After sending Lila home ahead of them in her family's carriage, Charlotte and Viève took a Church carriage down the broad King's Road, heading straight for the crime scene in the Harbor District.
Inside the swaying carriage, Charlotte watched the Solar High Priest Viève resting with her eyes closed, her body bobbing with its motion, and could not help asking:
"Why bring me along?"
She had asked a similar question beneath Saint Roch Cathedral, where she learned that the killer was very likely the member of the Tamara Family who had followed her at night and nearly kidnapped her. Back then, that mid-sequence Beyonder of the Arbiter pathway had merely asked a few questions before leaving calmly under the Machinery Hivemind members' watchful eyes. He had even used some sort of verbal "prohibition" to stop them from firing, displaying all the poise of a veteran Beyonder.
But three official Beyonders from the Church of the Artisan were there too. Even if that Tamara really did commit a murder, what does it have to do with me... Charlotte grumbled inwardly. Suddenly, a possibility occurred to her, and she added:
"Was the victim a cultist who escaped?"
Viève opened her eyes, looked at her with her emerald gaze, and answered:
"When the Harbor District's sheriff reached the scene, he found the victims in a very strange state. It didn't look like an ordinary murder case. Neither ordinary sheriffs and patrol members nor professional police officers like those in Trier are capable of handling Beyonder incidents. By convention, such cases are handed over to the nearest church for specialists to deal with. This isn't unique to the Intis Kingdom. The Orthodox Churches and secular authorities in other countries cooperate in the same way.
"After investigating the scene, the Machinery Hivemind members quickly contacted