Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 10. The Cail Family.
Sitting in his armchair, Luren kept hitting the armrest with his fingers restlessly. Despite the power he wielded in the Cail family and his title of the master of shadows, he was feeling extremely anxious.
“What should I do? What should I tell him when he arrives?” Luren kept beating himself over this one little problem he had had, which somehow managed to evolve into an utter nightmare.
He, of course, had a few ideas as to what he should tell Fohan when he came, but none of them were satisfactory; each carried a certain risk with it, a risk he really hated to take.
As he kept pondering on this problematic question, the convoy of carriages rolled down the street signaling the arrival of the main branch of the family. Knowing he can’t delay any further if he wanted Fohan not to grow suspicious, Luren stood up and headed out to greet the family leader.
“Luren,” Fohan spoke his name calmly as he stepped out of the forefront carriage.
The old, grey-haired man outwardly appeared to be perfectly calm, even a bit happy to see him… but Luren could tell how furious Fohan was in reality.
“Master,” Luren returned the greeting, keeping both his tone and body language as relaxed as usual. No matter what he chose to tell Fohan, he couldn’t let him see how nervous he was as it would be equivalent to admitting a failure; something Fohan never tolerated, especially from those he put a lot of faith in.
“I didn’t think I’d be forced to return so quickly.” Fohan clicked his tongue, his demeanor changing in an instant. “Our plans have been pretty much finalized in the north, but the west is going to get a lot more problematic,” he said angrily, already leading Luren into his private mansion, which was located here in the district owned fully by his Cail family.
“We will simply need to postpone them by a few years,” Luren said confidently. “Some random variables are going to pop up every once in a while, there’s nothing we can do about them,” he said with a sigh, not betraying in the slightest that the ‘random variable’ was, in reality, the result of his mistakes.
“Random variables, huh?” Fohan repeated, his ice-cold glance causing Luren’s heart to skip a beat. “If I recall correctly, you had an option of getting rid of that boy who now became the main cause of this whole mayhem, but you had chosen not to. Remind me, why didn’t you kill him back then just to be safe?” he questioned, wholeheartedly intending to make Luren face the consequences if his explanation proved not to be satisfactory.
Although he was shaken, Luren smiled somewhat apologetically and explained very calmly. “I had investigated the boy’s past and came to the conclusion that he had no reason to treasure the Valius family. Rather to the opposite, he was spiteful of it, what had been confirmed both by my information and by what Genzie told me. Given those circumstances, I felt it wasn’t worth to take the risk of offending Rudford…” he elaborated, but paused for a second and laughed helplessly.
“I must admit though, my decision might have been swayed by my personal feelings,” he added, giving Fohan a meaningful, resigned look.
“Oh,” Fohan raised his eyebrows a little. “Rudford did save your life once during the Great War, after all,” he mused aloud, the anger he felt with Luren beginning to subdue.
Had Luren tried to give him some other explanation, he wouldn’t have believed him at all. Risk? What kind of risk? Even if this kid had sealed himself away in the Red Dragon School, Luren would have had almost perfectly safe means to kill him without revealing anything, not to mention the reality in which the boy often left the grounds of his school.
To begin with, assassinating someone who wasn’t in the Realm of Heroes was as easy as killing a chicken for Luren and his subordinates! No information would have been leaked; at most, Rudford would have suspected something… but he would have had no proof at all.
Admittedly though, Fohan himself had forgotten that Luren had been on a mission with Rudford once and had been saved by him. Luren didn’t like to speak about this shameful event and told him about it only once, nearly one hundred years ago, so he really forgot about it until now. It made sense that Luren didn’t want to kill a disciple of the man he owed a huge debt to just as a means of precaution.
“No matter, there are countless ways we can deal with this situation,” Fohan spoke amicably, intending to let this one misstep be bygones. “You are absolutely certain that this kid, Laien, won’t act in defense of the Valius family, right?” he asked, a concrete plan beginning to take shape in his mind.
“Absolutely,” Luren reconfirmed without hesitation. “Unless we do something ridiculous like killing off random servants and guards he had been friends with, he won’t get involved. Who knows, he might even be grateful to us,” he spoke with a laugh, appearing to be genuinely amused by the irony of the situation.
