Chương 77: 31-3. City of Angels

When Matthews guided the wagons into the small rear courtyard, Olivia stepped down. She moved immediately into shadow—positioned herself somewhere unobtrusive—then began to look. Not the cursory scan of a noblewoman registering distaste. Real assessment. Door, windows, drag marks on the floor, dust accumulation in corners, stair structural integrity, where people could be concealed, where supplies could be hidden, which areas would catch fire first.

She even crouched to check moisture levels in the floorboards near the rear door, then glanced up at the dying magic lamp. I stood nearby watching her crouch beside a puddle of questionable origin, methodically determining whether this ruin could keep us alive through the night. And doing it as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Assessment?" I asked. Olivia stood, lightly brushing her fingertips.

"Usable."

"Reasons?"

"Narrow front, open rear," she said without hesitation.

"Stairs are old but structurally sound. Second floor provides sightlines to both front street and rear alley. Dirty but not abandoned—occasional use means it falls within some territorial understanding. That makes it safer than anywhere that looks respectable." She paused.

"And it's ugly enough." My eye twitched.

"Ugly counts as a criterion?"

"It does," she said calmly.

"The less a place looks valuable, the less likely it draws first attention." Coming from her, that logic was unreasonably sound. Alvira had already moved to the stairs, looking up.

"I'm going up."

"Check windows first, then whether the roof can support weight," I said. She nodded and went up with her bow. The wooden steps groaned reluctantly, but she moved lightly and quickly disappeared into the second-floor darkness. Jessi leaned against the half-collapsed counter, rolling her shoulders like the earlier fight hadn't served as proper warmup.

"Checked the back—ladder outside the second-floor window still works. Missing two rungs on the left. Don't step on air if you're running." She winked.

"Though if you fall, I'll laugh."

"I'll take you down with me."

"So aggressive." I ignored her and turned to Matthews.

"Wagons to the rear. Door stays cracked—not sealed. Looks occupied, not besieged."

"Understood." Lucas descended from the wagon, looking worse than before—somehow even more convincingly ill. Olivia glanced at him with her usual composure.

"Mr. Lucas, please remain interior. If anyone enters, maintain your current complexion." Lucas paused.

"... Was that a compliment?"

"It's efficient resource utilization."

"That somehow hurts more." I nearly laughed. Erina was guided into the innermost room—formerly manager's or bookkeeper's quarters, with small windows and thick walls. Suffocating but not visible from outside. Olivia reorganized the building's layout without pause.

"Lady Erina and Mr. Lucas stay interior. Matthews covers the front entrance. Lord Cedric—" She looked at me.

"You position between the front hall and stairs. Best placement for supporting both levels and intercepting anyone who enters." I nodded.

"And you?"

"I check water supply and usable rooms," she said.

"And whether the innermost second-floor room can be cleared for rotation. Everyone needs somewhere to rest in shifts tonight." She said it as naturally as discussing pantry organization. And because she did, the chaotic situation suddenly had visible structure. Kuroga was still on the floor, looking between us with the dazed expression of someone watching his reality reclassify itself. I walked over and looked down at him.

"Stop staring." He flinched. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Y-young master?"

"Get a bucket, draw water, point out the least disgusting room in this place," I said.

"And if anyone knocks tonight, you answer first." His bulging eyes widened further.

"M-me?"

"You live here. You look like you belong. We don't." He opened his mouth, processed several responses, and closed it.

"... Yes." I watched him deflate into acceptance and felt something approaching amusement. This city didn't require formal education. Simply surviving here was sufficient schooling in resignation. Light footsteps sounded above. Alvira leaned over the railing.

"Second floor usable. Two empty rooms left side. Innermost has a working lock. Roof accessible—wind's strong but it holds."

"Anyone watching?" I asked.

"Two across the street," she said.

"Looking at this building." I glanced in that direction. Naturally. Angel's Gate wasn't planning to grant us much quiet. But we had walls, doors, stairs, and one layer of separation between ourselves and the street. In this place, that counted as a fortress. Olivia stood by the half-collapsed water trough in the rear courtyard, checking remaining usable water. Her sleeves were neatly rolled, hands dusty, but her expression was as steady as someone deciding which jar to wash first in her own kitchen.

My original plan had been simple: endure the night without disturbing or being disturbed by anyone. Resupply at dawn and leave immediately. Every extra hour in Angel's Gate felt less like accumulating fortune and more like holding the door open for disaster. The city, naturally, had other plans. Once Jessi had beaten the building into approximate habitability, she vanished again.

When asked where, she waved without turning—like a gust of wind that specialized in irritation, arriving and departing exactly as it pleased. Matthews and Kuroga went to handle dinner. I couldn't trust the lizardman alone, but supervising meant potentially seeing things that would put me off food permanently. I had no interest in conducting comparative xenobiology research with my digestive system. Alvira had predictably taken the roof.

