Chương 120: 49-2. Embassy Roster

And I had no right to refuse. I let out a slow breath and reached for the escort roster.

"All right then, Captain," I said.

"Since my life is temporarily under your management, you'd better actually be capable." Julian gave me a smile that was thoroughly irritating and, against all odds, entirely convincing.

"Rest assured, Lord Envoy," he said.

"At least until you've earned the right to be personally returned to the capital by my own hand, I won't let anyone else collect you ahead of schedule." It sounded very much like a guarantee. But in the Empire's mouth, even the most reassuring guarantees were usually just risk disclosures dressed in more palatable vocabulary. Looking at him, I suddenly understood what I truly had to face. It wasn't just the Southern Dragon Kingdom, and it wasn't just the Yanxia Empire.

It was the reality that from this point forward, everyone would begin treating me as an asset in transit— Someone to protect. Someone to use. Someone to watch. And someone to observe from a careful distance, waiting to see whether I could actually return alive and prove I was more than just a newly legitimized bastard dispatched to die in the same breath. By the time I returned to the Blackwell estate, the afternoon light had already begun to lean.

I had spent the entire morning shuttling between the Office of the Grand Chancellor, the Imperial Treasury Division, and Security Headquarters, until my head was packed with rosters, supply allocations, escort configurations, and a quietly growing taxonomy of which methods of death most qualified as dying in the line of duty. Walking back through my sister's front door, I was struck by an almost absurd sense of relief—at least the people in this house weren't going to bludgeon me with official documents.

The side parlor was well-populated. Victoria sat in the main chair with half a glass of wine within reach. Jessi lounged nearby, wearing the expression of someone who had already decided today deserved at least one more good laugh. Lucas and Matthews were both present. Alvira had claimed the seat closest to the fireplace, apparently finding the room too cold and the rest of the world too loud simultaneously. I gave them a straightforward account of the morning's encounters.

When I mentioned the deputy envoy, Victoria raised an eyebrow first.

"Hans? He's your deputy?"

"Is that a problem?" She leaned back and produced a measured sound of contempt.

"The man's mind runs on rails. Sometimes he's stubborn as a mule about it. Ask him to follow procedure and he'll be more punctual than cathedral bells. Ask him to improvise, and he'll need to consult three legal codes before confirming he's allowed to breathe." I nodded. That assessment tracked perfectly. Even from that brief observation this morning, I could tell he wasn't incompetent—just the type who would never forge a new path to keep you alive.

He'd merely ensure you died in strict accordance with established protocol.

"That said," Victoria added, "putting someone like that in the deputy position isn't wrong. At minimum, he won't get excited and promise away two cities on your behalf." That was what made my sister terrifying. Her insults were genuine, and so were her strategic judgments. I moved on to Mr. Mimi. Victoria's expression hardly shifted.

"If Mr. Mimi's involved, your purse strings will be tight," she said.

"Though since you have your own funds, it's not catastrophic." I considered for a moment, then added, "He recommended I bring a private chef." Jessi burst into immediate laughter.

"Already worrying about Lord Cedric's meals? How thoughtful."

"Not worrying about meals," I corrected.

"Worrying about not dying during one."

"That's sound advice," Matthews said, his voice low and unhurried.

"Dying on a battlefield at least maintains some dignity. Dying from rotten meat and bad soup in the South—news like that reaches the Northern Reaches and people just laugh." Victoria took a measured sip of wine.

"A quartermaster who clamps down on spending isn't a liability," she said slowly.

"Tight funds at least signal the delegation isn't there to be picked apart from the inside." She gave me a sideways look.

"But if you supplement from your own pocket, don't make it too generous. Too lavish, and the South will assume you have separate designs. Too meager, and they'll conclude the capital doesn't take you seriously." I filed that away mentally. That was the Blackwell way. Where others read people, she read price signals. Where others read ceremony, she read intent. Finally, I reached the security officer.

"This one matters most," I said, pressing my fingers against my temple.

"Directly relevant to whether I come back breathing." Victoria set down her glass.

"Who is it?" I hesitated before delivering the name.

"Julian Eberhardt." The side parlor went quiet for exactly one beat. Then Victoria laughed outright.

"That boy who came to the house the other day?" she said without ceremony.

"Him? A killer?" I shrugged.

"His own claim. He says he's killed men in the South."

"His greatest combat expertise probably involves using his lance to lift the skirts of duchesses at Cliffkeep balls," Victoria said with a dismissive snort.

"I'd wager the man is thoroughly decorative." Jessi couldn't quite manage to hold it together, turning away to suppress her laughter. Then, as if struck by sudden inspiration, she cleared her throat and adopted the impossibly precise voice of an Imperial court attendant.

"Milady, one is strictly forbidden from bringing pungent abalone into the ballroom." My eye twitched. Matthews coughed deliberately into his hand, head lowered. Lucas turned aside with conspicuous haste, his shoulders visibly shaking. Even Alvira looked away. Victoria pressed two fingers to her temple, visibly weighing whether to defenestrate Jessi immediately or save it for a more convenient moment.

