It was late in the night, and Tuilas and the tax collector had already retired to their respective rooms, since they would have to wake up quite early to leave for Cinran tomorrow. So Kivamus was using this opportunity to have an impromptu meeting with his advisors at the moment. Duvas and Gorsazo were sitting on one side, while Feroy and Hudan on the other. The usual two guards of his temporary protection detail had been sent outside of the manor hall for now, with one of them standing guard in the inner corridor to make sure the knight or the tax collector didn't stumble into the manor hall before they were done with the meeting.

"So? What do you all think?" He looked at the others. "So far the knight doesn't have any idea of Levalas' confession to us. Should we even believe in his story? If so, we will have to think of a good way to make him stay without Tuilas finding out about it. Otherwise we might have to execute him as well."

Gorsazo began, "Apart from a few short visits, I've never stayed in Cinran long enough to know about the local political affairs, so I can't say whether his story is true, but I don't see why he would go to this much trouble to surrender to you if he didn't mean it. If he still wanted to assassinate you, it would have been far better for him to let Dosol do what he wanted instead of reporting to us about it. I think we should believe in him."

Hudan shook his head. "Whether he's lying or not is hardly as important as the need to set an example. Now that we know he's the same guy who tried to kill you before the winter and had escaped unpunished for that, we need to give him a proper sentence now. Whether it's execution, or sending him to the mines for a few years like we had planned at that time, he can't be left to live without giving him any punishment."

"I don't think that would help anyone at this point," Duvas disagreed. "Getting one more coal miner is hardly going to do much for us, and executing him doesn't help us in any way, since apart from those sitting here, nobody knows that he's the same guy as the one who tried to poison you. As far as the guards know, he's just a dutiful guard of the tax collector who wanted to prevent your assassination, which is why he reported about Dosol. We'll have to tell Levalas to retain his current look for now, and by the time some other guard recognizes him, they will know him a lot better as a person, so we can reveal more about his story to the guards if needed at that time. As for his story, I remember enough from the time Ebirtas came into power that Levalas' story seems credible enough to me. Looking at him when he was confessing, I didn't see a liar there, but I still don't know if we should trust him enough to let him stay here and work for you like he wants."

"You all are missing the point," Feroy interrupted. "Yes, it's important to check whether he's lying, and I don't think he is, but you all are forgetting that he is someone who has worked for Zoricus nearly all his life. That means he knows the kind of things about that greedy baron that we have no other way of finding out. By now we all know that even the Count seems to be working on Zoricus' directions. Well, more or less. But knowing Zoricus' greed and the fact that he's already sent two assassins here, he's not going to stop doing that anytime soon. For now, he doesn't have any control over the knights, but if he does force or manipulate the Count into that, he might just send an official punitive expedition to Tiranat along with the help of other barons of Cinran to weaken or even destroy us. From what I know, it could be a force of at least a hundred guards and knights, and possibly double that number, if not even higher. As it stands, we are in no state to resist such a force, so any insider information Levalas can offer at the time would only be helpful for us. Even if we can't act on that information right now, it could be vital in the future when dealing with Zoricus."

"There is no reason for the Count to do that!" Hudan retorted. "Even if Zoricus gets some control over the deployment of Cinran's knights, the Knight Commander will not agree to such a thing without a good enough reason. Now that we have paid the taxes, there won't be any such reason until autumn at least."

Kivamus kept quiet for the moment, letting others reason it out.

Feroy snorted. "You still seem to think that everyone in Cinran works by the gallant knightly ideals."

"I've met Sir Makanas, the Knight Commander of Cinran!" Hudan said with a glare. "He is a prime example of what a knight should be like! There is no way he would do anything uncivilized, like attacking a village under his protection without a very good reason!"

The ex-mercenary shook his head. "That may be true, but he still has to follow the orders of the Count, doesn't he? Zoricus only has to find some vague but plausible enough reason to make the Count accept it. Once Lord Ebirtas has agreed, and there isn't an immediate threat from Binpaaz, you can rest assured that prime example or not, Sir Makanas will have to follow those orders, whether he believes in them himself or not. Isn't that how it works?"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Hudan sighed, before he gave a nod. "If there is an official order from the Count, the Knight Commander will have to agree for sure. But can Zoricus even find a good enough reason for that?"

