Yan held up a hand to restrain his men as they readied themselves. “Very well. I shall believe you, son of János. László, if I remember correctly.”
“That’s me. It is an honor that a general of your caliber remembered such a novice after leading the battle of Tannenwald to a victory for the commonwealth.” The boy smiled softly at that, putting his right fist over his left breast and bowing. It was a common bow for a mercenary or soldier, but the boy looked like an aristocrat as he did so.
Yan gave a sigh at László behaving the way he was, and scratched his head. “Tch, I’d heard the rumors, but you’re just as bad as your father. So, how involved is János in this?”
János was a name that, at least in the mercenary world, was widely known. He was younger than Yan but had a roughly similar amount of fame. He had led many to victory in battle, and was one of the very few mercenaries whose services influenced any battle where he was employed. He was famed for already being married and taking a young child around with him.
Yan himself had fought on the opposite side from János once, before he was hired by the priest. He of course knew of his son László from rumors, but this was the first time he had laid eyes on the boy.
János was a mercenary who had just as high a reputation for his manners as his military skill. Naturally, that was only in relation to other mercenaries, but he was well-known for fighting for what was right in addition to faithfully fulfilling his contracts.
“It seems we’ve got a troublesome individual with eyes on us. It’s infuriating, but I suppose we were right not to move.”
Yan’s statement was prompted by a significant misunderstanding he was working under. That assumption was that the mercenary János was paying close attention to him and had pinpointed his hideout. It was by no means a shortcoming on Yan’s part that had led to that misunderstanding. There was the saying “it takes one to know one.” Indeed, if you were looking for a mercenary’s hideout, a skilled mercenary in the same circles would certainly be the one to ask.
In fact, Yan felt like it was something he too would do if he had to find a hidden mercenary in a city. It was practically impossible for him to make the leap that Tucale’s divination magic had let the country tip off Aura as to his whereabouts.
“Dad was just hired to get the letter to you, General, I believe he holds you no ill will.” He must have heard Yan’s comment to himself and his response was a pleased smile. He respected his father, so he was probably pleased to hear someone of Yan’s renown evaluate him so highly. You could consider it praising him as a mercenary.
“I see, then tell him this: if you don’t want to make enemies, don’t pry any further into our movements.”
“I shall tell him exactly that. For future reference, though, could you tell me something?”
“What?” Yan returned.
László responded without hesitation. “What exactly marked me out as his child? I don’t believe we’ve ever met, and I am fairly confident in my disguise.”
“Oh. That.” Yan considered it for a few moments, then answered honestly. “The first thing was the letter. That was one of your mistakes. Can you see what it was? It seems not, so I will tell you. It is too clean.”
The fact that László realized his mistake with nothing more was a testament to his intelligence beyond his years.
“Ah, the look on your face tells me that hint was enough. Impressive. That’s right; you’ve disguised yourself as a street brat, and a street brat would have gotten the letter dirty with filth and oils from his hands. Furthermore, they don’t have much of a sense of importance for those things, so it being bent and folded would be more natural. You treated it carefully because of your awareness that it was an important letter.”
There were a few moments of silence before the boy responded. “I’ll learn from that.”
“The deciding factor was your answer when I asked whether anyone other than the sender and I had seen the contents. After you said you hadn’t looked, you also added that you didn’t know about anyone else. Usually, you would answer that you hadn’t, or that no one had.”
“Huh?” The boy didn’t understand that and tilted his head in confusion.
The commander was almost unnaturally kind as he explained. “I suppose your assumption was that with you being a child living in these slums, some person you’d never seen had given you change and told you to bring the letter to me. The sender would never personally come here and directly hand it over, so there would have been at least one other person, or two if there was trust between you and them. That much is correct. If your father was going to use one of the street urchins for such a thing, he would do that, and so would I. However, the brat in question wouldn’t know that.”
“Oh...”
Yan grinned as László realized his mistake, and continued explaining. “That’s right. A street rat would assume that whoever handed them the letter was the sender. Whoever was handing it over would also never explain directly that they were acting on someone else’s behalf, after all. In that case, you would be the only possible person to see the contents between receiving the letter and handing it over. So from that position, the correct answers were either that you hadn’t looked or that no one had looked.”
“I see. If I was the street child I disguised myself as, the correct answer would have actually been the incorrect one. That does help,” he said gratefully. “If you’ll excuse me, then.” Now that his question had been answered, László bowed and moved to leave. His bow, the way he spoke, and the way he walked were all bold and made him seem like the young scion of a military family rather than a mercenary’s son.
“Aye. Take care,” Yan answered, having no more reason to keep the boy.
The squeal of the hinges showed just how bad the door’s condition was as László opened it and shut it behind him.
“That was a pretty precise explanation. Should you have given it?” one of his subordinates asked once they were sure the stranger had left.
The mercenary shrugged before answering. “Probably not. It’s better than a poor explanation to someone like him, though.”
“Not explaining would have been worse?”
László was the son of the mercenary János. You could describe him as a business rival. Purposefully giving him more information didn’t make sense to his subordinates, and their line of thought seemed correct. Commander Yan’s read on the situation was different, though.
“The fact that he bothered to ask means that he already had doubts. If I didn’t tell him the truth, he has enough intelligence to think it through and come to the correct conclusion. His reasoning skills have been trained for it. If it’s going to lead to bad habits in thinking, it’d be better to explain in detail to make him pay more heed to what people say. Well, it’s pretty much pointless, I’d imagine.”
The boy’s father was János, after all, so even if Yan hadn’t told him the truth, if László had explained the situation properly, his father would likely have come to the right conclusion.
“Well, forget about the brat. Getting involved with János is irritating, but if he was hired as a mediator, he probably isn’t against us, and he keeps his word. More importantly, you lot need to see this.”
With that, he passed the letter around to his subordinates. Many mercenaries couldn’t read, but Yan’s most trusted were all educated enough to be able to read on a basic level at least. All of them grew excited as they did so.
“What the?!”
“They can restore the priest’s corpse?”
“Are they telling the truth?”
They were all of the dragon faith, so the hope that the target of so much of their respect could be restored was shared between them.
“Considering the timing, I doubt it is a mere bluff. It will at least be worth hearing them out,” Yan answered.
Even as the words left his mouth, his feelings towards the sender were such that he couldn’t stay calm. The letter had arrived after he had found out about the priest’s death and before he had actively started to attempt his revenge, telling him that they could restore the corpse. It was unlikely that the timing was simple coincidence.
The sender had without a doubt found the mercenary’s location before the priest had been executed, having someone on watch—and Yan’s assumption was that it was the mercenary János.
“I’ve no idea who in the world this is, but it’s in poor taste,” he commented, a murderous tinge to his voice.
They had waited until the priest was already dead and then offered to restore his body. However much the offer matched his desires, he couldn’t manage to feel kindly disposed towards them at all.
“I don’t know what their aim is in contacting us like this, but I’ll see if this letter is true with my own eyes,” he said.
There was an extreme amount of resolve in his words as he spoke.