Age of arrogance novel (machine translated with some grammatical edits)

Chapter 8

Pete cautiously looked around, as was his habit, to make sure there was no one suspicious lurking around, and then spoke quietly.

"All the sparrows in the Empress' palace were hit."

"All of them?" Carlisle's eyes became sharp.

"Yes. At first, I think they were trying to convey false information to His Majesty using the sparrows. On the contrary, the Empress' palace side's received advanced information too easily."

"So, what measures did you take?"

"After much consideration, we discarded all information. I couldn't tell which of them were real and which were fake. That's why we stopped hearing from the sparrows."

Carlisle slowly exhaled the cigar smoke from his mouth.

"But it didn't end there, all the sparrows......", Pete continued.

"Are you saying they were targeted?"

"Yes." Pete said with a sad face.

"I think they moved as soon as they realised that they could no longer use the sparrows to shake the charge. But what I don't understand is how they found all the sparrows."

Other than Pete and two other managers, Carlisle didn't know all of Nest's sources of information. In many cases, the informants did not know each other. They deliberately did not reveal each other's existence so that even if one of them was captured and tortured, the other informants would not be found out.

"The managers couldn't have betrayed me........."

Carlisle paused for a moment and glanced at Pete and Lionel. The other administrator was Giles, so there was no way the information had leaked from Nest's administrators.

"Did you find any clues?"

"None. Not one. I don't even know how they killed the sparrows."

"What was the cause of death of the sparrows?"

Pete said, slowly shook his head as if remembering something horrible.

"All of them were sudden deaths with unknown causes. Everyone was in a completely different place, doing different things, and then they suddenly collapsed... ... ."

"What? then the only viable reason would be...... poison?"

"I do not know Your Highness. If it is poison, it must be something new, a poison that we have never come across before. Unfortunately, no symptoms of poisoning were found."

He hesitated a little and then added his opinion. "Actually, I feel like it is not poison. But then again I'm at a loss at how these killings were even possible."

Pete's intuition was trustworthy. Because he was a man who survived depending on that very intuition.

Carlisle tilted his head, resting his chin on the hand holding the cigar.

"That's strange. If someone out there had the talent to kill anyone like that, there's no way they would have left me alone. They would've come for me by now."

"For some reason, I don't have a good feeling about this Your Highness. It's very concerning.", Pete added.

Once again, Pete's intuition was trustworthy. It was really a regretful situation, that a person like Pete felt anxious about this.

"It seems like my mother decided to get it right this time, isn't it? Then I have to be prepared too."

Carlisle chuckled and sucked on his cigar again. For a person who was determined to be prepared for the Empress' next ploy, his attitude was of utter disregard.