The Red Bear Mercenary Company occupied a property tucked into a shopping district a little way off Mercenary Street. It consisted of a two-story wooden building that looked like an inn, a warehouse, and a sizable open yard. Most of the mercenaries must have gone out; only a few rooms were lit. I couldn't tell whether that was good luck or bad. Either way, it was a good chance to spy on someone else's place.

I quieted my footsteps and pressed myself against the wall. It wasn't smooth stone like the walls of the lord's castle or the duke's mansion, but rough plaster. The heavy security at the duke's mansion and the marquis's castle made sneaking in and out impossible, but climbing the wall of an ordinary building like this was easy.

There was nothing remarkable in the lit rooms on the first and second floors. Mercenaries tended their equipment, someone wrote a letter, and one room had a distinctly amorous atmosphere. I climbed toward the last lit window, on the third floor. It was the last room.

"How much longer do we have to stay here? I'm going stir-crazy."

I was in luck. A familiar voice came through the lit window. It was the female mercenary. Her name was Noah, wasn't it?

I flattened myself beneath the window, hooking the fingers of each hand into gaps around the window frame and the plaster and pressing my body close to the wall.

'This is cutting it close.'

Both the frame and the plaster were terribly old. They could barely support my weight. Good thing I was a kid. If I'd been even a little heavier, neither the wall nor the frame would have held.

Another voice came from inside, one I recognized too.

"Just hold out a little longer. We've gotten close enough to Martin, and he'll bring us a way to wipe out the marquis's entire family soon."

"Can we trust that? He's been getting things wrong lately. This time, he suddenly moved the whole thing up by months..."

Moved it up by months? What were they talking about?

"He hasn't been wrong about the other regions. There may be something here interfering with his ability."

"Doesn't that make him even less trustworthy?"

"He still has the broad strokes right, so wait a little longer."

"Yes, yes."

Were they talking about an inherited ability? Whose ability, and what did it do?

"Are the preparations finished?"

"The sudden change of schedule left us a little short on training... But our people are more or less ready. I've finished talking to the other mercenary companies, too. The company working with our people will take care of things inside, and then we just need Count La Palma to bring his knights on time."

What I was hearing grew stranger by the moment. Could they be talking about what had happened in my previous life?

But that wasn't supposed to happen for months! Why were they preparing for it already? Had something I'd done in this life caused a butterfly effect?

Then again, all I'd done was join Simon's journey. And meet Martin, travel here with him, and sneak out through the secret passage with Adria... Well, put like that, I'd done quite a bit. But those things couldn't easily have influenced their actions. The timing didn't fit.

I listened more closely.

They kept talking about the mercenaries they worked with and airing petty complaints. Unfortunately, nothing quite like the information I wanted came up. Worse, their voices grew faint, as though they'd moved away.

"So... like this... that problem..."

They'd moved? Would that alone make them so much quieter?

A chill ran down my spine.

THUD!

I kicked off the wall with all my strength. At that very moment—

"You little rat!"

CRASH!

The window frame shattered, and a man burst out through it with a shout. A sword shot through the flying splinters.

CLANG!

I blocked it with the sword I'd drawn as I kicked off the wall. The incoming blade was brimming with mana. My sword shrieked under the impact, and for an instant my hand felt numb. I barely managed to hold it off, but I was flung backward. Suspended in midair, I had no way to resist the difference in weight.

Normally that would have annoyed me, but right now I was grateful. I used the force of the blow to send myself as far away as I could.

WHOOSH!

I flew across the wide street, and the moment my feet touched ground, I broke into a run. Time to get out of here!

"Was it an actual rat?"

"It's really small. A woman, maybe?"

"Dwarf or woman, I don't care. Chase them!"

"Yes, yes."

The woman had apparently come down already.

WHEE!

After that exchange behind me, a whistle rang out, followed by the female mercenary's voice.

"Wow! Haven't had this much fun in ages! Wait up, rat—or dwarf, or whatever you are!"

Her voice drew closer. Damn it. I'd thought her nose was the only thing that was good, but she was fast on her feet too.

"An enemy?"

"Stop them! But why are they so small?"

Mercenaries poured out from both sides of the street. I hadn't seen any of them on my way here. Where had they all come from?

"Don't tell me it's a kid. I could catch them barehanded—urk!"

I slammed the back of my blade into the mercenary blocking my path, who hadn't even drawn his sword.

THWACK!

"Argh!"

I kicked the next mercenary in the side as he reached for his sword. The men blocking me went flying in every direction. I'd avoided killing them, just in case, but I thought I'd broken a few bones.

More mercenaries flooded into the street than I'd knocked away.

"You idiots! That's no child! They can fight! Just surround them!"

The female mercenary's voice was closer still.

There was no escaping down the street now. I hadn't checked the back alleys, but I had no choice. I darted between two buildings.

