Chapter 26
"So this is where you've been staying," the black-haired catgirl said, the moment the girl who'd come to take their order stepped away. "Nice place. A little humbler than I'd have expected for you, but definitely discreet."
Before Shiro could respond, Chaska cut in with a flat, "What are you doing here," making no effort to hide her opinion of the woman sitting diagonally from her.
Anya only smiled. "Here, meaning what, exactly?
Because the answer changes depending on whether you mean this city, or here specifically.
If it's the city, it's business. If it's here," she said, pointing a finger at Shiro, which earned him a glare from Chaska, "that's my business with him.
You haven't forgotten our arrangement, I hope, Master Shiro.
My smiths are eager to get their hands on that Vanguard. "
"Of course not."
"That's reassuring, because I was a little worried when I got to the city and heard nothing from Maiq's people about you."
"The arrangement was for me to report if I ever left the city. I haven't, and I don't plan to, not until this lockdown lifts."
"That makes sense," she nodded.
"When did you actually get to the city?" Shiro asked, frowning, suspicious of something in how she'd phrased it earlier.
"A few days ago," she said, vaguely.
"How?"
There was a full lockdown in place, stopping absolutely anyone from entering or leaving the city, so absolute it had the whole place on the verge of boiling over.
"A merchant just knows her ways."
At that, glancing left, Shiro could see the gears turning in Chaska's head.
She'd been itching to leave, quieter about it lately given everything that had happened, but he could easily picture her jumping straight on this.
Sure enough, without any distractions to hold her back, she asked immediately.
"How?"
"You want to leave the city?"
"Yes. How did you manage it?"
"You too?" Anya asked, glancing at Shiro.
He wasn't sure how to answer until a sharp look and a poke from Chaska got him to concede. "If she's leaving, I'm going with her."
"Where to?" Anya asked.
"That's none of your business."
"Chaska," Shiro whispered into her ear, "if you actually want a way out, it'd probably be smarter, even if I can feel you can't stand her, to at least fake being pleasant enough to get it out of her. And also, why do you even hate her so much?"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. Seriously."
"She and her people nearly got us shot the first time we met."
"That's true, but that wasn't exactly her fault," Shiro pointed out, a brow raised.
Her stance felt a little hypocritical, honestly, given how they'd first met each other too.
Heck, compared to Chaska, whatever sins Anya had committed were pretty minor by comparison, since at least she wasn't a repeat offender.
Watching her dig in stubbornly, he tried again.
"Come on, do it for me. Do it for your favorite friend, Shiro. "
"Who said you were my favorite friend?"
"I'm not?!"
"Something happened between the two of you these past two weeks, didn't it?" Anya asked.
"Pardon?"
"You two," Anya said, eyes narrowing, fingers gesturing back and forth between them. "You're screwing each other, aren't you?"
"Wow, what an accusation."
"Yes, we are," Chaska declared, which surprised Shiro a little, since part of him had expected her to just brush it off.
"See," Anya said, turning to her sister, "told you she was into men. Not girls."
"Guess I was wrong. Really thought she liked girls," Vanya admitted, conceding some earlier assessment she must have shared with her sister, which left Shiro wondering just what Chaska had done, and when, to give the girl that impression in the first place.
The only moment he could think of was that afternoon at the tower when he was alone with Anya.
"Sorry, that was out of line, coming from both of us. Please accept our apology," Anya said, bowing alongside her sister.
Chaska accepted the apology with a nod, though apparently in exchange for something. "I'd like to leave the city with Shiro. How would we go about that?"
"We're heading to the nearest big city," Shiro explained, remembering Anya's earlier question and guessing it had more to do with her fear of losing contact with him than anything else.
"We've seen enough of this city," he added, since Anya didn't really need to know Chaska's actual motive for wanting out.
Anya seemed to think it over. "When exactly are you planning to leave?"
"As soo—" Chaska started, then hesitated, turning to Shiro as if expecting him to name the date instead.
This is new, Shiro thought. My opinion matters now? Well, that's a welcome improvement.
"Two days. Enough time to pack."
"That's perfect, actually," Anya declared. "It matches up with what I had in mind for my own departure."
"You're planning to leave too?"
"Of course. It'd be dangerous for me to stay much longer than that."
"What do you mean?"
"Can't you see, Master Shiro? Things are on the verge of exploding. All the symptoms are there. The conflict between the two ducal princes, the death of that hero, the lockdown, the simmering rage of th—"
"Sorry, say that again?"
"Did you just say death of—"
"Not so loud," both sisters shushed him at once. "You didn't know, did you?" Anya asked, eyes locked on him.
"No. This is news to me."
"Which hero was it?"
"Lorenzo. The winged hero," Anya revealed, eyes once again never leaving Shiro. "He was supposed to be a guest of the city, but before the city could even show him a hint of hospitality—"
"When did that happen?" Shiro asked, apprehensive now.
"Curiously enough, the very day you two arrived in the city."
Shiro glanced at Chaska, who'd clearly reached the same conclusion he had. "That was the guy who splattered on the wall, wasn't it."
"Yes," Anya confirmed. "Maiq told me you two witnessed it firsthand."
"I wouldn't call it witnessing well. All we saw was chaos, then a smudge on the wall. There's no way we could've said that was one of the heroes from that alone."
"Well, it was. Why do you think the ducal guard is making sure no one can leave the city? To catch whoever's responsible."
"That was a murder?"
"You thought it was an accident?"
"I thought it was just a stupid, dumb accident, yeah."
"Well, the ducal princes don't share that opinion, which is why they're determined to find the killer and bring them to justice."
"Who's the killer?" Chaska asked.
"I wouldn't know," Anya said, "but our ducal lords, particularly the elder brother, seem to believe it was—"
"Another hero?" she guessed.
