Read Novel Full Chapter 459: The Spokesperson of Lust
Chapter 459: The Spokesperson of Lust
In the past, a legion on the march moved with masses of pack beasts, land dragons, and a handful of stone demons accompanying the main force. Now that it was the Palace Guard Corps setting out, a legion made up entirely of beast knights, the spectacle was grander still.
It was not just ordinary pack beasts and land dragons this time. No small number of earth-piercing beasts moved along the ground. Wind lizard dragons circled overhead. And scattered among them all were a few other kinds of magical beast besides.
One look was enough to stagger anyone.
The main army and its baggage train waited outside the city walls, while the beast knights gathered to a man in the square before the palace to take their leave of the king. He stood there with his lords and ministers, and away in the distance crowds of city folk had gathered to watch.
"Those Palace Guard Corps magical beasts, they really do look terrifying!" The people of Moonlight City had seen the Palace Guard Corps at its drills before, but for many of them this was the first time the magical beasts had come so close.
"They do look amazing, though." The wind lizard dragons looked savage and fearsome, and the more savage they looked, the more it proved their strength. No small number of the young were left full of longing and admiration.
"If only I could be a beast knight too." Watching the magical beasts was enough, for some of them, to make them want to become beast knights themselves.
"Are they off to Moonlight Province to put down the rebellion?" The older folk among them were watching for something else entirely.
"Looks like the northwest really has gone to pieces, then." Word had already come in from the northwest, but ordinary folk at the bottom had heard only rumors and could be sure of nothing. Now it seemed the truth of it was beyond doubt.
Beneath his wind lizard dragon, grown a full size larger now, Anu stood receiving His Majesty's final words.At the king's side stood the commander of another extraordinary legion, a third-rank ability user.
With the Palace Guard Corps gone, the guarding of the City of Fire Protection would fall to them in Anu's place, so that two extraordinary legions would still stand watch over the capital.
Anu had heard they meant to change class to alchemist before long, and that they had grown quite close to the Desire Divine System of late.
The king offered Anu a few words of encouragement, and said at last.
"I shall be waiting in the palace for your return in triumph."
Anu straightened and nodded, and said nothing more.
The wind lizard dragon bent its long neck low and let him climb onto its back, then spread its wings and took to the air. Close behind him, one wind lizard dragon knight after another surged up into the sky with him.
Wind lizard dragon after wind lizard dragon swept low over the rooftops of the city, kicking up gust after gust of wind.
Through the streets the mighty earth-piercing beasts marched in formation, and the beast knights astride them, lances in hand, armored head to foot, looked out over the crowds with cold, level eyes.
Every eye in the city followed them, and children ran chasing along the roadside, shouting at the top of their lungs.
"Amazing!"
"It's flying!"
"Look at the size of that thing, the ground shakes when it runs!"
So the whole Palace Guard Corps marched out for Moonlight Province, cutting across another province on the way. Even so, the sheer mobility of their magical beasts carried them to the border of Moonlight Province in little more than ten days, and the only things that had slowed them were the baggage train and the ordinary soldiers dragging behind, along with the rough mountain country to the north.
The army did not push rashly ahead. It made camp right there at the border instead.
"What should we do? Where do we even start?"
The Palace Guard Corps' deputy commander had settled the camp assignments and come straight into Commander Anu's tent to ask, and the other officers crowded in behind, every eye turning to Anu.
All along Anu had said the specifics would wait until they arrived. Now they had arrived.
Anu tapped a hand against the reports spread across the table, the ones the various nobles had sent in, each detailing where rebels had appeared, where fierce fighting had broken out, and every manner of other detail.
As far as Anu was concerned, though, this intelligence from the local nobles was worth about as much as scrap paper.
"First, let us get one thing straight. What exactly is going on with these rebels?"
"Who exactly is behind the unrest?"
"Or else... are these rebels even rebels at all?"
On the map of Moonlight Province, Anu drew a circle around one of the counties.
"The rebellion started in Fallen Leaf County. Since the nobles and lords of Moonlight Province all say the rebels here are the most brazen and out of control, that is where we will start."
"We will help them take care of their biggest headache."
From the moment he reached the border of Moonlight Province, Anu had held his position and sent wind lizard dragons ahead into Fallen Leaf County to scout the situation, to see just how far the unrest had spread and how many rebels there truly were.
Several days on, he had pinned down at last where these "rebels" actually were.
