Beginning the Temple Purge
Robin’s voice calling for his sister must have carried all the way inside the building.
“Robin, where have you been?”
A girl who looked about twelve came bursting out in a clatter, shouting at the top of her lungs.
Is that the sister Robin mentioned?
She seemed far too young to be the guardian of a seven-year-old.
I dismounted from my horse a little late and studied the two children.
Behind the girl standing with her hands on her hips, a line of children around Robin’s age spilled out one after another.
“Where have you been?”
“We’ve been looking for you forever.”
“Yeah. You’ve been gone since morning.”
“If you’re going out, you have to tell your sister first.”
“And if your sister isn’t around, you have to tell one of us, Robin.”
The children who arrived late stood with their hands on their hips just like their sister, scolding Robin in unison.
“Uh, um… I just went to the forest over there…”
Robin shrank under the endless barrage of nagging and mumbled an excuse.
Surprisingly, it seemed Robin’s pickpocketing had been a solo operation.
He glanced back at me and Everett, the only ones who knew the truth.
When he saw we had no intention of intervening, he relaxed and puffed out his hollow little belly, doubling down.
“I told you I was going out to find something for breakfast!”
“Did anyone actually hear you say that?”
Robin’s sister narrowed her eyes suspiciously and scanned the area as she asked.
But among what had to be more than twenty children, not a single one reacted.
Robin flinched and hastily added, “I told Nancy!”
“What? You told me?”
So his sister’s name was Nancy.
Nancy tilted her head as if this were completely new information.
“I must have been asleep and didn’t hear you.”
Robin rattled off the words while avoiding her gaze.
So he only “told” her while she was deliberately sleeping and then slipped out.
I could see right through Robin’s little scheme.
It was shallow, exactly what you’d expect from a seven-year-old’s master plan.
“If you didn’t say it while I was awake, it doesn’t count, you dummy!”
Nancy’s foot slammed against the ground as she yelled, clearly even angrier now.
Robin backpedaled, afraid she might come over and smack him.
Once he’d put some distance between them, he found his courage again and yelled back.
“I did tell you before I left! Why doesn’t it count?!”
This is getting out of hand.
I stepped in to cut the surprisingly long quarrel short.
“Hello.”
I walked forward a few steps and greeted them brightly. All the children’s eyes snapped toward me.
“Robin, come here.”
The moment a stranger appeared, Nancy kept her gaze locked on me while calling Robin over first.
She looked like a slightly bigger chick protecting a flock of baby chicks.
“Uh, okay.”
Robin shuffled over to the other children when Nancy called him with that serious expression, glancing back at us every few steps.
“Who are you?”
Once she confirmed Robin was far enough away, Nancy asked, her eyes brimming with wariness.
Several answers flashed through my mind—from something philosophical to a trending meme.
“I’m Lina.”
It was a safe, ordinary answer.
I smiled as brightly as I could, but Nancy’s guard stayed firmly up.
She’s been well taught how to handle strangers.
“We’re, um… here to help you.”
“Are you sponsors?”
Well, if you’re sponsoring anything, that technically makes you a sponsor.
Even if our hidden purpose was inspecting corrupt priests.
“Yes.”
Only then did Nancy finally lower her defenses.
“Shall we escort you to the temple?”
“No, I’d like to see the poorhouse first.”
Everett answered Nancy’s question.
The moment the large adult male—with his coldly hardened expression—approached, Nancy flinched in surprise.
From Robin to Nancy.
To my eyes—and most people’s—it was an incredibly handsome face, but…
to the children, it apparently looked rather frightening.
Wariness flickered in Nancy’s eyes again.
“The poorhouse?”
It was common practice for sponsors to receive flowery praise from the priests, sign the sponsorship papers, and only then take a brief look around the poorhouse.
Nancy’s puzzled reaction wasn’t unreasonable at all.
I gave Everett’s arm a couple of light taps.
When he turned to me, I smiled brightly and mouthed the words.
Smile a little.
Everett interpreted my silent request and lifted the corners of his mouth into a smile.
That alone softened his icy impression considerably.
It was like a spring flower blooming just a little early on a snowy mountain.
Nancy’s cheeks turned faintly pink.
“Um, please come in.”
The question of why someone who came to sponsor would visit the poorhouse first seemed to vanish in an instant.
So the handsome-man strategy works on children too.
Nancy quickly regained her composure. She smiled with kind, almost adult-like grace and guided us into the poorhouse.
“There isn’t much to see, though.”
“Please come in.”
The poorhouse children echoed Nancy’s words like a chorus, clustering around us as we walked.
Everett and I entered the building while carefully examining its condition.
The inside was even worse than it had looked from outside.
In the room where the children slept, there were only a few moldy blankets tossed on the floor.
The food supplies in the kitchen were absurdly insufficient to feed more than twenty children.
And even what little they had was in terrible shape.
Sprouted, shriveled potatoes and greens that have wilted beyond saving.
The stone walls were cracked in several places, and the wooden building that hadn’t received proper maintenance looked not just old but actively rotting.
So they only bothered fixing the parts people could see from outside.
Beyond the trees, the temple building looked aged but impeccably maintained.
The original story had declared this the empire’s worst poorhouse—the very place where Ivetta had spent her childhood. It was hard to believe anywhere could be worse than this.
After looking around the tiny poorhouse, I whispered to Everett with the last shred of my rationality.
“The Blue Hawk was planning to start cleaning up the temples soon. I’d like to begin right here. What do you think, Ed?”
We had already gathered more than enough evidence of the temple’s corruption.
We were simply waiting for the right moment to strike.
No matter how much the Blue Hawk intended to reorganize the temples, it was clearly overstepping my authority to inspect one on my own.
But I couldn’t bear to leave the children here even for the few days it would take for a report to reach the emperor and receive his approval.
Fortunately, Everett seemed to feel the same.
“I think it’s perfect timing.”
Everett smiled savagely.
The kind of smile that promised to ruin quite a few lives.
“Right?”
This time, I had no intention of stopping him.
There was no reason to delay. We headed straight for the temple.
It was a small temple with only two resident priests.
Whether by the grace of Minos or sheer coincidence, both of them happened to be inside.
The priests, assuming the noise was someone coming to pray, stepped out—only to freeze at the sight of Everett holding a sword.
“W-what is the matter?”
“This is a temple. Please put your sword away.”
Everett did sheathe his sword.
Right after subduing both priests in the blink of an eye.
He knocked them unconscious, tied them up, and tossed them carelessly into a corner.
“I wonder if the underground prison in Feram Fief has any room.”
“Wouldn’t the imperial palace’s underground have space?”
“That place is plenty big.”
We exchanged grim small talk as we moved deeper into the temple to search for evidence.
“These people didn’t even try to hide anything, did they?”
The temple’s subsidy ledger came sliding out of the head priest’s desk drawer.
Even a quick glance showed these priests were too stupid to even think of keeping double books.
Every detail of how they had embezzled the subsidies was written there in plain ink.
From a certain point of view, it’s transparent. Very transparent.
A wicked person being smart makes you angry, but a wicked person being stupid makes you angry in an entirely different way.
I clicked my tongue and resumed the search.
A list of people who had given bribes fell from between the bookshelves.
Behind the frame of a holy painting, we found a debt note detailing the luxuries the head priest had indulged in.
The best hiding spots they could come up with were between books and behind a picture frame.
After collecting the evidence with ridiculous ease, we left the temple carrying the unconscious priests.
Was it the grace of Minos? Or just the whims of fate?
The whole process had flowed as smoothly as water.
Is today my lucky day?