Shortly after, a server arrived carrying two steaming bowls of braised meat, moving with steady care.
The rich aroma of meat mingled with the sharp bite of pepper — uncommonly enticing on this gray, cold morning.
Sophia casually picked up a slightly coarse piece of Black Bread, tore off a corner without any change in expression, dipped it into the thick broth, and asked offhandedly:
"Our mistress sent us to Cors on business. Before we left, she made a point of telling us to find someone called Rita.
Have you ever heard that name around here?"
Sophia's voice remained cool and clear, without the faintest trace of emotion.
The server had been briskly wiping grease from his apron, but at the name Rita, his hands jerked to a sudden stop.
A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes. He shook his head and muttered:
"Rita? That's a common enough name — there are at least a few dozen women in this city called Rita. How would I know which one you mean..."
Sophia didn't reply. She simply let the server begin to turn away, then gave the faintest flick of her fingertips — and a bright golden coin slid with perfect precision to the edge of the table.
The sharp clink it made rang out with uncanny clarity amid the noise of the tavern.
The server's eyes lit up instantly, greed almost leaping out of their sockets.
He darted a quick glance around the room, then, with the lightning reflexes of a startled marmot, stuffed the coin into his breast pocket and leaned in toward Sophia, voice dropping to a near-whisper:
"My lords, please — don't go saying it was me who talked."
Sophia gave a slight nod. Beneath the shadow of her wide-brimmed hat, her pale-gold eyes took on an even deeper stillness.
The server drew close with a conspiratorial air, cupping his hands — greasy from years of wiping tables — around his mouth, and murmured:
"Truth is, 'Rita' here in this city... doesn't refer to a person.
If your mistress really sent you to find Rita, she most likely meant a place.
At the far end of the busiest alley in the eastern part of the city, there's a tavern with no sign — but carved above the doorway is a red poppy. That place is called Rita."
The server swallowed, his expression turning somewhat suggestive.
"It's technically a tavern, but the staff are all hand-picked from the finest available across the surrounding nations — every one of them, male or female, a first-rate beauty. More than a few senior officials from Olan and wealthy merchants from Yurilland have emptied their entire fortunes just for a single visit.
The staff there will also arrange private meetings with clients on the side. As for what kind of meetings... heh, you know how it is. I'm sure you two lords understand."
The server looked at Sophia and Irene in their plain attendant's clothes and had already filled in an entire drama in his head.
These two fair-skinned young fellows — they're probably servants of some great noble family's young mistress, sent to sniff around because she found out her worthless fiancé has been fooling around in Cors.
This kind of jealous investigation happened all the time in Cors. But that gold coin was the real thing.
Nearby, Irene — who had been nibbling on a small biscuit — froze completely the moment she heard that Rita was, in fact, a pleasure establishment.
She glanced awkwardly toward Sophia, only to find that Her Majesty remained as immovable as a mountain. Not even the untouched corner of braised meat in her bowl had stirred a single ripple.
This was Her Majesty's prediction all along?
*I had assumed Rita was a contact person. Her Majesty zeroed in on a location from the start.
And look at that reaction — she didn't so much as raise an eyebrow upon hearing about this kind of place.
That can only mean Her Majesty had long since seen through the nature of Olan's people. An empire that rotten to its core — its most critical secrets would inevitably be buried in its most debauched dens of vice.
Her Majesty deliberately used that crude cover story about running an errand for their mistress — working in the opposite direction, precisely to make the common people think this was just ordinary romantic drama, letting their guard down so the truth would slip out.
That must be what Her Majesty calls 'intelligence-source camouflage logic.'*
Following Her Majesty, even eavesdropping has this kind of weight — the gravity of a ruling class. I really have picked the right person to follow for the rest of my life!
"Thank you."
Sophia tossed out two words, flat and unhurried, and gestured for the server to withdraw.
She looked at the still-steaming bowl of braised meat before her, but her mind was rapidly calibrating a chain of logic.
