A few weeks had passed since the inquisition, and they went rather uneventfully.

Aldous’s execution date was still a season away. Renea had been confined to the castle as a temporary measure, until Sigurd, the acting regent, returned and decided what to do with her.

Finally, the decision was promptly made to add Sophie to the family register. At the month’s turn, she would officially receive the surname eum-Creid, with the ceremony coinciding with one of Varant’s most important festivals.

Besides that, there wasn’t much of note. Since his memories of his past life were neatly locked away, Ailn’s sense of reality was rather loosely tethered. He spent fifteen minutes in the void, three days solving his own murder, and now a few weeks being an actual resident of this world.

It was only after the dust settled that his existence started to feel anchored. All the way ‘til the end of the inquisition, he almost thought it was a long dream, like a run-on sentence that would get deleted at any moment.

Ailn was sitting quietly in the council room with Sophie, reading a history of the empire. As the new Saintess, she went around the castle clad in the robe Renea used to wear, assuming the duties Renea used to perform, her deadpan expression slowly starting to veer into a scowl.

This entire day, she’d spent a not insignificant amount of her time drafting a homily. Shadow beasts had broken past the northern wall and attacked one of the fortified villages that ran alongside the wall.

About a hundred kilometers away, it wasn’t a short trip.

Sophie needed to make the journey not just to heal the wounded, but to reinvigorate their spirits. And she seemed none too pleased at having to play the beacon of hope for these suffering people.

Looking up from her parchment, and quietly setting down the quill, Sophie stared at Ailn.

He had a habit of tapping on the page as he read.

“Ailn. Let me be forthright with you. I find your presence bothersome,” Sophie said.

“Sorry?” Ailn looked up from the book he had been quietly reading for the last two days. It was the first word he’d said to Sophie in those two days, in fact.

“This is no fault of your own. The blame lies with myself,” Sophie said, though she didn’t sound particularly apologetic.

“You really just hit me with the formal ‘it’s not you it’s me,’ huh?” Ailn arched an eyebrow in disbelief. “Can I ask why?”

“I enjoy my solitude. And you disturb the quiet,” Sophie said, coolly.

“...What, the tapping? Are you kidding me?” Ailn asked.

Ailn wasn’t an easy person to offend, but even he was a little galled. The council room wasn’t exactly his first choice for doing research, either. Especially not with Sophie subtly glowering the whole time.

“Please take your leave,” Sophie said.

“Fine,” Ailn got up with a sigh. Then he glanced at Sophie’s parchment. “By the way, you spelled ‘renewal’ wrong.”

Before he knew it, he was shoved into the corridor.

Taking a deep, calming breath, Ailn made his way to the Great Hall, nodding to the guard, and going up the steps to the solar. He was checking in on the other pain in the neck sister. Knocking politely on the wood of one of the shelves, he idled by the entrance to the lord’s chamber.

“Is that you, Ennieux?” a muffled voice called out.

“It’s me,” Ailn said.

No response. That meant she didn’t particularly care to talk to him, but also that there wasn’t any problem with him coming in.

“Your sister kicked me out,” Ailn said.

“...Our sister,” Renea’s voice came out from under her covers.

“I did my best to watch her,” Ailn ignored Renea. “But if she doesn’t want me there, there isn’t much I can do.”

“She needs time,” Renea mumbled.

Ailn wasn’t the only one in the castle who had a hard time dealing with Sophie.

It seems the constant rugpulls, fakeouts, and switcheroos of the inquisition had completely addled the knights’ sense of who the nice sister was. Sophie, at her best taciturn, and at her worst a passive aggressive holy terror, had the knights missing Renea.

Thus, the fake’s stock was on the rise. The kind Renea who made flowery motions and sugary smiles when she ‘healed’ may have lacked the divine blessing. But it was grouchy Sophie who lacked bedside manner, or… manners in general.

That said, the way Renea was wallowing in bed right now, she wasn’t much better.

The day after the inquisition she’d seemed almost chipper, sounding surprisingly optimistic about the next stage of her life, free of pretenses and falsehoods.

But without her usual duties to perform, her sense of self-worth plummeted again pretty fast. She tended to lay around in bed all day, only briefly waking up to eat a minimal amount, or to quietly pray under her covers.

“Worry about yourself, first,” Ailn said. “You’re making Ennieux look like Martha Stewart right now.”

“...Who?” Renea asked.

“You don’t know Martha Stewart?” Ailn asked, genuinely stunned. “Were you six years old when you died?”