"If your mouth gets any filthier," she said, "I'll have you relocated south to live with the fish directly." Jessi bowed her head at once.

"Yes, my lady." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. But her mouth corners were still twitching. I looked at the wine bottle on the table and suddenly felt genuinely tempted. Then I remembered the morning's appointments and decided getting myself drunk now would be doing the Empire a favor it hadn't earned. I pushed the bottle slightly away.

"Drink less," Victoria said mildly.

"I wasn't planning to."

"Good," she said.

"Your head is chaotic enough as it is. No need to add masonry to the structure." I exhaled, ignored that particular jab, and delivered my conclusion from the morning.

"This mission to the Dragon Kingdom—for me, it comes down to one objective," I said.

"Keep myself alive." The parlor went quiet. It was a blunt statement, and an entirely honest one. Honest enough that even Jessi didn't immediately reach for a follow-up. Matthews was the first to break the silence with a low grunt.

"Ugly as it sounds, that's correct," he said.

"Stay alive first. Everything else can be called a mission afterward." I nodded, then moved to finalize the personnel.

"Traveling with the delegation: Matthews, Jessi, and Alvira." Alvira didn't speak. She simply raised her eyes to meet mine briefly, which counted as acknowledgment.

"Everyone else," I said, glancing toward the empty space where Victoria and Olivia usually sat, "focuses on protecting Olivia and my sister." When that arrangement was spoken aloud, the last of the room's looseness pulled taut. Because at this point, the mission stopped being a king's offhand pronouncement and stopped being breakfast table jokes about storks.

It became names and divisions of responsibility—who goes south, who stays, who comes with me to stake their life on a southern gamble, and who holds the rear in the capital. That was the part that could actually kill someone. Lucas raised his hand.

"Cedric."

"Yes?"

"I've transferred the compression magic principles to Alvira," he said with his usual clean efficiency.

"Her mana reserves exceed mine, and she's better suited to operating the carriage. If you need to conceal cargo, change appearances, or reduce weight along the route, she handles it more efficiently than I would." I looked at Alvira. Her expression was composed, as though this were the most obvious conclusion in the world. But I knew it wasn't. Compression magic wasn't a parlor trick.

Having someone willingly hand over a technique that could save lives, enable escapes, and buy an entire delegation one critical extra breath when everything else failed—that was trust, stated without stating it. I looked at Lucas directly and said, with complete seriousness:"Thank you." He gave a single nod and said nothing further. He had never been one to frame gestures as sentiment. But some things carried more weight precisely because they were left unsaid. The parlor held a brief quiet.

I looked at the people in front of me and understood, with sudden clarity, something I hadn't fully grasped before—until last night, I could still tell myself this southern journey was just the Emperor shoving me out the door on a whim. But now, with each name confirmed and each role assigned, with skills transferred in advance to keep me breathing, none of this was as simple as following orders anymore. This wasn't my mission alone.

These were people placing their own hands on the same southbound gambling table as mine. Victoria must have caught the particular weight settling into my expression, because she pushed her wine glass aside and let her voice return to its usual clean edge.

"Enough. The roster is set, which means this isn't the time to stare at walls," she said.

"Cedric—tonight, you compile everything you know, everything you've guessed, and everything you haven't said out loud yet. Starting tomorrow, we tear it apart line by line." Jessi's hand shot up immediately.

"Does that include the stor—""No," I said.

"But it's relevant—""Relevant to your personal entertainment," I said, looking at her without expression.

"Not to my diplomatic mission." Jessi sighed with theatrical regret. Alvira offered a quiet addendum: "You'd better pray the South doesn't have anyone louder than her." I looked at Alvira, then at Jessi, then arrived at the only honest conclusion available.

"At this point, I'd prefer the Yanxia Empire to attack first." Victoria studied me briefly, apparently assessing whether that had been venting or the first genuinely lucid thing I'd said all afternoon. Then she pushed her glass aside and rapped the table twice with her knuckles.

"Done laughing. Close the door." Jessi rose without being asked and pulled the side parlor door shut, drawing the heavy curtains halfway across as she went. The afternoon light outside compressed to a dim suggestion. The room settled into firelight and the glow of a few table lamps. Victoria spread a large southern map across the surface. Lucas added two scrolls alongside it.

Alvira arranged the roster, route markings, and escort configuration I'd brought back from Security Headquarters, pressing each document flat with efficient precision. With all that paper laid out, I had a very specific sensation—that the King's words from last night had only just now grown bones. Victoria spoke first.

"Three things we lock down immediately." She pressed a fingertip to the map, her voice as level as a cleaver slicing meat.

"First: your official mission is to travel to the Southern Dragon Kingdom under Imperial documents and facilitate mediation. Ceasefire, arbitration, whatever form it takes—at minimum, stall the situation and prevent the South from collapsing directly into Yanxia's hands. Second: what you actually need to determine is how far Yanxia has already reached, how deep the penetration goes, and whether they've embedded themselves in ports, military provisions, or someone's private chambers. Third—" She looked up at me.

