[Complete] Ch 6.83 Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain Sheathed Against Injustice? (Patreon)
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Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain
Sheathed Against Injustice?
Story Starts
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Chapter 6.83
The Gale’s Justice
Demands a Stakeout
The crowd parted on both sides of the plaza like water before a ship's prow. From the west came Riveria Ljos Alf, staff in hand, green robes billowing with each measured step. A golden-haired girl trailed at her heels, practically vibrating with poorly contained excitement—though her stoic face didn't reflect this. From the east strode Rienne Arvel, her hair catching the lamplight, with the black-haired elf Filvis Challia following in characteristic silence.
"Baba! Ow—" Ais grabbed at Riveria's dress, her other hand clutching her head where Riveria's staff had connected with a sound like a mallet striking a coconut.
"Ais, what did I tell you about calling me that?"
But she persisted, pointing directly at Shirou with the enthusiasm of a hound spotting a fox. "It's Jagamaru-sama!"
Shirou's eye twitched.
'That name.'
The golden-haired girl—Ais, apparently, now that Riveria had supplied the information—was one of his regulars during his morning shift. She appeared like clockwork after his early Dungeon delves, when he'd set up shop amongst the other stalls near the Tower entrance. Her appetite for the one particular fried snack bordered on the supernatural. He'd once watched her eat fourteen in a sitting, pause, look at the empty bag with quiet grief, and then look at him. He'd made a fifteenth. He wasn't proud of how quickly he'd folded.
He also gave that fifteenth for free as she looked quite dejected when she took a peek at her valis pouch.
He blamed Syr. Entirely and completely.
Because apparently, one fateful morning, this girl who consumed jagamarukun with the dedication of a religious calling had found her usual stall missing. She'd wandered to his cart instead, golden eyes curious.
That particular day, Syr had been running errands for Mamma Mia and had seen fit to bless him with her company. After witnessing Ais's infatuation with his fried snacks—eating a dozen after a single free taste—Syr had cajoled the blonde into calling him Jagamaru-sama.
The name stuck like tar to feathers.
Shirou offered a small wave. He did not acknowledge the twin stares boring into him from Sophie and Rose, both of whom had gone very quiet in the manner of scholars presented with a new primary source.
"Sama," Sophie mouthed silently.
"Sama," Rose mouthed back.
"There were no noodles involved here," Shirou said, because it suddenly felt necessary.
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"Achoo!"
"Goddess?"
"It was nothing," Freya said to Ottar, who stood behind her chair like a sentinel carved from mountain stone. She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand—a gesture she would later reflect was unbecoming of a Goddess of Love and Beauty, and would then reflect that no one who mattered had seen it, and the one who had seen it would sooner die than mention it.
The scrying mirror's surface shimmered with images of a plaza in Orario's pleasure district—a certain red-haired merchant who had held her interest ever since she'd glimpsed that field of blades, now standing with a wooden sword in hand, surrounded by what appeared to be a convention of the city's notable healers.
Her gaze sharpened on the pink twintails.
Heith. Her own Heith, materialising out of a side lane mid-duel to heal the man with the reflexive fury of long practice. Her healer had been saved by the most interesting soul in Orario, and had never once mentioned it.
"She wondered when it had happened. She chalked it up to one of those days she'd been playing mortal at the Hostess—busy enough behind the counter that one of her own children's rescues had slipped past her entirely."
Freya was not certain what delighted her more: the connection itself, or the fact that Heith had tried to keep it private. Secrets were such a fragile currency in her Familia. It was almost sweet watching the children attempt to hold them.
She had, of course, made certain her evening was free. Sophie had mentioned the reservation in passing when booking the table with Mamma Mia, and Syr had quietly rearranged her shift to start late—arriving at the Hostess only once the trio did. Everything before that was hers to watch from Babel, uninterrupted.
"Achoo!"
"Goddess." Ottar produced a handkerchief from somewhere within his armour, offering it with the same gravity he might present a sacred relic.
Freya accepted it, pressing the silk to her nose as the mirror's image shifted to show new arrivals emerging from the crowd's edges. She also noted Hedin on one of the rooftops—composed, motionless, and far less conspicuous than the trench-coated Familia of Justice arranged along the opposite ridgeline like eleven misdelivered coat racks.
