Chương 30: An Almost Perfect Plan.

It didn't make sense. Much of it lined up, and yet it simply didn't make sense. Duke Greenward, from everything I had been able to find and read, was a man driven almost entirely by his own profit. He was more merchant than Noble. He was a man who wasn't shy about extorting the common people with his exorbitant prices where he could. Wasn't shy about unsavory business practices if it made even a bit more money for him. A man like that could buy slaves, even children. A man like that would.

Would a man like that turn… turn children into fertilizer? If that compost actually raised yields by some large amount, then maybe he would. Except it almost certainly wouldn't raise yields at all. I had done my share of reading on House Greenward. I recognized that black dust. It was known as Nightsoil. It wasn't a great secret. In fact, it was the primary reason why Julian Greenward had increased his House's influence so quickly after taking over his House.

Nightsoil was used in just about all of his granaries and produced in just about all of his refineries. Under his watch, Aelheim had gone from a city that needed to import all of its food to one that could export it to other cities. It wasn't a secret. The Magical Implement used to make it was one based off of an Artifact called a Transmutation Circle. It could make Nightsoil out of just about anything with a little mana, and so it was frequently used to turn useless scraps into compost.

I was supposed to believe that Duke Greenward was actually using children instead of random scraps? I hated men like him, and so I wanted to believe it was him. I had been sure of it. In my rage then, I might have actually believed it was Duke Greenward, no matter how ridiculous it looked. Those boxes, engraved with the Greenward sigil, were simply too much. Greenward was greedy scum, but he was intelligent greedy scum.

Not only is he turning children into fertilizer, but he's doing it so brazenly that he's openly putting his House's sigil in the same facility where it's done? Ridiculous.

"My Lady, please. You need to sleep." Anias all but begged. She looked stressed, much more concerned now than she had been in the middle of the warehouse brawl. I ignored her.

"No time," I mumbled. The tea in front of me sat cold. It wasn't like I needed it, given my Gift. I ignored the slight tremors that ran through my body. Ignored the heaviness in my eyes. I sat in the library. It was easier to think here.

"This can wait for the morning." Anias put a hand on my shoulder.

"You haven't even changed out of the cloak yet."

"In the morning, I will summon an emergency meeting of the Great Council," I whispered.

"In that meeting, House Veyne will accuse House Greenward of the unspeakable. Perhaps I'll be called a rabid dog, taking too much after my father. I can't imagine they could kill or even imprison me without risking civil war, but it will be bad. I do wonder what Greenward will do."

"What?" Why couldn't people just shut up and let me think? If I didn't call the meeting, then Greenward no doubt would soon. That would be much worse. Our attack hadn't been subtle. I had left Estovan there to more thoroughly inspect the place and keep people from wandering, but word would get out. Hell, it might have gotten out already. I needed to attack. I needed to frame things in just the right way so that it would buy me some time.

"I don't want to-" I swallowed.

"I don't want to say something I'll regret. Please. I just need to think in peace. I'll explain everything as soon as I can." The large woman slowly nodded, stepped back, and left the library altogether. A part of me felt guilty, but it felt far guiltier for falling for something so stupid. If I were running some kind of covert operation using a gang, the first thing I would demand is that said gang destroy the evidence in case of an attack.

Our attack had been swift and brutal, but surely there had been time to light the evidence on fire. They hadn't. They hadn't even tried. Why? The scene was meant to be found, obviously. Then, there was the Artifact, the one screening the warehouse from the outside world. Estovan had found it later. It was a large, purple crystal almost as big as I was. An Artifact. Would someone motivated entirely by money be willing to spend the money on such an Artifact? Not to mention the Dwarf and his staff.

Not one, but two priceless Artifacts being used to guard a facility that maybe made slightly better compost? The only other possibility was that Duke Greenward was doing something else and needed to dispose of the children in some way. Even in that scenario, his bloody sigil wouldn't be there. It all didn't quite fit right. My bias against Duke Greenward had blinded me, but the simple fact was that this wasn't an operation for profit.

I suspected the compost really was being sold to Duke Greenward, though I knew the man didn't have a clue about it. There was only one obvious mastermind here: Duke Indri. I reached for the tea cup in front of me. My hands shook as I grabbed onto it; some of the tea spilled. Thankfully, it only spilled onto an already muddy and slightly bloody cloak. The tea was cold. It was hard to tell if this was nerves or just me being exhausted. It didn't really matter. I checked Indri with my Gift. I checked him.

He hadn't lied to me. Was this some application of mana I didn't know? Was he trying to trick my Gift?

"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid." I mumbled.

"He doesn't know my Gift, he doesn't know that he has to fool it." Some passive ability of mana that makes one completely calm? Possible, maybe. Yet he had given me some reaction when he talked of Greenward. Likely not that then. I rose from the seat and started to pace around the room. The whole point of keeping my Gift a secret was to turn it into a Trump Card. If that was fooled so easily, then I didn't know what to do with myself. The door creaked.

"I thought I told you t-!" I paused. It was Sere. She flinched back. Fuck. I'd shouted. This was getting to me.

