東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 4: The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Four

𝘚𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘺𝘴, 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘴
𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴;
𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘹.


—10—


The red mist was steadily growing thicker and thicker, to the point where I could no longer see the mansion at all through the haze. At this rate it was impossible to be certain that the looming mansion was even still there. The temperature was dropping rapidly with the dampness and I found myself beginning to shiver.

Where had Sakuya and Meiling gone? As soon as I could form the question in my mind, Sakuya appeared again, with the same sudden abruptness. There was no break in the fog to betray her passage, she was simply there in front of us, where she hadn't been before. She was holding a coat and a heavy felt cloak folded over her arms.

"I brought you something to wear for the cold," said Sakuya, handing the cloak to me and the coat to Renko. Settling it about my shoulders, I was shocked at its warmth and softness. Renko threw the coat around herself and adjusted the sleeves. With the tie she was wearing with her shirt and that silly hat she always insists on, she looked like something right out of an old mafia movie.

"You look like a private detective", I teased.
"Hmm, it is a little cliché, isn't it?"

"It suits you well, Miss Usami," Sakuya said with a smile.

Renko pantomimed a gasp of astonishment. "Well, if you say so. Should I lean up against a streetlight and smoke a cigarette?" Despite my teasing, I had to agree —the look suited Renko's androgynous style well. I couldn't help but smile.

She looked toward the mansion, which was now completely hidden behind a bank of fog. "This fog—"

"The mist should not be harmful to the human body, so don't worry."

"This is all the mistress' doing, isn't it?"

In response to Renko's question, Sakuya just smiled thinly.

"Wasn't this all your idea though, Renko?" I interjected without thinking. "If Remilia is a vampire and vulnerable to sunlight, then that must be the purpose of the fog. To block the harsh sunlight so she can walk around outside during the day."

"Hey, Merry, don't say it as if I've committed a crime, I was just trying to offer a more comfortable lifestyle to a little vampire with an unpleasant condition."

I looked back toward the gate. Typically, the naturally occurring fog would roll in off of the lake and probably not spread much further than the garden of the mansion. Although it was hard to see much, I could tell that this mist was different; it was already billowing forcefully through the bars of the gate and I recalled it boiling up and over the walls when I could still see them. At the very least, this seemed likely to spread out over the lake. I wondered what impact that might have on plants and animals living in the area. "If the lady of the house wants to surround her own mansion in fog, that should probably be fine, right?"

Sakuya merely shrugged in response. "It's possible there might be some trouble, but we'll deal with that as it comes." I wondered who exactly might make trouble for the sorts of people living in this mansion. Were there anything like police in this world? Or would there be vampire hunters here? Or vampires who kill other vampires?

"Would you like to have some after-dinner tea?" Sakuya asked.
"Oh, yes please."

"As you wish." Sakuya bowed again and, as expected, a teapot and cup appeared instantly out of thin air. Her tricks were no longer surprising, but it was still impressive to see.

"You're teleporting those things, aren't you?" I asked with a fixed smile. I couldn't imagine what else you might call such an ability. She seemed to be able to immediately move at a moment's notice, or to call up anything you needed to hand.

However, Sakuya slowly shook her head. "No, regrettably, I'm not."

"Eh? Then, how are you—"

"It's time manipulation, right?"

It was Renko who interrupted me. I widened my eyes and Sakuya smiled wryly.

"I didn't think you would be able to see through it."

Time manipulation. Perhaps an even more impressive feat than teleportation. In other words all of the instantaneous transfers and magic tricks Sakuya had been performing up until now were done by stopping time and acting during the stopped interval? It might be something you would find in fiction, but seeing it in action was hard to believe.

"What gave me away, Ms. Usami?"

"Whether its food or tea, it's all prepared too quickly. Teleportation could only cut out the travel time; it would still take time to cook meat or boil water, right?"

"You are quite correct. I will perform one more magic trick for you then." The next moment an apple appeared in Sakuya's hand. A moment after that the apple was peeled, cut into pieces and moved onto two plates placed in front of us along with a pair of small silver forks. "Please enjoy your tea," she said, then walked away.

To our point of view it was an impressive trick, but to think that Sakuya had gone to the trouble of getting an apple, peeling it and cutting it into pieces in a world where time was stopped made me smile to think of. I let out an excited little chuckle.

