Episode 134
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 134
Ian Sylvester frowned, watching the huge body spill out of the carriage.
The woman who had dragged the man out, the culprit herself, scratched the back of her head sheepishly before giving him a cursory bow.
It was a bow so excessively polite he felt almost overwhelmed by the honor. Recognizing the crest engraved on the carriage door, he closed his eyes for a moment and asked.
“Are you always this reckless?”
“Why are you acting so surprised?”
“First, my brother suddenly sends me a corpse.”
Shaking his head, he asked in a light tone, “I heard you collapsed after entering a burning house. Are you alright?”
“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. Your Excellency… uh, um.”
Feeling obligated to ask after his well-being, Elysia glanced at Ian’s face. Noticing he still had one eye covered, she began, “Your eye… has there been any… improvement?”
“Ah, not even close.”
“...Do you mean it’s a long way from healing, or…”
“It means I’m blind in that eye. Didn’t Evan tell you?”
That damn mouth of his! Elysia flinched, startled, and quickly bowed her head.
“Ah, uh, um… I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Despite her somewhat unruly demeanor, her apology sounded earnest, and Ian smiled. Waving a hand dismissively, he looked over her shoulder. Evan, having handed the reins of his horse to a servant, was walking toward them.
Elysia watched Evan with a curious expression. Of course, he knows how to ride a horse, too… After roughly fixing his disheveled hair, Evan looked down at the assailant squirming on the ground and asked.
“...You caught him?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“The back of his head was wide open, so I just took a steel pipe and wham…! Anyway, Senior, do you remember this face?”
Evan’s brow narrowed as he examined the assailant’s face. His expression hardened. “I do.”
“This is why I asked to see you.”
Turning back, Elysia looked Ian straight in the eye and smiled brightly.
“Your Excellency, I’d like to tell you what I’ve found out over the past few days.”
*
Ian listened to their explanation without a word.
Elysia first spoke of the movements of Caden Hertz, who had met a suspicious end. Since she couldn’t tell him the raw truth, she opted to frame it carefully.
When he heard that Caden had tried to expand his business by getting involved in the development of a drug that caused social chaos due to its strong mental effects, Ian neither scoffed at him nor expressed any pity. He simply nodded with a stoic face.
However, the moment he heard that Alma Heron had a patron, presumed to be a noble, and that this patron was Cain Lorr, his brow furrowed deeply.
“Does that make any sense? What’s your proof?”
“I heard it from the man himself.”
“And why would he tell you that?”
A headache began to throb. The thought of their history—so terribly tenacious and dizzyingly tangled—left her speechless.
It was so intricately knotted that she didn’t know which parts to cut out and which to reveal. As she hesitated, Evan answered for her.
“He proposed that Elysia join his business.”
“Miss Hemming? Why?”
“Because she knows the field well. It’s the area Elysia is focusing her research on in Minerva’s chemistry department.”
While Ian, sighing as if his head ached, opened a window, Elysia’s eyes went wide as she mouthed, ‘I am?’ Evan’s simple reply came back.
‘Just go with it.’
Uh, right, let’s just go with that. Elysia nodded and faced Ian again with a placid expression. Ian rubbed his face in the cool breeze and said, “Continue.”
“I naturally refused, and right after that, Senior was…”
In that instant, Evan saw her expression falter. Her hands, resting on her lap, were trembling. He quickly cut in.
“I was attacked.”
“…”
“I wasn’t hurt, though.”
“Of course you weren’t. If you had been, it would have been a disgrace to the family.”
Evan smirked at the stiff remark. I wonder how he’d react if I told him I’d already died and come back once.
Elysia glanced toward the man sprawled near the wall of the drawing-room where they sat. Pointing a finger at him, she said, “And today, one of my closest associates was attacked by that man. Fortunately, we caught him at the scene…”
“A familiar face, I take it.”
“I recognized him from Alma Heron’s base of operations, so I brought him here.”
Lifting her teacup, Elysia fiddled with the warm porcelain surface. Just thinking about Cain as she explained had made her hands go cold.
“The ones you caught last time were all murdered before any real information could be obtained.”
She knew. Starting with the two who were killed in an ambush during their transport, every witness had been murdered as soon as they were secured. Alma was clearly moving fast.
But Elysia knew there was one person whom the tyrannical Alma could not defy. And she also knew who that person was obsessed with.
“So this time, I’ll handle it myself.”
Elysia smiled at Ian, who was staring at her as if to ask what difference that made.
