.

“It’s a horribly mean accusation, but I had no choice but to obey since the royal family might genuinely suspect me.”

“I think you’re suspicious, too,” Myuri said as she popped the last grape into her mouth.

Eve frowned and gave a large sigh.

“You upended all the plans I had in the last ruckus. Next time I plot something, you’ll be the first ones I invite.”

There came the sound of a splitting grape.

“Well then, how about another plate of grapes, little lady?”

Eve smiled impishly, another way of her laying the groundwork for her plans, and Myuri responded with delight.

Of the Knights of Saint Kruza maintained by the Kingdom of Winfiel, thirty were formal knights, ten were knights-in-training, and twenty were pages who took care of various odds and ends for them.

Col was disappointed by how few of them there were, but Myuri, who had been telling him about them, glared at him.

“Listen, Brother, knights in the Knights of Saint Kruza have to win at least five jousting competitions hosted by titled nobility. Even just winning five makes you super strong. That’s one person with the strength of a thousand. That means thirty knights have the strength of three thousand regular soldiers!”

Myuri gave a fiery speech in their room at Hyland’s manor, but Col had to interject.

“If there are thirty men with a strength of a thousand, then that would be thirty thousand soldiers.”

“Wait, what?”

Col sighed as he watched her count her fingers.

Her wolf ears suddenly perked and she whipped her head up to look at him.

“That doesn’t matter! Let’s go see the knights! Pretty please?!”

She had been like this since the moment she woke up.

Though she had risen late, perhaps exhausted from their march on horseback, when she leaped out from under the covers, the first thing she mentioned was wanting to go see the knights.

“No.”

“Why?!”

“Why?” Col placed down his quill, which he had in his hand to work on his translation of the scripture, and explained what he already had before. “We are in a position that would very likely make us the Knights of Saint Kruza’s mortal enemies. Have you forgotten what Rhodes said? There may be people outside keeping watch on us right now under secret orders. We must be careful, especially since we do not know what the knights’ intentions are.”

Myuri puffed out her cheeks so far that it almost changed the shape of her face, and her tail poofed out at the same time.

“No one’s out there! The only ones watching us are Miss Eve’s workers!”

Myuri refused to give up, so she went to ask Eve if it was all right to go, but the intelligent woman deftly avoided giving an answer.

“Why not decide on a design for the crest instead?” Col suggested, and Myuri turned away in a huff; the thought again crossed his mind that the design of a wolf turned away would be best.

As their morning passed, the guard that had stayed with Hyland at the cathedral came bearing a letter.

“For noon mass?”

“Yes. More precisely, they are wondering if the Twilight Cardinal might come in the middle of noon mass.”

Myuri moved to answer in Col’s place, but he raised a hand to stop her and asked, “But I would believe that the knights are not particularly fond of me.”

“That is why your presence has been requested while mass is ongoing. All the knights attend prayer morning, noon, and night. It is during these times that you will be able to talk in secret without the others noticing anything.”

Col understood somewhat, but something still struck him as strange.

“By talk, do you mean…with Heir Hyland?”

“No, with Commander Wintshire.”

He was the one that led those from the Winfiel Kingdom.

“According to Heir Hyland, Sir Wintshire hopes you will lend him some of your wisdom.”

Col did have a slight feeling that he might be accused of being a heretic, but if Hyland said so, then there must be good reason for it.

He looked at Eve, who sat with them, but she simply shrugged.

“Whether he’s plotting something or not, you should talk to him anyway. I’ll send one of my guards along with you, and I doubt things will get violent with this kid around.”

Eve poked Myuri on the head.

The guard who had brought the letter seemed to accept that the noble knights would not get rowdy with a girl present, but that was not exactly the case here. A band of thirty knights working together stood no chance against her.

But as Col looked down at Hyland’s letter, the image that came to mind was of Rhodes. It was hard to imagine the knights would send such a clumsy plea of help if the pope truly had ordered them under some plot.

Which meant it was possible they genuinely were asking for help, which would then mean that Col had an obligation to take their hands into his own.

“We shall go.” He stood from his chair and gave his answer.