I put a piece of the apple into my mouth and savored the mix of sweet and sour. Renko, however, merely stared up at the ever-changing crimson cloudscape and tilted her head slightly.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing—well, nothing much."

She snuggled deeper into her loaned coat and turned up the collar, then tossed a piece of apple into her mouth as well. I never have any idea what's going on in my partner's head. Whenever she clams up like this though, it's usually because she's collecting her thoughts. I'm sure she will tell me what she's thinking about soon enough. No point in fretting about it for now. I turned my attention back to our desert.


—11—


After our dinner in the misty arbor we returned to the mansion, where we were shown to the wing housing the guest rooms by Sakuya. She asked us, "Would you prefer to have separate rooms?"

"No, I'd like to share a room with Merry", Renko answered before I could interrupt.

"Right this way then."

"Don't make that decision without asking, Renko!" I whispered, prodding her in the ribs.

Renko grinned as she whispered a reply. "You've got more guts than I thought if you want your own room, Merry. I'm not saying I distrust anyone in this mansion particularly, but wouldn't you feel safer with us both in the same room in case something happens?"

I wasn't keen on Renko making decisions for me, but truth be told if I had had an opportunity to answer Sakuya's question, I would have suggested the same thing. I sighed. "Yes, one room will be fine."

Sakuya led us down the long hall, past many identical looking doors. As she did, several more unfamiliar faces emerged from the gloom. These faces belonged to childlike figures who were fluttering about, attending to chores while suspended in the air by sets of translucent wings growing from each figure's back. They were all wearing uniforms that looked just like Sakuya's, only smaller and less decorated. If not for the wings, they might have passed for human children, but with them they were clearly something else. They didn't fill me with the same nameless dread that the other youkai I had met had though.

"Winged maids?" I mumbled to myself.

"Fairy maids," Sakuya corrected me. "They do some chores around the mansion, but they're not very useful really."

"Fairies. There really are all sorts of creatures in this world, aren't there?"

"That's the nature of Gensokyo. Everything forgotten in the Outside World is welcome here."

The childlike maids bowed to Sakuya as we passed them by. I remember having read somewhere that fairies were supposed to only be visible to children. That didn't seem to be the case here though. I wondered if that meant that things were different in this world, or that Renko and I were just on the childish side. I suppose it might be hard for me to argue against the latter possibility.

"Umm, Miss Sakuya…"

"Yes, Miss Hearn?" . She seemed to know right where to go, but had I been in her position, I doubt I could have remembered which of the identical doors that stretched out along the vast hallway was which. I wondered just how many rooms there were in the mansion.

"Just to confirm, the residents of this mansion are just you and the mistress, Miss Meiling, Miss Patchouli, and the devil in the library, yes?"

"There are also numerous fairy maids in our employ, but I doubt you'll see them much. That's pretty much everyone."

Her phrasing struck me as odd. ‘Pretty much?' She fished a small brass key from the pocket of her apron and turned it in the lock. When I stepped into the room beyond the door, a gasp of admiration escaped my lips.

Past the threshold was an opulent and tastefully decorated room, like something out of a luxury hotel. The fluffy-looking double bed and comfortable-looking sofa... made me resent the poverty of my vocabulary to properly describe them. The room was dark, with no windows, but as Sakuya tapped the glass and iron lanterns affixed to the walls, each lit with a soft, warm light that made the color scheme into a rich burgundy rather than the garish scarlet it might have appeared in direct sunlight. In a room like this, I might be willing to stay for quite a while.

Renko squealed in wonder at the sight of it all and sprinted to throw herself onto the bed. She landed with a pronounced puff of air as the mattress sighed and conformed to her body. "Merry, this bed is so soft!" she called out, her voice muffled by the pillow her face was buried in.

"Renko! Please show a little restraint." Honestly, she can be so embarrassing sometimes.

She popped her face out of the pillow and rotated to sit on the edge of the bed, but I could see she was still nearly bouncing with excitement.

Sakuya showed no reaction whatsoever, but I can only imagine what she thought of us. Instead, she reached out to Renko. "Let me take your coat," she offered. Renko shrugged her way out of it and Sakuya hung it neatly in a dresser in the corner of the room. "The shower is through that door. Feel free to change into any of the clothes you find in that dresser that suit you. If you should need anything, just ring the bell on that end table and I will come. Please feel free to ask for anything you need, and do make yourselves at home."

