Xialuote pushed open the door and stepped into the room. At once she smelled something wholly unlike the incense in the bedroom and the drawing room: turpentine mixed with paint.
The curtains were open. Sunlight lit the easel and the open box of paints beside it. Several brushes were soaking in a narrow-mouthed glass bottle, with a turbid blue-green settled at the bottom. On the small table nearby lay a paper knife and a stack of drawing paper with curled edges.
Among the oil paintings on the walls were the courtyard greenery of the old Suolun residence in Telier, and Kelusi Mountain in Suxite, crowded with windmills. Most numerous, though, were the portraits: Xialuote's late mother, her elder brother Leinuo, her elder sister Danna, and herself at different ages.
There was a group portrait of the family seated in the garden; a profile of her mother holding the child Xialuote; her brother in the act of striking a wooden target with a wooden sword; and the instant her sister, crouching at the edge of the grass and reaching out to catch a butterfly, was tripped by the hem of her skirt.
Lawuer appeared now and then in the family group portraits, but his place was always a little farther back, as if he were one of the figures in the painting, and also as if he stood outside it watching them.
Xialuote suddenly understood. This studio was probably how her father remembered his dead wife and his lost children.
Surrounded by the paintings, Baron Lawuer Suolun stood before the easel, still holding a brush. He touched the last bit of color on the tip to the canvas, then set the brush down, turned, and looked toward the door.
Once he saw who had come, a trace of a smile appeared on his expressionless face.
"Why the sudden visit?"
The few probing lines Xialuote had prepared all stuck in her throat once she clearly saw the paintings on the wall.
After the attacks that had come one after another since her transmigration, she had long harbored a thread of suspicion toward this baron.
The first time, when Aidian tracked her and Lawuer hurried to the Gusitafu residence, his reaction had been a little strange—more as if something he had long worried over had finally happened. The second time she went to the printing plant, not many people knew her itinerary, and her father happened to be one of them. Added to that were all the clues in that booklet of Weiyefu's: a lack of respect for the orthodox gods, long seclusion, an excessive sensitivity to topics of mysticism, and one hard-to-explain death or accident after another around him...
A baron whose family had declined, who had lost his wife and children and been forced to leave Telier, might very well harbor resentment toward the royal family, the Church, even the world itself.
Could it be that he had long since put his faith in some existence that claimed it could grant power, and give his resentment an outlet?
But standing in the studio, she suddenly found this suspicion very hard to say aloud.
Under her father's puzzled gaze, Xialuote realized she had to say something. She quickly put on a natural smile.
"It's about the printing plant... Luosaier and Gelin are still preparing on their end. I wanted to know when it would be convenient for you to go to the Municipal Hall and ask about the publication permit."
Lawuer did not answer at once. He set the palette back on the small table, walked to the round table on the other side of the room and sat, then pointed to the chair opposite, motioning for Xialuote to sit as well.
He waited until his daughter had slowly taken her seat, folded her hands on her knees, and was behaving like an obedient noble young lady. Only then did the baron speak, in a tone that was not severe:
"Are you suspecting that I have something to do with the heretics who attacked you?"
Xialuote was stunned. She had imagined her father flatly denying it, offering every sort of excuse, guiltily changing the subject. She had never thought that, before she had truly asked, he would bring the point up himself.
Was the Arbiter potion really this effective?
Seeing the blank look on her face, Lawuer gave a soft laugh.
"It seems I guessed right."
"Father..."
Xialuote had barely forced the word out when he waved a hand.
"When the Municipal Hall turned the matter of Aidian over to the Church, I knew it could not be an ordinary homicide. After that you went to the church twice, and when you came back you were hiding something. Of course I could guess that you had come into contact with things ordinary people ought not to know, and I was worried because of it."
Xialuote pressed her lips together and did not argue. Twice she had promised not to go to the church, and both times she had gone. She had promised to confess everything she met with, and she had concealed parts of it all the same. If one spoke of deception, she had been the one to start.
"I went to see a bishop I know, and asked about you," Lawuer went on. "I knew they would keep certain matters secret. They would not reveal the Inquisition's operations to me, much less tell me whether they had developed some noble young lady into a peripheral informant. But very often, avoidance itself is an answer."
Peripheral informant.
Hearing those words from her father's mouth gave Xialuote a subtle discomfort, as if she had betrayed her family.
Lawuer saw the change in her and added, his tone calm:
"Such things are not rare. The royal family and the military will do it, and the Church will do the same. As a Suolun, even one of only a collateral branch, one could not be wholly unfamiliar with such things.
"In fact, that I can call upon a bishop of the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun, and receive his tacit acknowledgment where you are concerned, also has to do with some help I once gave the Church."
Xialuote suddenly understood. It was not that her father did not know the world of mysticism existed, nor that he did not know of the other force the Church kept hidden beneath the surface.
"Then why..." she asked hesitantly. "Why do you keep so distant from the Church?"
Lawuer's gaze left her face and fell on a portrait on the wall.
In the painting, a young Madam Suolun sat on a garden bench with Xialuote, not long after her birth, in her arms. Sunlight fell across the gentle profile of her face, making a face gone these many years seem all the more alive.
