Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“Even so, I never expected my uncle to go looking for an alchemist. What on earth is he trying to commission?”

“I’m not sure about that part. I only know that he plans to attend the banquet at the Blair residence two weeks from now, bringing a certain man with him.”

Kiri then told her the man’s name and status. Only after turning the name over a few times did Irenea feel a flicker of recognition.

“I feel like I’ve seen that name somewhere recently…”

“The list Selen passed along. The list of Viscount Calio’s candidates for your groom.”

“Ah, that’s right. Now I remember.”

Last spring, a man who had graduated from the military academy under Viscount Calio’s sponsorship had borne that name. Of all the men on the list, he was said to have the best looks by far.

Recalling Selen’s added remark, Irenea let out a hollow laugh.

“I’m planning to announce my spouse at that banquet, and he means to show up with a man who’s unmarried and a total stranger to me?”

Something smelled. It reeked so foully it turned her stomach.

She didn’t know exactly what scheme he had in mind, but it was certainly a cheap trick, the sort back-alley thugs would use.

Did he even realize he was lower in standing than the very people he turned his nose up at as base?

“I’d almost prefer he boldly slipped poison into my glass.”

That way, she could gather evidence and have him prosecuted.

“Marchioness.”

As though to ask what kind of absurd thing she was saying, Kiri’s brow knitted tightly. Irenea waved her hands in mock alarm and told her not to look so scary.

“I know, I know. I won’t do anything dangerous. Honestly, you’re just as overprotective as your brother.”

“If only you’d act a little less like a moth to a flame, Marchioness, then perhaps it wouldn’t be overprotective…”

Her manner of speech was formal, but there was something in the substance that was oddly unguarded for mistress and servant.

Irenea cherished the two siblings, bound to her in the past and brought out of the fighting pits with her own hands in the present.

For that reason, she was very fond of how unreservedly the two behaved around her.

“Anyway, so he won’t say the details unless I come in person?”

“Yes.”

“Honestly, I’m busy to death, so why does he keep ordering me back and forth?”

I really did spoil her.

Picturing Selen’s irritating face in her mind, Irenea furrowed her lovely brow.

“I’ll use this chance to knock that character into shape once and for all. Kiri, help me out.”

With Kiri’s help, Irenea changed her clothes inside the moving carriage and pulled a bonnet down over her head.

She’d repeated this routine dozens of times by now, so she could do it with her eyes closed.

“How’s this? You can’t see my face, can you?”

“No, Marchioness.”

“Then wait for me here. I’ll be back soon.”

She was going into the back alleys alone, leaving every guard knight behind.

Kiri drew a breath as though she had a great deal to say, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was a wish for a safe return.

“Take care of the paperwork while I’m gone!”

Kiri watched Irenea go off so blithely with a face sick with worry, but in truth there was no need.

For Irenea was a VIP under the protection of Selen, the head of the information guild “Moon Shadow,” which held the back alleys in an iron grip.

The guild that originally ruled the capital’s back alleys was not Moon Shadow, but the assassins’ guild “Silent Swamp.”

Up until exactly two years ago.

They had boasted tremendous influence in the back alleys, and even if someone was stabbed for no reason while passing by, one look at the tattoo of two overlapping S’s on the attacker’s hand and they couldn’t so much as protest, let alone retaliate.

The ones who finally brought down the tyrannical Silent Swamp were the information guild “Moon Shadow.”

Their beginnings were modest. People who had suffered harm, great and small, at the hands of Silent Swamp had begun to band together, saying they couldn’t go on living like this.

Did they come drifting into the back alleys because they wanted to? It was a place where those with nowhere else to go had flowed to the lowest ground and pooled.

They had nowhere left to run. So the place where they lived had to be made fit for people to live in.

But before they could do anything, someone’s betrayal put Moon Shadow’s existence at risk of exposure. And then, one helping hand reached out to them.

‘I’ll prepare a refuge for you. I’ll deal with your pursuers, so hide there for now.’

They were already cornered, with no room for suspicion. And so the head and executives of Moon Shadow barely managed to survive the crisis.

Only after their lives were safe did they begin to doubt the motives of the one who had reached out to them. Who on earth was helping them, and for what purpose?

‘I know what you’re trying to do. I’ll help you with it.’

‘…And in return?’

‘You’re going to build an information guild in the back alleys, right? Just make me your customer for life. For free, of course.’

The head and executives of Moon Shadow, to be frank, thought she was out of her mind.

But now that their existence had been exposed, time was not on their side. They had to succeed in their uprising before the innocent residents of the back alleys were all killed off.

So they took her hand, and as it turned out, it was an excellent choice.

Two years later, Moon Shadow had completely driven out the remnants of Silent Swamp and become the master of the capital’s back alleys and black market.

“Welcome! So good to see you again, welcome, Lady Linia! Was your journey pleasant?”