Anu called together the most mobile of his men at once. One after another the beast knights swung up onto wind lizard dragons and earth-piercing beasts, and showed their First Form, the Mounted Form.
At the same time, both the wind lizard dragons and the earth-piercing beasts went laden with men clinging to their bodies.
Ten men to a magical beast, sometimes closer to twenty, every one of them strapped on. It was no method for a long flight, certainly, but for moving troops a short distance it would do well enough.
The moment they reached Fallen Leaf County they split into three groups and drove swiftly toward three different points inside it.
And while the Palace Guard Corps bore down on Fallen Leaf County at breakneck speed, a drama of its own was already playing out inside the county.
Fallen Leaf County
Farmers stripped of their land and their homes had been driven into the jungle to hide, a full several thousand of them sheltering there, throwing together a makeshift, hidden settlement in its caves and ravines.
They had all been ordinary folk of Fallen Leaf County once, drawn from every corner of it.
Then, a little over two months ago, someone had begun attacking one village after another across Fallen Leaf County, burning their homes to the ground and stripping them of everything they owned.
Every elder was killed. Every able-bodied adult was dragged off to be sold as a slave.
Some of them had fled their homes in the panic, only to find the same thing happening everywhere across Fallen Leaf County.
Everywhere there were refugees fleeing for their lives, and everywhere there were the "bandits" cutting them down.
So they had banded together and fled into this stretch of jungle.
They lived in constant dread now, hiding in the hills, never daring to step outside. Their food was dwindling away, and what they could scavenge from the mountains came nowhere near enough for so many mouths. Not one of them knew what to do next.
In one of the caves a group of the refugees sat talking over what to do.
These were no ordinary farmers. Some were craftsmen, some had traveled as merchants once, and all of them counted among the more worldly-wise of the common folk.
"Is it still that bad out there?" Someone wanted to go out and look.
"More folk have fled up into the hills these last few days. It's bandits killing people everywhere out there." Someone shared the latest news. So much time had passed, and things outside had not gotten better at all. They had gotten worse.
"What bandits? Every last one of them is a soldier of the Fallen Leaf family," someone shouted, furious beyond words.
"When they burned our village, I knew the man at the head of them. I'd seen him before, back when Fallen Leaf County was still the Fallen Leaf Fief. He's the one who used to come round collecting the taxes." Another voice confirmed it at once.
"That's right. Since when does a bandit ride a land dragon? Those are Fallen Leaf family knights." Agreement rippled through the group, every one of them burning with hatred for the bandits who had torched their homes.
And at that very moment, a force of nearly a thousand men, looking for all the world like a regular local army, was pushing its way into the jungle under someone's guidance.
The jungle was thick and shadowed, but with a guide at their head they found the refugees' hiding place quickly enough.
Before long the sounds of commotion carried in from outside.
"This is bad!"
"Those men are back again!"
"Bandits... the bandits are here!"
"Bandits nothing, it's the Fallen Leaf family's army out there!"
"So many of them... it's nothing but men out there!"
The snake person who had been part of the discussion inside the cave rushed out at once, and saw soldiers pouring in through the mouth of the ravine without end, cutting down the refugees within.
"Do we run?" Fear took hold of someone at once.
"The mouth of the ravine is blocked. There's nowhere left to run." One look around at their situation, though, and they saw there truly was no way out.
"Whose idea was it to pick this place? Didn't anyone think about how we'd get out?" They had all been farmers and craftsmen before this. All they had thought about was how hidden the place was, and never once what might come after.
"Then we fight them to the death!" Driven to the very edge, they had gone half mad.
The refugees hiding in the hills snatched up whatever crude weapons they had. The luckiest gripped knives, spears, iron hammers. Others made do with farm tools. The worst off came down the slope clutching nothing but a wooden club.
"Kill!"
"Vengeance, vengeance..."
"We'll take them down with us!"
Weapons like these stood no chance against soldiers armed to the teeth.
The knights on their land dragons and the soldiers in leather armor scattered them with ease, and the burning fervor of a moment before curdled fast into fear and helplessness.
No small number of them dropped flat to the ground and surrendered. Others ran in blind circles like headless flies.
"Don't kill me!"
"Don't kill me, I surrender!"
"Please, my lord, spare me!"
"Ah!"
The whole scene dissolved into chaos. The soldiers and knights, well-drilled as they were, never once let their formation break.
