Wolves of Hader

Chapter 91

Mart approached and stood in front of me. He greeted Vice-guildmaster Nell with courtesy, then gave me a smile.

"It's been a while, Young Master Roger. I didn't expect you to come without notice like this."

"Have you been well?"

"We've been doing fine. Should have moved to this country sooner. After living in that cold northern land, coming to this southern country feels like paradise."

Mart's subordinates also paid their respects to me.

Their expressions hadn't changed much from when I first saw them at the fortress.

"Did you find out anything about my request?"

At my words, Mart's expression twisted slightly.

He glanced awkwardly at his subordinate beside him.

I intentionally didn't mention anything about the Emperor's bloodline.

"Oh, your request was to find that person, right? I must have forgotten for a while, trying to adjust and live in this country."

Mart grinned at me.

"In fact, we had a hard time too. There had to be a way to find that person, especially since they're a foreigner."

"Is that why you naturalized?"

A crease formed between Mart's brows.

Nothing of his true feelings showed on his face.

"It is more comfortable now that I'm a citizen of this country. Though I haven't found the person you requested."

Mart glanced at Nell.

His gaze was rather lecherous.

"So you like people like her, Young Master. Are cute, small girls somehow different at night?"

"There you go again, brother."

Mart and his subordinates snickered as they looked at Nell, just like a bunch of street thugs.

If this was an intentional act, it was Mart sending me a signal.

"Do you enjoy working in the guard unit?"

Mart's face crumpled.

"Are you mocking me now?"

His words were ice-cold.

His subordinates quietly began to radiate hostility.

Mart spoke again.

"I asked if you're mocking me."

I saw his subordinates glaring as if they wanted to kill me.

Only one among them wasn't glaring at me.

I realized Mart's intention.

"Mart. You've changed a lot."

Mart's look contorted.

Then he forced a smile to his lips.

"Do you even understand how it feels to fall to the very bottom? Can you even imagine what it's like for a noble of the empire to work as a guard in a foreign country?"

Mart's face turned red.

"And yet I'm the one who's changed? The eldest son of the empire's greatest house had nowhere to go and had to take refuge in a rural fortress! Driven to this country almost like an outcast with just a few gold coins! Along with that absurd order to find the Emperor's son!"

Mart's angry shouts echoed through the park.

He shouted again.

"Do you even understand what it feels like for a noble to bow beneath another? The first time as a man that I swallowed back tears! And now what? You ask if I enjoy being a guard?"

I looked at Mart impassively. His face was flushed to the point of bursting, his eyes bloodshot.

I spoke to him calmly.

"How utterly foolish."

"What did you just say?"

Mart's subordinates reached for their waists, ready to draw their daggers at any moment.

I turned to Mart again.

"Then why didn't you stay with our house? Did joining the merchant guild hurt your pride less than joining our house?"

"Go on, say more."

Mart's pupils trembled.

"Coming to our fortress was your decision. Coming to this country was your decision too. If you didn't like it, you could have refused. Now you're a guard here and only suddenly feel regret?"

"Fine, keep going."

I continued.

"My first impression of you was good. I just didn't realize it was a mask to drive us into a deadly trap. But when we survived, were you flustered? Or just jealous of my achievements?"

"Roger Hader!"

I shouted as well.

"Do you even know what it truly means to live at the bottom? Do you think I'm just some naive young lord who learned about the world from books?"

I continued, raising my voice even more.

"Giving up your inheritance! Abandoning your house and heading into the mountains—each step was your choice, was it not? And yet, now you blame others for your plight!"

As soon as I finished, one of Mart's subordinates rushed forward.

Mart didn't even have time to stop him.

Thud—

The charging subordinate was kicked by me and sent flying backwards.

Only then did Mart jump up and push his subordinates back with both arms, shouting.

"What are you doing?!"

"Brother!"

"This isn't the empire!"

Finally, the subordinates stopped and sullenly backed off. The angriest one was Mart himself.

And yet, he was the one best at holding it in.

Mart glared at me.

"Young Master Roger. I promise you this. No matter what you do in this country from now on, things won't go as you wish."

I replied with a smile.

"Maybe you'd be better off serving the Grand Duke. It'd certainly make it easier to kill me."

Mart let out a snort of a laugh and turned away.

His subordinates shot me cold looks and quickly left, escorting their injured comrade.

I looked at Nell, who stood behind me.

She just smiled calmly.

"Let's walk for a moment."

"All right."

Together with Nell, I walked into the woods.

For a while, we walked in silence.

After we'd gone some distance, nell spoke.

"Are you just going to leave them alone?"

"Mart will take care of himself."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Mart has his own circumstances he can't talk about. He'll probably contact me again soon."

"I see."

I couldn't be certain yet.

People really could change.

Mart was confined to just the interior of the Laiza Merchant Guild and could only contact me discreetly.

Yet he'd somehow found me.

That was the first clue.

He had gone out of his way to come find me—to be seen together with me.

The second clue was that he had naturalized.

That meant he had to deceive someone. The situation was so dire he had to pretend to be used.

And his eyes.

Unlike his tone and expression, Mart's eyes were deep. They didn't belong to someone who craved money or power.

A person's nature doesn't change easily.

If Mart had always been an opportunist, perhaps, but suddenly changing just because he came to this country didn't make sense.

There had to be circumstances that couldn't be easily explained.

That's why he acted with his subordinates, pretending to be so hostile that they wanted to kill me.