For someone like her, entering unfamiliar territory never meant sitting down to breathe—it meant finding the optimal shooting position first. The first floor was left to Lucas, half-alive and counting it as progress. The second floor held Olivia and me. The room wasn't large. Walls mottled with age and neglect, window frame listing at an angle it had committed to years ago. Through gaps in the warped floorboards, you could see the ruined walls and tower shadows outside, painted dull red by the dying light.

It wasn't quiet—the shouting, cursing, and shattering glass from the street had simply been filtered through thick stone into something lower and more persistent. Not silence. Just noise that had given up trying to be distinct.

"Lord Cedric." The moment Olivia said my name, I straightened up on reflex. The reaction happened so fast I wanted to curse myself for it. I was supposed to be casually watching the door, but I'd snapped to attention like a recruit hearing roll call. If Jessi had witnessed that, I'd never hear the end of it.

"What is it?" I cleared my throat, attempting to sound less like someone who'd just been caught performing involuntary military posture. Olivia stood by the window, a half-sorted cloth bundle still in her hands. She didn't turn immediately—just watched the light sinking beyond the city's broken silhouette. After a moment, she asked with her usual composure:"What are you planning to do once we reach the capital?" I paused. Not a difficult question, technically.

But something about the way she asked it made a careless answer feel insufficient.

"Deliver the princess first," I said. I glanced toward the inner room as I spoke. Erina had apparently settled down—no movement behind that curtain for some time. I brought my gaze back and leaned against the doorframe.

"The original plan was simple enough. Hand her over, then go find my older sister. She married out years ago, but she's not going to watch her brother starve on the street. If nothing else works out, at least I could pick up some dead-end position through her connections." Olivia listened without interrupting. I laughed, though even I could hear how dry it came out.

"Then things started compounding before I got there." I paused, then added:"And somewhere along the way I ended up picking up an entire wagon's worth of complications." The words were out before I'd examined them. Not wrong, exactly. Just—too natural. The kind of thing you say when you've already unconsciously filed a group of people into the category of things I'm responsible for. I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly uncomfortable, and cleared my throat.

"... What I mean is, I didn't expect it to turn into this." Olivia turned from the window then. She looked at me—eyes very quiet. The particular stillness that made it difficult to determine whether she was processing information, or simply watching the loose end I'd left dangling in my last sentence. Two seconds passed. Then, very softly:"I see." Just that. No smile, no follow-up question. But precisely because she let it land so gently, the words didn't quite settle.

They stayed suspended between us, resting quietly, as though neither of us had decided what to do with them yet. I was about to say something else when a voice came from below.

"Cedric." Not Olivia this time. Alvira. I turned and went downstairs immediately. Olivia followed a step behind. At the bottom, Alvira stood by the door with a letter pinched between her fingers. Her expression carried the specific blankness of someone reporting that trouble had spontaneously generated itself outside. I frowned.

"Who delivered it?"

"Whoever it was dropped it and ran." She held it out.

"I didn't chase." I took it. The moment my fingers touched the wax seal, I knew this had no business being in this building. Heavy paper, edges cut with precision. The seal pressed into the wax was intricate—a mark I didn't recognize, but one that had clearly been made by someone who owned proper equipment and used it deliberately. This wasn't something scratched together with charcoal in an alley. This wasn't a speculative delivery. Someone knew exactly where we were and had sent this to our door on purpose.

Kuroga had been crouched nearby, sorting through debris from earlier. The moment he registered what was in my hand, he went very still. His bulging eyes locked onto the seal like someone who'd just spotted something that had no business existing in this neighborhood.

"Conquistador Syndicate..." he muttered. I looked at him sideways.

"You know them?"

"Not personally." Kuroga swallowed, his voice dropping involuntarily.

"They're the type that hates playing fair while being very good at appearing reasonable. Officially a trading consortium. In practice—everything. Slaves, contraband, black market goods, old sea routes... if it converts to coin, they're involved." He paused, then added:"They claim to be descendants of the old maritime kingdoms. Very attached to performing that heritage." I looked down at the letter without opening it. News traveled faster in this city than I'd given it credit for. How long had we been here?

We hadn't even properly settled in before this arrived. Either someone at the gate had sold our information, or this district had watchers built into it, or Angel's Gate itself was a web that had been woven long before we arrived—anything that fell into it got noticed immediately. I held the letter and turned to look at Olivia.

She was already studying the seal, her expression unchanged but something shifting in her eyes—a thin layer of calculation, as though she was working through who might be standing behind this letter, what they might want to discuss, and which of the available traps would be most elegantly concealed.

"What do you think?" I asked her.

"Go, or don't go?" Olivia didn't answer immediately. She looked at the letter for a moment, then raised her eyes to my face. In that instant, I understood with complete clarity—from the moment we'd entered Angel's Gate, tonight was never going to be the quiet, uneventful passage I'd planned for. Olivia clearly understood the same thing. She paused for half a beat, then spoke with characteristic calm:"Open it first."

I looked down at the envelope in my hands—far too clean for this rotting building—and pressed my thumb slowly against the seal. It didn't feel like a letter. It felt like a ticket. The kind where you couldn't tell, until the doors opened, whether it was an invitation to a performance or a one-way passage to something considerably less entertaining.