Chapter 319 — Santis's Home

The little girl poked her head out the door, peering this way and that with one part nervousness and nine parts curiosity at the three carriages halted before the house. The great carriages, emblazoned with noble crests, looked thoroughly out of place on this street—though a good deal better than they would have looked parked on Sturgeon Street. A few residents of Cross Street had already been drawn out, watching from a distance, but none dared come too close. The imposing soldiers who stood beside the carriages, clad in black steel light armor and dark blue tabards bearing medallions, wore black steel longswords at their waists—blades with strange triggers and runes that filled the onlooker with awe. To the people of Cross Street, soldiers of that kind were not to be trifled with under any circumstances.

From inside the house came her mother's shout: "Pepe! Don't leave the door open! Get back inside!"

The little girl cast one last reluctant glance at the soldier standing near their door. The fierce, armored soldier noticed the little girl's gaze and gave her a kindly smile and a nod.

The little girl let out a small gasp and darted back into the house.

"The Duke has ordered me to return to the royal capital to recruit a number of mages," Santis explained to his parents in the main room, accounting for his sudden homecoming. "I won't be staying here—I'll be at the Duke's residence on Crown Street."

The middle-aged couple had already worked out what was going on, and their hearts had settled—yet they still gazed at Santis in his finely woven robe with a kind of disbelief, as though unable to believe that this high-spirited young man was truly their son, the one who had gone off to the Dark Mountains and ought by rights to have been suffering hardships out in the world. Their eyes inevitably drifted to the people standing beside Santis, and the mother spoke: "And these are...?"

"Greetings, madam. I am Gipri, a mage's apprentice in service to the Cecil family, appointed by the Duke's command to serve as Mr. Santis's assistant."

"Pierce. A guard, nothing more."

The two agents, graduates of the Military Security and Intelligence Bureau, introduced themselves in keeping with their assigned identities and temperaments—but Santis, wedged between them, was plainly not adjusting well to the atmosphere. The young arcanist hastened to break the somewhat stiff mood: "Where's Miles?"

Miles was his younger brother, the second child of the family.

"Miles has gone to the tanner's," his father said. "There's little work to be had in winter, but he found a job tanning hides for a noble lord."

Santis nodded. Outside Cecil Territory, it was well-nigh impossible for common folk to find work in winter—but this was the royal capital after all, and the noble lords still needed a certain number of servants to do things for them come winter. For commoners scraping by, such odd jobs were a tremendous boon; and so, meager as the pay might be, everyone scrambled for them.

Yet as his gaze swept across the main room of the house, the young arcanist's brow furrowed slightly.

"Didn't I send money home three times?" he said, frowning. "Even if it wasn't enough to move to a better neighborhood like Felton Street, you should at least have repaired the doors and windows, enlarged the stove... Why is it still like this?"

Santis's father worked as a cook in a noble household, and his mother was a herbalist; by the standards of commoners, the family already belonged to the well-off. Years ago they had in fact had the chance to move to a better "upper-class neighborhood"—but in order to send Santis to the Mages' Association, the whole family had drained their savings, and with that they lost the opportunity to move and "rise in station." This was also what Santis felt most indebted to his family for after he failed in his attempt to break through to third-rank mage. And so the very first thing he did after settling down in Cecil Territory and securing a steady income was to save up money and send it home. By his reckoning, given Duke Gao Yang's generosity, two or three years of saving should have been enough for his family to move to the better conditions of Felton Street. Yet now, having come home and taken one look, he found the place still wearing its same dilapidated face—his parents still in patched clothes at home, and his father's one good garment, in all likelihood, still that "cook's uniform" he wore when he went to work at the noble house.

Where had the money sent home gone?

At their son's question, the middle-aged couple exchanged a downcast look. After two or three seconds of awkward silence, the father spoke: "Things were about to get better for us... but before winter set in, your brother fell ill."

The mother took up the thread: "The herbs couldn't cure him, so we took him to the Church of the Shining Star. The church's priest said he had been cursed by cultists—that because his faith in the Lord was not firm, he could not withstand those evil powers..."

"The priest performed a rite of exorcism over him and sprinkled holy water, and Miles was finally cured. But since your father worships the God of Commerce, the priest of the Shining Star Church said that a household harboring a believer in a foreign god and thus falling under a cultist's curse was guilty of sin—so a 'sin-offering' had to be paid before you could take your brother home."

The father shook his head, seeming laden with guilt for having brought trouble on his family through his "wrong faith." "The sin-offering would originally have taken a third to a half of the family's property—short of mortgaging the house, it would have stripped us of nearly everything we owned. But fortunately Count Taut, whom I serve, put in a good word or two, and you have a name registered with the Mages' Association as well, so the church reduced the sin-offering somewhat... But the money we'd set aside to repair the house before winter—that's gone."

Santis's expression gradually darkened.

His fists clenched. He, who had never known how to be angry, felt fury for the first time.

And behind him, Pierce and Gipri exchanged a glance without any change in their expressions.

The two agents silently committed everything they had seen and heard to memory. Then Gipri stepped forward and murmured at Santis's ear: "Do not forget why we are here, Mr. Santis. The Duke will remember for you everything that has happened in this place."

Santis drew a deep breath and looked firmly at his parents. "I've come to take you to Cecil Territory."

"To the Dark Mountains?" His mother was startled.

"To Cecil Territory," Santis corrected her earnestly. "The Dark Mountains are just a place; Cecil Territory is a promised land within them. Father, Mother, do not believe those superstitious rumors about the Dark Mountains. It was indeed desolate once, but Duke Cecil has built it into a safe, prosperous, and stable home. The houses there are sturdier and warmer than in the royal capital; every inch of its soil is watered with druidic potions, rich as the finest land of the Holy Spirit Plain; and Cecil's mighty army keeps the whole territory utterly safe. You will certainly live better there than in the royal capital."

"We read the descriptions in your letters—are they all true?" His mother looked into Santis's eyes with disbelief, then pressed on: "But here in the royal capital..."