Hearing the strange noise in the dining room, the knights downstairs ran up to investigate, only for Rykard to stop them with a shout.
"Nothing happened. Go back."
Hearing Rykard's voice, the Gelmir Knights halfway up the stairs could only turn around and head back down. In front of a stranger, Rykard wiped his mouth and put on the mask of a noble house's head. Like Mare Mare, he used a mask to conceal his face. Apparently, this was a custom among the nobility of the Lands Between, keeping outsiders from seeing the true faces of noble family heads. Perhaps it lent them an air of authority, keeping ordinary people from reading changes in their expressions and making their majesty seem unfathomable.
As Zhao Si would have put it: this was just putting on a mysterious act.
Rykard cleared his throat, deliberately adjusting his voice to sound cold. "You escaped from prison."
"Obviously." Zhao Si pulled out a chair and plopped down. Looking at the delicacies on the table, he reached out, grabbed some, and stuffed them straight into his mouth. He could not have shown worse manners if he tried.
Bernahl shook his head as he watched.
Zhao Si, however, asked Bernahl, "How did you introduce me?"
"I told the truth," Bernahl said.
"Then it looks like your truth really screwed me over." Zhao Si swallowed his food, wiped the grease from his mouth with his sleeve, and looked at Rykard. "So what exactly do you want?"
"Hm?"
Rykard and Bernahl both made puzzled sounds. That seemed like a question Rykard should have been asking Zhao Si instead.
Zhao Si repeated himself. "What exactly do you want? Do you throw everyone who visits you into prison first?"
"Of course not. But you serve the Two Fingers." Rykard spread his