Truly Shameless
As the sun sank fully beneath the western horizon, night settled over the land.
Leaving behind the band of refugees under William’s lead, Ferda returned to the castle.
He sat on the sofa in the reception room and regarded the man across from him.
Stefan was there.
The haggard look peculiar to a man who had been cornered had faded somewhat, yet his eyes still held a hollow, sunken cast.
Ferda spoke as he watched him.
“I have good news.”
“Oh—what sort of good news?”
Stefan asked, his face tight with anxiety.
Ferda slowly laid out the information he had pieced together.
“Stefan, the mercenaries you hired harbored far more vicious intentions than anyone imagined.”
They had not been third-rate sellswords at all, but assassins openly organized to sow chaos. At the rendezvous point they had slaughtered every merchant and laborer. They had scattered the cargo, dragged out portions of the contents, and tried to stage the whole affair as a robbery.
“But turning it into a robbery carried too great a risk.”
“Because of the anti-theft magic, I presume.”
As branch manager, Stefan knew the systems well. Anti-theft enchantments were woven into every valuable. Touch them and a criminal brand would sear itself onto the thief—an absolute disaster for assassins. For the scene to look like a robbery the valuables had to vanish; yet if they did not vanish, the ironic result only made the assassination more glaringly obvious.
“So two of the mercenaries laid the groundwork.”
“How do you mean?”
“They would have forced open the treasure chests, smashed them, and pulled the contents free.”
“But tracking magic would still cling to the goods. Why would they do something so stupid…?”
“They were probably trapped themselves. Either they were never told the full truth, or their ordinary greed made them convenient sacrifices when the clean-up began.”
Stefan accepted the explanation with a small nod.
“Pulling those valuables free seems to have been the foundation. What was that foundation for?”
Ferda moved on at once to the next piece—the pawn on the board.
“A foundation for drawing the refugees into the robbery.”
Refugees shivering through the early-winter cold. The mercenaries had set out from the Empire; they would have known that the displaced were streaming toward the far east in search of hope. They found William’s column. As planned, they lured the refugees with promises of food, dangling a scrap of hope before them.
“The refugees will have had no choice but to go. They needed something to eat that very day.”
Even if the word was a lie, hungry people take whatever scrap of information they can get and move on it. What awaited them was not a generous distribution point but a scene of pure slaughter.
“All that was required was for the refugees to ransack the table that had already been set.”
Ferda flicked a finger as though counting refugees.
“What fills their vision? Food. Weapons. And treasures of pure gold that most of them would never see once in a lifetime. Everything they need right now, everything they want, and everything they will never possess no matter how long they live—all laid out in one place.”
It was no different from walking into a temple of desire.
Stefan could already see how the board would turn. Through the refugees the assassination would be rewritten as a robbery. Since most of the looting would be done by the refugees themselves, everyone would naturally conclude that the refugees had been the ringleaders and would massacre them to the last. No one would bother hunting down the remaining stragglers; the example would already have been more than sufficient.
One strange point remained, however—the central theme of the entire story. Everything that had been prepared was an attempt to disguise an assassination as a robbery. Which meant every plan laid beforehand had already failed.
“The refugees never touched those jewels, did they?”
“There was a variable.”
Ferda nodded.
“No one could have predicted it. No—it was too thin, too absurd to even place inside the range of expectation. A bolt of lightning out of a clear sky.”
He set a knight piece beside the tilted pawn.
“A knight who held fast to his convictions was leading that group.”
William.
The man who had once been able to become a knight still knew what duty and honor meant. He looked upon the gold before his eyes as if it were so many stones. He gathered the bodies and prayed for them. Though hands had been laid on the goods, they had taken only what survival demanded—and only within the span of a single golden. A matter that could be generously overlooked.
“Because of that, we can now declare with certainty that this was an assassination.”
That was the full account of the events they had uncovered so far. Their conversation moved on to the next question.
“Then who, exactly, ordered the assassination?”
“The most likely candidate is this man.”
Ferda handed over a personnel file from the Pascal company.
“Among the twelve merchants, the only one still missing—a fellow named Frank Fontaine.”
“Frank Fontaine.”
The moment he heard the name, Stefan’s face twisted by reflex.
“Not a man you cared for, I take it.”
“He’d worked here for ten years and never once made branch manager. Always complaining that he was stuck doing a coachman’s work.”
“And the reason?”
“Nothing grand. Poor performance, pure and simple. He simply lacked the makings of a merchant.”
Stefan ground his teeth as he stared at the file.
“He played the old-school martinet more than once and we clashed often. I even thought about cutting him loose, but I let it go.”
“Why?”
“He had five children under him.”
“Soft-hearted of you.”
“Indeed.”
The personnel ledger crumpled in Stefan’s fist.
“This bastard… ordered the deaths of eleven of my merchants…?”
A little mercy. Had that soft-hearted scrap of mercy brought about this slaughter of other families?
“Not quite.”
Ferda shook his head.
“I am certain Frank Fontaine is involved, yet he cannot be the mastermind.”
“May I hear the reason for your certainty?”
He knew the question might overstep, yet Stefan needed something he could accept.
“Setting aside the refugees’ footprints, reports show twelve sets of tracks coming and going. That means thirty-two mercenaries took part in the assassination, does it not?”
“Yes.”
“The looted sum, at the highest estimate, is two hundred goldens. Split among thirty-two men, that comes to roughly three goldens and twenty-five shillings apiece.”
Three goldens and twenty-five shillings was no small amount. Yet for blood money it was meager.
“If they were cheap muscle one might shrug it off, but these were men skilled at erasing their own traces. Do you know what such men charge?”
“I do not.”
