Perhaps he didn’t use it as his workshop, since he didn’t have any signs out. There was only one window, but the shutters were down, and she couldn’t see inside.
The front door was obviously shut, and she couldn’t hear any sounds inside, even when she put her ear against it.
“Not to be rude, but are you sure this is the place?” Phoebe asked politely. Ebel gave a big enough nod they could see it in the bad lighting.
“He lives in a one-story house, and I saw light through the window as soon as he went inside. His neighbor lives in a two-story house that casts a shadow on his rooftop. A streetlight stood directly behind the buildings, so I figured he built his hovel in the middle of what used to be a road.”
Phoebe seemed convinced by Ebel’s detailed account.
“You have a great memory.”
“Thank you, Phoebe.”
Ebel jumped down from the roof, happy for the compliment. He turned toward Rock and Phoebe after he landed with catlike ease.
“All right, it seems the house owner is out. What do you want to do now?” he asked.
“Want to start by knocking on the door?” Rock suggested, knocking on the hovel’s door three times.
They waited a couple of minutes, but there was no reaction, as they expected.
“Guess we’re stuck breaking down the door?” Phoebe rolled up his dress sleeves, revealing his muscular arms.
Rock stopped him despite thinking it was a splendid idea. “Wait. Let’s get a light source first. I doubt there’s any lamps lit if he’s away.”
The closed shutters were of shoddy craftsmanship and had gaps. The sheer lack of light coming through told them it was pitch-dark inside.
“In that case, let’s borrow that.”
Ebel looked toward the streetlight.
The imperial capital streetlights set up on the street corners each consisted of an oil-lit lantern secured to a tall post by wire. The lantern could be removed if they undid the wire. It was at a height an ordinary person couldn’t reach without a ladder, but Ebel needed no such thing.
“Won’t that upset the constables…?”
“I’ll return it when we’re done. We’ll only be borrowing it for a moment.”
“Yeah! We just have to return it before they find out.”
Rock expressed her concern, but Phoebe immediately agreed with Ebel’s plan.
These two might just get along better than I thought. Rock forced a smile as she decided to go along with them.
Ebel easily removed the lantern from the post and hopped down with it. Its warm light surrounded them and illuminated the door. Phoebe’s expression hardened just as Rock was filled with relief.
“Look.”
He pointed at something that’d fallen on the cobblestones in front of the door with the tip of his boot. At first, Rock thought it was a button, but the light revealed it to be a small bloodstain.
“…Oh no…”
Rock was at a loss for words.
The bloodstains had already dried and become discolored, proving they weren’t from today or the day before.
“Break down the door now,” Ebel requested.
Phoebe nodded and twisted the doorknob as hard as he could. The hovel’s door was no match for a battle-hardened mercenary, and it came off its hinges with a creak that sounded like a death cry. The three of them rushed inside through the gap.
But, contrary to what they were expecting, the inside was clean.
Nothing, not even a drop of blood, littered the floor. It looked like someone had swept up the place.
The room’s furnishings consisted of a simple bed, a workbench with fragments of charcoal on it, a desk, and several cupboards. Despite being locked up for some time, it didn’t smell of dust or mold and even seemed to be filled with a familiar, sweet scent.
“No one’s here.”
Rock gasped after looking around the hovel.
Where did Krister get off to after leaving a trail of blood? Of course, there was no guarantee that was his blood, but still…
“I wonder if he was kidnapped or fled in the night…” Phoebe raised an eyebrow.
“Probably the former.”
“What makes you say that?” Phoebe asked Rock.
Rock slowly walked up to the workbench. “This.”
She picked up a piece of charcoal left there. The tip was cut to make it easier to draw marks like the charcoal pencil Rock had at the shop.
“Is that a charcoal pencil?” Ebel asked, coming over with the lantern.
“Yes, it is. It’s a sewing tool used to mark fabrics,” Rock answered, then continued with confidence, “No tailor would run without their sewing tools.”
She knew as someone of the same trade that tailors couldn’t earn the price of bread without their tools. Krister probably couldn’t do business without the tools he’d grown accustomed to.
“I see…” Phoebe groaned, his expression darkening.
A kidnapping worsened the situation significantly compared to him fleeing on his own. Krister’s life might be in danger as they spoke.
“But I don’t see any other tools.” Ebel grimaced as he closely examined the workbench. “Did he purposely not bring it because you can get charcoal anywhere? Or did someone leave it, not knowing it was a sewing tool…?”
As Ebel said, there weren’t any other sewing tools around aside from the charcoal. Pincushions, measuring tape, scissors, needle threaders, punch needles, and the like were expected at a tailor’s workbench, and Krister also sold fabric and buttons. None of those items could be found anywhere.
“Maybe he put his other tools away. Let’s check,” Rock suggested, prompting everyone to search the house.
The three of them combed the room, relying on the light from their lantern. But they couldn’t find any other tools, scraps of fabric, buttons, or clothes for sale in the market.
All they found was a shriveled apple and moldy old bread in the cupboard and books shoved messily under the desk. Dust had fallen into his water jug, and it was easy to see the stagnant water hadn’t been used for a long time.
