Chapter Twenty-Four: Turmoil Throughout the City

With a face alight with excitement, Lin Qi stood atop a tall building, leaning lazily against a chimney, his spirits high as he watched the tavern engulfed in flames. Yulian was an old hand at arson, possessing a unique talent in this field. As he himself often described, he excelled at setting fire to anything in the world—though, as he also boasted, his greatest skill lay in kindling a raging blaze within a beautiful woman’s heart.

“Hmm, I don’t know how well he lights a fire in a lady’s heart, but this one here is certainly spectacular!” Enzo recalled Yulian’s shameless claims, crouched on a bronze beast’s head at the corner of the roof, chewing tobacco and betel with relish as he commented on Yulian’s handiwork.

Lin Qi held a cigar between his lips, taking a deep drag and slowly exhaling the smoke through his nostrils.

The fire in the stables spread, and over thirty frightened horses neighed shrilly, galloping wildly across the small square before the Swords and Beauties Tavern. It was unclear which horse had kicked open the back door in the corner of the yard, but all thirty fled in a flash through the open gate.

From Lin Qi’s understanding of the business district, these horses, having bolted out into the night, would be difficult to recover. The local rogues lurking in the shadows would surely seize them quickly, whisking them far from Brelley. In a few weeks’ time, these horses would appear in certain clients’ stables—or perhaps end up as a hefty bone in someone’s stew pot.

“That’s a loss Big Sword Joe can afford. Just thirty horses!” Lin Qi blew out a thick cloud of smoke, sneering as he said, “Enzo, you’d better get back to the dormitory now. Tonight’s going to be lively. Very lively indeed!”

Enzo gave a strange laugh, nimbly leaping from the rooftop. The building was six stories high, but he used the ledges of each window to slow his descent and landed lightly. He waved to Lin Qi, then vanished into the darkness with the Bloodied Seven Swordsmen, all grinning from ear to ear.

Lin Qi spread his arms wide, gazing at the shifting shadows down the distant street, laughing soundlessly.

At least three squadrons of patrolling Dragoon cavalry had arrived at the scene—nearly a hundred horsemen were circling the tavern at breakneck speed, driving away the curious onlookers who had been roused from their beds. Dozens of secret police from the Security Bureau, sporting copper helmets and heavy coats, blew their whistles with wild abandon, gesticulating madly as they summoned the district’s dedicated fire brigade.

The shrill whistles tore through the night, and from afar, a dozen crimson oil lamps approached swiftly. Nearly a hundred men—disheveled, shivering in the cold—were pushing a dozen massive water wagons, scrambling toward the scene in disarray. These were the professional fire brigade under Brelley’s city hall—their livelihoods, even their lives, hung in the balance with this fire.

If they succeeded in extinguishing the flames without major damage, they would be richly rewarded. If not—if the fire caused heavy losses—some among them might even face imprisonment.

Fortunately, to ward off the frigid winds from the northern tundra, most of Brelley’s finer buildings were constructed of stone; the Swords and Beauties Tavern, built of blue stone blocks, was not only sturdy but also highly fire-resistant. Thanks to the fire brigade’s efforts, after a quarter of an hour, the blaze in the stables was subdued. Apart from the misfortune of a flour shop next door, whose woodshed roof was burned, no other buildings nearby suffered.

Hardly had the flames been doused when the Dragoons dismounted and, along with the copper-helmeted officers, rushed into the tavern.

Screams—men and women—echoed from within. The second floor of the Swords and Beauties Tavern served as an inn, and at this hour, perhaps thirty or fifty guests were resting in their rooms. Some Dragoons and fearless copper-helms stormed the tavern, while others violently broke into rooms, searching for suspicious persons among the lodgers.

After all, the century-long Island War had ended only thirty years ago, and the land still bore the scars and horrors of that conflict. Back then, Brelley suffered dozens of enemy-sabotaged fires every month. For thirty years, the city had not seen a nighttime blaze. Tonight’s fire, then, struck a raw nerve in many.

Room doors were battered open, guests dragged outside with rough hands. The wind howled; some, dressed only in nightclothes, trembled in the cold, and a few delicate young ladies, frightened and freezing, fainted on the spot.

Amid the chaos, an even greater commotion erupted from within the tavern. Sharper whistle blasts pierced the sky, and a Dragoon stepped outside, snapped a small scroll in half, and hurled it upward. A white fireball, the size of a human head, shot into the air with a shrill wail, soaring over three hundred meters before exploding in a roaring blast, blossoming into a sphere of white flame over ten meters wide.

All of Brelley was roused. This was the emergency signal reserved for patrolling Dragoons who encountered urgent crises—either a call for reinforcements or a sign that the matter was so grave their superiors needed to take over.

Lin Qi’s grin stretched from ear to ear. Black Horse House and their lot were finished this time.

Over a hundred students from various years at the Imperial Military Academy had violated academy discipline and military law, spending the night drinking themselves into a stupor at a tavern—and had, in their drunkenness, set the place ablaze. Not only would the Round Table Knights’ Club face disaster, but the Swords and Beauties Tavern would also be implicated.

This affair would not only alarm the academy’s leadership, but shake up high-ranking figures in the military as well. Black Horse House, in particular, came from a prominent noble family of generals, and the greater his background, the worse his predicament would be. The still-vigorous Saint Louis XIII would never tolerate such degenerates in the military academy he founded. This was going to get messy.

Recalling every detail of his own infiltration and the orchestration of the tavern raid, Lin Qi was confident he had left not a trace behind.

He exhaled a breath with ease. Seeing the Dragoons begin to fan out and expand their search, Lin Qi slipped from the rooftop like a black cat, crouching low as he sped through the streets toward the Fifth University.

Enzo and the others should have returned to the academy dormitory by now. With no evidence, no one could touch them.

As for Lin Qi, he had the best alibi—a witness, no less. He had been serving the great deity that night, copying scriptures in his dormitory at the time of the incident; Father Barin could vouch for him. Even the Brelley Security Bureau would not dare utter a word of complaint.

Divine authority reigned supreme; royal power lay beneath it. With the glow of the gods as his shield, who would dare question Lin Qi?

“O mighty deity, I will help you sell those thousand indulgence slips as soon as possible!”

As he raced through the night, Lin Qi prayed devoutly.