"Achoo!" She wondered if Shirou was thinking of her.
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"And where exactly are you going?"
Rienne's voice cut through the murmuring crowd like a blade through silk. Everyone turned towards the source of her attention—Lowell and Aldric, who had been attempting to inconspicuously melt into the gathered spectators.
The attempt failed spectacularly. The crowd had significant valis riding on the duel's outcome, and they weren't about to let their investments simply leave. A wall of spectators closed ranks with the smooth coordination of people protecting their money; one man planted a hand on Lowell's shoulder and turned him gently but firmly back towards the plaza, the way one redirects a lost tourist.
The werewolf and elf stiffened under the combined glares of two elven captains. Lowell's ears flattened against his skull. Aldric's theatrical composure crumbled into something resembling a child caught stealing sweets—doubly so now, because it was not only his captain standing before him but Riveria Ljos Alf, elven royalty, and some ancient instinct buried in his people's bones was screaming at him to compose an apology in formal verse.
"We were just—" Aldric began.
"About to explain everything," Rienne finished, her tone brooking no argument. "Both of you."
Sophie stepped forward, her earlier playful demeanour replaced with something far colder. "Lady Riveria, Captain Rienne. If I might have a word regarding your Familia members' conduct?"
Rose joined her, arms crossed, tail lashing with barely contained fury. "As the Guild adviser assigned to Lowell Wolfguard, I have several concerns to raise. Starting with his public declaration of having monitored my biological cycles for the past year."
Riveria's eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. For the High Elf of the Loki Familia, this constituted an expression of profound displeasure. "Is this true?"
Lowell's silence served as answer enough. His tail attempted to tuck itself somewhere his anatomy did not permit.
"Down," Rienne said flatly to Aldric. "Now."
"But Captain—"
"Now."
Both challengers dropped to their knees in the centre of the plaza—and the entire crowd winced in unison, because the sound of two sets of kneecaps meeting flagstone at penitent velocity was not a gentle one—legs folded beneath them in the position of formal apology.
The two grimaced. Shirou couldn't tell whether it was pain or embarrassment. He suspected they couldn't either, and that the ambiguity was the only mercy either of them would receive tonight.
The crowd shifted, uncertain whether this was part of the evening's entertainment or an entirely new spectacle. The bookmaker, hedging, quietly opened odds on the length of the apology.
Shirou took the opportunity to step back from the immediate chaos. His eyes found Neze and Iska behind Riveria and Rienne, both still wearing their ridiculous trench coat ensembles. They turned their heads away the moment he spotted them, pretending with desperate intensity that they weren't there. Neze had angled her hat brim to cover her face and was now facing a wall. Iska had adopted the stance of a woman deeply interested in the architecture of the pleasure district's guttering.
'Not my problem.'
Filvis materialised at his elbow. The bruise on her forehead from his sandbag round had faded to a faint yellow mark, partially hidden beneath her dark fringe.
"Emiya."
"Challia."
They stood in companionable silence for a moment, watching the Guild advisers systematically dismantle the two challengers' dignity.
"Have you stopped being antisocial?" Shirou asked.
Filvis's pale cheeks coloured. "I don't know what you mean."
"I'm sure you do. Or do I need to gift your Familia a set of blunted arrows?"
She huffed, crossing her arms. "You're insufferable."
"So I've been told."
"Frequently, I imagine."
"By better archers than you, even."
Filvis's mouth twitched—fought it, lost, recovered—and settled back into her customary severity, though the severity now had a crack in it that she was electing not to acknowledge.
Ais appeared on his other side, golden eyes fixed on him with unnerving intensity. "Jagamaru-sama. You didn't have your cart this morning."
"I had other obligations."
"Will you have it tomorrow?"
"Possibly. I'll make you something special as recompense."
Despite the stoic face, Shirou would have sworn her aura brightened—the air around the girl acquiring the quality of a sunrise, without a single muscle of her expression moving. The dedication to fried snacks was genuinely impressive.
Ais nodded solemnly, as if he'd just sworn a sacred oath. Which, knowing Orario's relationship with food and divine contracts, he possibly had. He made a mental note to actually deliver, because he had a strong suspicion this girl kept accounts.