A royal palace attendant — and the name he couldn't stop murmuring with his dying breath turned out to be a top-tier pleasure house.
If this wasn't a personal affair, then that place must be home to the most extensive underground intelligence network in all of Cors.
Whatever it is the Olans are after — it is very likely in the hands of someone hiding behind that red poppy.
Sophia picked up a wooden spoon and took an unhurried sip of the soup.
It was nowhere near the level of Mason Palace's cooks, but that rough, high-calorie warmth did restore one's strength with remarkable speed.
"Eat."
Sophia glanced at Irene, who was looking a little uneasy, her tone cool and clipped.
"Eat your fill first. We'll handle business after."
Irene gave a start, then, with an expression of great seriousness, began stuffing meat into her mouth.
She knew — now that the location had been locked down, what awaited that so-called House of Rita would likely be the coldest, most ruthless operation in all of Mason's history.
But, Your Majesty — are we really going to a pleasure house?
---
Pushing open the heavy crimson wooden door, the mud and clamor of Cors were cut off in an instant.
What met the eye was a vast hall of extravagant rosewood, drenched in luxury.
The wool carpet underfoot was thick enough to swallow the sound of boot heels entirely. The air no longer smelled of cheap barley ale, but of an expensive, faintly sweet incense.
Sophia and Irene kept their hats low and stepped into the hall at a steady, unhurried pace.
The interior décor of this establishment called Rita was even more refined than some of the noble mansions back in Mason Royal City.
Staggered private booths were separated by translucent silk screens, behind which one could vaguely make out richly dressed patrons, speaking in low, laughing voices.
To maintain this level of security and privacy in a chaotic border city — this was clearly no ordinary pleasure house.
Sophia swept the room with an expressionless gaze, her mind perfectly composed.
If the goal was gathering intelligence, making any overt move would only put the other side on alert.
Logically, the identity least likely to arouse suspicion in an outsider was exactly this: a minor noble's lackey with pockets full of gold coins, here for a good time and nothing more.
Before the two of them could even find seats, a beautiful blonde woman glided lightly toward them.
She wore a deep V-neck gown in the Olan style, her waist slender, trailing a seductive cloud of perfume as she moved.
Her bright green eyes flicked quickly over Sophia and Irene's plain robes, and finally settled on Sophia's jaw — still cool and otherworldly even beneath the shadow of her hat.
"Two young lords — coming in at this early hour, are you looking to drink something to wake up, or to find a sympathetic ear to share your troubles with?"
The woman's voice was soft enough to drip like honey, carrying with it the characteristic probing warmth of a professional woman of Cors.
Sophia raised her eyes slightly. The pale-gold of her irises flashed cold beneath the shadow.
She paid no attention to the woman's mildly flirtatious gaze. She simply reached unhurriedly into her sleeve, produced a gold coin she'd pocketed before leaving, and set it down on the edge of the bar with a quiet clink.
"Two glasses of your most expensive wine. One plate of snacks."
Sophia's tone was flat, without the slightest inflection — cold as a slab of arctic ice.
"We want that seat by the window. We don't wish to be disturbed by anyone.
If the wine is good, the tip will be generous."
When the blonde woman caught sight of that heavy gold coin, her breathing visibly faltered for a beat.
Gold of that quality was rare even in a place like Cors.
She immediately tucked away her careless smile and bent considerably lower at the waist:
"Of course, of course — please follow me, my lords.
I'm Lucy, the floor manager here. I'll make sure you have the most private table we have."
Irene followed close behind Sophia, watching the woman's swaying hips and fawning posture, and couldn't help letting out a silent snort in her heart.
So this is Her Majesty's advanced infiltration method?
I had assumed Her Majesty would simply grab someone and interrogate them. Instead, she chose the most gold-consuming method of all — blending in.
Her Majesty must have decided that resorting to force would spook the bigger fish deeper in Cors.
