APIBAGS Chapter 22

Something was strange. Daisy had been in the middle of talking with me and suddenly bolted—normally you'd ask why, wouldn't you? And there was that odd emphasis about not having eavesdropped, the unprompted insistence on privacy. That was suspicious.

Wait—was this a hidden villain build? All sweetness now, but the second Gabriel marks me as an enemy— he'd be the first one stepping forward to bring me down. When I imagined it, Raphaela's smiling face became considerably more unsettling. I'd never been comfortable around people who go around laughing haha-hoho anyway.

"And your companion over there?"

Raphaela glanced toward Jelly with the question. Jelly caught my eye, silently asking what do I do?

Good question. What was I supposed to say? My hooked sub-male-lead? A magic-wielding werewolf? My household pet beastfolk?

"My escort."

"Oh! I hadn't realized he was a knight. I couldn't tell, since he isn't carrying a sword."

Right, I hadn't thought of that. A sword would be strange for Jelly. He was a beastfolk mage—he mainly used magic, and instead of a sword he'd use his claws. I should have come up with a more convincing excuse. How was I going to fix this? I was still trying to think when Jelly gave a shrug.

"Pfft. I'm magnificent without one."

He'd smoothed it over with impressive ease. Raphaela's gaze moved to Jelly's hand, where he was holding the case of holy water bottles effortlessly in one grip, and gave a nod. The flexing had served a purpose after all.

"You'll be heading to the knights' reception room? Then I should return as well."

Raphaela and Uriel took the lead. I followed at a slower pace, matching Jelly's stride.

"How do you know Daisy?"

"Who? Oh—her? Hmm... we helped each other out a bit."

"You didn't give her trouble?"

"Of course not. I told you, I helped her. Got her out and escaped together, didn't we."

Jelly grumbled that if anyone had been given trouble, wasn't it him—clearly hedging, with other people nearby.

Fortunately, that was enough to piece together the story. Jelly had shown up badly injured when he first appeared, and what kind of thing could leave a beastfolk in that condition? And just now he'd said they'd gotten out and escaped together.

There was no other reading. Locked in. Jelly and Daisy, caught by slave traders, escaped together. When Daisy saw Jelly, those memories had come flooding back and drained all the color from her face. That was probably what they'd call post-traumatic stress, or something along those lines.

So Jelly hadn't been a sub-male-lead at all—he was half of a sub-couple. Toward the end of the story he'd let go of his feelings for Kanna and turn toward Daisy. The villain in both couples was me. Why did it work out that there were two couples but only one villain?

"I cleaned up after, too."

So he'd dealt with the slave traders cleanly as well. Good. I reached up and patted his head in approval.

Raphaela had stopped some distance ahead, waiting for us to catch up. As we drew close enough for the gap to close, his face was doing something that could only be described as ten thousand feelings crossing each other at once. Understandable, given that he'd thought he was meeting the Commander's particular person of interest, and now he was witnessing her patting a strange man's head.

"You seem quite close with your escort...?"

That's because Jelly is kind of like my pet, and he usually goes around as a wolf rather than a person, and—

The moment I opened my mouth to say it, I could see exactly how it would land—I'd actually get branded as an interspecies-discriminating slaver—so I shut my mouth quietly.

"Not at all."

I had absolutely no intention of getting romantically entangled with Gabriel, but I couldn't afford to fall out of his good graces right now, so I answered firmly on that front instead.

To think I'd end up running a fishing ground in a rofan setting....

Raphaela watched Evangeline Rohanson in silence as she spoke with Daisy.

His mouth was occupied with Uriel—trading the sort of remarks that amounted to nothing—and anyone watching would have assumed Raphaela was doing what he always appeared to do: making pointless jokes. Uriel, for her part, was exactly as unobservant as she seemed and had never quite grasped Raphaela's true nature.

Within the knights, Raphaela was the one who knew the most truth, Gabriel excepted. If Raphaela had genuinely been as artless as he appeared, Gabriel would never have kept him close.

Raphaela had seen Donau's body. He knew about the cryptic inscription found inside it. He knew about the summoning circle, and since visiting the Rohanson estate had been researching the old sorcery connected to it.

The report he'd compiled from Daisy's testimony and submitted to Gabriel had also been his work.

On its face, Daisy's testimony had seemed unremarkable.

She had witnessed Father Berga summoning something. It had appeared demonic in nature. Those the demon killed had their throats cut. Then they rejoined. They went on as normal—if not for the thin red line across the neck, you couldn't tell them from the living.

That, Raphaela supposed, was why she'd reacted so violently at the sight of Kanna, Evangeline Rohanson's maid.

Honestly—was it because Kanna served Evangeline Rohanson? Even the idea of her being dead seemed somehow plausible. After all, Evangeline herself had died and come back.

'Evangeline Rohanson's throat is...'

