Chapter 405: Orange Trees

Richard pushed the door open and stepped inside, shutting the February chill out behind the glass.

This was an abandoned greenhouse. The damp heat pressed against him immediately, driving the lingering cold from his collar.

Mortimer sat on a long workbench at the end of the brick path.

"Close the door. Don't let the heat out."

Richard pulled the door shut.

"Sit." Mortimer tipped his chin toward an overturned empty wooden barrel nearby.

"Let's do an exercise."

"What kind of exercise?"

"A deduction exercise. First, let's assume you aren't Richard Williams."

"Then who am I?"

"The one across the sea."

Richard sat down on the barrel.

"You are sleeping in your lair, nursing your wounds."

"Suddenly, someone rips three syllables right out of you and shoves them into someone else."

"You wake up."

"What is the first thing you want to know?"

The greenhouse was dead quiet. Only the heating pipe gurgled softly along the base of the wall.

"Who did it," Richard said.

"Exactly." The old professor nodded. "Keep going. How do you investigate?"

Richard put himself in those shoes.

"First, look at who can touch my name. There's only one place they can do that—the fragment that was swallowed."

"The fragment dissolved inside the Imperial Capital Museum."

He looked up.

"That Virtuoso knows everyone who was present that night."

"List them."

"Director Wetherby, a Minor Adept bordering on Major Adept, and the two Virtuosos standing guard.

Plus Pritchard and Hammond—one Secret, one Hunter—and roughly twenty research students."

"And if you were it, how would you rank them?"

"The director was present, and two Virtuosos were standing guard. The fragment dissolved right under their noses."

"Every link in that chain holds together. Motive is there, and the timing matches up."

"And what about you?" Mortimer asked.

Richard shook his head.

"I wouldn't list myself."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't have the capability."

"A provincial engineer's son, who was still memorizing Latin declension tables in Briston this time last year. Someone who reached Signature less than a year ago."

"It wouldn't even list me. If it did, it would think its own mind was broken."

The old professor nodded.

"Naturally. Its first bite will be aimed at the authorities."

"That's a good thing. It will buy you some time."

He took a sip of tea. "Don't celebrate just yet."

"Second clue: that morning in Whitby, a black dog was sitting at the cave entrance."

"How many were present?"

Richard counted in his head.

Corbin, Hathaway, Colonel Javier, Montagu, Phillips, himself, his grandfather, the Chief Inspector, and the trailing staff from the Branch Office.

"A dozen or so."

"A dozen mouths. Someone is bound to talk," Mortimer said.

"The black dog looked at two people. One of them passed away within a month, while the other was sitting at his own dining table drinking tea just yesterday."

The old man rotated the cup a half-turn in his palm.

"That kind of thing is the best gossip in Hunter circles.

Within two months, it will spread from the Imperial Capital to every Branch Office in the north: a black dog marked Gerard Ashford, and Gerard is still alive."

Richard's back tensed.

"The third clue is the Echo Society."

Mortimer continued.

"That line of theirs has been buried in the Empire for decades.

That night at the Black Trench, you dismantled one point in Briston. No one knows how many others exist elsewhere."

The old man looked at him.

"Even an old bookworm like me, who hides from people all day, knows the older generation of the Ashford family was involved in a past incident of counter-hunting."

"Tell me, could it fail to find that out?"

The damp heat inside the greenhouse suddenly felt uncomfortable against the skin.

Richard sat on the barrel, piecing the three clues together.

A piece of a true name delivered away, a Major Adept who survived being marked by a black dog, and a decades-old score involving a counter-hunt.

"It will suspect the Ashford family."

"It will." Mortimer drank the last mouthful of his tea. "And it doesn't need any evidence to make that presumption."

"Those people dug out from the bottom of the pit in the Western Suburbs—every single one of them was hollowed out by it and thrown in."

"For an entity like that, slaughtering by mistake is far less trouble than investigating clearly."

Richard said nothing.

Mortimer stood up from his barrel. He reached into the nearest orange tree, stretching for a long moment before plucking a piece of fruit.

The rind was incredibly thick. He had to dig his fingernails into it for a while just to pry open a split.

After peeling it, he broke off a segment and shoved it into his mouth, eating without changing his expression.

Richard was handed a few segments. He didn't stand on ceremony and tossed them straight into his mouth.

