Chương 117: The Saint and the Thief Were the Same Man

Seria and Theor opened the grimoire in the shelter kitchen. There was no dry table anywhere else. The cover of the grimoire was stamped with forty owl eyes. Seria placed Church records beside the old Papal State seal on the inside cover. Theor turned pages with one hand.

"The dates are the same." The grimoire's first distribution chart began the day after Elvar took office. On the day Elvar visited the fever village, the grimoire recorded molly and bandages sent to the same village. Papal State documents recorded his petition to the royal court to open its grain warehouses. The record for that night in the grimoire said two royal army grain carts had been seized. Seria placed the two documents side by side.

"Look at the handwriting." The last stroke of the number four was long. Beside the word molly, the same leaf shape had been drawn. Theor opened the drawing of the fortieth fork in the grimoire. Beneath the priest's robe and thief's mask hanging on the same nail, two marks were stamped. The Papal State seal used in the day record and the owl eyes repeated in the night record. Seria put her finger on the date beside the seal.

"The same day. The same hand."

"Now the seal, dates, and route all connect." The two commanders also brought old records from their own camps. The human army's suppression records gave the date on which a black-masked thief leader stole royal army grain. The demihuman records said that on the same day, thieves who used owl eyes raided the medicine warehouse. The quantities stolen matched the amounts recorded as entering the mountain stores. So did the amounts distributed to the refugee village a few days later.

"We recorded this person only as a plunderer." Marten said. Grad closed his own record.

"So did we." There was no mention of thieves in the Church records. Only the record that Elvar cared for refugees and sent the Fragment of God's Word to the Church remained. After he failed to return, a document even proposed him as a candidate for sainthood. The oldest owl-husbandry record dated from that day. The first aviary plan brought from the Church was there too. Under the nest, four small wooden message tubes were drawn.

The dates beside the markings for roof, branch, bridge, and grain cart matched the grimoire's contact chart. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The Church's current courier master explained that those marks indicated old pilgrimage routes. Theor opened the contact chart in the grimoire. Roof was shelter, branch was patrol, bridge was a safe passage, and grain cart was a target for seizure. The courier master did not erase his own explanation.

Instead, he added the meaning from the ledger of the Forty Outlaws beneath it. On one page, he recorded both facts: the Church had used the marks on those message tubes to guide pilgrims, while the outlaws had used them to communicate at night. Seru came down from the beam above the treatment station and landed on the grimoire. The bandage around its chest still could not be removed. Seru scratched once at the cover stamped with forty eyes, then bit the empty message tube Theor held out.

Theor read aloud the Church's first record. One injured white owl returned to the chapel with a leather pouch attached. Inside the pouch were the Fragment of God's Word and a final note. The Church recorded it as a miracle: the white bird had conveyed the Saint's will. In the records of both armies, the same white owl was the first accomplice to operate the Forty Outlaws' communication network. A sacred messenger. The thief's eye. It was the same bird. Theor read the sentence at the very end of the grimoire.

When the world again feeds law before people, send this fragment forth in a hungry person's hand. The Papal State preserved that fragment as a sacred object proving God's will. Long afterward, the fragment came into Kichan's hands. He too stole army grain and fed starving people.

"So it happened as he wished." Grad said. Seria did not nod right away.

"Kichan was not imitating Elvar."

"I know."

"It must not be used to make Kichan the next Saint." That day, a letter arrived from the Papal State. It said to gather and send testimony of the gold ring and wings that appeared during the Requiem. They would judge whether Han Kichan was a vessel of an angel or a foreign Saint who carried out God's will. A document also came from the kingdom. It said grain theft, assault on soldiers, and use of royal markings could not be erased from the records. Publicly, he had to remain a criminal and an exiled foreigner.

The tribal council gave him another name. A dangerous human sorcerer who gave medicine to demihuman children and disrupted a commander's orders. Seria placed the three documents beside the grimoire. Seria set the Papal State review document marked "Candidate for Sainthood: Elvar" beside the refugees' oral record that called him "Saint Elvar." The Papal State had preserved only the priest by day. The armies had preserved only the mask by night and called him a thief.

This time, they were trying to split Kichan into an angel and a criminal.

"Which side will you answer?" Theor asked. Seria took out a blank sheet of paper.

"I will answer neither."

"Then what will you write?" Seria looked outside the kitchen door. The unbroken cup was circling through people's hands. The human farmer and demihuman herbalist were choosing seedlings in the same field. At the bridge construction site, Bram and Kur were exchanging curses again.

"We write what we saw." Seria wrote the first line of the reply to be sent to the Papal State. We do not request that Han Kichan be judged an angel or a Saint. Theor wrote on the next line that they would not hide the record of the supplies he stole and the soldiers he struck. In the same paragraph, he included where those supplies went and what the soldiers had been trying to do when Kichan struck them. Marten wrote his own name on the kingdom document.

He had overlooked the theft of army grain, and he knew how many residents had survived with that grain. Grad also stamped his mark on the reply to the tribal council. He attached both the order releasing the human sorcerer and the list of demihuman children Kichan had treated. The reply did not declare Kichan innocent, nor did it preserve only one name for him. Four copies of the reply were made.

One each was sent to the Papal State, the kingdom, and the tribal council, and the last copy was placed in the border joint ledger. Marten and Grad bound copies of their armies' old records together with the grimoire. The Papal State records were placed among them too. Elvar, the priest of the day, and the thief of the night were the same person. This time, they left both faces in the same ledger without erasing one.