Herald of Steel



Coming to terms with the fact that Alexander soon would have to deal with a lot of uninvited visits from spies, he asked for advice from his council members regarding how to contain if not eliminate them.

"........" But the council members unfortunately only returned him a wall of silence.

They could not help him.

Because they themselves knew almost zilch about spying or how to catch them.

So Alexander was on his own.

His first thought was to delegate this to Camius.

But after a few days of thinking about it, he found a better idea.

And he found it when trying to decide what to do with Laibak.

The man had been nothing but cooperative and Alexander had no intention of killing the man.

That would be a waste of his talent.

And so he simply asked the spy to come over to his side.

And unsurprisingly the man agreed with a heartbeat! 

How would he dare refuse?

So Alexander gave his job description.

"You and your partner will work with the city guards. You will set up your spy ring just like you would have, but now those reports will come to me."

"I want to know everything the people say and think…be it about me, about other nobles, and even the weather." 

"That will be one of your jobs. But not your main job."

"Your main job will be to keep an eye out for suspicious individuals in the city….you know the kind….your kind…enemy spies." Alexander pointedly spoke with a smirk, which also caused Laibak to involuntarily smirk.

He of course knew where Alexander was going this with.

After all, who better to catch a thief with than another thief?

As Laibak thought of this, Alexander continued, 

"You are to use your people to catch other spies and stop them from accomplishing what you were ordered to do."

"You can choose your own team and will be given adequate funds for your operations."

"As for who your day-to-day operations, you will directly answer to the head of the city guards- my wife."

"I will introduce her to some time later." 

Alexander was very frank with what was expected of Laibak, finishing by saying, 

"Also I have another man who does a similar job to yours. I will let you two meet at a later time so that you can cooperate with each other."

Here Alexander of course meant Camius and the two would meet under asuspicious circumstances under Alexander's directive.

Now, it might seem that Alexander was being overly trustworthy towards a man he had barely met over a week.

But there was a reason for that, or there were two reasons for that.

The first and obvious one was that Laibak appeared to be very pliable, bending whichever the way wind blew.

If force was applied to the man, he wisely bent instead of resisting and snapping.

So obedience through the threat of violence was always an option against him.

And the second one was that he had a family he seemed to care very much about.

Yes, the man had a wife and several kids.

Apparently he had married a local, which was also one of the reasons he said he was practically a local too.

And those people even lived with him. 

You see, the inn did not only house the men there.

On the second floor of the inn also resided many of the men's families, including Laibak's.

During the incident, they had all been asleep after the long day's work and only woke around the time the guards got there, whereupon they were all arrested and promptly thrown into the dungeon.

That was also one of the reasons Laibak spilled the bean so quickly.

At one point of the interrogation, Laibak had even said to the interrogator that as long as the man could swear that his family was safe and he could see them, Laibak would tell him everything he knew, swearing in the name of the god.

And after he was allowed to see and talk with them, the man followed up with his promise.

This went to show that as long as Alexander was able to provide him and his family with enough benefits and keep them safe, he was confident the risk and pain-adverse, family-loving man, who was smart enough to know what was good for him, would be loyal to him.

It was also because of those 'risk and pain adverse' and 'family loving' qualities that Alexander put him in charge of the counter-espionage operations of his capital city.

That way he could operate inside the safety of the city and the chances of him or his family coming to harm were very, very low.

Whereas if he were to recruit him for Camius's intelligence agency, whose focus was primarily going out to distant lands and establishing spy networks using his business as a cover, something like Laibak was initially asked by his former boss, well then the risk of him or his family getting captured and then singing like a canary was much higher.

Alexander was a hundred percent sure that since Laibak bent at the sight of the stick with him, he would bend to anybody too.

He could not expect undying loyalty in the face of adversity from Laibak.

And that was why Alexander did not simply insert Laibak into Camius's service, but formed two separate intelligence services.

One was the sword, wielded by Camius whose task was to gather intelligence from others on behalf of Alexander.

That was the foreign division of his intelligence services.

While the other was the shield wielded by Laibak, who prevented others from gathering intelligence on Alexander.

That was the domestic division of his intelligence services.

Together they formed his eyes and ears that stretch across for hundreds of miles.

Alexander would later introduce the two men, and with him describing Laibak as 'a man who prefers to stay safe rather than go on adventures' to Camius.

This was euphemistically revealing the man's traits to his close friend, who was in many quite the opposite.

Camius was very free-spirited and loved to travel the world.

As a matter of fact, he even said it once that the reason he joined the mercenary group was because his village was too small and he wanted to see the world. 

Yes, the man was made enough to go battles because he wanted to see the outside scenery. 

In connection to that he also never had any real relationship, and at the moment even the mere thought of settling and having a family was ludicrous to him.

Instead, his love lay in revealing new lands.

It was also because of that he loved his current job so much, because he could go to so many places and being a merchant even meet so many different people. 

From beggars to peasants to other traders to even nobles, people from all walks of life came to talk and meet with him.

It was a very rewarding experience.

But until now, he had not been able to take advantage of his opportunities for he was tied down by the fact he had to also oversee the domestic part of the surveillance, meaning he could not leave for another place willy-nilly.

His subordinates still needed someone to report to after all.

And then he needed to report those to Alexander.

But now that Laibak was there to take care of that little inconvenience for him, Camius felt almost liberated, like he could simply spread his wings and go do his thing with no problem.

So Camius was very graceful in accepting Laibak, and very openly revealed all the contacts he had made around the city.

And Laibak in contrast, under Alexander's guidance, gave Camius and his men a few tips and tricks about the trade called spying, things he had learned from painstakingly years of experience.

And it included how to recruit informants, how to arrange bribes, how to hide from the authorities, and a million other things.

On the hands-on experience, Camius and his men were very happy to learn.

And in this way, through a completely whimsical twist of fate, Alexander had managed to double his security.

Something he was very pleased about.

Previously, when Camius reported something, Alexander would always take it with a pinch of salt.

Not because he thought Camius was trying to deceive him, 

But because it was very likely Camius was getting only a look at the picture from just one side.

But now with  Laibak, Alexander would get two perspectives, especially about his domestic situation.

A new set of eyes and ears so as to speak.

And speaking of eyes and ears, Alexander at one point approached Laibak with the intention of asking if one set could be installed on Matbar (Marquis) Kyuam or better yet Amenheraft himself.

"You were set here as a spy. Could you continue that?" Alexander asked hopefully.

And this made Laibak first produce a wry smile.

'Man his new master was greedy!' He thought to himself.

Not only had he pouched two spies from his enemies, but he was also now urging them to become double agents.

And that was after killing five of the seven of them, including a noble!

That's what you called an optimistic man!

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