Shade did not dwell too long on the matter of the three mysterious Rhodes Cards before continuing:
"Second question. Someone asked me to find a special person. About two or three months ago, he had contact with you. Yes, you know who I mean, Ring Arcanist. Don't look so surprised. You only need to answer me: what did that person do here, and where has he gone now?"
The bare-chested Hawthorne hurriedly shook his head:
"I don't know what you're talking about. Stop asking. This isn't something we should get involved in."
"I'm curious whether you're truly willing to pay a price for someone else."
Shade asked:
"You can probably tell that I'm Delarion. In Yodel Palace, in Tobesk City, the distant capital of the Northern Kingdom, I once heard of a kind of attendant official known as a 'eunuch attendant.' Mr. Hawthorne, are you interested in that profession?"
Freeman Hawthorne opened his mouth:
"You really love joking around—don't, don't do this! I don't know that Ring Arcanist either. Grandfather told me to send people to help him look for something, but he never explained what he was looking for. He only said it was somewhere in the Lower District, that it was of a very high level, and told my people to inquire about anything unusual that had happened recently. But in the end, we found nothing. That person still occasionally appeared around Grandfather, but he never contacted me again. Later, I heard Father say that the thing seemed to have been taken by someone from the Belinder Family. If The Church found out about something like this, everyone would be in trouble, so both sides tacitly pretended that nothing had happened."
"Belinder?"
After going around in such a large circle, he still had to find someone else:
"The