Chapter 72. The Missing Hostage
2023.11.11.
Early morning, Herdin woke from sleep.
Even though he went to sleep and woke up at similar times as usual, strangely he didn't feel refreshed.
Did he have a nightmare he can't remember?
Shaking off the unpleasant feeling, Herdin got out of bed and started another ordinary day.
After lighting a cigar and taking a shower in the bathroom, he changed clothes and left the room. As he headed toward the stairs to go down to the dining room, he saw Blair's closed door.
Since he stopped seeking out Blair's room, he hadn't seen her for the past few days. She hadn't even come out for meals.
Her visible defiance was laughable, but he decided to leave her alone for now. If he provoked her further and that weak woman collapsed in front of the fireplace like last time, or took to her bed, it would be troublesome.
Passing Blair's room and coming down to the first floor, he saw Mason talking with a maid with a serious expression.
It was an ordinary morning scene, but Mason's expression was somewhat gravely set. It was rare for him to wear such an expression.
Something felt off.
Herdin approached the two and asked.
"Mason, what's going on?"
"Your Excellency."
The maid who saw Herdin hurriedly bowed her head and glanced between Mason and Herdin.
Mason hesitated for a moment before speaking.
"The Madam went to the Imperial Palace urgently in the early dawn."
Typically in noble households, servants took shifts waiting throughout the night so they could respond to their master's summons at any time. The maid beside him must have been the one on duty last night.
Herdin's eyebrow rose at the news.
"At that hour? What could be so urgent to go there?"
Mason hadn't heard that part either, apparently, as he gestured to the maid, and she spoke hesitantly.
"I tried to persuade her that it was too early and she should go after sunrise, but she said she had to go right away."
"Was there any letter from the Imperial Palace yesterday or anything?"
Mason answered.
"No, there wasn't."
"Did she say when she'd return?"
"I asked about breakfast, and she said she would return before then..."
The maid answered.
Breakfast time would be around now. But seeing them laying this out before him meant Blair hadn't returned yet.
Herdin furrowed his brow.
He had previously assigned knights to guard Blair, so the gatekeeper would have reported her departure, and the knights would have secretly followed her.
"The knights must have followed her, so nothing serious should happen. Everyone, back to your duties."
The maid bowed again and moved away.
Herdin turned around with Mason following behind. As he headed to the dining room, questions crossed his mind.
Why did she go to the Imperial Palace so urgently in the middle of the night? What on earth for?
Just as Herdin was trying to gauge the reason, the front door abruptly burst open.
Startled, Mason and Herdin turned around to see a man bleeding from his head dragging in an unconscious knight with a stab wound to his abdomen.
The man was one of the coachmen working at Delmark, and the knight was Bain, who had been assigned as Blair's guard.
Herdin's eyes began to shake at the sight of them.
While the servants preparing breakfast all looked at them in shock, the coachman said breathlessly.
"Your Excellency, the Madam... has been kidnapped by unknown assailants."
* * *
"Ugh..."
Blair felt a throbbing pain throughout her entire head as she struggled to open her eyes. Her head hurt, her vision was blurry, and her stomach churned. And her hands were bound too.
As she retraced her memory to figure out why her body was in this state, she came to a rough conclusion.
She had been kidnapped again, and while slamming her head hard against the carriage, something had also gone wrong with her body. Seeing as she hadn't died instantly, it didn't seem to be a major problem, fortunately.
When Blair blinked and recovered her hazy vision, she saw the scene before her.
A forest.
A forest landscape similar to what she had seen at the villa she went to with Mikhail spread out beyond the panoramic window.
Whether the previous incident had left her with some experience, Blair quickly assessed the situation. Just as she tried to sit up, an unfamiliar man's voice was heard.
"You've been groaning since a while ago. Did you hit your head hard?"
Blair hastily closed her eyes upon hearing the approaching man's voice.
Just as an unfamiliar shadow was about to loom over her, a woman's gruff voice was heard.
"That happened because you recklessly rode your horse and charged into the carriage, you lunatic."
"What should we do? Is she going to die?"
"She won't die from that. That woman is a princess who grew up sheltered, so she's just making a fuss."
