adbindia Chapter 153 : Chapter 153
Chapter 153 : Chapter 153
Chapter 153. The Fall of Tarassa
Ten in the morning.
Whiteport’s central square was packed with people.
Logaris and Sylvia stood atop the raised platform. This time, they wore no disguises. Logaris was dressed in his signature black research robes, while Sylvia wore full military attire, her cloak snapping sharply in the sea wind.
“Bring them up.”
At Sylvia’s command, Cassido Tarassa and the rest of his family, young and old alike, were dragged onto the execution platform like dead dogs.
The once-glorious count now wore nothing but a torn nightshirt, his face a mask of terror and despair. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, the veins in his neck bulging, as if he wanted to scream out some earth-shattering secret.
“Mmgh! Mmghhh—!”
Unfortunately, all that came out was the broken wheezing of a bellows with its mouth stuffed shut.
He wanted to shout, “Tyrenia forced me into this.” He wanted to shout, “I have intelligence to trade for my life.” He even wanted to shout, “Logaris is a devil.”
But no one could hear him.
To the crowd below, he was nothing more than a corrupt official still trying to argue his way out of his crimes.
“Stone him to death!”
No one knew who started it, but a rotten egg flew through the air and splattered squarely across Cassido’s forehead, the yolk running down his fat face.
Then came a storm of rotten vegetable leaves and chunks of stone.
Standing high above it all, Logaris pushed up the sunglasses on the bridge of his nose and lifted his hand to glance at his watch.
“The hour has come.”
Sylvia nodded and drew the sword at her waist, then slashed it downward.
There were no unnecessary speeches, no final confessions.
The line of executioners brought their blades down in one motion.
A wet slicing sound rang out.
More than a dozen heads rolled across the ground.
Cassido’s head came to a stop at the edge of the steps. Those dead fish eyes of his were still bulging wide, as if even in death he could not believe that after decades of ruling Whiteport, he had ended so miserably.
The crowd erupted into thunderous cheers.
It was the release of oppression that had been bottled up for far too long.
Sylvia stepped forward and raised the longsword in her hand high overhead.
“All illegal gains of the Tarassa family are hereby confiscated in full!”
“From this day forward, all exorbitant taxes in Whiteport invented under false pretenses are abolished! The breathing tax, the city-entry tax, the poll tax, all of them are null and void!”
“Of the thirty million Golden Lion Coins seized, half will be turned over to the national treasury, and the other half...”
Sylvia paused, her gaze sweeping across the ragged townsfolk below.
“...will be used to repair Whiteport’s docks, establish low-cost medical stations, and provide compensation to every victim exploited by the Tarassa family!”
At that moment, the cheers turned into deafening cries of “Long live!”
...
Morning in Whiteport’s lower district was always shrouded in a layer of gray mist, the salty sea breeze mixed with the stench of rotten fish and gutters. It was natural camouflage.
Rossi, the veteran Tyrenian agent codenamed “Albatross,” was now weaving through the maze of alleyways exactly like a down-and-out drunkard.
But those seemingly muddy, unfocused eyes of his, whenever he turned a corner and gained a momentary blind angle, swept with perfect precision across every shadow behind him. No one was following him, and there was no residue of magical tracking marks.
He stopped in a filthy dead-end alley slick with grease. In one swift motion, he stripped off the silk shirt on the outside, the one he had deliberately worn ragged, and reversed it, revealing the coarse inner lining stained with coal dust. Then he scooped up a handful of mud from a puddle in the corner and expertly smeared it over his cheeks and forehead, masking the refined complexion he had before. At the same time, he adjusted his body language, letting his once-straight back hunch over.
In less than ten seconds, the disheveled noble steward who had just fled in panic was gone, replaced by a laborer who could be seen anywhere in this district.
Rossi crossed two more streets and finally stopped in front of a shabby wooden shack with a sign hanging outside that read Old John’s Salted Fish Shop.
The sky still had not fully brightened, and the shop was tightly shut. Rossi stepped forward and knocked on the door.
