Violant of the Silver

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Editor: sleepchaser

T/N: I swear I need to get ahold of myself…

Night descended the stairs to the dungeon, a lamp lit by magic on one hand. There, Fion and three members of the Knights of the Green Flash were already waiting for him. 

“Captain Fion. Sorry for being late.”

“I’ve just arrived as well. Don’t worry about it.”

Fion’s polite reply came as a surprise. Night had braced himself for the chance that Fion would treat him, a knight of the Ruslan Kingdom, as an obstacle to the investigation.  

Night’s surprise was probably apparent from his behavior, for Fion heaved a small sigh. “It’s true that it vexes me having a knight of another country meddle with my business. But this is a job. Naturally, we have to obey the order of His Highness the Crown Prince.” Then, Fion arched his brows and pointed to the corpse in the prison cell. “Anyway, Sir Night, do you notice anything strange when looking at this corpse?” 

White sheet covered said corpse. It lay on top of a stretcher, perhaps to make moving it out easier. A stench had already started spreading from it.  

Night was no stranger to corpses; he had seen some when he had still worked as a mercenary. That said, he would never be able to get used to the rotting stench. Out of reflex, he frowned. “This is terrible.”

“Exactly. Since we’re underground, the smell is still better than if the corpse was outside. Now that it is summer, corpses decompose a lot quicker.”

Fion ordered his subordinates to open the prison cell door with the snap of his fingers.

Somewhat tired already, Night took his gloves out of his pocket. Once he had them on, he entered the prison cell to examine the corpse.

He flipped over the white sheets. Looked at the face. Night did not recognize it. Following that, he shifted his gaze to the clothes, but found nothing unusual with the blue jacket and pants meant for the evening ball. “As I expected, I’ve never seen him before. What about his belongings?” 

The knights brought a wooden tray to Night. It contained accessories the assassin had worn that night. 

Night’s eyes stopped at one of them. “This is…”

A silver amulet necklace. The amulet appeared in the shape of a one-eyed owl.

Fion looked at the item in Night’s palm and sighed. “It symbolizes the Goddess of Wisdom, Sophie. Not a rare amulet at all.”

It was fair to say that disappointment hung heavily on Fion’s shoulders. Nowadays, everyone strongly worshiped the Great Spirit as the guardian of their county. Even so, there were also tales of ancient gods that had been passed down since time immemorial. One of them was the Goddess of Wisdom, Sophie. Some believed that Sophie had visions of the past, present, and future. Night was well acquainted with her legends since many mercenaries carried around her amulet. 

There were times when his female acquaintances gave him this amulet as a good luck charm. A good luck charm to sharpen the intuition of whoever carried it.

“Captain Fion, can you take a look at this?” said Night, taking out an amulet from the back pocket of his jacket and placing it on the tray with the other one. Both were very similar in shape, size, and overall appearance.

Shocked, Fion murmured, “This… they look like they are made from the exact same mould.”

“Why do you have this?” asked Fion’s subordinate.

“When Princess Liona was attacked before this incident, the assassin dropped this,” said Night with a stiff expression. “I’m carrying it around to see if it has any meaning.”

Fion and the members of the Knights of Green Flash shared a look in silence. Eventually, a deep sigh thick with discouragement left Fion’s lips. “A trap, huh? His Highness had a good intuition.”

“Even so, it’s good that we realized this before we prosecuted the Lesserhains, Captain. Otherwise, the situation would have grown grave.”

“The Lesserhains? What are you talking about?” asked Night.

“Before this man had committed suicide, he claimed that he was Rupheus Lesserhain’s agent.”

Night stayed silent, pondering over what Fion had said.

Then Fion asked, “You noticed something?” 

“No, I was just thinking a bit. Why did this assassin, who’s probably the enemy of the Kingdom of Ruslan, mention the Lesserhains here?”

At the sound of those words, Fion’s expression also transformed into a grave one. “I understand. Apparently, someone wants conflict to arise between this country and the Ruslan Kingdom.”

Night nodded, silent.

A trigger of conflict. He had a guess as to who could have possibly contributed to this development. But as usual, he only caught a shadow of them. Not a shred of hard evidence remained.

Night glanced at the tray for a moment, the large eye of the owl ominously reflecting the light of the lamp.