Chapter 165: Ancient Fire (4)
A society without Kung-Fu is like a ship trapped in a frozen harbor.
-Napoleon Bonaparte-
“The most ancient, flame…?”
I asked, but the Tsar only laughed as if it were absurd.
It seemed I would not get an answer.
He had no intention of telling me—willingly—what was hidden inside the egg.
‘He must be certain I’ll move even without being told.’
When he said London would become a sea of fire in three days, Watson and I were thoroughly shaken.
Seeing that reaction, the Russian Emperor must have realized we loved this city beyond measure.
“Since I live in London, I can’t refuse this matter… Is that why you summoned me?” He already knew I had met with Her Majesty Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.
He must believe the treasure would return to his hands on its own, without needing me to leak anything important to the British royal house.
“Well. I do not much care which way matters roll.”
The Tsar replied, leisurely crossing his legs.
What a vile hobby the man had.
He was the one who lost the thing. Why was I the one who had to grow anxious?
If he weren’t a foreign head of state, I would have honestly wanted to smack him.
“It sounds as though you mean to achieve your purpose even if you must take all Londoners hostage.”
“Impertinent. How is this because I wished it so? If you wish to blame someone, blame the detestable firefox that stole my treasure.”
A firefox1, indeed.
It was certainly a fitting word for Irene Adler.
And it suited the dreadful calamity that might unfold in three days.
Come to think of it, there was a gap between what I’d heard at Buckingham and what I was hearing here. I should clarify it while I had the Tsar before me.
“You did not mention anything about fire to Her Majesty, it seems.”
“That is so.”
“I heard you said you would move your army south if the treasure was not recovered within three days.”
“It is true.”
“……”
I could tell just by looking into his eyes.
This man meant it.
‘So even failure becomes profit to him.’
I understood why he hadn’t spoken of fire at Buckingham.
Telling the Queen he would start a war if the stolen object wasn’t recovered must have served two purposes.
First, to provoke the Queen’s greed.
Second, to make her hesitate, if only a little, from seizing the treasure by invoking war.
It sounded contradictory, yet forcing those two impulses to coexist inside the Queen would put the Tsar in a highly advantageous position.
‘If London burns, the British government will be unable to stop Russia’s southern advance.’
If he recovered the treasure, the Tsar would pioneer “Russia’s future” by some means.
Conversely, if the Queen failed to find ‘the most ancient flame’ on the Tsar’s behalf, London would become a sea of fire (the precise mechanism remained unknown, but at the very least, the man involved was certain of it).
If London fell into chaos, the Tsar would return home without hesitation and move his army.
Pressing India while London floundered would yield considerable gain.
‘Does he believe that even if Irene or Her Majesty holds the object, they still can’t prevent the catastrophe?’
From the Tsar’s words, it seemed that even Irene Adler, the leader of the Afternoon Tea Party, famed for handling the underworld’s most secret information, and the thief of the Fabergé egg, did not know how to tame the power of fire.
No. She might not even have grasped what the hidden item inside the egg truly was.
Even in the world I came from, Irene Adler was a born criminal. She enjoyed taming talented people into her service, and stealing priceless treasures guarded by ironclad security simply to admire them.
But she was not so foolish as to risk dangers she could not control.
Irene must have stolen it with confidence that the Tsar would never find out.
She coveted the egg because it was a meticulous artwork crafted by Peter Carl Fabergé.
Having tracked Irene Adler’s crimes in my previous life, this much I could say for certain.
If she had known the contents could reduce London to ash, Irene Adler would have sold it off at once.
She might have stolen it from the start at someone else’s instigation, but even then, she likely would not have understood what was inside.
Keeping something that dangerous in her possession, even briefly, was not like a cunning woman such as her.
One question remained: how did the Tsar learn the truth of the theft, when Irene’s work was usually clean?
Had one of her subordinates betrayed her?
I would think about that later.
“I understand a hundred times over that your disappointment is great. But I believe letting innocents be dragged into it is unchivalrous.”
“If you do your work properly, chivalry will be set straight. Am I wrong?”
“……”
It was, truly, a maddening logic.
If you had stored your treasure properly in the first place, none of this would have happened.
That thought rose, yet…
‘If I lash out as I please, the results won’t be pleasant.’
With superhuman patience, I sealed my mouth.
If everything the Tsar said was true, then the safety of countless people living in London was at stake.
Rather than waste time arguing, it was better to gain the information I needed and move quickly.
More than that, I understood the Tsar’s feelings, if only a little.
The Irene Adler I had witnessed before my regression was a villain who had robbed royals, nobles, and industrialists hundreds of times by a variety of methods.
Theft, robbery, blackmail, and even kidnapping.
King Wilhelm von Ormstein of Bohemia, whose weakness she seized to demand a vast sum, described Irene Adler as ‘a woman with the face of the most beautiful gu-niang, and the spirit of the stoutest general, Guan Yu.’”
That was how deep, and how vicious, Irene’s schemes were.
Let me say this beforehand. I would wager Alexander III did not hand over the egg because he was bewitched by Irene Adler’s beauty.
He was a family man. An exemplary husband devoted to his wife and children.
