It turns out that Bob didn’t have my grimoire stashed. I can’t blame him for dropping my grimoire on the ground when the fight started, though, and it’s no trouble to find it in the weeds and dust it off.

I amuse myself on the hike back by memorizing Find Spellcraft, casting it over and over until I can do it without looking at my hands and while doing math in my head. It’s not complicated math; I’m mostly just building some intuition for various numbers of days so I don’t have to pause to convert mid-conversation. However, given that I sacrificed my ability to do basic arithmetic in return for the ability to determine the time complexity of randomized algorithms, that arithmetic is more than enough to overflow my working memory. I’ll have to come back this evening and then again tomorrow morning to make it really stick — spaced repetition is great — but it’s a solid start.

While I don’t catch much of the trip back to Caulfield, too focused on my spellcasting, I do drag myself out of my spellcasting occasionally.

The first time is when I decide that the breaks we’ve been taking at five-minute intervals are going to keep happening. Each time, Agnes puts Axelos down, stands back while Bob and Ewald fuss over him for thirty seconds or so, and at their signal picks him back up so we can continue. I eventually manage to get Find Spellcraft up fast enough to determine that Bob’s doing magic to the necromancer. “Hey, Heather,” I say quietly, “mind if I ask a question?”

“Go ahead,” she says.

“What’s the limiting factor on our ability to keep Axelos asleep? And,” I say, realizing I have a related question, “what’s the plan for getting him to Stonehill if we have to check on him every five minutes?”

“The first drug Bob tried didn’t work on Axelos. He wants his full kit to do some testing, which he says may take an hour or two,” Heather answers. “In the meantime we’re using Ewald’s sleep spell.”

“Ah,” I say. “And sufficiently rapid onset for combat use also means it wears off quickly.”

“Not necessarily,” Heather disagrees. “Several Gifts have ways to induce unconsciousness rapidly and maintain it for days. Ewald’s simply not specialized for it.”

“Huh. Fair enough,” I say.

The second time I direct my attention outward is when an entire extended family, children, parents, and grandparents, passes us on their way out of Caulfield. They might be returning from Calfort and its market day, actually, given that the adults are wearing much fancier clothes than the farmers in their fields have been. The instant they see us they step off the path to let us by. They don’t look scared, exactly, but Liv’s still in her tactical kit and could menace someone while asleep on the couch.

This reminds me of something else I’ve been wondering about, so once we’ve passed the farmers I ask Heather another question. “Do BIA agents have insignia or badges or anything else to identify themselves? Not an ID,” I clarify, “I mean, something that’s visible at a distance?”

“Not really,” Heather answers. “Bureau of Isekai Affairs field agents aren’t common enough for people to learn to recognize our insignia. We prefer to be unknown, rather than mistaken for impostor Guards or a pompous Hunter team.”

“Ah,” I say. “That’s a good reason.” I hesitate. I’m tempted to ask about police corruption now, but I’m not sure if it’d be any use given that I wouldn’t trust Heather’s answer anyway. I suppose I’ll keep saving that topic for when I can talk to someone that’s unaffiliated with the government here. Or when I can get my hands on a few different newspapers.

Having made that decision, I return to my spellcasting.

Eventually we reach Caulfield. The group splits up; Anna, Bob, Ewald, Agnes, and Liv carry Axelos into the stone guardpost, while I join everyone else in heading back to Alfwyn’s tavern to retrieve our backpacks.

I wonder why we didn’t stash our packs in the guardpost from the start. Nobody in there to watch them or something? Do they not have effective locks? Maybe it’s another weird Gift interaction thing, the most commonly-available Gift for thieves providing substantially better lockpicking than crafting Gifts offer physical security.

Recovering our gear is easy enough. Heather and Alfwyn exchange pleasantries, Heather quickly lets him know that we’ve succeeded and will be moving to the guardpost, we pick up all of our stuff, and we carry it across the street and inside the heavy stone building.

The guardpost’s interior is pretty much what I’d expected from the outside: big blocks of bare stone, heavy doors even between interior rooms, arrow slits instead of windows, a big table with benches along the sides, and bunk beds crammed into every remaining space. The group that was carrying Axelos is nowhere to be seen. They’re probably deeper in the building? Maybe some of these doors lead to cells? Yes, of the three doors across the back of the room, one has its hinges on the other side and two others have their hinges on this side. The doors with hinges on this side are so prisoners can’t escape by pulling the pins out of the hinges and lifting the door out of the way, while the door with hinges on the other side is so attackers can’t get access to the upper story by doing the same.

It means something that this building is built with a panic room. I’m not sure what it means, precisely, but you don’t put in the effort to build a building this way unless you expect it to be necessary. It’s not quite as strong a signal as it would have been back on Earth, where that door would draw the fire marshal’s unending ire and require dozens of pages of paperwork for a fire code exception, but it’s still a conscious design decision.

Eh, more stuff that I’ll probably figure out easily once I have more than six hours of knowledge about this place.

I throw my backpack, grimoire, and waterskin on one of the beds. I then push everything to the side of the bed and add myself to the pile.

Of course, it’s not until I get comfortable I think of looking at what everyone else is up to to make sure there’s not something else I should be doing.

Ji’s doing push-ups in the middle of the room. Heather has her knives out on the table and is carefully maintaining them with the assistance of a collection of oily rags, a couple flat stones, and a magnifying glass. Yann and Katell have claimed the other half of the table, having both unstrung their bows and laid them and the strings out for inspection. Anna’s flopped on one of the beds just like me.

Okay, it looks like nobody’s doing anything important. And nobody’s told me I should be doing anything, either. I never so much as drew my dagger so I don’t have any maintenance to do, though at some point I should ask someone if there’s anything to do with their table knives other than wiping them off with a damp napkin at the end of the meal.

Note to self: Make sure sanitization spell can handle knives as well as cotton pads.

I pick up my spellbook, decide that my next objective should probably be to figure out what other spells are in there so I can pick a useful second spell, flip to the back, and promptly fall asleep.