By throwing gold around like this, she not only swiftly establishes the persona of a wealthy-but-eccentric reclusive noble, but also turns it into a probe — testing just how deep the connections behind this House of Rita truly run.
If even gold coins this pure can't buy information here, then the water in this place is far deeper than the wetlands.
Her Majesty isn't buying wine at all — she's using gold as a sonar pulse, measuring the floor of this world of conspiracies!
Long live Her Majesty — this logic is even more airtight than my gunpowder formulas!
The two settled into a window-side booth. The thick screen blocked most of the sightlines.
Lucy returned promptly, carrying two glasses of rich amber wine and even thoughtfully adding a small dish of finely arranged nuts.
"Please enjoy, my lords.
If there's anything you need, simply pull the silver bell over there, and Lucy will be at your service immediately."
Once the woman had left, Sophia lifted her wine glass — but did not drink. She simply swirled the crystalline liquid gently.
"Your Majesty, are we really just... sitting here drinking?"
Irene kept her voice low, a barely-contained urgency bleeding into her tone.
"Patience."
Sophia looked down at the pale-gold reflection of her own eyes in the wine, her cool voice drifting through the quiet of the private booth.
"In a place like this, the walls have ears.
If we appear too purposeful, whoever 'Rita' is will simply become one more nameless body in a ditch somewhere in this city.
Our task right now is to listen."
Sophia tilted her head slightly, straining her hearing to its full reach.
Beneath the elegant music drifting through the room, the adjacent booth was leaking the half-drunk boasts of a few patrons who hadn't sobered up from the night before.
"...I'm telling you, I saw it with my own eyes in that mine tunnel — that girl's father was dragged away while he kept screaming for help.
You think... our landlady here, does she actually have some kind of... murky connection to the Jasu royal family..."
"Shh! You want to get yourself killed?! Is this a place you run your mouth?!"
The fingers Sophia had wrapped around her wine glass tightened almost imperceptibly.
She had caught it immediately.
The landlady — with an unclear connection to the Jasu royal family.
Even if the part about their relationship were fabricated, the two of them would at minimum be acquainted.
And acquainted was enough.
The light and shadow inside the tavern swayed in the amber of the wine.
Sophia's sharp senses registered it clearly: although this city was crawling with merchants and spies from every nation, the news of Jasu's fall had apparently not yet detonated beneath these murky waters.
Understandable. The Kingdom of Jasu had been wiped too cleanly.
Apart from Tulan, who had survived by sheer chance, there had been almost no one left alive to tell the tale.
Or rather — had Sophia and her party not happened to pass through Jasu and pulled Tulan out, Tulan too would be dead by now.
In the eyes of these patrons, Jasu was still that neighboring kingdom known for its quality iron ore, occasionally producing wealthy and generous clients.
This extreme asymmetry of information was, in Sophia's eyes, the most perfect gap in the logic — the ideal crack through which to slip inside.
It turns out the news of death hasn't outrun the fog of the wetlands.
Sophia watched the ice swirling in her glass, her expression utterly still, her mind undisturbed.
Olan has sealed the borders. Jasu's miners and merchants haven't yet reached the date of their return.
At this moment, Jasu is alive in the eyes of the world — and that living illusion is the best door to knock on when approaching that landlady.
Irene, sitting nearby, had evidently picked up on it too.
Her eyes went wide as she stared at the merchants at the next table still arguing about rising Jasu iron ore prices. A chill ran through her — followed swiftly by a wave of awe toward Sophia that filled her entirely.
This must be Her Majesty's time-based tactics. No wonder she wanted to travel here so fast.
She calculated the vacuum window of information transmission — and came to play an information-asymmetry gambit.
While everyone still believes the Jasu royal family is sitting securely on their throne, Her Majesty has already arrived with the clues to read the other side's hand.
Using the delay in how the world turns to engineer absolute advantage — it's like a god manipulating a sand table.
Irene swallowed. She truly hadn't expected Her Majesty to have thought all of this through in such a short span of time — and acted on it immediately.
