“The princess took Sir Talion with her?!”
After leaving Ras in Tishna’s care, Fiarca returned to the royal villa alone and broke the news to Elmira. Kanalayka jumped to her feet, nearly toppling her chair, when she heard. The imperial legate was never that versed at hiding her emotions, but the panicked look on her face was easier to read than ever.
“What do you mean by that, Your Highness?! What happened?!” she cried.
“Calm down, Kanalayka.”
Fiarca unfastened her mask and smiled bitterly.
“She hasn’t taken him prisoner or anything. Ras is safe. He’s simply going to be acting as the princess’s escort until the summit is over. Of course, that means you shall have to work twice as hard to make up for his absence.”
“I will work as hard as it takes, Your Highness, but what about Ras? We cannot trust Princess Tishna to act true to her word, and it would be a severe blow to the empire should anything happen to the Guardian of Silver.”
“I don’t think we need to fear that,” Fiarca assured her. “Ras is an important international asset, even more so than the kingdom’s fourth princess. Princess Tishna wouldn’t dare harm him and risk angering her allies.”
“I see… I hope you’re right.”
Kanalayka continued to bite her lip with worry. Ever since witnessing them for herself at Prouss, the legate seemed to harbor an almost blind faith in Ras’s abilities. If this was Kanalayka’s way of compensating for her initial misguided prejudices, then Fiarca couldn’t help feeling that the girl had swung too far in the opposite direction.
Of course, Fiarca was only too glad that her two most trusted aides had grown to be on such good terms, but at the same time she couldn’t shake her worry. If the ever-celibate Kanalayka finally awakened to feelings of romance at this stage, there was no telling what she might do. Compared to her, the machinations of Princess Tishna were far more manageable. At least those had some logic to them.
“The more pressing issue,” said Fiarca, turning to Elmira, “is the question of this captured assassin. How far do you think we can trust what the princess says?”
The silver-haired agent produced a file from among her belongings and handed it to Fiarca.
“There is indeed an assassin known as the Black Owl working with Eterusia,” she said. “The Silver Fangs have previously identified him as a person of interest.”
“So his specialties are disguise, auramancy, and long-range stealth attacks,” said Fiarca, reading the file. “I can’t think of a better choice to assassinate the princess of Charlgia while the whole world is watching.”
Eterusia’s main goal with Princess Tishna’s assassination was to send a bold message. It was difficult to do that with other methods, such as poisoning, which could be passed off as a natural death, or explosion, which could cause collateral damage and make it unclear who the intended target was.
With that in mind, sending a sniper like the Black Owl was the correct choice. But the assassin had been arrested before managing to carry out his task.
“The Black Owl was previously involved in eight cases, including the succession war of the Barony of Prevtz, and the murder of the chairman of the Nilsen Company,” explained Elmira. “All of them took place in the northern reaches of Argyll.”
“Which means the princess was telling the truth,” said Fiarca with a sigh. “That makes things even more difficult.”
The northern region of Argyll provided trade access to Charlgia, and traffic was high. If the princess was assassinated and relations worsened, it would lead to a lot of strife in the area.
“How are we going to proceed with the Black Owl’s questioning?” asked Elmira.
“I’ll leave that to Major General Adamkus,” replied Fiarca. “I doubt we’ll be able to pry anything useful out of him, though.”
“Very well. Counterespionage is a job for the army, after all.”
Assassins very rarely acted out of loyalty to their employers. As a result, it was common practice to provide them with the bare minimum information required to do their job. Even if he was made to come clean, it was vanishingly unlikely that questioning the Black Owl would prove fruitful.
“I also considered putting Val in charge of this task, as it pertains to his home region. However, Tishna still doesn’t know he’s here, and I’d prefer to keep it that way as long as possible. Also, I’m still not sure how far we can trust him.”
“You think he might have reason to order Princess Tishna’s assassination?”
“I couldn’t say. He does have a motive, but he also knew the assassination would make him a suspect. If Lord Burndy wanted to strengthen his relations with the emperor, there are safer ways to go about it. He could offer his daughter as my concubine, for example.”
If all the mastermind cared about was stopping Auriol and Tishna’s marriage, then there was no need to assassinate her in such a grandiose way. In the worst case, they could even have Tishna murdered after the wedding.
But there was also the possibility that the high-profile assassination was meant as a distraction from some other sinister aim. It wasn’t prudent to strike Burndy’s name from the list of suspects just yet.
“Elmira, what do you think the chances are that this Eterusia organization has sent agents other than the Black Owl?”
“That depends on how much money the employer has to spend,” Elmira replied, “but I would figure it highly likely. They cannot trust that he will keep to his word, after all.”
The international conference made the perfect stage for a group to showcase their skills to the criminal underworld. Eterusia would no doubt spare no expense to ensure the job was a success.
Now that the Black Owl was down, it could be expected that his replacement would begin to move.
“If that’s the case, then perhaps it’s for the best that Ras stays with Princess Tishna,” Fiarca said, half muttering to herself.
“Why is that?” asked Kanalayka, looking puzzled.
“I’m guessing Princess Tishna has something to do with why the Black Owl was caught so quickly,” Fiarca explained, putting on a prideful air. “She knew all along how he was going to enter the country and fabricated the story about his friends selling him out to cover her tracks.”
“Oh.”
“But now she’s changed the future, she’s going up against a foe whose behavior she hasn’t seen before.”
“Which means she won’t be able to stop it this time?”
“Not with her abilities, no,” said Fiarca, shaking her head. “Which means we’ll have to let Ras handle it. But if the princess dies while in Ras’s care, it’s really going to reflect badly on the empire.”
“Doesn’t that mean you’re putting Ras in great danger?” asked Kanalayka, her expression growing graver by the second.
There weren’t many assassins who could get the drop on Ras in a one-on-one. However, their target was Princess Tishna, and if Ras needed to protect her and fight at the same time, the risk to his own life spiked. And there was always the possibility that the assassins would choose to strike as a team.
“All we can do is trust in his skills,” Fiarca said, not showing a whit of the worry the legate did. There was nothing Kanalayka could say in the face of such overpowering confidence, which meant it was Elmira who spoke up in her place.
“What I’m more worried about,” she said, her expression even sterner than Kanalayka’s, “is that Ras will give in to temptation and lay his filthy hands on the princess. Could the kingdom not use that as an excuse to bring him over to their side?”
This possibility appeared to unnerve Kanalayka even more than the last.
“Th-that’s not… H-he wouldn’t…” she stammered.
Ras was a son of one of the great noble houses. He had once been engaged to marry a princess and was perfectly suited to do so again. The kingdom knew him as a hero who had slain a Greater Dragon, and more recently, an aquatic dragon that threatened their lands. Plus, nobody yet knew about the planned marriage between Tishna and Auriol.
Charlgia would no doubt welcome Ras with open arms, and if he managed to knock the princess up, there was little Argyll could say in protest.
But for some reason, Fiarca wasn’t the least bit troubled by this possibility.
“You don’t need to worry,” she said. “I don’t think that’ll happen.”
It wasn’t because she trusted Ras. If anything, it was the complete opposite.
“I knew there was a chance that wicked princess would make a move on Ras,” she said, “which is why I’ve taken steps to prevent it.”
“Y-you have…?”
Kanalayka and Elmira both watched Fiarca grin gleefully, and they looked to one another in confusion.