Chapter 129

“There is no need to press so harshly. As that brat himself testified, this place is indeed connected with Thierry Kiatek. However, more recently, it has been confirmed that other fellows have also been coming and going, yet there was no way for me to pry into their identity.”

He had already been caught once while attempting to deceive someone. When Eugène pressed him again, Hunter seemed to think that he must not provoke his temper any further, and so he obediently confessed his true intention.

To put his confession simply, it was as follows. Since Eugène had kept his promise, he himself was obliged to conclude the transaction, yet the circumstances were not favorable. He had discovered the last place where Thierry Kiatek had stayed, but the problem was that the location happened to be Sailboat Street.

Hunter’s Jackdaw Syndicate was an underground organization that possessed the widest information network within the empire, but in the end, it was nothing more than an assembly of fences. As nothing but a common criminal, it was an impossible choice for him to mobilize force in such a refined residential district.

“It is unfortunate, but I do not have any reliable backing that would protect me after carrying out business in a place like this. If I had to insist, there is only one, and that is you, who became a man of Balustre with his bare bod-”

Before he could finish, Hunter let out a pained cry and clutched his brow. Eugène, who had been silently listening until then, had slapped him hard across the face. He had expected to take a hit for running his mouth, and had even steeled himself for it, but the reality of being struck left his vision black. Only then did Hunter realize that his resolve had been far too careless.

Sparks burst before his eyes, and he felt as though his eyeball might burst from its socket. If it was mercy, it lay in the fact that Eugène had aimed not for the sound eye but for the ruined one, yet to Hunter that mercy was all the more agonizing. Having lost one eye, he wore a wooden prosthetic in the empty socket to keep the bones of his face from collapsing, and it was precisely near that spot that he had been struck.

Damn it! This rotten #%#$^!! Not even a dog would want it!

The pain rattled him to the marrow of his bones, and Hunter bit down on the flood of curses rising like a dialect from his tongue, groaning and choking instead.This cruel and ruthless fellow! Butcher! Slaughterer!!However, with so much upon his conscience, Hunter dared not voice any of it aloud.

“Was it wrong of me to place my trust in a dishonest man? I never expected you would disappoint me like this.”

At Eugène’s cold rebuke, Hunter, still clutching his brow with one hand and groaning in pain, raised his head. Even with tears brimming in his eye, he forced a wide grin and kept jesting to the very end.

“Oh, to hear such a rebuke after so long, it feels like a dagger is driven into my chest. My father, in his lifetime, used to scold me in exactly the same manner as you.”

“It seems you showed no promise even then.”

“As they say, a tree destined to grow tall is different from the sprout. Perhaps the opposite is true as well.”

Eugène shot him a glare that said he was utterly incredulous, then turned his head away as though he could not even be bothered to deal with him. Fortunately, it seemed the brief commotion across the street had gone unnoticed, for the mansion that was their target still lay in silence. Nevertheless, Eugène, still uneasy, kept watch for a time, studying the darkened windows for any sign of movement within.

“How many people come and go?”

“I have not been watching long, since it has not been long since I tracked down the boy. At most, I have observed for only a few days.”

“Still, you must have an approximate number.”

“Well, it is hardly a reliable tally. As few as three or four, as many as six or seven, they say. They disguise themselves as clerks of a trading house when they come and go. Excluding overlapping faces, I would say the number is about that.”

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“But with only that much, I do not think you can be certain of his identity. All that is known is the name, his true status has never been confirmed, and in fact there is a high chance even that name is an alias.”

“That is something I will learn for myself, once I see him.”

Eugène muttered, his eyes gleaming with a sharp light. At that, Hunter could not hide the sour expression that came over his face.

“…What? You really mean to go in?”

“Do you not think it is a little late to be asking that? You deceived me into bringing me here, all to push me inside there, did you not?”

“Well, if you put it that bluntly, I cannot deny it… But should you not reconsider? I thought you would at least bring along some of the Emperor’s Guard, or if not that, a few of the Anti-Chevalier. To throw yourself in when we do not even know how many enemies may be waiting, it is far too dangerous.”

“Who said I was going in alone?”

“Huh?”

“You are here, are you not? And as it happens, you are also a man who owes me a debt, scrambling to find a way to repay it.”

“W-what? No. Hey, Eugène! Let’s talk about this—”

Hunter, who was more devoted than anyone else to preserving his own safety, shook his head violently with a pale face, but Eugène paid no heed to his desperate protest. Out of the darkness, a hand shot forward and clamped tight around Hunter’s wrist.

Eugène’s grip bound his arm like a pair of handcuffs, and in a low voice, he whispered.

“They say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If that proverb holds, then you and I should be inseparable.”

Hunter, it seemed, had not realized. But to a soldier of merit, the tenacity to pursue an enemy to the very end was an indispensable quality. And though called tenacity in polite terms, in plainer speech, it went by another name. Spite.

“My father handed over port blueprints more valuable than his own life in order to save me.”

Hunter muttered resentfully to himself as he picked the lock of the sewer grate secured with heavy chains. Eugène, unfazed by the stench that pricked at his nose, kept a sharp watch on their surroundings. Although he knew perfectly well that his companion was not listening to a single word, Hunter dragged on with his grievance all the same.

