Ivan who is sleeping beside me every night became accustomed calling me 'Mother'. Everyone in the mansion jump to conclusions right after I told them he was my son. After leaving the explanation to Samuel and Uziel, the rest started to treat Ivan as my son.
While he is emotionless in front of others, he is especially docile in front of me.
Now that I think about it, the others are the same as him. Samuel is your usual knight model to others but he is clingy when he is around with me. Uziel on the other hand is aloof and is more mature than most people in the mansion but when he is around with me, he just becomes a normal ten year old kid.
'Almas, let's throw a party. A big and flashy one'
-Will it have a lot of sparkly things?
'Of course!'
After that, I restricted the entry to a certain room at the third floor and prepare everything inside at dusk since I can't do it night as I still need to sleep with Ivan.
For the past few days, I would do the work of a lord in the morning, spend time with the others in the afternoon, and continue on this project of mine at dusk before going to bed.
At the fifth day, I was done. I then invited everyone to come to the 'room' that has been vacant all this time. It was a rather spacious room so it will easily accommodate a lot of people.
Before inviting them, I had some maids to help me out with the food so that I don't have to go back up and down to placed the food in the room since it is in the third floor.
The door opened and they came in one by one.
"Milady! What is all of this?"
"Wow"
The fresh smell of white peonies that was placed all over the room greeted them.
"Isn't it your birthday today? This is my gift to you before we part ways. I had a hunch that you would like white peonies which is why I decorated the entire room with it"
White peonies was very common in a meadow near their village before the attack happened. Uziel who was dragged away and saved was not able to go back to the place where he used to lived with his family since he had a 'responsibility' to meet my expectations as the one who saved him.
The nostalgic scent of white peonies brought back memories of the past. Uziel walk slowly forward and hugged me, showing his weak side to everyone else which he only shows to me.
The others were of course surprised to see the indifferent genius like Uziel to be crying so dramatically. Well, they don't know why he was crying, so that much is understandable.
He looked up at me as he asked. "How did you know?"
To answer his question, I whispered.
"I did a background check on you. That was the main reason why I knew you wanted to take revenge on baron Klein. That's how"
His surprised birthday celebration went smoothly. At the middle, he was talking with the others with a more friendly tone and a jolly face.
-Master.
'What is it?'
-The man named 'King Maxwell' is about to arrive. Approximately ten minutes with his current speed.
'Okay. Once again, thank you for the hard work'
-It is my job to do so.
Before going down, I whispered to Uziel that I was going somewhere so that he wouldn't be shock to find out about it from someone else's mouth.
I went down with Samuel. As we arrived in front of the prison, King Maxwell arrived at the same time.
He was panting and sweating profusely.
That is normal. Almas said there was an urgent news matter that pop up before he departed which he needed to fix. Despite the sudden work, he still made it here after five days.
"Let us go inside first, shall we"
"...."
He followed us inside and rested for a while until he catches his breath.
"My lady- no, baroness Emond, where is my brother?"
"He is in prison obviously. He was the one who led the attack. It would be stupid of me if I don't put him and the others in prison"
In the novel it was told that the two were orphans who inherited the name of their adopted parents. Since their foster father was a baron, the two became knights. A tragedy then happened two years later which made the two become mercenaries. Another year later, the became vigilantes. After four years, they then became the head of an information guild at the border of Loate and Vanifi.
After taking their revenge, they were filled with envy and thought that "We grew with broken hearts. We will let you all know how much we suffered"
And so, that was the birth of these hypocritical vigilantes, who would save people as they commit crime such as assault and murder.
"Samuel, restrain him"
King obediently let himself be handcuffed and followed me underground.
As we go deeper, the sound of men betting on something got louder and clearer. When we arrived at the underground dungeon, King Maxwell saw his brother and his underlings having a great time playing around.
Dumbfounded about the situation, he couldn't say anything and was left with an open mouth.
"Brother! You're here!"
"Boss!"
The prisoners were delighted to see their boss here to save them.
They then notice the restrain on his wrist and immediately quieted down.
"Now let's negotiate"
The underground prison was basically one gigantic room, with the size of a soccer field, with hard wood bars to prevent them from escaping and a long table with chairs as if it was cinema chairs with the prisoners as the main show.
The wooden bars was hard as steel and had a high resistance to fire since the wood absorbs the moisture in the air proving that breaking out would be impossible.
"What does the baroness want?"
For him to say that means he deeply cares about his brother. I am glad that he does but, that is simply not enough.
"I want your guild to work under me from now on. Murder, assault, transport of illegal products are prohibited. What I am trying to say is, I want your entire guild to be my hunting dog"