Chapter 42: Confirm It (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 42: Confirm It (5)
Night. Rain. A tavern.
A fitting combination, Calian thought.
If anything was out of place, it was either the fifteen-year-old boy who had braved the downpour to visit a tavern, or the scene currently unfolding before his eyes.
He had entered expecting to find the Blue Warbler’s companions, but the unexpected sight caused the lips visible beneath his hood to curl into a familiar smirk.
“I suppose I was in too much of a hurry.”
Calian spoke as he watched the woman with sea-blue hair, who stood behind the bar wiping a glass.
Anyone who saw her would have praised her beauty. She was stunning—so much so that she seemed entirely out of place in a tavern like this. In some ways, she was even more beautiful than Silike.
Which made the situation all the more bizarre.
A tavern run by such a gorgeous woman, on a rainy night, yet there wasn’t a single customer in sight, and the heavy stench of blood filled the air.
The long-lashed woman set down her glass and quietly raised her head. Calian addressed her in a low voice.
“The people outside are only here because they followed me.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not heartless enough to turn my blade on bystanders. Besides, they’d be a hassle to clean up.”
She had clearly been waiting for him. In response to his concern for Yuran and Kyrie, the woman offered a bright smile.
The corner of Calian’s mouth twitched.
“I thought you were heartless enough to send arrows flying at a broke swordsman and a young elf. I’m glad to hear I was mistaken.”
“They involved themselves,” the woman replied, her smile unwavering.
Calian’s gaze shifted past her to the seven corpses strewn across the floor. The number matched the archers who had attacked his group that afternoon. The woman’s eyes followed his.
“And so did they,” said the woman with sea-blue hair—the Blue Warbler.
* * *
Seeing Alan visit him in the dead of night, Lemain instinctively reached for his glasses. Assuming Alan had brought another stack of documents, he put them on, prompting the mage to smile.
“I only came because I have a question, so please, relax.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Alan grinned at Lemain, whose face was finally beginning to show a flicker of emotion.
“It seems I’ve lost a great deal of your trust.”
Only then did Lemain remove his glasses and walk over to the sofa.
Looking at the mage who now sat opposite him without waiting for an invitation, Lemain said, “To think you’d drop by at this hour just to ask a question. First you treat me like a glorified caretaker for your crown, and now you use me as an informant.”
Though Lemain made no effort to hide his annoyance at the late-night visit, Alan remained unfazed.
“I recalled that Your Majesty was recently reviewing the very answer to my question. Why go to the trouble of searching elsewhere when the person who knows best is right here?”
When Alan had previously visited to propose forming a mage corps, Lemain had been reading a document on the residences of priests. Alan remembered him grumbling that even the King of Libern didn’t bother with such things himself, which was why he had come straight to the palace.
“I came because I’m curious about how many priests from Tensil are in Kairis, and where they are located.”
Lemain’s brow furrowed slightly. His reaction was due to being asked about Tensil’s priests at this specific time.
“I can’t tell if you’re asking because you know something, or if this is just a sheer coincidence.”
This time, it was Alan’s eyebrows that twitched.
“Is there another matter concerning the priests of Tensil?”
“As a matter of fact, envoys from Tensil arrived earlier for that very reason.”
Alan was aware that envoys had arrived unexpectedly from Tensil, but he hadn’t known why.
Lemain glanced briefly toward his desk before continuing.
“There are currently fourteen priests in Kairis. They demanded to find and retrieve all of them, save for the one here in the royal palace, and told us not to request any more.”
Of course, the envoys of a small, weak nation like Tensil would never have spoken so aggressively to a power like Kairis. They had undoubtedly wrapped their words in layers of diplomacy, but it was an unpleasant situation for Kairis regardless.
“Kairis never requested priests from Tensil to begin with, so for them to act this way is quite an insult.”
Even the healer in the royal palace was someone Tensil had sent of their own accord to commemorate the marriage between Princess Aisha and Lemain.
Everyone knew the divine healing powers of the priests were highly effective. However, Kairis was not in a position where it had to beg Tensil for them. And Lemain was certainly not the type of king to bully a smaller nation into handing over its resources.
“They sent the priests on their own whim under the guise of celebrating various occasions, yet now they speak as if Kairis has been holding them hostage. I was left speechless.”
Listening to Lemain, Alan let out a quiet chuckle. The king’s grumbling made him sound like a child complaining about being treated unfairly.
“I don’t know how depleted their sacred artifacts have become, but they must be in a tight spot. They want to hide their circumstances, yet they desperately need to bring their priests back.”
Lemain nodded. “It certainly seemed that way.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I considered tracking down all the priests and hanging them, but…”
Alan knew perfectly well Lemain had done no such thing. The king wasn’t foolish enough to ignore that such an act would instantly trigger a war with Tensil.
“Waging war now would only benefit Brissen, so I couldn’t do that. For Randel’s sake, I decided to let it slide this once. Since we don’t keep track of them anyway, I told them they were free to find and retrieve the priests themselves.”
“You made the right choice. In any case, please tell me what you know. It is not I, but Prince Calian who is curious about this.”
Lemain’s brow furrowed once more. He had already received reports on Calian’s current location.
“He’s already at a place where a priest resides. Why is he asking now?”
