The Prince in Question Is Not Stable

Chapter 70: The Broker.

There are several methods of sending a message in Lunar. Some of the most used ones are the post-letters, messenger-birds, and radio signals.

And several small-scale organisations that operate within the counties. These organisations depend heavily on their members, who sometimes aren’t aware they’re a part of an organisation.

From whores, servants, cooks, caretakers, drivers, carriage repairing shops, men who work on steam engines, construction, to roadside beggars, and slums.

The network expands to places nobles don’t visit, and places nobles never tend to leave.

One such organisation that gained its fame over the network of information is "Eye of the Goddess."

Cultists are what people claim them to be. They, however, consider themselves an information broker.

An organisation that flooded the network by acquiring various small firms, divided into three tiers of members and a man that every noble in the world is aware of.

An organisation built by one single man, who considers himself the greatest devotee of the saintess, and is known for his obsessions over her.

*Tining*

Bells of the silent store chimed as a man walked on the wooden flooring, observing the instruments hung on the walls.

He wore a grey shirt over black pants, hands slightly tanned with the grease of the construction site he was on.

He didn’t seem like a man who would be interested in buying the expensive instruments that the store had on display, but he still walked with a purple envelope in his hands.

His posture was stiff, nervous, and unconfident in the environment.

"It’s a fine noon, and I’ve got a peculiar customer already," The store owner said, sitting on the chair behind the long wooden bar table, meant to pick out instruments and show them to the customers himself.

The owner wore a black suit, with a blue shirt underneath, and a dark blue tie.

"Uhm..." The man placed the purple envelope on the desk, and the owner didn’t say anything, just glanced at it once.

The man observed the instruments lined on the walls until his gaze fell upon a violet Zither. The kind that could sell for tons of gold, with purple diamonds etched into the flowy designs of its board, strings carved from glistening metals that shone even in the dim lights of the store.

"That..." the man pointed at the instrument.

The owner of the store glanced at the Zither and then back at the man.

"This envelope...is for the owner of that instrument." The man said.

"..." The owner nodded, took out a pouch from his drawer, and picked off two small and shiny diamonds before extending his hand to the man.

"Here..." he said. "For the envelope,"

"Uh-th-thank you," the man bowed deeply, clutching the diamonds as if his life was in them.

He then turned around, glanced at the owner once, and quietly walked out of the store.

"Hmm," The owner picked up the envelope, walked towards the door, and flipped the ’open’ sign to ’closed’.

He shut the gates, locked them, and turned off the lights of the store.

Walking through the back door, he descended the stairs, arriving inside the workshop of a luthier.

From there, he walked for quite a while in the underground passage that led him to the opposite side of the market square.

He exited into a flower shop.

"It’s been a while, Mr Shervin," said a middle-aged blonde woman in a bright sunset dress.

"Just running errands, Sheily," the man, Shervin, replied.

He boarded a public carriage, which led him to quite a journey of half an hour, before he was dropped off at the circular building, and the biggest library for nobles and commoners alike, to ever exist in the entirety of Lunar.

Walking in through the gates, he took a deep breath filled with the scent of pages, and no librarian checked up on him as he entered.

He ascended the stairs, crossing through the sound of pages being flipped, murmurs of chatter, and the silence of knowledge, before he arrived at the fifty-second floor, the topmost floor of the library.

Here, however, there were no bookshelves.

Instead, he was met by a single door, with a pot of violet orchids placed on the column of the walls.

He knocked twice and waited.

The knob of the wooden door rotated. Opening it was a young man working as a servant.

They both bowed slightly, and Sherving entered the room.

A floor turned into a house. That’s what this was.

He looked around only to find several paintings of a woman with violet hair and eyes.

Walking on the dark wooden floor, he arrived at the gates of an office.

The office didn’t match the theme of the room outside. With walls painted in white, a large painting of the saintess hanging behind the desk, as the man sitting on the chair just...stared at it.

"Shervin?" The man called out and turned around.

Revealing dark brown hair and silver eyes. He was formally dressed in a brown suit and a black shirt.

"Message for you, Sir Arthur," Shervin said and placed the purple envelope on the desk of that man.

Arthur Curzon. Also known as ’The Luthier’ of the information world. A man who single-handedly built an organisation to protect the woman he ever cared for.

"That’s new..." Arthur murmured.

"Who’s the sender?" he asked.

"I am not aware of that..." Shervin replied.

"Funny, isn’t it. We’re the largest information network, yet we don’t know who sent a message to us. And the design of the envelope seems to be the one we use quite often while communicating," Arthur scoffed and put on his black rubber gloves before opening the envelope.

Inside it was a letter and a small slip of paper.

"Now, now..." Arthur smiled and looked at both of them.

The letter had a seal of the royal family, with the goddess of Luna playing her flute, sitting on the orchid petals.

The other was just a simple handwritten note.

Arthur felt the thickness of the age and smelled the scent of the ink.

He could confirm it just by the texture that these were official. But the question that bugged him was...If royalty knew he was the head of such an organisation, they wouldn’t invite him. They’d execute him.

But that didn’t happen.

His curiosity was increasing by the second, and to top it off, he opened the letter of the royal family first.

’By the Grace of Her Majesty, And under the Seal of the Royal Household.

To Lord Arthur Curzon, Benefactor of the Curzon Charitable Foundation, and Recognised Friend of the Crown’s Civic Interests.

It is with gracious acknowledgement of your organisation’s continued and commendable contributions to the welfare of Lunar’s commonfolk, most notably in the border counties and relief efforts of the southern parishes, that the Royal Household extends this formal invitation.

You are hereby cordially invited to attend The Banquet of Rile, hosted in honour of Count Marcus Rile of Rile County, Professor of the Lunar Academy, and Distinguished Servant of the Kingdom.

The banquet shall be held at Harlow Hall, in the Noble District of Varenthis, on the evening of the fourteenth day of the Month of Ember. Doors open at the seventh bell.

Formal attire is expected. Your attendance is a distinction, not an obligation. However, your absence would be noted.’

"This seems to be an official invitation to the banquet, but why Marcus Rile?" he murmured.

"How did the royals know that I was personally investing my time in Marcus Rile?" he asked himself.

"Are you suggesting there’s a rat?" Shervin asked.

"No, not quite," Arthur replied, and then read the note.

’If the Saintess were free of every claim upon her: covenant, crown, and kingdom; where do you imagine she would choose to go?’

"..."

"Even a rat cannot find the information this anonymous man seems to have," Arthur said, and folded the note, placing it in his drawer.

"Is it that sensitive?" Shervin asked.

"As much as it is...it’s more interesting to find someone who might know about my past," Arthur replied.

"Should I be worried, Sir Arthur?" Shervin asked.

Arthur leaned back in his chair, fingers laced together, eyes drifting back to the painting behind his desk.

"Worried?" he repeated, as if tasting the word and finding it insufficient. "No. Whoever this is, they’re not threatening me. They’re...introducing themselves."

"Through a tampered royal invitation."

"Through a perfectly tampered royal invitation," Arthur corrected.

Arthur appreciated the work of that craftsman. The ink, the page, the smell of the wax. No one except he himself can distinguish it from an original.

"There’s a difference. A threat announces itself loudly, Shervin. This arrived like a book placed on the wrong shelf. Close enough to belong. Wrong enough to notice, if you know what you’re looking for."

Arthur stood, adjusting the cuffs of his brown suit jacket, and walked toward the window.

Below, the library’s courtyard was filled with the quiet movement of afternoon visitors.

Scholars, students, minor nobles pretending to be intellectuals.

"The Banquet of Rile," he said quietly. "Marcus Rile."