| Burne and the Maiden
Another dose of Mop Mop Bow's tea served to revive the woman once more, and she launched unprompted into a tale of woe. Trite stuff; she'd fallen for a man of the lower classes, her father disapproved, and now he was missing. The sort of thing that Arabia Wainright writes lurid pot-boilers about.
ARABIA WAINRIGHT IS A LITERARY GODDESS, AND WORTH TEN OF BURNE. NO, A HUNDRED.
Without even a moment's hesitation, the archer offered her his services. Some misplaced sense of chivalry, I suppose. Kenji, with an indifferent shrug, opined that he might also be of assistance, lacking anything better to occupy his time.
And what was I to do? Leave this woman unattended in the company of madmen and, even worse, foreigners?
Unthinkable. I had no choice but to offer my own assistance, even though it would take me away from my own increasingly vital experiments.
AT THE TIME, HE WAS WORKING ON A FORMULA THAT WOULD ALLOW HIM TO CREATE EXPLOSIVE RABBITS. I DON’T KNOW WHY, BUT I SUSPECT THAT ALCOHOL HAD PROVIDED HIS CHIEF INSPIRATION.
As we prepared to leave, however, Mop Mop Bow unwittingly provided a further piece of information. He offered Delphine a scarf that he called a "Hue-Wu charm", of a brilliant shade of green...the very same green as that unfortunate cat! It had been purchased, he said, from a local businessman, Han Oi Xian the Dyer, and was considered to be a good-luck charm by his credulous fellows.
Furthermore, he suggested that he might know the origin of that alchemically treated bag that I had discovered. Sanjuro Roeh, an alchemist of some sort and a rival of Bow's, was known to create such things..
Roeh, I resolved, would need to be dealt with.
We left the shop, talking quietly among ourselves, only to find a group of uniformed men entering the square, busily discussing the disposition of the criminals we had so handily dispatched. This, I thought to myself as I glanced at the foreigners, could be a difficult situation. | 
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