Chapter : 751

Jager, his companion, was Kael’s complete opposite. He was unnaturally tall and slender, dressed in fine, if practical, black clothes. He leaned back in his chair with an air of languid, aristocratic boredom, one long-fingered hand idly swirling the amber contents of his glass. His face, pale and handsome with piercing grey eyes, held an expression of amused, condescending superiority. He looked utterly out of place, a sleek hunting cat that had inexplicably wandered into a pigsty.

“Patience, my dear Kael,” Jager said, his voice a smooth, hypnotic purr that cut through the tavern’s din. “Patience is the primary virtue of the true artist. You, with your soldier’s mind, you see this as a hunt. A simple matter of tracking the prey and making the kill. It is so… brutishly linear.” He took a delicate sip of his drink, his lip curling in distaste. “You are correct about the quality of the libations, however.”

“Art?” Kael snorted, not pausing in his sharpening. “We are killers, not painters. Our job is to put a hole in the target and collect our coin. This waiting… it is dishonorable. It is the work of cowards.”

Jager chuckled, a soft, patronizing sound. “Oh, Kael. You have all the subtlety of a charging boar. That is precisely why you are the muscle, and I am the mind. Honor?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Honor is a luxury for those who have already won. We are in the business of creating outcomes. And the desired outcome requires a certain… elegance. A certain finesse.”

He leaned forward, his grey eyes glinting in the dim lamplight. “Our target is not a simple stag to be run down in the forest. He is clever. The decoy carriage was an elegant move, I will admit. Annoying, but elegant. It tells us he is not the pampered fool our initial intelligence suggested. He knows he is being hunted. He has gone to ground. A lesser predator would now crash through the undergrowth, making a great deal of noise and finding nothing. A true hunter, however, simply waits.”

“Waits for what?” Kael growled. “For the gods to drop him in our laps?”

“Precisely,” Jager said with a serene smile. “Not the gods, perhaps. But his own nature. A man like Lloyd Ferrum—a young lord, newly powerful, flush with success from his little soap venture—cannot stay hidden forever. Pride is a powerful force, Kael. So is ambition. He has come to Zakaria for a reason. He has a purpose here. He will eventually make a move, and when he does, he will make a mistake. He will reveal himself. And we, my dear, impatient friend, will be waiting.”

Jager sat back, the picture of calm, predatory confidence. He saw this as a grand, intricate game of chess, and he was a grandmaster patiently waiting for his opponent to make a fatal blunder. He was so certain of his own intellectual superiority, so convinced that he understood the mind of his target, that he couldn't conceive of the truth. He couldn't imagine that his prey was not hiding in a hole, but was actively playing a completely different game on a completely different board, a game so subtle and audacious that it was utterly beyond his comprehension.

The hunters sat in the dark, watching an empty stage, completely unaware that the true play was already happening all around them, and they were no longer the predators. They were simply the next obstacle to be removed. The vigil continued, a monument to their own growing frustration and their profound, fatal ignorance.

---

Kael paused his meticulous sharpening, the sudden silence drawing Jager’s attention. The big man slammed the flat of his dagger onto the sticky tabletop, the sound a sharp crack that made a nearby informant jump in his seat.

“And what if you’re wrong?” Kael challenged, his voice a low, dangerous growl. “What if he’s not proud? What if he’s a coward? What if he’s already halfway back to his father’s fortress, laughing at us for chasing shadows? Our benefactor is not a patient man. He paid for a result, not for us to sample every foul tavern in this kingdom.”

The mention of their benefactor brought a flicker of something—a brief, momentary caution—to Jager’s amused expression. “Our benefactor understands the intricacies of our craft,” he said, his voice a little cooler now. “He is paying for a clean, deniable result. A public assassination of a ducal heir on the open road would lead to a war. An unfortunate, tragic accident within the chaotic tapestry of Zakaria… that is merely a sad story. Our mission is not just to kill him, but to kill him in a way that creates the desired political fallout. It requires the perfect stage.”