Knock. Knock-knock. A pause of two seconds. Knock. Knock.
It was a highly rhythmic pattern, like something striking the door in the wind.
A moment later, a hoarse and impatient voice came from behind the planks. “We’re not open yet. If you want fresh fish, go to the docks.”
“I’m not buying fresh fish.” Rossi lowered his voice, his tone steady. “I’m looking for salted fish that’s been dried for three years. Headless.”
“Headless salted fish is bad luck.”
“That’s only true for the living. The dead only care whether it’s salty enough.”
Click.
Rossi slipped sideways into the room and shut the door behind him in one fluid motion, without making a single unnecessary sound.
The dim little shop carried no smell of salted fish at all. Instead, it was filled with the faint scent of ink. An utterly ordinary-looking old man sat behind the counter, picking fish bones out with practiced hands.
He was the Tyrenian intelligence chief embedded in Whiteport, codename “Fisherman.”
Rossi dragged over a broken stool and sat down, looking somewhat weary. From his chest, he drew out a handkerchief and calmly wiped at bloodstains that did not actually exist on his fingers. Those marks had been left when he had deliberately heated his skin with a candle to create the appearance of “destroying evidence.”
As a high-level operative who had spent fifteen years undercover behind enemy lines, he knew very well that the more dangerous the moment, the more he had to act like a cold stone. Any excess emotional display would be viewed by the suspicious old man before him as a sign of weakness or the precursor to betrayal.
“The situation is very bad,” Rossi began. His voice was low and steady, carrying the taut strain of someone who had barely escaped with his life.
“I can see that.” The old man set down the boning knife in his hand and raised those cloudy yet razor-sharp eyes to examine Rossi’s carefully staged state of disarray. “That idiot Cassido got himself killed?”
“Not just him.” Rossi shook his head. He picked up the kettle nearby, poured himself a cup of cold water, and swallowed some to wet his dry throat. “The entire Tarassa family is finished. But I preserved the bottom line. The intelligence network is safe.”
Something flickered in the old man’s eyes. “Tell me exactly. I heard the disturbance was huge. Even the governor came.”
“The governor was only a smokescreen.” Rossi let out a cold laugh, his tone filled with the certainty of someone who saw the whole situation clearly. “The one who really made a move was the man called Logaris. This was not a political purge, Chief. This was a complete and utter act of private vengeance.”
“Private vengeance?”
“That’s right. Twenty years ago, the Tarassa family persecuted a minor noble house called West. And this Logaris is a descendant of that family.”
Rossi recited the script Logaris had prepared for him in a clear, orderly fashion, adding the sort of “polish” only a professional spy would think to provide.
“How can you be sure the intelligence network wasn’t compromised?” The old man stared directly into Rossi’s eyes.
“The moment I judged that the situation was spiraling out of control, I activated the backup plan.” Rossi slowly extended the right hand that had been burned red and held it out before the old man, his tone carrying a faint trace of someone asking for credit. “During the chaos while they were fighting, I used flame magic to destroy the briefcase containing the communication codebook and the distribution map of our safehouses. Unfortunately, I burned my fingers in the process.”
He looked at his swollen, reddened fingers and spoke calmly. “Compared to my hand, if that list had fallen into the Northern Territory’s hands, our entire layout along the eastern coast would have been finished. Only after I confirmed the documents had burned to ash did I use a Teleportation Stone to escape.”
“As for Cassido...” Rossi spread his hands with a regretful look on his face. “He brought it on himself. I warned him long ago not to be so flamboyant. A fool like that, one who gets purged over a private grudge, is not worth the risk of saving.”
“For some time to come, Logaris will inevitably be cleaning out Whiteport. At that point, I will be blind as far as intelligence work in Whiteport is concerned, and it is also very likely that madman has already noticed my identity.”
He took a deep breath, then delivered the line he had prepared long in advance.
“I request that the ‘Tail Severance’ protocol be activated, and that I be withdrawn to the homeland immediately.”