Chapter 348: You Must Be Sisters!

Richard followed Maggie's gaze and saw Catherine.

The two red-haired girls locked eyes.

Maggie still had half a piece of Basque cake in her mouth. One cheek bulging, she stopped chewing.

The atmosphere shifted instantly.

Catherine didn't move, and neither did Maggie, who forgot to even chew her cake.

The Blackwood and MacPhee families—two Highland Hunter clans—had fought for generations over the deer hunting grounds on the North Shore of Lake Eirin.

They had killed each other's people, burned down each other's sheep pens, and erected stone steles on the hillsides to curse the opposing family.

Theodore stood two steps behind Maggie, completely clueless.

He furrowed his brow, looking left and right. He opened his mouth twice but didn't dare make a sound.

Edmund was even more oblivious.

"Uh..." The chubby young man held up the Tin Box.

"Want some cake? The nuns at our order made it. It's Basque cake—it's really good."

Catherine didn't even glance at the box. Her eyes remained nailed to Maggie.

A seagull cried out overhead, its voice sharp and piercing.

Standing between them, Richard didn't know where to look.

A tall, thin youth from the Manchester Guild walked by, clutching a crumpled Registration Form.

He was looking down at the squad list on the form. Halfway past, he looked up and glanced at the group in front of him.

His gaze paused on Catherine and Maggie.

"Hey..." He patted his companion's shoulder and jutted his chin in their direction.

"Look at those two red-haired girls over there."

He didn't bother to lower his voice, and with the harbor wind blowing in their direction, every word reached its intended destination.

"They must be sisters, right? They have the exact same hair and eyes."

The moment he spoke, Catherine and Maggie's heads snapped toward him in unison.

The fire blazing in their eyes could almost burn a hole right through the tall youth's chest.

The youth had another half a sentence left to say, but the moment he met their glares, he swallowed the rest of his words.

His companion had already instinctively shifted away.

"Wrong way, wrong way... I'm going over there..."

The tall youth shoved the Registration Form into his pocket, slipped around a corner, and vanished into the crowd.

Edmund just held up the Tin Box, his jaw dropped open.

Theodore didn't even dare look anymore. He turned entirely toward the harbor to admire the industrial beauty of the cranes.

Richard stood where he was, fighting a slight urge to laugh. At first glance, the two of them really did give off a sisterly vibe.

When the two Highland girls turned back, their gazes collided once again.

Maggie finally swallowed the cake she had been holding in her mouth.

"He said I look like you?" The anger was gone from her voice.

Catherine's mouth twitched.

The target of their mutual irritation was no longer each other.

Richard seized the opening to interject.

"She's Maggie MacPhee of the Highland Guild, Scholar path."

He tilted his head toward Maggie, then turned to the other side.

"Catherine Blackwood from the Imperial Capital University prep program. Also a Scholar."

He deliberately emphasized the word "Scholar."

They were both Scholars. Carrying a Hunter blood feud over to Scholars wasn't appropriate.

Maggie relaxed before Catherine did.

She shifted her gaze away from Catherine and let it land on Richard.

"Your classmate from Imperial Capital University?"

"Yeah."

Catherine held out her right hand.

When members of two feuding families met on neutral ground, offering a hand first signaled, "Today doesn't count."

If they ran into each other in the hunting grounds tomorrow, that was a matter for tomorrow.

Maggie looked down at Catherine's extended hand.

Then she reached out and shook it.

The handshake was quick, and they released each other just as fast.

"Time to assemble." Catherine shoved her hand back into her coat pocket and wrote down her actual business on a notepad to show Richard.

"Front of the main building in ten minutes."

She turned and walked away, the corner of her scarf catching the wind behind her.

Maggie stayed where she was.

"This classmate of yours."

She brought her gaze back from Catherine's retreating figure and settled it on Richard.

"She's got quite a temper."

"You two are cut from the same cloth."

Maggie didn't deny it; the corners of her lips even curled up slightly.

"If you went and told her that..."

"I won't." Richard knew better.

"Let's go." She brushed the cake crumbs off her coat. "Time to assemble."

Edmund had been standing on the sidelines the whole time. He had held the Tin Box up for at least two minutes, and his arm was sore.

As he tucked the box back into his coat, he finally couldn't help asking Richard in a low voice.

"...What was that all about just now? Why were they looking at each other like they were about to draw knives?"

"Blood feud."

"What blood feud?"

