When Rei returned to the site of Byune and Keena's fight, bringing a guard along with him, the scene that greeted him was entirely unexpected.
Despite still being bound, Keena was chatting amicably with Marina and Vihera—smiling, even.
"...Rei, I was called here because I heard we'd caught someone involved in this incident. What's going on here?"
"No, I can generally guess... but it's still an unexpected sight."
Rei's hardline approach toward Keena had been calculated from the start. The plan was for him to play the bad cop and corner her while Marina and Vihera took a gentler approach, lowering her guard so they could extract information.
However, keeping Rei—the one playing the heavy—at the scene would only keep her tense. That was why he had stepped away to fetch the guards. But returning to find such a harmonious atmosphere was the last thing he expected.
"Ah."
Marina was the first to notice Rei and the guard.
Vihera and Keena followed in turn.
Keena's reaction to seeing Rei was by far the most dramatic.
The brush with death she had suffered at the hands of the Death Scythe had clearly left a deep scar.
She was no stranger to life-or-death situations in the heat of combat—her work as an assassin had guaranteed that. But the mortal terror she had felt in front of Rei was something fundamentally different.
It was so overwhelming that it made her wonder if every other brush with killing intent she had ever experienced was fake.
"It's alright. If you answer their questions honestly, Rei won't do anything to you."
"...Yes. You're right."
At Marina's reassurance, Keena's tension eased slightly.
Rei was genuinely surprised they had managed to get her to open up so much in the brief time he'd been gone.
"Alright, I'm handing Keena over to you. She's agreed to cooperate with the interrogation, so please treat her well."
"Y-yes, ma'am!"
The male guard, on the receiving end of Marina's radiant smile, replied with a face flushed bright red.
Watching the guard's reaction, Rei found himself idly reflecting on how he hadn't responded like that to Marina in a while—a completely trivial thought.
Taking the end of the rope binding Keena from Marina, the guard led her away.
Keena offered no resistance, docilely following as the guard pulled the rope along.
Just as Marina had indicated, she seemed prepared to submit quietly to questioning.
Once the two had disappeared from view entirely, Rei turned to Marina with a look of exasperation.
"I'm amazed you tamed her so thoroughly in such a short time."
"My, 'tamed' is a rather poor choice of words, don't you think? I'd appreciate it if you said we 'got along' instead."
"From where I'm standing, it's the same thing. She's an assassin who has killed countless people. Which means she's probably looking at..."
"The death penalty, right?"
Vihera chimed in, finishing Rei's thought.
Neither he nor Marina argued the point.
It was simply a fact—captured assassins were almost always sentenced to death.
A heavy silence settled over the group.
While Rei felt nothing in particular, Marina and Vihera—who had at least spoken with Keena briefly—felt a faint pang of pity.
The person killed had been Tris's subordinate, hired after he arrived in Gilm. He had no connection to Marina or Vihera whatsoever.
...Well, Marina, as the former Guild Master, might have recalled something if she heard the fallen adventurer's name.
Regardless, they bore no personal grudge toward Keena for the killing.
If anything, having exchanged words with her, they even felt a degree of fondness.
Marina, following that train of thought, suddenly remembered something. When she had gone to speak with Daskar about stepping down as Guild Master, the Prairie Wolves—Gilm's intelligence arm—had lamented their shortage of manpower.
The Prairie Wolves were a former bandit gang... or rather, a band of chivalrous thieves. Because of that, their numbers had always been significantly smaller than those of other groups.
They had managed to scrape by until now, but with Gilm's continued growth, that was no longer viable.
Of course, "growth" in this context didn't refer to Gilm's physical size, but rather the expanding scope of the Prairie Wolves' operations.
That's right. From what I gathered in our conversation, she wasn't really a bad person. It might be worth at least bringing it up with them. Whether or not they take her is up to them.
She'd discuss it with Daskar later.
With that in mind, Marina spoke up again.
"Now then, there are a few things I learned from talking with Keena. First of all, the one who brought her the job wasn't Precious... but a man who looked like an adventurer."
"...Figured as much."
Rei never believed Precious would be careless enough to directly commission an assassination.
If he were going to issue orders, Rei assumed he would either place several intermediaries in between or have a subordinate make the request on his behalf.
Actually, wait. Would he really use intermediaries in this case? It depends on his current situation. If he felt threatened by us after the Slum District incident, would he really take his time like that? Or is the delay since then his doing?
Some days had passed since the Slum District incident.
It was possible he had placed several intermediaries in between during that time before hiring Keena.
Rei entertained the thought for a moment, but simultaneously recalled what he had seen of Precious in the Slum District.
More precisely, not Precious himself, but the group surrounding him who appeared to be his guards.
Among them had been a man who looked like an adventurer—or more accurately, a former adventurer.
Of course, in a city teeming with adventurers like Gilm, men who "looked like adventurers" were a dime a dozen.