From Anya's reaction, Chaska had hit the mark exactly. "How'd you know that?"
"History."
"Makes sense. I wonder if that's the same reasoning that led him to conclude it was murder in the first place, rather than an accident," Anya mused, her sister nodding along.
Lunch arrived not long after, and once the girl serving them stepped away, Anya laid out her plans for the remaining time she and Shiro's group would spend in the city.
Finally, Shiro asked the question that had been nagging at him.
"What are you actually doing here? And by that I mean here in the city, specifically. "
She seemed reluctant to answer, which prompted him to be more direct. "Does the reason you're here have anything to do with the people who attacked your group before?"
Her expression stayed carefully neutral, but her sister's reaction gave it away entirely.
"Are you here to settle a score?"
"Settle a score? That's beneath me," she said. "I'm just a humble merchant, selling goods for money. That's what I do."
"You're here to sell guns."
She didn't even bother denying it, grinning wide instead. "As all gun runners should."
"Who are you planning to sell to?"
"Hopefully someone belonging to a faction opposed to whichever bastard tried to do me and mine dirty."
"Have you figured out who that was?"
"Not yet, but it's only a matter of time. I'll move the moment it's confirmed, which should be tomorrow."
Shiro exchanged a look with Chaska, who clearly didn't appreciate how Anya kept dragging them into conflicts that weren't theirs. This time, though, she stayed quiet about it, which he suspected had something to do with the mention of a hero possibly being in the city.
"Anyway, now you understand why it's tricky for me to leave right now. In two days, though, if we're lucky, there should be an opening for all of us."
???
"Damn," a freshly bathed Shiro sighed, lying on his bed, eyes fixed on something in the corner of the room.
As Anya had explained while outlining her plans, she intended to stay put at the Bower for the next two days, treating it as a fitting headquarters for her business, business her younger sister seemed to be handling most of, since that very afternoon, right after dinner, Vanya had left to take care of something on her elder sister's behalf.
"Damn you, Anya," Shiro groaned, looking away from the thing sitting in the corner of his room, the very stuff he and Chaska had bought for an evening that had ended up tragically cancelled. And why had it gotten cancelled? Well, because of Anya.
To be fair, it wasn't like she'd done it on purpose, but he still couldn't help wishing they hadn't run into her today of all days.
Tomorrow would've been perfect. Why did I have to notice them tailing us, he lamented, imagining how differently the evening might have gone if he'd just stayed oblivious.
"Come on, man, this is unbecoming. What's done is done.
Besides, it's not like Chaska said it wouldn't happen, just that it wouldn't be tonight.
" As Shiro talked himself into acceptance, his door, deliberately left unlocked, creaked open.
He shot upright, the name already on his lips for whoever he'd left it unlocked for. "Chaska."
Yeah, she'd said tonight wasn't happening, to which Shiro had argued she could at least spend the night in his room anyway. Why not? Her answer, a flat no, hadn't made much sense to him, though he'd still left the offer open in case she changed her mind and wanted to stop by.
"Unfortunately, no," said a black-haired catgirl in a pink peignoir. "Just me. Anya."
"Hm."
"Sorry to disappoint," she said, closing the door behind her.
"That's... what are you doing here?"
"How cold of you, Master Shiro. I remember, less than two weeks ago, you were much… warmer," she said, approaching.
"Was I?"
"You were. I remember it clearly." She reached for his shoulders. "Is it because you've got a girlfriend now? Oh, wait, I talked to Chaska, I know your arrangement isn't quite that."
"Hm. What kind of arrangement is it, then?"
"I'd guess," she said, pushing him back onto the bed and climbing over him, her face close enough now that their breath mingled, "it's a smarter kind of arrangement than the usual boyfriend-girlfriend thing."
At that, Shiro couldn't hold back the laugh he'd been suppressing any longer.
"What's funny?"
"Just that this whole arrangement sounds a lot like the most convenient thing ever, to you specifically."
"How so?"
"Earlier, I saw the way you looked at us before we confirmed exactly what Chaska and I were to each other. You looked genuinely worried our arrangement might get in the way of yours."
She had seen from his response to her offer to purchase his gun that money alone wasn't enough to sway Shiro the way she wanted. Which was probably why she was dangling something else in front of him now, something she had figured out to be effective.
She didn't deny Shiro’s accusation. In fact, she confirmed it outright.
"I'll admit, it'd be a waste to give up on the fun we could still have together, my little cauliflower, over something as impractical as—" She leaned in then, clearly about to kiss him, only to be interrupted by the door swinging open.
"You..." a familiar voice seethed. "Out!"
"Miss Chaska, done with your bath?" Anya said, not moving an inch from where she sat atop Shiro.
"Get off him and get back to your own room," Chaska scolded.
"Why? You told me it'd be fine."
"You did," Shiro added, frowning at her, which only seemed to fuel the fury building on her face.
"Out!" she repeated like scolding an unruly child.
"Alright, alright, no need to say it three times. I'm out," Anya said, sliding off Shiro and heading for the door. "'Night, little cauliflower."
"Yeah. Good night," Shiro said, left to face Chaska's glare alone.
"Impatient perv," she muttered, shaking her head as she reached for the door.
"Oh, come on, don't just leave like that. I've been waiting for you all evening. Now that you're here, stay."
The fact that she didn't immediately slam the door gave him a little hope. He hadn't even expected them to follow through with what they'd planned earlier that day, just a cuddle would've been enough. Unfortunately, all she said was, "Lock your door," before leaving him there alone.
Why, he wondered again, repeating the same question he had asked himself the first time she refused to share his room for the night. Why not spend a cozy night together instead of leaving him to spend a pointless, lonely one alone in his room?
The answer came to him much later, the following morning, when he woke to discover that she had left without him.