I ACCIDENTALLY MARRIED A DUNGEON

"I do, actually," Felix thought for a minute. "It’s been exactly four days, hasn’t it? The day after Marisol disappeared."

"Yes. What of it?"

"How did you know she disappeared so quickly? And that she took the necklace as well? I heard your men were at her door already the next morning. She might have just been taking a rest, gotten sick or something."

Marcus responded. "Along with the other maids and a guard. But she vanished after that. Nothing much would have been thought of it if it hadn’t been for the discovery of the necklace the following day by Eleanor."

"Can I talk to Grace, then?"

"No." Marcus’s voice became more sharp with an immediate rise in tone. "She is a child and has nothing to do with all this."

Why is he behaving like I just asked him to marry his daughter?

Felix massaged his temples with his thumb. "Fine. No Grace. Are there any others who had gone to the marketplace with her?"

"I will fetch them straight away." Fiona left immediately, hurrying down the corridor.

For some time, Felix questioned every single maid as well as the guard who had accompanied Grace during their visit to the marketplace. Every response was practically identical and nobody saw where exactly she had gone from the market, one of the girls even claimed that she had just disappeared right before their eyes. Felix thanked them and told he would return if they would discover anything else, and began walking out of the garden area toward the gate.

Can’t put pressure on them without any proof, even though half of what they say is a lie.

He looked sideways at Dune. "Well, let me see what you managed to write."

"Yes." She passed over her notepad.

Felix flipped through its pages one by one, frowning increasingly every time. Scribbles, scrawls, hardly resembling words. "I cannot make head nor tail of what is written here. What language is it anyway?"

"The language people use. Everything is written down. What I found in Kite’s room. What Carmen said, and—"

"Yeah, yeah, all right." He passed it back to her before she could finish. "Next time, try to write in such a way that someone else could understand it as well."

"I understand."

They got to the gate, and the same guard as before cast an extended glance at Felix as he dragged the gate open. Felix grinned as he walked past into the street.

I am sure we will not find anything useful at the market because I know four days is sufficient to lose any lead.

However, there was no other alternative. "Let us try our luck at the market and finish for today."

The noble market was hidden behind a line of hedges, half the size of the main square, but everything there was twice as expensive-looking, the cobblestone paths perfectly clean, awnings dyed in uniform colors, without any wandering vegetables lying loose.

"Fancy." Felix whistled low, looking around him. "Surely they have some surcharge for breathing the air of this place."

First they went to the stall selling clothes, silks and delicate linens hanging in perfect rows. The owner, a slim woman with piercing eyes, sized them up with one glance and obviously decided that they were not good enough.

"Can I help you?"

"We are searching for information. Do you know a maid named Marisol who works for the Sterlings?"

"Marisol." She tapped her chin. "She comes here from time to time, fetching something for Lady Grace. Haven’t seen her, hmm...in, well, probably in a week’s time."

"She disappeared four days ago."

"Feels like more time when business is slow." She shrugged.

"Very helpful." Felix grumbled, leaving.

Their next stop was a stall of cosmetics, different jars and powders piled in pyramids. The vendor, an old man with a magnificent moustache, perked up upon hearing the name.

"Marisol! Such a lovely girl, always so polite. She bought some rouge for Lady Grace, let’s see, it was probably last week or a week before—that..."

"The day she disappeared. Four days ago."

"Oh." He sagged slightly. "So no, I haven’t seen her on that day."

"You just told me..."

"I mentioned she bought the rouge. Not when."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Brilliant."

They headed to the next vendor who had glass cabinets full of jewelry lit by Numen light bulbs. This vendor, a younger woman, instantly eyed them warily as soon as Felix stepped closer.

"You aren’t buying anything, are you?"

"Depends. Do you know Marisol?"

"Everyone knows Marisol around here. Nice girl but awful tastes. Always after the pieces more expensive than what she earns."

"She was here four days ago?"

"No. But to be fair, when you say it, the Sterling group passed through on that very day. And they seemed in a rush. They usually hang around, but not on that particular day."

Dune wrote it down.

"Why did they seem in a hurry?"

"Just rushed, like somebody ordered them to go away. Could mean anything, really."

"Eveything doesn’t mean anything until it means something." He said, mostly to himself.

They decided to visit the bakery because Dune stopped walking and wouldn’t move on until Felix bought some food there.

"We’re working."

"I’m hungry."

"You ate just an hour ago."

"That was an hour ago."

He sighed and bought two rolls just to shut her up and asked the baker if he’s seen Marisol.

"Marisol? She buys bread for that little boy of hers sometimes. Haven’t seen her for a while, actually."

"Not four days ago, precisely?"

"I couldn’t say. When you work before sunrise, you don’t really notice days going by."

The flower stand provided them with nothing. The shoemaker offered nothing aside from a very long complaint about the tardiness of the noble people who visited his shop. A stand with imported spices gave them a general recollection of a "woman in gray dress," which described roughly half of all the maids in the area.

The fourth in a row stall which provided them with nothing useful completely disheartened Felix.

"This is pointless." He touched his face. "Four days. No one can recall four days back clearly. Not in such a crowded market. Everybody just sees maids purchasing stuff all day; they merge together the same as the baker described."

"The jewelry woman recalled something," Dune pointed out.

"The jewelry woman recalled a ’feeling’ of theirs, not a fact. ’They seemed to be in a hurry.’ This isn’t information, this is an impression."

"I wrote that into the paper."

"Wonderful. Put it to the collection of nothingness." Felix stroked his face and took a deep breath, looking around at the neat, useless and overvalued little market for the last time.

"I told you," he stated plainly. "I told you we won’t get anything here."

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