"The strangers?"
"Strangers visited your village that barely gets any visitors and coincidentally left before the attack. Now doesn't that smell fishy to you?"
Suddenly Aldrich remembered the notebook he happened to read that day, he snatched it from the sleeping guard. It had information about the village situation about weapons, number of guards and their shifts.
How could he have been that stupid? The clues were right in his face.
The owner of the notebook was a bodyguard named Keld Adash. He was known for going all around the village to flirt with women instead of protecting his employer.
But what if Keld wasn't flirting with women? What if it was all a ruse, so that he can move around the village freely. All his weird actions would be blamed on his vulgarity and pervertedness. His true objective was—
"Information..." he stuttered, the words came out of his mouth like they weighted as boulders, "they were sent to collect information."
"Undoubtedly, And anything else? Names? any distinguishing features?"
"Atrio Taelva, he claimed to be a banker for the Ado'merin imperial bank branch. Keld Adash was one of his bodyguards."
Ayemon laughed, "Ado'merin well, would you look at that. That happens to be where we're going tomorrow."
-------------------------
Aldrich watched the trees and hills get left behind by the carriage. This was the first carriage that Aldrich saw, nobody had something like that in Wakefield or Uleq. It didn't look as fancy as he had imagined.
It was bigger than he expected but the outside woodwork was plain and unadorned. It was bigger than it looked on the inside than it looked and the seats were big and wide, there were cushions even on the back of the seats.
Aldrich was sipping tea from a porcelain cup that he wasn't sure how to hold. He looked at Caldera and Ayemon, on the seat across, drinking elegantly and tried to imitate them. He failed.
He shared the seat with Orven, Norge was out driving the carriage.
This tea was called the Azureleaf tea and was apparently harvested from tree canopies in the far south. Apparently it was mostly sold by elven merchants.
Aldrich savored the sweet but sour taste of the tea. Last night he had slept a peaceful sleep without being pulled to the nightmare realm. This was a pleasant surprise for him.
After he finished his tea he handed his cup to Caldera who collected it into a wooden basket underneath.
"Aah! These bumps are driving me mad!" Protested Orven.
"Really?" Asked Aldrich. Confused. He felt that the road was extremely well trod and stable.
"You feel like that because you haven't tried the imperial roads, after you do, you just cant come back to dirt and mud trails. Isn't this the capital of the region how cheap can they be?!" Orven raged.
"These guys are stuck a hundred years in the past. They think hoarding gold is all they have to do." Answer Caldera with disdain and disgust.
"It's not easy to part with gold is it? Besides the concept of spending gold to make more is difficult to accept for some people." Added Ayemon.
Aldrich felt a little embarrassed for being impressed by the road but he was glad that he didn't voice out his feelings. He would seem like a total country bumpkin. More than he already has.
Aldrich had more questions to ask. Yesterday he realized that he was ignorant of the state of things outside Wakefield. If he was going to save Isger and take revenge on the perpetrators of the massacre, he needed to do better.
"I thought about it and I think the news should reach the central government right? I mean even if they killed everyone in the village, someone sooner or later will realize that a village of a few hundred people disappeared, right? The government will be alarmed."
Even if their plan had worked and there were no survivors, a village can't just disappear. Someone will find out and people will start asking questions.
Aldrich looked at Orven who had an awkward look on his shaved face.
"Ah, well.... you see... its not that simple."
Orven looked at Ayemon and he nodded.
"These are foul times, Aldrich. Monsters and even dungeons are popping up everywhere. Bandits and outlaws have taken control of many trails and roads, some of which go about their dark business in broad daylight.
In other regions the lords unsanctioned private armies squabble with one another. Abandoning small villages and towns to their fates.
Some other areas of Vorian have become a playground for goblins, kobolds, gnolls, bugbears, trolls and orcs, you name it. Foul times indeed." Ayemon stated.
"What do you mean to say?" Aldrich inquired, he remembered his very recent experience with the goblins and cages. The cages full of people.
"What I mean to say is; what happened to Wakefield is a terrible tragedy. But, by no means is it shocking or rare in the current circumstances. I'm sorry."
Aldrich gritted his teeth, "how could the governor not do anything about this? How could the central government be this blind? This makes no sense."
"Unfortunately, it does." Replied Caldera, "the rest of the provinces and the central government are happy to see Vorian suffer. After all we had sided on the wrong side during the war."
"The wrong side?" Aldrich asked.
"The defeated side. We lost the war along with the false saint, he's dead but we're alive and the rest of the provinces aren't done kicking us when we're down.