From the idle chatter around her, soaked in alcohol and desire, Sophia pieced together a portrait of the woman who owned this establishment:
An exceptionally beautiful woman, and one with an iron-blooded, ruthless grip on power.
"...That landlady's figure — I caught a glimpse of her in the corridor last time and had three nights of dreams about it."
The man at the next table lowered his voice, a mixture of fear and longing on his face.
"But that woman is cold as ice. Some Olan field officer made a flippant remark to her once — they say the next day he turned up stripped naked and dumped in a mud pit outside the city walls. Even Olan's command post didn't dare make a peep about it."
Sophia's fingertips slowly traced the cold rim of her glass.
Remarkable looks. A cold, hard character. And a background not even the Olan military would willingly provoke.
This landlady is either a proxy for some major power — or she holds in her hands the exact lethal leverage that Olan desperately wants but is too afraid to reach for.
But then — why hadn't Olan thought to look for it at Rita in the first place?
At the speed Olan moved when destroying kingdoms, if they had guessed where the secret was hidden, they would have torn Rita apart the moment they arrived.
"Irene."
Sophia spoke suddenly. Her cool voice landed with unusual sharpness in the quiet of the private booth.
"Present, Your Majesty — your orders!"
Irene snapped upright immediately.
"That floor manager Lucy is about to come back."
Sophia looked toward the swaying silhouette beyond the screen, her tone as level and temperature-free as ever.
"In a moment, I'll use a reason she cannot refuse to invite the proprietress out to meet us.
You need only do one thing."
Irene nervously gripped the powder tube hidden in her sleeve.
"Say the word — are we blowing something up, or setting something on fire?"
Irene was ready.
Just give the order, Your Majesty, and I'll blow the whole place!
"No."
Sophia gave her a level look.
"Whatever shocking scene you witness next — don't drop your biscuit crumbs into the wine. That would be unbecoming of Mason's etiquette."
Irene snickered and nudged her wine glass — the one already contaminated with crumbs — to one side.
Just then, the blonde floor manager Lucy came walking in, smiling, carrying a plate of neatly sliced smoked ham and a dish of specialty spiced oil.
"Sorry for the wait, my lords — this was carved fresh by our best chef.
I hope the wine is to your liking?"
Sophia didn't touch the food. She tilted her head slightly upward, and the shadow of her hat fell open in the light, revealing that stretch of neck — pale and near-translucent.
"The wine is average. But the stories are excellent."
"If you're unsatisfied with the wine, I can replace it free of charge, my lords."
Lucy had taken Sophia's gold coin, and she was now all smiles and warmth toward her.
After all, there were countless patrons who'd nurse two drinks and spend all night at a table talking nonsense — a whole crowd of them working till dawn might not earn a single gold coin between them.
"I want to see your proprietress."
Lucy's professional smile froze for a brief moment. Then those bright green eyes swept quickly over Sophia.
Even in this trade, where she had seen countless free-spending lords, she had never encountered anyone like this young figure before her — with a bearing that seemed to look down on the entire world from a great height, cold and utterly indifferent even while reaching for a wine glass.
"My lord, you do have a sense of humor."
Lucy quickly recovered her willow-in-the-breeze composure. She covered her mouth with a light laugh, her fingers drifting almost imperceptibly across the surface of the table in front of Sophia, her eyes carrying a soul-catching softness.
"Our proprietress is a very busy lady — she never meets with patrons easily.
If you're feeling lonely, Lucy would be happy to share a few drinks with you.
Or perhaps..."
She turned, her slender finger gesturing toward the corridor on the other side, where several staff members stood waiting.
Among them were broad-shouldered foreign men with great swords strapped to their backs and cold, hard eyes — and soft, ivory-skinned young women in diaphanous gowns.
"Those over there have all been hand-selected by our Rita.
Whether you'd like to chat about the wars on the Northern border, or hear an exotic ballad — I guarantee you'll be more than satisfied.
