Episode 57
âWhy on earth⊠would the Marquis OrionâŠ?â
One of the team members, who had been standing there in a daze, finally voiced the question. It was trueâOrion had been in hiding for a long time, and had only just returned to the political scene. Aside from his high-ranking noble title, there didnât seem to be any justification for appointing him as the head of the Special Task Force.
Orion quietly scanned the faces of the team members before speaking in a low voice.
âThis Special Task Force was formed around the Ministry of Oversight and the Intelligence Bureau. Since I served as Director of the Intelligence Bureau, I became the team leader. Any objections?â
No one answered.
Yan and I already knew he would be appointed team leader, so we stayed silent. The others, however, were stunned to learn that the Marquis Orion was the head of the shadowy and secretive Intelligence Bureau. By the end of the day, rumors about what Orion had been doing all this time would spread throughout the entire imperial palace.
Sigh.
I couldnât help letting out a breath. David had worked up so much resolve for this, but the Crown Prince just went, âWell, if someoneâs going to shake things up, it might as well be someone high-ranking!â and promptly shoved Orion into the leaderâs seatâwhile publicly revealing his position as Director of the Intelligence Bureau, no less.
Well⊠knowing that Crown Prince, he wouldnât act without some sort of plan. Surely, he had his reasons for boldly playing the Orion card.
I turned to Yan, thinking: Youâre the vice-captain, so surely you know moreâŠ
âHaaâŠâ
But the deep sigh I heard from right beside my ear made me think that maybe⊠the Crown Prince really had acted without any foresight at all.
There were a lot of nobles in the Empire. With a population of forty million, and about 10% of them being nobility, that meant roughly four million nobles in total.
Of course, that number included minor nobles like those who had only been knighted or had passed the palace exam, country lords barely different from commoners, and their children and grandchildren.
We didnât need to investigate all those people. Though the official name of the project was âNoble Asset Investigation,â the real targets were the influential nobles in the capital and the high-ranking palace officials.
Even among the imperial family, there were countless distant relatives, but once you narrowed it down to truly influential houses, the number became much smaller. In fact, only the Emperor, the Crown Prince, and the Second Prince were direct bloodline royalsâmaking that list far easier to manage.
Orion divided the noble list he had prepared into categories by house and region and handed them out to the team. The list I received mostly focused on Count Lev and the vassal families under himârecently known to have become the Emperorâs new lapdog. Clearly, Orion had deliberately assigned me to investigate them.
âFamiliarize yourselves with your assigned houses. We have cooperation channels set up with the security units of each territoryâuse them whenever needed. If the situation requires force, you have authorization.â
As soon as the orders were given, the Special Task Force began preparing to investigate their assigned targets. Yan, who seemed to have prepared something beforehand, immediately grabbed his coat andâstrangelyâlooked at me with an almost competitive gleam in his eye as he left.
âŠApparently, there wasnât a single sane person around the Crown Prince.
While the investigation was underway, the palace itself seemed to come to a standstill.
Every department not deemed absolutely essential for the nationâs operation was ordered to assist in the investigation.
The Crown Prince was clearly out for bloodâanyone who dared to object even slightly was instantly treated as though they were a traitor.
In fact, one department head had loudly demanded to know why he was being investigatedâand by the next day, he became the first priority target of the Special Task Force. They wrung him dry, down to the last speck of dust.
As a result, the atmosphere in the palace became stiflingly heavyâno one even dared to breathe too loudly.
Not that it mattered to me right now⊠because I was too busy recoiling at the mountain of documents I had just brought from Count Levâs estate.
âWhy is there so much of this?!â
Count Lev was a powerful noble in the capital, so I had expected a lot of paperwork to come out of raiding his office. But this⊠this was beyond what I imagined. If one house already had this much, then what about all the other nobles combinedâŠ
Sigh.
This was paperwork hell.
The only consolation was that I wasnât the only one buried alive in itâYan, the other team members, and even Captain David were all floundering in the same sea of documents.
I let out a deep sigh and picked up the top sheet.
ââŠThis guyâs obsessed with antiques?â
The Lev family had always been wealthyâtheir lands were mostly fertile plains, and with a long history, they had accumulated considerable assets over generations.
Now, however, their wealth was being slowly chipped away⊠because the current Count Lev was obsessed with buying antiques.
Looking at this, I wondered if maybe he did really believe those cheap ceramics were genuine antiques.
