In the living room of the Williams residence, the flames in the fireplace still danced. The red-haired girl kept her head low, fiddling with her fingers, her face still flushed. She shifted uneasily on the sofa, mulling over her thoughts for a long moment before finally asking a new question:
“Are you free on Sunday evening?”
As it happened, Jenkins was.
“Can you come to my place? Be there at six, don’t be late. Eat dinner beforehand. It’s my house in the Westminster River district.”
“Can I bring Chocolate?”
Hathaway looked up at Jenkins’s face, trying to determine if he was actually taking the conversation seriously:
“Fine. You can bring your pet.”
After that, Hathaway left without asking about the incident at the docks that afternoon, leaving Jenkins, who had prepared a whole explanation, with no chance to give it.
The writer had no idea if the red-haired girl had believed his earlier words, but he truly didn't want to drag them into his complex and dangerous life.
Watching the carriage recede from his front door, a wave of melancholy and loss washed over him, reaching an unexpected peak. Jenkins didn't consider himself a sentimental person, yet he found himself sinking into the very emotional entanglements he had been so determined to avoid.
“Maybe I should ask for Alexia's opinion at the gathering tonight.”
He had made another terrible decision.
“Oh, what am I thinking?”
And immediately realized how foolish he was being. Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs novel·fire.net
After resting at home for a while, he set out again. First, he went to the old craftsman's shop to pick up Fini’s gift, then he took his cat and headed to the church. Today was Fini’s birthday, and while Jenkins couldn't spend the entire day with her, he could at least join her for dinner.
He had originally planned to bring a small cake, but as far as he knew, when the children at the church had a birthday, the church only prepared some nice desserts rather than a special cake. If he brought one just for Fini, it might make it difficult for her to make friends in the choir.
The jeweler had fulfilled Jenkins's request perfectly, crafting a teardrop-shaped ruby pendant from the leftover fragments of a larger gem. The raw stone Robert had brought him was of exceptionally high quality, especially the central piece; its translucent luster and rich color were absolutely stunning.
The old craftsman had originally planned to cut the central part into two ring faces and decide what to do with the rest later. But when he learned Jenkins wanted a gift for a little girl's birthday, he reduced the planned size of the ring faces and deliberately set aside a piece of the finest material to create the pendant.
Even Jenkins had to admit that the red pendant was absolutely beautiful. It was a solid piece of gemstone, not just a thin sliver set in a silver frame. It would make a perfect gift, though he still needed to wrap it in a gift box before giving it to her.
Beaming, he arrived at the church and greeted the guards at the entrance. He spent some time praying with the faithful in the main hall before taking a rear passage to the complex of buildings behind the sanctuary. He planned to give Fini her gift at dinner, which meant he had some time to take care of other matters.
Miss Bevanna wasn't in her office, which disappointed Jenkins, who had wanted to ask her about a few things. However, he ran into another Scribe he knew and heard that Pops Antique Shop had been attacked.
Apparently, someone had used a Mysterious Object to shatter the antique shop's display window. Papa Oliver, who had been in the backyard securing items against the sudden whirlwind, had gotten quite a fright.
“Which Mysterious Object was it?”
“A-12-02-1110, the Living Corpse Gem.”
Jenkins wasn't surprised—after all, he was the one who had thrown it. What did surprise him was that the cold, black stone was indeed the very item he had suspected it to be. If that was the case, things were about to get very interesting.
The investigation would continue, and this Mysterious Object was sure to bring new leads and a breakthrough.
The gray snow had stopped around the time Jenkins had dug out the substitute's heart, but a layer still covered the church garden. Jenkins was looking at the snow with Chocolate when he happened to run into Bishop Parrold, who took the opportunity to officially inform him about his ennoblement.
“The Kingdom has decided to elevate you to Viscount. The official letters and circulars should arrive before the end of the month. I believe you'll need to make a trip to Bel Diran in March.”
“Do I have to go to Bel Diran?”
“Of course. Only the one who sits on the throne has the right to bestow titles upon others.”
The bishop could see that Jenkins was reluctant to leave the city, but he simply smiled and said nothing more on the matter.
“The weather was so strange this afternoon. Snow and wind, all of a sudden,”
the old man remarked.
“Do you know when Miss Bevanna might be back?”
“She returned once about an hour ago but left again shortly after. Oh, she has been terribly busy lately, but the peace and tranquility of our diocese rest on her shoulders.”
The bishop and Jenkins chatted as they walked. In recent months, the old man had been looking increasingly healthy. He had all but stopped accompanying the clergy on their missionary trips to the small towns around Nolan, but now he was going almost every week.
They spoke of many things, from the rise of the banking industry in the wake of the Fabry fraud to the further expansion of the city's infrastructure. Finally, the conversation turned to the problem of air pollution. The bishop told Jenkins that when he was about Jenkins's age—roughly half a century ago, before the steam industry had become so dominant—no one could have imagined that the power of mortals could have such a profound impact on nature.
And because of the many problems brought on by the steam industry, the relationship between the Church of All Things and Nature, the Church of Earth and Harvest, and the Church of Creation and Machinery had grown increasingly strained over the past decade. While they weren't openly hostile, the former two steadfastly believed that the latter's promotion of steam power was destroying the natural world.
Speaking of the relationships between these three churches naturally led them to the topic of the members of other faiths currently staying in Nolan. The bishop wasn't sure about the whereabouts of the delegation from the Church of Machinery, who were in town to investigate the shattering of the Gifted Clock, but he did know that the knights from the Church of Sun and Justice had been staying in the Evergreen Forest for some time.
“I've heard that Miss Celtic Knight's family has ties to the dragons of legend.”
Jenkins took this in as they rounded a corner in the long corridor, joining the bishop in examining a statue of a small angel at the base of a white staircase.
“Many noble lineages can trace their roots back to the mythical races of antiquity. Some of those claims are fabricated, of course, for the sake of a so-called ‘noble bloodline.’ But some are genuinely noble...”
As he said this, he subconsciously glanced at Jenkins's face, but Jenkins was too preoccupied with studying the statue's wings to notice the bishop's peculiar gesture.