"You are not going there to be a hero. If martyrdom appeals to you, wait until you return and I'll personally find you a suitable river." I nodded.

"Understood."

"No, you don't understand yet," Victoria said.

"You understand the words. You haven't understood the boundaries." She slid the copy of official documents toward me.

"What you carry is the Empire's position—not the Empire's blank check. You cannot privately guarantee military stationing. You cannot promise cession of trade ports. You cannot agree to marriage alliances. You cannot promise joint military action against Yanxia. You can negotiate prices, supply terms, ceasefire durations, even personal favors—but you cannot play out Valerian III's next three years of strategy in a single sitting. If it reaches that point, the capital sends someone to take over."

I looked at the rows of conditions and thought they read remarkably like a collar fitted for a dog—not tight enough to strangle, but the moment you lunged forward two steps, you'd know exactly where your throat was.

"What if they demand an immediate answer?" I asked. Matthews spoke from the side, voice flat and deliberate.

"Then you learn to act like an envoy," he said.

"Smile. Stall. Drink. Answer questions you weren't asked. If that fails, develop a sudden illness." Jessi chimed in immediately: "Or sudden madness."

"For you, that wouldn't be acting," Alvira said without inflection. Jessi pressed a hand to her chest with wounded dignity.

"Miss Alvira, you've really been getting sharper lately."

"You forced my hand." I didn't bother mediating and ran Victoria's conditions through my head again. Every item was a tripwire. None could be pulled carelessly, and the South was almost certainly not going to make it easy to stay within bounds. When actual negotiations began, the problem wouldn't be my reluctance to cross lines—it would be someone holding a blade to my throat and inviting me to step over them. Lucas placed a small carved wooden token beside the map.

"The foundational inscription for compression technique," he said.

"I've already walked Alvira through the theory and application. Cargo concealment, wardrobe changes, load reduction—she handles all of it. When it actually matters, this is worth more than two additional guards." Alvira pushed the token toward me.

"You don't need to learn it," she said.

"You wouldn't have time to develop proficiency anyway. You only need to remember one thing: if I tell you to drop a crate immediately, you drop it. If I tell you not to touch a specific carriage, you don't touch it. Clear?"

"Clear." She gave a single nod—apparently grudgingly satisfied that I could at least process basic instructions. Jessi spoke next. She leaned forward, tracing her fingernail across several merchant towns and grey-marked points on the southern portion of the map.

"The official route can follow the documents," she said.

"The shadow routes cannot. A delegation like this gets watched the moment it clears the city gates. The people in the South who eat with short blades—their favorite targets are supply lines and relay stations. Your official types love traveling in clean, orderly formations, and the cleanest formations are reliably the first to get sold."

"Meaning?" I asked.

"Meaning," she said with a brief smile, "the routes worth showing, you show. The routes that matter, you rotate—different personnel, different vehicles, different timing. Especially the ledgers, the official seal, the medicine, and you personally. Those four should never be in the same location simultaneously. Southern people value efficiency. If one cut can solve the problem, they don't make two." Victoria didn't object.

She simply added with quiet precision:"So what you're leading isn't a neat, orderly procession. You're leading something that can be disassembled and reassembled on the move." I smiled without much humor.

"Tremendously dignified."

"You have a name now," Victoria said evenly.

"What more dignity do you need? Stay alive first." The meeting ran long. Long enough that I found myself wondering whether the Empire had survived to this generation purely because of people who could reduce human beings to line items and strategic variables. We moved from viable southern overland routes to maritime supply chains, from the escort roster to which scribes might most conveniently fall ill before departure—Jessi's suggestion, not adopted, but everyone considered it seriously for a moment.

Matthews served as the anchor dragging every theory back to mundane reality. He asked only three things throughout: water, horses, weather. By the end, I was convinced that if the Yanxia Empire ever did swallow the South, it wouldn't be through grand strategic ambition—it would be because someone on our side had failed to secure adequate water and horses. When the last sheet was pressed back to the corner of the table, the light outside had started going dark.

Victoria placed her hand flat on the map, like pressing a final seal on the session.

"That's enough for today," she said.

"Cedric—stay. Everyone else, begin your preparations. Lucas, compile the key points of compression technique. Matthews, go through the escort roster and identify which ones will run first when things go wrong. Jessi, find out whether there are any clean mouths in the deputy envoy and quartermaster's immediate circles. Alvira—""I know," Alvira said, already rising.

"Cut everything the team is carrying until what's left can actually move when it needs to."

"Good." The room emptied in stages. Jessi paused at the door and looked back at me with a smile that carried absolutely no good intentions.

"Lord Cedric—if the young mistress gets too harsh with you in a moment, just think of the stork. It'll help with perspective."

"Get out." She got out with great enthusiasm. The door closed. The side parlor held only Victoria and me. She didn't speak immediately. She pulled out the papers on the table that no longer mattered and restacked the ones that did, edges aligned with careful precision. I knew that motion well. Every time she was working out how to begin something she didn't want to be seen working out, she'd find something nearby to occupy her hands first.