Noâif he actually knew about antiques, that would be even less likely.
Anyway, it wasnât particularly relevant, so I skipped ahead.
From what I could see, their wealth seemed to be growing naturally thanks to their rich lands and assetsâthey didnât need shady dealings to make money. Even the Countâs crazy antique purchases didnât really dent the fortune.
And there were no signs of corruptionâcertainly nothing like Bareil, who ran a slave-trading operation to fund the Emperor.
âŠThe Emperor?
Now that I thought about it, once Bareilâs money pipeline was cut off, the Emperorâs new source had become Count Lev. Would the Emperor really not have demanded money from him? Or slaves? No way.
But no matter how much I combed through the papers, there was no sign of suspicious money transfers.
ââŠThatâs suspicious.â
If Count Lev was the Emperorâs cash cow, there should be traces of him being milked. The absence of any such record meant only one thingâthere had to be a secret channel invisible in the official paperwork.
Surely he wasnât running another slave operation? But after the big bust at Carrieâs Bar, all the other covert slave-trading venues had voluntarily shut down out of fear. The Crown Prince had imposed the maximum penalty, and no one wanted to be next.
Still⊠the Emperorâs obsession with slaves was extremeâheâd even bought the Prince of Aint as one.
There had to be something.
I set aside the Lev family papers. If the connection didnât show up there, then maybe he was using a vassal house as a front.
I pulled forward the files on the Countâs subordinate families. That seemed like the best way to find the link.
âPesilian Trading Company?â
Ron poked a fork into a slice of cake, deep in thought. When I placed a strawberry on top of the piece he had cut, his mouth stretched into a huge smile, and he immediately popped it into his mouth. After swallowing, he asked,
âWhy them?â
âI was wondering if the Ministry of Justice had dug anything up on them.â
âWell⊠Iâve been stuck at the mansion this whole time. Youâre the one in the palaceâshouldnât you know better? Arenât there Ministry of Justice people on the Task Force?â
âThere are, but they all work independently. I havenât gotten close to any of them.â
ââŠBut you could ask them.â
If Ron saw the state of the Special Task Force office, he would never say that. How could I ask overworked peopleâbarely keeping their heads above a flood of papersâto do even more? That would be inhuman.
Noticing my sour expression, Ron gave me the pitiful look of a dog trying to gauge its ownerâs mood. After a while, he quietly slid a piece of cake onto my fork.
I couldnât help but smile at how cute he looked. That made him wag his invisible tail happily.
âWant me to find out for you?â
âYou can?â
âWell, our family does have its own intelligence network. Or I could just hire the Information Guild.â
Oho, the Information GuildâŠ
Based on Ronâs personality, I wasnât sure how reliable the Metailer familyâs intelligence network was. It wasnât that I doubted him, but internal political info networks werenât necessarily great at this kind of work.
The Information Guild sounded betterâbut was it secure?
After all, the last time Bareil sent a letter to the Emperor, the Crown Prince had intercepted it. My trust in the guild had taken a nosedive since then.
âIf itâs Pesilian Trading Company, theyâre bigâtheyâll have plenty of info. And if needed, just say youâre from the Metailer family. That alone can be useful leverage.â
Ron, sensing my concern, set another piece of cake on my fork. I smiled and ate it.
Honestly, he was adorableâpinpointing exactly what I was worried about and offering a solution. Also, the way the cake had mysteriously migrated almost entirely to my side of the tableâŠ
As Ron tilted his head expectantly for praise, I ruffled his red hair, chuckling at the warm, ticklish feeling it gave me.
âThe Information Guild has two S-class files, thirty-seven A-class files, and over three hundred files rated B or lower on the Pesilian Trading Company. Which grade do you want? If youâre after something specific, we can assess it and price it accordingly.â
For a moment, I was stunned.
They classified information by grade? And why were there so many B-class or lower files? Did they even sell information on how many times the Pesilian Baron went to the bathroom?
I quickly shut my open mouth and asked calmly,
âHow much for S-class?â
âThat depends on the information. Most people pay with a noble house promissory note.â
Meaning⊠it wasnât just a matter of a few gold coins.
After some thought, I decided to buy both S-class files. On the way here, Ron had slipped me the Metailer family seal, saying to use it if I needed it.
âŠRon, Iâm sorry.
If the Metailer family goes bankrupt, it might just be my fault.
