Chapter 742
Ludger stared at the tree, and for the first time since arriving, he stopped seeing it as a clue and started seeing it as a cover.
A respectable symbol planted over something no one wanted disturbed.
That thought sat very badly with him. Because if the illusionist had pointed him here on purpose… Then maybe the next step wasn’t in the branches. Maybe it was under the roots.
Ludger kept his eyes on the tree a moment longer before asking the obvious question.
“What do you know about the person buried there?”
He glanced toward the roots beyond the gate.
“Did they die a long time ago?”
Hroth shrugged.
“I’m a bodyguard,” he said. “I don’t ask questions like that unless I’m being paid extra.”
Ludger didn’t react. That was fair enough. Men in Hroth’s line of work survived by knowing which questions bought information and which ones bought graves.
Still, after a moment, Hroth added, “But…”
Ludger looked at him. Hroth frowned slightly, thinking back.
“I’ve been in the capital for over five years,” he said. “And back then, I passed near that estate a few times.”
His gaze shifted toward the garden.
“The tree wasn’t there.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed.
Hroth continued, “So unless they planted a mature one from somewhere else, which would be a pain, expensive, and obvious, it should be for someone who died more recently.”
That made more sense. Not an ancient burial. A newer one. A recent death hidden under an old symbol. Ludger nodded once.
“Then I’ll need to ask around for more details.”
Hroth snorted softly.
“In the capital?”
“Yes.”
“At night?”
Ludger glanced at him.
“Who knows?”
That got a short laugh out of Hroth.
“Fair enough.”
But Ludger’s attention had already moved ahead. A recently dead noble or family member. Buried beneath a tree associated with cursed labyrinth sickness. And important enough that the family planted the marker inside their own estate grounds. Someone in the capital knew.
Servants talked. Gardeners noticed. Gravediggers remembered. Priests, healers, or suppliers might have heard whispers. All he needed was the right loose thread. And the capital, for all its polished walls and expensive silence, was full of loose threads.
The next morning, Varik headed to his office in the Senate with the same measured pace he used for everything important.
The Silver Talon Order didn’t answer to merchants, border lords, or petty noble whims. It worked directly under the Senate, which meant its headquarters had been folded into that monstrous complex of polished stone, warded halls, and armed bureaucracy that sat at the heart of imperial power.
Aside from the castle itself, there was no question… It was one of the most secure places in the Empire. Maybe the most secure place that still allowed people to pretend they were civilians.
Guards at every approach. Ward-lines woven through the walls. Silent watchers hidden behind decorative pillars. Layers of security so dense that most people relaxed the moment they stepped inside.
Varik never did. And that was why he noticed it. The moment his hand touched the door to his office, his expression changed. Not much. Just a slight narrowing of the eyes. Something was off.
The air around the doorway felt… wrong. Not openly hostile. No obvious mana spike. No clumsy alarm disturbance. But the atmosphere had shifted by a hair. A tiny tension. The kind that only existed when a room no longer belonged to the man about to enter it.
Varik’s body responded before his thoughts fully formed. His weight settled. His breathing slowed. One hand hovered just close enough to his weapon to matter. Then he opened the door, fully ready to meet an ambush. What he found instead made him stop cold.
No assassins. No blood. No broken wards. Just a fourteen-year-old boy sitting on his chair, casually reading through a stack of Senate documents as if the office had always been his.
Ludger. He looked absurdly comfortable, posture relaxed, papers in hand, expression calm and unreadable. He looked like he owned the place. At least, Varik noted grimly, the boy hadn’t put his boots on the table too.
Ludger glanced up from the document he was reading. There was no alarm in his face. No guilt. No urgency. Just a quiet, flat acknowledgment.
“Sorry for barging in,” Ludger said.
Varik stared at him for one long second. Then another. Of all the things he had expected to find in one of the most secure offices in the Empire… This had not been one of them.
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Varik closed the door behind him with deliberate care. Not because he was calm. Because slamming it would have implied he’d lost control of the situation, and the boy sitting on his desk already looked far too comfortable for Varik’s taste.
He stepped farther into the office, eyes sweeping once, corners, wards, papers, Ludger again. Then he folded his arms.
“What,” Varik asked, voice controlled, “are you doing here?”
His gaze sharpened.
“And why did I hear nothing about you being in the capital? Or looking for me?”
Ludger set the document down neatly on the desk, like he was a clerk finishing a routine task instead of a teenager who had just humiliated the Senate’s security.
“I came incognito,” Ludger said.
Varik’s brow twitched.
“And I’d like to keep it that way.”
Varik stared at him. Of course.
“Right,” Varik said dryly. “And how exactly did you get inside one of the most secure offices in the Empire?”
Ludger’s expression didn’t change.
“I’d like to keep my methods secret as well.”
Varik let out a long breath through his nose and pinched the bridge of it for a second.
“Ludger,” he said, “I respect you.”