“I wasn’t six. I just wasn’t an old man like you,” Renea snapped.

“I was just a few years older than this body when I died,” Ailn shrugged. He didn’t quite remember, but he knew it was the truth.

Renea peeked out from under the covers.

“Then why do you act like a cynical old man?” Renea wrinkled her nose, and her scowl took on some genuine anger. “I told you not to come in here if you smoked.”

She hid back under the covers.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Ailn winced. He still felt a little bad about that one. “I was in a profession that rewards cynicism. I’m a detective.”

“...Oh. That makes sense actually,” Renea’s blankets seemed to pause in reflection.

“Can’t you help Sophie with the clerical stuff? She’s having a hard time with the homily. Writing… spelling… saying nice things,” Ailn gave a poor review of what he’d seen of her prepared sermon. “She needs a little hand holding.”

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And it would give Renea something better to do than waste away feeling sorry for herself.

“She needs to learn how to do it on her own,” Renea said tersely.

“Then teach her.”

“...She would’ve had a first class education as a child if she didn’t always skip her classes,” Renea grumbled.

“What’s past is past. What’s that got to do with now?”

“I… I don’t really feel up to seeing her,” Renea said.

The truth came out.

The two sisters hadn’t exactly been at odds since the inquisition. But things hadn’t been normal for them, either.

For nearly ten years, the two of them had to either stay together constantly or risk giving up the charade. They couldn’t take any personal or emotional space even if they wanted to.

Now, simple daily life kept them apart. Their emotions were confused, even paradoxical. The sudden realization of freedom was gratifying, but it came with a sense of loss. There wasn’t really any nice way to say it: the two sisters were borderline codependent.

Sophie wasn’t a patient person, by any means. But there was a reason she was so out of sorts, when all she had to do was write a simple sermon. Renea’s tranquil presence used to keep her calm, and now it was gone.

And Renea, for all her grumbling, obviously enjoyed taking care of her sister. She’d lost more than just her Saintess duties, and it was making her feel useless.

That was the surface of it, at least. Ailn suspected there was a deeper cause for their awkwardness.

It was probably Aldous.

Their exact feelings, though, were anyone’s guess. He wasn’t going to prod at it.

“Well, do what you want,” Ailn shrugged. “You’re almost an adult. You can make your own decisions.”

He said he’d take care of her. Not that he’d baby her.

“...Just go away,” Renea said. The way her voice was muffled, it sounded like her face was mushed into a pillow.

“By the way, I need money,” Ailn said.

“Are you serious? Are you actually a bum?” Renea whined. “You’re not gonna gamble are you?”

“I promise you that what I’m doing is actually important,” Ailn said.

“...Whatever. There’s a small coin chest at the foot of my bed. Don’t take more than a couple silvers. I’ll count,” Renea said, sounding way too lazy to actually make good on her threat.

Not that Ailn was going to take advantage. He took his two silver coins and headed out.

On his way out of the Great Hall, Ailn debated whether he’d ever broach the topic: that he had a mission to catch reincarnators. He promised he’d treat her like his real sister, but Ailn wasn’t sure whether that meant keeping her in the loop or keeping her away from danger.

At any rate, it was time to hit up the town.

----------------------------------------

Hanging around a tavern wasn’t exactly the most efficient way to do things, but it was a start.

Information wasn’t easy to come by in this world. Public records weren’t nearly as detailed, and, at any rate, it wasn’t the kind of info he needed.

Ideally, he’d want a collection of profiles for important figures—basically a ‘Who’s Who in the Empire’ anthology.

Ailn realized something when he received Renea’s shard: securing the ruby was a top-loaded task, in more than one way.

Renea’s shard was more than ten times the size of Cairn’s. And if Ailn’s conjecture was correct, then the size of someone’s shard would roughly match their social standing—at least for the ruby.

He only had a sample of two, but both Cairn and Renea had shards that matched the circumstances of their births. Cairn was born into court gentry, and Renea into high nobility.

Ailn wasn’t certain it would always be that simple. But reincarnators with ruby shards would tend to go upwards, anyway. Since reincarnators with ruby shards were able to exert unconscious influence on other people’s psyches, they’d have strong social mobility regardless of where on the rung they started.

In short, Ailn needed to look for nobles. The higher the noble the better, because it likely meant a larger shard.

Unfortunately, he’d probably already found Varant’s biggest shard. In fact, Renea was likely the biggest shard in the entire duchy.