"I-I'm sorry," I said hurriedly.

"I didn't mea-" She ran off. I stared at the now open door.

"Damn it!" I kicked the bookshelf nearest to me. There was a thud. My leg ached. I'd even forgotten to use mana. What the fuck was I doing? I turned and sank down against the bookshelf until I was on the floor. I'd been played. Not only that, but this might be the end of me altogether. The worst part was that I didn't even know how or why. If I knew those things, then maybe I would have some options. My gaze drifted to the library around me. Books lay strewn on the table, some of them lying open on the floor.

That was something I'd clean up later. It didn't quite feel right to have some poor maid clean up after my tantrum. Every part of me just wanted to sleep. Yet, I knew that was the last thing I could do. There was still time. If there was time, then I could think. If I could think, I could find a way out.

"Focus, Esra. Let's think about it… from a different angle." Let's suppose my Gift did pick up on Duke Indri's tells. Perhaps it was simply that he believed what he was saying? Think. Just what did he say, exactly? This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. He'd called the Blue Vipers pests that he wanted to get rid of. It was entirely possible to both be behind them and feel that way at the same time.

Perhaps they drew too much attention, given their mention at the recent Council meeting. Maybe they were simply bad at their job. Any number of things could have been true that would have allowed him to say what he did, and not trip up my Gift. Yet, there had been genuine horror in his tone when he'd spoken about the atrocities. That… was a little harder to puzzle out. A man who committed evil, while hating it all the same. How vile. There was another nagging suspicion I had.

My Gift could pick up a person's tells, but if I didn't know what they meant, could I really divine anything from them? If I asked someone a sharp question, their heart rate might spike, and it would have nothing to do with the contents of their answer. I didn't think it was this, at least not for Duke Indri. It still bothered me. He'd mentioned the possibility of Duke Greenward wanting slaves. I hadn't questioned it then, but now that I thought about it, why would you use children to work in granaries?

Surely, they weren't efficient workers, even if they weren't paid anything.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." I slammed my fist down on my knee. Three times. It was so obvious. It was so, so obvious. I'd been blinded. A motivation like profit I could understand; this was… something else. Something I didn't understand. Maybe that's why I wanted to believe it was something I understood. And he had seen that. He had massaged my ego, told me everything he'd thought I'd needed to hear. Then, he'd simply set me off. The result from there was almost inevitable, even if the way it had come about wasn't.

What was the motivation behind reaching out to me then, in the way that he did? Was I to destroy the Blue Vipers and all evidence of his crimes? If that was his aim, then I had helpfully done just that for him. Footsteps. I raised my head. It was Sere again. She had a very nervous look to her. In her hands, she carried a… teacup. I stared at her. She stared at me, swallowed, and slowly walked forward.

"You didn't have to," I mumbled. She set the cup down on my right, backed away. She- she was afraid I would yell at her again, wasn't she?

"I'm sorry," I murmured.

"It's- it's been a difficult day." She slowly nodded her head. I expected her to walk away and leave. She sat down on the floor instead. I reached for the glass and brought it to my lips. Warm. Bitter. I sighed, some of the tension draining from me. Just a little.

"Thank you." She slowly nodded. She was wearing a slightly too-large white shift. I think it was one of mine. I should have someone get her properly fitting clothes. Perhaps it was as simple as Duke Indri wanting to start a feud between House Veyne and Greenward. Or perhaps he thought I would bring House Greenward down to its knees. Maybe it was neither of the two. Just what the hell did that man want?

"What was he doing there…." I mumbled. It all really came down to that, didn't it? Anias had inspected the children. The ones outside were starved and exhausted. It was the one inside that was different. Mana flowed from a person's mana core through pathways in their bodies. Not only did that poor child have essentially no mana left, but his pathways were all but destroyed. It was not something you could recover from. It was a wonder he wasn't dead.

A person could use all of their mana, and they might faint, but they would recover. It might take days or weeks, but they would recover. Even when that happened, they had a little bit of mana left in their bodies; it was a failsafe of sorts. If, however, they were drained past the point their own bodies would stop them….. Rage started to settle over me. The glass trembled in my hand, some of the tea spilling onto the floor.

"Maybe the entire point was the mana itself?" Sere let out a small gasp. I blinked, pointedly set the glass down.

"I'm sorry," I murmured.

"I uh…long day, remember?" She was frowning at me. Sere did project disappointment. It was hard to be quite as angry when I looked at her.

"Hey, don't look at me like that. I'll clean it up later." She huffed. I only just noticed that she was reading. I vaguely recognized the book. It was a fairy tale I'd read when I first woke up here. It was about a cobbler's son who dreamed of becoming a Knight, rather than taking after his father's trade. He did become a Knight, only to find himself more miserable than when he started. He only found true happiness when he went back and lived the life that was decided for him.

Not the most complicated of texts, but she was reading, or at least appeared to.

"Can you understand that?" I asked. Sere looked at me, shrugged.

