Gordon opened another document.
It was a sheet of official stationery, stamped in the bottom right corner with a circular seal depicting a fish leaping from the waves, overlaid with a brass anchor.
"To the esteemed Count Montfort..." Gordon read. "I recently learned that your household seeks to employ an upright gentleman skilled in maintaining collections... Harold Wade has served our society diligently and conscientiously for the past four years... I firmly believe that, whatever responsibilities you entrust to him, he will perform them with the same dedication and prove worthy of your trust..."
"Oh." Vera listened, only half following.
"This is a carefully worded letter of recommendation from someone important. No wonder that clam man could work for the Montfort household. Someone vouched for him." Gordon frowned.
He looked at the signature:
Olivia Brendel.
"Members of the Hermitage usually operate through a single line of contact. Each has only one handler," Gordon mused. "If Harold was Octopus Face's handler, then the person who vouched for him might be Harold's handler. At the very least, she was willing to put her name on the line for him..."
"Kill her?" Vera asked.
"Not yet," Gordon stopped her. "A letter and a name don't prove anything right now. But if this Olivia dares work against us, this piece of paper will become a knife at her throat."
Finally, Gordon took out a rubbing of a stone tablet.
This was something of immense significance, its value impossible to measure in money.
"The Tidal Birth-Rite." Gordon checked it against Harold's notes. Harold had obtained this rubbing from a high-ranking member of the order.
"Can't read it." Vera stared at the marks on the rubbing.
The writing on it was ancient, beyond anyone's understanding.
At first glance, it looked like some bizarre mural left by a drunken Cultist.
But on closer inspection, Gordon felt that the ancient characters and lines followed a definite logic, like an engineering diagram.
An embryo was drawn in the center, surrounded by a ring of symbols resembling spiraling eyes linked end to end. Countless lines extended outward, all enclosed within a vessel. Beneath the vessel, a passage pointed toward something radiant.
It was like giving birth. Apparently, Harold had a reason for playing a hanging rain doll at the pumping station. This seemed to be a means of ascending to a higher order of life.
What Gordon's "newborn yet to choose its form" lacked was precisely this secret ritual, so closely associated with the concept of "birth."
Since all these things came from the Blackwater Hermitage, and the Silver Fish Casket produced embryos, it seemed reasonable that there would be a corresponding ritual to gestate those embryos into fully formed beings.
The only problem was...
Gordon couldn't read the ancient inscriptions on the rubbing, and he couldn't perform it by guessing.
He needed someone knowledgeable to decipher it.
Professor Winslow immediately came to mind. It looked like he would have to tap the professor's resources again.
"..." Uninterested in unfamiliar writing, Vera turned toward the wax-sealed storage bottle.
A faint gray glow drifted slowly inside, like a rotten fish.
It didn't look like much.
But in the hunting profession, "it doesn't look like much" was usually the first half of someone's last words.
So Vera looked at Gordon.
"What is it?" Gordon asked.
"Is that... source substance? What should we do? I'm not eating it, and neither should you." Vera was cautious.
Ever since recklessly absorbing source substance had afflicted her with Gluttony, she had never wanted to refine any source substance of unknown origin again.
"Nobody wants to refine a failure. I need to find someone to buy it." Gordon thought for a moment.
Winslow, Peter, Charlotte... He needed someone he could fleece without feeling guilty.
The range of candidates immediately narrowed.
Once they had finished taking stock of their gains, Vera stood up.
"Where are you going?"
"To clean myself up," Vera said. "Then sleep. Train when I wake up."
"No training. Rest," Gordon corrected her.
"Rest." Vera understood.
Before closing the door, she paused and glanced back at the living room.
There was food within reach here, things of her own, and Gordon.
Number 9 Knights Road wasn't large, but it was beginning to feel more and more like home.
Gordon didn't notice Vera's gaze.
He cleared the table and put everything away, carefully storing the most precious items, especially the colorful scales whose purpose he couldn't figure out.
Finally, he found the carefully sealed new source substance.
[Immaculate new source substance-"newborn yet to choose its form." Its first cry has yet to sound. It awaits the hour of birth.]
It awaits the hour of birth...
Once he deciphered the inscriptions on the stone tablet rubbing, perhaps he could reproduce Harold's "Tidal Birth-Rite" and grant this source substance its true power.
"Wait a little longer," Gordon said. "Your old man's found a way to bring you into the world."
Beneath the walnut-shell wrinkles, something really did seem to stir slowly.
In a normal household, those words would have sounded deeply wrong.
At Number 9 Knights Road, they merely meant today's work was going well.
Meanwhile.
When Vera emerged again, her hair was still damp.
Her first instinct was to reach for her sword. But remembering her injured left shoulder, Gordon's instructions, and her own small hopes for the future, she let go again.
She moved the chair out of the way, drew the curtains so they blocked the view without shutting out the light, and rearranged the books Gordon used for revision. She couldn't understand them, but she could at least put them in order from thickest to thinnest.
Only after finishing did she notice the mud spots on the floor.
So she began investigating the broom, along with the pot and the meat.
Whatever it took.
To find a life worth living.
Gordon went to Wycliffe Street.
Arthur Gray's private demon-hunting agency was on this street, opposite the hunter brokerage hall. Gordon already knew the area well.
Gray was a Professional Hunter. His consultation fee was twenty gold pounds.
Gordon stood outside, hands tucked into his coat pockets, resolutely refusing to cross the threshold.
He respected twenty gold pounds.
That was an ordinary person's wages for an entire year.
So Gordon stood at the entrance and knocked on the glass.
"Come in." A languid voice came from inside.
When those two words failed to work, the door opened a crack.