The knights were all reasonably high status, but Ailn was certain at this point that being a reincarnator meant you couldn’t use holy aura. De facto, that meant none of the knights were reincarnators.

Right now he was going fishing.

He had a good hypothesis, but he needed to try and falsify it. So, he was looking for a third data point, and one that was reasonably distinct from the first two.

If Ailn found someone of relatively modest social standing with a large shard, then he’d have to throw out his theory. He’d be back to square one, but it was better to know now than later. If his assumptions were wrong, and he acted on them, he’d end up wasting a lot of time traveling to the domains of other nobles.

And since traveling wasn’t a trivial thing in his world, he could lose a lot more than just time.

Which meant besides the task of finding reincarnators, he just had to become generally acquainted with the world as best as possible. He wasn’t going to make any long treks until he felt confident he knew the empire well enough.

“The east? Disabuse yourself of such fantasies” the young merchant waved his goblet around dismissively. He looked pretty well-to-do for his age. “The east is no paradise.”

“I glimpsed a lady from the east but once, and I thought I’d seen a fairy… Never before had I beheld such beauty!” the old man groused. “Were I a merchant, I’d roam the world.”

When the older man walked in, he’d passed by Ailn. Calloused hands, developed forearms—educated guess was that he was an artisan. The earthy smell made Ailn think woodworker or leatherworker.

“Were you a merchant, you’d be presumed conniving before you breathed a word,” the merchant sighed. “Your ‘fairy’ surely looks upon us as fleas, if she were truly from the east.”

The inn this tavern was a part of was popular with traveling merchants. The wine was good here—even Ailn liked it—and it was close to the market.

Merchants and artisans liked to break bread here after making deals with each other.

It was Ailn’s smartest tack at the moment, and if nothing else, it helped him get a pulse on the town. Unfortunately, no particular lead had come up yet.

He’d gotten at least a few uneasy glances from the merchant, though.

There was a chance that the cloak and hood he currently wore made people too wary. His ‘incognito’ getup was far from inconspicuous, but it was still a hundred times better than openly displaying his silver hair. So there wasn’t anything that could be done about it.

Still, if wearing a cloak and hood was enough to stop people from talking, then coming here was futile anyway. He’d have to rethink things if this didn’t bring results.

While Ailn debated the degree to which his cloak undermined this approach, a set of loud footsteps could be heard approaching, and sure enough the inn’s doorway gave way with a loud creak.

“Geoff! Give me a moment of your time!” a man called out. “I’ve got an offer for you!”

“By the gods, no,” the merchant, presumably named Geoff, buried his face in his hands. “This man never fails to find me… how?!”

“A fellow merchant?” the old artisan asked.

“Do not flatter him so,” Geoff said, sounding quite unhappy.

With a sunny overcoat over his charcoal gray tunic, the man standing at the entrance of the inn would catch anyone’s eye even from afar. His outfit got even stranger with a closer look: suede gloves and a fur-lined trapper hat suggested affluence, but his leather boots were in serious need of replacement.

The man looked like he could benefit from his mother dressing him.

“Geoff, listen to me,” the man said. “I’ve got a simple trade for you. Just hear me out.”

“...What is it?” Geoff groaned. He made a face when he saw what was in his acquaintance’s hand. “Is this a jest?”

“No sir, it is not,” the man said triumphantly. “I’d like to trade you this appleseed.”

“A single appleseed,” Geoff said. “You wish to sell me… a single appleseed.”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you suppose I’m too poor to buy the whole apple?” Geoff asked.

“That would defeat the point, my friend. And all I ask in return is—”

“No.”

Geoff cut him off before he could even start bartering.

“What? How do you know you’re unwilling before I ask?” the man demanded.

“It won’t grow here!” Geoff snapped. Chugging the rest of his ale, he gave a look to his artisan friend which suggested they leave. “Stop hounding me!”

Geoff set off, his artisan friend in tow, looking rather disoriented. He probably didn’t expect to be moving around while he was that drunk.

The failed dealmaker sighed, his gloomy, overcast face quite at odds with his sunny coat. Then, catching Ailn’s eye, he came trudging over.

“You look like you’re having a rough day too,” the man said. “Life really knows how to make you feel like a loser, sometimes.”

“...Sure does,” Ailn said obliquely.

The man was all set to share miseries, even if Ailn didn’t actually have any. The guy had probably ruined a lot of people’s meals over the years, frankly.

In this case, his overfamiliar behavior suited Ailn just fine.

“I’m Ceric Windrider,” the man grinned, extending his hand for a handshake.