Tailing the Marquis
Cantares pressed his fingers hard against his temples through the whole string of reports, dragged a hand down his face, and finally let out a tremendous sigh.
Arendt waited quietly, giving him all the time he needed to sort through his thoughts.
It was a long while before Cantares could finally force his mouth open.
"Ruins? In the Garden?"
"Yes. From what I hear, what was found there is only part of what the 'Garden' holds, but either way, it seems to be true that a grimoire from Hero Cahn's era was discovered."
Arendt answered as if he'd been waiting for exactly that question.
Only then did Cantares properly collect himself, letting out a low groan.
"This exceeds even my imagination. An ancient grimoire... If that's the case, then as Zen said, it wouldn't be strange at all if ghoul production research was already well underway."
"They probably succeeded up to the point of fusing mana, then hit a wall there. That's why they tried to seduce Count Stadler."
Arendt gave a light nod. It was a scenario anyone could have predicted.
"The original owner of that land may have been murdered by those bastards, too. I heard he died suddenly."
"Entirely plausible. And the real problem is that ancient technology may have already fallen into their hands. They've had plenty of time while we were busy digging holes for nothing."
"Oh? So you're finally admitting we were digging holes for nothing?"
"You insufferable brat. You never concede a single word."
Cantares grumbled in irritation and shot him a sidelong glare.
"At first I planned to plant the Count among them and focus on siphoning out intelligence... but it seems we don't have the luxury of taking it slow anymore. What's your take?"
"Wouldn't you call it a rather fine opportunity?"
Arendt shrugged.
"An opportunity?"
"I don't know exactly what they've got buried so deep, but whatever it is, we have to take it by force, by any means necessary. The ancient grimoire, the golden garden, all of it — it becomes ours. And once we do, their influence will naturally start to wobble."
Cantares's eyes glinted with interest.
"Not suppression, not occupation — plunder?"
"See? You understand me perfectly."
Arendt grinned.
It was not a vow to punish evil in the name of God, nor a pledge to cut down those who threatened the imperial family out of a knight's sworn duty.
It was a statement of pure, calculated self-interest.
Hardly befitting a knight — but utterly, unmistakably Arendt.
Cantares burst out laughing.
"It won't be that easy. We don't even know how large their force is."
"But there's no other way. As you just said, Your Highness, time isn't exactly on our side."
Quite a while had passed since the Garden changed hands.
It was more than enough time to assume they had already harvested most of what there was to take.
The only part their hands hadn't yet reached would be the territory that required Count Stadler's research. If that fell into their grasp as well, the rest of the story wrote itself.
"If we have to keep them in check regardless, then it's more profitable to seize it for ourselves and put it to use."
"Correct answer."
Arendt nodded lightly.
"What will you do? If you order me to sit still and behave, I won't go sticking my nose in."
"Don't make me laugh. As if you'd sit still just because I told you to?"
Cantares, chin propped on his hand, waved him off.
"When does the Count head for the Garden?"
"Tomorrow, as it happens."
"He's in a hurry, isn't he. And your side?"
"We can move whenever you give the word."
Having said that, Arendt fixed Cantares with a steady look that plainly asked, Well, Your Highness?
There was only one answer Cantares could give.
"The plan? You must have something in mind."
"Is there really such a thing as a 'plan' here? For starters, I intend to follow them with Senior Arthur and Senior Richt."
Arendt replied as if he'd been anticipating the question.
"We'll go ahead, assess the situation, and link up with the 3rd Knight Order when they follow behind us."
"Good. Granted. Depart at once. Command goes to Commander Laios, and I authorize independent action as well."
"Thank you."
Cantares eyed Arendt's grin with open displeasure, then let out a long sigh and added one more thing.
"Don't cause an incident. Please."
Arendt merely shrugged.
The next day, before the sun had even risen, Arendt, Arthur, and Richt slipped quietly out of the dormitory and made for the stables.
With their uniforms and swords hidden beneath traveling robes, they looked less like knights and more like the ordinary travelers one could find anywhere in the Empire.
Richt turned to Arendt. "And Count Stadler?"
"We got word he departed with Marquis Grig about half an hour ago. I'd say it's about time we moved too, wouldn't you?"
"The map?"
"Got it."
Arthur answered just as matter-of-factly. It was the map Cantares himself had marked with the Garden's precise location and handed over.
Richt gave a short nod. "Good. We move out."
It was the dead of morning, before the Imperial Capital's day had even begun. And so the three knights departed in silence.
Once clear of the Imperial Capital, they cut through the heart of the city by back roads.
Clop, clop. As the horses picked up speed, the wind slapped hard against the knights' faces.
As the sun rose faintly over the horizon, they left the city behind and crossed a plain still drowned in pre-dawn shadow.
About time it showed up.
Arendt swept back his wind-tousled hair and stared straight ahead. A moment later, his trained knight's eyes caught something.
"There it is. Marquis Grig's carriage."
Arthur had evidently spotted it at the same moment. The hand mirror Count Stadler had hung from his luggage bag had caught the light of the freshly risen sun.
In the dim hush of early dawn, with riders in pursuit on horseback, it was the perfect hour for them to conceal themselves in the darkness — and the worst hour for the Count to shine like a beacon.
The knights slowed their pace.
Richt sharpened his vision and scanned around the carriage. "It's the Marquis Grig's carriage, all right. Five escorts."
"Knights of House Grig?"
"No. Judging by their gear, mercenaries."
