IBTRFL Chapter 7

Sunlight had slipped through the gap in the window and come to rest on her lashes. Children's laughter tickled the edges of her hearing.

Wake up. Everything around her said it in one voice.

Aer rubbed the sleep from her eyes and quietly opened them.

"…"

How long had she been out? She stared blankly up at the ceiling, then stretched, long and slow.

Joints that had stiffened like rusted hinges loosened pleasantly. Muscles still holding onto lethargy urged her to stay down a little longer.

Aer tilted her head toward the half-open window. Children with a little more flesh on their bones ran laughing across the yard, faces open and happy.

Among the familiar faces were unfamiliar ones. Older than the others—not quite adults, but no longer quite children, either.

"Thank goodness."

Aer murmured it in a voice roughened by sleep.

The Director had regarded the children as beneath notice while finding endless uses for them. Those under thirteen he broke through abuse and put to work on the orphanage's petty tasks. Those he had broken were sent out when they turned fourteen. The quarry. The sewers. The chaos beast management operations. The Bishop of Solbo's privately run operations—the ones no one was meant to know about.

Every child sent to those places ended in death.

A dog's death. Mourned by no one. Even their bodies found no rest. Sold cheap as bait for the beasts. Burned with the refuse if no buyer came.

"…Hell."

The filthy memories surfacing one after another wrung the curse out of her. Aer breathed in slowly, face drawn.

That kind of tragedy would not happen now.

With Valor here, the Director and the Bishop and the priests beneath them would receive what they had coming. Something like a life that couldn't even properly be called living, most likely. For those who had committed sins that could never be washed clean, that was a reasonably fitting end.

"But what was that guy doing here…"

The trailing thought dissolved. Aer pulled the blanket over her head and rolled back and forth, picking at the blurred fragments of a conversation conducted deep in drink.

No matter how she turned it over, there was nothing in what she remembered that placed him in Solbo at this point. By now he should have just been appointed Papal Inspector-General and be cutting a path through the capital.

Too many enemies, too much work—a man who had every reason to be moving. No reason to be here.

Then…

Had he also come back? She turned it over for a moment, then shook her head.

Impossible, given his character. A man absurdly, anachronistically direct—absurdly, anachronistically honest.

He might have had a talent for detecting lies.

He had no talent at all for telling them.

If he had truly come back, she would have been sandwiched flat between that destructive chest and those forearms and crushed to death. Just imagining it made her ribs ache.

Aer let out a deflated laugh and pushed her head out from under the blanket. If the chance came someday, she could ask.

She looked out the window, the faint shape of a smile on her face.

"It's over here!"

"That's cheating!"

"Nah-ah, it's my call!"

The children playing ball began squabbling, shoving against each other. Childish and guileless, the way ordinary kids their age were supposed to be.

The peace of it came to her strangely. It was a thing her own life had never permitted.

Aer placed her hand on her chest. Her heart was beating quickly. A warmth that felt good spread through her veins and out to the rest of her body.

The future had changed. She had no idea how desperately she had wanted that. The hope she had finally met, after so much wavering, drove away the deep shadow that had been covering her sight.

And at last, the compass of her wandering soul found its direction.

She was an ignorant mercenary, nothing more. Full of nothing but wickedness. Coming back had not given her education or wisdom she had never had. A life from the gutter was still a life from the gutter. The likes of her.

But this time, she simply wanted to be a little more solid. Enough to bear the weight of a world that showed no mercy.

There was no grand and noble purpose of saving the world.

She was simply afraid. Afraid, just afraid, of living through the same losses and the same grief again.

So she would change things. Little by little, little by little.

If she kept running like that, someday—

She would reach the right ending.

Aer slowly closed her eyes.

A blunt blade moved along the grain of the wood.

With a sound like a pen nib brushing across paper, a thin curl of shaving dropped to the floor. The rougher the blade passed over the wood, the more a delicate shape found its way out from the block. The children around her watched with shining eyes. Every time her hand moved, their curiosity followed. The urge to laugh kept pressing at her mouth.

Aer smoothed her twitching lips and set down the knife.

She brushed the sawdust from the surface. A rough carving emerged—a legendary great knight-king, lance raised high, mounted on horseback. The shape was only barely there, but to the children it was more than enough.

"Here you go."

"Sis! Thank you!"

The child who took it with both hands smiled brilliantly.

The nearby children stared at the carving with undisguised envy. A few reached out quietly to touch the horse's legs or the tip of the sword.

"Sis, make me a princess! A princess!"

"Hey, I was first!"

"Get out of the way, both of you, I got here first!"

The orphanage that had been quiet as a dead mouse had become loud in exactly this way. Sometimes her ears ached, but Aer was glad for even the noise.

When she spent time like this with the children, it felt like some small recompense for the childhood that had been crushed out of her.

