"Robbery? Kidnapping?"
Iver frowned slightly. "Was it done by people? Or was it deliberate?"
"Exactly."
Ibn nodded and looked toward Anar, the guide, who was visibly restless and deeply uneasy.
Iver followed his gaze and suddenly understood a few things.
The girl was probably only fourteen or fifteen. If she had been in Avalon or Iris, she would not even have entered university yet. But now, she was already speaking Stibium Language haltingly and skillfully carrying out this work that would earn her the death penalty if she were caught. If she had no courage, that would have been impossible.
But ever since she had heard the word "petrification," she had clearly grown more anxious. It seemed obvious that she knew part of the truth.
"I'm guessing... someone spread a similar rumor in Rock Cellar City, saying that the city was unclean, that its people had committed some great sin, and that all the sinners in this City of Sin would be turned to stone or something..."
Iver slowly asked, "Am I right?"
This sort of story was simply too easy to understand.
For uneducated people, complicated matters were impossible to grasp. But they could understand "crime"—someone did something wrong and was punished for it. And the idea that a crime could be so great that it implicated everyone else was neither abstract nor unfamiliar to people living in a slave society.
As the saying went, one could teach someone a lesson and fail, but one real event would teach them at once. In Parthia, this was a classic example of being taught by events.
"Half right... Well, mostly right."
Ibn nodded. "There is indeed a similar story among the common people. They say that using stone slabs to block off the desert is a taboo. Because they failed to