Without further comment, Sakuya turned and left, gently closing the hall door behind her. I sank down on the sofa and let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. Renko flopped back onto the bed and rolled from side to side.

"This feels so good, Merry."

"Don't laze around like this is your own room. We have the Mistress' favor for now, but don't we have more important concerns than the quality of the beds?"

"Hey, don't assume I'm not thinking. I have some very important questions on my mind right now."

"Me too."

"Oh? What's concerning you?"

"Sakuya's abilities, for one. From a physicist's point of view, what do you make of them?"

"Ah, that's a tricky question."

"Is the physical manipulation of time like that even possible?"

"Well a time machine is the dream of every physicist, but everything we know suggests that they're pure fantasy. That doesn't mean, however, that the same is necessarily true in this world. In fact it's just the opposite—rather than clinging to the common sense of our world, we should seek to replicate and observe things that can't be explained using the scientific knowledge we have, then aim to create new theories that incorporate and explain our observations." Renko twirled her hat around an outstretched finger, a look of amusement on her face. "I'd like to see more of this world and what it's like, personally. I'd be happy to spend my summer vacation here."

"I'm sure your parents must be rather worried about you. You suddenly disappeared without a trace from your aunt's room. They might even be questioned by the police over it."

"Well, we have no means to contact them, so there's not much we can do about that right now. I'm sure that your eyes will be able to find us a way back once they've had some time to look around."

"Don't put this all on me." I passed a hand over my eyes wearily. I hadn't seen a single rift or even the edge of a boundary since we had arrived here. That may not have been unusual in and of itself, but it didn't do anything for my nerves. There was something unusual that I could sense here though... "Speaking of boundaries, Renko..."

"Yes?"

"I have a feeling there's some kind of strong barrier that's been placed over this entire building."

"What do you mean?" Renko had perked up, instantly going from dreamily staring at the ceiling to rapt attention. It was flattering, the way she would always give an unbiased and considerate ear to my theories or rambles about things she couldn't see. But it was also weird. I've heard the sorts of things I say, who in their right mind would believe any of it?

"I don't know how to explain it, exactly, but I've told you before that the gaps I can see are basically areas where mutual interference between different overlapping boundaries creates pockets where none of the constituent boundaries cover that space, right? The world is covered with a thin, transparent veil that we don't notice even if we're conscious of its existence and when that natural barrier collides with man-made barriers, the frayed edges where they intersect appear to my eyes as rifts. In some cases, when I look through these gaps, I can see a different world connected to it."

"And if you touch my eyes, I can share in that vision, sure."

"Well, I hadn't noticed it at first, but now that I think about it I haven't seen any rifts here at all. I don't see them everywhere, so maybe that's not strange, but this building itself is a kind of boundary. The wall around it is another. Each of these rooms represents a boundary. And yet, I haven't seen a single fray or so much as a ripple in any of the boundaries that make up this place. They're all perfect. Either all the boundaries in this world are exceptionally strong, or this building was constructed in such a way as to reinforce boundaries somehow."

I thought back to our dinner in the walled garden this evening. "A house, or a mansion in this case, is essentially a closed area that excludes others and divides space. At the same time, it's a place where people frequently come and go, so the boundary is necessarily flexible. Doors, windows and gates allow things to easily transition from one side of the boundary to the other without disrupting things, so the boundary remains stable and doesn't cause friction with other boundaries. In such a situation, there's only one place where the division is likely to become unstable, and as such it's usually the place where the boundaries are most carefully reinforced, both structurally, with wood and metal and spiritually, with ritual and habit—the entrance and exit. If we were to take all of the boundaries that make up this mansion as a whole then what would be the point where the boundary is the least stable?"

"The front gate?"

"Correct."

It made sense. The entrance and exit to any realm must necessarily be able to be loosened. Just as the membranes of a cell could open to take in food or excrete waste, other worlds could most easily be accessed through the torii gates of a shrine. Tunnels and forests often lead to other worlds in folklore because they were places that separated one type of space from another. The gate of this mansion, the only gap in the wall that surrounded it, should have been no different. My eyes, which can perceive the rifts between worlds, can also sense fluctuations in boundaries too minor to have become rifts yet. The thinning of boundaries was like a constant sort of background noise that one sees everywhere as people, energy, things and information transition from one bounded space to another. Just another part of life in the city that you had to learn to tune out.

