/
Noisy.
“-so that’s when I said, ‘How could you do something so dishonourable!?’ Do you know what the reply was?-”
Calian hated drunk people. More than that, he hated noisy drunk people.
Calian didn’t bother to hide how uncomfortable he was and looked at Hale sitting in front of him.
After they’d had dinner, he had wanted to ask some questions about the man who had attacked Calian so he had asked him to sit down with a drink, hoping to loosen his tongue a little and now he was in trouble.
Sat in front of him, Hale was face down on the table, arms stretched out, still holding the wine glass in front of him. He tried to raise his head and bring the wine glass to his lips but thanks to that, the wine glass fell sideways and the red alcohol soaked into the white tablecloth.
“Oh your highness! I guess I’m a little drunk,”
Well, at least he was aware of that.
Who could he even blame? Calian had suggested having a drink.
Wine overflowed from the table one drop at a time and fell to the floor, watching it reminded Calian of something,
‘Come to think of it, I didn’t even ask his name,’
Calian thought of the man who’d had his hand eventually cut off by Yuran’s sword and lowered hi seyes. Whether he was looking at him or not, Hale’s words continued to flow endlessly.
“Anyway, after that, I haven’t contacted him for more than three months – your highness, too, should be careful of that man and never build a close relationship with him,”
Hale continued to gossip about the Lord of some place around here and clicked his tongue, he then cut off Hale’s words and asked,
“Are there any plans for a priest of Tensil to visit this place or perhaps the Royal Palace?”
Rather than asking out of curiosity, he had brought it up due to the possibility of that mouth slandering Rumein next.
At that, the count stopped talking – he then slowly opened his mouth as he searched through his memories with a sharp gaze.
“I can’t be sure, there might have been – or were there none,”
The answer was spectacular.
Calian laughed out loud.
The butler that had been standing next to Hale looked restless. Not only had the prince been attacked in his territory, but now he was drunk before the prince, giving nonsense answers like that.
“The noses of Tensil’s new officials are ready to pierce the sky – would they come to such a rural corner? They might have? Probably not though,”
Hale said something similar again. The butler looked like he was about to cry and Calian smiled internally.
‘If it’s like this, even if I don’t come out of my room tomorrow, you wouldn’t suspect a thing would you?’
The reason he allowed Hale to go on like this was because he was planning to sneak out of the castle tonight.
If he didn’t manage to come back by tomorrow morning, then it was clear that Hale would be suspicious so he created the excuse that he was angry with Hale’s rude attitude and intended to spin the story as though he was refusing to meet him.
And the reason he had to sneak out of the castle was because of the name that had popped out of the mouth of the man he had met.
Blue Warbler.
The spy who reported directly to the King of Secretia, Devlan.
From what he remembered, Blue Warber’s mission was to monitor the relationship between Kyris and Tensil.
It was a simple surveillance mission which never required direct meetings with Tensil’s officials or priests and no such meetings had been reported either.
That wasn’t all.
The area Blue Warbler was assigned to wasn’t this countryside estate but the capital, Kyrisis. In a place like this, where it was difficult to even see the shadow of Tensil’s officials and priests, there was no effective way to monitor the relationship between the two kingdoms.
Of course, he wasn’t trying to find out why Secretia’s spy was outside of their operating sphere out of simple curiosity.
Blue Warbler was a person who had been somewhat acquainted with Bern, so Calian was fully aware that their skillset was somewhat unique.
‘They’ve never failed a mission,’
Such a skillful spy of Secretia – there was no way they wouldn’t have recognised the Prince of Kyris. So what were they searching for, that was so important, that it was worth shooting arrows at Calian’s party?
“Your highness,”
Calian, who had been lost in his thoughts, was called out of his reverie by Yan. He followed Yan’s gaze to see Arsen coming into the hall, his shoulders slightly wet.
He nodded slightly without saying anything. It seems the preparations to leave had been completed.
Hale, who could not know about such preparations, began babbling in front of him again.
“Tensil’s priests are very black-heared people. I’ve met them haven’t I? The people of Tensil and their officials are all the same. If you turn it upside down, there is nothing that is free of dust.”
Calian sighed as if he was still listening.
On behalf of Hale, who still wasn’t coming to his senses, the butler’s waist folded in a bow.
Calian raised a hand to his head, as if he was very displeased, and a small mutter came out of Calian’s mouth,
[Sleep]
Hale, who had continued muttering incoherently, began snoring.
Calian, raised his head, frowning,
“What in the-”
The butler was close to getting on all fours with his head touching the ground.
“He’s doing all sorts,”
Calian lifted the napkin that was spread on his lap and put it on the table. Yan quickly approached and pulled his chair back, sending the butler a look of disapproval.
Calian turned and left, without paying any attention to the bowing butler. He walked back to his room as fast as he could and Arsen quickly followed behind him and spoke in a small voice,
“I caught the bird,”
What Arsen was saying was that he had caught the carrier pigeon.
Fortunately, when Calian had first entered the city, he had not had Sia hidden in a robe.
Was that all?
When Hale had met Calian at the city gates, he had greeted him as obnoxiously as he could. So if not Blue Warbler directly, then the chasers would have seen Sia and delivered the news to Blue Warbler that they were staying in his city.
At least, Calian thought that should be the case.