"Highlanders have a different way of holding grudges than your order."

"Our order preaches forgiveness." Edmund shoved the Tin Box into his pocket, unable to maintain his smile.

"Try preaching that to those two."

Richard carried his canvas bag and headed toward the building.

Edmund swallowed his scripture of forgiveness back down.

He glanced at Catherine's retreating figure in the distance, then turned to look at the back of Maggie's head as she walked on the other side.

The two redheads stood out glaringly against the winter haze.

"Do you think they look alike?" Edmund asked Theodore in a hushed voice.

Theodore looked left, then looked right.

"...Don't ask me questions that will get people killed."

Once they reached the open space in front of the Port Authority building's main entrance, everyone waited obediently inside the designated area.

The sea wind blew in gusts from the Strait of Dover.

Richard stood inside the white chalk lines. Not far away, Edmund was clutching his crucifix, his lips moving ever so slightly.

He was probably reciting a prayer, or maybe he was just craving food and reminiscing about the cake.

Catherine and Maggie stood on opposite sides with Richard between them. By tacit agreement, they treated him as a somewhat unreliable partition wall.

When the person in charge of the field operation walked down, everyone went quiet.

It was a man in his early forties, wearing an old trench coat whose original color had long faded.

He introduced himself as Harding, a senior inspector at the Minor Adept Rank.

The man had a long face, high cheekbones, and a scar on his jaw that dragged from the corner of his mouth down to the root of his ear.

That scar meant that when the left side of his face smiled, the right side remained entirely motionless.

He stopped in front of the white chalk line and began sweeping his gaze from the far left.

The first person his eyes fell on was Montagu.

Sweeping up to his waist, the bulge inside his coat was the shape of a signature artifact.

Continuing up, Montagu's shoulders were perfectly level, his chin slightly tucked.

"Clean." The moment Harding said it, he shifted his gaze away.

Montagu frowned, unsure if that was a compliment or an insult.

When his eyes swept over Richard, Harding's movements slowed.

A canvas bag was slung over his right shoulder; its outline showed it contained quite a few things but was packed tight.

The webbing of his right hand was calloused, worn down by years of gripping a pen.

Looking further up to his face, Harding lingered there a little longer.

"Usable."

He moved on right after saying it. To Richard, it sounded like he was evaluating livestock.

Harding only paused for a second when he looked over Catherine.

"Tough."

Scanning Maggie, he paused for two seconds.

"Wild."

Scanning Edmund, this time he paused the longest.

Harding stared straight at the protruding little belly and gave a muffled chuckle.

"...Time to lose weight."

Edmund's face flushed beet red.

Having summarized most of them, Harding stepped back onto the stairs.

"Form up in squads of four to five, with a Senior Practitioner assigned as squad leader."

"You will guard your own assigned section. Once you step out of your patrol zone... it's no longer your business."

"If you encounter danger beyond your Rank, don't try to be a hero."

He pulled a Bronze Whistle and a Red Flare from his trench coat pocket, holding them in his hand without rushing to pass them out.

"Listen up, I'm only saying this once."

"Your primary duty in coming here is routine patrol."

"Each squad will manage a section of the tent zone. Twelve-hour day shifts, from seven in the morning to seven at night. Your job is to walk row by row, inspecting tent by tent."

"For that layer of dampness mentioned in the briefing, if a refugee's concentration exceeds the level-three marker, red-flag them on the register and notify your squad leader. The squad leader will make a judgment and report to me, and I will decide whether to isolate them."

He held up two fingers instead.

"There's also registration and interviews. Who is living in each tent, what day they arrived, where they came from, and how thick that layer of stuff on them is—all of it must be logged. An interview is not an interrogation. Keep your tone polite; don't scare people."

"These refugees just escaped the water. Some of them can barely remember their own surnames. Just record what you can ask. If you can't get an answer, don't force it."

"Your squad leaders are all Senior Practitioners, mostly of the Secret path. They'll be performing divinations and reading traces between patrols. Those on the Scholar path will assist them—logging divination results, verifying symbols, and translating inscriptions. This is your specialty."

"Those on the Hunter path will be on guard duty, securing the perimeter while the squad leader performs divinations."

Harding held up the Bronze Whistle and the Red Flare.

"If you discover any anomaly beyond your ability to handle during a patrol, no matter how small, report it. Don't take action yourself or try to show off, thinking 'it's such a minor thing, it's not worth bothering the squad leader.'"