At this mansion, the gate that Miss Meiling was guarding should have been like that. A place where a rift, or at least a fluctuation that could become a rift should have been visible. I collected my thoughts and delivered the bad news: "As far as I could see from the garden, the boundaries around the gate weren't even a little frayed."

"Does this mean the mansion is completely sealed off?"

"Yes, you might say that. It's as if they've intentionally cut themselves off from the outside. Like they're afraid of something out there."

"I don't know, the mistress doesn't seem the type to be afraid of much. She didn't hesitate to make an attempt to block out the sun with fog, even."

"Well it's just my impression of the space. We shouldn't rely on it too much."

"No, that's an interesting observation." Renko mused, staring pensively into the middle distance. "There's probably many more hidden secrets in this mansion. For example, the other resident Sakuya doesn't want to tell us about."

"Other resident?" My mouth was agape in surprise.

"When you asked Sakuya about the residents of the mansion earlier, she had said that the people we've met so far was 'pretty much everyone'. That suggests there's someone here who isn't openly spoken about."

"Ah..." I supposed it wouldn't be so strange if there were things or even people here they didn't want to show to guests. Hospitality only extends so far.

"There should be one more person here, or to be precise, one more being here who they don't seem to want guests to see."

"And who would that be?"

"The resident Sakuya hid. Another vampire, I'd guess."

I raised my eyebrows at Renko's suggestion. "What makes you think the mistress isn't the only vampire in the house?"

"When Patchouli first called Sakuya, she said we might end up as Remi's pie or as her sister's plaything."

I thought back. "The bit about the pie had left a distasteful enough image in my head that I hadn't given much thought to the second half, but I think you're right. She definitely did say something like that. Remilia is the mistress of the house, so I'm guessing it would have to be a younger sister."

The mistress' younger sister. What would the younger sibling of that proud, cruel little tyrant be like, I wondered? Perhaps she was a good, honest girl. For her to be mentioned in the same breath as the threat of making the two of us into a pie, however, sent a shiver coursing down my spine.

"Hey Merry, what do you suppose it means for a human to be the plaything of a vampire?"

"I don't want to imagine it, Renko."

In my head, the image of a child throwing and tearing apart a human while in the midst of a temper tantrum played out, leaving me with a cold, sickly-feeling sweat.

Later, I would find that my imagination had not been so far from the truth.


—12—


After that conversation, I was left feeling a bit on edge for the rest of the evening. I wasn't in the mood for the usual banter with Renko, either. Not that there was much for us to discuss, trapped as we were. Renko was laying on the bed with her hat pulled down over her eyes, lost in thought about something. Or maybe asleep.

Normally, when I have nothing to do, I would open a book, but I had left all of the books I brought with me for this trip to Tokyo at Renko's Parents' house. To my chagrin, this room was without a bookshelf of its own.

I picked up the bell that Sakuya had left on the end table. It looked for all the world like an ordinary hand bell, tin plated with silver on a polished wooden handle. I couldn't imagine that Sakuya would be able to hear it anywhere in the mansion. Wondering, I gave it a shake.

"You wanted to see me?" Sakuya appeared without the slightest warning directly in front of me. Even though I had half-expected it, it still gave me a start. For the health of my heart, I would have to learn to get used to this.

"I'd like to get a book to read."

"From the library?"

"No, I found an original copy of Christie's 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦 in the parlor where we were first taken..."

"I'll bring it right away." Sakuya bowed, and the next moment there was a green hardcover in her hand. "This one, I take it?"

"Y-Yes, thank you very much."

"Very well, then." Sakuya handed me the book and walked out the door, in the way that I could see her this time. As I settled down onto the couch with the slim hardcover, Renko sat up abruptly, tipping her hat back into place on her head.
"Oh, the Christie from earlier. You had Sakuya go all the way back to get that?"

"I have nothing better to do, so I thought I may as well read the original."

"In a situation as fantastic as this, is there really a need to escape into fiction? There's plenty of other things to do, like exploring this mansion."

"As long as this is the reality I find myself in, I'd like to try to live as normal and peaceful a life as possible. No need to go poking our noses where they aren't wanted."