Feroy chuckled. "He doesn't have to find a reason. He can just create a new one. I haven't met Zoricus personally, but I can already guess what kind of man he is. Trust me, if he wants the coal mines of Tiranat, then he will not stop at anything, especially if he gets the full backing of the Count for it." He shrugged. "Anyway, we are already hiding the fact that Lord Kivamus doesn't allow slavery here. Even if that's his own choice for this barony, now we've even started keeping escaped slaves from Kirnos to gain more workers, which is certainly going to be a problem if they realize where their slaves are running off to and make a complaint to the Count about it. There's a plausible reason for you."

"Unless we allow some officials from Kirnos to perform a thorough check of every villager who lives here," Gorsazo remarked, "they won't get any solid proof of it, and we have no reason to allow them to do that. While it's far from ideal, we can't stop taking in new people either, but we should be fine on that front for now."

Feroy shrugged. "That's just one possible reason. If news gets out about us being the real source of acelos medicine, or us having a way to produce paper cheaply, I have no doubt a crafty noble like Zoricus can find some loophole to make it illegal for us. The crossbows we already have and the scorpions we are going to make are obviously illegal for anyone outside Fort Aragosa to have. Let's say that somehow we manage to hide all that for now, what about in the autumn? Nobody knows how our finances will be at that time, and if we are even a week late, that will itself be a good enough reason for Zoricus to ask for us to be punished for the delay. Isn't that right, Sir Duvas?"

The majordomo nodded. "Last autumn was an exception when the tax collector didn't come here because of the threat of bandits on the road. There was no point in coming here to take the gold - assuming we even had enough of it at the time - only to lose it again, just like it happened with the previous baron. However, this autumn, I don't think they will agree to any delay of more than a week or so."

"See?" Feroy looked at the guard captain. "Knowing Lord Kivamus, we are going to be spending a lot of gold on all kinds of things..."

Kivamus snorted after hearing that, but remained quiet for now.

The ex-mercenary continued, "That means a short delay is more than possible. Even if that doesn't happen, Zoricus can still think of a different reason. The point is, he's not going to stop. Whether it's sending more assassins, or a full scale punitive raid from Cinran, we will undoubtedly get into conflict with him at some point. So having someone like Levalas working for us - someone who has all kinds of insider knowledge into how the baron operates - will be a Goddess-sent gift for us in that conflict." He finally looked at Kivamus. "I think we should let him live, and instead of sending him to the mines which would be a waste of his talents, we should slowly try to include him in everything here, once we are more sure of his loyalties. In time we will get a much better idea about him, and can even start including him in our meetings like this one."

"I know your instincts are rarely off the mark," Kivamus muttered, "but you seem to have a lot of faith in someone you have barely met..."

Feroy shrugged. "I see a lot of myself in him. Unlike him, I don't have a drop of noble blood in me, but we were both forced to live a kind of life we didn't want to. That has resulted in both of us getting a variety of experiences just to keep surviving, and that experience is going to be extremely useful to us in the future. For example, in case we need to send a spy somewhere in the future, especially to a city, he would be a far better option than even me."

The ex-mercenary continued, "While I can judge people's intentions easily enough and can certainly hold my own in a swordfight, I've lived most of my life as a mercenary in the forests, and I hardly have any idea of how to merge in with those of high society, like the rich merchants or nobles, especially those of bigger towns and cities like Cinran and Ulriga. I did well enough trading in Kirnos, but in the future, if we need to send someone to those bigger cities, whether as a merchant or a hidden representative of Tiranat, Levalas' past experience living in the Count's mansion and having a good experience of dealing with all the nobles in that place will be invaluable to us. Of course, Sir Duvas or even Gorsazo could do most of that just as well as him, but I don't think that you'd be able to spare their usual tasks for long enough to send them away from Tiranat for weeks at a time."

"You are right in everything, but all that hinges on how much we can trust him," Kivamus said. "I agree that Levalas could be very useful to us in the future, but he could also stab us in the back easily enough if we give him this much freedom."