Chapter 65 Cloak

Creak.

The wooden door slowly opened with a harsh scrape that set teeth on edge.

Cold, damp air flowed through the gap, carrying the faint metallic smell of rust.

Then came wet, shoulder-length blond hair.

A standard-issue short plate cuirass, still dripping with rain.

“My apologies for disturbing you.”

Ingram, sheriff of Kalanfor, stood in the doorway.

His low voice carried across the dining room.

A dozen pairs of eyes watched him.

His own faintly reddened gaze swept across the cluttered tables before settling on Xia Nan and Alton.

“If you don’t mind, could the two of you step outside for a moment?”

The door remained partly open after they left.

Not wide enough for everyone inside to hear clearly, but enough that both sides could still keep an eye on one another.

The adventurers in the dining room soon appeared to resume their drinking and boasting.

Appeared to.

Their voices had dropped noticeably.

And every so often, someone openly glanced toward the doorway.

“I’m very sorry to bother you this late.”

Ingram stood in the corridor, two equally serious guards behind him.

“Before anything else, I need to make one thing clear. I don’t suspect either of you.”

His tone was firm.

“I’m only here to ask a few questions.”

Xia Nan frowned slightly but said nothing.

He nodded for the sheriff to continue.

Ingram’s jaw tightened.

“Joey is dead.”

Rainwater and sweat ran together down the sharp lines of his face.

He turned slightly and lowered his gaze toward Alton.

His blue eyes looked tired.

“It happened tonight.”

The name took Xia Nan a moment to place.

Then he remembered.

The scrawny pickpocket from that afternoon.

“Given what happened earlier, I still have to ask,” Ingram continued. “I know neither of you had anything to do with Joey’s death, but… this is part of my duty. I hope you understand.”

Xia Nan folded his arms.

The situation was easy enough to understand.

Joey had tried to rob Alton that afternoon.

He’d failed, but that still created a connection between them.

Now Joey was dead.

And since Ingram had personally witnessed the entire incident, there was no way he could simply ignore the two outsiders who had interacted with the victim hours before his death.

Xia Nan didn’t mind.

He and Alton had returned to the inn before dark and stayed with the caravan’s adventurers ever since.

Any number of people could confirm it.

Alton, meanwhile, looked almost energized.

A murder in the middle of an otherwise ordinary night was exactly the sort of thing capable of igniting the halfling’s natural curiosity.

For now, anyway.

If Ingram kept them standing around too long asking the same dull questions, that enthusiasm would probably die just as quickly.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

Both Xia Nan and Alton had solid alibis.

And from the way Ingram conducted the questioning, he’d apparently already confirmed they had nothing to do with the case before coming here.

Barely ten minutes later, it was over.

“Thank you for cooperating.”

Ingram looked at both of them with genuine sincerity.

“If either of you notices anything later, please contact me.”

His gaze flicked past them toward the dining room visible through the partly open door.

He was already saying his farewells, but his right hand rose to wipe the water still dripping from his forehead.

Xia Nan’s eyes naturally followed the motion.

The golden sun embroidered inside Ingram’s cuff had been strikingly clear that afternoon.

Now it was completely soaked.

Under the dim corridor lighting, the design looked faded, yellowed, and warped by the wet fabric.

Ingram was about to leave when Alton’s curiosity finally got the better of him.

“I heard there’ve been strange murders in town lately.”

The halfling tilted his head.

“The bones were removed from the victims’ limbs.”

His eyes sharpened slightly.

“Was the thief killed the same way?”

Ingram stopped.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he gave a slow nod.

“Yes.”

His voice was quiet.

“The same kind of murders had already begun before your caravan reached Kalanfor.”

He looked between them.

“That’s also one of the main reasons I don’t suspect either of you.”

Then he stepped back.

“That’ll be all. I should go.”

He gave them one last nod.

“Good luck with your mission.”

With that, Ingram turned and disappeared down the corridor with the two guards.

The moment Xia Nan and Alton stepped back into the dining room, Jeff hurried over.

The caravan captain had been waiting by the door ever since the sheriff arrived.

“How’d it go? Is something wrong?”

Concern was written plainly across his face.

“I know Ingram pretty well. If there’s been some misunderstanding, do you need me to talk to him?”

Xia Nan shook his head.

Nothing serious.

He glanced at Alton.

The halfling clearly couldn’t care less, so Xia Nan explained what had happened on the road that afternoon himself.

He had barely finished when a red-faced adventurer slapped the table.

“How could that have anything to do with you two? You were here at the inn with us all night!”

The man belched.

“I’ll tell you what… that sheriff’s just looking for trouble. Sees we’re outsiders, thinks we’re easy to push around, so he comes over here to show us who’s boss!”

Another drunken adventurer immediately chimed in.

“When the short fellow and Xia Nan left earlier, wasn’t that sheriff still standing there with the thief?”

He snorted.

“If you ask me… who knows who actually killed the kid!”

“You’re drunk. Completely drunk.”

A companion who was still relatively sober hurried over and grabbed him before he could say anything worse.

The last thing they needed was for a drunken rant to turn into real trouble.

Jeff sat back down with an awkward expression.

On one side was Ingram, an old friend he’d known for years.

On the other were the adventurers who had guarded his caravan all this way and with whom he’d finally built a decent relationship.

Neither side was someone he wanted to offend.

So he did the safest thing possible.

He lowered his head and kept eating.

Xia Nan returned to his seat, but his thoughts remained on the case Ingram had mentioned.

Then he glanced at Alton.

The halfling had been full of curiosity before.

Yet after Ingram confirmed the manner of Joey’s death, all that interest had vanished.

Now he looked bored.

Xia Nan narrowed his eyes.

“You know something, don’t you?”

Alton looked like a child, but he was a Lightfoot Halfling walking the path of a Bard.

He had traveled far more widely than Xia Nan.

He had seen more people, more places, and far stranger things.

That expression said he’d already reached some sort of conclusion.

And sure enough, Alton merely shrugged.

He lazily stirred the sticky beans on his plate with a spoon.

“What else would it be?”

He sounded thoroughly unimpressed.

“Cultists.”

Xia Nan waited.

Alton sighed.

“Those madmen are everywhere on this continent. They’re like cockroaches. Most of the time they hide in some dark corner, then when you least expect it, one crawls out just to disgust you.”

He reached into his clothes and pulled out his Lucky Coin.

The brass disk flipped lightly into the air.

“No matter how many you catch, there are always more.”

He caught it.

“Boring.”

The coin gleamed beneath the lamplight.

It spun once across his fingers, then settled into his palm.

Xia Nan’s gaze followed it without thinking.

And for the first time, he saw the reverse side of Alton’s Lucky Coin.

A cloak was engraved there.

Empty.

Billowing in the air with no one beneath it.