In the trading hall beneath the Scented Leaf Bar, Alger put on the mask he had prepared and pulled up his hood to hide his hair. He chose a seat that was neither too secluded nor too close to the front, then discreetly surveyed the crowd.
He first glanced at the Appraiser seated beside the raised platform. The man's hair was neatly slicked back, and like the black-haired maid beside him, he wore a silver mask that covered the upper half of his face, making his features hard to discern...
So that's the Appraiser with the Notary Beyonder item? At least eighty percent of the people here tonight must have come because of him.
Heh. In Bayam, this is probably the only place with both an Appraiser and a Notary...
Alger looked around. Though most people were disguised, he still spotted a few relatively familiar faces.
That tall, dark-skinned man in the left corner is wearing a mask, but his hair curls into such conspicuous little beads... That must be Iron Maveti, second mate to the Admiral of Blood, with a bounty of 6,000 pounds!
When did he come to Bayam? And he's showing himself so openly at a Beyonder gathering... Isn't he afraid the Mandated Punishers will catch him? The church must have tacitly approved this gathering. There's no way it doesn't have informants here.
If subordinates of Vice Admiral Iceberg or the other Pirate Admirals appeared in Bayam, the authorities might not pursue them with everything they had...
But the Admiral of Blood and his subordinates were different. They loved killing and blood, and they delighted in assaulting women. Every time they raided a passenger ship, they left a massacre behind... Each was an extremely dangerous criminal. Their appearance would inevitably draw the attention of the Mandated Punishers,