The knight at the head of the army charged in front, cut a way into the cave, and killed every last one of the ringleaders inside.
A moment more and the cave held nothing but a scattering of bodies.
Then the knight gave orders at once to the soldiers under their command.
"That's enough. Have them stand down."
"Round up the rest of them. Have the slave traders from the City of No Guilt come take a look, see which ones they want, and what they're worth."
The slave traders would not take just anyone, of course. Hauling them all the way out came at no small cost.
Climbing down from the land dragon, the knight looked over the bodies scattered across the ground and spoke with open contempt.
"All this land belongs to the lord. These people worked the lord's land and still wouldn't do as the lord said. Now they're paying the price for it."
"Did they think turning it into Fallen Leaf County meant the lord no longer had say over them?"
"No matter what they call it, this will always be the Fallen Leaf Fief."
And just then a bone-chilling shriek split the sky.
Hiss!
Every head turned up toward the sky.
"What's that up in the sky?" All that could be seen were dark shapes circling one after another against the sky.
"Wing demons? Are those wing demons?" Anything that flew still brought wing demons to mind first for most people. Wind lizard dragons had appeared only recently, and the people of Moonlight Province, more than most, had never once laid eyes on such creatures before.
"Where did this many wing demons come from?" The knight came rushing out of the cave as well. Only seven or eight shapes hung in the sky, but to them even that was terrifying enough.
And at that moment the earth split apart.
Boom~ The ground buckled upward, and rock shattered apart.
Roar! A massive head broke free of the earth, and let out a bellow.
Before every terrified eye a monstrous creature burst up out of the ground and bit down, crushing an iron-armored knight and his land dragon together in a single snap of its jaws.
It was an earth-piercing beast.
Its arrival was a war horn sounding. One earth-piercing beast after another came bursting up from beneath the ground, and the land dragons scattered in wild panic, a few of them blind enough with terror to charge straight into those waiting jaws.
Overhead the circling wind lizard dragons came diving down as well, soldiers leaping from their backs one after the next.
Some raised great shields. Others drew alchemy crossbows and every manner of weapon.
They formed up in squads of seven and turned to face the soldiers below.
Fewer than a hundred of them had come, along with a dozen or so magical beasts, and still they left the thousand-odd men of the local noble's private army with nowhere left to run.
It was more savage, more bloody, than anything the noble's private army had just done to the common folk. The slightest motion from those terrible wind lizard dragons and earth-piercing beasts was enough to flatten a man into paste.
Terrible lances swept in and skewered men up into the air like so many falling leaves.
A few among them were ability users, and even those died under the wind lizard dragons' blasts of compressed air.
Step by step the soldiers with alchemy weapons pressed forward, driving the men who had just been slaughtering refugees into a dead end.
The soldiers of Fallen Leaf County were left utterly at a loss, with no way to make sense of where these men falling out of the sky and bursting up from the earth had come from.
"Who are these people?"
"Where did they come from?"
"What are these flying monsters?"
"And where did the monster riding a flying monster come from?"
They were terrified out of their wits, every one, and beaten senseless besides.
All they could do was watch their comrades fall around them one after another, their formation drawing tighter and tighter, until at last there was nothing left to see anywhere but those monsters.
"Who are you?"
"Who are you people, really?"
One of them went mad and charged straight out, screaming, only to be nailed to the ground by a lance several meters long.
Anu had stayed up in the sky the whole while, watching from his wind lizard dragon. A small affair like this hardly called for him to step in himself.
Not until the Palace Guard Corps' soldiers had cut down nearly all of them, leaving only a handful of the ringleaders alive under guard.
Only then did he come down out of the sky, and looking over the Fallen Leaf Lord's private army, wiped out to the last man, he nodded, satisfied.
He had never meant to hold back, not from the very start. These people were going to get a taste of exactly what they were dealing with.
And he had a perfectly legitimate reason for it besides. He had wiped out these "rebels" who had "caused the unrest" down to the last man.
The refugees who had fled into the hills stood slack-jawed with terror at the Palace Guard Corps' magical beasts and their savagery. Anu looked them over, then turned at once to his deputy commander.
The deputy commander went at once to stand in front of the refugees, and spoke to them.
"There's no need to panic."
"I am the kingdom's Palace Guard Corps commander, sent by His Majesty to Moonlight Province to deal with the bandits and the rebellion here."
