Chương 105: Priest by Day, Thief by Night

Inside the mountain, there were more empty shelves than gold coins. Past the entrance, the path split into forty branches. An owl eye was carved at each fork. The first eye looked left, and the second eye looked at the ceiling. Only the fortieth eye stared straight at the person who had come in.

"It looks creepy." Kichan said.

"You say that after opening the door?" Riphiel asked.

"The mountain opened the door." Argaon was still looking at the entrance rock.

"It listened to you."

"Either way, I didn't push it." Gold coins were piled up in the first storage room. Some had the face of a king stamped on them, and some were tribal coins with holes through them. Silver notes from a merchant guild that no longer existed and elven trade plaques were mixed together in one box. Dust leapt into the pile of gold coins.

"Kyu."

"Spit all of it out when you come out." Kichan left Dust there and went to the next storage room. At the second fork, the path split again into three. The owl eyes on the wall were looking left, down, and back.

"Why is it looking back?" When Kichan turned around, a small door had opened in the wall they had just passed. Dust, with gold coins stuck to its body, went inside first. Beyond the door was a collapsed kitchen. A stone stove, a blackened pot, and a wooden spoon sized for a child's hand remained there. Three names were carved over one another on the handle of the wooden spoon. One was human writing, and two were demihuman marks.

It was an object passed to the next child when one child grew and the spoon became too small for that hand. Kichan did not set the spoon beside the gold coins. He returned it to the pot where it had been.

"This isn't a treasure room. This is where they cooked." Riphiel rubbed the ash trapped beneath the stove between her fingers.

"It was used for many years. These were not supplies hidden for a short time." The party searched storage rooms one by one by following the directions the owl eyes were looking. Batu smelled closed doors, and Valkyrie stretched its body into cracks in the ceiling to push latches. If they read an eye wrong, they came back to the same fork. Only after seeing the same pile of gold coins for the fourth time did Argaon admit that Kichan was lost.

"We came here earlier."

"All gold coins look the same."

"The hollow Dust chewed out is the same." Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. One side of the gold pile really had a dent in the shape of Dust's body. The second storage room held nothing. When they wiped the dust on the shelves, round marks appeared where grain sacks had been. Village names and numbers were written on the wall. Twelve sacks arrived. Northern valley, four sacks. Riverside refugees, three sacks. Fever village, two sacks. Remaining, three sacks.

The third storage room held children's clothes bundled by size. The smallest winter coat had its sleeves extended three times. Demihuman leather knots had been added over human-style straight stitching, and the last repair had used elven thread. Riphiel picked up the thread.

"They used something this expensive on the sleeve of a child's coat."

"As long as it was warm."

"That makes it even stranger. Normally it is used for decoration." The coat's lining had been worn smooth as a palm wherever it had been patched and worn again. There was no decoration. The fourth room held medicine bottles and bandages, the fifth held blankets, and the sixth held boxes that had contained salt and dried roots.

"Is this really a treasure cave?" Kichan asked.

"To someone, yes." Riphiel placed the children's clothes back on the shelf. There were more ration ledgers than piles of gold coins. There were separate ledgers for items brought in and items sent out. Incoming gold coins were recorded only by weight, but outgoing grain listed how many people lived in each house and how many children there were. At the front of the first ledger, the marks of forty people had been stamped. Most of the names had been scratched away.

What remained identified only their trades and circumstances. A farmer who lost his family. A merchant from a starving village. A soldier who left the human army. A warrior who left a demihuman unit. A wounded person who could not receive treatment.

"There are no professional thieves." Kichan said.

"Who starts out as a professional?" Riphiel answered.

"What about you?"

"I am not a thief." An elven trade plaque she had taken a little earlier was sticking out of her bag.

"What is that?"

"I'm going to return it to its owner."

"Who is that?"

"I will have to find out." The same handwriting appeared in the day records and the night records of the ledger. The day records described a priest who treated refugees. He petitioned the Papal State and the royal court to open their warehouses and demanded that medicine be sent even to enemy civilians. The night records described a thief leader who stole two military ration carts. He took blankets from a noble's warehouse and medicinal herbs from a demihuman chieftain. The dates of the two records alternated.

By day, he treated patients in a fever village. That night, the royal medicine warehouse was robbed. By day, he wrote down the names of starving children. That night, military ration wagons disappeared. The name had been scratched out, but the habits of the handwriting were the same. When writing the number four, the last stroke was long, and beside the word molly there was always a leaf shape drawn. Kichan laid two pages over each other.

"Same person."

"Do not decide that yet." Riphiel said, but her voice was smaller than before. The party went as far as the fortieth fork. At the end of the path was a small room shaped like a chapel. There was no altar, only one nail driven into one side of the wall. Two sets of clothes hung together on that nail. A faded priest's robe. A black thief mask that covered the entire face. On the chest of the priest's robe, the old Papal State seal of wings overlapping a cup still remained.

It was the same shape Seria had seen inside the cover of the grimoire. Inside the mask was carved the owl-eye pattern of the thief both armies had cursed for a long time. Riphiel looked back and forth between the last page of the ledger and the seal.

"If this priest is the relief priest who entrusted the Fragment of God's Word to the Papal State..."

"Then at night, he was the thief leader here." Kichan lifted the mask and held it over the priest's robe. The size matched. Argaon rubbed the dried bloodstain under the nail with a fingertip.

"It is old. There is no trace that they were ever hung separately." In the Papal State records, only the white priest's robe remained, and in both armies' records, only the black mask remained. In this room, the two hung on the same nail. The priest by day and the thief by night were the same person.