Chapter 80
Marching in there without intelligence or support would have been sheer stupidity.
Instead, Evelia checked into an inn near the station. The room was small and worn, but she found nothing worth complaining about. After sending Ivan the inn’s location, she decided to rest and recover from the journey.
How much time had passed?
In the darkness of the room, Evelia’s eyes flew open.
She bolted upright, sweeping her gaze across the pitch-black room where not a single light burned. Cold sweat streamed down from her brow.
“Hah… huff…”
She’d dreamed that the Union Police had come after her simply because she’d entered Lakeland. Just like always, she’d assassinated her target and fled the scene, only for officers to emerge from a bank of hazy mist, chasing after her as gunshots rang out behind her back.
Bang! Bang! Bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!
And then—
Bang!
She woke just as the last shot struck her, sending her sprawling to the ground.
Running a hand roughly through her hair, Evelia wiped the cold sweat from her brow and drained the glass of water on the bedside table in a few desperate gulps.
‘I’ve been chopping fish heads for so long I’ve gone soft.’
Just then, someone approached her door.
Her eyes narrowed. Silently, Evelia held her breath and slipped a dagger into her hand.
Whoever stood outside had done their best to muffle their footsteps, but they hadn’t managed to silence the faint rustle of their clothing.
She took her position beside the door, ready to slit the intruder’s throat the moment the handle turned.
Shff.
A document envelope slid through the gap beneath the door. She didn’t even need to inspect it.
It was Ivan’s.
Letting out a quiet sigh of relief, Evelia picked up the envelope. As always, it contained information on her target.
“Hmm…”
More than anything else, what surprised her was the target’s age. He wasn’t even thirty.
When she’d heard duke, she’d imagined some half-dead old relic with one foot in the grave. Instead, even through the blurred photograph, the head of the ancient house looked remarkably young.
‘Handsome.’
Evelia stared at the out-of-focus photograph for a long moment. Then again, couldn’t Ivan’s people manage to take a proper picture?
‘No professional pride.’
The image was so blurred it looked as though it had been swallowed by mist. Disappointing. Still, identifying the target’s basic features wasn’t difficult.
Young or not, she hoped he’d die quietly. A man that young had no business meddling in the arms industry. There was inviting death, and then there was asking for it.
“Hm, a young guy hiding out in the middle of nowhere?”
Weren’t nobles supposed to spend every night attending lavish parties in the capital?
Attached to the profile was a rough map leading to the duke’s residence, along with a sketch of its general layout. That, too, had been gathered by one of Ivan’s spies.
Unfortunately, their maps were often riddled with inaccuracies, whether in scale or detail. They were useful only as references. Some things could only be understood by seeing the place with her own eyes.
After committing both the target’s appearance and the map to memory, Evelia hid the documents deep among her belongings. Then, before sunrise, she slipped out of the inn.
Dawn in the north was pitch-black. Beyond the reach of the gas lamps, there was only darkness. Blending into the shadows, Evelia made her way toward the hill where the estate stood, carefully reading the terrain as she walked.
After about an hour, the outline of a building began to emerge atop the hill. Or rather, it wasn’t that she could see the building. She sensed that something was there first, concealed within the mist.
The Brumfield ducal estate.
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