Arthur Gray wore a grayish-white shirt and held a gun. Seeing Gordon, he returned the gun to its holster.
"I said come in," Gray said.
"No need."
"I don't discuss commissions in the doorway."
"I'm not here to discuss a commission either." Gordon put on an innocent expression. "I just want to ask a few questions that don't cost anything."
"Make it quick. Then leave. Don't block any big-spending clients who might turn up," Gray said.
"I've been reading," Gordon said. "If a piece of source substance has very poor aspects, a dull gray color, weak activity, and looks like a spoiled, stinking oyster, does that usually mean it's worthless...?"
With every sentence, Gordon made the source substance sound more like garbage.
Gray's expression grew increasingly contemptuous.
At last, he couldn't resist correcting him.
"You can't judge source substance by appearance alone," Gray said.
That correction was exactly what Gordon had been waiting for.
"Really? I thought gray ones could only be thrown away, while gold, white, and red ones had to be high-grade," Gordon said innocently.
Gray's expression worsened.
Gordon could practically read the words on his face:
Another idiot who thinks source substance is just colored rocks.
"Mutated or contaminated source substance is indeed unsuitable for assimilation, but it's good for making weapons," Gray said. "A few bullets, an explosive bottle, or a trap, for instance. Handled properly, it can release extremely vicious anomalous reactions in a short span of time."
"But it's very small," Gordon said.
"Size has nothing to do with it," Gray said. "A little contaminated source substance powder is enough to saddle you with a strange disease for decades."
"But what if it looks like a lump of... something especially failed and useless?" Gordon said.
"Then you definitely shouldn't throw it away carelessly," Gray said. "Those corrupted, contaminated aspects might correspond to some truly vicious effects. Anyone who really knows the trade won't turn their nose up at such things."
"Sounds like it's worth a little money," Gordon said.
"Of course it's worth money," Gray said. "It just depends on who's using it. Now go away. Go find your professor."
Gordon took out the brown glass bottle he had concealed on his person.
A small gray shadow drifted inside.
Gray's face twitched.
"You just said anyone who really knows the trade wouldn't turn their nose up at it." Gordon smiled. "I particularly admire that sort of professionalism."
"..."
"I've heard," Gordon said leisurely, "that failure aspects don't mean something is useless."
Gray said nothing.
"Bullets, explosive bottles, traps..."
Gray still said nothing.
"A little contaminated source substance powder is enough to saddle you with a disease for decades..."
Gray sighed.
"Where did you get it?"
"An extremely, extremely unsuccessful experiment," Gordon said. "Apparently, source substance appears under precisely those sorts of extreme conditions."
"Not big enough. I'll buy it for fifteen gold pounds." He couldn't be bothered to say more.
"Sure. Now I have a baseline price. I'll ask at the exchange," Gordon said.
"Twenty gold pounds."
"Exactly your consultation fee!"
"Not just a consultation. Twenty gold pounds... plus my help in a fight, once," Gray said.
Gordon grew serious.
"Help in a fight?" Gordon said.
"Off the record. One time only. No attacking the royal family, no attacking the Church, no prison breaks, no overseas wars, and no testing a noblewoman's fiancé for her," Gray said.
"You know those restrictions so well it sounds like someone's screwed you over before," Gordon said.
"Many times," Gray said.
A seasoned Professional Hunter always had stories.
"How much help?" Gordon asked. "The kind where you hang around outside the door for a while, or...?"
"That depends on whether the enemy dares look me in the eye," Gray said.
Gordon considered it.
Twenty gold pounds in cash, plus one intervention from a third-tier Professional Hunter. In exchange for a weak piece of source substance with failure aspects. A bargain. An absolute bargain.
"Deal," Gordon said.
Gray went back inside, fetched a stack of banknotes for Gordon, and bought his source substance. He also gave him a business card.
["White Raven" Gray's business card. Like an expensive bullet, its eventual target unknown.]
"I've taken a loss." Gordon put away the banknotes, his tone heavy with grief.
Gray glanced at him, plainly not believing a single word.
He studied the gray shadow drifting inside the bottle, judging that it could make at least a set of contamination rounds, or one sufficiently nasty trap.
Twenty gold pounds plus one intervention wasn't cheap.
But buying something like this wasn't a loss, either.
"Still spending time with Vera Cateret?" Gray remembered something else.
"Yes."
"Before she started recklessly refining source substance, she was exceptionally clearheaded, calm, and intelligent." Gray turned away, a trace of regret entering his voice. "Probably no one will ever see that side of her now."
Gordon headed back, and the door closed behind him.
Gordon made the rounds of the Old Fish Market, May Square, and Prism Avenue, selling the anomalous materials in separate batches.
By the time he returned to Number 9 Knights Road, it was evening.
On the way, he rehearsed several possible scenarios, preparing himself for chaos.
Vera might have removed her bandages in an attempt to prove she didn't need to recuperate.
Or she might have nailed some intruder to the wall.
Or she might have vanished, leaving only a note saying, "Taking a commission. Back soon," and turning Gordon into a steaming kettle of fury.
Instead, the first thing he noticed when he pushed open the door was the smell of stewing meat.
Vera stood by the stove in a clean white shirt, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
Wielding a wooden spatula as a sword, she was beating up a pot of beef, onions, dark beer, pepper, and bay leaves.
He looked around. The floor had been cleaned, and there wasn't a speck of dust on the windows.
"Welcome back." Vera didn't look up.
Gordon stood in the doorway.
There was nothing aggressive about those words, yet their destructive power was earth-shattering.
"Did I come to the wrong place?" Gordon said. "This doesn't look like Number 9 Knights Road."
Before you continue