"You're such a hikikomori, Merry."

"Well excuse me for preferring peace and quiet."

Ignoring Renko, I opened the pages of the book. I had read the story in Japanese once before, more than five years ago, so I remembered the culprit, but my memory of the details of the story was dubious. Just how would Christie describe the psychology of the murderer in her own words, I wondered? I began to follow the English text down the page.

As I did so, Renko began pacing relentlessly back and forth in front of the sofa I was sitting on. I attempted valiantly to ignore her, but the sight of her concerned expression popping back and forth into my field of vision kept interrupting my focus. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere until I heard what she wanted. I closed up the book and lightly glared up at my partner. "Hey Renko, why don't you calm down a little?"

"Calming down is the last thing I should do! You're far 𝘵𝘰𝘰 calm for this situation, Merry!"

Renko's internal cogitation must have completed. Whenever she reaches a conclusion and synthesizes some new information about the supernatural phenomena we've witnessed in our time as the Hifuu Club, she always gets like this. Bursting with energy and curiosity, and eager to learn more. "How can the Hifuu Club, charged with uncovering the secrets of the world, spend the night reading peacefully in a vampire's mansion?"

"Curiosity killed the cat, Renko."

"And you can't catch a tiger cub without entering its den, Merry. Come on!"

It was a foregone conclusion that arguing with her would be pointless. When Renko gets like this she's just about unstoppable. Asking her to sit still once she'd gotten hold of a mystery would have been an impossible request.

Renko pulled the trenchcoat out of the closet and threw it on. I suspect the noire detective look was to her liking. Wearing the coat inside seemed a bit silly though.

"If it gets dangerous, I'm going to leave you behind and run", I said, climbing to my feet.

"That's terrible. The Hifuu Club is one, isn't it, Merry? Our fates are sealed together."

"Oh no. You can't drag me into this adventure without my permission then tell me we're stuck together forever. I won't let you." This last line I had to deliver while walking briskly, as Renko had already made for the door. Despite our arguments, the activities of the Hifuu Club continued like normal and I found myself trotting along behind as Renko led the way into darkness. Some laws of nature are far too immutable to change just because we'd come to another world, it seems.



And so it was that we slipped out of the guest room and prowled along the darkened corridors of the mansion, our footsteps silenced by the soft thickness of the carpet.

"Judging from what we saw when we went out into the garden earlier and on our trips to and from the library and to the audience hall, the entire mansion must be three stories high. The chamber where the mistress held court must be in the center of the building, connected to the balcony we had seen diagonally below the clock tower. The reception room we first visited was on the first floor, to the left of the main foyer. The guest room we had been given was on the second floor, just above it." Renko narrated as we walked along.

"If you were to look down on this mansion from the top, it might look like a capital H, or more precisely, like a serif I laying on its side, right?" I ventured.

"I suspect it's actually more like a sideways serif E, as the ceiling of the library probably sticks up above the ground."

Renko was right, the height of the ceiling in the library had to reach beyond the level of the first floor - it had definitely reached beyond the height of the staircase we had ascended when we left. "With that in mind, the layout might look more like the kanji 山 when viewed from above. But whether it's H or I or 山 or a sidewaysコ, the point is this place seems far too big for the number of people living here, doesn't it?"

While I was muttering this to myself, Renko was playing with the brim of her hat. "Yeah, the house and the library are both too big for the number of people here. But there's more wrong with this place than that."

I looked up from my reverie into the depths of the hall, which proceeded on much further than I could see in the dim light. There wasn't much to differentiate one bit of hallway from another without windows, and it almost seemed as if we had been walking in place endlessly, never getting any closer to a turn or end. I looked back the way we had come nervously. The corridor there was indistinguishable, disappearing back into the same darkness. The hallway was at least a hundred meters long. It hadn't seemed that long when we had walked with Sakuya to our room initially. "...Renko," I began, my voice wavering.

"You're just noticing now, Merry? The size of this mansion is obviously unnatural. The hallways are far too long and I'm confident that library is bigger than it appears, too."

"But how can that be?"

"Well, this mansion is home to magicians and vampires. Someone might be using illusions to make things seem larger than they are, but I don't see the point."

