Byletta looked questioningly at Count Swangan, only to find he’d taken on the expression of a man chewing a wasp.
“Stop nitpicking and go! We don’t have much time!”
“Oh dear, someone’s in a bad mood. I’ll do my best not to anger you any further. Now then, we have three demands: Tell us where the stolen grain is going; reveal the identity of the thieves; and lastly, could you please put out the fire? The last point should be your first priority, so I’ll speak with you and the thieves in question about the other two when you’re done with that.”
“Wh-what? Err…”
“Are you stupid?! Hurry up and go and put out the fire!” an impatient Count Swangan barked at the confused steward.
Before long, the fire had been extinguished with the help of the house staff.
No one told them what Bardu had done, so they still followed his orders unquestioningly. Upon hearing that the thieves had run away after setting fire to the storehouse, they all breathed a sigh of relief. They had been doubly reassured upon learning that the only party injured during the little skirmish had been the intruders, and that the count and Arnald had eliminated a great many of them.
The night couldn’t be deemed a complete success, however—not with the furious looks the count continued to throw at his head steward.
By the time things settled, it had grown very late. It was decided that talks were to be temporarily postponed.
The bandits had been locked up in the dungeon under the manor. It was a place usually reserved for village criminals, so it wasn’t very big. After fifteen of the assailants were squeezed in there, it rather resembled a can of sardines.
Of those fifteen, Byletta had subdued three, while the count had taken down two. The remaining ten had been captured by Arnald. He was quite a remarkable soldier, despite his slim physique. The ease with which he’d moved had felt almost like an illusion at first glance.
Byletta left everything else to the count and excused herself to her room. As she left, she heard Count Swangan and Bardu finally begin speaking about the questions she had put forward. But she was a young lady in need of beauty sleep, so she didn’t waver in her decision to take her leave.
Just as she changed into her nightclothes and climbed into bed, Byletta was overtaken by a deeply pleasant feeling: drowsiness. She hadn’t been able to fall into a deep sleep for days now, so it was a relief that matters had been taken care of so quickly.
She still didn’t get the best rest that night, but she managed to get some winks in before she woke up the following morning. That’s when she found out that her father-in-law had summoned her.
It was time for the talking to begin in earnest. Byletta had a rough idea about how things would unfold, but it was still difficult to predict how those on the opposite side would react.
By the time she arrived at the reception room, the other parties had already gathered. Count Swangan, Arnald, Bardu, and the apparent leader of the band of burglars were waiting for her.
The leader of the bandits had reddish-brown hair and sharp eyes, which gleamed with a light that seemed out of place in a mere thug down on his luck.
Presumably, this was the same man she and Arnald had seen giving orders when she’d dragged him out to observe the workmen fixing the bridge.
As soon as Byletta entered the room, all eyes were on her. She carried on walking, trying her best to pay her audience no mind.
“My apologies for the delay.”
Bardu showed her to a seat beside her father-in-law, although he remained standing.
“We’ve already gotten the answers to the questions you asked yesterday, but an inquiry has been lodged as to why you thought the thieves were connected to a neighboring country,” said the count.
“Oh, so you’ve already told them?”
“If we hadn’t, this man wouldn’t have agreed to come to the negotiating table.”
“My name is Gail Adaltine. Ex-head of the Kingdom of Naris’s Artillery Regiment Supply Corps,” said the bandit leader. “Those down in your dungeons are my former subordinates.”
The Kingdom of Naris lay to the east of the Swangan’s country estate. War had raged between the people of Naris and the people of Gaihandar thirty or so years ago, but the relationship had become more cordial once a peace agreement was in place. That treaty was also one of the reasons Count Swangan had been able to neglect his estate in favor of pickling himself in alcohol in the capital for as long as he had with so few consequences.
Just like the Gaihandar Empire, the Kingdom of Naris had been busy fighting a war against one of its neighbors for the past ten years: the Yahawelba Empire to the north. The conflict took up all the Narisians’ energy and time, meaning they hadn’t had the opportunity to turn their attention back toward the Gaihandar Empire since the war had begun. Embroiled in trouble as they were in the south, the Gaihandar Empire had been more than happy to leave them to it. However, while Gaihandar’s war was premised on false accusations spread by an enemy that had unilaterally invaded their southern border, the Kingdom of Naris was fighting for a different reason.
A daughter of the Yahawelba Empire, who had become a princess of Naris through a wedding to Narisian royalty, had been poisoned and died. The war was retaliation—at least on the record.
The reddish-brown hair and tawny eyes of Gail Adaltine were common enough in the empire, so his appearance alone didn’t give away that he was from a different country. And his subordinates looked much the same.
If Byletta hadn’t known the surrounding circumstances, this incident would likely have been handled as a simple case of grain theft. She could understand why Gail had grown curious as to how she’d learned foreign actors were involved.
“Well, where should I begin? I know all about Targitte’s disease.”
“How on earth do you know about that…?!”
Gail’s expression changed in an instant. Everyone from the Gaihandar Empire, on the other hand, looked confused. Bardu was the only exception—he turned his eyes downward with a meek look on his face, like he’d heard about it all before.