The next day, Liston dropped Kraft and Lucius off on Elm Street. Using the items on the shopping list as an excuse, he left ahead of them.
Before leaving, Kraft didn't say goodbye to him. Instead, he put on the Bird-Beak Mask, and an unsettling cough came from beneath it, like someone who'd accidentally inhaled the secret seasoning powder on a grilled fish at Gris's tavern.
Perhaps the foul miasma from the Salt Tide District had spread this far. After they'd approached the area, Kraft had barely stopped coughing. It made Liston wonder if something in the air, undetectable to anyone else, was irritating his windpipe.
Only after Liston had walked some distance and looked back did Kraft finally stop coughing and wave to show there was no need to worry. Lucius gave him a hand and suggested they leave it for another day, since Kraft had just seemed about to cough up a lung, but Kraft firmly refused.
"Cough, cough... I'm fine. I just choked." Kraft wiped his face, his hand bumping against the lenses. Rather than taking the mask off, he tightened it, pressing it more firmly against his face.
The gesture was clearly meant to hide something. Perhaps only someone as slow-witted as Lucius would take it at face value. Liston didn't know what it meant; the truth was far more than a mask away, so he could only investigate it himself.
First, he went to the market near the harbor and divided the items on the paper into several groups, handing them off to friends and acquaintances who knew far more about them than he did.
As for Liston, he changed out of his black robe, put on a set of clothes he'd never worn at the Academy, and pressed his hair down with a hat.