“I’m surprised that bastard could read.”
Phoebe crouched and pulled the pile of books out from under the desk. A thin layer of dust had collected on top of them, but Phoebe dusted them off and checked the contents of each volume.
“There are books on Southern history, climate, culture, and even their old lullabies…”
“I wonder if he collected them for Nisha,” Rock said cheerfully.
Phoebe seemed unsure of how to react. He glanced at his daughter’s face and smiled.
“Maybe so.”
Phoebe flipped through a book and frowned at the sentence recorded on the endpaper.
“This is a rental. It’ll cost him a fortune if he doesn’t return it soon.”
Books were valuable in the imperial capital because every volume was written by hand and took time and effort to create. Commoners couldn’t afford them, which was why book rental shops were established around the capital. Rock wasn’t the reading type, but she knew Phoebe often visited those shops.
“I wonder if they’re all rentals. Should we return them for him?” Rock asked.
“Don’t even try. You’ll end up paying for them.”
Rock and Phoebe checked every book, and it turned out most of them were rentals. Then something else slipped out from between one book’s covers onto the ground.
“…What’s this?” Ebel picked it up, raised the lantern, and looked at the cover. “‘Sales Ledger’… It looks like it’s his account book.”
It was a simple notebook with its pages tied together with string—clearly different from a normal book.
“This falls in your wheelhouse, Roxy.”
Rock excitedly opened the ledger Ebel handed her.
Contrary to his work ethic, Krister seemed to be diligent when it came to bookkeeping. He’d recorded his sales and necessary expenses in detail, and from that, Rock could tell he was
making a decent profit as a tailor. Judging by customer numbers alone, he had far more traffic than Floria Clothes Shop, making Rock a little jealous.
But that was trivial now.
The big job in question was mentioned about a month ago, just around when Nisha stopped seeing Krister. He’d received an order for thirty blue robes with wool satin faille fabric and a special request for a unique embroidery, but he didn’t detail what kind of embroidery.
And although he didn’t write down the customer’s name, they were definitely a big spender.
“He received full pay the same day he accepted the order.” Rock explained what she’d learned from the ledger to Phoebe and Ebel. “And it was ten times market price. This goes beyond just a generous or lavish spender.”
Krister likely overcharged his customers, so he must’ve been ecstatic they were willing to pay this much.
And if that wasn’t juicy enough, he received the same amount of money once every few days in the name of expenses. Rock had no way of telling if Krister or the customer suggested the extra payments, but either way, it meant his customer was wealthy enough to afford it.
“It’s not your average slightly rich man we’re dealing with here. Must be a wealthy merchant or some nob…” Phoebe paid Ebel a sideways glance.
“I could afford it,” Ebel agreed. “But the buyer’s methods lack class.” He seemed like he’d more to say but stopped to quietly sneeze in the elegant way only noblemen could. Embarrassed, he apologized. “Forgive me. An odd smell has been tickling my nose since entering the room…”
“I know what you mean. There’s something snooty about this smell; it’s grating on my nerves.” Phoebe scrunched up his nose.
A sweet smell hung thick in Krister’s apartment. It had a faint but unique scent, like smoked wood. Rock felt as if she’d smelled the same scent years ago.
“What kind of scent is this?” Rock asked the room.
Ebel was first to answer.
“Fragrant wood.”
“What’s that…?”
“It’s an incense made from sweet-smelling trees. And it’s an incredibly high-quality one too.”
No wonder why it smelled like smoked wood then. Yet, it didn’t quite smell smoky and had a slightly sweet scent, which gave it the qualities of an expensive fragrance.
“People who enjoy this smell often burn the incense in their rooms or perfume their clothes with it.” Ebel frowned as he continued, “This kind of incense is almost always imported. It’s far from cheap.”
“It’s the kind you have to cough up a mountain of gold coins just to buy one of this size,” Phoebe explained, pointing to his pinky finger. He might have had big, bony fingers, but it still wasn’t big enough to adequately convey the scent’s expense.
Rock grimaced.
“For his room to have such an expensive smell must mean—”
“It’s likely the smell of a customer who came here.”
“And I’m willing to bet it’s the wealthy customer who dumped a pile of money on him to make robes,” Phoebe finished, his thoughts in perfect sync with Ebel’s.
Rock gleaned just how rich this customer was from Krister’s ledger. Someone who could pay in advance for a huge order of thirty robes, frequently paid for expenses along the way, and had money to spare for the luxury of perfuming their clothes with incense had to be as wealthy as a nobleman.
The problem at hand was if and how this person was related to Krister’s disappearance, but the answer still eluded them.
And something else bothered Rock.
“The ledger doesn’t state if he delivered the goods.”
Flipping through all the old transactions showed Rock Krister made a point of recording when he’d delivered the goods. Only this most recent job lacked any record of being delivered. And if that wasn’t weird enough, any kind of record stopped being made two weeks ago.
“He hasn’t written a thing since the day he came to my apartment.”
The last time anyone recalled seeing him was during the following morning. Something that triggered Krister’s disappearance may have happened that day.