One of Mart's subordinates was someone I'd never seen before. The only one who hadn't glared at me.

Probably a watcher.

But the rural fortress?

Exiled with only a few gold coins?

That part felt genuine.

/ / /

We had come to a place where there weren't any people.

A field with glimpses of the distant forest.

It seemed there was a reason we had come all the way here.

"Do you see a hut in that forest?"

"Yes, I see it."

"This land belongs to the royal family, and the school I attended is within these grounds. So I was twelve and my brother was nine. We were both attending the royal school."

"Is it a school for the wealthy?"

"It was for nobles and children of great merchants."

Nell gave a forlorn smile.

"Most of the students were nobles; the merchant children were routinely bullied and ostracized."

"So the son of the Laiza Merchant Guild, who was the suspect in the incident, also attended that school."

"That's right. He was a year older than me. The day of the incident was on the former king's birthday, and the entire school participated in a hunting tournament."

Nell let out a sigh.

"Hunting was dangerous, so the younger children just played together in the hut. Then an accident happened— the king's horse was struck by an arrow. That was the beginning of the tragedy."

"The parents must have been distracted from the children."

"That's right. When the adults rushed to the king, seven children playing in the hut were murdered. Only the son of the Laiza Merchant Guild was left standing there."

Nell trembled.

"Redore Laiza. There was a bloodstained knife in his hand, and his face and body were splattered with blood."

She paused before continuing.

"To everyone, it looked like Redore was the killer. There was already friction between the noble kids and the merchant's son, and Redore didn't have a gentle disposition—he could kill rabbits for fun."

"But was Redore not the one who killed them?"

"No, redore did kill them. I saw it from beneath the floorboards of the hut. My brother had dropped a silver coin between the logs, so we went to look for it..."

Nell's gaze drifted off.

Her eyes trembled, as if she were remembering the moment when blood was dripping from the prone faces.

"I only saw it from a tiny gap, but it was as though Redore was possessed by something."

I waited for her to go on.

"The moment all the children were dead, the door creaked open and a man checked inside the hut. He wore a black hat and coat."

"A hat and coat?"

"Yes. He looked like a mage."

Nell paused. Though she had never forgotten, trying to recall it now seemed to make the memory hazy.

"I was so terrified. I thought the mage had found me hiding under the floor. But he just left the hut and met another man outside."

I listened in silence.

"The mage and the man spoke briefly, then suddenly the mage's throat spurted blood and he collapsed. I saw the man's face clearly then."

"Who was it?"

"It was the captain of the Laiza commander's guard."

"Where is he now?"

"With the Syren family."

I hadn't expected a connection like this.

I had known there was some link with their side, but—

"Do you know his name?"

"Kallad Tando. He's the chief of the Syren family's assassination squad."

That name was familiar.

"That man died in a tavern fire."

"No, the one who died was Kallael Tando, his older brother. Both brothers did secret work for the Syren family. The elder led the knight order, the younger the assassins."

I calmed my tangled thoughts.

I didn't see the full picture yet.

But I felt like I was starting to see some connections.

"The grand duke was behind it, wasn't he?"

"Yes. After that trial, all the elders were pushed out, and the Laiza Merchant Guild suddenly became incredibly wealthy."

"The grand duke provided the funds?"

"That's right. The Grand Duke Syren used the incident to take control of the Laiza Merchant Guild and this country."

"Why were the children killed?"

Nell looked over at the hut as she spoke.

"My father said there might be a hidden son of the emperor from the empire in our country."

That connection was what I'd suspected.

It felt like the fog in my head was lifting.

"Did Count Drian's son also die then?"

Nell shook her head.

"Count Drian had two sons who did attend the school. But neither participated in the hunt that day—not even the count."

It was staggering to think that the Grand Duke Syren had tracked things all the way here.

Had he really killed all the children of a similar age in an attempt to murder the emperor's secret son?

"Do you know what became of Count Drian?"

"We searched but never found out. But before my father died, he told me—"

My throat felt dry.

"That the only nine-year-old survivor, Count Drian's second son, might be of emperor's blood."

That was why Count Drian had sold off all his assets and vanished. When the children of his second son's age were killed, he must have realized.

Or maybe he'd known even before.

"Did you learn anything about the count's relatives or friends?"

"He mentioned heading to Tern, but that was just to mislead even his friends. We've guessed the count and his family either fled to the empire or to the south."

"So they're not in this country."

"That's right. Not only us, but the Merchant Guild and assassins sent by the grand duke searched every inch of this country."

Mart must have realized the Grand Duke Syren was the true force behind the Laiza Merchant Guild.

Having come to this country, he knew he couldn't leave alive.

So Mart is pretending to be used, just to survive. Does the grand duke really not know?

He's only kept Mart alive so far because Mart's strong enough to kill me.

In the end, we were both pretending, using and being used. And of course, the grand duke surely knew I would come to this country.

He must have seen it as his chance to kill me.

"Are there many people that the Grand Duke Syren has placed inside the Laiza Merchant Guild?"

"There are many. Especially the steward is presumed to be the grand duke's man. Even some of the elders—so the grand duke practically controls our country's politics. However—"

Nell smiled.

"We're going to win."

"Are you truly confident?"

"Of course. With your strength, our information, and we have the princess behind us."

"The princess? Who do you mean?"

Nell smirked as if I should already know.

No way...

That embarrassing title—

She was the princess?