“That bastard… he probably can’t kill me.”
“…?”
“Which means the man with me will also be, relatively speaking, safe.”
Ian remained silent for a moment. He looked back and forth between Elysia, who exuded confidence with a nonchalant face, and the man curled up motionlessly on the floor. Then, with a sigh, he gave an order.
“For now, both of you will move into this mansion. Immediately.”
“No, it’s fine—”
“Miss Hemming, I know you’re confident, but you should be more concerned about your own safety.”
“I want to draw out more of them.”
Hearing Elysia’s reply, Evan’s expression hardened alarmingly. Unaware, she continued urgently, “We have to make them move more aggressively to get physical evidence, and then—”
“You… is that why you weren’t planning on leaving the dormitory?”
She flinched at Evan’s low, angry voice. Oops. Realizing she’d misspoken, Elysia subtly turned her head away from him.
But he wasn’t about to let it go. He immediately cupped her cheeks, turning her face back toward him, and asked again.
“When you refused before, were you planning to use yourself as bait?”
“It’s not so much bait as…”
“If it’s not bait, then what is it?”
Unable to answer, Elysia, still held by him, darted her eyes toward Ian. Hey, do something about your brother! But Ian simply watched them with his arms crossed, as if to say, Figure it out yourselves.
Damn it. Blood really is thicker than water. Giving up on asking for help, she turned her eyes back to Evan and mumbled, “I wasn’t planning on being bait. How could I, knowing you’d worry? I was just going to stay in the dorm on purpose to see if Cain would approach—”
“Sounds an awful lot like being bait to me.”
Ian cut in as if he couldn’t watch any longer. Elysia protested.
“How is this bait? To be bait, wouldn’t I have to deliberately leave the gate open or something?”
At her genuinely puzzled tone, Evan pinched her cheek with an exasperated look. As Elysia pressed her lips together in a pout, he chided her in a stern voice.
“That’s enough. If that was your reason, you’re moving in here today.”
“Alright…”
Her tone held a hint of strange disappointment. Sensing the situation was more or less settled, Ian quickly sealed the deal.
“A wise decision. I’ll send a carriage to Minerva now to pick up your things. However.”
However? Elysia placed her teacup back on the table. Ian asked, “This can’t be the only thing you wished to discuss.”
It’s definitely easier when the conversation moves this quickly. Elysia nudged Evan’s side. From this point on, it wasn’t her field; it was better to leave it to him. Evan, who had been silent, finally spoke.
“We’d like you to do some political maneuvering for us.”
“With nothing in return?” Ian asked with a smirk.
As if expecting such a response, Evan replied, “It will be beneficial to you as well, brother.”
“How so?”
“As I understand it, public opinion on the truce is currently split into two factions within Alea. The commoner-born council members, who bear no responsibility for the war’s outbreak as they lacked power at the time, and the royal family, who are displeased with the nobles using the war as an excuse to raise private armies, are in favor. The nobles are against it.”
This was the plan Evan had proposed to Elysia.
So far, Cain’s confirmed crimes were three murders and large-scale drug distribution. Murder was a capital offense, but unfortunately, two of the three victims were commoners.
Alea was a nation in transition. The lines between social classes were blurring, but discrimination still existed.
Caden Hertz was a noble, but his family was weak compared to Duke Lorr’s. Considering Blair’s attitude, it was possible he would demand the Lorr family take responsibility to the very end, but the sentence for a single murder could hardly compare to that for three.
Therefore, to prevent the matter from being swept under the rug simply because the culprit was the son of a powerful man, they needed to set the stage beforehand. This was where politics came in.
The Commoner and Noble Factions were hell-bent on crushing each other. If one of the commoner councilmen were to learn of the shocking crimes committed by Duke Lorr’s son, would they simply stand by?
Not a chance. They would tear into the issue any way they could, and for a time, the balance of power in the parliament would tip toward the Commoner Faction.
And if the commoner-born council members, who favored the truce, gained more power, Ian could ratify the truce agreement much more easily. Their interests aligned perfectly.
Ian said nothing, instead taking out a tobacco pipe. He gave Elysia a slight nod, asking for permission, then walked to the balcony to light it.
A moment of silence, a few puffs of smoke, and then Ian spoke.
“You said a woman named Alma Heron’s drug distribution business has Cain Lorr’s involvement.”
The silence that followed was an affirmation. Twirling the pipe in his hand, he muttered, “Is it a registered business?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then it’s tax evasion.”