The Weight of Legacy

Responsibility…

…was a stupid societal concept.

Really, in life, things happened for many reasons. If one truly looked at it with the sole purpose of finding cause and effects, the end result would be that events were often unrelated. If one bought a pie from the local bakery and shared it with the neighbors, only for one neighbor to save a slice and give it away to a third person who just so happened to react negatively to it, that did not make the bakery responsible for some random person dying from an allergic reaction just because they made a pie.

So why did Ximena feel like calling in that favor might have been the worst mistake she made this decade, at the bare minimum? Surely, Sybrandt would understand that she couldn't possibly have predicted a madman crashing the wedding and somehow getting his man killed by dodging what appeared to be an entirely unrelated attack. Someone had been trying to kill Baldur Maryem—completely understandable—and ended up hitting Lambrecht instead, certainly, but it wasn't as though the man had even been a guest. He had actively ignored the people reminding him he was unwelcome, even.

Hildegard—having finally crawled out from under whichever administrative hurdle she'd been using as a shield to avoid making a public appearance—was engaged in a heated debate with the lady of the house and her husband. All agreed that this was not the fault of Kristian Rīsan, at least.

See, Ximena, you are being stupid. Lambrecht simply having been here isn't your fault, either. He was just doing his job… which you technically hired him for…

Her attempts at convincing herself of her folly in feeling guilty about this were not going well in the slightest.

Having lived in Beuzaheim for as long as she had, Ximena was all too aware of just how no one would shed tears for Baldur if he ended up paying for this, but that wasn't the sole problem—if this became a matter of one man's word against another's, it would be a disaster, considering who the two parties involved were. There was no evidence to speak of, and no one would put their reputation on the line to defend Rīsan. This would be a clash between people literally nobody liked, and predicting the outcome seemed impossible—sure, it had happened at the Rīsan estate, and others had witnessed it, but everyone who hadn't left at that point had been affiliated with this House in one way or another.

The argument that they wouldn't be unbiased witnesses basically wrote itself.

That all, of course, could be solved with ease—while it wouldn't be an immediate act, Ximena could just contact Sybrandt again, and he would not hesitate to act based on whatever she told him, even if it went against whichever theories people were building in their heads.

There was, however, a tiny problem with the truth—neither Baldur Maryem nor Kristian Rīsan had actually been responsible for whatever killed Sybrandt's man. And with how quickly it had happened, it must have been the result of some sort of artifact, seeing as no Immortal would be hiding in the woods waiting for a chance to kill some random mayor with a single hit. Not even if that mayor was Baldur.

If the culprit could be found, surely, Sybrandt was the man for the job… but then Baldur Maryem would avoid the heaviest of consequences. He was innocent of that particular crime, but he had still destroyed the obit. That ridiculous decision simply made this too horrid a crime for him to go unpunished, and Devils knew it wasn't the first time the mayor had gone out of his way to prevent the resurrection of someone who had literally nothing to do with him, just because of a slim chance they might be revived and speak against him.

Sybrandt had many men working for him, and this particular one hadn't been anything special to Ximena, but she still wanted Baldur gone for this. It was personal, if vaguely.

Browsing her inventory for some practical pants, Ximena slid into the restroom that had been made available for guests. Too short. Too plain. No, those would probably get tangled in something… oh, these are perfect.

It'd been a while since she last chased after someone—and she wouldn't be caught dead explaining why she'd done it the last time—but Ximena still had it in her. Tracking a single mortal down would be child’s play compared to dealing with the average customer, and she doubted even a slight delay could truly make any difference. She could have left immediately, certainly, but she needed another moment.

Just because she meant to run after a man didn’t mean she could just slack on how she looked when she did it.

Malwine watched her surroundings with trepidation, knowing all too well there might be a hidden threat out there. She could not know if anyone was watching, especially when she still had no idea just where the attack had come from—but it sure seemed likely. Who was to say the mystery attacker wasn't just waiting for another chance to strike?