The man's shadow moved away again.
Blair grasped two things from their brief conversation.
They knew who she was, and they had no intention of killing her.
'Are they after a ransom?'
She had heard that sometimes bandits attacked carriages aiming for noble ransoms.
But they were 'mountain' bandits.
They would target travelers passing through desolate mountain paths, not risk danger by coming right into the heart of the capital.
"Anyway, why aren't those guys coming so late? We need to erase her memory before the Duke arrives."
The woman grumbled. Then the man defended the people they were waiting for.
"Well, who could have known? That the Princess would move this fast, and at such an early hour too."
"..."
"Don't be too anxious. Villas like this are only used by nobles for secret trysts, so they can't just barge in. If things go wrong, we can just run."
Blair collected as much information as possible while listening to their conversation.
Even if there was nothing she could do right now, understanding the current situation would be a great help.
After a brief silence, someone stood up.
"Where are you going?"
It seemed to be the man who got up.
"I'm hungry, so I'm going to look for something to eat. This is a noble's villa after all, shouldn't there be some snacks at least?"
"How can you think about food in this situation?"
"What about this situation? I'm not the one who got kidnapped."
The man chuckled as he replied and left the room.
Along with the woman's sigh-laced curse, a clicking sound was heard. Then the cigar smoke that began to waft indicated that the earlier sound had been a lighter.
Blair bit her lower lip to suppress the cough that reflexively threatened to burst out from the cigar smoke. But that soon reached its limit too.
Just as Blair was swallowing painful breaths.
Crash—!
A loud noise came from downstairs. Hearing that, the woman swore and stood up.
"Ugh, that idiot is causing another accident."
The woman left the room as she was. The footsteps echoing in the hallway grew increasingly distant.
"Cough..."
Blair finally let out the cough she had been holding back. The more she coughed, the worse her headache became.
After repeating deep breaths several times, Blair barely caught her breath and sat up.
Her head, having taken a strong impact, throbbed, and her stomach churned as if she would vomit at any moment, making her unable to even think of moving her body.
But at the same time, another commotion that came from downstairs once more helped her steel her resolve.
'There's no time.'
Looking around the room, Blair found a chair and approached it. Fortunately, her legs hadn't been bound.
Blair carefully knocked the chair over and wedged a thin chair leg between the ropes binding her hands.
After a few movements, the knot loosened. Blair untied the loosened rope with her hands.
The next problem was escape.
Blair looked at the dense forest beyond the panoramic window and balcony.
'Let's escape into the forest.'
At least there would be more places to hide than here.
Perhaps because she knew they wouldn't kill her, rather than worrying about what would happen if she failed, various methods to try came to mind first.
'This is the second floor, so with just a little setup it should work.'
While Blair was searching for a way to go down to the first floor without them noticing, she spotted a curtain half-covering the panoramic window of the balcony.
Seeing that, suddenly the day she first visited Guild Revelus came to mind.
Blair placed the chair under the curtain, climbed up, and separated the curtain from its rod. Then she tied the curtain to make a long rope and similarly tied it to the balcony railing.
Finally, grabbing both sides of the knot and pulling, she felt it was tightly secured.
After completing her final check, Blair threw the curtain rope tied to the railing outside.
"Done..."
Now it was time to go down to the first floor using the rope.
Just as Blair was about to grab onto the railing.
"You came here to work, not to play, huh?"
"After eating well together, why are you being so prickly? Honestly, you were hungry too."
From the direction of the stairs, the bickering voices of the woman and man coming up could be heard. Blair's heart sank at the sound.
With an anxious mind, Blair approached the railing again but stopped.
If she went down now, she might slip and get hurt, or be caught by them before her feet even touched the ground.
Even if she was lucky enough to reach the first floor, it was obvious she couldn't outrun them.
'In that case, rather...'
Blair quickly changed her plan.
* * *
The two people who entered the room where Blair was, while arguing with each other, stopped when they felt the chilly air of the room.
With a sense of foreboding, they looked around the room and saw the wide-open balcony door right in front. And the curtain tied to the railing.
And decisively, Blair was gone.