With the box in hand, the group ended up gathering some attention, even more so since they were heading to the palace. The place was around ten blocks wide and long, so a bunch of guards were patrolling the place while marching around and gathering at the entrance of the palace as well.
The guards of the palace were all equipped with red spears, and they were also wearing a different kind of armor, it wasn’t that heavy since it mainly protected the sides of their limbs, their chests, and backs like scale armor, but that meant that they could be pretty fast too. Heirina sighed when she felt their eyes on them.
“They already noticed us. We would only look suspicious if we looked around, only to return to this place later. Let’s head to the front and talk with them.”
Everyone nodded once again, and then they walked toward the entrance of the palace. Before long, the guards there assumed a defensive formation and began to hold their spears tightly. They weren’t just simple guards who had been doing that kind of job all of their lives, and they had an aura of people who meant business.
“Identify yourselves.”
Once again, Heirina decided to use her real name. Her name wasn’t that uncommon, and she wasn’t supposed to be famous yet. Even the leaders of clans should be relatively infamous in that part of the country. Only a handful of people that people for the clan’s services would know their names.”
“My name is Heirina and I am an envoy of a merchant in the west called Reino. As the princess birthday is approaching, my master gave me the order to bring her this gift. Please confirm with her this. She already received some gifts from my master over the years and I have the order to delivery this directly to her hands.”
The leader of the guards studied Heirina and the others behind her. He was a man who had a few face scars, and he also had a long mustache. Thanks to that, and his hardened expression, it was hard to read his facial expressions. Still, since he took a few seconds to respond, the group assumed that he was considering the option of doing exactly that. That kind of thing probably was common. In the end, he looked at one of his soldiers and then pointed to the palace.
“Wait here. We will pass on the message.”
Heirina nodded. So far, so good. The group was able to keep their posture despite the glare of the dozen or so guards defending that side of the palace. Truth be told, they were too young to be considered envoys of someone, but there were a bunch of reasons someone would send a group like that to send the gift. To save money was the most obvious one.
Only important people were supposed to know the birthday of the princess as well. Besides, at that point in time, everyone couldn’t care less about it. They were more worried about when the emperor was going to die, and the prime minister would take the reins over the whole country. That made Zelos wonder… even if the prime minister possibly caused the disease that was inflicting the emperor with some poison, he wasn’t going further by killing him already. Maybe there was some sort of reason for it.
Zelos had plenty of time for that since it took one hour for the guard to return… the princess was either hiding, or those guys were slacking off and messing with them.
“Princess Liry said that he will receive you all. You will have to leave your weapons here.”
“We don’t have weapons with us.”
The guards checked their clothes and confirmed that not like they would need weapons to do anything, but it would make it a lot easier for the guards to stop them if they tried anything, anyway. Regardless, four guards positioned themselves around the group, and soon they entered the palace.
The tension was pretty hard to ignore as the group passed through the stone-paved paths toward the center of the palace. After crossing a few buildings on the way, they stopped in the middle of the palace and then turned to the right side.
Before long, they entered a large group of buildings that seemed like the part of the palace where the princess lived. The group saw that the place was quite lively with bright colors there, most of them were light pink. There were flowers around decorating the place, and they looked brand new since their aroma was in the air.
The place was quite big, around two blocks big, but the group didn’t see anyone there. There were no servants to keep the place clean. However, they could feel a weird aura in the air, almost like they were being watched. The feeling decreased as they went further into the buildings, and that puzzled them.
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Eventually, the group arrived. In the final building where they found a girl that looked like she was around fifteen years old. The group blinked several times since the girl looked like a younger version of Reina…
Princess Liry was sitting on the ground using some cushions as support. She had very long light brown hair that one could think had never been cut. She had emerald green eyes that looked full of life, and she was wearing a simple green dress that suited her image of a princess.
“Thank you for coming, everyone. My name is Liry. It is a pleasure to meet you all.”
