After Mrs. Anne tried her best to measure the queen's size, His Majesty's head of maid, Mrs. Kelly, hurried in with a secret letter.
She took a warm and thick nightgown from little Mary, and wrapped the Queen's naked body first. The queen took the secret letter she had brought. Mrs. Anne at the side took her little daughter winkingly and retreated first.
The letter was knocked into a thin plain brass tube. Adele turned the tube away, poured out a roll of parchment inside, and spread it out on the table.
"It's Mr. Archbishop Rodriguez." Mrs. Kelly explained beside her.
"Let him in."
Adele glanced at the densely packed words written on the letter paper by the firelight of the fireplace, frowning immediately, and said to Mrs. Kelly beside her without hesitation.
When Archbishop Rodrik got permission and walked into the room full of anxiety, his footsteps paused for a moment, and he didn't know whether he should leave first. The queen was standing by the burning fireplace, clutching the neckline of her nightgown with one hand, and holding the letter with the other, her brows were tightly frowned.
The dark red nightgown had wide cuffs, with lotus leaf-shaped lace, and it slid down with the queen's hand raising, revealing a thin and pale arm. The thick hair was pulled up high for easy measurement, and the light fell down the neck and fell on the shoulder blades protruding through the nightgown. Due to her young experience, the Queen has always been thinner than ordinary people, and the two shoulder blades are more and more similar to each other. A pair of thin and graceful butterfly wings.
Archbishop Rodri stopped there, turned his head quickly, and looked away from the queen.
Adele heard his footsteps coming in, and let him come over without looking back.
"A secret passage?" she ordered, the ends of her frowning eyebrows slanting slightly, like two unsheathed knives, "No one noticed you coming, right?"
"No."
Archbishop Rodrik replied that he was a little stiff, took a few steps forward, and stopped at a place not too far from the queen, as if he had made up his mind not to take a step closer.
Adele didn't notice Archbishop Rodri's stiffness. She threw the secret letter into the fire, turned around, and sat down on the chair thoughtfully. Naturally, it would not be some irrelevant news that would allow Archbishop Rodri to come to see him from the secret passage late at night—they found the root of the ** that was deeply rooted in the Strait of Roses.
Unlike the swift and decisive action she had taken in Port Zarago, the queen did nothing to stimulate people's nerves after she came to the Strait of Roses—except that she went to the market that day and ignored the merchants in the free commercial city.
She played all the usual roles of a monarch on his southern tour: convening the royal court, making judicial decisions, meeting different royal agents and merchants, meeting nobles and envoys with various purposes... the attitude was gentle, and those who watched secretly saw her He didn't intend to turn the harbor upside down, so he gradually put his heart back into his chest from his throat.
But according to Archbishop Rodriguez, these people relaxed too early.
Known as the "Empire Throat", the forces in Rose Strait are intertwined. There are not only the Heinrich family who guard the treasure like a double-headed snake, but also other equally ancient and powerful families. Unless the queen wants to welcome a new riot and mutiny, she will act rashly here.
While the queen dealt with the major families, with a gentle face, the ascetic monks of Archbishop Rodri scattered into the crowd unobtrusively. Right now, Archbishop Rodriguez took over the original Knights of the Temple and some of the Ascetic Orders transformed from members of the Church of the Old God. Archbishop Rodrigues had to admit that the St. Lorraine Sect before the reform did have the ability to start a rebellion and Intentions.
The common ascetic monks in the streets and alleys are the most overlooked but ubiquitous characters. Now they are the queen's spies and the queen's eyes and ears.
But it's Abigail and the pirates who really take the investigation a step further. They are the real local snakes here, and they are the most proficient in various ways of deceiving people and unknown information channels. With the Queen as the leader, the information network formed by the monks and the information network formed by the pirates are handed over together to form a different Inferior to the spy network of the major families.
This stealthy, scrupulously carried out net brought the queen exactly what she wanted.
"tonight?"
The queen tapped the armrest with her fingertips.
If all the names and things written in the secret letter she threw into the fireplace were published, it would be enough to cause the empire's throat to experience an unprecedented tsunami, and it would affect the whole body. Judging from the number of cargo ships in and out of the port and the trade situation in the commercial street observed by the Queen these days, it is not difficult to calculate that there is a large vacancy in the annual tax revenue of the Rose Strait to the royal family.
The port of Rose Strait belongs directly to the Naval Council founded by Adele's father, Edmund III. It is true that those on the Naval Council could make the accounts neatly and seamlessly, but they couldn't make the ships and shops disappear out of thin air.
