In the pitch-black four-wheeled carriage, Marshal Beian carefully placed Bei Ya on a seat piled with soft cushions, then viciously slapped him across the face, sending seven or eight of his large teeth flying.
"Useless trash!" Marshal Beian's eyes blazed with savage fury. "Dealing with a mere Ente Malte, look at the mess you've made of it! You bribed an assassin to murder a merchant right in front of him, hoping to pin incompetence on him?"
Bei Ya shrank into a trembling ball, not even caring about the agonizing pain of his broken thighbone, merely staring at his grandfather in terror.
"Why frame someone? Why use such low-class tricks?" Marshal Beian said in a low voice, each word distinct. "He's only Ente Malte. If you truly wanted him dead, one transfer order sending him to Norman Fortress to fight the orcs to the death would have been enough! Why resort to such petty schemes?"
Taking a deep breath, Marshal Beian shook his head in extreme displeasure. "Since you did it, since you used such methods, you couldn't leave anyone a single handle to seize. But what did you do? That damned assassin—you should have personally killed him at once, then immediately taken his head to the Garrison to put it on record!"
"That assassin brazenly murdered a foreign merchant right in front of Ente Malte, exposing Ente Malte's incompetence. But if you had slain that assassin on the spot, that would have shown your capability! If you had killed that damned assassin at once, how could things have turned out like this?"
Beludi coughed softly. Pulling out a white handkerchief, he slowly wiped the blurred, bloody mess from his horribly battered face. In a quiet voice, he said, "Father, that assassin was... old steward Bejisha's youngest grandson. You know what