"Gather everyone together now. Don't go running off in every direction..."
Anu waved over one of his wind lizard dragon knights. "Go and tell the magistrate of Fallen Leaf County. Oh, and the current head of the Fallen Leaf family as well."
"Tell them the kingdom's Palace Guard Corps has arrived, and has already wiped out the rebels within Fallen Leaf County."
The beast knight on the wind lizard dragon broke into a wide grin, and called back loudly.
"Got it. I'll let them know right away."
"I'll tell them not to be afraid, not to worry, the rebels who stirred up the unrest have all been wiped out clean."
Before long another group came hurrying up, drawn by the news.
The sight of the bodies strewn everywhere struck them with grief.
The man at their head all but screamed. "Those were soldiers putting down the rebellion, my own domain's private army!"
Then he pointed to the refugees standing off to one side, their clothes hanging in rags, and said.
"These are the real rebels."
"They are the rebels!"
"You killed the wrong people."
"You killed the wrong people!"
The man at their head picked out the largest of the wind lizard dragons, and Anu standing surrounded by his men, and rushed forward at once, unable to contain himself.
"I am the lord of the Fallen Leaf family."
"You must be Commander Anu!"
Anu answered with perfect seriousness. "That is right. I am Anu, Commander of the Palace Guard Corps."
Furious, the lord of the Fallen Leaf family said it all over again, telling Anu again and again that the men killed had been his own family's private army, sent to put down the rebellion, and no rebels at all.
Wearing a look of thorough surprise, Anu drew out a letter the Fallen Leaf family had sent up.
"It says plainly here that the rebels of Fallen Leaf County are savage in the extreme, laying siege to villages and towns, harrying cities, and that you were powerless to put them down."
"You are telling me that these plundered common folk, a crowd who do not have a scrap of armor between them, are the savage rebels you spoke of?"
The lord of the Fallen Leaf family was at a loss for words at once, stammering and stuttering.
It did not take him long to find an excuse, though.
"That's because the rebels have already been wiped out. These are nothing but the scattered remnants left after their defeat, which is exactly why they ran into the hills."
Anu waved a hand, and had one of the dozen or so men left alive and under guard brought forward.
"Bringing slave traders along to put down a rebellion. Putting the rebellion down with one hand and selling slaves over the border with the other. I will admit, that is a first for me."
The lord of the Fallen Leaf family showed not the slightest shame, and did not even bother to hide it.
"Is there a problem?"
"A pack of rioters, and we let them live on as slaves. We've already been merciful and lenie..."
Anu laughed, cold, and cut him off flat before he had even finished speaking.
"What you say counts for nothing. All I know is that I wiped out a band of rebels who were plundering Fallen Leaf County and preying on the kingdom's own people."
"My own eyes saw them slaughtering unarmed common folk, saw them bringing slave traders and slave-catching gangs in from beyond the border to seize people of Suinhor."
"Men like that are rebels beyond any doubt."
The man was furious beyond all measure. "Lord Anu!"
"I will report this to His Majesty. I will tell every minister in the capital, tell everyone how insolent and overbearing you've been."
"You have no right to kill my men. Killing the private soldiers of a lord of this kingdom, that breaks the law, that's..."
Anu paid the furious shouting no mind, and spoke instead straight to the soldiers under his command.
"Cut off every one of these rebels' heads for me. Do not miss a single one. Every head counts toward merit."
"If you miss one and lose out on the credit later, do not come crying to me about it."
Fierce and unyielding to a man, the Palace Guard Corps' soldiers fixed the lord of the Fallen Leaf family with savage stares.
"Can't let a single one slip by. Better cut a few extra, just in case."
A chill ran down the lord of the Fallen Leaf family's neck, as though these men were about to take his head as well.
All the bluster went out of him in an instant, and he did not dare say another word.
Anu turned back around, though, and went on.
"Keep the rest of them well under guard for me, and question them properly. Find out why they betrayed the kingdom, and who put them up to it."
Furious past bearing, the lord who had once ruled the Fallen Leaf Fief raised his arm and leveled a finger at the lizard person in front of him.
"You..."
That single word "you" hung in his mouth a long moment, and the rest of the sentence never came.
His back still turned, Anu delivered one last blow to finish him off.
"Oh, right. There are two more bands of rebels, it seems, out in the Kulo Highlands to the west and Valley Town to the south. I have already sent men to surround and wipe them out too."
