Buildings Do Explode Sometimes

"Oh dear!"

With a startled cry, Nina plucked the fork right out of a seated customer's hand at an outdoor table and lightly batted away the shrapnel flying toward Natalisha.

"Auntie! Uncle! Are you all right?"

Nina fretted that the two delicate souls might be so frightened they'd have a heart attack on the spot.

"Thank you for lending me your fork."

And she didn't forget to return the dented, singed fork to its owner, either.

The customer, frozen stiff from the explosion, never even noticed the fork vanish from his grip and come back.

"It's dangerous here—let's move this way!"

"R-right."

"......."

Uneasy at this turn of events, Chayson and Natalisha followed Nina's lead for the moment and retreated behind the solid wall of a building.

Is the informant safe? There's still time before our meeting—surely he didn't go to the theater early?

Is it really a coincidence that the very theater where I was supposed to meet the informant exploded? Where did the information leak from?

Both of them were certain the theater's explosion was no accident.

Since Nina joining them hadn't been part of the plan, the attack couldn't have been aimed at her. It had to be a scheme to eliminate the informant.

But blowing up an entire building instead of staging a quiet assassination is far too conspicuous and flashy. Which organization operates like this?

While Natalisha ran through the list of major groups she'd dealt with over the years, Chayson patted Nina's shoulder soothingly.

"Nina. Too bad you won't get to see the theater."

"Nothing to be done about it. Buildings do explode from time to time, after all. It's a blessing we didn't park the carriage right in front of the theater."

Chayson regarded Nina with admiring eyes.

"That's right. Buildings do explode. You know your stuff."

"You two are the ones I feel sorry for—you'd been looking forward to the play."

Nina watched the guardsmen sprinting toward the blast with a look of genuine sympathy.

"Nina. Why don't you go on ahead to the tea house across the street with your uncle?"

Startled by Natalisha's sudden suggestion, Nina grabbed hold of her.

"Pardon? What about you, Auntie?"

"I really ought to check whether the actors are all right. One of the performers I've been meaning to patronize was cast in this play, you see."

"Oh dear, how awful......."

Nina nodded with a worried expression.

"Then I'll come with you. I can't possibly send you alone somewhere so dangerous."

"Wh-what? No, that won't be necessary. Didn't you see the guardsmen rushing toward the theater just now?"

Natalisha flashed Chayson a pointed look, quietly threatening him to cooperate—and quickly.

Chayson, too, knew that finding out whether the informant had survived was the urgent matter, so he backed her up.

"She's right, Nina. Let's wait at the tea house. My legs are aching, and the smoke seems to be drifting this way—my eyes are stinging."

"Uncle, so delicate as you are......."

Nina sighed in exasperation and decided to take a step back.

"Then at least take a carriage driver with you, Auntie. I'll do as you say and wait at the tea house with Uncle."

"Hee hee. How thoughtful. Very well, then."

Fanning herself gently with her fan, Natalisha took her leave.

Once out of Nina's sight, Natalisha lowered her stance, swept both arms back like wings, and moved at blinding speed.

The guardsmen were already dousing the flames with water-spraying magitech devices, and the nearby shops were actively cooperating, replenishing the water the devices required.

Careful not to approach the blast site itself, Natalisha darted up to the rooftop of a nearby building in a flash.

One can never let one's guard down.

She snatched the necklace from her throat, and the gleaming pendant transformed into a long sniper rifle—her ever-present weapon-storage magitech device.

Settling in among the stacked crates and canvas awnings, she peered through the scope.

With the guardsmen's shouts, people were pouring out of the theater.

More survivors than I expected. Wait—no one's actually dead?

There were people carried out on stretchers, but not a single body with its face covered by a cloth.

As she studied each face streaming out of the theater, Natalisha suddenly sensed killing intent and swung the muzzle sharply to the side.

The informant, who had been approaching in silence, flinched and slid the knife in his hand back into its sheath.

"Natalisha. It's you. I didn't recognize you because of the clothes."

