That particular consideration came from what she'd worked out about "him" — specifically, that despite being unable to use her Beyonder abilities, he had somehow managed to cross through the spirit realm to reach the interior of Ruen.
As a Sequence 3 clairvoyant, even a body stripped of its soul retained a certain residual vitality and instinct. When faced with a mortal threat, that instinct could act on its own — survival first.
For Bernadette, this was reassuring. Even if she and the man failed to reach any understanding, she wouldn't be entirely without recourse.
That was, of course, the worst case.
She set the parchment aside and stepped barefoot onto the cool floor, looking out through the window at the distant blue of the sea.
Her eyes went distant. Unfocused. Deep. Somewhere in that depth, images seemed to flicker past — a river of silver, translucent, surfacing and sinking — as though she were looking down a corridor through time, catching glimpses of something that had not yet arrived.
A few minutes later she stumbled back two steps. Blood seeped from the corners of her eyes.
As a master of prophecy, she had the ability to glimpse the threads of fate — but her own future had always come to her muddied, unclear. And now with this man's intrusion, those threads had become chaos.
"...Perhaps that's not such a bad thing."
After a long silence, she wiped the blood from her eyes and murmured: "The future I saw before wasn't a good one. I've been looking for a variable ever since — something that could change it."
And now the variable had arrived, in a form she'd never anticipated.
Held, in a sense, in her own hands.
Maybe this wasn't bad at all.
"Squeak!"
An Invisible Servant popped out of the air, a small note clutched in its grasp. Bernadette took it and read, and her eyes shifted with mild surprise.
Word from Element Dawn's Backlund safehouse: someone had been collecting Emperor Roselle's notebooks.
As the great reformer of his age, Roselle — dead for over a century now — still commanded devoted followings across every nation. His notebooks, scattered to the winds after his death, had always attracted obsessive collectors. People who wanted to crack the script he'd invented. To read whatever secrets lay inside.
In itself, someone collecting Roselle notebooks wasn't unusual. What made this particular case worth flagging was the pattern: the same person, in a short span of time, placing acquisition requests through different intermediaries at different locations. Slightly suspicious.
In all likelihood it was another false alarm — she'd seen plenty of those over the years. But she always investigated. She couldn't afford to let any real possibility slip through.
Bernadette stepped in front of the floor mirror, took in the dog-bitten state of her hair, and frowned slightly. She put on a hat.
Then she opened the wardrobe — an entire wall of it — and selected three outfits that worked with short hair. After several minutes of deliberation, she settled on a white Intisian shirt and dark jacket on top, cream trousers cut for ease of movement below, and a pair of solid black boots.
One step forward. Green pea vines erupted from nowhere, filled the room — and she was gone.
She emerged inside a high-end Intisian restaurant in Backlund's Hillston district. The dining room was full and not a single person noticed her arrival. She walked through it without pausing, straight to a private room at the back, where a red-haired woman in her mid-thirties — a short skirt, black stockings — was bent over a desk writing.
She heard Bernadette's deliberately audible footsteps and looked up. She was on her feet immediately. "Your Majesty. You're here."
"Mm."
Bernadette settled into the vacated armchair. "Have you identified the person collecting the notebooks, Vivian?"
The red-haired woman — Vivian — nodded quickly. "Yes. The requests came from different people, but they all trace back to the same source."
She produced a file and held it out. "A small-figured woman, active in the East Borough and the Bridge Quarter. She does pro-bono arbitration for commoners who've been wronged — day-to-day she deals mostly with street thugs and brokers, and turns up occasionally at certain Beyonder gatherings."
"Do you know why she's collecting the notebooks?"
"Hmm..." Vivian considered. "From what we can tell, she seems to be acting as a middleman — taking the commission, earning the markup. Whoever is actually behind it, we haven't been able to identify yet."
She paused, with an expression of mild defeat. "She's not high-sequence, but she has a sharp sense for surveillance. Following your standing orders, my people could only observe from a distance. Last night she seemed to notice something — she moved before dawn, and we haven't located her new address yet."
Bernadette didn't interrupt. She knew Vivian. If this was all she had, she wouldn't have sent word.
"Based on what we've been tracking, she should attend a Beyonder gathering in the next few days."
"When?"
"Four days from now."
Four days.
By then she'd likely be in the other world. And the one controlling her body would be a man.
Bernadette's expression stayed even. "Give me her previous address."
Vivian had a slip of paper ready. "East Borough, Calvin Street, number sixteen."
Bernadette nodded once, and turned to leave. Vivian spoke quickly: "Your Majesty — the restaurant's revenue ledger for the first half of the year—"
A careless wave. "Handle it yourself. I told you I don't involve myself in day-to-day operations." Then, as an afterthought: "Oh — whenever you've finished digesting the Sequence 7 potion, you may advance at your convenience."
Vivian's face lit up. "Thank you, Your Majesty."
"Prepare food for three people, seven days' worth. Varied — no meal the same twice. Add something for one person to occupy themselves with alone."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
The reply drifted into thinning threads of green vine.
East Borough, Calvin Street, number sixteen.
Bernadette landed lightly and took stock of the two-room flat — empty, clearly vacated in a hurry. The place was a mess at first glance, but after a careful circuit she found nothing that could serve as a divination anchor — no personal effects, and every surface of the furniture had been wiped down.
Her eyes went deep again. As a master of prophecy, her sight reached not only into the future, but into the traces of the past.
It didn't take long. In a corner that would have escaped anyone's notice, she found a single yellowed strand of short hair. She gave it a small wave of her hand, conjured a guiding thread-ball, and followed where it led.
Twenty minutes later she walked into a quiet tavern and watched the thread-ball come to rest beside a blond young man who was asleep with his face on the table.
"..."
So the strand of hair had been left deliberately. Set there as bait for whoever came looking.
Bernadette wasn't annoyed. If anything, she found herself genuinely interested in this small-figured woman. That kind of mind was worth something, wherever you found it.
The only problem was the timing. Four days from now.
The clue about her father's diary mattered. But the body swap was the more pressing matter.
If necessary, she'd have Vivian bring the woman in by force.
Bernadette stepped out of the tavern onto the busy street, and let her thoughts wander: if the swaps stopped after this one, everything returned to normal. But if they continued — what would come next?
Even a god probably couldn't say.
To be continued…