Of course, this may also be because they never thought that the queen's eyes would be so sharp. When she came to the Strait of Roses, it was like a falcon leaving a high mountain and circling over the fertile plain. Any rabbit's behavior in the grass Nothing can escape her observation. And her camouflage skills are also superb. Thinking about it, the nobles of the Navy Council still think that the Queen knows nothing about business and only knows how to do things willfully.
They were more eager to push Abigail out of the Naval Council, but she was just another pawn the Queen put on to attract attention.
"Since six years ago," said Adele, who speaks a little slower than usual when she thinks, but every word comes out with a veritable truth, "a huge amount of money has been siphoned from the port every year, Not the usual embezzlement or bribery, but invested in another place - the Grote shipyard."
It took almost all the power of the two intelligence networks to track down the whereabouts of the funds, and finally through Abigail's first mate—he has a good face and is very popular in the Communist Party—accidentally from It may take a lot of time for a boss named "Leishia" to get a clue.
"Confusing, isn't it?"
She asked softly, the lines of her face looked extremely cold and dangerous under the reflection of the fire.
According to the preliminary estimate of the amount of funds, even if a lot of the funds were spent and not all of them were used for shipbuilding, the ships built privately over the past six years should be able to form a small-scale fleet.
And in the "Fire Rose" harbor raid that directly caused the fall and demise of the Roland Empire, the ship disguised as a free commercial city came so quickly, and the attack on the harbor was so powerful that it was able to bypass the Roland Empire's patrols skillfully. Team and port sentry.
Historians have struggled to trace where the fleet came from, but now the Queen has the answer.
"They built a fleet secretly, but no one has seen this fleet, like a ghost that only exists in the shadow of the port," the queen said slowly, and she raised her eyes to look directly at Archbishop Rodrik, "then this fleet Where is the fleet that mysteriously disappeared?"
Their eyes met, and they already understood each other's guess.
Thousand Island Bay.
Why did Rose Strait become a place where piracy prevailed? Why was the Iron Cross Pirates able to occupy here for so many years, and even became the "Uncrowned King" in the southern part of the Roland Empire's sea area? The reason is "Thousand Island Bay".
On the west side of the Rose Strait, there is a sea area called "Thousand Island Bay". The Thousand Island Bay is divided into two parts, the north and the south. The North Thousand Island Bay is close to the continental shelf. The southern part of Qiandao Bay is dominated by hundreds of small islands, like a handful of silver sand thrown by the gods on the sea. Pirate ships, smuggling ships, and plundering ships are all hiding in that sea area, and there is a lot of fog between the islands. As long as the pirates enter the southern part of Qiandao Bay, the regular navy will not dare to set foot.
Even the pirates based on the island over there only know the part they occupy, and it is difficult to see the whole picture.
If the privately built fleet of Rose Strait is hidden not far from the empire, then Qiandao Bay is the best choice.
"You are in great danger now."
Archbishop Rodri's first reaction was something else.
The Queen is now in the Rose Strait, and the fleet of the Empire is still under the control of the Naval Committee. The fleet built in six years is hidden in the Thousand Islands Bay not far from the Queen. If the Naval Council realizes that the Queen has discovered what they have done, and has the audacity to mobilize the fleet to attack the harbor...
The formal imperial fleet and the armed merchant ships of the free commercial city are two completely different concepts, and these pirates who gather are definitely not able to resist.
Coupled with the fact that the negotiating team from the Free Commercial City arrived at this point in time, if the other party intends to unite with the Free Commercial City—or if the Free Commercial City buys them off, the situation will become extremely dangerous.
"You must leave Rose Strait immediately."
Worried, Archbishop Rodri blurted out.
He even stood up right away, wanting to leave the room to arrange people so that the queen could be escorted away from this place that suddenly became like a crowd of snakes.
"Rodri." Adele sat on the chair and called him.
Archbishop Rodri calmed down, but his face was still very ugly. He simply estimated the number of guns carried by the regular warships of the Imperial fleet at anchor in the harbor—a disturbing, unsettling number.
As the queen said, there is indeed a rotten root hidden in Roland's Rose Strait, and that root is likely to ruin the future of the empire and the queen's life.
"We're here to cut it off."
Adele crossed her fingers and rested her elbows on the armrest.
"There's always some risk to take on that."
Outside the window, the night wind blew past the high and low towers of the city, making a mournful long cry.
……………
Brothels and taverns are the most densely lit places in the harbor at night. Under the cover of night, the guests who still maintain a little decent during the day are taken away by alcohol and beautiful bodies, and indulge Dionysus and desires to erode their sanity. The young aristocrats are regular customers of the brothel, and they walked through the streets with their guards, looking for today's target.
A man in a dark blue short cloak skillfully dealt with the prostitutes on both sides, and was finally welcomed in by a blond prostitute with a striking figure.