Chapter 612: Mansion/Manor

"Who are you calling a sow?!" Zanya’s voice came from directly above me, bright with theatrical outrage.

I did not need to look up to know her hands were on her hips and her ponytail was swinging with the force of the kick.

"I see you’re getting very casual with us, old man! Your old blood is boiling because of the fresh, young girls riding on your wagon? Face reality."

I rubbed the sore spot on the back of my skull with the heel of one hand and kept my eyes carefully on the road ahead.

"Please, you’re framing it in an immoral way," I said, the apology coming out quickly and with as much dignity as a man who had just been kicked in the head could manage. "And while I like you girls, please jump out when we reach the gate. I have a fierce wife and three daughters waiting for me inside those walls. They will not take kindly to the sight of five—I mean, six young women climbing down from my wagon after a long journey through the Wilds. The explanations would be... difficult."

"No can do." The answer floated down from the roof, light and clearly entertained by the entire exchange. I recognized the mature one’s voice this time, though the others were laughing under it. "We plan on telling them how you ’took care’ of us tenderly on the way here. All the long nights under the stars, the shared food, the way you looked after our EVERY NEED and never once complained about the extra weight on the Scarab Boros. We will be very detailed."

"That is, you plan to have me executed?!" My voice climbed despite my best efforts. "And I did no such thing! I simply drove the wagon. That is the entire and exhaustive list of my crimes against modesty and marriage!"

I twisted halfway around on the box to watch their faces, one hand still steadying the reins.

All of them except the small, quiet girl in the bandeau were laughing.

The cat girl’s ears were flattened sideways with mirth and her tail lashed the canvas. Mocking me, are we?

The lady-man was grinning openly through the small beard, shoulders shaking. I don’t need perverts laughing at me.

Even the mature one with the red-pink heterochromic eyes had covered her mouth with one hand, the other braced against the roof for balance.

Only the petite girl remained expressionless, her pigtails neat, her gaze fixed on the approaching walls as if the conversation happening around her had nothing whatsoever to do with her existence.

I turned back to the road and let out a long, slow breath that took some of the tension with it.

In spite of the kick to the head, the cheerful threats of marital destruction, and the very real possibility that my wife would believe every exaggerated word they chose to deliver, I found myself thinking that it had not been so bad to meet them.

The long stretches of the Wilds had been less lonely with their voices arguing over nothing.

The nights had been less quiet. Even the massacre on the plain—still vivid whenever I closed my eyes too long—had proven that the world still contained people capable of standing between ordinary folk and the worst kind of predators.

I would never say any of that aloud. Zanya would never let me live it down, and the cat girl would invent three new nicknames before sunset.

But the thought remained, steady and surprisingly warm, as the gates of Thaad grew larger ahead of us.

"So are we all sleeping in your room with your wife when night comes?"

Alright, Sekhmet, that’s enough expensive joke for one side story!

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BENJAMIN’S POV

I had spent a complete seven days in Thaad already—living in Erica’s mansion with her and the rest of the party.

The evening of the day I had deathly teased Katana arrived: with the light outside the windows turning soft and gold, the shadows lengthening across the floorboards, and the first real smells of cooking beginning to drift through the halls from the direction of the kitchen.

Heka’s voice and Erica’s lighter one called out almost in unison, telling everyone it was time for dinner.

There was something suspiciously eager in the way they spoke, a brightness and coordination that went beyond ordinary end-of-day hunger.

The two of them had been spending a lot of time in the kitchen together, moving around each other with a new, unspoken ease that made me glance twice whenever I passed the open doorway and saw them working side by side over the same pot or cutting board.

I left the room they had assigned me—second floor, last door on the short corridor, single window looking out over the rear garden—and walked the length of the hall.

As expected of a high-class elf who claimed not to announce herself too loudly, Erica lived in a mansion.

The local residents preferred the word "manor," but the difference was mostly a matter of custom and self-presentation.

It was not the most luxurious building I had seen inside Thaad’s walls; there were estates with more imported marble, gilded molding, and servants.

But it was also clearly beyond anything a normal middle-class household could ever have.

Five proper bedrooms, a kitchen large enough for more than one person to work without constant collision, a big separate bathroom that actually had functioning plumbing and hot water, two garderobes (the older, more precise word for what were essentially private toilets), a dedicated storage room, and two additional empty rooms that had probably once served as a buttery and a private sitting room for whichever family had owned the place before.

When Erica first took possession, the house must have been considerably emptier; either that or she had quietly sold off a good portion of the previous owner’s heavier furnishings and replaced them with lighter pieces that suited her tastes.

What remained now was thoroughly and undeniably Erica-ified.