Chapter 643 — Gifts and Choices
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
Gao Yang looked up with some curiosity, and there he saw Amber dragging someone toward them. The one whose arm she had seized, his face full of embarrassment, was a young man in black light leather armor with a somewhat familiar face.
Victoria, standing nearby, recognized the man's identity at first glance: "Dark Crow?"
Only then did Gao Yang suddenly recall who the man was—an old friend, this.
A Royal Shadow Guard who could not perform the two-handed greatsword whirlwind slash.
"I caught him outside the camp. He was sneaking over all furtively, and I kicked him right out of the Shadow Realm," Amber shoved Dark Crow toward Gao Yang, planted her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. "He says he's here to deliver a letter."
"Dark Crow, what letter have you come to deliver?" Victoria immediately furrowed her brow and questioned the Royal Shadow Guard before her.
Dark Crow first glanced at Victoria, then gave Amber beside him a helpless look, and at last lowered his head before Gao Yang and said respectfully: "I bear a personal letter from the king, to be delivered to Duke Gao Yang Cecil."
As he spoke, the Royal Shadow Guard fished a letter from against his body and placed it in Gao Yang's hand.
Gao Yang took the letter bearing the wax seal of the Ansle royal house, curious as to what it contained—though the southern battlefield of Saint-Sunil was now essentially cleared, it was still no simple matter for a lone Royal Shadow Guard to cross the war zone and reach the Cecil camp. What sort of emergency could compel the new king of Ansle to contact him in this way?
He broke the seal and saw that it bore only one simple sentence:
"Crow Terrace has been corrupted and defiled. Duke Cecil, I ask your aid in cleansing it—Welsh Morne."
Gao Song's gaze froze. After a silence lasting several seconds, he slowly set the letter down and looked at the royal shadow guard before him: "Beyond this, what else did your king tell you?"
"He had one message to pass on to you," the Dark Crow recited Welsh Morne's words. "He said he left a ball of thread there."
"…"
Victoria had seen the contents of the letter and heard the Dark Crow's words. She did not know what this so-called "ball of thread" meant, yet by guesswork and intuition alone she had already begun to dimly sense what Welsh was doing.
She turned sharply to Gao Yang: "Duke Cecil…"
"Your king has set me a difficult problem," Gao Yun sighed, glancing once more at the letter in his hand.
This letter bore no "burn-after-reading" seal; it lay whole and intact in Gao Yang's hand, every word on it clear and sharp.
It was a difficult problem—and perhaps, at the same time, an observation. Behind this thin sheet of paper, Gao Yang seemed to see Welsh Morne's eyes.
Those eyes were full of scrutiny.
Amber had seen the letter's contents too. After a moment's reaction, the goose let out a cry of alarm: "…Mother of God."
Then she said: "Be careful, this might be a plot, he's tricking you, what do you call this… borrowing a blade to, what was it…"
"As a matter of fact, I don't much mind whether it's a plot or not," Gao Yang said, looking at Amber. "But I do need to confirm the situation at Crow Terrace—go tell Jinna to take a flight up."
Then he looked again at Victoria, whose expression was complicated: "We'll wait here a while."
They did not wait long. The aerial reconnaissance imagery from the griffin riders was soon transmitted to the command post.
The armored griffin swept over Crow Terrace, and in the image a vivid array of banners and sigils danced in the wind.
Gao Yang and Victoria stood before the magic-net terminal, watching the holographic projection displayed upon it. Gao Yun asked quietly: "Do you recognize them?"