“Good, it makes everything simple,” Fohan said contentedly. “The Red Dragon School mobilizing its forces will be a huge annoyance, but in even the most powerful warrior can’t do much if he is as blind as a child in the darkness,” he said and smiled at his own words, very much enjoying the thought of toying with someone whom he couldn’t match in a direct combat.
“It’s a bit of a surprise to me, though.” Fohan frowned in discontent. “I didn’t think Rudford would end up treasuring this disciple of his so much. He is completely serious about aiding that Prince in the contest for the throne, all because of one whim of a kid! So unreasonable,” he commented rather angrily and shook his head. The eruption of a war for the throne in his country was the last thing he wished to happen.
“Anyway, once the Valius family is taken care of, we will suppress the camp of those kids and I will return to taking care of more important matters,” he stated grudgingly, wondering if it would be possible for him to head back to the west in less than a month.
“I didn’t plan to have our family surface as a major power quite yet, but so be it,” Fohan said with a sigh. “Luren, have your men coordinate with mine. I want our intelligence reports to be perfect; we are aiming to take over the clan, not to burn it to the ground,” he reminded, the possibility of failure in such an important undertaking being wholly unacceptable to him.
“Obviously,” Luren nodded, perfectly aware of what their goals were. They needed to overwhelm the Valius family all at once and give them no opportunity to fight back; they needed to make them surrender in order to preserve as much military strength of the clan as possible. To achieve that, they needed to execute their plan flawlessly.
“You can leave now,” Fohan said calmly, having no other questions or orders to Luren. He trusted his master of shadows enough not to lecture him upon every detail of what he was required to do, so he didn’t feel like wasting any time for idle talk if not necessary.
“Yes master,” Luren bowed his head and turned around, leaving the building soon afterward.
“I will need to request a meeting with our allies,” Fohan murmured to himself. “It won’t be hard to take over the clan from Garon’s hands, but we can’t afford an all-out internal conflict amongst the supporters of the Royal Children. Tsk, tsk, if only Luren killed that kid back then, we wouldn’t need to expend so much effort now,” he complained, but truly didn’t hold it against Luren anymore.
“Eh, what is done is done. We still hold a great advantage over them. Let’s approach it more gently, with some soft persuasion. I’m sure the seventh Prince will be willing to reconsider his stance,” Fohan chuckled, a bit amused how just a few kids joining forces managed to become an obstacle in his path.
Yet in the end, the group was nothing but that; a bunch of kids with the support of their respective protectors. He didn’t worry much about the outcome especially since he went out of his way to oversee the events personally. As long as nothing unforeseen and catastrophic didn’t happen, everything would be resolved smoothly.
“It will be hardest to persuade the eldest of the brothers though. Tsk, that kid has always been as stubborn as a mule,” Fohan smiled to himself. Teaching that kid had been oh so difficult, but not because of his lack of talent, no. It was mainly because once that kid set his mind to something, it was almost impossible to make him stray from his path.
Usually, it was a good trait to have… but sometimes, it would make him too inflexible. In Fohan’s opinion, that kid was still letting his emotions and personal feelings affect his decisions too much.
“So stubborn, so stubborn,” Fohan said with a sigh, then dissolved into shadows and headed to the Two Weeks City.
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“What am I going to do now?” Luren thought restlessly. “I mustn’t let the boy learn of the takeover of the Valius family. I can’t take the risk of Rudford getting involved, that much is obvious,” he murmured very quietly as he wandered around his private room.
“However, how do I prevent Fohan from learning I had already sent assassins after the boy and had them all killed by that madman?” he groaned, to this very day unsure how in the world did he manage to make a huge blunder like that one.
Not acting because of the debt he owed to Rudford? It was just a convenient excuse he gave to Fohan! He had been uneasy about Laien and even though he had no clear reason to, had chosen to get rid of him! It was the only sensible choice to do so!
Two years ago, he had sent five martial masters to kill Laien, of which one was a fairly elite one at the fourth Realm of Heroes. After observing the boy’s habits for two weeks, the men attacked him as he was returning to the Red Dragon School one evening… but were intercepted by that madman, who somehow noticed their presence when they were waiting for Laien to leave his house after training.
Subsequently, unwilling to accept the failure, he had sent three more martial masters with the orders of making their attempt when the boy would be far away from Shire… alas, even before the three could find a proper chance, that madman sought them out and slaughtered them.
In the end, even the expert whom he had sent to watch Shire’s house ended up being discovered and killed.