"I nearly killed you."

Clicking her tongue, Natalisha sent the sniper rifle back into the pendant and hung it around her neck.

The informant's clothes were scorched, but he seemed to have no serious injuries.

"Was the explosion a coincidence?"

At her question, the informant gave a hollow laugh.

"You know better than to ask. It was an explosion timed so that the chandelier would drop exactly on my seat. If I hadn't gone to check the exits just in case, I'd be dead."

"I knew it......."

Natalisha pulled the canvas taut to block any view from the building across the way, then continued.

"You were supposed to deliver the information by visiting the townhouse, posing as one of my guests. Why the sudden change of venue?"

"There was a report that a maid of the Count Sezac household had entered Soltum."

"Another one besides Nina Bones? When?"

"One entered yesterday. I spotted her and have been tailing her—though her whereabouts have since gone murky."

Natalisha stiffened at his words.

She slipped through Soltum's surveillance net? For an ordinary maid, that's suspicious. Just what kind of maid training do they run in that household?

"Anything else I should know?"

"Lady Viscount Lilier is also in Soltum. Orders are to keep your signal device active at all times so you can receive new developments the moment they come."

"...The maid of House Sezac and Viscount Lilier arriving in Soltum on the very same day?"

Before Nina had entered the picture, the most troublesome adversary for the Victorious Nations Alliance's spies had been Viscount Lilier.

The allied nations' intelligence agencies had relentlessly pursued the Remnants of the Defeated Nation.

There was no direct proof that Lilier was one of them, but every remnant operative they'd captured to date had some connection—great or small—with him.

Publicly, he's known as an art collector who patronizes struggling artists... but is that really all there is to him?

She couldn't leap to conclusions about Lilier's relationship with House Sezac, but the circumstances were undeniably suspicious.

That was the end of what the informant had to report.

"Wait."

Natalisha stopped the informant as he quietly turned to leave and lowered her voice.

"There's something I need sent covertly to the top."

"What is it?"

"Chayson must be removed from the operation."

"...You mean the Ilite agent?"

"Yes. He's begun to feel sympathy for the target. His erratic behavior is interfering with the plan."

"So it's finally come to that. I'll pass it along."

The informant asked nothing further and vanished.

Natalisha smoothed away her mounting headache and headed for the tea house where Nina and Chayson would be waiting.

Even so, the informant's news kept turning over in her mind.

Especially the part about the maid of House Sezac.

Granted, there was a fair chance a single maid entering Soltum meant nothing at all. They hadn't yet uncovered anything significant about House Sezac, and sunny Soltum was a popular destination even for ordinary travelers.

Natalisha cast her mind back over Nina's behavior on the streets that day.

Though Nina seemed wholly absorbed in gazing around at the unfamiliar sights with wide-eyed excitement, she had still looked after Natalisha walking beside her with tender attentiveness.

She'd naturally steered toward the shaded side of the street where the sun beat down, and checked for loose stones that might splash up when a carriage passed—little things like that.

They didn't look like conscious calculations; they looked like ingrained habits, worn smooth by years of repetition.

So she really was a maid.......

Yet when she went through it all one detail at a time, Nina seemed so perfectly ordinary—suspicious in not a single way—that it only deepened Natalisha's confusion.

An ordinary girl wouldn't own a harpoon gun, and an ordinary girl certainly wouldn't have such a tolerance for sleeping poison.

Nina Bones. What on earth are you?

Having resolved never to let her guard down around the girl no matter how innocent she appeared, Natalisha's eyes gleamed sharp and hard.

In front of a tea house shaped like a grand piano, Nina gazed up at Chayson with glistening eyes.

"Wow! Uncle, this place is so pretty too. I'm so glad we went out together. Thank you so much for suggesting the outing and being so kind to me, even though I'm a stranger here."

And watching her, Chayson thought very seriously:

...I suppose even an ordinary person could own a harpoon gun or two. Couldn't they?