"By my reckoning, it should all be over about now."
The man let out a shriek at once. "What?"
The lord of the Fallen Leaf family swayed where he stood the moment he heard it.
Then his vision went black, and he collapsed to the ground.
It spelled complete ruin for the Fallen Leaf family's private army and all its power. Generations of accumulated strength, wiped clean away in a single day.
These were not the old days, when the whole of Fallen Leaf County had still been their domain. Nothing was left to replace what they had lost.
Not unless they could carve out territory of their own all over again.
Anu spared the fallen lord of the Fallen Leaf family one contemptuous glance, then had the battlefield cleared and set out for Moonlight City, bringing the surviving refugees along with him.
"Notify the whole legion. We are gathering in Moonlight City."
"It is time we met these people of Moonlight Province face to face."
Moonlight City, the Governor's Mansion
Anu led the Palace Guard Corps into the city and had the governor's mansion, which looked as though it had been thoroughly ransacked, cleared out and put back in order. Then, in the name of the king's envoy, he summoned every official and noble lord of Moonlight Province, great and small, to come before him.
In truth, the nobles of Moonlight Province had gotten word the moment Anu set out. They had even known exactly when he would reach the province's border, and had banded together at once to work out how to deal with him.
Only, once he arrived, he had simply lain low, and left them utterly unable to make sense of him.
Then he had struck into Fallen Leaf County like a thunderbolt, too fast for them to react in time, and before they knew it he had caught them with proof in hand.
No sooner had Anu entered Moonlight City than another large group gathered inside a manor castle within the city.
"He's here. The king's own attack dog."
"This one's vicious. He'd barely arrived before he killed thousands of the Fallen Leaf family's men, and plenty of knights the kingdom itself had knighted among them. The Fallen Leaf family's finished, completely."
"Looks like the king's well and truly lost his temper. What do we do now?"
"How many generations have our families ruled Moonlight Province between us?"
The castle belonged to the Luqi family, its master a middle-aged noble with brown curling hair, of a family that had carried its line down a thousand years, rooted in Moonlight Province since the age of Alpens.
"Isn't he here to put down a rebellion? Then let him put down a rebellion."
"Isn't he fond of killing? Then let him kill. Let's see just how many he can manage."
Only when the nobles of Moonlight Province had finished their discussion did they trickle in, one after another, to the governor's mansion to see the governor.
The moment they were in front of Anu they poured out their grievances, how rioters had run rampant everywhere, how unbearable things had become in every district.
"Commander Anu must kill these rebellious rioters and save Moonlight Province!"
Anu watched their little performance through, then asked.
"A crowd of common folk, are they really capable of everything you are describing?"
"Fighting their way into the governor's mansion and killing everyone inside, top to bottom? As I recall, a provincial governor usually keeps several second-rank ability users at their side for protection."
"I would like to know where common folk found power like that."
One of the Moonlight Province nobles stepped forward, and told Anu.
"Of course it isn't just common folk. There's a heretical cult behind it too."
"A heretical cult?" Anu repeated.
"Is it the Silver-White Church, or the Abyss Cult?"
"That, I couldn't say," the noble answered. "Though I imagine Lord Anu will get to the bottom of it."
"After all, you're the very envoy His Majesty sent, the commander of the Palace Guard Corps."
"I've heard you even fought in the battle to seal away the King of Ghouls himself. Whatever evil is at work here, surely it stands no chance against you."
Anu let the flattery pass without a word either way, and only said.
"I will investigate, of course. And I will get to the very bottom of it."
"As for putting down the rebellion, well, that will need all of you working together to help!"
Anu laid particular weight on the words "working together," as though he meant something else by them entirely. Not one person in the room said a word, as though none of them had caught it at all.
Words went back and forth, and in the end neither side gave an inch.
And so a meeting cordial on its surface, and tense as drawn swords underneath, came to its end.
The real struggle had only just begun.
Anu had barely gotten back to the rear of the governor's mansion when word reached him.
Of the dozen or so officers he had brought back, the ones from the Fallen Leaf lord's private army who had taken part in slaughtering the common folk, several of the ringleaders were dead.
"Dead?"
"Did I not tell you to keep a close watch on them?"
"Who could possibly have killed them right under your noses?"
The deputy commander looked more than a little ashamed. "They killed themselves."
"Suicide?" Anu asked.
