Isaac drew the curtains, plunging the room into dimness. He took his place at the last point of the triangle, representing the ritual's officiant and forming three points with the shopkeeper and the mirror.
After confirming that all three candles were brand new and roughly the same length, Isaac looked at the shopkeeper. "Mr. Harper, before we begin the ritual, I need to confirm one thing. You worship Vicania, correct?"
The shopkeeper looked startled. "Of course."
As a longtime resident of Vista, the shopkeeper could hardly have had a more normal faith than Vicania. Isaac was simply double-checking to be safe. "All right. Please kneel facing the mirror and keep your eyes on your reflection. Don't make any large movements. You may pray silently."
The shopkeeper swallowed and knelt as instructed, resting his hands on his knees.
Isaac also went down on one knee. He took a match from his pocket, struck it, and lit the candle before him. Picking it up, he took a deep breath and recalled the words of the prayer.
He had never used those prayers in an actual setting, so accurately retrieving them from memory now required concentration. Fortunately, the Church of the Golden Bough's prayers followed a fairly consistent format. As long as he remembered one, recalling the others by association wasn't difficult.
"Goddess of glory, Vicania, with the Golden Bough you cleanse the world of impurity and wash away the foul remnants of evil..."
Carlo leaned against the doorframe and yawned. His gaze swept around the room, then rose toward a spot on the ceiling, as though he had noticed some movement.
The flame of the candle in Isaac's hand suddenly flickered. Its color began to change, the orange-yellow gradually taking on a pale gold, infused by some power. The gold softly enveloped the flame, spreading a warm halo of light.
The shopkeeper caught the change in the light out of the corner of his eye, and his eyes widened slightly. He instinctively wanted to turn and see what was happening, but remembering Isaac's earlier instructions, he forced himself to stay still.
Isaac continued reciting the prayer as he held his candle toward the unlit one in front of the shopkeeper, tilting its flame.
The golden flame licked the wick, and after a few seconds, the second candle kindled with the same golden light. He turned his candle toward the one in front of the mirror and repeated the motion. The third candle caught, and all three sides of the triangle were illuminated by golden light.
Isaac returned his candle to its place and picked up the sword cane lying beside it. He pressed the mechanism, and the blade slid out of its sheath.
The blade bore no church patterns or inscriptions. It seemed Carlo had found someone to forge it purely as a weapon, without giving it any religious attributes. But Isaac didn't know how the Holy Silver had been made without involving the church.
Next, Isaac extended the blade over the candle in front of the shopkeeper, holding it above the flame as he continued the prayer.
"Goddess of glory, Vicania, please strip the filth from the innocent and draw it out from the place where it dwells. Let the unclean have nowhere to hide, and let the evil presence return to nothingness..."
The candle flame in front of the shopkeeper flickered several times. A wisp of extremely faint gray-green mist rose from his body and drifted slowly toward the candlelight, then seemed to be swallowed by the flame.
Isaac's gaze sharpened. He turned his wrist, sweeping the blade through an arc, and thrust it at the mirror.
The rush of the sword extinguished the candle flame, and the tip struck the mirror.
The mirror did not shatter immediately. The shopkeeper's reflection remained kneeling, and the light of the candle before him was reflected in the glass, as though the candle in front of the mirror were still burning in reality.
The next second, cracks spread outward from the point where the sword tip touched, growing like branches. The entire mirror shattered, countless fragments falling like dust. Before they reached the floor, they had already lost their luster and turned into a heap of dull powder, scattered inside the salt line.
The shopkeeper swayed violently, as though something had been pulled out of him. He braced both hands against the floor to steady himself, gasping for breath as cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
The flames of the two remaining candles returned to their normal orange-yellow and steadied.
Isaac sheathed his sword and let out a breath. "It's over."
It took the shopkeeper several seconds to come to his senses. "Th-that's it?"
"The curse was transferred to the mirror. The mirror shattered, and the curse has been purified," Isaac explained. "See if you can still smell that odor."
The shopkeeper took a breath, hardly daring to believe it. "It's gone... it's really gone. That smell has completely disappeared!"
He sniffed hard twice more. "It's been half a month. I could smell it the whole time, and now that I suddenly can't, I'm not quite used to it."
Carlo, who had been looking somewhere else, looked back. "You miss it that much? Want me to put the curse back on you?"
"No, that won't be necessary..." The shopkeeper gave an awkward smile. "I'll go get the rest of your commission fee."
The three returned to the shop on the ground floor. The shopkeeper took out a ten-pound note, placed it on the counter, and pushed it toward Isaac.
Isaac accepted the note. Together with the ten-pound deposit from earlier, he now had the full twenty-pound commission fee.
Under the agency's fee-sharing arrangement, he would receive fourteen pounds, enough for him to live decently in Palmer for some time.
The shopkeeper rubbed his hands together. "I'll rush the alterations on that gentleman's hunting outfit for you today. You should be able to pick it up this afternoon."
"Sorry for the trouble."
"It's no trouble. You've helped me so much that I can't thank you enough." The shopkeeper waved a hand.
With the matter settled for now, Isaac and Carlo left the clothing and hat shop. Everything on the street was as usual, as though what had just happened had been a minor episode in another world.
"That went more smoothly than I expected," Isaac said. "I thought something would go wrong."
"It was only a minor curse, after all. The person who cast it seemed more eager to transfer it away than determined to harm anyone." Carlo shrugged.
Isaac had anticipated as much. If the caster had truly wanted to target the shopkeeper, the method wouldn't have been so crude. That person seemed more like someone dumping a burden than plotting to harm someone.
But in that case, the source of the curse probably didn't end with the person who returned the item without asking for a refund. It was hidden deeper.
"Then the source of the curse..."
"The commission was to deal with the curse, and now it's dealt with. The rest is outside the scope of the job. At most, we can stop by the Joint Investigation Bureau and report it, then let them deal with it until they can't make sense of it and hand it over to Section Nine for me to take over. If you're interested, investigate it yourself, but don't expect me to get to work ahead of time."
Isaac thought it over. If he investigated this lead himself, he still knew too little about Vista. Rashly pursuing a curse and its caster when he didn't know where they came from carried more risk than reward. It was better to leave it to the professionals.
Come to think of it, did he count as one of the professionals now...?
"Still, Vicania seems quite willing to do you a favor." Carlo stopped walking. "And also..."
Isaac paused, wondering how to explain his special circumstances, only to see Carlo turn to one side and raise a hand in greeting.
"Good morning, Cardinal Vilka."
Isaac followed his gaze. On the other side of the street, a nun wearing a golden mask gave a slight nod.