[TVL] 87 – Checkmate

“Huh! A child. Well, that.” Benito answered, looking bitter as if he had failed. “That’s it. You’re a little girl, aren’t you? What’s the use of a child giving birth to a child? You can’t get milk out of them... no, you’re small, fascinating to have milk.”

Luciano tried to pull his sword out of its scabbard, and Benito panicked.

“Wait, wait, wait, I’m joking.”

“I don’t want to hear you say anything obscene again. There won’t be a second time.”

“I understand. Easy. I won’t joke...So, what kind of poison is it?”

“Are you familiar with poison?”

“Hey, I’m a secret agent, okay? I use poison, and I get poisoned. I mean, come on, man. You shot an arrow at me, didn’t you? It was poisoned. Do you know how much pain and suffering I’ve gone through because of you? I’m sure you’ll be able to understand that I’m not the only one who has a problem with poison...If I didn’t know better, I’d be a mummy by now.”

Luciano reached out to Alana and gently wiped her cheeks with a cloth.

“It’s a poison that smells like roses. It looks like rose water, but it kills within two weeks of vomiting blood.”

“It’s been two weeks since she vomited? I haven’t heard of it, but I have a bad feeling about it.” Benito added, prowling the room like a beast.

“Do you have the antidote? Show it to me. If I know who made the poison, I’ll tell you directly. Even if I say so myself, I’m smart.”

Luciano went through his pockets and threw an elaborately decorated vial at the agent.

Benito caught it in an arc but immediately let out a yelp. “What? You’ve got to be kidding me. This bottle is the worst! The poison master Luteli, a monster.”

Luciano’s brow furrowed at Benito’s sudden outburst, but then his face changed.

But Benito’s following words made his face lose its colour.

“Brother, you’ve been deceived. I don’t think Luteli would have made the antidote in advance. He’s an assassin, after all. He demands a ridiculous amount of money from his clients. He’s not going to give you a neutraliser in the first place. If you want to detoxify the poison, you’ll have to pay a lot more.”

Luciano brushed back his silver hair as he looked at Benito.

No, it wasn’t Luteli who’d deceived him. His foolish preconception deceived him: that poisons always came with an antidote and by Flavia.

–– That pig, I’ll kill you.

However, Benito, who was in the line of sight of Luciano, seemed to feel that he was glaring at himself and pinched his lips.

He opened the vial lid and licked the small amount of residue from the edge.

“Hmm, I knew it. This stuff is just syrup. If it’s Poison Master Luteli’s poison that’s the culprit, brother, you’ll have to go to his shop. But it’s a dangerous one, one that I hope I never have to encounter. Besides, he will never let anyone live who has seen his true face. It doesn’t matter how strong you are. If he wants to kill you, you’re dead. Oh, and you’ll need money, right?” Luciano was convinced that Alana’s poison belonged to the Poisoner Benito was describing.

Because when he had poisoned her before, it had been in an elaborate vial, exactly like this one.

“Where is the shop?” Benito said that the shop was in the country of Aldo and that it would take him more than four days to get there, even if he travelled tirelessly.

Alana had ten days left to live.

He was barely able to leave now and considering the round trip, if something unexpected happened... Checkmate.

Luciano’s eyes darkened as he stood up.

♔♔♔

It was extraordinary willpower of sheer brute force.

Luciano disregarded common sense and rode his horse to his limits. He once lost consciousness in Amoroso, one step before Aldo. It was partly because Luciano had exceeded his limit and because he had been caught in a trap and surrounded by hunters. He fell off his horse, got covered in mud, and his horse was crushed in the fight. But thereupon, he reversed the tormentors and robbed them of a better horse.

As soon as one entered Aldo, one would see the Black Castle, even if it was not the object of particular note. The white castle of Armenia and the obsidian castle of Aldo were famous all over the world. People on the street blatantly avoided him, with eyes that spoke he was rubbish.

Fatigued and covered in mud, he was seen as a vulgar, lowly figure by the people of Aldo. But Luciano didn’t mind being snubbed or scorned as he passed by. He didn’t care about the outside world.