Maybe Both

“Well met my good man! I’m glad to see there are people like you gallantly protecting this humble city I’m proud to call my home.”

We only just reached the city’s gate and Sanson was already making a scene.

From my limited experience, if you arrived at a city via cart or wagon, you could go straight through the actual open gate. The driver would be questioned, but unless things seemed suspicious the passengers would just ride through. Things were different if you came on foot. Everyone had to go through a little door, well little in a comparative sense, it was actually a normal sized door, that was beside the gate. There would typically be a guard or two there that would ask you questions. Nothing major. The kind of questions that would make most people think, ‘Who would give the wrong answer? Even if it was true, why wouldn’t they just lie?’ Those were the kind of questions you’d be asked. As long as you weren’t a wanted criminal or boldly declared you were an agent of chaos they’d let you through with no trouble. Honestly, you had to mess up pretty badly for them to even ask to see any identification.

And if you are wondering why people on foot had an ever so slightly more difficult time, well, simply put, if you were on foot that meant you probably didn’t have enough money to ride a carriage, and you certainly weren’t bringing anything useful to sell. The whole thing was blatantly discriminating against the less fortunate, but seems fair to me. You know what they say; gold talks, so if you don’t have any, you’ll have to do the talking yourself.

Now I had plenty of gold and no real desire to talk myself, but thanks to Sanson we were entering the city on foot. And despite how easy I made the questions sound, I couldn’t help but worry.

Fortunately I had an ace up sleeve for when Sanson inevitably ruined things for us.

“Are you a citizen of the Holy City of Ciel?” The guard addressed Sanson in an uninterested tone.

“Yes I am, good sir. Circumstances kept me away, but I’m proud to make my grand return! Hahaha! Just look at how excited these pecs are! They’re dancing with joy!”

While even I knew it was completely inappropriate to start stripping at the checkpoint, I had to admit, those pecs were dancing. I was also glad I decided against tattooing the prison map on Sanson’s back. I figured his shirt would come off, so I knew we’d get caught right away. Well, the whole thing was a moot point anyway once I realized that I didn’t actually know what prison Rakki was at.

“Sir, please don’t, wait, hold on a second.”

“Impressed?”

I didn’t want to believe it, but the guard was really staring at Sanson’s left pec. I thought Sanson’s routine was finally working on someone, but the guard looked over his shoulder, ignoring Sanson’s question.

“Marcus, can you come over here? Bring the painting.”

“The painting?”

“Don’t worry, it’s probably nothing. It’s just, ever since I got this job, every gate into the city has the same painting. It’s never come up before, but with the top half of your armor off, you kind of looked like the person in the painting. Same tattoo and everything. I figured I better check, just to make sure. Especially after the past few days we’ve had.”

“Oh? How interesting. This fellow in the painting sounds like a rather intriguing fellow. I’d love to meet him. Do you know who he is?”

“I’ve never been given a name. I just know that if we see him, he is to be immediately placed in custody and brought before High Bishop Sacrés.”

I see. Actually, I’m sure everyone other than Sanson could see what was happening.

“Excuse me, this stranger I’ve never met before seems to be taking a while, don’t you think? Could you let me right on through before you keep dealing with him? I’ve got important business in the city.” I took a half step forward and addressed the guard directly. And yes, I was playing a character.

Sanson was clearly going down, there was no reason for me to get dragged along with him. Losing my guide would make things harder, but I’d manage. My only regret was not getting the mice trained in time. Looks like I’d be working solo on this one.

“I’m sorry, Miss, please wait a bit longer. We’ll have this sorted in just a moment.”

Yeah, that’s what I was worried about. At least I managed to set the groundwork to claim I wasn’t with him.

“Alright, I brought the painting, but-” A second guard came rushing toward us holding a framed painting in his arms. As soon as he saw Sanson he stopped talking. He just held the painting out in front of his face.

There it was. No one could possibly deny that it was a painting of Sanson, naked from the waist up, flexing with a proud look on his face.

“That looks like it’s supposed to be me, doesn’t it?” Everyone was thinking it already, but Sanson shouldn’t have admitted it so easily. “The artist captured my likeness decently well, but I’d never make that facial expression while my lower half was still completely covered. Let me show you what it would really look like.”

“Sound the alarm!”

Both of the guards yelled out in unison.

After that things went as expected. If you’ve seen one paladin getting escorted away by guards while trying to remove his pants you’ve seen every paladin getting escorted away by guards while trying to remove their pants.

I thought about running away myself, but don’t you think that would just make me look suspicious? They might put my painting up next.

Wait, what am I thinking? They would recognize a beauty like myself without needing a painting.

