Chapter 196
Turn the tide
Lea immediately shared what she was thinking with her companions. When the name ‘Janik’ came out of her mouth, both Calix and Derek were inwardly surprised. The information they had obtained after much investigation was now coming directly from her lips.
That made Calix curious. How did she know about this Janik?
“Just how do you know about him? Could it be…”
He trailed off, wondering if she’d known this person before coming to Cantabria. Even though he trusted everyone present, he was cautious.
Lea, noticing what he was thinking, hesitated before answering.
“I’m not really sure myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hardly remember anything from before I came to the Cantabria Empire. I don’t think I was so young that I shouldn’t remember, but… I can’t even recall my father’s face.”
Her words left the four men at a loss for words. They’d been curious, but never dared to directly ask about her past, or how exactly Lea and Bianca had come to meet the Emperor and end up here.
“There’s no need to remember the past. If you think about it, neither of us has much of a good past anyway.”
Calix spoke softly, consolingly, as he brushed Lea’s hair over her shoulder. His words brought a gentle smile to her lips.
It reassured her, as if he was saying the past she’d been so afraid of no longer had power over her.
Lea then explained how she came to know of Janik in detail.
“The Empress secretly runs a merchant guild without the Emperor’s knowledge. And I was the one managing the guild’s ledgers.”
In this life, she’d only managed it briefly, but before her regression, she’d managed the guild until the day she died. That was why she was falsely accused as Bianca’s accomplice.
“…The guild the Empress runs wasn’t established with imperial funds. It was founded on capital of unknown origin. But most of the profits from the guild ended up going to that man named Janik. That’s why I couldn’t help but notice. The real owner of that money of unknown origin was Janik.”
She didn’t know exactly what kind of person he was. But knowing there’s no such thing as a free lunch, Lea assumed Janik wanted something from Bianca.
Either way, if they used someone like that, they could threaten the Leonis Crown Prince.
Derek, who’d been listening quietly, glanced at Calix. Calix recognized that Derek wanted to share what he’d learned and gave him a subtle nod.
Derek immediately spoke up.
“There’s something I’d like to report, Lady Lea.”
“Yes, please go ahead. I’ll be needing your skills for this matter, Derek.”
“I’ve been gathering information by scouting the enemy and reading their minds. What I learned is this: Duke Janik von Venesi is leader of the wolf tribe and has had bad relations with the lion tribe Imperial Family for a long time.”
Derek shared everything he’d learned from his own abilities and informants. When he finished, Lea organized her thoughts and responded.
“We shouldn’t just use him alone. We should connect him to another prince. Since the third prince participated in the war, it would seem more natural to link Janik to the second prince rather than the third.”
“In that case, we should plant information for that lion beastfolk, Tynato.”
“Yes, how about this…”
“Do you already have a plan in mind?”
Lea recalled the situation before her regression in detail. Back then, Bianca’s merchant guild was also connected to Janik, but until the war ended and she and Bianca were executed, Janik had never made a move.
It didn’t feel like he was just acting out of defeat, she felt he must have had some other agenda. She vaguely sensed the outline now.
She told Derek,
“If he was truly loyal to the country, even if relations were bad, wouldn’t he have helped with the war more actively? From what you said, Derek, the wolf tribe was always ready to withdraw, right?”
“That’s correct.”
“Then it seems the war with us was never really important to him. For example…”
Lea continued, outlining what might be her plan, or perhaps Janik’s.
“What if he’s using this war, waiting for Leonis to weaken, to prepare for a rebellion?”
Her words made the four men start in unison. It didn’t sound at all impossible. A prince losing a war could hardly be separated from the threat of a prince’s death.
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