Chapter 69

“Revolting…!” No sooner had Kyle Hughes brought the glass in his hands to his lips than he jerked it away again. He was visiting the royal office to report on the extremists when he’d received the drink. He glanced at the duke, the master of this room and the one who had offered Kyle the glass. The king’s right-hand man was, as always, chillingly handsome. Roughly speaking, he was Kyle’s superior’s superior’s superior. Delivering a status update to a man like that hardly seemed like a job for an underling like Kyle. But Duran Belsford, the man whose job this should have been, was honest—simple, even, to put it rudely—which made him a terrible match for a scheming old fox like Adolphus. He usually returned from such visits loaded down with annoying tasks, so he had recently been banned from delivering the reports. Randolph Ulster had been going in his place. The House of Castiel and the House of Ulster had a relationship going back generations, and Randolph was famous for being a favorite of the foul-tempered Adolphus Castiel. However, the man of last resort was currently on vacation, frolicking with his fiancée under the cover of a diplomatic trip. This meant that a new sacrificial victim was needed. Kyle had been secretly amusing himself by wondering who the next poor lamb would be, when a senior staff member tapped him on the shoulder and showed him smiling to the door. Or rather, chased him out of it. In short, Kyle Hughes had drawn the short straw and was now serving as the substitute’s substitute. And it wasn’t long before he received his initiation at the hands of the old fox. “What is this? It tastes disgusting. Is this how you torture newcomers?” “It’s just lemonade,” Adolphus said, peering at him curiously. “Lemon…aid…?” As he was racking his brain for a poison by that name, it occurred to him that it was the word for a refreshing sweet-tart beverage. “Aha, so that rotten flavor must be the acidity of the lemons,” he said. He noticed some seeds floating in the liquid. “You really ought to either sue your cook or fire him.” Perhaps a maid had prepared it rather than a cook. But whoever it was, they’d be better off in some other profession. This one was clearly not working out. Kyle had completely forgotten his etiquette in the shock of the moment, but Adolphus didn’t seem to care. “Oh, I made it myself,” he said with a placid smile. “…You what?” A terrible silence descended. “I was attempting to reproduce the lemonade they make in my wife’s hometown, but perhaps it wasn’t to your liking.” “I’d hardly call it an issue of personal preference.” Kyle had more to say, but it would have been disrespectful, so he stopped there. “Anyhow, I hear the saint-worshipping extremists are planning something,” Adolphus said, as if nothing had happened. Did he really not care? Kyle hastily straightened his back. He was here to report on that very subject. “That’s right. Kate—I mean, Kimberly Smith’s assistant—says she heard it directly from the believers. She’s truly a genius at getting people to let down their guard—sorry, that was a digression. The point is, according to our intelligence, they are planning some sort of action in Saint Mark’s Square in the near future.” “Another fire?” Kyle shook his head. “Actually, a man was arrested several months ago in a different case, and the fellow seems to have been a truly passionate saint worshipper.” The man had been setting off powerful fireworks along the Senne River outside the city, night after night, seemingly for the fun of it. He told the police his name was John Smith and wouldn’t say exactly how he got the fireworks. “Fact is, they were smuggled in from Melvina,” said Kyle. “The mastermind was a man our perpetrator didn’t know, but he infiltrated the group as a believer and approached them with the plan.” Originally, the whole thing was supposed to unfold much later. “What plan?” Adolphus asked. “It seems they intended to gather a large quantity of fireworks to make a bomb.” But before they could, the man calling himself John Smith had gone and set off all the fireworks himself. “It could be that the purpose of the recent arsons was to see how long it took the military to respond, and by what routes they arrived.” “You mean they’re still making a bomb?” “We think they’ll probably smuggle it in from somewhere.” It seemed certain the event in question would take place in Saint Mark’s Square. “According to this John fellow, the man had a strange tattoo on the back of his neck.” Adolphus’s eyebrows shot up. Kyle narrowed his eyes and said seriously, “It appears that Daeg Gallus is behind this.”