Heith Velvet approached from the crowd's edge, her pink twintails bouncing with each step. She raised her hands, soft golden light emanating from her palms, and ran them over Shirou's torso one final time.
"Just to be certain," she said, not quite meeting his eyes.
"I'm fine."
"You say that, but—"
"Heith."
Heith stiffened at the voice and turned towards the rooftops.
A male elf stood at the roof's edge—blonde, spectacled, dressed in what looked like a nobleman's military uniform, arms crossed. His expression sat somewhere between disappointment and the specific weariness of a man who had drawn the short straw at a staff meeting.
Heith tried hiding behind Shirou. Behind the man she had just been publicly caught following.
"Heith. More than half of the Einherjar are currently in our medical wing."
Shirou turned to Heith, who blushed at the reprimand.
"I forgot," was her excuse.
"You forgot," the elf repeated, in the tone of a man placing the words into evidence, "the entire medical wing."
"They heal on their own eventually! They're Einherjar! It builds character!
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On the opposite rooftop, Kaguya adjusted her dark spectacles and took a long drink from her wine glass, her eyes following the healer as she excused herself under the Freya Familia executive's escort—walking the walk of a young woman composing her defence and discarding every draft.
"So," Alise said, crouched beside her with barely contained energy, "what happens with the betting now?"
"I believe the bookmakers are having a crisis of faith," Lyra observed. "The duel was interrupted before a clear victor emerged. Half the crowd wants their stake back, the other half is arguing the Guild staff won on points, and the pallum is about to learn why gambling houses are often regulated."
Below, Sophie had produced a small notebook and was reading from it with the cadence of someone delivering a court verdict. Lowell flinched at each point she raised. Beside him, Aldric had adopted the expression of a man watching his entire life collapse in slow motion as Rose and Rienne took turns dismantling his romantic pursuit with surgical precision.
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Lord Ganesha, meanwhile, stood at the edge of the scene with fists planted on his hips, chest thrust forward, radiating the satisfied energy of a deity who believed everything was proceeding exactly as intended. Ardee hovered behind him, her expression suggesting she was contemplating her life choices.
She briefly considered transferring to the Astraea Familia. The goddess of justice. Order. Procedure. Dignity. It had an appeal.
Then she looked towards the rooftops of the pleasure district and locked eyes with Ryuu Lion—or at least she assumed she did; the dark spectacles made confirmation impossible. Ryuu, second-in-spirit of the Familia of Justice, was crouched on a ridgeline in a trench coat, and at Ardee's attention she panicked visibly—miming something incomprehensible, a rapid sequence of gestures that might have meant look away or we were never here or possibly the fish is this big—before giving up, pulling her hat down over her spectacles entirely, and tightening the coat around herself like a woman attempting to be swallowed by her own clothing.
'Doesn't Ryuu remember that she and her God also were given the same communication crystals?' Ardee sighed. 'Maybe commitment to justice does invite eccentricities.'
Ardee sighed and quietly withdrew her transfer application from the committee of her own heart.
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Further along the ridgeline, Maryuu and Noin had drifted into a discussion of the outfits—specifically, whether the ensemble ought to become Familia standard, the way the Ganesha Familia had their uniforms. And the mask.
"We'd need summer versions," Noin reasoned. "The coat would be unbearable by the solstice."
"A summer trench coat," Maryuu mused. "Shorter sleeves. Lighter fabric. Same spectacles."
"The outfits are distinguished," Astraea's voice crackled across the frequency, warm with amusement and wine in roughly equal measure. "We look like professionals. I might genuinely be considering it."
"We look like we escaped from a theatrical production."
"The same thing, really."
Ryuu watched the proceedings below, her ears still warm beneath the brim of her hat. The jagamarukun grease had dried into a faintly sticky residue on her ear that she couldn't quite ignore, and scrubbing at it with her glove had achieved nothing except distributing it more evenly. Meanwhile some corner of her attention remained on Ardee, at whom she had been attempting—and failing—to signal stop looking at us.
"Lady Riveria is going to see us," she said. "In these clothes."
"Riveria respects commitment to a role," Kaguya offered.
"Riveria is going to ask questions I cannot answer."
"Then don't answer them. Maintain your cover."
