The air in the lounge instantly tensed up.
Yet, while the officials who were here to welcome us were too stunned to do anything, Makary sighed, Madam rolled her eyes while Fay smiled as she leaned even more of her weight over my arm.
"Sir, I understand that you are on good terms with Leon, but..."
Clearly unhappy with how my words cost him the initiative, the leader of the officials put on a sour smile while trying to work the magic of his words.
"Just to make sure you are aware, but I don't think he's throwing his words on the air," Makary spoke calmly, the twitching of the corner of his mouth betraying how he was holding back a smile. "So you know, if I were in your shoes, I would sooner pry my own eyes out than dare to look at his woman again."
I looked over at the man, slightly taken aback by how he took my side, even though I was obviously overreacting. Or I would be overreacting if this wasn't about Fay.
'When it comes to her, there's no such thing as overkill,' I thought grimly while fixing my hold over her hand and squeezing down on it with my fingers.
"Haha... ha..." the group's leader let out a dry laugh, his eyes jumping from Makary's to my face and then back to Makary's. "Still..."
"Why are you here, even?" Makary asked before the other party could even speak their mind. "It's not like you are still in the council. You can't affect their decisions either. So I will ask again," Makary's voice gradually turned lower. He also slowly stepped towards the group, only stopping an inch away from the table with the treats. "Why the hell are you here for?"
"I'm here to keep you company while the council gathers," the man replied without as much as a hint of hesitation.
'I guess he's not here just to piss us off,' I thought, taking half of a step forward and to the side to put myself in the line of view between the group and Fay.
"Do they annoy you that much?" Fay whispered in a voice loud enough for anyone to hear it. "Do you want me to kill them then?"
Hearing Fay's voice assault my ear like that, I felt like melting. Still, this wasn't the place or the time.
I took a moment to steel myself against this mental invasion before taking a breath and clearing my throat.
"Didn't I tell you?" I muttered softly while slightly shaking my head. "We can't go around killing people just because we dislike them. Just think of them as... people on the level of Etaria's servants?" I suggested out loud, sparing the group of men in suits a mere glance before scoffing slightly.
"No one would really care if they died, but for appearance's sake, they would have to make things hard on us."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Just like Etaria back home, the boss of those morons would lose face if we killed them for seemingly no reason. So unless they give us one..." As I brought my explanation to an end, I made sure to fill the ending with a tone of both disappointment but also anticipation... Only to put a wide yet completely cold smile on my mouth as I raised my eyes to the group.
"So you can feel welcome to any kind of provocation your overdrugged minds can produce. I will be happy to take all of it on," I stated, staring the group's leader right in the face.
"You've heard the man, dear," I laughed out a little while already taking a step in the direction the guide hoped we would take. "It would be rude of us to needlessly cause him any further problems."
From there on, there were no further adventures or other events that could delay our arrival. And with a total of fifty minutes lost, we finally arrived in a conference room where a group of four men and three women had gathered.
They were all sitting around a round table, the place in front of each of the occupied seats was full of towers of stacked papers.
'That's most likely just a decoration, a small trick aimed to make us believe they work hard,' I thought with a sigh.
My past in the slum made me aware that those at the very top... hardly worked at all. And what I saw right before my very own eyes, right now, was nothing more but an act to hide the unsavory truth.
"Welcome, Makary, welcome, Peter, and welcome, two respectable ladies we know now the names of," the old, elegant lady sitting at the far left of the table rose up from her chair as she greeted the members of our group one by one.
There were no snacks and refreshments for us to partake in, contrary to what we found back at the lounge. And yet...
For some reason, the welcome here felt a lot more warm, and genuine, than the one we had on the ground floor.
"And not to waste both our and your time, let's move with the agenda right away. Please, be seated so that we can discuss in comfort," the elder woman continued, ending with a gentle invitation to the free seats at the table.
Enjoy new chapters from empire
"I will ask the same question that I did back in the lounge," Makary spoke in a soft voice while giving the gathered group of city officials a small smile. "What the hell are you guys here for?"
A wave of shock moved over the faces of all the officials. Their masks of professional courtesy wavered... but held against the man's provocation.
"You came here to discuss something with us," the man at the far right of the table mentioned. "To a degree, we can even tell what's your issue. It's about that stupid investigation, isn't it?" the man suggested as he looked for something within the mess of paper right in front of him. "There!" he shouted lightly when he finally plucked a single-paged document.
The man then slid the paper over the table, to where Makary stood over the chair, refusing to sit down on it.
"No, you are wrong," Makary then sighed while slowly shaking his head. "Both in terms of why I'm here and when it came to the only question I asked here."
This time, the officials were too puzzled to try to counter Makary's provocation.
After all, even I struggled to figure out what the hell was on his mind, and I worked quite closely with him for a while already. With that in mind, the chances of those officials figuring him out before me were... slim at best.
"What's the correct answer, then?" a lovely, young woman in a suit sitting in the very middle of her group of colleagues asked, raising her head and looking directly into Makary's eyes.
"It's simple," Makary shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. "I have no idea what the hell are you doing here, simply because you are not the ones that I came here to talk with," he revealed only to lock his arms over his chest as he gave everyone a wide, confident smile.
"I'm here to talk with Leon and Leon alone, so stop stalling for time and bring that bastard out already!"