No, I couldn’t run. I waited with patience that far exceeded that of any saint I knew for that whole mess to clear up. Fortunately, it didn’t take very long. From the moment the bell above the checkpoint started ringing to the moment the checkpoint opened back up was only around nine minutes.

“Well, now that you’ve finished with that business, would you kindly let average-sized young me through the gate?” If they somehow had access to information about Sanson’s party members they might recognize my usual intelligent, cool-beauty persona. That’s why I was acting like a different person.

Hmm? I was talking like that to the guard earlier? Fine, I actually just wanted to try playing a new character. I was a young, mysterious, femme fatale. Actually, that’s just me all the time. Well, I had a new accent.

“I apologize for the delay. I know you were asked this while the arrest was being made, but do you have any connection to the man that was escorted away?”

“Well, I do not recall having met that poor soul before sundown last evenin’. I happened across his camp, but goodness me I had no inklin’ that he was a wanted man. I do declare that he had the eyes of a wolf, and I’m just a cute average-sized lamb. Boy am I grateful that men like you were here to keep my chops attached.”

I made sure to look down and flutter my eyelashes. Heh. I usually didn’t like to use it, but if I took advantage of my sex appeal I could have any man eating out of the palm of my hand. I was un-living proof that you didn’t need a body like Eris or Ane to control men. What simpletons. Mentally speaking I suppose I’m more gender neutral than anything, but I definitely didn’t have anything in common with the gender that would do anything for a pretty girl.

I swung my head to rustle my hair, but then I remembered that my hair was only around neck length. I was going to grow it out, but Ane told me not to. She was worried it would get tangled up in her torture machines. I was a bit disappointed, but I’d do pretty much anything that Ane asked me to.

“That so? Then what is the purpose of your visit?”

Well well well, he was trying to resist my charms. The guard’s face looked the same as normal, but I could tell that under the surface he was struggling to keep his composure. His eyebrow was twitching slightly.

“I’ve come to the big city in order to meet a man.” I gave him a wink.

“You’re here to meet someone?” He didn’t seem impressed.

“Or a woman.” I winked with the other eye. I didn’t know what kind of thing he was into, so I decided to try both.

“Wait. Are you here to meet a man or a woman?”

“Maybe both.” I winked both eyes at the same time. I made sure to keep them closed for a few seconds so he wouldn’t get my double wink confused with a normal blink.

“Miss, is there some kind of problem?”

“Why? Think you could help this average-sized lady solve it?”

“At this point, I don’t think I could. What is your name?”

“Whoooow, slow down sugar cube, movin’ a bit fast ain’t ya? Maybe I should speed things up myself. . .”

“Miss, do you have any form of identification?”

I reached into my stylish travel bag and pulled out a rolled up piece of paper.

“Are you implyin’ that you want something like this?”

“If that is paperwork that identifies you or your purpose in coming to the Holy City of Ciel, then yes.”

“I suppose then you’ll have to retrieve it.”

I tried to position it between my dress and my chest, but without anything to hold it in place it just fell straight down. Ah. My femme fatale act was so perfect that I even fooled myself. I completely forgot that I didn’t have the assets necessary to pull off a maneuver like that. The paper eventually got caught between my petticoat and dress. I kicked my legs a bit and it managed to roll free, stopping in front of the guard.

He had a, let's call it interesting, look on his face as he bent down to pick it up. He wouldn’t be able to resist for much longer. Time for the killing blow.

“Miss, what exactly is this supposed to be?”

“Anythin’ you want it to be.”

“Well, I want it to be your identification, but it’s certainly not that.”

“Tsk tsk. That’s my most delicate identification. Those are my three sizes.”

“Well there’s only two numbers written on this piece of paper.”

“You’ll have to find out the third yourself.”

“And both of the numbers written here are 170. What sizes exactly are those supposed to be?”

“My height and intelligence, obviously. Both in centimeters.”

“Somehow your height isn’t the least likely of those to be true.”

“My, don’t you have a way with words.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Charmed. Now if you’ll let me right on through.”

I tried to slip past him in the love dazed state I put him in, but he managed to hold his arm out to stop me.

“If you can’t give me a purpose behind your visit or any form of identification I can’t let you in.”

“Playing hard to get, huh? Now I see why they let you manage the gate. Alright, fine.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out my secret weapon, placing it into his hand before he knew what I was doing.

“Miss, is this what I think it is?”

“Are you thinkin’ it’s a bribe? Then yes.” Yeah, my secret weapon was a bribe. I had placed a gold coin in his hands.

“Did you really think such an obvious attempt at bribery would work on a soldier of the Holy City?”