The greatest proof was that he wore a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, despite needing his presence in London kept secret.
A Russian wedding ring. Three bands, yellow gold, rose gold, and white gold, woven into one, expressing a trinity akin to the Three Pure Ones.
It was only that his family, including his late father, had cherished Irene Adler greatly.
Only that Irene Adler had been the greatest prima donna all Russia could not stop praising.
A mere hired performer. An acrobat who could sing, had plunged a knife into the back of an emperor like the heavens, and the age-old story of trust and betrayal had simply played out again.
The emperor had merely shown the reaction one would expect.
His anger was justified.
But in Russia, lives are cut short over things far smaller.
“She betrayed my trust and stole Russia’s future.”
As the Tsar spoke in a dry voice, dense killing intent gathered in his eyes.
In short, the emperor no longer wanted Irene Adler’s voice.
“She will pay the price.”
What he wanted was Irene Adler’s head.
The reward the Tsar offered was not something the word ‘generous’ could dare to describe.
An immense fee aside, he even promised to use political influence in the future to aid me if necessary, so his claim that he did not care how the matter rolled seemed only half true.
Russia’s future hidden inside the crafted piece.
I could roughly guess what it was, and what the Tsar meant to attempt.
However, separately from that.
“…Things are tangled.”
As Watson and I rode down alone in the lift, I muttered without meaning to.
“You can say that again.”
Watson had frozen stiff before Alexander III and couldn’t speak, but she had still grasped the flow of the story.
“Didn’t you say you need that woman’s help to achieve your goal?”
“That’s exactly the problem. The Tsar intends to kill Irene Adler.”
It was well known that Alexander III sent those who assassinated his father to the gallows.
Unlike his merciful father, once he saw someone as an enemy, he could become endlessly ruthless.
He had surely vowed to take Irene Adler’s life.
‘This is troublesome. That woman still has uses left.’
I had planned to solve the case, then find a suitable pretext to slip a leash onto Irene Adler and use her as a piece in my long game against Moriarty, yet I had the uneasy sense that this would disrupt that plan.
Should I recover the item, then advise her to keep her head down for a time?
But whether she would listen was uncertain.
After having what she stole taken from her, another person’s words wouldn’t easily enter her ears.
Above all—
“For now he must avoid the eyes of those who killed his father, so he cannot move rashly, but once the Tsar returns to Russia, that’s the problem.”
“Shouldn’t we tell Irene Adler that danger is coming…?”
“If we do that, the Tsar will bear a grudge against both of us. He’ll quickly realize where the information leaked from.”
“Eek…”
The reason I could tell Queen Victoria who the culprit was, after war had been invoked, was because I believed the news would not reach the Mistress of Green Willow herself.
“We’ve gotten tangled in a headache of a problem. If we solve it, we won’t have to worry about money or elixirs for years, but…”
Soon, the course of a past case began to rise in my mind.
As I mentioned earlier, before my regression I once faced Irene Adler on commission from the King of Bohemia.
At the time, she was blackmailing the king, who was about to marry, trying to extort a vast sum.
The moment I took the case, I moved, deceived her with a flawless disguise, entered her home, and even learned where she had hidden the incriminating photograph used to blackmail the king.
Unfortunately, I failed to steal the photograph, a result of Irene Adler’s quick-witted response.
One fortunate point was that Irene Adler, fearing the Bohemian royal house’s relentless pursuit, swore to abandon the blackmail and vanish. The king paid, relieved, so it could be considered resolved.
In any case, even if the world had changed, she hadn’t changed much.
This time too, I could deceive Irene Adler and find where the Tsar’s treasure was hidden without much difficulty.
Irene Adler had the habit of keeping precious items where her own eyes could always reach them.
The so-called ‘most ancient fire’ sealed in the Fabergé egg would likewise be hidden somewhere in her splendid estate along Serpentine Road.
I am not a man who repeats the same mistake twice.
As long as the lesson earned by chewing on past bitterness lived and breathed within me, there was no reason I couldn’t solve this case.
But.
Somehow, this case did not feel like it would end perfectly just because I followed the shortcut of future memories.
“I must prevent Irene Adler from dying no matter what it takes.”
“Easy to say, but how are you going to protect her…?”
If we reclaimed the Tsar’s property and Irene was killed quietly, without anyone noticing, my link to Moriarty would vanish.
Persuading the Tsar was close to impossible.
And I couldn’t guard Irene three hundred and sixty-five days a year, so I couldn’t prevent assassination attempts forever.
One might think she’d evade danger easily, being the Afternoon Tea Party’s leader and all, but trusting a criminal’s competence was like gambling with one’s eyes closed.
Then how could I guarantee Irene Adler’s survival while carrying out the Tsar’s commission?
“I’ve had a good idea, Watson.”
“Hm? Are you planning to request witness protection from Scotland Yard?”
“No. I don’t trust the police.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
The answer was simple.
“Kill her.”
“What?”
“Before the Tsar does. By my own hand.”
- TL/N: A mythical creature in Finnish folklore, a fox with fiery or radiant fur, the reflection of which produces the northern lights. ️