Chapter 467: My Very Heart and Soul
It was a lovely spring day near the end of May, with the sun shining and a light breeze rolling in off the water.
Several children were laughing and playing in the river, cooling off from the warm weather as their parents watched on from nearby.
It was a calm, peaceful scene filled with joy.
There was even a young man sitting with his back against one of the nearby trees strumming a lute-like instrument, humming a cheerful tune.
Every now and then, a passerby would drop a Copper or two into the musician’s hat, causing the smile on the man’s face to broaden slightly.
A few hours went by like this, with new parents joining in as others left with their tuckered-out kids. Through it all, the bard kept playing his simple songs.
Only when the last parent left and the sun began to set over the small town’s cove did the bard stand up, fill his money pouch with the coins, put his hat back on, and stroll off with a light smile on his face, heading for the inn he was staying at tonight before moving on to his next destination.
To any outside observer, it was just a normal day by the river, with nothing out of the ordinary happening.
The reality, however, was very different.
While the people passing by had almost all been common folk just out for a stroll, the children playing in the stream, aged 8 to 12, were actually the latest ’products’ the organization had finished processing.
The parents?
Aside from an occasional stranger who happened to stop for a chat, they were all agents of the organization, each one responsible for a different piece of the ongoing operation.
The minstrel?
He was the chief coordinator sent here to oversee and coordinate the organization’s efforts.
Once every 3 months, these individuals or their proxies would meet to exchange information, update each other on their individual situations, and receive new instructions from their leaders.
How was all this communicated?
Some information was passed between the children in the form of toys they exchanged, toys that had notes or even memory jades hidden inside them.
The children would also each give a ’gift’ to the minstrel before their ’parents’ took them ’home’.
Some updates were done even more blatantly than that, through thinly veiled conversations between the parents, conversations about how life was getting tougher for them, or how things were going well in their new business.
Now, it was easy to see how the minstrel was receiving information from both the children and their parents, all he had to do was sit there and listen, but how was he giving orders to his subordinates?
The answer to that was actually quite simple, the songs he was playing contained coded messages that only his comrades understood.
To everyone else? It was just a bit of bad music.
That was how this organization worked.
Secretly.
Silently.
Lurking in the shadows, yet boldly appearing in plain sight.
It was as impressive as it was dangerous.
.....
After paying for his meal, the minstrel retreated to his room where the casual smile which had adorned his face the whole day faded to a cold, indifferent mask.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this was his true face, and that the smile he was wearing had been the mask, but that hardly mattered to his comrades, much less his victims.
Sitting at the desk, he began going through the reports, most of which indicated that things were either proceeding according to plan or had encountered minor troubles that were being dealt with.
One set of reports, from a certain old man who seemed to always be smiling, even said that things were going better than expected.
This old man and the cell he was working with had encountered a major setback around the end of last year, forcing them to abandon their base and ’dispose’ of all evidence of their activities.
The young minstrel had not been pleased when he learned of this, but the follow-up investigation he had personally conducted concluded that it was all just an unfortunate accident, so he didn’t blame his subordinates for their failure.
Besides, it wasn’t like all their assets in that city had been uncovered and rooted out.
As for the smiling old man, he had quickly recovered and set up shop in a new city, one that was going through a particularly bad bought of chaos thanks to the recent crisis.
The old man had gone on to recruit quite a few cooperators to their cause, as well as acquire a number of prospective ’products’ for training. It was less than originally anticipated thanks to the situation improving faster than expected, but still a significant number.
In all honesty, the minstrel had also believed that with the ongoing chaos, they would be able to accelerate their timeline significantly, but to his astonishment, the actual fallout of the disaster wasn’t nearly as bad as it should have been.
The reason for this seemed to be the extraordinary efforts of a few individuals, one of whom was close to the top of his list of potential ’troublemakers’.
It seemed like this place had some surprisingly competent leaders.
That, however, didn’t bother the minstrel; after all, what fun would it be if everything went according to plan?
"Speaking of that particular troublemaker, it seems our operations in their territory have been suffering a bit as of late," the young man mused, sifting through the most recent reports to find the relevant one.
Browsing through the memory jade, the minstrel couldn’t help pondering for a bit.
According to the report, about 15% of their activities had been disrupted; however, it didn’t seem to be some kind of coordinated effort or targeted response to their presence, but rather just bad luck.
Some new charity organization had been set up with the specific goal of helping the poor and disadvantaged, the prime recruitment targets for their organization.
Also, since they were both courting the same people, occasionally running into one another was unavoidable.
That said, there were far more cases where the two sides met but everything nothing happened.
Was it all coincidence? Possibly, but any potential sign of trouble was not something the minstrel was willing to overlook. He was a perfectionist by nature, and the organization had not tolerance for failure, so he decided to look a bit more into this issue.
This wasn’t just paranoia, mind you.
The unusually effective pacification of the nation’s chaos, the incident with his smiling subordinate, and now the far too frequent disruption of their operations in the east, all of it traced back to that one person of interest.
Something happening once or twice could be written off as an accident, but three times? That was a pattern, and patterns couldn’t be ignored.
He would have to be careful if he wanted to investigate, of course.
If, as the report seemed to imply, this was all just a series of unfortunate mishaps, then the risk he was taking would be minimal.
And to be fair, as far as he could tell, this was the most likely scenario.
Patriots caring about their country was what made them patriots, the righteous upholding justice was what made them righteous, and a Master indulging and spoiling their Disciple was a tale as old as time, especially when that Disciple was blood-related.
Maybe he was just overthinking things, but if this really was some subtle attempt to root them out and interfere in their great cause...
Then he would likely be walking into a deadly trap given his strength, his available resources, and who his opponent was.
With that in mind, the minstrel did what he did best, he sat down and began writing a song.
.....
An hour later, with his lute in hand and his bag slung over his shoulder, the traveling bard made his way downstairs and over to the bar.
"Oh, Mr. Blank, what brings you down here again?"
"Nothing serious, I just suddenly felt the urge to set out on a journey."
The barkeep, who was also the inn’s owner and another leader among the organization’s forces, immediately understood and nodded along, maintaining the appearance of an attentive host chatting with his customers.
"By the way, good sir. If you wouldn’t mind, could you help me have this letter delivered?"
"Oh? A letter? Certainly," the bartender replied, a knowing look flashing across his face.
His leaders often had ’letters’ sent to the various operatives in the kingdom, so it wasn’t strange for him to want to do so now after the recent quarterly gathering.
To the bartender’s surprise, however, the minstrel only took out one letter, along with a Silver Coin, rather than a Copper, which indicated this letter wasn’t to be delivered locally, but was instead bound for a much further destination.
Just to confirm, the innkeeper asked, "Where exactly are you sending this letter?"
Smiling widely, the minstrel waxed poetically, "North, to the one who holds my very heart and soul in the palm of their hand."
The innkeeper paused, then chuckled, perfectly understanding the instruction.
To others who heard this line, they would likely assume the mistral was a lovestruck youth who was pining for his far-off lover, but the bartender who accepted the letter knew that his leader wasn’t using flowery language to describe a romantic affair here, but literally meant what he said about sending a message to the one who had control over their lives.