"Eight out of ten rookies who die on field duty die because of the thought, 'I can handle this.'"

He handed the Bronze Whistle and the Red Flare to the first squad leader standing at the front.

"Three short blasts and one long blast on the Bronze Whistle means request for backup. Firing a Red Flare means retreat."

"When you see a flare, fall back toward the warehouses."

Harding read off the squad lists in his hand, sheet by sheet.

Richard kept his own group in mind: himself, Catherine, Edmund, and Maggie. A four-person squad.

He hadn't heard the squad leader's name before. He thought it was Pratt.

A man stepped out from the back of the crowd. He was in his thirties and had a mole on the right side of his mouth.

A Senior Practitioner of the Secret path. His body barely swayed as he walked; it was as if he were gliding over.

He spoke even less than Harding. Stepping up to the four of them, he merely gave them a passing glance, though he let his gaze linger on Richard a moment longer.

That pause was incredibly brief, but Richard read a trace of recognition in his eyes.

The sliver of power Madam Marie had left on the Silver Ring had been sniffed out by him.

Pratt hung his Bronze Whistle at his waist and slipped the Red Flare into his trench coat's inner pocket.

"There is only one squad rule."

"The four of you will operate within each other's line of sight at all times. Under no circumstances are you to act alone."

He glanced at the deliberate gap left between Catherine and Maggie.

"Settle whatever personal business you two have outside the patrol zone."

The two red-haired girls turned their faces away at the same time.

Theodore was assigned to the neighboring squad, and Montagu went to a patrol squad in another direction.

Fischer and Edith had their own assignments as well.

Fischer was in the Row C zone, while Edith was stationed on the far eastern perimeter.

There were no fewer than fifteen or sixteen squads just in visual range, scattering into the old warehouse district that stretched for nearly half a mile along the eastern side of the harbor.

Each squad managed a section of the tent zone.

Everyone was a worker bee guarding a cell in a hive, keeping their heads down and doing their own jobs without meddling in how well their neighbors were collecting honey.

Richard followed Pratt into the tent zone.

It was so damp here that you could wring water out of the air. It felt as if their exposed skin had been licked by a cow.

He stopped at the entrance of an aisle and unfurled his Concealed Spirit Vision.

The tent fabric felt dry to the touch, and the mud on the ground was normally damp.

It was November at a southern port on the main island; where wouldn't the mud be damp?

Under his Spirit Vision, that layer of stuff had absolutely nothing to do with physical water vapor.

It clung to the inner walls of the tents and the iron frames of the cots, over the surface of the blankets the refugees were wrapped in, and even on the sleeping people's cheeks.

If the precision of his Silent Observation hadn't been high enough, Richard wouldn't have noticed it at all.

Pratt was also looking, using his own methods.

Richard spoke first. "The concentration of dampness varies here."

Pratt tilted his head to look at him.

Richard lifted his chin toward the innermost row of tents.

"Rows three through five are the thickest. The first row has almost none."

Pratt nodded.

"You're reading it closely. Keep going."

Richard walked about a dozen paces in. Catherine followed over his right shoulder, Edmund on his left, and Maggie took up the rear.

The four of them naturally formed a diamond formation, their lines of sight overlapping. This was the basic formation for fieldwork.

When they reached the third row of tents, Richard stopped.

The dampness here was noticeably thicker than anywhere else.

"Rows three through five," Pratt explained from behind him.

"They're inhabited by the last batch of people to evacuate."

Richard recalled the information from the briefing.

The refugees at Port Folkestone had arrived in three batches.

The first batch was the earliest. They were the ones who fled to higher ground the very day the sea gates opened, evacuating the fastest and the cleanest.

The second batch came two days later, rescued from their rooftops by emergency teams.

The third batch was the latest, arriving a full five days after the first.

As for what happened during those five days, no one could say for sure.

Richard took Catherine and started from the first tent in Row B, lifting the flaps tent by tent and registering them household by household.

Edmund walked along the other side, stopping to offer a few soothing words whenever they encountered an agitated refugee.

In this kind of setting, his identity as a cleric was more effective than any Spell Formula.

As soon as he revealed his crucifix, even those who didn't speak the language would clasp their hands in prayer.

Maggie guarded the rear, her eyes never lingering too long on the inside of the tents.

The first day's work was tedious.

Whenever a problem turned up during the patrol, Richard flagged it in red on the register and handed it to the squad leader.