I wanted to start with a brainstorm session to see what each side’s takes were on this situation. Along those lines, I created a list of issues affecting all of us and passed them out to everyone to kick things off. This was just to ensure we were all on the same page; I didn’t want to turn this conference into a blame game, so if we disagreed on how we saw matters, I wanted it fixed as soon as possible, and so did Hinata.
Our respective stances were about what I figured.
To us, of course, the whole story began with Farmus’s invasion of our land. Our view of this hadn’t changed; all we did was respond to moves made by the other side.
On the Church’s end, Hinata told us that problems actually began before Farmus’s request to them. Essentially, acknowledging the existence of a nation of monsters went against the teachings of Luminism, a pressing issue that threatened to cast doubt on the faith of its believers. Leaving this unaddressed could trigger internal revolt and weaken the foothold the Western Holy Church had on the region. That’s why they had to destroy the monster nation, and that was why they needed a just cause, a good reason to conquer us.
“That was the situation when we received the request from Archbishop Reyhiem, who was in Farmus at the time,” Hinata explained. “Cardinal Nicolaus gave his approval, and I had no objections to it—and besides, I still wanted to get back at you.”
She intended, in other words, to take advantage of Farmus’s greed and seize the opportunity to annihilate us and gain revenge.
“Was that about Shizu?”
“Yes, it was. I suppose I was just being used, though, looking back. I don’t know who is operating behind the scenes, but there are definitely Eastern merchants involved.”
“Merchants? I knew it. Clayman had a merchant or two he was particularly close to as well. Given how well armed Geld and his orcish army was, I assumed they were connected to one nation or another. I guess it was the East, then.”
I nodded, convinced. Judging by the account books I had Shuna look into, Clayman was dealing in a vast amount of merchandise—mainly goods from the Empire, originally crafted in the Dwarven Kingdom. That wasn’t suspicious, since the Empire and kingdom had regular trade with each other—but there were no records at all of the middlemen involved in this. Shuna was thorough in her work, but she couldn’t find any of them, even after we asked the assorted officials we took prisoner. Clayman was careful, no doubt drumming it into his force that no evidence should ever be left behind. We found absolutely nothing on the Moderate Jesters, either, the group closely affiliated with him.
Still, we could make educated guesses about who was involved. In Clayman’s castle, we found a collection of artwork, rare magic items, and other such goods, brought in from around the world. The weapons and armor we discovered, however, were chiefly hand-me-downs from the Empire. They had teleportation magic, so they could’ve procured weapons from anywhere they wanted, but they got almost all of it in from the East. That suggested close connections, and while the evidence was circumstantial, it was still persuasive.
That and their food supply. Clayman’s bases across the land held enormous stashes of fruit, bread, dairy, and luxury goods like alcohol. Being organic, they couldn’t be teleported; physical transport was a must with them. Clayman’s domain, the Puppet Nation of Dhistav, apparently used slave labor for most of its agricultural output, but not everything we found in these stores was domestically produced—according to Shuna, some of it had to be imported from beyond their borders. The only real candidate for this was the Eastern Empire, adjacent to Dhistav. Milim’s domain, after all, was self-sufficient to the point that she barely even considered international trade—hell, she and the ex–demon lord Carillon didn’t even have currency to exchange.
So I had my suspicions that Clayman was linked to people from the Eastern Empire.
“That’s right,” Hinata said. “They told me you killed Shizu, and you happened to be stationed in Englesia. That’s why I took the initiative to kill you.”
“Yeah. You couldn’t have picked a worse time, either. Even now, it still pisses me off when I think about it.”
Hinata shivered a bit. Arnaud and the other paladins looked similarly cowed.
“Enough coercion, you upstart brat. I can feel the Lord’s Ambition coming from you.”
Whoops! As Luminus just pointed out, a bit of my aura was leaking out. I was pretty good at keeping it perfectly under my control, but I guess it gets kind of loose whenever I’m angry.
“So,” I began after apologizing, “it’s pretty clear an Eastern merchant or merchants is behind this. Do we know any names?”
“I know one. He called himself Dahm, but I’m sure that’s an alias.”
An alias? Probably so. But the name didn’t really matter. What did matter was narrowing the culprit down to the Empire’s merchant class.
“So this merchant was connected to Clayman, and I’m willing to bet he and his people are the guys who set Farmus’s King Edmaris on us, too.”
“No, there’s no doubting that. Reyhiem made that much clear enough in our questioning.”
I nodded. “Okay, so it’s clear Clayman was controlling Farmus from behind the curtain. Not in a cooperative kind of way, either. It seems more coercive to me.”
“And you think the Eastern merchants were his boots on the ground?” Benimaru asked.
“And I suppose I was just another cog in the machine,” whispered Hinata.
I could sense her anger. The question was: Who drew