"My cover involves wearing spectacles indoors at night whilst eating fried snacks on a rooftop."
"Dedication to craft, Ryuu. Dedication to craft."
Below, the admonishment reached its crescendo. Sophie closed her notebook with a decisive snap that carried clear across the plaza.
"Furthermore," she declared, loud enough for the surrounding crowd to hear, "effective immediately, neither of you will remain our advisees. Your files will be reassigned to colleagues better equipped to handle your... particular needs."
Lowell's ears drooped. Aldric looked like he might weep.
"Who—" Aldric's voice cracked. "Who will we be reassigned to?"
"Recently, we've been really short on staff, so even our guildhead Royman is handling intake this month."
Both challengers made a sound. The crowd, many of whom were adventurers with their own Guild histories, made it with them.
"You should apologise now," Rienne added. "Sincerely."
The apologies that followed were extensive, detailed, and delivered to the cobblestones rather than to any specific person. The crowd watched with the satisfied attention of spectators at a particularly compelling execution.
Lord Ganesha nodded sagely throughout, as if the entire affair had been his intention from the beginning.
When the final words faded, he stepped forward and thrust both fists skyward.
"THE WINNERS OF THIS BOUT," he bellowed, his voice carrying across the plaza, "ARE THE GUILD STAFF! PASSION HAS TRIUMPHED—BUT WISDOM HAS TRIUMPHED MORE!"
The crowd groaned as one. Gamblers began the painful process of calculating losses. Somewhere in the throng, a man who had bet on "the Guild lady kills the werewolf" demanded a ruling on whether verbal evisceration counted.
"YES!" Kaguya's shout of triumph echoed from the rooftop, drawing every eye upward. She had one boot propped on the rooftop's edge, wine glass raised, coat billowing, her other hand brandishing the betting chit like a divine relic. "I KNEW IT! MY JUSTICE IS ABSOLUTE!"
"Justice doesn't involve gambling!" Ryuu hissed.
"Justice comes in various forms." Kaguya grinned. "Besides, this operation has now profited. We've earned back the disguises, the wine, and change besides. Sound fiscal management is also a virtue."
"It is not one of ours—"
Kaguya leapt from the roof—yet another coated figure descending from the skies of the pleasure district, to a crowd that had frankly stopped counting them.
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Ais had been watching the rooftop people with interest.
They wore strange clothes and made actions with their hands. The one in the purple coat had shouted very loudly about winning something, and had then jumped off a building, which the grown-ups around her were all pretending was normal. Ais had concluded some time ago that adults pretended a great many things were normal, and had stopped relying on them for guidance in the matter.
None of that was important.
What was important was that one of them had something in her pocket that smelled exactly like Jagamaru-sama's cooking.
She'd been tracking the scent for several minutes, nose twitching beneath Riveria's notice, triangulating with the patience of a hunter and the single-mindedness of an empty stomach. The source was the tall woman with white hair and wolf ears—one of the coat people who had fetched Riveria earlier. The smell was faint, wrapped in fabric, but unmistakable. Golden. Fried. Round.
Riveria was busy scolding the kneeling men. Nobody was watching.
Ais moved.
Before anyone could react, her hand shot into Neze's coat pocket and emerged with a round, golden-brown sphere.
"Jagamarukun," Ais breathed, reverent.
"Wait—" Ryuu started, from a rooftop and far, far too late, unfortunately earning Riveria's and Rienne's attention in the same instant.
Ais bit down.
The smoke bomb disguised as a fried snack detonated in her mouth.
Grey-white smoke exploded outward in a billowing cloud, engulfing girl, plaza, and dignity alike. Coughing erupted from every direction. Ais stumbled backward, smoke pouring from her lips, her expression travelling from confusion through betrayal to a profound sense of culinary injustice.
"MY EYES—" someone wheezed.
"EXTRACTION, EXTRACTION—" Neze's voice, from somewhere in the murk.
"DON'T PUSH ME—" Celty.
"WHO'S TOUCHING MY—" Iska.
"THE SMOKE SMELLS LIKE POTATO," a stranger observed, baffled, from the heart of the cloud. "WHY DOES THE SMOKE SMELL LIKE POTATO—"
The smoke rolled off the rooftop in thick waves, descending into the plaza below. The crowd dissolved into chaos, patrons stumbling blindly whilst the kneeling Lowell and Aldric seized their opportunity. By the time anyone thought to look, both had vanished into the confusion, leaving behind two sets of knee-shaped impressions and an unpaid bar tab.
