32. The Note

"Wanna wash," I said shortly.

She gave me the book she had brought with her. "You have known about the massacre of the mixed-bloods, forty years ago, haven't you?" I nodded at the question. "Can you investigate it for me?"

"Meaning?" I still could not get what she talked about. "What do you want to know? It is a very old case, a long time ago. There might be possibilities that evidence has gone, and so as the witnesses. Why didn't you investigate it long ago?" It was like unearthed an old grave and only scattered bones were found, with the body that had turned into soil.

"Because my best dog has just arrived." She smiled ambiguously. "Just read that note first. I'll give you the task three days from now." Then she left my room without closing the door. I wondered why Azalea always behaved ambiguously like the other astral being who kept following me.

My head felt throbbing to think about it. I didn't know what she had planned that made her make such notes in my language. She knew well that I still found it hard to read the scripts here.

I put that note on the bookshelf by the table. For me, leaving it for a while but washing my clothes would ease the headache.

…

Dinner time that night felt so much quiet. I wondered where the other people were. Even Ane was not anywhere to be spotted, but just some servants were around. The food got even more tasteless because we had to be very thrifty in using herbs and spices. We didn't know how long this winter would last and how bad it would be. Hopefully, it was not as bad as I imagined.

I finished up my dinner quickly so that I could help the guards prepare the steel blades that we would bring to the city the following day. The iron would be forged into swords for us to collect by mid-spring. Most of the weapons here were made of Damascus steel which was not provided at blacksmiths, so you had to bring your own.

I never thought that the blade of Shashin's shiny black sword came from a rusty iron blade like this. We chose a piece of iron that was not too rusty, then put it in a basket to be transported by train the following morning. If you looked more closely, these irons had a water motif that was a mix of dark black and some parts that were lighter to white. I never imagined that this would be good for weapons, which turned out to be the tip of my arrows using the same iron, as well as the bow I used.

My bow was made of Damascus steel. It was smaller in size than the wooden bow used here. Every time an arrow was shot from the string, there was a slight movement in the branch, which made a distinctive sound that I did not see from any bow.

I preferred the sound of arrows hitting the target. The feathers used on the back, taken from a black chicken-like animal that lived in the forest, were scribbled in blue ink to indicate that it was mine. Yes, every archer or bodyguard who wore a bow, had a different color of arrows. The goal was to mark that if one day the arrow was found it would be easy to find its owner. Even though we were allowed to use weapons, Azalea severely restricted us from using them.

"Have you finished?" someone tapped me on the shoulder, and he said that it was time for me to rest because we were leaving in the early morning.

The night was not very good. I closed the small window of my room because of the noise of a windstorm carrying a lot of snowflakes. The rolls of clouds I saw today brought the storm now. I was almost unable to see anything but the white color out there. If this condition worsened, our trip might be put off.

I opened the note Azalea gave me, still not knowing why she was writing in script, nor why she wanted me to read this. These notes did not make much writing, mostly hand painted in ink. Now it gave me a better understanding that they also had difficulty with my language, so to make me understand, they conveyed what they wanted in pictures, so that we could understand each other. Each picture had a description that was very easy for me to understand.

Some time passed, and I was sure that this only contained a history, the mass murder of mixed-bloods and the content was exactly what Antonie said. Everything was exactly similar, the guy didn't seem like he was lying to me.

considering Azalea who just gave the note, it seemed that she just wanted me to know about the incident first. I was very curious, about what tasks would be given to me. She had a lot of the best people. Yoru especially, who immediately found out the things I was hiding. I was a foreigner, he should have thought of me that way. 'But how come she can always trust me?' I thought, confused.

I put the book back and tried to sleep. The following day, I had to prepare for our final preparations, for the winter that people here seemed to dread so much. Hopefully tomorrow the storm would not come and we could immediately go to the city to deliver all the steel blades, for swords.

...

Someone knocked on the door just before I left the room. It was Yoru. He was looking at me suspiciously. He didn't seem to be able to believe me, but I tried to ignore him. For me, I had a reason to hide all that from Azalea. He asked me to follow him, saying that the carriage that would take us was ready and that we should leave before the light in the sky disappeared.

"Where are the others? Why is it so quiet?" He didn't answer my question, it was like talking to a rock. I wanted to say that I hated him, but he's the one who taught me all this time and got me used to camp alpha. Yoru?" He just turned his head. "The punishment place is in the back, what's that for?"