The alley was barely wide enough for one or two people to pass. A large adult would have trouble escaping through it, but on a dark night, a narrow alley with no light reaching it was the perfect playground for a child under ten to hide in.

"Where are they?"

"Not in this alley!"

"Not here either!"

Mercenaries called to one another from all through the alleys.

"Then where are they? Check every house with an open door or window!"

"They're all closed."

"They might have gone in somewhere and shut the door behind them."

"Then open them and check!"

Everything I'd overheard earlier seemed to be true. More than one mercenary company was searching for me. The other companies around the lodgings were all in on it.

I'd made a mistake rushing here the moment I heard about the company's quarters. I'd thought I was being careful, but in a real situation, I kept finding flaws in my approach.

'Be more careful. If I die again after this, I'll have no one to blame but myself.'

Watching the mercenaries run through the alleys below, I renewed that promise to myself.

Climbing onto the roof had been the right choice. The mercenaries hunting me hadn't considered that I might have climbed up here. Because they couldn't do it, it hadn't occurred to them that someone else could. To be fair, I didn't think an ordinary person could have made it onto a roof in so little time either.

As I looked down, the female mercenary appeared in the alley below.

"Hmm. Where did they run off to?"

She drew a deep breath and looked around. Then she raised her head and looked my way.

Yikes. She might see me. I pulled my head in like a turtle. She hadn't spotted me, had she?

I moved away carefully. She had a good nose. I didn't think she'd found me, but I needed to get away fast. I all but crawled to another part of the roof, then leaped to the next house. Mercenaries ran through the alley I'd jumped over, but no one looked up.

I kept crossing from roof to roof. The night air was wonderfully cool against my face, and my racing heart finally settled.

A few buildings away, I could see Mercenary Street. A few more beyond that was the roof of the inn where Martin was staying. The noise from the inn carried all the way here. I'd just had a whole action-packed chase, and nothing anywhere else had changed.

"Time to head back, then."

Mercenary Street was noisy, but it was quiet around here. I'd made it beyond their cordon. They might search this far eventually, but before they did, I'd be back to being the kid at Adria's side.

I hopped down. It was a fair drop from a second-story roof, but I was long past the age when a height like that frightened me.

"Found you!"

A woman's voice came from the dark alley beneath my feet. Noah. At the same instant, she sprang upward. Her flushed face rushed toward me through the darkness, beaming with excitement. I had no idea what made her so happy, but along with that bright smile came the green flash of a sword.

'Does every damn mercenary around here use poison?'

I swung my sword hard and blocked the poisoned blade.

CLATTER!

But the moment our swords met, an unexpected sound came from mine. At the same time, I was thrown backward into a wall.

"Urgh!"

I felt the difference in our weight again, but that wasn't my main concern.

"You can fight, so what's with that sword? Are you broke? Maybe you're not a rat after all, just a petty thief."

Her baffled expression made me sigh. One clash, and my sword had snapped clean in two. Was that the limit of a mass-produced iron sword? It had looked strained when I crossed blades with the mercenary commander earlier, but I hadn't expected it to break so easily.

I forced myself upright. My back hurt from hitting the wall, and blood was running down my thigh; a fragment of the broken blade must have cut my leg.

Damn it. This was bad. The woman stood between me and the alley leading to Mercenary Street. I was hurt, I'd lost my sword, and now my escape route was blocked. My bleeding leg wasn't in any shape to climb back onto a roof either.

WHEEEEE!

The woman whistled.

"The others will be here any second. Then we'll find out whether you're a rat or a petty thief."

I couldn't let the mercenaries swarm in. Both the woman in front of me and the commander had seen my face before. All they had to do was pull back my cloak to recognize me.

'Damn it. Is this as far as I get?'

The thought of living through everything again was dreadful, but ending it here seemed better than being captured and tortured without even dying. Thinking that made this life feel like such a waste. Just when I thought I was beginning to understand things, my overconfidence had ruined it.

Still, I wasn't ready to give up. If I got very, very lucky, an opening might appear. I braced my injured leg, about to make a run for it.

"What do you think you're doing?"

The voice came from the woman's direction.

"Threatening an injured child! Have you no honor?"

It wasn't the female mercenary speaking. The voice had come from behind her. Noah turned around, looking dumbfounded.

"Honor? Did you just lecture a mercenary about honor?"

Well, it certainly wasn't the word I'd have used. Someone stepped out of the darkness behind her: a slight mercenary in a cloak. The same one who'd tried to help Adria earlier.

"Mercenary or knight, anyone who wields a sword bears a responsibility! If you don't understand that, you have no right to wield one!"

Noah and I both stared at the newcomer, mouths hanging open. I couldn't believe I was hearing a line that cringeworthy outside a movie from my previous life. They'd clearly come to save me, but right then, all I wanted was to pretend I didn't know them.