A pulse of green light cut through the haze. Riveria's voice rose in abbreviated incantation, and wind swept the plaza clean in a single gust.
She looked at Ais.
Ais looked back at Riveria, smoke still wisping from her nose, betrayal etched across her features.
"It wasn't real," Ais said, her voice small. "It looked real."
Riveria pinched the bridge of her nose.
"It smelled real," Ais added, with the air of a witness correcting the record.
Across the cleared plaza, Rienne met Shirou's eyes after turning from a pouting Filvis. The silent communication required no words. Sometimes, the look conveyed, our Familia members simply aren't worth the trouble.
Shirou's expression remained carefully blank. Then his shoulders moved in the smallest possible shrug.
Rienne nodded.
Riveria met his gaze as well, and the same wordless exchange repeated. The High Elf of the Loki Familia, jade-blooded royalty of the Alf line, reduced to commiserating with a noodle vendor over a child who had just eaten ordnance.
Shirou supposed this was what passed for camaraderie in Orario.
"Perhaps," he said, turning to Sophie and Rose, "we should proceed directly to the Hostess. Before anything else... develops."
Sophie nodded, threading her arm through his left. "Excellent thinking. The evening can only improve from here."
Rose took his right arm, her tail finally settling into something less agitated. "Mamma Mia's will be safe. Quiet. Uneventful."
Shirou felt a chill run down his spine.
'Never say that. Never, ever say that.'
He offered a nod to Ardee, who shot him an apologetic look from beside the still-triumphant Ganesha. He shrugged in response. Some battles simply couldn't be won.
The three of them departed, leaving behind a plaza full of confused gamblers, two escaped challengers, and an assortment of trench-coated operatives attempting to extract themselves from a rooftop without being noticed—but not before Kaguya informed the pallum bookmaker that she would collect her—"our," someone corrected through the comms—earnings later.
She did not appear to notice that, delivered from beneath a hat brim, through dark spectacles, in a long coat, the words I'll collect later carried the unmistakable cadence of organised crime.
The pallum could only nod at the implied threat.
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The Hostess of Fertility glowed with warm light against the evening's deepening shadows. Chatter and laughter spilled from within, the sounds of an establishment doing brisk business despite—or perhaps because of—Orario's troubled times.
Shirou guided Sophie and Rose through the entrance, nodding to the familiar faces amongst the staff. The interior bustled with the usual crowd: adventurers celebrating successful dives, merchants closing deals, travellers seeking refuge from the city's darker corners.
They secured a table near the back, far from the windows and the door. Shirou's choices in seating had become habitual—always aware of exits, always positioned between potential threats and his companions.
'Old habits,' he reminded himself. 'This is supposed to be relaxing.'
Sophie ordered drinks with the enthusiasm of someone determined to salvage the evening. Rose's shoulders gradually unknotted as the noise of the crowd formed a comforting barrier around them. Even Shirou allowed himself to settle slightly, the tension in his frame easing by degrees.
The meal arrived—hearty portions of the Hostess's standard fare, supplemented by a bottle of wine that Sophie had been eyeing for weeks. Conversation flowed more easily now, ranging from Guild gossip to Sophie's theories about the trench-coated figures they'd spotted throughout the day.
"I'm telling you," Sophie insisted, gesturing with her cup, "they were everywhere. That can't be coincidence."
"New fashion trend," Shirou offered blandly.
"Fashion trends don't involve smoke bombs and rooftop surveillance."
"Some might."
Rose snorted into her drink.
The evening progressed without incident. Shirou allowed himself to hope—foolishly, perhaps—that the night's chaos had finally exhausted itself.
Then somebody approached.
"Ei! Aren't you the owner of Emiya-ya in Rivira?"
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Meanwhile, Syr—who had just started her shift—approached Mamma Mia at the bar.
"How long have they been there?"
Mia crossed her arms, her considerable frame blocking the bar's back entrance. "Couldn't say. But they're attracting a fair bit of attention, drinking wine on a roof and making hand signs I don't understand."