But what was most horrifying was that the same night his most recent scout got killed, that madman had paid him a personal visit and killed seven more martial masters who were foolish enough to stand in his way. At that time, he had been sure he was about to get killed by Shire, but instead was confronted with a demand; leave his disciple alone or have the Cail family wiped out.
Apparently, even someone like Shire wasn’t willing to deal with repeated attacks of Fohan’s men, which would have surely followed had he chosen to kill him back them.
Scared out of his wits as he had been, he had agreed to the demand of Shire’s and never again laid a hand on the boy again.
Of course, however, since he had managed to get sixteen martial masters killed in the process of getting to this point, he couldn’t possibly have made a report to Fohan; the man would have been utterly furious with him!
There would have been no benefits from making such a report either, as killing Shire would likely require the sacrifice of multiple elite martial masters and dozens of average ones. Fohan would never agree to pay such a price to get rid of one madman who wouldn’t bite if left alone.
After this whole thing was over, he had only hoped that the siblings would keep to themselves in the Red Dragon School so he could avoid any direct conflicts with them ever again. Alas…
“Why did they need to get friendly with one of the Princes? Why did they suddenly decide to help him get the crown and why did Rudford go along with their idea just like that? Why do I need to be dealing with that madman again?” Luren felt as if he was about to go mad. Was there really no good way for him to intervene so Fohan wouldn’t end up discovering that because of his past actions, he was now facing not a neutral camp, but a bunch of people who would never trust or ally themselves with him willingly?
Sending assassins out was a very effective way of dealing with obstacles, especially if done correctly. Yet, exactly because of how convenient this method was, the price which needed to be paid in case of a failure was adequately heavy.
“I doubt the information of our takeover of the Valius family will be leaked and I can hide what I need from Fohan for a few more days too, but what will I do later?” In his nervousness, Luren bit his lip so hard that a strand of blood flowed down onto his chin.
“Fohan probably wants to negotiate with those kids and pressure them into giving up, but they won’t agree to that! And if he asks them why and learns of the reason, when he learns of my failure and the multiple martial masters I had lost… and if this whole thing results in that madman getting involved and going on a rampage alongside Rudford and the Red Dragon School…” Luren shivered, a cold sweat beginning to pour down his neck and back. He wanted to tell himself was panicking and overreacting, but the worst case scenario suddenly became quite likely to happen and the awareness of it filled him with complete and utter dread.
“I need to cut the loses. If Fohan learns not only of how many men I got killed, but also that I concealed this information from him for two years and that I left a dangerous variable in the game instead of informing him… he might even kill me on the spot.” Luren wanted to swallow his saliva, but found out that his mouth had gone completely dry.
“I need to find a way to solve everything before Fohan learns of anything. After the fact, I will just say I saw a good chance and arbitrarily decided to make use of it,” he murmured while stomping the floor with his foot restlessly.
“I will try whichever methods available to me; I need to put pressure on Rudford and those two brothers. If I can break the alliance between their schools and that Prince, then it would be great. As long as I can divide them and weaken them enough, they won’t have a choice but to submit when Fohan confronts them,” he thought silently, quickly settling on the overall picture of his plan.
“However, if nothing works out… I will need to move on to more drastic measures,” he added ominously.
“I can’t be sure Fohan won’t sense something if he works with one of my subordinates, so I will need to personally help him with the preparations to overtaking the Valius family. As for what needs to be done about this camp of the seventh Prince’s… I will entrust it all to Zhira,” he decided reluctantly, truthfully having no other choice but to do so.
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“Garoth, finally! What have you learned?” a thirteen years old youth, Genzie, asked hurriedly. He knew that his Grandfather’s arrival would force Uncle Luren into trying to repair his mistake from two years ago, so he had naturally made all the effort to learn what Luren’s plans would end up being.
“Although the information is being kept top secret, we’ve been quite lucky,” Garoth said with a slight smirk. Ever since his life had been spared thanks to Genzie’s request two years ago, he always did his best to serve him well and naturally, was extremely happy to be able to accomplish the tasks assigned to him.
Personally, he had never truly enjoyed serving Fohan; he very much preferred to work under a more benevolent master, someone who wouldn’t order him to kill women and children if he were to gain something from their demise. To him, the last two years had been the happiest period of his life, throughout which as far as he could remember he had been serving the Cail family.
