Chapter 86
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Chairman of the Far East Front Alliance.
This was the first time the Far East had been convened for a second gathering in a single year, apart from its annual meeting.
Ferda slowly looked over the fourteen lords.
Some of the ample flesh they had displayed at the first gathering had disappeared, and jawlines had begun to show before they knew it.
Ferda looked at them and spoke.
“There is a young man named Stephan.”
A young man named Stephan.
It was not something a kid who would soon turn nineteen ought to say.
Yet even that choice of words, which might normally have drawn a scoff, carried enough weight to sink in.
“I trust you all know what kind of person that young man is.”
“Of course we do.”
“Thanks to him, whenever we need something, we can go and find it right away.”
They took turns offering words of praise for him.
The Far East had limits when it came to self-sufficiency.
That was why most people had lived by letting things slide or pretending they had never existed in the first place.
Stephan was a good merchant who had created opportunities for their lives to improve.
“The reason you were able to do that is because I made that young man a promise.”
Ferda held up his index finger.
“I promised to help him become the owner of a trading company.”
“The owner of a trading company?”
“Someone of Lord Pascal's standing is more than capable of becoming the owner of Pascal Trading Company.”
“I think so too. But it seems the young man is having such a difficult time that he is now ready to give up on that dream.”
A brief silence followed.
Normally, Count Consilus would have fanned the flames at a time like this, but he merely watched in silence.
He wanted to see the true public sentiment.
“If that's the case, then surely this is something we ought to step forward and handle ourselves?”
A viscount who looked brimming with a sense of justice sprang to his feet.
Another lord, carried away by his enthusiasm, rose as well and shouted.
“Exactly! We can't turn a blind eye when the Far East has become a more livable place thanks to him!”
“If we do not even intend to repay that favor, we deserve to be judged by the sun!”
“Hear, hear!”
There were also faces belonging to people who reluctantly joined in.
Ferda memorized those faces in detail.
“I understand your intentions. I would like to request that troops be dispatched there to provide an escort until Pascal Trading Company is secure. Of course, only insofar as it does not interfere with the defense of this Grand Duchy.”
“Of course! We will dispatch thirty men from our standing defense force.”
“We will send thirty-five!”
“Forty!”
As the competition to prove their loyalty grew heated, Ferda had no choice but to permit only up to thirty men from each domain.
Even that brought together four hundred men in an instant, including around fifteen knights.
Ferda handed the documents containing their pledges to Count Consilus.
“I leave it to you.”
“As Your Excellency commands.”
The problem with the caravan's mercenaries was half solved.
The other half depended on whether the fundamental problem could be resolved.
In the meantime, Ferda decided to do what he needed to do.
“Ruri.”
“Yes.”
“Can you take me to the place where the attack occurred?”
“Do you think I'm Your Excellency Ferda's shuttle?”
“Because I don't want to waste time.”
Grumbling, she slipped her hands between Ferda's shoulders and hugged him.
“Hold on tight. If you fall, I won't catch you.”
Ruri spread her enormous wings and took flight.
It was a distance that took two days from Valdrova Castle, but they arrived there in less than a minute.
The site of the incident was some distance from the Grand Duchy, on land claimed by no one.
That meant it was land with little value and considerable danger.
As it was a particularly brutal season, the scene had also been savagely ravaged.
People from the Grand Duchy were guarding the area and had preserved the scene as much as possible.
The Dragon Spawns dispatched to maintain the magic formation were conducting the investigation.
The one directing them was Administrator Isabella.
When she spotted Ferda and Ruri, she bowed her head.
“Have you arrived? Miss Ruri came with you as well.”
“Yes, somehow.”
Ruri looked as though she was not pleased to see Isabella.
It seemed less like the usual conflict between affiliations and more like she simply disliked Isabella herself.
“What is the current extent of the damage?”
“There were ten wagons headed into the Grand Duchy in total. Three were wagons for carrying monsters, and the other seven were delivering goods to be stocked at the branch in Count Consilus's territory.”
The three wagons that remained intact were the ones carrying monster corpses.
They carried things so filthy that even approaching them was unpleasant, so it was only natural that no one had touched them.
“What about the casualties?”
“Of the twelve merchants, eleven are dead and one is missing. All twenty-two laborers were killed. Of the twenty mercenaries hired, two died. The employees can be considered completely wiped out, while most of the mercenaries survived.”
“Typical.”
He meant that the mercenaries had survived even though everyone else had died.
“Was there anything unusual?”
“There was.”
Isabella pointed toward the bodies.
The corpses, each bearing a single sword wound, had been laid out in neat rows.
Ferda naturally assumed they had been arranged that way for the recovery of the bodies.