The letter contained a pledge from the commander that he would not arrest Col, but Col still decided it would be best to keep himself disguised, so he dressed as a merchant before leaving the manor.

They would stand out terribly if they traveled in one of Eve’s carriages, so they went by foot instead.

Myuri’s steps were so light and bouncy at the prospect of meeting the knights she idolized that it almost seemed like she was floating.

Rausbourne was lively, as always, and they spotted people here and there performing and singing tales of knights, stalls selling wooden swords, and some artisans had even set up shop engraving knight coats of arms.

It was the people selling flowers that stood out most in the plaza in front of the cathedral. What Eve had said of the city girls wanting to give the knights wreaths of flowers was not an exaggeration—it was fact.

“Will you buy one?” Col tentatively asked Myuri, but she glared at him.

“I genuinely respect the knights, Brother.”

It was as though she was telling him not to compare her to the frivolous girls who would gift flowers to any knight.

It was a complicated age for a girl, so he obediently nodded.

They passed through the hustle and bustle of the stalls and made their way to the cathedral, where a milling crowd even greater than the last was waiting for them.

“…How shall we get in?”

Since the knights were also taking part in mass, the townsfolk were swarming the building. The procession went in as far as it possibly could, with the young assistant pastors and clergy-in-training hurriedly trying to keep the line in order.

“There is a side passage. Let us make our way there,” the guard Hyland had sent whispered in Col’s ear. The guard brought them around the side of the cathedral, where there was an iron door with a peephole.

“We have guests for Heir Hyland,” the escort stated, and from inside came the sound of a key turning, and the door opened.

“All those people are making it hot in here,” Myuri remarked.

They proceeded inside, went up a brief flight of stairs, and came to a corridor on the mezzanine level of the passageway that wrapped around the outside of the nave. There was a wall on the nave-side of the corridor, making it so that no one there could see who was using the hallway. It was perhaps a passage meant for the use of nobility and other high-standing individuals.

They could peer through the latticed windows that were placed at regular intervals on the wall and see just how crammed the nave was with people.

It was almost like a sea of people. How the heat from the crowd poured so thickly into the stone corridor, which was still chilled from winter, was palpable.

“Oh, knights,” Myuri said, pressing her face onto the window.

At the very front of the crowd of attendants was a group of people wearing deep crimson mantles. They all were above average height, and had broad shoulders and sturdy builds; they stood out for better or for worse.

Each of them wore flower wreaths on their heads, and flowers had been sewn into their mantles.

They were all presently occupied, talking to the children who came up to them, but very peaceful looking.

“They’re so popular,” the young assistant priest that was guiding them informed them. “We rarely ever see the royal Knights of the Golden Sheep, but their ships do occasionally call at the Rausbourne port when someone is undergoing ship-steering training. The people do get excited when that happens, but we have only ever heard of the Knights of Saint Kruza in stories.”

Knights stood at the top, in a sense. And not only that, they traversed across the sea as representatives of the kingdom to train hard every day and serve God.

As one who had caught a glimpse of what lay behind the curtain, their brilliance even seemed a bit cruel to Col.

“This way.”

The assistant priest must have read his thoughts, since he resumed his duties as a simple guide and led them to the cathedral office while keeping them out of sight from others.

The cathedral was a long building; from the front entrance to about halfway through was the nave where regular people could enter freely, and the altar sat almost at the center. Everything beyond that point was where the clergy worked, and it even housed a chapel specifically for nobles who made large donations. There were also rooms for honored guests.

As they made their way further into the building it got suddenly quiet, despite how busy it was in the nave, and the transition felt strange enough.

As they waited in the room, they soon heard footsteps coming from the other side of the door, and Hyland appeared.

“I am so sorry to call you back here right when you’ve left for a relaxing trip.”

“Oh, please do not worry about it. But is it true…that he wishes to seek my counsel?”

Col would understand if he would be apprehended as the enemy.

When the thought crossed his mind, Hyland spoke up.

“I also considered the possibility that they may be plotting against us, but I would find it most regrettable if it turned out they were not and we did nothing for them.” She continued, “Officer Wintshire is asking for help so that he may keep his company alive.”

Col felt the same, and it struck him again how he had come to serve such a wonderful person.