"After your mother died, I prayed to the gods, and I went to see the bishop in Telier and asked the Church to confirm whether someone had done her harm.
"They said no."
Lawuer's voice had no obvious rise or fall, as if he were describing something that had happened to someone else.
"After that it was your sister, and then Leinuo. Each time I hoped for an explanation of why misfortune always targeted our family... But the answer the Church gave was always the same. No Extraordinary power found. No curse ritual involved. No clear traces.
"They said it was only an accident. All of them were accidents."
At that he finally drew his gaze back and looked at Xialuote.
"So it is not that I do not believe in the Eternal Blazing Sun. I simply no longer expect the Church to answer the faithful in His stead."
The room was quiet for a time. Xialuote looked at her father and did not know what to say.
She had thought she would hear some concealment, some danger. What she faced instead was a man who, after losing too much, no longer held any expectation of the Church.
Lawuer did not linger on that subject. He went on:
"As for the position you are in now, I can guess some of it. There has always been a certain understanding between the royal family and the two great Churches. The royal family does not obstruct the Church's growth, and the Church cannot casually reach into the inner circle formed by royalty and the great nobles—at least, it cannot step in directly without a reason.
"But the reverse is also true. They are bound to seek out and cultivate people who can enter those circles. You are a member of the Suolun family, you have only just been drawn into events, and in the course of their operation you stayed calm enough. To the Inquisition, you are a very suitable person to develop into an informant."
So that was it. That an Extraordinary whose sequence was not low, such as Weiyefu, had personally heard her appeal, introduced her to the Extraordinary world, and even readily given her a Sequence 9 potion—Weiyefu's purpose was probably not limited to tracking the heretics and evil cults hidden among the nobility... Xialuote had guessed as much long ago. Hearing it confirmed in her father's words, she could not help nodding.
For now she was only the daughter of a baron whose house had declined. But if she later kept advancing in sequence, made herself look as though she had potential, and used the Suolun name to enter a more central circle of noble society, she would become a nail the Church would plant inside the Suolun family.
In any case, this agreed with her own thinking. To find a way back to that original world, she needed both worldly standing and Extraordinary power. The former could not bypass the Suolun family; the latter would have to depend on the Church... Once she had thought this through, Xialuote instead let out a breath of relief.
What was unknown was the most terrifying. So long as she knew what use she was, she could trade on it for protection, knowledge, and resources. So long as that value endured and suited an investor's interests, a relationship of this kind was in fact the most stable.
She gathered her thoughts and glanced at Lawuer. His expression was mild, as if he were waiting for his daughter to work the matter out for herself, and she realized he was not the disappointed noble sunk in memory that she had imagined. Baron Suolun might not understand potions or sequences, and might not know that the Purifiers were the core strength of the Inquisition, yet he saw very clearly the logic of power among the nobility, the royal family, and the Church.
More important, since Lawuer had dared to question a bishop and had not drawn the Church's suspicion or watch, she could basically rule out any contact between him and an evil cult.
So our family has long been on the Inquisition's list, and near the front of the whitelist... Why didn't Weiyefu give me so much as a hint... Xialuote grumbled inwardly for a few lines. At the thought that she had actually suspected her own family, her ears grew hot. She hurriedly lowered her head, pretended to straighten her skirt, and muttered, a little unwillingly:
"I understand."
Lawuer looked at her and suddenly smiled.
"The way you changed the subject just now is much the same as when you were little."
"I didn't. I was only..." Xialuote searched for a way to explain, and then her eyes lit up. "Do I have to go to next week's hunt as well?"
Seeing her clumsily hunt for a new topic once again, the baron nodded.
"You may. Quite a few of the local nobles in Suxite will attend, and they will bring their young sons and daughters. You have been through too much of late. Getting back into ordinary social life will be good for you... And since you have accepted the Church's help, you will have to take some action. I expect they promised you a special reward, didn't they?"
The words tightened Xialuote's chest. She realized her father still did not know she had already become an Extraordinary.
"Mm... I'm very interested in that."
She forced herself to answer calmly.
The baron sighed. His pale green eyes rested on Xialuote's face for an instant, and he continued:
"Still, do not get too close to Luosaier Gusitafu. He is too clever, and too restless. People like that bring trouble easily. You may cooperate with him, but only this once, and only on official business."
Xialuote nodded obediently.
"I understand."
But when she made a graceful bow and left the studio, what lingered in her mind was another doubt.
If her father was not a hidden helper of the evil cultists, then who had laid the plan for the ambush at the printing plant?
Those who knew her itinerary that day were not only Lawuer. There were also the Gusitafu father and son, several servants, and Gelin Lande'er.
Earlier, because Baron Lai'ang Gusitafu had saved her, and because Luosaier and Gelin had in fact held off the attackers inside the printing plant, she had instinctively set these people aside.
Thinking of it now, the more reliable someone seemed, the easier they were to overlook.
Could the evil cultist hidden behind it be not in the Suolun mansion, but in Baron Gusitafu's residence, or beside someone connected to them?
Chapter 24