Having finished his assessment, Richt gave the order. "We follow. Stay hidden."
Marquis Grig drove his carriage relentlessly onward, never once stepping out of it — whatever was driving him, it clearly couldn't wait. The journey stretched on until the sun stood high overhead.
Chewing on dry bread, Arthur checked the map. "If they keep this heading, it looks all but certain they'll reach the site where the Garden is being built."
"They don't show any sign of branching off somewhere else."
Arendt answered with equal ease, nibbling his own bread from horseback, perfectly relaxed.
Richt tore his watchful gaze from the carriage and looked at the two of them with a complicated expression.
No, there was no law against eating during a mission. But watching the pair casually chomp away on hardtack side by side in the middle of a covert operation made his stomach churn.
Arendt being Arendt, fine — but Arthur, too, was gradually starting to resemble that damn brat, and the realization only deepened his unease.
"What's the matter? Shall I dig one out for you too, Senior?"
It was a genuinely regrettable fact that this sardonic remark had come not from Arendt, but from Arthur.
Letting out a short sigh, Richt urged them on. "Move. We'll lose them at this rate."
"Yes, sir."
The two shoved the rest of their bread into their mouths in one go and took up the reins again.
What followed was an unbroken stretch of dull travel. Marquis Grig stopped only for brief rests now and then, hurrying the carriage along without once detouring into any town.
Before long, the party entered barren wasteland. Trees stood withered, not a blade of grass grew, and the rough earth was desolate to the bone — nothing wandered there but the occasional monster stray from its pack.
"Tailings would've been far trickier in broad daylight."
"That's for sure."
Just as it struck him how absurd it was to build an enormous garden in a place like this, the knights came face to face with a vast construction site.
"Whoa..."
The first to blurt out something so unseemly was Arthur. Richt and Arendt were feeling much the same, so no one bothered to chide him.
Arendt muttered, his face stiff. "Isn't that... bigger than the garden attached to the imperial residence?"
"Going by scale alone, I'd say it is."
A garden raised out of nowhere on empty wasteland looked bizarrely out of place — like a mirage of an oasis springing up in the middle of a desert.
Even now, the laborers sweated buckets, buried in their work. Where the parched earth had been dug away, gravel and fresh, plantable soil had been laid down.
Where the basic groundwork was finished, trees had already been planted and statues of God Luce and Hero Cahn raised.
But the plot was so vast that the finished portions looked to be less than half of the whole.
Arthur's voice came out strained. "It might actually be worth seeing once it's done. If it ever gets finished, that is. Honestly... maybe this is why nobody ever suspected it."
Clang! Clang!
Construction noise pounded at their ears from every direction. Seeing it up close, it was more than easy to understand why Marquis Grig had poured in a fortune amassed under a false name — and why he'd tried to scrape together other nobles' money on top of it.
Arendt, who had been scowling as he swept his gaze around, pointed to a corner of the site. "There it is. The carriage."
"Let's go."
Suppressing their presence, they approached with their bodies concealed. Marquis Grig and Count Stadler had apparently already alighted; only a single coachman remained, listlessly puffing away at a cigarette.
Richt studied the ground intently and discovered footprints leading from the carriage toward the far side of the construction site. "This way."
With Richt in the lead, they tracked the footprints. Before long, all three stopped in their tracks, as if by unspoken agreement.
A squat hut stood there, looking at a glance utterly unremarkable. Had that been all, they might have taken it for a break room where laborers rested between shifts — but Marquis Grig's mercenaries stood ringed around it, keeping watch.
Richt signaled to the other two with a glance. The three moved swiftly.
Slipping up behind one of them, Richt struck the back of the man's neck hard. "Urk—!"
Another mercenary, belatedly realizing something was wrong, tried to draw his sword — and was subdued in an instant by Arthur closing in from behind. In the meantime Richt dropped a second man, and Arendt, approaching from the other flank, had already silently taken down two more.
Dusting off his hands, Arendt smoothed down his disheveled robe. "I don't sense anyone inside."
"Then we go in."
The door was bolted from within. Thud, thud! A few kicks from Arthur and the lock shattered with a crash, the door sagging open.
The interior was arranged exactly as it had looked from outside — an ordinary rest room.
Richt frowned. "Nobody here."
"Then there's a hidden passage somewhere."
Arendt sauntered forward and promptly yanked up the carpet covering the floor in one clean motion. There, revealed beneath it, was a large wooden door fitted with a handle, lying flush against the ground.
"Places that hide secret passages are always this obvious."
He pulled hard on the handle, and the door opened with surprising ease, no noise at all — unveiling a staircase that descended into the earth.
Hooooh...
A chill draft came climbing up the steps, as if the passage ran down a very long way.
Bang, bang! From somewhere far off, the sounds of the construction site echoed faintly.
"Shall we go take a look, then — at what the golden garden really is?"
After a brief silence, Arendt tossed the words out with deliberately breezy cheer. His golden eyes, fixed on the darkened staircase, gleamed as though he were genuinely savoring the moment.
Thanks to that, Arthur had no choice but to shake off the tension that had been creeping up on him and let out a hollow laugh.
"Is any of this fun to you? You absolute lunatic."
"No time for chatter. Let's go."
Richt delivered the short rebuke and took the lead, stepping toward the stairs. Arendt shrugged and obediently followed behind him.
The moment Arthur's foot found the last step, the door slid shut overhead — smoothly, as if someone had pulled it closed by hand.
The hut, now empty of human presence, sank back into silence.