And as for the governor, why would he report his failures? If he did, not to mention his career, even his head would fly off, so he would rather steal as much taxes as he could while looking the other way."
"Looking the other way?"
"It's an expression, it means he is pretending that everything is fine and reporting that everything is great to Central. And Central is happy to go along with it as long as no one makes an official report."
"Hundreds of innocent villagers are dead. And they'll look the other way? People were killed without even knowing why and nobody cares?" Aldrich asked no one in particular.
"The story will be the talk of Vorian for a week, two maybe and then it'll just fade away. To the rest of the world it's like it didn't even happen. But the most important thing is that you don't forget." Ayemon reminded Aldrich.
'That's right, let them forget for now. Let them sleep in honey and milk while I sleep in nightmares. They'll see, all of them will pay. All of them will rue the day they decided to involve Wakefield in their dirty schemes. This I swear.'
Aldrich subconsciously drew blood from his lower lip. He could see now why they had no qualms about slaughtering an entire village. Because they knew they were in the clear.
———————————————
After a long time, Aldrich could see the walls of Ado'merin growing closer and closer. After a while, the huge gate was looming over the carriage.
He saw many guards on top of the walls and by the gate. Each were very well armed, some had bows some had crossbows, others held muskets at the ready.
But the carriage passed through the gate smoothly without a hitch. The slightly bumpy road turned to smoth pavement.
Aldrich observed Ado'merin a city that he had only hear about until now but the carriage moved too fast for him to comprehend any part of it.
"Where to?" Norge asked from outside.
"An unassuming inn, for now." Answered Ayemon.
"Got it."
Some time later, the carriage came to a stop and they each got off. Aldrich looked around but before he could take the city in he was taken by the smell.
Caldera must have noticed the look on his face. "The greedy sods that run this city didn't bother with sewerage."
Aldrich looked at the hundreds of people in the streets, the three- and four- story buildings everywhere. The cobbled streets with tracks worn a hand's breath down into the stones.
There was too much. Smells of cooking pork, chicken and duck. Spices he didn't know, fresh fish, rotting fish, a thin odor of humanoid waste. And a stronger one of horse and cattle manure.
Aldrich tried not gawk as he followed Ayemon and the rest, they walked towards a two story inn, the inn had a wooden signboard with the name, the smiling rose.
Before they entered Ayemon threw a copper coin at group of four young men by the door of the inn. After catching the coin, the young men scrambled to get the horses into the stables.
When they entered the wooden floor creaked under their feet and the smell of cooking pork and fish grew ever stronger. The hallway was clean and tidy.
Aldrich walked behind the group to a young woman behind a desk, she was fiddling with a book. When they were close enough she looked up at them and asked politely, "good evening, how may help you today?"
"Just four rooms for the night." Ayemon said with a smile.
The receptionist beamed, "of course. Hot water will be provided in the night and morning by the staff. That'll be eight coppers."
'Eight coppers? That's insane!' Aldrich wanted to lash out at the insane price. But no one else reacted so he held his tongue.
"Sure." Ayemon placed one coin with the number five inscribed on it, and four separate coins on the table.
"Let me get you your keys, sire. Eh, you made a mistake sire, you gave me nine coppers." The woman took one copper out to return it to Ayemon but he refused.
"Ah, you can keep that." He said.
"No, sire, I can't. I'll get in trouble for this..."
"Consider it a token of my appreciation for the good work you've been doing here." He insisted.
The woman blushed as she kept the copper coin in her pouch.
"I don't deserve such kindness sire."
"Outrageous! How can you not? Since the moment I walked in I felt your hard work and sincerity, by the way.... we just got here from Kidaran. Did you by any chance hear anything interesting lately? Any rumors, perhaps?"
The woman looked like she was thinking hard, "I've heard about all sorts of rumors, I'm just not sure what are you looking for."
"I'm thinking something big, something recent. Any ideas?"
"Oh! I know!" the receptionist jumped excitedly.
Aldrich held his breath. Here it comes.
"The fifth daughter of lord Onsworth was seen swimming in the jorie lake in the middle of the night, and in the nude too."
Aldrich felt the veins one his forehead about to explode and shower the receptionist with his blood.
But Ayemon's reaction was different.
"Whaaat~ now that's some big news."
"I know, but it's not confirmed yet. Anyhow, through that door's the tavern if you feel hungry at all please try it out."
The receptionist then opened a drawer and brought a few keys out and gave them to Ayemon.
At this moment the front door opened again.