“He used to say constantly that his domain was more precious than his own child, yet in the end, at the very last moment, he abandoned his land in order to save that child. Do you understand what that means? My life, no matter how cheaply valued, is worth at least one domain.”

“If my life ends, then my father’s tender paternal devotion ends as well, and so does my family line. You had better recognize very clearly what sort of crime you are committing right now!”Muttering like a monk caught in the rain, Hunter’s hands nevertheless moved swiftly.

With only a few lockpicks hidden in his sleeve, he made short work of the heavy lock, slid the iron bar that secured the sewer grate aside, and stepped inside.

“Which way must we go?”

Following behind into the channel, Eugène removed the cloth covering his lantern, casting light into the darkness. The sudden glare scattered the rats scurrying across the walkway, their shrill squeals echoing as they darted into cracks in the wall.

The water flowing past was a black, festering mire of household waste and filth, churning like a rotten swamp. Hunter wrinkled his face and covered his nose with his sleeve. It was a stench no sane man could endure.

“Mmmff-rrnghh grmmf. Ngghh-mmmff chrrff-brrnghh grmngh.”

“The first fork on the right?”

“Mmmh-hmm.”

Unbelievable…Eugène did not even bother to look back at Hunter, certain the man was being troublesome on purpose. He simply strode off in the direction indicated, and Hunter, reluctant as ever, had no choice but to follow.

Fortunately, their destination was not far. Since even the mansion they targeted had a small private dock attached, it was only natural that the sewer passage leading to the river lay close by. Eugène, pressing his sleeve to his mouth, followed Hunter’s silent gestures upstream through the sewer.

Choosing the sewer as their entry point, so as to avoid the eyes not only of the household but of the neighbors as well, had been the right decision. Because they were moving against the outlet, the tunnel was high enough that they could walk without stooping, and since it was not the rainy season, the water level was low, leaving the walkway dry enough to traverse with ease.

If there was a minor problem, it was that, unlike the sense of smell, which dulls easily, the stench only grew stronger as time went on. Strangely enough, from the moment they passed a certain point, the stench became unbearably vile. It was a foulness so rancid it felt as though their noses would rot away.

“Corpses.”

So nauseating was the stench that even Eugène, who had maintained a composed expression until now, could not keep his features from tightening. Hunter, who had thought as much, could not help but change his own expression when he heard the word. He hurriedly lowered the sleeve with which he had been covering his nose and tested the air.Curse it!It truly was the stench of corpses.

“I have a feeling I know where this smell is coming from.”

“Is our destination just beyond the left corner?”

“Exactly.”

“Then I know as well.”

Hunter had no wish to turn that corner. He very much did not want to reach the destination that awaited him there. However, Eugène walked ahead with firm, unhesitating steps. A man, through and through. Quite the paragon of manhood. Hunter glared resentfully at the obstinate back of his companion and forced himself to follow.

As expected. The moment they turned the corner, the very image of hell revealed itself.

Spread across the sewer and the walkway lay no fewer than half a dozen corpses, thrown together in a chaotic heap. Some were relatively intact, as though they had been slain only recently. Others were half-rotted, their torn flesh swarming with corpse-flies and maggots. All of them were male. Some bore hideous marks of torture, with skin flayed away or grotesquely swollen from abuse.

Lost in that dreadful sight, Hunter stumbled forward until a soft, yielding sensation rose underfoot, and he shuddered violently. He glanced down, unwilling but unable not to look, and saw a severed arm. Beneath the bluish, discoloured skin, the grain of the muscle stood out in detail. Hunter wrenched his foot away and spat a furious curse.

“Fuck! What is all this?”

Eugène, however, who had already witnessed worse horrors during the purges of pirate strongholds, did not show such violent disgust. He merely observed the scene in silence and drew his brows together in solemn distaste.

He knew from experience how cruel human beings could be to one another. For such people, imagination existed only to devise new instruments of torment.

“Do you recognize this mark?”

Using the tip of his short sword, he shifted the corpses about until he uncovered a tattoo shared among several of them. He then directed the question to Hunter. The man looked at him in open revulsion, yet curiosity gnawed at him as well. Unable to resist, he edged forward, albeit with extreme reluctance.

On the part that Eugène indicated with his short sword, a roughly drawn tattoo in the shape of a pair of scissors was faintly visible. The craftsmanship of the tattoo artist was poor, which explained its crude appearance, but taking into account the somewhat inward-pointing lines, it was not impossible to imagine it as a crab’s claw.

“It is obvious at a glance. It is in the shape of a crab’s claw. …It seems we have found the real butcher.”

“Is that not too few to be certain?”

“It is also possible that there are more who have not yet been killed. It is difficult to assert that the one who acted as the butcher was only one.”

There was reason in Hunter’s words. When Eugène first heard of the butcher, his immediate suspect had not been these people but another party.

However, what was important now was not how many butchers had dismantled the Clawhand gang. The more pressing matter was that they had been negligent enough to leave the bodies directly beneath their base.