I Stopped Simping and the Heroines Lost Their Minds

The afternoon after the meeting in the archive room, Arthur and Felix walked into Lornfell’s southern market district.

Tanner’s Lane was a narrow, crowded street filled with wheelwrights, leather workers, and old transport shops. The air smelled of wood shavings, hot iron, and curing hides. Number fourteen stood above a noisy wheel-repair workshop, with the living quarters reached through a staircase at the back.

Arthur and Felix stepped into the open workshop and asked the apprentice hammering a hot iron rim whether Garran Holt still lived upstairs.

The worker pointed to a wooden staircase in the back corner. He warned them that Garran became highly unpleasant whenever anyone mentioned outstanding toll payments.

Felix looked down at his ledger containing the copied Thorne entries. ”That explains why his address survived.”

They climbed the narrow stairs and knocked on the heavy wooden door.

A moment later, the door opened, but only a few inches. An older man with a heavy, thick-shouldered build and rough, calloused hands looked out at them. His eyes moved from Arthur to Felix before settling into a deep scowl.

”If this is about the Thorne road charge, I paid it twice and argued about it for three years,” Garran said, his voice grating. ”I am not paying it again.”

”We are not here to collect a toll,” Arthur told him. ”We are asking about Grayroot.”

Garran’s scowl disappeared. He stopped opening the door.

Felix reached into his satchel and pulled out the copied pages from the Thorne toll book. He held them up so Garran could read the neat lines of ink through the doorway.

”We found your signature on three specific shipments,” Felix said quietly.

Garran looked at the dates, then at the academy uniforms Arthur and Felix wore beneath their coats. He opened the door the rest of the way, gesturing for them to step into the small, cluttered front room.

”I drove hundreds of loads for dozens of companies,” Garran said. ”Whatever was inside the wagon was the merchant’s concern, not mine.”

”We aren’t accusing you of contaminating anything,” Arthur assured him. ”We only want to know where you collected the cargo.”

Garran crossed his arms and looked at the copied pages Felix had placed on a small wooden table.

”The first journey is easy,” Garran said, pointing a thick finger at the earliest date. ”Grayroot had already been mostly abandoned by then. I drove my wagon directly to the quarry’s surface yard. Two men loaded sealed crates into the back while a reseller agent checked my paperwork. I never went down into the lower quarry.”

Felix pointed to the second date, recorded eleven days later.

Garran studied the ink for a longer moment, rubbing his jaw. He tapped the paper. ”That second load was not collected from Grayroot.”

Arthur and Felix exchanged a brief look. ”Where did it come from?” Arthur asked.

”An old freight yard just south of Lornfell,” Garran answered. ”The crates were already sealed when I arrived, and they were loaded by local yard hands.”

”But your merchant declaration still called them stored Grayroot stone,” Arthur noted. ”Why didn’t that bother you?”

Garran answered plainly. ”Because drivers who opened merchant crates stopped getting hired.”

Felix moved his finger down to the third and final entry. He showed Garran the margin note the toll clerk had squeezed into the edge of the ledger: Rear covering damaged. Driver refused inspection.

Garran read the note, and his irritation returned.

”I wasn’t hiding the cargo,” Garran muttered, dropping into a chair. ”The covering tore before I reached the toll station. An inspection meant unloading the crates, losing the day, and probably losing my payment. I had a sealed declaration, so the clerk let me through.”

”What did you see when the covering tore?” Arthur asked.

Garran leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. ”The crates were packed tightly beneath dark cloth. One of the wooden corners had split when the wagon hit a rut. A pile of fine, black grit had gathered along the wagon bed. Some of it blew onto my coat and my hands when we tried to pull the canvas back over the gap.”

He rubbed his rough hands together. ”It was unusually difficult to wash away.”

”Did anything happen after the journey?” Felix asked, his pen ready over his ledger.

”I got sick,” Garran admitted. ”For weeks. Constant coughing, weakness in my legs, severe headaches. My mana kept slipping whenever I tried to use even a basic heating charm to warm my food.”

”Did you see a healer?” Arthur asked.

Garran nodded. ”A local healer down in the market. He told me to rest and avoid breathing road dust.”

Felix wrote down the symptoms. They followed the same pattern as the old miner complaints Chloe had presented.

”You said someone helped pull the canvas back,” Arthur said. ”Who was with you?”

Garran nodded. ”Another driver helped me tighten the covering. His wagon was travelling with me from the freight yard.”

That caught Felix’s immediate attention. He checked the toll copies again. ”There was no second wagon registered on that date under the reseller.”

”Because he didn’t pass through the Thorne toll station,” Garran explained. ”He complained that the torn canvas was delaying both our deliveries. After he helped me secure it, he drove ahead. But shortly before the main road reached the toll gate, his wagon turned onto an older service route leading directly toward Lornfell. I continued through the proper station because my merchant declaration required a stamped passage seal to get paid.”

”Do you remember his wagon?” Arthur asked.

”It was larger than mine,” Garran recalled. ”Painted dark blue, though you could see newer brown paint slapped carelessly over the sides. It had a faded academy supply crest on the wooden boards, and it was carrying long wooden containers rather than the square stone crates I had.”

”Do you know the driver’s name?” Felix asked.

”No,” Garran said. ”He wore an academy road coat. An older style, I think, though I didn’t pay much attention. He knew the horses and the road better than a temporary driver would.”

”Where is the freight yard where you collected the second and third loads?” Arthur asked.

Garran gave them directions rather than a formal address. The yard stood behind a row of old dye warehouses near the southern road leading out of the city. It had several covered loading bays and a faded, chipped bell painted over the main wooden doors. He hadn’t worked freight in years and had no idea whether the place was still operating.

”Who paid you for the runs?” Felix asked.

”The reseller’s agent,” Garran said. ”He only called himself Marlow. Paid me in guild-stamped silver. He never touched the crates himself. He just stood back and supervised while the other workers loaded them.”

”Would you recognize him?” Arthur asked.

”Maybe,” Garran said, staring at the floor. ”If the years have been kinder to him than they were to me.”

Before Arthur and Felix could leave, Garran looked at the notes Felix had made about his old symptoms.

”Was that cargo what made me sick?” Garran asked quietly.

”Your symptoms match people who worked around similar material,” Arthur said honestly. ”That is all we can say for certain right now.”

”Am I still in danger?”

”If the weakness returns or your mana starts slipping again, see a proper healer,” Arthur said. ”Tell them you handled black mineral dust during a Grayroot shipment. Do not let them dismiss it as ordinary road dust.”

Garran nodded slowly. ”I won’t.”

Outside on the busy street, Felix pulled a city map from his bag and quickly compared Garran’s directions against the sprawling southern districts.

”The freight yard is less than an hour from the academy,” Felix noted, tapping the parchment. He looked up at Arthur. ”Two wagons were declared as Grayroot shipments even though Garran never collected them from Grayroot.”

”Which means Grayroot was the declared source, not necessarily the place where the later wagons were loaded,” Arthur answered.

They still did not know whether the cargo had originally come from Grayroot or whether the declaration was false.

Felix circled the yard behind the old dye warehouses.

Whatever the cargo’s true origin, the later shipments had passed through a freight yard just outside Lornfell.