"Somewhat, then?" She nodded in response. There was some warmth in my heart then, just a small flicker compared to the rage I felt, but it was there. Sere really was a bright kid. It hadn't been very long since we'd found her, but she had started to change, even if a little. There was more color to her now, and she didn't always walk with her eyes planted on the ground. Even her hair seemed fuller than back then. Maybe I'd done at least one right thing in this life after all.

Combine all of that with her apparent talent for mana, and she just might be able to grow out of the life that had been decided for her- A thought occurred to me. I looked at Sere and rose. The desk I'd been sitting on had an empty notebook, one where I'd been scrawling furiously to organize my thoughts. I reached for it now, penciled in a symbol, the same one I'd seen on that Magical Implement. I walked over to Sere. She frowned as she looked up. Right, not too close. I flipped the book around, pointed.

"Sere, have you ever seen this before?" She stared at the page, before shaking her head. There was no reason to believe she would lie about this.

"Does- does the name 'Blue Viper' mean anything to you?" This time, her face did pale. She swallowed, slowly nodded her head. It was rather clear that I had forced the answer out of her.

"Please." I tried to sound kind, despite the cold clawing at me.

"Was- was your mother a Blue Viper?" She weakly shook her head. Then she nodded. What was that supposed to mean? Perhaps she was only allowed outside because her mother was one of their gang? It was also possible that the mother had been trying to run away. I didn't know the truth and… a part of me didn't want to find out. I knew I had to. They were draining children of their mana, past the point their bodies could handle. Then, they turned them into compost to get rid of the evidence.

If I were Duke Indri, then my biggest problem would be a simple one: how do you get rid of so many bodies without someone noticing something? If you thought about it like this, then turning the children into compost and hiding them in Duke Julian's supplies made a lot of sense. It also had the added benefit of framing Duke Greenward. If Indri were ever in danger, he could just tell Greenward the truth and find an accomplice who would go right down with him.

It was kind of brilliant when you thought about it like that. And… I couldn't help but think that in a sick, twisted sort of way, Duke Indri might want to feel like the children were useful even at the end.

"Sere…" I whispered.

"Can you channel mana? As much as you can? Please?" I expected her to argue. She swallowed. Closed her eyes. I felt the pressure. I hadn't been ready for it; it almost made me fall over. It wasn't like I'd had the time to test her. I had suspected she had reserves, but this was a little much.

"Okay, you can stop now," I said. The pressure eased. If I had to guess, then I would say Sere had perhaps two-thirds or maybe half of the mana I did. It was hard to know without testing her. Suppose that you were a member of the Blue Vipers, tasked with finding children who had a lot of mana. Suppose your own daughter were one such child. No, she was exceptional. What would you do? Would you stay? Perhaps you would, for a time, believe that your own child wouldn't be harmed.

But this was a Duke asking, promising more money than you'd ever seen in your life. You would falter, or your fellow gang members would. Something would happen that made it clear that your child wasn't safe after all. What would you do then? It wasn't me. That was the first thing Sere's mother had tried to say, before she'd claimed it was some kind of accident. Perhaps... perhaps that first statement had been something close to the truth. It was impossible to say now. Something twisted in my stomach.

I wanted to vomit. I looked at Sere, and wondered if perhaps I had killed this girl's mother for no reason at all. Click. Click. Now wasn't the time for this. The Blue Vipers were looking for mana-rich orphans who hadn't been scouted for one purpose or another. How many of those could there possibly be in one District? No wonder they'd started expanding. Even then, it was unlikely any of those children would have as much mana as Sere. For their purpose, for their client, she was almost priceless.

And then Sere slipped right out of their hands. If I were Duke Indri, that might have been the point where I'd decided the Blue Vipers were better off dead after all. And I had more mana than even Sere did.

"My God." That's what he'd said when I'd used that mana measuring Artifact. I had assumed he was just impressed. What if he were instead hungry? Eager?

"So that's your game, you bastard." I hissed. I shook my head. It wasn't that he was tying up loose ends. Or trying to start a war. No, he'd simply found what he'd been looking for. Me.

"Sere?" I looked at her. She seemed to have regained at least some of her color.

"I need you to find Anias. I'm sure you know where to look." She nodded, rose.

"Thank you. The tea was lovely." She smiled hesitantly and walked away. I felt faintly sick. I couldn't let myself get distracted now. In retrospect, Duke Indri's plan was almost perfect. The pieces were almost all lined up. There were just two things he couldn't have foreseen. He hadn't thought I would go to the warehouse myself, or that I would do so this quickly. He hadn't thought I would see that child, the one drained to the point of breaking.

There had been one Blue Viper, the one who'd been reaching for the cage even as Anias had killed him. Of everything in that warehouse, he was the only thing someone had tried to keep hidden. The other children were likely 'leftovers' he needed to get rid of soon. Perhaps I was only ever meant to find their remains, and let my imagination do the rest. You did say you needed a lot of mana, didn't you?

"I'm going to skin you alive, you bastard." The sword had been quiet for some time. It finally spoke. Just one word. Resolve.