Spiritual Workshop

Gordon returned to 9 Knights Road.

Downstairs in Hopkins's dental clinic, the dentist was torturing a patient with a pedal-powered drill.

"Aaaah!!!!" A bloodcurdling scream rang out, enough to make everyone on the street reconsider whether they had brushed properly the night before.

Gordon climbed the stairs to the chorus of wails, yet he was in quite a good mood.

Humming, he opened the door, wondering whether Vera was cleaning her weapons, preparing food, or doing something else.

As it turned out, she was reading.

Vera sat in the armchair by the window, the afternoon sunlight edging her short, dark-brown hair with gold.

Her clothes had all been washed and were clean. Her polished boots sat beside the chair, and she had her bare feet up on the seat, knees bent, her whole body crouched in the sunlight, looking especially distinct.

She was reading.

[The Aberrant Dissection Atlas. Thick enough to serve as her secondary weapon.]

She found the book fascinating. For one thing, she wanted to know whether the monsters illustrated in it looked exactly like the Aberrants she had hunted. For another, she cared deeply about the anatomical structures it described. These monsters seemed to have hidden treasures inside them, and she couldn't afford to miss those in the future.

Quite a sight, Gordon thought. So this is what it looks like when a block of wood starts understanding the world.

"Class is over." Vera didn't look up.

"As far as I know, that happens quite often at universities." Gordon closed the door behind him. "What have you learned?"

"There's a word I don't know." Vera flipped back a few pages and pointed to an illustration of a Stormhawk Demon. "What's a cloaca?"

Gordon paused in the middle of pouring hot water.

This was a scientific question, so he could only teach her by making the complex simple.

"Scientifically speaking, how many openings do you think you have below your belly button?"

"What does that mean?"

"Just count them."

Vera glanced down and counted.

"Three."

"Some birds and lizards only have one."

"What do you mean? Which job does it do?"

"Three in one."

"My God." Vera was astonished. "They use the same one for things going in and coming out."

"Truer words were never spoken."

"That must be a very busy hole." Vera turned the pages, finding the book more interesting by the moment.

Gordon blew on his hot water to cool it, then told her about his day.

He started with the Rabid Demon, moved on to how he had become a little overseer with a clipboard, then described Martin Holt producing a Blackwater River sample found inside a human lung. Finally, he explained that the Bureau of Affairs was preparing to recruit trainee investigators from among the university students.

"So you're going to wear an Octagonal Badge." Vera finally put down her book, looking somewhat surprised.

"How useful is that thing?"

"Very useful," Vera said. "The Aberrant Affairs Bureau oversees the Hunter Administration."

"Say I'm an investigator now, and I visit Arthur Gray's agency. Do I still have to pay?"

"No," Vera said with certainty. "He has to cooperate with the investigation. He even has to pour you tea."

"Incredible." Gordon rubbed his chin, where stubble was starting to grow. "That's exactly what I've been missing: the authority to barge into someone's home and make them pour me tea. Just imagine how many detours we could have avoided if I'd already been an investigator."

Vera suddenly smiled.

It was as though the left half of her brain had told the right half a joke.

"What?" Gordon rarely saw Vera smile so naturally.

"Nothing," she said. "...I'm a probationary hunter, and you're a trainee investigator. That's pretty funny."

Gordon understood.

"Right, right. Between the two of us, neither has a permanent position," Gordon said. "Yet we can wipe out a bunch of Aberrants, investigate a pile of cases, and now we're planning to study the capital's biggest river."

Vera considered it and decided they made a good team.

Their combined experience wasn't exactly abundant, but the ceiling on their abilities could be very high.

"How do you get it?" she asked.

"First, I have to submit a final thesis with some substance," Gordon said. "It won't just be Professor Winslow and a bunch of classmates reading it. People from the Bureau of Affairs, the university president, and the military will all come to see what we university students cook up."

"What's a thesis?"

"Taking something you could explain in three sentences and writing thirty pages about it, with twenty-nine of those pages copied from other people."

"University is such a hassle," Vera concluded.