“They were like that when we arrived.”
“They were already arranged neatly?”
“Yes. Just in case, I asked a scout from the caravan, but he said he had not touched them.”
At this unexpected development, Ruri muttered as though she found it ridiculous.
“The humans of the Serdes Continent must have evolved. I never knew bandits could be so polite.”
“Indeed.”
Ferda looked over their condition.
They were all lying in a straight line with their hands placed over their chests.
Was there any reason to go to such lengths?
“There is one more unusual detail. Some of the laborers were carrying weapons, but there are no signs of combat.”
“No signs of combat means……”
“They were all killed in a single blow. In other words, they were ambushed.”
Ferda understood immediately.
“They hired bandits instead of mercenaries from the outset.”
“That would appear to be the case.”
It was a typical scenario.
Yet even this typical scenario contained something Ferda could not understand.
Ruri noticed it as well and tugged on Ferda's collar.
“Lord Ferda, they ambushed the merchants, so they must have come to rob them, right?”
“That would be the obvious conclusion.”
“But for people who were robbed, they seem to have gotten off far too gently.”
Ruri pointed toward the wagons carrying valuable goods.
“Look. They didn't even touch the things over there before leaving, did they?”
The barrel containing the golden candlesticks stood wide open, as if shouting, Here I am!
Even so, the wagons containing valuables had barely been touched.
Everything stolen was fresh produce.
Some of the other stolen goods were preserved rations and weapons.
And among the most valuable jewels and other treasures, only four items were missing.
“Miss Ruri, if I may answer that, it was probably because of the anti-theft magic.”
“Anti-theft magic?”
Ruri asked as though speaking to herself.
“To explain it for your sake, Miss Ruri, some expensive goods are marked with a magical tag that can track them the moment anyone other than the merchant touches them. Modern merchants often use this method for insurance purposes.”
“I see.”
Tracking magic that clung to its target like a criminal's tag.
Even if such magic existed, logic dictated that anyone determined to steal would still take the risk.
“Were all the stolen valuables items without that tracking magic?”
“I confirmed that they were.”
“Who knew that?”
“According to the merchants, no one besides them knew.”
Ferda rested a hand on his chin and thought.
“The two dead mercenaries.”
“Yes.”
“Were they marked by that tracking magic?”
“I will check.”
Isabella released her magic and examined the two corpses.
Ferda's prediction was accurate.
“As Your Excellency said, they are marked with tracking magic.”
“It seems they killed the ones who grew too greedy.”
After putting together all the circumstances, Ferda arrived at a new suspicion.
“The missing merchant is probably the mastermind.”
“That does seem likely. It is a method that occasionally occurs in small and medium-sized trading companies.”
One of the merchants had brought in a band of bandits from the beginning with the intention of stabbing Stephan in the back.
They had staged the scene to make it look as though everyone had been wiped out, taken a suitable amount for themselves, and fled.
The outline was plausible, but Ferda still could not shake his doubts.
The picture in his mind was still not clear.
After pondering whether he was fixating on something, he asked Isabella,
“What if they never intended to loot the wagons in the first place?”
Ruri and Isabella asked,
“They did not intend to loot them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Looting was a secondary concern. Their primary objective was murder and conspiracy—to show that we were collapsing because of internal division.”
“Murder and conspiracy……”
After hearing Ferda's words, Isabella nodded thoughtfully before tilting her head to the side.
“But if that were the case, there is something strange.”
She showed Ferda the stolen goods and said,
“If murder was their objective, would there be any reason to take all the fresh produce?”
“Couldn't they have taken it because they were short on food?”
Isabella refuted Ruri's suggestion.
“If they were short on food, they should have taken all the emergency rations. Stealing fresh produce while in the process of fleeing is something not even a third-rate thief would do.”
Isabella was right.
Fresh produce was bulky and difficult to store.
If they intended to hit and run, they would have stolen all the emergency rations, which were easy to preserve.
“The only people who might take those would be people desperate for food—refugees.”
“That makes them no different from bandits.”
In other words, there was no guarantee that the refugees had not cooperated with them.
Ferda agreed with Isabella.
‘This leaves a bad taste in my mouth.’
Ferda racked his brain again and again, trying to understand this infuriating situation.
He questioned everything more than usual and tried not to leave even the slightest doubt unexamined.
At that moment, one of the Dragon Spawns helping with the investigation whispered something into Isabella's ear.
“Good news. We found that one person has a tracking-magic tag attached to him.”
It was a strange story.
The two mercenaries who had grown too greedy and been marked by the tracking magic had died at the scene.
“What did he steal?”
“Apparently, he took a gold coin from one of the merchant's pockets. We should be able to track those bandits with it.”