Aer brushed the sawdust from her knees. Past the bickering children, she saw a priest hurrying over. The priest took one look at the uproar and pressed a hand to his head, then gently called the children to order in a warm voice.

"Hey! No fighting."

"Father! He started it!"

"I didn't do anything!"

The children swarmed him, clutching his robe and reporting on each other. The priest sweated freely but listened to each of them in turn.

A scene she could not have imagined even in a dream, before. Something itched at her in a pleasant way, and Aer smiled faintly.

Then the priest looked up at her over the children's heads while he was calming them, and moved his lips in an exaggerated, silent shape.

The Director would like to see you.

Aer read it in one look and got to her feet. The children, thoroughly distracted, did not notice the source of the argument disappearing.

Aer hummed quietly to herself as she made her way to the Director's office.

A week since she had woken. Between the priests' attentive care and more food than she could eat, her body had recovered quickly. Not entirely back to normal, but at least she was no longer collapsing mid-step or fighting dizziness.

Once her body had recovered to some degree, her mind had grown impatient.

The changes in the orphanage were Valor's work. She had done almost none of it herself. On her own strength, she had not yet changed anything.

That fact kept feeding a restlessness inside her. She knew better than anyone how rough the road ahead was.

She needed a different kind of power. Not the sword. And she knew, better than anyone, the method to obtain it.

A method she had abandoned before because of lost time. A method that required accepting the risk of death.

Damn it. Why is my life like this. Aer exhaled all the way down and knocked on the Director's door.

"Oh, come in."

A kind voice reached her. Aer opened the door carefully and stepped inside. The Director, who had been reviewing documents, rose to greet her with a glad expression.

An old woman with mild, soft eyes. Same age as the other one, and yet somehow utterly different—Aer still could not account for it.

"Hello, Director."

"I must have startled you, calling so suddenly. First—how is your body holding up? Is the room working out for you?"

"Yes, I'm fine. The room is working out well."

Somehow she had ended up with a private room. A small space tucked into the corner of a building, a former storage room piled with odds and ends. The Director had offered to clear it out for her to have to herself, and Aer had accepted without hesitation.

Having a space of her own was a fine thing.

The Director looked into her bright violet eyes, smiled, and pulled open a drawer.

"I called because the Inspector-General left a letter for you."

"A letter?"

"Yes, he specifically asked me to make sure you got it—now where did it, that's not it—he was very particular about it, just a moment. I'm sure I put it somewhere around here."

The Director frowned and began rummaging through the drawer. Aer watched.

A letter from Valor. An unexpected piece of news.

By the time she had woken, Valor had already departed for the capital, and she had received no word since.

Aer let out a deflated laugh without meaning to. An old connection, come back without warning, and it seemed it would not sever easily. She was glad of it, and bitter about it at the same time. Because she knew she would have to cut it herself.

She turned her eyes away and looked around the room.

The extravagant furniture was gone. Simple, modest furnishings had taken its place. The hidden display case where the Director had kept his soul stones now held volumes of religious texts.

So all the soul stones were collected. They had never been hers. The thought that she wished otherwise raised its head anyway.

She was running her tongue over her teeth when something caught her eye. The wooden floor directly beneath the display case. A small gap—easy to miss unless you were looking.

Right. There's no way that greedy bastard didn't hedge his bets.

Aer checked the Director first. The Director had her head buried in the drawer, locked in battle.

Aer crossed to the display case and bent down. She worked one finger into the gap and drew it carefully toward her.

In the narrow space: a small pouch. Through the thin fabric, a familiar gleam pulsed.

Aer pocketed the pouch quickly and pressed the floorboard shut. A beat later, the Director found the letter and looked up.

"Aer, I finally—are you interested in books?"

Aer had slid a volume from the shelf in the corner. Ancient Astrology was stamped on its spine—a considerably old, and considerably dull-looking, tome.

"Oh, this one just caught my eye."

The Director's nostrils flared. Her eyes lit up like a child's, and she launched into an explanation no one had asked for.

"It's a wondrous discipline—reading the movements of the world from the stars that rise in the night sky. There's an old story passed down, you know, that when the Goddess created the heavens, she took small pieces of each person's soul to make the stars. So in ancient times, people used astrology to divine the fates of the world and of individuals."

"Oh. I see."

"Yes. These days it's dismissed as nonsense and no one studies it anymore, but every so often you find someone like me who takes an interest. You're welcome to borrow it, if you like. Someone who shares a passion is always welcome here."

"Yes, thank you. I'll make sure to read it."

"You must, you absolutely must. If you told me your impressions afterward, I would be truly delighted."

The Director smiled contentedly and held out the letter.

"If you ever hear anything strange, come and tell me right away."

"…Yes. Understood."

Aer took the letter, bowed, and stepped outside.