Whether you actually see the proprietress... doesn't really matter all that much, does it?"
Sophia watched Lucy's textbook-perfect sales pitch without any change in expression — and inwardly felt a faint urge to eat a piece of dried beef.
This establishment's defensive logic is quite solid — beauty and alcohol as the first filter.
But unfortunately, what I'm bringing her is the truth that the Olan royal family couldn't pry out with a hundred thousand troops.
"No. I want her specifically."
Sophia's tone remained steady. She didn't even lift her eyelids.
Her slender fingers reached into the inner pocket of her outer robe — and then, something weighty and ancient in its presence was placed flat on the table beside the plate of smoked ham, without fanfare.
It was a gold seal, roughly half the size of a palm.
Carved on its top was a pure-gold eagle poised mid-spread, wings open as if about to take flight. Around the base ran a border of fine, dense rubies.
It was the royal gold seal of the Kingdom of Jasu — recovered by Mason's forces from the deepest corner of the charred ruins of the Jasu royal palace.
It was the physical embodiment of a nation's highest legitimacy. And now it sat on a greasy tavern table like an ordinary paperweight, casually set down by Sophia's hand.
"Tell her."
Sophia spoke quietly, the shadow of her hat concealing her pale-gold eyes.
"The seal in my hand is still warm.
If she doesn't want Rita to end up as rubble the way Jasu did, she had better come out right now and personally confirm whether or not the bloodstains on this thing have already dried."
Beside her, the moment the gold seal hit the table, Irene's eyes nearly leapt out of her skull. The piece of meat she still hadn't swallowed almost flew out of her mouth.
Good heavens... is this Her Majesty's promised thunderclap move?!
I thought Her Majesty brought this thing along as pocket change — or maybe to keep as a war trophy.
It never once crossed my mind before we left that we ought to bring some kind of token or credential — and she's using this as a calling card?!
At a moment in time when everyone still believes the Jasu royal family exists, Her Majesty casually produces the gold seal representing an entire nation's authority — this is like dropping a heavy bomb directly onto the other side's forehead!
Her Majesty is executing information suppression. She hasn't just told the other party that Jasu is gone — she's declared herself the apex predator of this entire war.
This cold, brutally efficient method of communication makes my directional explosive charges look positively subtle!
Once the proprietress over there learns someone has walked into her establishment bearing the Kingdom of Jasu's royal gold seal — even if she has never personally met the King of Jasu — she will absolutely come out to see them.
Who in the world would fail to give face to the ruler of a neighboring kingdom?
Irene suddenly felt that all the novels she'd read before had been wasted on her — she'd gone and forgotten every bit of it, spending all her days obsessing over inventions.
When she had some free time after returning, she would absolutely go back and mentally review every work she'd ever read on political intrigue, military strategy — even palace drama — and go through it all properly!
As for Lucy — that pair of eyes, so accustomed to their professional veneer of a smile, the moment they recognized the eagle crest engraved on the gold seal, shrank to pinpoints.
As the senior floor manager of Cors's top intelligence relay station, she knew all too well what this object meant.
That was not a gold coin. That was the symbol of power itself.
"This... this..."
Lucy's voice trembled so badly it nearly failed her entirely. Her slender hands reached instinctively toward the seal — then recoiled in midair, as though she'd burned her fingers on it.
She looked at Sophia. The lightness and teasing that had lived in her gaze were utterly gone, replaced by a terror akin to staring into an abyss.
"My lords — please, please wait just a moment!
Lucy will go and fetch the proprietress at once!"
With that, she abandoned the half-arranged snack dish entirely, nearly tripping over herself as she hiked up her skirts and bolted toward the forbidden corridor at the back of the tavern.
Sophia watched Lucy's retreating figure disappear, then settled back against her chair, fingertips tracing lightly along the cold rim of her glass.
As expected. A blunt, direct piece of proof is always more economical than any amount of circling around.
Sophia lowered her eyelids. The pale-gold light flickered in and out of the shadow.
____
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