“Which place do you mean?”
Alan suddenly felt a strange sense of unease. Although he hadn’t heard the details, Calian had definitely asked as if there were no priests nearby.
“Latran. Before Tensil went to war with the desert, they gifted a priest to Count Latran. Their relationship may have soured since, but back then, Randel and Count Latran were on quite good terms. It seems Tensil never bothered to recall the priest they had already sent.”
Upon hearing this, Alan fell silent for a moment.
“Is something the matter?” Lemain’s voice cut through the quiet.
Quickly smoothing his expression, Alan shook his head and offered a hasty excuse. “No, it’s nothing. The Prince has a healer in his retinue, and I suppose he wanted a priest to examine her.”
“I doubt that is the case.”
Lemain’s skeptical gaze was fixed on Alan, who smiled gently.
“It seems I truly have lost your trust, if you refuse to believe even that.”
“Who would believe you came to the King’s study at this hour just to ask something like that?”
Indeed, he had a point. Alan dropped the excuse and spoke honestly.
“To be honest, I don’t know the full details myself. May I return tomorrow to explain? For now, I must relay this information to the Prince. In any case, be it Count Latran or anyone else, surely no one is foolish enough to harm a prince of Kairis. You can rest easy.”
He needed to leave the palace to contact Calian, so there was no point in lingering. With a reluctant nod, Lemain compromised.
* * *
Calian looked at the Blue Warbler, who stood before him without her usual male disguise. He unhurriedly removed his rain-soaked cloak, set it aside, and spoke.
“When my group was attacked earlier, I thought they did so knowing exactly who I was.”
“They did know. I warned them before I left. It was my mistake.”
The Blue Warbler’s gaze followed his to the corpses.
So, she had instructed her companions not to attack his group before she went after the elf, Luca. However, her companions had ignored her and fired their arrows anyway—a mistake that left them as seven corpses on the floor.
Having grasped the situation, Calian nodded slowly. Then he looked up and asked casually, “So, does that mean I’m involved now too?”
He was asking if she intended to attack him.
“I was planning to say yes, but…” The Blue Warbler stared at him for a long moment before taking her hand off the hilt of her concealed sword. At the same time, the sharp killing intent Calian had been directing at her vanished. Looking at him with intrigued eyes, she said, “I suppose it wouldn’t be easy.”
Instead of replying, Calian asked something else.
“Is the elf you pursued already dead?”
“An elf fleeing through a forest is difficult to track. I have a headache trying to decide whether to pursue him again or give up. And when I returned, I found an even bigger headache waiting for me.”
Calian glanced back at the decapitated corpses. Turning her head to look at them once more, the Blue Warbler said, “I’m not particularly fond of being chased by a prince radiating killing intent, or by his knights. Since neither of us has truly harmed the other, would you mind leaving? If you do, I’ll keep my hands off the kid as well.”
“To think you’d ask me to leave after I went through all this trouble to find you.” Calian shook his head. “Answer a few questions, and I’ll be on my way.”
After a brief hesitation, the Blue Warbler nodded. “I’ll give you reasonable answers, as long as your questions are reasonable.”
“Why were you looking for a sacred artifact when you aren’t a priest?” Calian asked without hesitation.
“Because they fetch a high price these days.”
“It sounds like you sell them often.”
The Blue Warbler poured herself a glass of liquor and downed it. Frowning slightly at the strong smell, she replied, “Even for me, my main line of work sometimes leaves me short on funds.”
So she had come all this way to sell a sacred artifact obtained during her espionage work in Kairisis.
Just then, Calian felt a faint trace of mana on his finger.
Realizing Alan was contacting him, he channeled mana into his ring. The mage’s voice came through immediately.
—Your Highness, I am told there is a priest with Count Latran.
—Are you saying he already had one?
And to think he babbled that nonsense about not knowing if there was a priest here when I asked him.
—I understand for now. But Master, do priests use sacred artifacts often? Enough to warrant buying them repeatedly?
—No. One or two would last them ten years.
Yet the Blue Warbler had spoken as if she sold sacred artifacts continuously.
That meant the buyer wasn’t purchasing them for a priest’s personal use.
Calian raised his head and questioned her again.
“Is the buyer of the sacred artifacts in Latran? There’s no reason for you to sell them in a backwater town like this. In Kairisis, you’d find priests far more easily.”
“No one pays as generously as this buyer. Besides, we already had a connection.”
A connection with a spy from Secritia?
“It sounds like you originally had a connection with a Secritian spy for another reason, and that relationship evolved into selling sacred artifacts.”
To Calian, it sounded as though someone had been selling Kairis’s secrets to the Blue Warbler, and now the tables had turned—they were buying sacred artifacts from her.
His brow furrowed. He delivered his final question.
“That buyer. Is it Count Hale Latran?”
“I don’t think that’s a reasonable question,” the Blue Warbler said with a bright smile.
Her refusal was as good as an affirmation.
—Hale Latran. He hides the priest in his keeping, buys up sacred artifacts he doesn’t use at exorbitant prices, and has ties to a Secritian spy. This is highly suspicious.
—Indeed. His movements are far from ordinary.
—Yes. I believe I will have to confirm it myself.
Calian’s eyes grew cold and deep.