“A single gold coin?”
“Yes.”
Ferda asked again.
“You mean he took one coin from a pouch that contained only one gold coin?”
“No. We confirmed that it was one of the gold coins remaining from the five goldens set aside for travel expenses, after one golden and thirty shillings had been used for security expenses.”
In other words, he had taken a single gold coin from a pouch containing three goldens and seventy shillings.
“Where are they headed?”
“Amazingly, they are headed into the Grand Duchy.”
It was truly astonishing.
They had gone to such lengths to avoid being marked by tracking magic, only to get caught because of a single gold coin.
They were a bundle of contradictions.
Perfect, yet full of openings,
Cruel, yet polite.
They were a chaos made up of two irreconcilable things mixed together.
Perhaps
that foolish bandit might provide the answer himself.
“I will immediately organize a pursuit team and order them to capture every last one of them—.”
“No.”
Ferda cut Isabella off.
“There is no need to have them brought in. We will go ourselves.”
“We will?”
Isabella clearly did not like the idea.
“It would not be appropriate for Your Excellency to personally wipe out a mere band of bandits. It would be better to leave this sort of thing to your subordinates.”
“She's right. It would be better not to do this sort of thing.”
Ruri agreed with Isabella and tried to dissuade him.
But Ferda was not Ferda if he listened to such protests.
“I can't rest unless I do things myself. And in this matter, I don't want to leave any room for doubt.”
“Doubt?”
“Yes. There must be no doubt left behind.”
Only Ferda knew this.
Revenge was most beautiful when it was clean.
“This is a revenge play for Stephan.”
A revenge play had to be clean.
A revenge play carried out for someone else had to be even cleaner than usual.
That was Ferda's guiding principle.
* * *
Late that evening.
Following the traces they had left behind, they found a camp belonging to people presumed to be bandits.
It was unlike what they had expected from vicious and despicable criminals.
Around forty men, women, and children were gathered in small groups around campfires.
“Can we eat now?”
“No. It needs to cook a little longer.”
“I'm starving to death! Listen. My stomach is growling!”
“That's better than dying from a stomachache.”
Even though they had come quite close, no one noticed Ferda and Isabella's approach.
All their attention was focused on the campfire—or, more precisely, the pot sitting over it.
“It's ready.”
The children burst into cheers, and the adults smiled.
For this moment at least, they might have forgotten that they were fated to vanish as fleetingly as mayflies.
Isabella, Ferda, and Ruri.
Any one of them could have sent these people flying with nothing more than a flick of a finger.
Instead of moving a finger, Ferda kicked a pot rolling across the ground.
Thunk! Thunk!
The men who had been focused on the pot turned their heads.
A pot suddenly rolled and flew toward them.
When they raised their heads, they saw one man and two women standing there.
“……”
“……”
A brief silence followed.
The one who broke the silence was a bearded man.
He hurriedly drew his sword.
Shing!
The light of the campfire reflected softly off it.
It was a well-honed sword utterly at odds with his appearance.
Ferda recognized it at once as a sword stolen from the caravan.
“What are you all doing!? Draw your weapons!”
At his command, the others moved, belatedly grasping the situation and reaching for their weapons.
“Stop!”
They all froze at once.
The man wearing half-plate armor was the one who had spoken.
Unlike the other refugees, who were floundering without understanding what was happening, he possessed presence of mind.
“Everyone, lower your swords! Lower them, kneel, and put your hands on the ground!”
“What are you—”
“Do it now if you want to live!”
At the man's command, all the men and women knelt and placed their hands on the ground.
Accustomed to surrender rather than fighting, they moved quickly.
It was truly swift judgment.
Ferda had intended to make an example of one of them to facilitate a conversation, so he had been one-upped.
The man rose from his place and knelt before Ferda.
“I am William, the leader of this group of refugees. You must be our honored guest, Ferda Valdrova…… the Regent?”
he asked.
His manner of speaking was not that of a third-rate bandit.
“Yes, that's right.”
“And after completing your investigation into the robbery, you tracked us here, correct?”
“Yes.”
It seemed he had been aware that an investigation team would be dispatched to investigate the matter.
“I am certain you wish to know the full circumstances of the incident. I will tell you everything, so would you please allow the children to eat first?”
He asked politely.
That was why Ferda scoffed.
“You rats gnawing away at another man's grain dare pretend to be human and beg for sympathy? You have no right to eat.”
Ferda looked slowly over them and spoke.
“From this moment on, anyone who moves without my permission will die. Adults, children, and the elderly alike.”
Ferda sat down directly on the pot he had kicked.
“Confess properly. Otherwise, I will kill the children first.”