Syr smiled her usual enigmatic smile. "I think they're friends of Shirou's."
Mia looked at them through her periphery. Eleven silhouettes against the evening sky, arranged along her neighbour's ridgeline like crows with a dress code.
"They look like they're conducting surveillance."
"Perhaps they're just shy."
Mia's expression suggested she didn't find this particularly amusing. She'd tolerated a great deal in her time running the Hostess—divine squabbles, adventurer brawls, the occasional declaration of love towards one of her staff. But she drew the line at having her establishment used as the centrepiece of someone else's intelligence operation without prior notification. If nothing else, they hadn't ordered anything.
"Right then." She rolled up her sleeves. "I'll have a word with our visitors."
"I'll come too," Syr offered, her smile widening. "For diplomatic purposes."
The two women made their way through the Hostess's back corridors and up the service stairs—Mia pausing only to instruct one of the staff to mind the floor whilst she handled something quick, in a tone that made several nearby patrons quietly check what they might have done.
They emerged into the cool night air.
Across the gap between buildings, eleven figures in matching long coats, hats, and dark spectacles huddled together in what could charitably be described as a tactical position. Several held wine glasses. One appeared to be eating from a bag of fried snacks. Another had her hat pushed back and was furiously scrubbing at something on her ear.
Mia cleared her throat.
Eleven heads turned in perfect unison.
"Evening," Mia said, her tone pleasant in the way that avalanches are pleasant—right up until they bury you. "Care to explain what you're doing on my neighbour's roof?"
Silence.
One of the figures—the one radiating a quiet warmth that Mia's long experience immediately identified as divine—stepped forward with admirable composure.
"We are conducting an investigation," Astraea said, not removing her spectacles. "Of a... sensitive nature."
"Into my bar?"
"Into one of your patrons."
Mia's eyes narrowed. "Which one?"
"The one with red hair and golden eyes," Syr supplied helpfully. "The noodle merchant."
"Emiya?"
"Quite."
Mia exchanged a glance with Syr. Something passed between them—an understanding that transcended words, decades of one and enigma of the other arriving at the same commercial conclusion.
"I think," Syr said sweetly, to the rooftop at large, "they're just shy. They've been using the wine to muster the courage to come down and join them. Isn't that right?"
Ryuu looked up at the grey-eyed waitress—the one they'd met during Evilus's attack on the orphanage—and found a gleam in those eyes that she could only classify as predatory.
"Oh, is that so?" Mia's grin spread wide enough to be visible across the gap. "Well, I'd never turn away paying customers. And since you've all worked up such an appetite out here—everyone will be ordering a feast. Right?"
The entire rooftop scooched backward by a single, synchronised celch.
Eleven heads gave one slow, collective nod. Kaguya's was the slowest—the profits she had just declared, the disguises and wine she had just accounted for, all of it about to vanish into Mamma Mia's coffers before the night was out.
"Excellent!" Syr declared, clapping her hands together. "Let me escort you to your table."
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Meanwhile, back inside the Hostess:
"Ei! It's my turn—let me buy this man a drink as well!"
It hadn't stopped. It had begun with one patron recognising him as the owner of Emiya-ya, and then someone else had pointed out that this was the archer—the one from the defence of Rivira, the one whose ranged support, by all surviving accounts, had kept the monster tide from becoming a massacre. And then it had become a procession. One after another, patrons who had a friend, or had been present, or had a Familia member who'd walked out of that night alive, came to the table to put a tankard in front of him.
Refusing had proved impossible. He'd tried. The first refusal had wounded a scarred dwarf so visibly that three tables had turned to glare, and Shirou had discovered that in Orario, declining a survivor's gratitude ranked somewhere alongside kicking a casino dog.
Shirou was, by now, feeling it. The table had acquired a skyline of empty tankards. Rose had begun stacking them into defensive formations. Sophie had stopped helping and started counting.
And it was at this exact moment—as another patron pressed another ale into his hand and the room raised a toast to "the archer of Rivira"—that the doors opened, and Syr Flover escorted eleven trench-coated, dark-spectacled, wine-carrying figures across the floor of the Hostess of Fertility, and seated them, with great ceremony, at the table directly beside Shirou's.
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End
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