Aurelio left behind Valentino's possessions and then took his leave. He exited the temple and made his way on foot towards his place of lodging.
The Serenian Legion wasn't overly large, which made it rather straightforward to find accommodation for them within the city. The Westrick side had simply commandeered a number of small inns and private residences, and that sufficed to house the entire army. After just a short stroll of a few minutes, Aurelio arrived at his lodging – an inn. He pushed open the door and stepped into the hall.
This was no luxurious establishment. The furnishings in the foyer were quite spartan. Apart from the counter and the wall clock standing beside it, there were only a few wooden dining tables along with their corresponding dining chairs. The tables were on the small and low side, and their surfaces were far from smooth.
Over a dozen Serenian soldiers, many of whom were knights or mages, were seated around the dining tables. Most of them had little to occupy themselves with and were simply lounging about idly. Only one group at a table was engaged in a game of cards, yet they were keeping the noise to a minimum. After exchanging greetings with a few familiar faces, Aurelio walked directly towards the counter.
The innkeeper was nowhere to be found, likely having fled the city as soon as the war had broken out. In his stead, seated at the counter, was a man approximately thirty years of age – he was a clerk attached to the army. He too was sitting there listlessly, using the roster as a makeshift fan and fanning himself in a desultory manner.
Aurelio approached and stated his name. The clerk responded in a lackluster fashion, making a few scribbles with his pen in the register to assign him accommodation.
"Thank you," Aurelio said, pointing at the old clock beside the counter. "Is the time on this accurate?" Upon receiving an affirmative reply, he retrieved his pocket watch from his pocket and promptly set about adjusting it. His steel pocket watch was quite durable; a single winding would keep it going for three days. However, as the mainspring gradually unwound, a few minutes' discrepancy was bound to occur, and this tiny margin of error was something he simply couldn't abide.
"Half past five," Aurelio mused to himself. "If I head back to rest now and sleep until just before dinner, I'll have two hours." With that thought, he left the counter and ascended the wooden staircase. The stairs were clearly showing their age, creaking audibly under his feet as he climbed. Reaching the second floor, he swiftly traversed the narrow corridor and located his room at the far end.
He pushed open the door and entered the room. It was decidedly cramped, measuring just over four feet in width and no more than seven feet in length. Had it been even a bit shorter, fitting a bed in would have been a challenge. Besides the bed, the sole other furnishing was a small table, roughly one foot square. On the table sat a candlestick with a nearly burned-down candle in it. There was a square window on one of the walls. The window was rather sizable, approximately three feet in both height and width. It wouldn't have been difficult for him to clamber out through it if he'd had the inclination. The window was sealed with some sort of leather, and the seal was fairly tight.
The small room was stiflingly hot, and Aurelio could now understand why the soldiers would rather sit around doing nothing in the foyer. Nevertheless, the overall conditions were somewhat reassuring: the room was clean enough that he wasn't driven to fits of coughing from dust; the window was sealed well enough to keep mosquitoes at bay; and the bed was clean, free from the annoyance of lice, fleas, and bedbugs – this was probably the cleanest inn in the entire city. The only drawback was the short length of the bed. The length of the bed seemed to reflect the stature of the local populace, and Aurelio was a good five inches taller, so he had no choice but to curl up on the small bed. As for the heat, he had his own means of dealing with it.
He pushed the candlestick to the corner of the table, then emptied the contents of his bag onto the table. After a cursory sorting of the items, he cast a spell and conjured up several large blocks of ice. He carefully arranged the ice blocks inside his leather bag, fashioning a rudimentary ice pack. With this ice pack, he could combat the sweltering heat within the room.
After two days of trudging on foot and with little sleep to speak of, Aurelio was already exhausted. Casting the spell had only made him sleepier still. No sooner had he lain down on the bed than he drifted off into a deep slumber.
When he opened his eyes again, the room was pitch black. Evidently, he'd overslept. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his pocket watch, and conjured a small flame to light up the area so he could check the time: it was just past eleven o'clock at night.
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly, put away his pocket watch, climbed out of bed, and gingerly propped the mostly melted ice pack against the corner of the wall. Then he pushed open the door and stepped out into the corridor. The corridor was equally dark – there were no lighting fixtures installed there at all.
It was nearly midnight, and most people were already fast asleep. All was quiet. Aurelio walked as softly as he could, yet the stairs still creaked as he made his way down them. Reaching the first floor, he saw that three candles were still burning on the counter in the hall, so it wasn't completely pitch black. Through the open window, he could make out several soldiers on guard duty outside by the street.
The clerk seated at the counter had changed. It was now a black-haired woman, around twenty-four or twenty-five years old. She was dressed in a long black dress that made her look particularly slender. She too wore a pair of round-framed glasses, quite similar to Valentino's, though her lenses were much thinner. Her black hair was neatly tied up, ensuring it wouldn't fall down and interfere with the clerical work she was engaged in.
"Hello, Alyssa," Aurelio greeted as he approached.
"Hello," the woman named Alyssa removed her glasses and looked at Aurelio. Her eyebrows and eyes, especially her black eyes, bore a certain resemblance to his.
Aurelio stood in front of the counter, regarding her in silence.
"Why are you looking at me?" Alyssa asked. "Should I be more surprised to see you here?"
"Probably," Aurelio tilted his head to one side. "You must have known that I... went missing, right?"
Alyssa retrieved what appeared to be an account book from beneath a pile of documents and held it up for him to see. "I have the register. I saw that you'd checked in, so of course I knew you were okay. Well, I've still got work to do. If you want to eat, you can go to the kitchen and cook something yourself. Just try not to make too much noise."
"I missed dinner. You knew that too?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
Aurelio said, "You seem to care about me a lot. How should I repay you? What time do you finish work?"
"Six o'clock," Alyssa put her glasses back on and was about to resume her work when she couldn't suppress a yawn.
"Looking at you, I don't think you'll make it until then."
"Maybe not," Alyssa gently pinched her own cheek. "But even if I can't hold on, what can I do?"
"Get someone to take over for you," Aurelio suggested. "Like me, for instance."
Alyssa eyed him warily and said, "You're not that altruistic. What's your hidden agenda?"
"Nothing," Aurelio shook his head gently. "I just noticed you've got quite dark circles under your eyes."
"You know, they're hereditary," Alyssa took off her glasses again and rubbed the bridge of her nose gently. The heavy glass lenses had left two marks there from pressing on it for so long. "Just like yours."
"Don't overdo it," Aurelio advised.
Alyssa let out a sigh, placed her glasses on the counter, and shook her head. "I can guess what you're after. You want to sit here and write something and will probably ask me to lend you some paper. Why don't you just come out and say it? It's not like it's the first time. What's the point of hiding it from me? Do you really need to go to such lengths?"
"'Do you really need to go to such lengths?'... I thought only the citizens of the Republic would say that to an ambitious person," Aurelio said with a slight curl of his lip.
"Can't I say that to someone known to be 'ambitious'? Just because I haven't been a citizen for long?"
"I didn't mean it that way," Aurelio replied, shaking his head repeatedly. "But I don't understand, Miss Alyssa Malgano Michelot, why anyone would give up being the princess of Nova and come to Serenicia to be a lowly clerk."