That much was true, irritatingly enough.
“But there are limits to everything.”
He gestured at the room with one hand, the motion clipped and sharp.
“Barging into my office like this. Sitting on my desk. Reading my documents without asking permission.”
Varik’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Do you have any idea how unacceptable that is?”
Ludger looked genuinely thoughtful for a moment. Then Varik continued before the boy could say something unhelpfully honest.
“What would you do,” Varik asked, “if I suddenly showed up in your chair at Lionsguard?”
Ludger answered without hesitation.
“You’d be free to come solve the problems that land on my desk all day, every day.”
Varik froze. The response was so immediate, so dry, and so completely sincere that it hit harder than a proper insult would have. Ludger continued, calm as stone.
“If you want to handle guild disputes, training schedules, supply failures, political complaints, recruitment problems, patrol reports, construction issues, and whatever else people decide is my problem before breakfast…”
He gave a small shrug.
“…then yes. You’d be welcome.”
Varik stared at him for a long second. Then, despite himself, a quiet, reluctant laugh escaped him.
“Heavens,” he muttered. “You really are impossible.”
Ludger didn’t deny it. He simply reached for another paper, then stopped halfway and set it back down with what might have been the closest thing to politeness he could manage. Varik shook his head and moved around the desk, reclaiming his side of the room by habit if not by authority.
“Fine,” he said. “You’ve made your point.”
His gaze slid back to Ludger, sharper now.
“So. Since you’re already here, and since you clearly risked a small political disaster to get into this office…”
He set a hand on the desk.
“What do you want?”
Ludger leaned forward slightly, resting one hand against the desk.
“I was looking for documents related to unexplained deaths in the capital,” he said.
Varik’s expression sharpened.
Ludger continued, tone calm and matter-of-fact. “As expected, you investigated some of them.”
He tapped the stack of papers he had already sorted through.
“Particularly the Rosenhard family.”
Varik frowned. The name pulled something old to the surface. His eyes unfocused for a brief second as he recalled the case.
“…That,” he said slowly, “was four years ago.”
He moved around the desk, set one hand on the chair’s back, but didn’t sit.
“The head of the family fell ill,” Varik said. “Gradually. He weakened over the course of months, and then he died.”
His mouth tightened slightly.
“Just like a few other people in the Empire around the same time. All older. Past fifty.”
He looked at Ludger.
“Sometimes that happens.”
His tone wasn’t dismissive exactly. Just practical. Age, illness, decline, those were normal enough. Not every death hid a conspiracy behind it. Ludger nodded once.
“I agree.”
Then he took one of the papers and placed it neatly on the desk between them.
“Health deteriorates,” Ludger said. “And people die unexpectedly.”
Varik’s eyes dropped to the document. Ludger’s voice stayed even.
“Still, the exact same thing happened four times in the last five years just in the capital.”
That made Varik go still. Ludger tapped the listed names one by one.
“Four victims,” he said. “All heads of their houses.”
His gaze lifted.
“Isn’t that suspicious?”
Varik didn’t answer immediately. Ludger pressed on, calm and sharp as ever.
“And very convenient,” he added, “for the new heads of those houses.”
The office went quiet. Varik looked back down at the page. Four names. One unknown illness. Four family heads dead after slow decline. And four successors stepping into power at exactly the right time. The kind of pattern that, taken alone, could be dismissed as misfortune. But laid side by side… It stopped looking random. Varik’s frown deepened.
“You think someone arranged it,” he said.
Ludger’s expression didn’t change.
“I think the pattern deserves more suspicion than ‘sometimes that happens.’”
Varik exhaled slowly through his nose and looked at the paper again, this time not as an old report, but as a cluster. A pattern. And patterns were always where trouble started.
Ludger looked at Varik for a long moment, then said the thing most people in the Empire were too careful to say inside a Senate office.
“You’re not stupid.”
Varik’s jaw tightened by a fraction. Ludger continued anyway.
“You should know this is beyond weird,” he said. “And you should have investigated more.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Unless someone told you to stop.”
That hung in the room like a blade. Varik didn’t answer at first. He looked down at the paper again, at the names, the dates, the neat sequence of deaths that had seemed easier to ignore when each one lived in its own file. Then he exhaled slowly and finally spoke.
“I wanted to investigate.”
Ludger said nothing. Varik’s expression turned harder, more tired than angry.
“But walking into mourning noble houses and openly raising the possibility that someone inside the family may have arranged the death of the head…” He shook his head once. “That would have been seen as disrespectful. Political provocation. The kind that makes every door close at once.”
He moved around the desk and finally sat, one arm resting on the chair as he stared at the reports.
“So I did what I could behind the scenes,” Varik said. “Quietly.”
Ludger’s gaze sharpened.
“I looked into side accounts. Unofficial businesses. Couriers. Private contacts. Missing funds. Unusual visits. Hidden exchanges.”
His mouth flattened.
“I found nothing.”