With that, she picked up the atlas again.

"That 'shadow of Aston Street'..." Recalling what Gordon had told her about his day, she said, "I think I came across it half an hour ago. It's a Dragon Lizard Demon."

"What are its distinguishing features?"

"Super strong, super big, super violent," Vera said. "If it's in Lundenim, we're in for a nasty fight."

Gordon made a note of that.

"Have you come across an Aberrant that looks like a black goat?"

"No." Vera had no memory of anything like that.

"All right. No luck on that one."

Next, Gordon drew a blueprint on the table.

His hand moved astonishingly fast, yet his lines weren't messy in the slightest. A construction drawing that would have taken an ordinary person two hours took him ten minutes, without even needing corrections.

"Want to go out? I need to stop by Clocktower Street." Gordon blew the ink dry and prepared to head to his next destination.

"What for?"

"To commission a uterus."

"My God." Her tone was identical to the one she had used when discussing cloacas.

Apparently, like birds, Gordon also had some indescribable anatomical structure.

Clocktower Street was also in Lundenim's East District.

The street had many print shops, instrument stores, and small mechanical workshops. It was a gathering place for craftsmen, with a little clock-repair shop every ten paces. Printing presses hummed along the way, continuously stamping ink onto novels, textbooks, and newspapers.

The Sinclair Spiritual Workshop was tucked away in an alley off Clocktower Street.

The storefront wasn't particularly spacious. Its sign bore a crucible, a thermometer, and the name Sinclair.

"I've been here." Vera looked up. "He sells things."

"Of course he sells things. He makes things, too," Gordon said.

Before the two of them could push the door open, the sounds of an argument came from inside.

"Mr. Sinclair," a man said gruffly, "we'd like to borrow your blueprints for a look."

"Taking them without permission can hardly be called borrowing," Sinclair's voice answered from within.

"We've decided to give you one final chance to cooperate..."

"You've already said that six times."

Gordon listened for a moment. It didn't sound like a robbery.

These people clearly had some education. They knew better than to use force against a man of Sinclair's standing.

Gordon and Vera pushed the door open and entered.

Sinclair stood behind the counter in an overcoat, facing three well-dressed people, each holding a walking cane and an agreement.

"This is private business. It doesn't concern..." Their leader wore a gray overcoat. His tone was still forceful when he saw Gordon, but the sight of Vera made him focus at once, and his voice quickly became composed. "...And this lady is..."

"What do I look like?" Vera asked coldly.

The three huddled together and whispered.

Gordon caught the words "Essence Hunter."

They reached a consensus within seconds.

If a fight broke out, Sinclair's chief concern afterward would be how to mop the blood off the floor.

"We don't want any trouble. We're only here to discuss business." The business representatives tipped their hats to them. "If you two have business to discuss as well, please go ahead."

"Yes, we're here to discuss business, too." Gordon smiled.

That gave both sides a graceful way out.

But she still stood there, motionless, with no habit of making way for others.

So they had to tuck away their canes, turn nervously sideways, and hug the wall, keeping their distance from Vera's sword as they left Sinclair's workshop.

"Good day."

The workshop regained the quiet befitting a small establishment.

"Welcome." Sinclair smoothed his beard and nodded to Gordon, then gave Vera a cautious glance. "...Miss Hunter."

When he had visited the university previously, Gordon had taught him the proper way to use a piece of source substance.

Before this, he had only known Gordon as Winslow's student. He hadn't expected him to know Vera Cateret as well.

There were many rumors about Vera.

Binge eating and drinking, uncontrolled contamination, a wandering attention span, living under a bridge.

She had also come to buy things from Sinclair several times, sometimes forgetting to pay, and even forgetting she had ever visited.

Yet now, she stood straight-backed, her expression cold.

Sinclair had baked a meat pie in the workshop, filling the room with its rich aroma, but she wasn't distracted in the slightest.

It reminded him of a much older rumor... a top student at the Logris Hunter School. It seemed Gordon was bringing something exceedingly dangerous back into the world.