“Not at all. I told you I was busy. Your delivery service is simply dreadful. Do I really have to come all the way here to pick things up myself?”

“Please take that matter up with our Master…”

The face of the girl who had come out to greet her, so thrilled a moment ago, visibly drooped.

Irenea had grown close enough to the girl that she no longer fell for this expression, but she still pretended to be fooled.

This girl, named Julie, was so adorable that she reminded her of her two sisters.

“So, where’s the Master?”

“Waiting below. I’ll show you the way!”

Julie eagerly took the cookie Irenea handed her and, in a thrilled voice, took her by the hand.

Guided by Julie, who ran along in short, scurrying steps, she entered an inner room containing a secret door that led to the basement stairs.

“The Master has been waiting for your visit till her neck stretched! Please hurry in!”

“When exactly does that neck of hers finally break off?”

Every time she came, they said Selen had been waiting until her neck stretched, but she had never once seen it actually happen.

‘Always playing pranks, that one.’

Today would be no different. Even as she went down to the basement thinking so, Irenea was left speechless by the sight that opened up before her.

‘Ta-da, ta-da-daa!’

The place she had come to was undoubtedly the headquarters of an information guild, yet what lay before her was the scene of a magnificent banquet hall.

“Oh, good heavens…”

“Moon Shadow’s one and only VIP, Lady Linia, has arrived!”

Having clearly seen it done somewhere, the doorman standing beside the door even blew a trumpet.

Members of the organization, convincingly decked out in gowns and tailcoats, clapped their hands at the sight of her.

“Eek, it’s Lady Linia!”

“We love you, Lady Linia!”

Theatrical words of welcome poured out, affected and accompanied by whistles.

‘Why do I have to be the one embarrassed?!’

Irenea faltered and took a step back, as if about to flee.

Did someone notice her move? Standing in the middle of the banquet hall, a woman in a neat tailcoat with short green hair came toward her, grinned, and held out a hand.

“May I have your hand, my lady?”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to do this?”

The abandoned house standing amid the back alleys, tangled as complicated as an ant colony, was a disguise, and the information guild’s headquarters began from the basement beneath it.

Selen, the guild’s master, had left the headquarters’ entrance open so that anyone belonging to Moon Shadow could come and go, and once or twice a month she decorated the basement lobby lavishly.

When Irenea had seen it dressed up like a jungle, with potted plants large and small hauled in, she’d thought nothing could surprise her further. Yet she never would have imagined a banquet hall.

“I’m already dying from being summoned to one event after another… Why do I have to put up with this wretched sight here too…?”

At Irenea’s teeth-gritted question, Selen grinned slyly and jerked her chin at their surroundings, telling her to take a look.

“I keep telling you, I’m not doing this for my own pleasure. Everyone here loves this sort of thing so much.”

Irenea was not unaware that the people of the back alleys, whose freedom had been crushed under Silent Swamp’s tyranny, were now living each day happily.

So she had no intention of laughing at their clumsy imitation of high society, but why did they have to drag her into the back alley’s festivities every single time?

“Selen. I keep telling you, I’m…”

“A busy person? Yes, I know that well. You have a lot you want to hear from me, don’t you?”

Winking one eye, she led the hand she had half-forcibly taken toward the center of the hall.

When Selen bowed gracefully, the band stopped what it was playing and began a new dance tune.

“My lady! Please accept the Master’s invitation to dance!”

“The Master’s been counting the days to this one!”

Yes, I’m sure she has. She lives for the fun of teasing me.

In the end, Irenea gave in to the surrounding crowd’s cheers, or pretended to, spread her skirts and curtsied.

Out of spite at the beaming woman who clasped her hand, she wanted to stomp hard on her boot-clad foot, but Selen, somehow sensing it, slipped her feet away every time, and even that failed.

“So, my lady, what news are you most curious about?”

“What medicine did my uncle commission?”

Had she decided she’d played along long enough? Or had she herself noticed Irenea’s voice turn sharp?

Selen pulled Irenea, who had just spun a full turn, tight against her waist and whispered straight into her ear.

“What he ordered from the alchemist is a love potion.”

“A love potion?”

“A potion made by burning a single strand of someone’s hair. The instant you drink it, my lady, you’ll fall in love with that person.”

No matter whom you love right now.

At Selen’s whisper, goosebumps prickled across Irenea’s skin.

“That’s absurd… Can a potion really force a person’s feelings that far?”

“Most of what alchemists make is that sort of thing. You’re not unaware of that, my lady, are you?”

Honestly, she hadn’t known they could make even that kind of potion.

The medicine she had obtained through an alchemist in the past was a permanent contraceptive. A potion that had made her infertile with just a single drink.

Thanks to it, she had been able to avoid bearing the child of her dreadful former husband.

Later… it had been bitterly painful that she could not bear the child of the man she loved either.