“They start at a minimum of fifty goldens a head. Even on the low end the total exceeds a thousand goldens.”
“A thousand… Frank’s finances could never have stretched that far even if he sold his soul.”
Stefan set the file down.
“If someone is trying to shake me, and that someone is a separate hand behind the curtain… just what kind of bastards are they…?”
“That is the good news.”
Ferda slipped a hand into the inner pocket of his coat.
“I was able to identify the hand behind it.”
He drew something out and laid it on the table.
A green scarf—the one that had been in the hand of a young refugee boy.
“This is…”
Stefan recognized it at once.
“It belongs to the men of my brother’s company… Why is it in Your Grace’s possession?”
“One of the refugee children said he saw one of the conspirators drop the scarf and picked it up.”
“Surely the hand behind it… that hand is…”
Stefan could not finish the sentence.
Yet both Ferda and Stefan already knew whose name would next enter the conversation. Shocked, Stefan finally let the glass slip from his fingers.
Crash!
It shattered and its contents spilled, but he paid no heed. Ferda, too, left the trivial mess alone.
Stefan covered his face with both hands. He no longer even knew what expression he wore.
“…Is it certain?”
“So he claimed.”
Stefan stretched out a hand and took the scarf. His pupils, shrunken with shock, traced every stitch of embroidery. Fixed in his gaze was the crest of House Pascal—two swords crossed behind it. He checked it again and again; there was no mistake. It was no counterfeit. It was the genuine article of the Pascal Mercenary Company.
“My brother’s company…”
Looking down at the scarf, Stefan spoke.
“They say a contract with the Pascal Mercenary Company is the same as a contract with the devil. Do you know what that means?”
“I do not.”
“Once you sign, you can never escape… that is the substance of it.”
A hollow laugh twisted across Stefan’s face, then immediately crumpled. Every emotion whirling through his mind seemed to leap out onto his features the moment it formed.
“When a contract with the Pascal Mercenary Company ends, bands of quiet bandits suddenly begin targeting the caravans—almost as if someone had deliberately tipped them off.”
Stefan’s voice trembled thinly.
“It was always strange. After a contract expired, the first expedition of the merchants was certain to go wrong. Robbery, or the hired mercenaries turning robber themselves, or simply deserting… eight times out of ten they met disaster, and seven of those eight came crawling back to sign with my brother again.”
“You believe it was Merchit’s own stage-play?”
“They say demand creates supply. In the safety business one must make the other party feel that need.”
Stefan recalled the recent friction with Merchit. The man had said, Let’s see how well you eat and live without me.
This was far more vicious than any ordinary raid whispered about in rumor. Those men had been as good as family to Stefan—seniors who were like fathers, juniors who were like brothers, peers who were friends.
Merchit had taken them all.
Simply because they had gotten in his way.
The scarf crumpled in Stefan’s fist. He squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lip. It hurt. He wanted to weep, yet no tears came; he wanted to scream, yet his throat locked. The pain was maddening, and because he did not know what to do with that pain it only grew more stifling.
At that moment Ruri entered the room and took her place beside Ferda.
“Lord Ferda. A guest has arrived.”
“At this hour of the night?”
Her eyes flicked once toward Stefan, who still clutched his head.
“Yes. Someone who specifically wishes to see both Lord Stefan and yourself.”
“M-me?”
“Who is it?”
The name that left Ruri’s lips stunned them both.
“He asked me to announce Merchit Pascal.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Your Grace the Regent.”
Merchit Pascal sat on the far side of the reception room and offered Ferda his greeting.
Looking at the two brothers side by side, Ferda found himself thinking: Is the same blood truly flowing through them?
Stefan carried the sheen of oil and the porcelain-smooth skin of a man who never saw hard weather—the very picture of a prosperous merchant, the sort whose chair would forever bear the imprint of a large peach-like rump. Merchit, by contrast, wore sun-bronzed skin and a short, rough-looking regent cut. A thick neck and broad shoulders filled out his formal coat; the threatening lines of muscle beneath made him look like a gang boss. Had their hair and eye colors differed, no one would ever have taken them for brothers unless they introduced themselves.
“Welcome, Sir Merchit.”
“‘Sir’? I’m just a squad leader of the common rabble.”
Merchit waved the honor off with an embarrassed, modest air. For a man who ought to have arrived as an unspeakable villain, he radiated an almost hearty good cheer.
Ferda felt it clearly: the man did not yet know he had been named a suspect. No—he was carrying himself as though the idea had never so much as crossed this side of the table.
“I heard my little brother was in a hard way, so I went looking and ended up at the castle itself. Thank you for this late-night hospitality.”
“Not at all. When times are hard, seeking out family is a good thing.”
After the light small talk, Merchit rolled his eyes toward Stefan. Stefan’s gaze was ice. Whether or not he sensed that coldness, Merchit offered comfort.
“Stefan. I heard the news. The eastern caravan was wiped out, they say?”
“……”
“Truly a pity. I know how loyal those lads were to you. That empty place must feel enormous.”
“……”
“I’ve already had our people carry the bad news to their families. We’ll take care of the funerals on our end as well. For now, just try to settle your heart.”
His words were those of the world’s kindest older brother. Yet that kindness existed only for those who did not know the truth beneath.
Stefan was neither blind nor deaf. He was a man who saw, heard, and thought; he knew what lay hidden behind that thick-skinned face.
“You are… truly shameless.”
“Hm?”
Even as rage boiled inside him, Stefan spoke with careful calm.
“You sent men to kill them all, and now you sit there pretending to be the good-hearted brother. Why?”
“……What?”
One of Merchit’s eyebrows climbed toward the ceiling.
The spark inside Stefan’s heart roared into open flame.