Anu went straight to the camp to look into it himself, and found that it truly was suicide. These men must have known there was no surviving what was coming, and had taken their own lives rather than drag their families down with them.
Anu had originally meant to use them as witnesses, to prove certain things about what was going on in Moonlight Province, and now that plan had come to nothing. What was left were small-time flunkies, worth nothing at all.
"Never mind. Even if they were still alive, those nobles could simply deny everything, and failing that, push the blame onto the Fallen Leaf family."
"Holding onto them would have achieved nothing. It proves nothing against them."
"Then what about the rest of them, and the refugees we brought back?" the deputy commander asked.
"Keep them for now," Anu said. "They are no use to us at the moment, but later they may help back up the evidence of what these people have done."
Anu turned his eyes on his deputy commander, and spoke.
"Every soul in Moonlight Province wants me out putting down this rebellion. What do you make of that?"
After all this time, the deputy commander had come to see the shape of things clearly enough. "There's no rebellion here at all, not really. It's these people carving up the land for themselves, just like back in the age of the Fire Guardians. They've divided up the whole of Moonlight Province between them without so much as asking."
"What they want now is to make that division permanent, and force His Majesty to recognize how they've carved up Moonlight Province."
"This whole so-called suppression is likely meant to keep you tied down here."
"They're nobles, and right now every noble in Suinhor is watching His Majesty. Without proper cause, he certainly can't move against them, and the longer this drags on, the worse His Majesty's position gets."
Anu nodded. "So His Majesty needs the right cause."
"One so ironclad that no one can find an excuse against it."
"But a cause like that won't be easy to find," the deputy commander said. "And even if we found one, it wouldn't be easy to get it back to him."
Anu showed not the slightest fear. "Then I will just have to go a few rounds with them."
In the days that followed, Anu came to see just how shameless these noble lords could be.
Urgent dispatches poured in from every direction, demanding that Anu put down the rebellion.
They did everything in their power to drive the refugees into rebellion, everything they could to arm bandits across the region, spreading every kind of rumor, making trouble for Anu at every turn.
Then they sat back and let their own territories fall into chaos, all the while pressing Anu again and again to go and put it down.
The picture they built was of a Moonlight Province ablaze with beacon fires, rebellion breaking out without end.
It ran Anu ragged.
At the governor's mansion, deep in the night, the deputy commander came hurrying in out of the rain still in full armor, and spoke to Anu. "They're already talking about it back in the City of Fire Protection, saying you've failed to put down the rebellion, that the king should pull you back and send someone else in your place."
Anu sat before the table. "That is exactly what they want."
The deputy commander looked at Anu with concern. "As long as those noble lords are still standing, this so-called rebellion and its rioters will never truly settle down, because they're the real source of the chaos."
Anu knew that better than anyone. "I know. And they know it too."
"But I cannot just move against them directly, and they know full well I cannot move against them directly either."
Anu watched the candle flame in front of him, and slowly closed his eyes.
Outside the rain came down heavy, drumming on the stone paving in a noisy clatter.
And just then several lizard people came in from outside, bringing someone back with them.
Anu was on his feet the moment he saw them.
"You found him?"
The lizard people hauled the prisoner in after them, and spoke to Anu.
"Took us a long while, but we finally found this one."
"This one was still in Moonlight Province at first, but after you arrived, everyone wanted him dead, so he ran off along the Great Serpent Road, and fled into the Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents."
"We finally tracked him down, following the method you taught us, Chief."
Anu looked down at the snake person ability user lying on the ground, his very consciousness sealed away for fear he might take his own life.
"The commander of Moonlight Province's garrison legion."
Anu waved a hand at once, and someone came forward from behind him, glanced once at the figure on the ground, and spoke.
"That's the one, no mistake."
The lizard people there let out a breath of relief. Catching the wrong person was what they had feared most, and it was exactly why they had brought the prisoner straight here the moment they got back.
The deputy commander came forward at once, and spoke, astonished at what Anu had said.
"That one?"
"Still alive?"
"Didn't he go down with the whole garrison legion? Wasn't he killed along with the governor?"
"That one never died at all," Anu said instead. "He killed the governor of Moonlight Province with his own hands."
"He betrayed His Majesty and threw in with those nobles, never imagining that once I arrived, every last one of those nobles would turn around and want him dead to silence him."
"Sharp, this one. Slipped away ahead of them all."
"If I had not picked up a few tracking methods hunting down that ceramic figurine before, I doubt we would ever have found him."