Within what little remained of the party, everyone seemed fully convinced that the mayor had been responsible for what happened to Lambrecht… whatever what had happened to Lambrecht was. Hopefully, the now late officiant’s warning would keep Thekla and Abelard within their little structure, at least just a little bit longer, minimizing the amount of damage control anyone would have to do in terms of explanations.

More like, procrastinating explanations.

But that suited Malwine just fine, seeing as she had decided to take it upon herself to solve the optics part of this problem. If she was interpreting things right, the mayor expected to be able to just blame Kristian for everything—had that been the case all along, when he'd meant to attack Abelard? That seemed unlikely, but reading into the motivations of someone who would go around carrying what she now knew to have been a whole ass pot of seawater might have been a hopeless cause.

Her first concern on the list was the little matter of whether or not they were actually safe at the moment—either Adelheid had gotten the obit or she hadn’t, so there wasn’t that much to be gained by remaining here. Only once she knew the answer to that could she really settle on how to proceed.

Malwine took in a deep breath. Regardless of how this went, she had to at least convince herself she knew what she was doing. Consequences were something for later.

“Adelheid,” she called to her little sister in a whisper. She hadn’t even felt the girl return, but simply calling her seemed to summon her if she was nearby—or more accurately, she probably just stayed hidden until called, despite being already there. “Can we get back to our room?”

Her little sister didn’t answer, but she felt the world dissolve swiftly, just as a hand touched her shoulder. The sight of their shared room greeted her and now away from prying eyes, Malwine did the very mature thing of just pulling her own hair. “Ah! Why can’t things just be normal for once?”

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She stopped herself before doing anything else—she didn’t want to be too terrible a role model, even if that ship had already sailed. There was an attempt to be made! Shaking her head, she met Adelheid’s gaze. “Did you get it?”

Maybe she shouldn’t have wasted her breath asking—her little sister was already smiling. “Yep!”

Holding her hand out, Malwine gave her an appreciative nod. “That’s great! Can I have it?”

“Sure! I thought it was because you wanted it, anyway.”

Carefully, Malwine grabbed the offered obit as Adelheid withdrew it from her inventory. It felt cold against the palm of her hand—she couldn’t recall if Katrina’s had been the same way, and it wasn’t as though she could pull that one out to check.

“Why is that weird man inside that box?”

Malwine choked. “It’s an obit. It’s like… when people die, they become these tiny boxes, but they aren’t really alive anymore.” That I know of. “If you push a lot of mana into the box, though, it’s supposed to bring them back. I’ve never actually seen that part happen.”

“Oh,” the girl’s expression went distant for a moment. “Do you think I could have Mother’s family back if I found those for them?”

“…Probably? But you’d have to find them in the first place,” Malwine didn’t have it in her to bring up the fact that she was pretty sure the Tacit Saint had just straight up dumped that entire family into the sea when he’d killed them, and everyone seemed to be in agreement that the sea just ate obits it came into contact with. Presumably, the mayor’s decision to use the bucket—she had long since decided to stop calling that thing a cauldron—had stemmed from desire to erase the evidence of what happened, though the fact that he’d probably assumed it could hurt even a living Abelard had her more than a bit worried.

Just what happened if people got into contact with it? Seasickness as a concept was barely explained as it was, and most books she’d skimmed that even mentioned it treated it as something to be avoided under pain of death without actually addressing the depths of it. To Malwine, it seemed like a consequence of getting exposed to the vague something that the sea gave off, without actually being taken by it, but that statement already contained enough absurd half-details that she’d yet to wrap her head around it. This might as well have been the first time she’d seen the sea weaponized in person, and even now, she’d yet to actually start taking it seriously—whatever remained of the widow’s worldview simply kept her from ever truly thinking of a bunch of upside-down waves as some world-ending monstrosity, no matter how much evidence piled up before her.

Ugh. I’m sure the price of hubris will catch up to me or whatever soon enough. OHeidi had still been reduced to nothing by her actions, even if that sibyl had been disconnected from the sea.

As much as she wanted to keep musing about and justifying her lack of concerns to herself, Malwine turned the obit over, examining the shimmering silvery box and watching as [Identify] seemed to come to life on its own, showing a message not unlike the one she’d gotten for Katrina’s obit.