Everyone dropped to their right knees, and then Zelos frowned. Heirina opened her eyes widely… to think that Zelos didn’t even know something that basic. In the end, after much hesitation, Zelos decided to copy them.
“Oh, please. No need for formalities. You can all sit. Thank you for bringing them here. You are all dismissed.”
The guards looked at each other for a moment. The princess only had power in name, but the guards decided to follow her orders. If something were to happen, they could just blame those five, and no one would bat an eye on that. The situation was weird in the castle. Everyone was counting the days of her life to come to an end, but no one wanted to make a mistake and do that themselves.
After sitting down on the floor cross-legged, Zelos realized all that. Despite that, the princess had this weird, unconcerned smile on her face. She couldn’t be that clueless considering how Reina met her. That being said, it was hard to imagine that she actually had confidence in repelling any assailants; she didn’t look that strong, and it wasn’t the surprising appearances that people like Heirina and Kaitrine had while hiding their strength and skill. The princess truly looked frail, like a doll.
“It seems that they are finally far away enough… you all can relax now, but don’t raise your voice. I can’t tell when there is one nearby that can hear us. Reina sent you all here, right? I thought that she would finally come, but I guess that is just like her…”
The princess showed a sad smile. Zelos wondered if she was secretly hoping that Reina would come to rescue her from that situation. She wasn’t that surprised, though, but she accepted it as if it was unavoidable.
“Excuse me, Your Highness. We need to introduce ourselves first. My name is Heirina, and these are Kaitrine, Edea, Irlan, and Zelos. Whatever this one here says or does, please don’t mind. He was somewhat raised in the wild, so he doesn’t understand manners.”
“Oh, really? He doesn’t look like that, considering his expression. He looks more comfortable than all of you, at least. I wonder why.”
“Your Highness probably won’t like his explanation for that. Well, I also ask for apologies in advance since I am not used to this kind of situation. Perhaps delivering the gift as soon as possible will make things easier for all of us.”
Heirina passed the box to the princess, and the chains disappeared immediately. Everyone blinked several times when they saw that. Was that some sort of trait? How did that one work? Zelos could only think that the chains had disappeared because they had reached the person that they needed. Aside from that, nothing came to mind.
Liry opened the box and then showed a small smile, and then touched whatever it was inside. Then she closed the box again. No one saw what was there, though.
“This one was her best so far. Hopefully, I will be able to send one back to her next year. By the way, are you all in a hurry?”
“Well, actually…”
“Not, really. Your Majesty, why do you ask?”
Zelos knew that this would happen, but he still felt like he should do that. It was a bit funny, even if he didn’t smile or feel like laughing at all.
“Usually, Kaitrine uses a very roundabout way to send me her gifts. No one ever showed up in the palace with the gift in their hands. You don’t look like you live in the mountains with the natives, so how did you meet her?”
“Well, it is a long story… Basically, it is thanks to you, Your Majesty.”
Heirina proceeded to tell the events that happened six months ago. Speaking of which, Zelos even forgot to ask what happened to the guys who hired those bandits to attack the town of the clan, since he was too busy with the expansion of his business. He finally learned that more than half of the merchants escaped once they learned about the failure and used the others as scapegoats. They tried to escape as well, but they only bought time for the others. They ended up resisting since they knew that they would be executed for treason, and so they died at the hands of Huxi and some of Lua’s warriors.
After that, the territory fell into Lua’s territory. While the merchants had many businesses there, Lua was able to easily find people to take their place. After a single month, things were back to normal. The only issue was that the merchants escaped to the neighboring country. However, since their alliance failed, it was hard to know what happened to them afterward.
“Huxi didn’t pass the details of that time… I never imagined that things would have ended up this way. I thanked him, but he just said not to mention it.”
This time, everyone raised their eyebrows to think that Huxi ended up getting the reputation for that incident… Come to think of it, Zelos heard that Huxi worked in the capital, and since he received the letter from the princess and she didn’t have any real power… was he an ally or not?