Come to think of it, when we had left the library with Sakuya, we had reached the exit right away. Perhaps there was a mechanism in the mansion that confused the senses of intruders. I wondered if the boundary surrounding the mansion might have something to do with it.

"Personally, I don't think it's an illusion though. I wonder if it's Patchouli's magic, or something the mistress can do, or maybe even Sakuya's work. I think this mansion is actually larger on the inside than it appears from the outside," Renko continued.

"Sakuya's work? How would the ability to manipulate time make the mansion larger?"

"Time and space are inseparable, Merry. Distance is typically thought of as only existing in three dimensions, but distance can only exist as a concept because it takes time, which is distance in a fourth dimension, to travel between two points in the other dimensions."

"I follow what you're saying... sort of."

"For Sakuya, who can stop time, the concept of distance doesn't exist unless she wants it to. If she were to stop time and travel from point A to point B, then release time again, it would be the same to an outside observer as if the distance between A and B didn't exist for Sakuya. In other words, by expanding or contracting time, she could similarly manipulate space, making travel between two points in three dimensional space require the traversal of a greater or lesser distance in the fourth dimension as well."

"Alright, that's enough theoretical physics for me. Let's say you're right. What would be the point of enlarging a mansion already too big for the number of people living in it?"

"That I couldn't tell you." As she said this, Renko had come to a stop. At some point a staircase had appeared before us.

"Are we going up or down?" Renko nodded her head and headed for the descending staircase. "Downstairs?", I asked. "Are we going outside?"

"Well," she began, "you have two choices for concealing something you don't want others to find: the basement or the tower. The clock tower looks like we might have to go through the audience hall to get to it, so for now the basement's the safest bet."

For a moment, I didn't quite grasp Renko's intentions, but once I put all the pieces together I raised my eyebrows and reached out to grab her shoulder in alarm. "Wait a minute, what are you planning, Renko?"

"It would be rather ungracious if we didn't say hello to the one resident we haven't met yet, don't you think?" She smiled that troublesome grin of hers. It seemed my partner was serious about finding this little sister she had theorized.

"Renko, there's no guarantee that this sister is someone you'll be able to communicate with. Maybe there's a reason she's been hidden away."

"Anyone that people with these kinds of abilities feel the need to hide away from two harmless guests like us sounds like someone very interesting, don't you think? Besides, if things turn out badly, we can just run straight away."

I wonder if a human could even outrun a vampire? "Renko, there's probably a reason why she's hidden away where guests wouldn't find her…"

I released Renko's shoulder with a sigh. Renko looked back at me as if to reply but just as she went to turn at the landing of the staircase, there was a loud bang, and the entire building shook violently.

"Earthquake?"

Immediately we both sank to the floor and clambered to the edge of the landing with our backs up against the wall, but the tremor lasted only for a moment, and afterwards silence returned. We looked up fearfully and exhaled at the same time.

"What was that?"

It had felt more like a sudden, strong impact than an earthquake.

"It almost felt like a jolt or explosion had struck the foundations of the house from below. I wonder what else might be below the mansion other than the library." Renko's eyes were alight with excitement.

If there really was something in the basement, then it had just shaken the whole building. It seemed obvious to me that we we should be running away from something like that, not toward it.

"Now we need to know what's down there more than ever. Come on, Merry." She was up and moving already, descending the stairs two at a time.

"Renko, we—mpmph!" My argument was cut off by Renko's hand covering my mouth. She had flattened herself up against the wall of the stairwell, and was reaching her arm out to muffle me while peering into the first floor hallway. I waited a bit before pushing her hand away and whispering "What happened?"

"Meiling was at the bottom of the stairs, looking panicked," she whispered back. "She must have just come in."

"Meiling?"

"Now, will she go to the gate, the library, the mistress' room or..." Renko paused for a moment, then craned her head around the corner. "She's headed down to the basement." That had to mean to the source of the tremor, to the hidden sister's place. "Let's tail her, Merry."

"[Six little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one, and then there were five.]" I quoted, more to myself than Renko. I knew full well there was no stopping her curiosity now. I could only hope we weren't about to get stung ourselves. I still had the copy of 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘞𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘯𝘦 in my hands, as I hadn't had time to put it down while following Renko out of the room. Maybe I could use its hard cover as a shield if something attacked, though I doubted it would provide much protection.