With the prisoner in front of him at last, Anu let out a breath of relief.
He turned to the lizard people who had brought the prisoner in, and gave them their orders.
"It is not safe here anymore."
"Take a wind lizard dragon and get them to the City of Fire Protection at once. Hand them over to His Majesty personally."
"Once that is done, His Majesty will strip those men of their rights, and pass judgment on their crimes."
Anu's hand closed around the sword at his waist, his eyes sharp as knives, a cold killing intent rolling off him.
"I will, with my own two hands, send every last one of these men to the gallows."
All this time had shown him just how shameless these nobles could be, just how vile their methods were.
To carve out territory for themselves they let rebellion run wild, and treated human lives as though they were nothing more than weeds.
They played the part of bandits and burned down other people's homes. They drove those people to turn bandit in their turn. Then they killed them in the name of putting down the rebellion they had caused.
They themselves were the true bandits, and still they kept pressing Anu to go and kill the very bandits they had forced and tricked and stirred up in the first place.
Wave after wave they drove out more refugees and more bandits, then turned around and attacked Anu for failing to put down the rebellion, all of it really meant to embarrass the king.
What Anu did not know was that he had already set his estimate of these nobles' lowest depths very low indeed.
And he had still underestimated just how low they could go.
Because they had no floor at all.
The Luqi Family's Manor Castle
Even before the lizard people brought back the commander of Moonlight Province's garrison legion, carriage after carriage had been pulling up here deep in the night, and the people in them gathering in secret.
Every single one of them who arrived was thoroughly rattled, unease etched into their faces.
"Word's come from the City of No Guilt. That one's been caught, and just ahead of us, at that."
"It has to be that lizard person who caught them."
"A little later, and we'd have gotten to them first."
"He's been throwing us off the whole time. We thought we were the ones running circles around him, but he had his sights set from the very start, and he'd already spotted every one of our weaknesses."
Anu had only just brought back the former commander of Moonlight Province's garrison legion, and in the blink of an eye word had already reached them.
"Is that lizard person trying to drive us to our deaths?"
"We've already given ground. All we want is to reclaim our own territory. Moonlight Province was ours to begin with. We're only taking back what belongs to us. What more does he want?"
"He's nothing but an animal the king keeps. Does he really think he's some kind of hero?"
"A lizard person, playing at being a hero?"
"Isn't that laughable?"
"What should we do?"
"We have to get rid of him. Wipe out that other one along with him."
Anu had driven them to the very edge, and not one person in that room had kept their composure.
And at that moment the head of the Luqi family stepped forward.
"It's fine. I've been ready for this for a long time."
Some resolve seemed to have settled at last on this elegant, brown-curled noble, and his eyes went cold and distant, looking out at Moonlight City, swallowed in darkness.
"Right now, Morabi commands only three extraordinary legions. Normally, two stay behind in Fire Protection Province, and one is sent out on assignment."
"And of the three, it's clear enough the Palace Guard Corps is the strongest."
"If that legion were gone, if that attack dog Anu were gone, I'd like to see how well he manages then."
"Right now he holds things steady only by leaning on what King Osis left behind, his old arrangements and his lingering authority. Once that illusion of strength is torn away, I'd like to see how he keeps calling himself king."
The head of the Luqi family looked round at the others, and spoke one final line.
"We never once recognized him as king, not really."
That said, the head of the Luqi family turned and went back inside.
He came to a heavily guarded building with two sentries posted at its door, unlocked it with his own key, and went in along a dim, deep passage.
He walked all the way to the very heart of it, and there, in a broad, hidden shrine, a graceful figure stood.
It was a woman, a serpent woman of striking beauty.
She wore a black gauze dress, and the sight of her back alone was enough to set the mind wandering.
She stood facing the divine statue at the heart of the shrine, and from outside the wind and rain drifted in on the faintest trace of light, fine threads of rain settling gently over the sheer fabric she wore.
A soft prayer came from her, murmured under her breath.
"Great Fallen Angel Melde!"
"King of the Black Mud Abyss, King of the Original Sin of Lust."
At the sound behind her, the woman turned her head to look at the head of the Luqi family.
"Darling, you're back?"
The brown-curled, middle-aged noble came forward, face lost in a daze of enchantment.
They were powerless against her beauty.
She was Lust's spokesperson in the mortal world, the very embodiment of desire.