Chương 202: 29. Fairy Tavern and Yozora 1

When I folded those testimonies and slid them under my record board, the first thought that surfaced wasn't about who was lying. It was: Something's wrong. Everything was wrong. The evening wine reeked of setup, the incense reeked of setup, the inner staircase reeked of setup, and the cloaked figure practically radiated "I'm absolutely here to commit crimes and you'll never catch me" from three blocks away.

But no matter how suspicious all of that was, it only explained how Haerding had delayed reports, concealed evidence, and ultimately died like a fish someone had deliberately stomped on. It didn't explain the other thing. The tooth. That hollowed-out back molar—packed with poison, waiting to be crushed by its own owner—hadn't fallen from the sky into his mouth. I stood under the command post's outer corridor and looked up at the night sky.

The harbor lights were fractured by the tension of the port closure, and in the distance, dragon cavalry traced slow circles overhead like coils of iron wire drawing tighter with each pass. I snapped the record board shut. Right. Start with the tooth. The old dentist of Iskaapubra Harbor lived in a narrow alley on the eastern edge of the district. By day, it looked like a place that sold salted fish and boat nails. By night, it specialized in burying hope.

The alley was suffocatingly narrow, the walls stained black with age, and the few sickly yellow lights glowing behind warped windows made even the stray cats walk like they owed someone money. I had to invoke the harbor command's authority and flash my temporary passage token before anyone would open a door. The man who answered was thin and dry as old rope, hair bundled with what might once have been twine, a pair of badly worn spectacles perched on his nose.

His eyes held all the warmth of someone examining a cavity—which is to say, none whatsoever.

"Midnight knock. Extractions cost triple," he announced with the dignity of someone who had built their entire professional identity around this principle.

"I'm not here for an extraction."

"Worse." He squinted at me.

"Someone who comes to a dentist at midnight without needing a tooth pulled usually wants me to take the fall for something." Old man, with that level of situational awareness, you have genuine survival potential in tonight's circumstances. I didn't waste time dancing around the subject. I laid out everything in one breath—Haerding's poison tooth, the coroner's findings, the sigil beneath the tongue, the jaw muscle spasms at the moment of death.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. The old dentist had started with his standard "don't bother me, young man" expression, but halfway through my explanation, his eyebrows began migrating toward the center of his forehead. By the time I finished, he'd pulled the door wider and was already turning back inside.

"Get in. Close the door. And don't touch my instruments—you break one, I'll strap you to the chair and extract everything you have." I suddenly felt entirely convinced of this man's innocence. People with actual guilt don't usually deliver threats with such domestic authenticity. The room smelled heavily of medicinal astringents. Shelves groaned under bottles and jars, alongside a murderous row of metal forceps, fine drills, and narrow blades that made my back teeth ache just from looking.

Several beast-bone dental molds sat on the worktable, carved with more refinement than some noble families' dining sets. The old dentist listened to everything, then knocked his knuckles twice against the table.

"Hollowing out a rear molar, packing it with poison, sealing it back up… tch."

"Is it possible?" I asked.

"Possible." The answer came without hesitation—which did nothing good for my stomach.

"But that's not ordinary dentistry. Ordinary dentistry cures ailments. What you're describing is turning a man's mouth into a mechanism." A chill crawled up the back of my neck.

"Would a local practitioner do this?"

"No legitimate local would." He made a dismissive sound.

"This kind of work requires steady hands, nerve, and complete indifference to whether the patient survives. You'd have to hollow the tooth precisely, pack the poison capsule inside, then seal the surface so perfectly it won't fracture under normal bite pressure." He picked up a drill so fine it was nearly a needle and turned it in the lamplight.

"And it requires delicacy like this. Most tooth-pullers in this harbor rely on force, not subtlety. They extract teeth with strength, not dark arts."

"Then whose technique does this resemble?" The old dentist was quiet for a moment. Not from fear—from disgust.

"Outside hands," he finally said.

"People who've passed through battlefields. Itinerants who travel with merchant caravans, black-market physicians, mixed company. Fixing teeth isn't their primary trade. Using teeth is." A name surfaced in my mind almost immediately. Wave & Tail Caravan. But the old dentist wasn't finished.

"One more thing." He glanced at me.

"If the host truly bit down and crushed that tooth himself before dying, he would have been showing symptoms for the past ten days to two weeks."

"What kind of symptoms?"

"Chewing on one side only. Grinding teeth at night. Jaw tension. Occasional sharp pain at the root—like needle pricks. Irritability when eating hard foods. In severe cases, blood at the corner of the mouth upon waking." His tone was ice-cold.

"Anyone in close attendance would have noticed. There's no way around it." I thought back to the servants' evasive, fragmented testimonies and felt a violent urge to slam my record board against my own forehead. Wonderful. The direction wasn't wrong. I just hadn't dug deep enough.

"So if Haerding had been experiencing tooth pain recently, or had consulted a practitioner—""Then go investigate that," the old man cut me off.

"Find out who examined his mouth. Who had their hands near his teeth. Who could make him hold his mouth open long enough without him raising hell." He paused, then added with a cold half-smile: "And find out who he trusted enough to open his mouth for willingly." That was both precise and deeply unpleasant. I stayed quiet for two beats, then pulled a blank sheet from my board and wrote it all down. The old dentist watched me work, his voice dropping slightly.

"Boy."

"What?"

"You didn't come here tonight about tooth decay." He said it like he was clarifying something obvious.

"You're investigating who turned a Governor-General into a blade that destroyed itself on command." I paused mid-stroke and looked up at him.

"If you're clean, I'll do my best to keep you away from the princess."

"If you dare hand me over to a woman who can fill a building with screaming at midnight," the old dentist said, adjusting his spectacles, "I'll tell her your teeth are the most rotten I've ever seen." …This man genuinely had a talent for inspiring confidence in his survival skills.