“It would have worked on me.” I shrugged as I answered.

“Miss, now I’m really going to need you to give me your name.”

Even my secret weapon failed? Who was this monster they had guarding the gate? I pulled out my real identification paperwork and handed it to him. He unrolled it and started reading aloud.

“Baronetess Remnant Blanche.”

“That’s me.”

He held the paper toward me and the seal on the bottom started to glow, as did an identical mark on the back of my hand, proving I was the woman in question. I don’t know how it works, but apparently every noble uses seals like that to prove their identities. They can’t be forged, and only the noble family that owns the seal can give or remove it. Even if you removed the body part with the seal it would show up somewhere else. Although I imagine Sanson is the only person that would think to place it somewhere that would require stripping. Nobles sure came up with an interesting way to make it easy to prove they weren’t commoners.

Oh, yeah, I was made into a noble. I didn’t really care about titles or anything like that, but Ane thought that people would accept our relationship if I were a noble. So she had me adopted into her family’s house. Now her last name was Milize, but that was a bit of a special circumstance. Her actual family name was Blanche.

Despite not caring about titles, it was a little annoying that she was a baroness while I was a baronetess. Apparently that’s the highest title a commoner could be given though. Ane told me that even the king faced backlash for naming a commoner an imperial knight recently.

Anyway, part of being a noble was having followers. That’s why I needed to give Crow and my little sister names. Crow was made part of my entourage, but I demanded that my little sister be a noble as well. I couldn’t risk something coming between us. Without her I’d be back to not being able to read. And if I ever married Ane, I’d be promoted to a Baroness like her and my little sister would be promoted from Chevalier Blanche to Baronetess Blanche.

Honestly the whole thing didn’t mean much to me. Gold was far more useful than an empty title. Making me a noble wouldn’t impress the actual nobles from Milize who knew I used to be a commoner, it would only impact other commoners; and I doubted they’d care anyway.

And if I managed to realize all of that, I’m sure Ane was more than aware how meaningless making me a noble was. I bet turning a commoner into a noble and then murdering her was just one of her fantasies or something. At least the Blanche family crest looked decent enough, and I already had it on my dress, so the design didn’t clash.

“You’re a noble from Milize?”

“Guilty as charged, officer.”

“Why didn’t you just say you were a noble in the first place?” His face was turning red. Ha. I knew he couldn’t resist my charms for long. “No, Lady Blanche, my apologies. Please, enjoy your time in the Holy City of Ciel.”

“But of course. Just make sure to stay away from women like me. You just might get burned.”

“I’d like nothing more than avoiding such meetings.”

I grabbed my paperwork, and the gold I tried to bribe him with, out of his hands and took my first steps into this so-called “holy city.’ Well, I tried to. For some reason it felt like the city itself was trying to keep me out.

Like I’d listen to something like that! No one could keep Remnant Blanche out of the city. I steeled myself and pushed forward as hard as I could.

I felt a pleasant tingle spread across my body and heard the sound of shattering glass.

Then an alarm, far louder than the bells that the guards rang for Sanson, started blasting throughout the city.

“Another one? It was her!”

I turned around to see the guard that just let me through pointing in my direction. What was that about? I didn’t do anything. Was he really that upset about me taking the bribe back? It didn’t seem like he wanted it. Was this some kind of trick? Well, it wouldn’t work. I was playing my new character perfectly.

“Well, I do believe there has been some sort of confusion.”

“Her, right there! The little noble that just entered the city!”

“Little? Did you just call me little? I’ll kill you for that!”

Before I could enact divine retribution upon him bands of holy light started to wrap around my body. More paladins than I could count were surrounding me. And these were real paladins, nothing at all like Sanson. I didn’t even see a single one try to take their armor off.

But even with all their armor on they were weak. Compared to the holy magic that Ane liked to use on me these bands weren’t even worth mentioning. I broke through them and continued my completely justifiable dash toward that slandering guard.

More bands started wrapping around me, but I didn’t let them slow me down. As I reached the guard I grabbed the chain-mail draped over his shirt and started spinning.

“Once you see me from a different angle you’ll realize that I’m actually decently tall. In about two seconds I’ll look just as tall as all of these paladins, from your perspective at least.”

After a few spins I threw him as hard as I could.

Now that might seem a little violent, but don’t worry, I made sure to aim high enough that he wouldn’t smash into any buildings or anything like that. And based on the number of paladins that were currently trying to restrain me, I figured one of them would catch him. And if they didn’t. . .

Good.

“Alright, now that I got that out of my system, I’d like to surrender. Please take me to jail.”

This wasn’t exactly how I planned it, but looks like we’re getting a prison break after all.