"Greetings followers of the Archivist Tower. I'm Sir Chronos Ulv and I don't believe we have a relic in our possession that would warrant your attention. May I know what specifically you are looking for?" Chronos politely asked them.
He was honestly confused about why the relic custodians would be after them as they didn't have anything too dangerous.
Well, if you didn't count the devil spear that was and that was safely locked away in his storage. And as long as it remained in storage then even if it blew up it would only be the items in storage that were damaged.
There was no reason for the Relic Custodians to be searching them.
The leader of the relic custodians sneered at him, showing the overbearing confidence of a city noble, "Then we'll be performing a personal search of you and your belongings."
Chronos smirked as he started to realize this was just another attempt to embarrass him by the royal court.
"I don't mind; I have nothing to hide. But I feel that I should warn you if you become too hands on with the ladies you will need to find a priest to reattach them later."
One of the relic custodians didn't take his warning to heart as he reached out towards Sariah's chest with lust filled eyes.
She narrowed her eyes as she prepared to cast a spell but then
Snick.
"AAAHH!"
He let out a blood curdling scream as his hand hit the floor and blood sprayed cobblestone. Drawing the attention of all those in the lane behind them.
The Kings Knights all drew their swords as they turned to face them. Then their lieutenant waved for them to put the swords away and came over.
"What's going on here?"
"Lieutenant, these people attacked us!" Yelled the leader of the custodians.
The lieutenant turned to Chronos with a raised eyebrow.
"They demanded to search for a dangerous relic they insist is in our possession. I told them they were free to do so and even warned them about the consequences of wandering hands, but it seems this poor lad just couldn't help himself. Honestly with the way his hands were moving you'd think he was still a teenager."
The relic custodians glared at him for mocking their companion's misfortune as everyone in the line chuckled at them.
That man was not a teenager anymore, not even close, having an actual teenager mock him in such a way severely hurt his pride.
"Ah, so it was deserved," said the lieutenant.
"Lieutenant! Aren't you going to arrest her for cutting off my subordinate's hand?"
The custodian's leader pointed his finger at Sariah, making her frown even more.
"He is right. Since she initiated the incident, I do have to take her in."
"I didn't cut his hand off. I was going to curse him to death," she stated as if that was a much better result compared to cutting his hand off.
Chronos put a hand on her shoulder gently pulling her back then stepped forward flashing the family ring on his finger as he did so.
The Lieutenant's eyes shrunk when he saw it.
"Did you see her cut your friend's hand off? I didn't see her do it."
"T-That's uh," spluttered the relic custodians' leader.
He really hadn't seen her cut it off. In fact, he hadn't seen any of them move at all, he had no clue how his subordinate's hand had been cut off and Chronos certainly wasn't going to tell him how it had been done.
"See you don't know what happened at all. Now come here poor teenager and this nice lady will reattach your arm for you," he said with the tone of one coaxing a child.
Grabbing the man's arm before he could escape Chronos gestured for Lyla to step forward while he held the man's hand against the stump of his arm.
Lyla stepped forward with a disgusted look on her face and cast [Order of Restoration] on the man's severed arm. A moment later the arm was reattached, and he was cradling it against his stomach.
"That will keep it in place, but you should have another priest take a look at it. Healing spells are not my specialty."
With healing magic small incidents like suddenly losing an arm were actually fairly common in the world. As long as the priest didn't have to regrow the limb or revitalize dead flesh they generally wouldn't charge you for basic injuries like this one, at least in the Leighla Kingdom.
"There see, no harm done, just a bit of a lesson about keeping our hands to ourselves," the man glared at Chronos, he'd never live down being spoken to like a child. "Now if you and your men are not going to perform your search, we do have other places to be today."
"He is right we don't have all day for you to hold up the lines," The lieutenant agreed.
He didn't like these men any more than Chronos did and took them being here as an affront to his men's work. It also helped that Chronos had shown him his family ring otherwise the lieutenant might try to cause more trouble for them.
The relic custodians glared at them, realizing that the King's Knights were not going to be backing them up, they began searching the carriage. They took out their baggage and dumped it on the ground only to find that it was empty.
"My apologies but we sent our belongings ahead with another carriage," Chronos added fuel to their anger.
Next, they turned over the seats, looked under the carriage and the entire time they kept waving a wand with a glass bauble on the tip over everything, but it kept flashing green.
Seeing the wand Chronos knew that they were trying to find any magical item to try and embarrass them, not just forbidden ones. And because every noble carried magic items on their body, they hadn't tried to use it on them from the beginning.
It would be too easy to reveal their fraud when it went off on something as simple as a poison detection ring.
That's why they had thought that examining the carriage would give them something to make a big deal out of.
Sadly, for them, they weren't able to find anything.
That was because they'd already stored everything in the small bags on their waists. If the relic custodians didn't know where to search, they would never find them.
Having finished their search with nothing to show for it they grumpily descended from the carriage but just as they were going to walk off Chronos called out to them.
"Gentleman, if you could please tell me your names it would make things much easier for me later."
"What?"
Their leader looked at him in confusion. They'd already finished their search. There was no other reason for them to speak with each other, so he didn't need to know their names, right? Why would he ask for them at this late juncture?
"You see you have done some minor damage to my carriage, and I need to know who to charge the repair bill to," Chronos said with that same polite grin he'd been wearing since the beginning.
Immediately they felt a chill run down their spine as they looked at what they had just done to the carriage.
There wasn't much direct damage. You just needed to put the seat cushions back on and buff out the scuff marks and it would be good as new, but Chronos had no intention of letting them off that easily.
And they could tell that he wouldn't let them off easily.
Remembering that they had done this because someone had paid them, they instead proposed something else.
"Would you take a deferred payment?" Their leader asked while looking like he was going to cry.