Chapter 23: Investigation
Rendell began doing what he could do.
The archives were located in the basement level of the palace's east wing—an unreasonably long corridor flanked by floor-to-ceiling shelves filled to their edges, leaving only a narrow passage just wide enough to pass through sideways. The air carried the scent of parchment and old ink, kept perpetually cool, and when he breathed, he could feel a subtle chill clinging to the inside of his nostrils. The keeper was an elderly man with white hair and beard who showed no surprise at Rendell's arrival. Rendell had accompanied Mia here to research materials many times before; he needed no authorization to enter this place.
"I need the registry of external visitors entering and leaving the court from three months ago, particularly the sections for mages and scholars."
The old man retrieved three thick volumes and placed them on the only reading desk, then stepped back.
Rendell spent nearly two hours turning pages. Within the timeframe he needed to examine, the registry contained two records of external visitors. One was a northern scholar who had entered the palace under the pretext of academic exchange—the name didn't matter, as it was likely false. He had stayed four days.
The other was a traveling mage who had requested palace access to research historical court archives, staying six days. Both had remained in the palace no more than a week and left no contact information after their departure.
He copied these two records into a blank notebook, writing down his first entry.
In the afternoon, he went to the security office that managed the city's public order.
The surveillance department occupied a four-story stone building near the inner city's south gate. The director was a practical man who didn't ask many questions when a knight came to examine historical case records, simply retrieving the current season's report book from a cabinet and handing it over. The cabinet's handle already showed shallow wear marks from years of the same repeated gesture.
Rendell found what he needed in that report book.
Approximately three weeks before the curse manifested, Aldenmere had seen three incidents of minor goods spoilage complaints. The first occurred in the east market—a fruit and vegetable vendor reported that a basket of sweet potatoes purchased fresh that morning had changed color by noon. The loss amount was minimal, not reaching the reporting threshold. The second incident involved a fabric merchant in the south district, where an entire shipment of newly arrived linen developed unprecedented mold spots, a color unlike normal dampness mold—deep, with a glossy black sheen. The third incident occurred at an apothecary in the inner city, where a batch of properly stored Bittersorrel had withered within two days.
Additionally, there were two reports of sudden livestock deaths and one case of a missing twenty-year-old young woman. These cases were all small in scale, none formally reported. The livestock and herb incidents were treated as natural losses, and the young woman was listed as having eloped with a lover. But Rendell knew this poor girl was likely no longer among the living.
He cross-referenced the timing of these incidents with the movements of those two suspicious individuals—the timelines essentially matched.
They were testing the curse's effects.
Someone in the city was finding the correct intensity. After finding it, they implemented the curse on a more precise target. Someone had walked Aldenmere's streets, placing hands on different goods, recording each result. Then they tested on animals, and finally on someone close to Mia's age.
Rendell suddenly realized a terrible fact: those people's initial objective had been to kill Mia with the curse. But for some reason, it hadn't succeeded. So someone had stayed a few extra days and switched to a different curse.
In the afternoon, he sought out a third contact—a man who ran a shoe repair shop in the south district, a relationship established three years ago during a mission, purchased with protection for his family. The shop was small, its air thick with the smell of leather and some adhesive he couldn't name. He sat inside for less than twenty minutes and obtained one piece of information.
Three weeks ago, two outsiders of unknown origin had appeared in the city. They stayed in the south district for about five days. Their spending habits were ordinary, but their manner of speaking was not. According to vendors who had encountered them, the two spoke the common tongue without an accent, but sometimes paused while choosing words, as if translating from another language into common speech before speaking.
He thanked the shoe repairman and walked out of the shop, heading back through the south district's streets.
The face appeared as he passed the second intersection.
Across the street at a fabric shop entrance, a man in his thirties leaned against the doorframe, appearing to wait for someone. Rendell glanced at him and continued walking without changing pace, turned right at the third intersection, wound through a small alley, emerged from the other end, and returned to the main road, approaching the palace from a different direction.
The face appeared again.
At a more distant street corner, naturally leaning against a post, facing away from him, gaze not following him, but he knew that face had definitely appeared before. A face appearing twice at different street corners could be coincidence. A face appearing twice precisely in the direction he was traveling was not coincidence.
His pace didn't change, he didn't look back, maintaining an outward naturalness while being followed. He used a more circuitous route back to the palace, scanning with peripheral vision at each intersection to see if that face remained, memorizing details of that face's clothing and hairstyle to the degree that he could instantly recognize it upon next encounter.
After returning to the palace, he supplemented everything from today into that small notebook at his room's desk. He didn't know when he had also developed this habit.
He turned to the last page and under the line "who has entered the palace" added a new entry: They know I'm investigating. They sent someone to follow me because they want to know how quickly the court is reacting to the princess's disappearance.
This meant they were monitoring Rendell, perhaps even monitoring the entire palace.
In that case, not just Mia—everyone's situation was more dangerous than he had originally estimated. She thought leaving was her own decision, thought that walking out of Aldenmere meant reaching a place those eyes couldn't see, but what if those eyes already knew exactly where she would go before she even left?
What if that expulsion-type curse was itself a tool to drive her from a protected place to an unprotected one?
He wrote this deduction into the notebook, then drew a horizontal line beneath it.
Below the line, he picked up his pen again and wrote the first entry that truly belonged to action:
I need to find those two people.
He couldn't send anyone to find her. But he could find out who was behind those two names, could find out where their next step would lead, could scout that landing point one step ahead before their next move fell into place. A knight's work outside the battlefield and a knight's work on the battlefield were two different things. What he was doing was the intelligent kind.
He closed the notebook, placed it in the deepest part of his inner pocket, fastened his outer robe, then retrieved something else from a drawer.
It was a short backup knife, not usually worn at the waist, hidden in a specially made inner layer of his outer robe. In thirteen years of knighthood, this was the first time he carried it on his person.
Outside the window, Aldenmere's dusk gradually descended, transforming the city's outline from clear to blurred, then into a darkness where boundaries could no longer be distinguished. He sat in that darkness, reviewing today's information once more in his mind.
Outside, she walked mountain paths.
While he remained inside Aldenmere.
But the position he guarded had quietly shifted from that spot half a step to her left and behind thirteen years ago to an invisible position. From this position he still guarded her, and the things she cared about.
Only from today forward, even she herself would not know.