Chapter : 752

“I’d settle for a dark alley and a sharp knife,” Kael muttered, picking up his dagger again, though his sharpening movements were now more agitated, more aggressive.

Jager sighed, the sound a long, theatrical exhalation of pure condescension. “This is why you will always be a tool, Kael, and never an artisan. You see only the nail. I see the entire sculpture. Think. Why would Ferrum come here? Zakaria is the kingdom of merchants, the nexus of trade. He is here on business. His new soap empire, his ‘AURA’ brand. He is likely trying to secure trade routes or source rare ingredients.”

He leaned forward again, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial purr. “So, we do not watch for a lord. We watch for a merchant. We listen for whispers of a new player trying to break into the perfumers’ guild. We watch the warehouses, the shipping manifests. He cannot conduct business of that scale without leaving a paper trail. He will expose himself through his own ambition. It is inevitable.”

Jager’s logic was sound, his analysis of Lloyd’s probable motives completely rational. It was also completely, utterly wrong. He was playing a three-dimensional game of chess against an opponent who was operating in a fourth dimension he didn't even know existed. He was looking for a merchant prince, while his target was playing the role of a penniless saint, moving in circles Jager would never deign to notice.

“So we keep waiting,” Kael said, the words a bitter pill. “We keep drinking this swill and listening to the ramblings of these pathetic worms.” He gestured with his dagger to the rest of the tavern’s clientele.

“Precisely,” Jager confirmed, taking another delicate, distasteful sip of his drink. “We are spiders, Kael. We have spun our web across the city. Now, we simply wait for the fly to blunder into it.” He smiled, a thin, cruel expression. “And when he does, I assure you, the bite will be worth the wait.”

Kael fell silent, returning to his sharpening, the rhythmic scraping sound filling the small pocket of shadow they occupied. He was not convinced, but he was a soldier, and Jager was his commander. He would follow his orders, for now.

The two assassins sat in their self-imposed darkness, two apex predators completely blind to the true nature of their prey. They were so focused on the grand, political stage that they missed the quiet, revolutionary drama unfolding in the city’s forgotten gutters. They listened for the roar of a lion and were deaf to the whisper of a saint. Their vigil was not a mark of patience, but a testament to their arrogance. They believed they were the hunters, waiting for their moment. The truth was far more terrifying. They were the ones being watched, their movements and contacts already being logged and analyzed by a silent, invisible shadow. The trap was not theirs to set. It was already closing around them. The hunters had become the hunted, and they were too proud, too blind, to even realize it. The Drowned Rat was their waiting room, and they had no idea that judgment was already on its way.

The clinic had become a world unto itself, a small, quiet bubble of purpose and routine that existed outside the grand, dangerous game Lloyd was playing. The days were a rhythmic cycle of healing and quiet companionship. Lloyd would diagnose, his mind a cold engine of logic and perception, while Sumaiya would treat, her hands a gentle conduit of compassion and care. They were a perfect, self-contained system, and in the quiet of their shared work, Lloyd almost allowed himself to forget the assassins who hunted him and the certain, ominous fate that awaited him.

Almost.

The intelligence Ken had provided was a burning coal in his mind, a constant, glowing reminder of his true mission. The dying Qadir heir, the desperate Lord of the Armories—they were the key. And Sumaiya, his mysterious, capable, and now deeply trusting partner, was the unwitting hand that would turn that key. The time for passive observation was over. It was time to begin the delicate, dangerous work of manipulation.

He chose his moment with the care of a master strategist. It was late in the evening, after the last patient—a young dockworker with a brutally infected gash on his arm—had been stitched, bandaged, and sent on his way with a stern lecture on cleanliness. The clinic was quiet, the air thick with the clean, sharp scent of the antiseptic he had used. Sumaiya was carefully cleaning his instruments, her brow furrowed in concentration. The atmosphere was one of shared, weary satisfaction, the perfect emotional state for a subtle and carefully crafted conversation.