“I don’t think Krister ran for it,” Rock told the other two her thoughts. Sure, a piece of her hoped that was the case, but she drew her conclusions solely from her experience as a tailor. “Neither thirty robes nor the materials to make them are in this building right now. But it’s physically impossible to flee carrying all of that. It’d be too much baggage.”
Maybe that’d be a slightly different story for someone with superhuman strength like Ebel, but Krister had sticks for arms. It was unlikely he was able to escape without anyone noticing him hauling off thirty blue robes.
“What’re the chances he delivered the product but didn’t have time to record it?” Phoebe asked, too cautious to jump to conclusions. “He might’ve just been in too big a rush to deal with it.”
“If that was the case, then he shouldn’t have had the time to open his stall during the morning after he dropped by my place.”
Although he wasn’t out long, Krister still did business the next day. That was why all his troublesome customers ended up at Rock’s shop.
“And then we have these rental books.” Aside from all the other evidence she had, the books were the main reason why Rock wanted to believe in Krister. “Would someone who’s planning to make a run for it really borrow books like these?”
She picked up several of the books on the South. History books, culture books, climate books, and even lullabies and fairy tales—he clearly had an interest in the South.
She didn’t know how Krister perceived the way a book rental shop did business. Knowing him, maybe he thought he could borrow as much as he could and never return, so he didn’t have to pay the fees. But even if that’s how he planned to treat the rentals, Nisha still remained the only reason he would pick books on these topics.
“But if he didn’t run for it, then…” Phoebe pushed his chestnut-colored hair up, inhaled, then continued, “…we’re dealing with more than one person. It’d be a skilled group, too.”
“What makes you say that, Phoebe?”
“Look at the floor. There were bloodstains outside, but it’s sparkling clean here.”
In other words, if Krister was hurt by someone, then that someone had enough time to kidnap an adult male, carry away thirty robes and sewing tools, and even scrub the possibly bloodstained floors.
“If that’s true, then they’re frighteningly skilled.”
Rock shuddered as she imagined what might’ve happened here. Ebel gently rested his hand on her shoulder.
“Whether he delivered the goods or not, we need to identify the customer. As far as we know, that’s the last person Krister met.”
Rock and Phoebe both nodded.
“Good point. If only we could find them…”
“There aren’t many clues. If only we knew the embroidery design…”
Father and daughter exchanged looks, furrowing their brows at the same time. Then, suddenly, Ebel’s glowing golden eyes darted toward the gaping door.
“…Someone’s coming.”
The werewolf count’s ears picked up on a sound Rock’s could not. Phoebe seemed not to hear it either, but he acted fast. He blew out the lantern fire and stealthily looked outside through the door.
“I can’t see anyone yet, but…I think our time is up. How do you want to do this?”
“Let’s escape to the roof. Whoever they may be, we don’t want to get caught here,” Ebel said, pushing open the broken door without making a sound. Then he turned to Rock, who followed behind him and whispered, “Don’t make a sound.”
Thanks to that warning, Rock barely swallowed her cry when his arm wrapped around her waist and yanked her to him. Ebel easily ascended Krister’s roof with Rock in one arm. Then he reached down with his free hand and pulled Phoebe up. The three of them crouched on the dark rooftop and waited with bated breath.
Footsteps and lantern light approache
d. Rock squinted in the direction of the alleyway where the streetlight was out and the stars didn’t shine.
Before long, a city constable wearing a surcoat over his armor appeared from around the corner.
He was likely on patrol. He walked in their direction, shining his lantern’s light over the surrounding area. Then he stopped in front of Krister’s hovel and glanced at the broken door.
Will he find us? Rock held her breath, but the constable only gave the door a fleeting glance. He quickly departed without being alarmed by the broken door or paying heed to the bloodstains at the entrance.
Everyone on the rooftop finally breathed as soon as the constable was entirely out of sight.
“We scraped by on that one.”
“Great work he’s doing, not even checking what happened.”
Ebel and Phoebe seemed relieved, but Rock had mixed emotions.
“…It’s kinda sad when you think about it,” she muttered, getting an odd look from the other two. “We’re the only ones who know this is Krister’s house. It’s just sad to think it will be left forever unchecked even though he’s disappeared…”
Both Ebel and Phoebe’s expressions darkened.
If Krister never came back, the hovel would be left as a vacant house. Getting occupied by a vagrant would be one of the better outcomes, although it was more likely one of the flippant slum dwellers would demolish it and use the materials to build a different shack.
“Is it a bad idea to tell Nisha about it?” Rock asked.
Phoebe was first to shoot down that idea. “She’ll only worry more if she sees the blood.”
“You think so too…?”
“If you’re going to bring her any news, it’d better be good.” Phoebe patted Rock on the head to comfort her. He looked down at her with an affectionate smile. “Since we’ve come this far, why don’t we track him down?”
“I agree,” Ebel said, his expression grim. “Something about this customer of his bothers me. I’ll use my connections to look into what someone could possibly want that many robes for.”
“Please do, Ebel.”
Someone capable of putting out that much money couldn’t possibly reside in the slums. Ebel was the best person to look into that side of things.
The Werewolf Count and the Trickster Tailor, Volume 2 Page 5