Herald of Steel



Listening to the shabby man who introduced himself as Laibak recount the events of the inn, Alexander could not help but feel a tinge of regret for those men.

He felt that the people in that inn had reacted too rashly.

If they had been only a bit more sober, and thought things over more calmly, everything likely would have turned out fine for them.

Even if they did nothing but calmly and politely talk to the two bodyguards, a lot of this could have been avoided. 

In fact, it could have worked out even better than they could have ever hoped for if they had just done what the two bodyguards asked them to do.

Because then Alexander would have likely recruited Laibak for his own spy agency, meaning then they would have had a mole inside the very heart of Zanzan's intelligence services, one whose cover was as solid as one could get, for he would be directly recommended by the boss himself, Alexander.

And after a few years, it would have been possible for Laibak to even occasionally get Alexander's ears, or at least Camius's.

If that had happened, Alexander's entire or at least a large part of his spy network would have been compromised.

It was a scary thought that Alexander found himself shaking a bit at.

But ultimately that had not happened.

All because they panicked and their manners were crude.

What a tragedy for them.

And it just went to show how much manners mattered.

Finished recounting the happening inside the inn, Laibak then went to go and introduce himself.

He claimed that he was sent here to be the leader of the spy ring under orders from Matbar (Marquis) Kyaum, whose fief was about 200 kilometers west of here.

And hearing this name surprised Alexander a bit.

He recalled that the man was mainly tasked with protecting Zanzan's western coastline and wondered why he was trying to set up a spy network in his city.

And lastly, he mused what was his connection with Muazz.

Because it had to be remembered, that just because someone tried to set up a spy ring in his city did not mean he was immediately hostile.

Alexander had a similar intelligence network in Adhan, but that did not mean he had any intention of going to war with Ptolomy.

At least not anytime soon anyway.

But if Alexander hoped that the Matbar (marquis) could be an ally if not just a neutral bystander, those cherry thoughts would soon be shattered when he would ask the QM, who was still living with them at the time, about the man and be informed that the man was a zealous follower of Amenheraft, and that his loyalty to him was unquestionable.

A claim that would be backed by Laibak's revelation that among his teams were two people who worked under Manuk, Amenheraft's right-hand man, leaving Alexander in no doubt as to whose camp the man was on.

After ratting out his master, Laibak then went on to describe his previous work experience and revealed that due to his work, the man had practically become a local by now.

And when he was asked to elaborate on that, the man freely revealed that he had been stationed here for almost 20 years now, starting from even before Pasha Muazz's rule, during his father's in fact.

He came here as a helping boy with a disguised merchant caravan, and over the years, the men in that fake caravan had worked hard to slowly build quite a solid intel network in the city.

And Laibak himself made large contributions to their cause, slowly rising up the ladder to become quite a high-ranking member there.

But the sweet times do have to come to an end at one point or another.

And their sweet time came to an end three years ago.

First hit by the drought and then Amenheraft's war with Tibias, many people left the city for the lusher countryside, with even Laibak and many of his staff leaving for their real lord's territory to escape the flames of war and to find better sustenance.

But an unintended consequence of this action was that the web of contacts they had so painstakingly built up began to break without the people to support them.

And by the time Alexander took over the city, those networks had basically vanished, either dead, lost, or not having the same access to the same kind of information, the last one being particularly applicable to the gangs that Alexander had effectively purged, who otherwise would have worked as the city guards.

So Laibak was now sent here to do the same thing his predecessors did, building a new spy network and try and establish whatever old contacts that were left in the city.

When Alexander learned of this, the huge scale of the project Laibak was put in charge of surprised him, and it made him feel the Matbar (Marrquiss) must hold this man in great regard.

So it appeared Alexander had unknowingly caught a big fish.

"Why were you there when we first met?" Finished with that topic, Alexander then moved to this.

To which the man firstly shyly chucked, as if it was not natural for a man to seek the pleasure of the flesh, especially when the flesh was served in such a unique way.

But then revealed a bit more reason behind his action.

He said the reason why he was at the brothel was because, well as luck would have it, that house belonged to his master, and having visited the manor numerous times in the past, the man had gotten nostalgic and wanted to see it one last time.

It was that simple. 

And it was at that mention that Alexander recalled Ophenia once introducing the building as belonging to that man. 

Who could have guessed then that such a small, throwaway detail could have caused such huge changes to the world?

Due to that tiny coincidence, Laibak had ended up meeting the city's ruler, who then sent his bodyguards after him on a whim, which then set off a chain of reactions one could have never seen coming.

Truly fate was a wonderful thing.

And this was a perfect example of how a simple butterfly's tiny wing flap would cause a hurricane thousands of miles away.

At least that was how Alexander saw it.

Those were everything there was to really know about Laibak.

So then came the identity of his team members.

Laibak revealed that the one who shouted 'shoot' when the two bodyguards had burst through the door was the illegitimate son of a noble, though he could not name the exact noble.

That man was sent there as the overseer of the operations, one who oversaw and approved everything, representing the will of the Matbar (Marquis). the prestigious position landing to him courtesy of his blood.

While Laibak, was the actual mule of the team, doing all the work.

And sounding by the tone Laibak described him, he did not seem to hold him in even low esteem, going as far as to curse, "That useless fucker…if he had not only screamed!"

It seemed that it was the panic of the greenhouse noble that had really started the fight. 

With the boy who responded to the order being the noble's attendant and at night something even more.

As for the rest of the crew, well, they were not nearly as interesting.

Alexander of course made sure to verify all of Laibak's claims with the other two separately, and much to his happiness found to match with one of them, while the other simply refused to talk, stubbornly keeping his mouth shut.

So after a few days, he died during question.

As for the exact details, well dying during interrogation was never a pleasant way to go.

And noticing this, Alexander had one time even asked Laibak why he was so forthcoming with his answers, and the man simply said that he was afraid of pain.

It was that simple.

The man knew what it meant to get captured and had determined the easiest and best way to save one's skin, many times literally, was to talk.

And hearing so, Alexander did not know whether to describe the man as clever or a coward.

It appeared that though the man was a great spy, he was not a martyr. 

And for his last question, Alexander asked how they got their hands on a crossbow.

That should have been very hard to get, given Alexander made sure that they were regularly checked and inventoried, so stealing one would immediately be noticed.

He even made sure to number them on the stocks so hiding or replacing them would be very hard. 

But the answer here too was very simple.

'One of the men who used to work for me is in the army. We got him to bribe one of the guards." "1,000 ropals, half before, half after."

"That guy then gave us the bow and to make sure that the theft was not detected immediately,  we replaced it with a fake with the exact serial number."

"That looks like a crossbow but it does not work."

"But we figured, even if it was found out, it might not matter. The soldier might simply think that this was just made shoddily and get a new one."

"While real one would have been sent to my lord."

"This was one of my primary goals."

Laibak really held nothing back on detail in his answer.