Clean, of course. Just clean.

The crimes Father Berga had committed, according to Daisy's account, were ugly enough to make anyone flinch. That he'd gone undiscovered for so long was almost certainly due to the convent's insularity—that peculiar closedness of remote religious institutions—and the protection of his family name. Remarkable, really, that a priest said to have received Rahel's grace could have lived like that.

Whatever other offenses remained unknown would surface once Father Berga had been apprehended and properly questioned.

But there were parts of Daisy's account that still didn't sit right.

Setting aside the rest, what puzzled Raphaela most was this: Daisy had witnessed Father Berga summoning something. She'd seen enough to terrify her into silence. So how had she escaped with that knowledge intact?

Father Berga didn't seem like a man who would simply let go of someone who knew this much. So how had she gotten out?

"Uriel. If you were being watched somewhere difficult to escape—could you get away?"

"A prison, sir? Well, you're not supposed to leave a prison."

"...Not a prison. Somewhere like a convent."

Uriel couldn't quite follow why anyone would be imprisoned and surveilled in a convent in the first place, let alone need to escape from one—but she applied herself earnestly to the question regardless.

"Jumping from a window? If there's a tree nearby, I'd be all right up to the third floor."

"...Right. Thank you."

It wasn't helpful at all. Raphaela pressed a hand to his forehead. Daisy wasn't the sort who could leap from windows like Uriel.

He turned his attention back to the two women.

"———."

"You—you don't know my name?"

"—————————."

"...I'm Daisy."

An odd sensation. The two of them were plainly talking, yet Raphaela couldn't hear a single word from Evangeline Rohanson's side. And Evangeline wasn't moving her mouth. Yet the fact that she was speaking—that much registered with perfect clarity.

Whether Daisy heard her properly was another matter; she kept responding as though she'd received each question, carrying on the exchange without pause.

Raphaela had no choice but to reconstruct the conversation from Daisy's words alone.

Following the thread of it: Evangeline Rohanson didn't seem to remember Daisy at all. Daisy had behaved during her testimony as though she'd witnessed something traumatic—something that had left marks that didn't fade.

'Lady Evangeline came back to life, you say? I don't know where you heard it, but it's true. Everyone who attended the funeral would have seen it. ...A dead young woman, waking in her coffin.'

'The priest who presided over that funeral killed himself? I'm not even surprised.'

'I've seen the Lady draw summoning circles. You're saying it summons angels? Angels? You wouldn't say that if you'd seen it yourself.'

And then—what she'd witnessed at the Rohanson estate.

Daisy had said she'd seen Evangeline summon something. Given Father Berga's case, she'd concluded it must be a demon as well.

'There were too many watching eyes at the Rohanson estate. That's why I went to the convent.'

So from the estate she'd fled to a convent—where she ran directly into more trouble. Misfortune with a reliable sense of timing.

But what did Daisy mean by watching eyes? That there were too many people watching? Were all the servants at the Rohanson estate as loyal as those two sisters, Henna and Kanna?

Gabriel had originally planned to ask about that himself—but Daisy had clammed up the moment she laid eyes on the Rohanson estate's maids, and that avenue had closed.

Gabriel had tasked Raphaela with escorting Daisy home and trying to gather more. The entire walk, Daisy had said nothing useful. Raphaela had come away empty-handed.

Running into Evangeline Rohanson had been an unexpected stroke of fortune. From the moment Evangeline entered Daisy's field of vision, Daisy had been excessively agitated.

So Raphaela had deliberately placed Daisy in front of Evangeline Rohanson—thinking something more might be pried loose. But with Evangeline's voice entirely inaudible, there had been nothing to show for it.

"...Sir Gabriel knows."

What's more, Daisy had apparently panicked and disclosed that she'd already given testimony—confessed it herself, in reverse. Gabriel's name appearing in her words confirmed she'd told Evangeline everything about her own statement.

All Raphaela had managed was to scratch open an old wound for nothing. Or so he'd thought—until the man appeared.

A man with black hair and gold eyes—the kind of face that was offensively knowing, roguish in a way that announced itself. His unhurried movements had the quality of a large predator that sees no reason to rush. He settled into place behind Evangeline with the ease of someone who belonged there.

"Who's that?"

"Sir Jelly, Lady Rohanson's companion, sir."

Raphaela stared at Uriel in bafflement. His head pulsed steadily at the thought of a colleague so guileless they heard 'Jelly,' assumed it was a proper name, and addressed it with full honorifics."

"I was told he was quite reliable. Very serious."

"The one called Jelly?"

"He didn't say a single word the entire time the Lady was praying, sir."

Left alone with that suspicious person? Technically, by any reasonable measure, Evangeline Rohanson was the greater threat—but even so, of all people to assign—the oblivious, guileless Uriel.

Raphaela found himself mildly resenting the Commander for it.