In terms of sheer numbers, Gilm boasted one of the largest adventurer populations in the Kingdom of Mireana.
Even so, the fact that someone among Precious's guards fit that description nagged at him.
If you're going to place someone in between, would you deliberately use an adventurer? If you just operated with people from the underworld, there'd be no issue.
With that in mind, he explained his reasoning to Marina and Vihera.
...Byune, meanwhile, was leaning against Set, completely asleep in the spring sunshine.
Given that she had just fought Keena, Rei figured this much was understandable. He didn't comment on it, finished his explanation, and then spoke again.
"That being the case, the adventurer-like man among Precious's guards is bothering me. What do you two think?"
"Logically, I don't think someone directly linked to Precious would surface so easily... but what do you think, Marina?"
"You're right. The most convenient possibility for us is that after the Slum District incident, no one was willing to cooperate with Precious anymore. He pushed on for a few days, but ultimately that failed too... and in the end, he had no choice but to order his own guard to carry out the assassination."
"In that case, if we show the guard to Keena, she could confirm it was Precious's doing?"
"It'd be nice if they showed their tail that easily," Vihera said flatly in response to Rei.
Precious had never left behind clear evidence before.
Assuming he would do so just this once was more than a little naive.
"But it's better than doing nothing, right?"
"...True. Though if that's the case, shouldn't we have held onto Keena instead of handing her over?"
"That's moot now."
The original plan had been for Rei to take a hardline stance to extract information, then disappear so Keena would let her guard down and talk more freely. Fetching the guards had simply been a convenient excuse for him to leave.
And since they never expected to build such a friendly rapport with her, the current situation was genuinely unexpected for all of them.
"It can't be helped. I had some thoughts about Keena, too. If she cooperates with our investigation, we could offer her a reduced sentence. Tris might not be happy about it, though."
From their conversation with Keena, both Marina and Vihera knew she had carried out a job today—an assassination.
Whether it was fortunate or not, the target had apparently been Tris's subordinate rather than the man himself. Even so, it didn't change the fact that Tris had lost a subordinate.
On a personal level, he likely couldn't forgive that. But as a shrewd merchant, Marina was confident he would prioritize the benefit of cornering Precious once he understood the advantage.
"Then I'll leave that to you. To confirm whether that guard is Precious's man, we'll need to find Precious first."
"But if it was Precious's guard who made the request... would he really keep him in Gilm indefinitely? Isn't it possible he's already left?"
At Vihera's words, Rei conceded the possibility.
At the same time, he wondered whether Precious would so easily send away someone he trusted enough to bring into what amounted to enemy territory.
If it were simply a matter of manpower, he could always hire adventurers from the Slum District or back alleys—even along the main streets, if he was willing to risk his circumstances being partially known.
But someone he trusted from the bottom of his heart? People like that were rare.
Viewed in that light, there was a very real chance the guard hadn't left yet.
Though that assumes the person who actually hired Keena really was that man.
In the end, it all came back to that question.
But with no other leads, they had no choice but to bet on this one.
"As for Precious's whereabouts, the fact that he used Keena suggests he's probably somewhere in the back alleys."
"That's highly likely. But there's a chance Tris might have gotten his hands on some information, so I'll ask him about that."
"...But finding evidence on Precious is a race between us and Tris, isn't it? Even if you go ask, I doubt he'll tell you anything willingly."
"Probably not. But doing something is better than nothing. By making a show of gathering information on Precious, we might be able to rattle him. Tris aside, at least Precious might start to panic."
The result of that panic had likely been the attack on the branch office.
But now that the perpetrator had been captured, even if the request had gone through intermediaries, there was a possibility it could lead back to him.
And if Precious's guard had made the request directly, they could reach Precious that much faster and more reliably.
"I'll make sure to discuss this thoroughly with Daskar. That said, we don't know how the person pulling the strings will try to leave Gilm, so I can't guarantee anything."
Marina knew that if the man who served as Precious's guard tried to leave Gilm, she couldn't stop him completely.
If he tried to leave without any subterfuge, they might be able to spot him. But if he left alongside someone unconnected to the affair, he'd be far harder to find.
Worse still, if he accepted a private commission—not through the Guild—as someone's escort and simply departed Gilm that way, it would become even more troublesome.
"Since he went to the trouble of bringing him all the way to Gilm, he must be someone Precious trusts considerably. So there's the question of whether he'd let him go that easily... but there's no point in speculating about that here, is there?"
At Vihera's words, Rei and Marina each nodded and immediately sprang into action.
"Then I'll go question Tris."
"I need to speak with Daskar about this. Vihera, what about you?"
"Let's see... I'll head to the Guard Station. Now that Keena has been captured, there's a chance someone might come to silence her."
With an assassin in custody, the employer couldn't afford to have unfavorable information leaked.
It was entirely possible someone would act on that fear.
And so, the members of the Crimson Lotus Wings each set out on their separate courses.
...Naturally, Byune accompanied Vihera, and Set went with Rei.