He chewed a few times, and his brow furrowed so hard it could have crushed a fly.

"Too sour. No wonder no one picks them."

Professor Mortimer chuckled and popped another segment into his mouth.

"The exercise isn't done yet."

"That answered for the one across the sea. Now let's switch sides."

He jutted his chin toward the glass outside, in the direction of the Imperial Capital's center.

"The Department of Internal Affairs isn't blind either."

"The name Gerard Ashford was crossed off the register. Someone in the administration is definitely asking on what grounds."

"How did you answer?"

"Old MacFie and I gave the higher-ups this explanation." The old professor pushed the orange peels aside.

"That old relic Mortimer is getting on in years and suddenly wants to find a successor. He took a fancy to a prep student.

For this student, he and MacFie emptied out their life savings in favors, each calling upon a Virtuoso they knew to fish the kid's grandfather off the registry."

He shrugged.

"I didn't utter a single word of a lie. I merely omitted some details in the middle."

"How long will that hold them off?" Richard asked.

"Until someone seriously goes digging."

Mortimer's expression darkened.

"Then there is that night on Flower Moon Street. A dozen Practitioners saw with their own eyes the hound pack reach the boundary stone and turn back."

"On the bright side, they can assume Marie Viktorova has the presence to hold the line."

"On the dark side, the Wild Hunt recognized someone on that street."

"Add in that Slavic surname of hers, and she's already subject to more screening than anyone else."

"She protected the whole of Flower Moon Street that night," Richard said.

"She did protect it." Mortimer chuckled.

"The merit is recorded on the roster, the suspicion is recorded in the file. Each is tallied separately."

The heating pipe in the greenhouse gurgled.

"There is one more, and it is far more troublesome than the one across the sea."

Richard looked up.

"The lord of the hunt."

"It was indeed very pleased when it received those three syllables, as you saw."

"Take a guess what it'll think about once it's done being pleased."

Mortimer looked at him.

Richard answered it himself: "On what grounds does a Practitioner have this in hand, and does he have any left?"

He suddenly felt the antler tip wrapped in reins tucked inside his coat pressing uncomfortably against him.

The old professor tapped a finger toward where he kept the antler.

"It said it would be waiting. If you go, it can keep an eye on you up close."

"If you don't go..."

The old man spread his hands.

"Then it will definitely want to figure out why you don't dare go."

The soot on the glass roof filtered the daylight ever paler, the shadows of the orange trees pressing one over another.

"Right now, the one across the sea has lost its name and is mad with hate, and the lord of the hunt is thoroughly smug."

"How long will they fight?" Richard cared about this most.

"Not long. Fighting until mutually ruined only benefits a third party for nothing. Anyone with normal intelligence can figure that out."

"They will definitely call a truce once they enter a stalemate. And once they stop, both sides will take stock."

"When they trace it all the way down, both sides are going to want to invite the middleman who delivered the goods for a cup of tea."

Richard braced his knees, his complexion looking somewhat unwell.

"You and Professor McPhee..."

"Don't rely too much on us old folks."

Mortimer looked at him with a scrutinizing expression.

"We two are Major Adepts. What does a Major Adept amount to in front of a Virtuoso?"

He raised the empty cup.

"Just two people who still know how to read."

"I won't feed you nonsense about making you a Minor Adept in a year, a Major Adept in three, and a Virtuoso in five."

"But before they prepare to move against you, you must at least possess the means to ensure they cannot easily handle you."

Richard looked down at his own hands.

Back at the secondhand market in Briston, he had touched those pieces of scrap metal one by one, hoping to turn up something.

Back then, he had only one thing on his mind: what exactly was this world hiding?

Along the way, the desire to explore had accompanied him, so much so that he had walked deeper and deeper, step by step, completely unaware.

Now...

Mortimer pulled his overcoat down from an orange tree branch, shaking loose two leaves.

"Starting next month, come to my office when you have time. At least once a week."

"To do what?"

"Copy books." The old professor walked slowly toward the door.

"In my room, there are decades' worth of unarchived things piled all the way to the windowsill."

"Are there wages?"

"There is tea."

The door closed behind him. A small gust of February squeezed in through the crack and was quickly eaten by the heat.

Richard stood among a room full of orange trees, smelling that sourness for a long time.

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