“One of the men we’ve placed in your uncle’s household happened to become a part of Zhira’s unit. We’ve learned that your uncle ordered Zhira to find a way to split the seventh Prince’s camp and in case nothing works out, take more ‘drastic measures’,” Garoth informed with a bitter smile. “Your uncle panicked completely, just like you were predicting, young master,” he added with a grim laugh, the wisdom and ability of this thirteen years old young master of his never ceasing to amaze him.
“Drastic measures, eh? That should at least mean Laien’s life isn’t in danger,” Genzie mused aloud. “As long as Laien stays in the Royal Palace of the Two Weeks City, Zhira will be unable to touch a hair on his head. The place is too well protected. He will use some of his usual schemes, but against Great Martial Schools and with mere days to set everything up… he probably won’t accomplish much,” he elaborated, at the same time trying to put himself in Zhira’s shoes. If he were him, what kind of drastic measures would he undertake as the last resort?
“Zhira will have three days at most and he will most likely fail with the soft approach. Would he go as far as to try assassinating Laien though…?” Genzie murmured to himself. “No, even though I couldn’t risk telling Laien anything specific, Rudford will notice what Zhira is doing and if something happens to Laien or Siana, he will act against the Cail family even if there’s absolutely no proof of anything at all. Uncle Luren must be aware of that too,” he concluded, managing to calm himself down a little.
Rudford was after all one of the four supreme experts of the Sarkcente Kingdom. If he were to go on a rampage, there would be only three people in the country who would be capable of stopping him. However, one of those three would be more likely to join him in wiping the Cail family out, one would surely refuse to intervene and the last one… would likely dismiss the whole thing and remain in secluded meditation.
“I wish we could inform Master Shire secretly and get him to help us out like the last time, but Uncle won’t let his guard down like he did back then. He already seems to be wary of me, I can’t let him catch wind of anything suspicious,” Genzie stated bitterly, still thinking aloud; this way he could share his thoughts with Garoth without having to explain his reasoning part by part.
“We couldn’t even if we wanted,” Garoth mentioned with a little sigh. He wasn’t aware of it, but he had long since gotten so close to Genzie that he stopped the little things in his behavior like a servant would before his master. “Master Shire disappeared from the city the last night. We have no idea where he went or when he will return,” he informed straightforwardly.
“Damn,” Genzie clicked his tongue. “Master Shire is one of the few people who know the full picture of what is going on behind the scenes. Even if we didn’t go to him, he would have probably figured everything out and acted on his own… this is troublesome…” he spoke in a low voice while shaking his head. Technically, Laien and Siana should be perfectly safe in the Royal Palace, he also knew Laien wasn’t one to sit tightly in one spot. He would sooner or later go out alone… but was there a way to warn him of the danger without having Luren’s subordinates notice?
“If I could suggest something, young master,” Garoth spoke up politely. He looked at Genzie, waiting for a permission to speak.
“Of course,” Genzie said with a helpless smile. His grandfather had been using Garoth as a simple killing tool, but he had quickly discovered how bright this man’s brain was despite his dull face and rather average overall appearance.
“Your grandfather must have asked Luren if there’s anything he needs to fear from the siblings while overtaking the Valius family. We know that your uncle lied to him, but he must have also said something true… like for example, something along the lines ‘the boy despises the Valius family for how they treated him, so as long as none of his old friends and acquaintances are hurt there is no danger of the Red Dragon School intervening,” Garoth explained with a smile. In the past, he hadn’t been allowed to think for himself and was expected only to give accurate reports and inform Fohan of potential dangers, but even that proved to come in handy right now. He pretty much knew the way of thinking of Fohan, Luren and the other two Masters of the Cail family inside-out.
“Oh.” Genzie’s eyes brightened up. “You are suggesting to carefully use one of them to deliver a message to Lord Garon, who could then warn Laien under the pretense of requesting aid from him… that can work out!” he said energetically but still made sure to keep his voice quiet. Even though his mansion itself was safe, no one knew if one of his uncle’s men wasn’t trying to listen from one of the nearby roofs.
“Does it mean we are going through with this plan?” Garoth asked, feeling very satisfied and happy to have the value of his idea recognized.
“Right, we will only pull a few strings. Nothing major; we can’t afford to do anything big anyway,” Genzie reaffirmed, already working out the details in his head.