In the grand drawing room, a lot of eyes were diverted at the question. Roland knew then that he was looking at a group of potential liars that were about to deceive him and he decided to strike first.
After slowly licking a spoon of honey, he looked at the duke and smirked. "Your grace, surely you are aware that I have looked into your family," he paused for dramatic effect and then added, "extensively."
"Oh, do tell." The duke picked up a cup of tea and brought it to his lips.
Roland smiled, "From the reports I received, your family does have a lot of chests, I don’t think I need to mention what is inside of those chests but I will go ahead and say gold nuggets...." he raised his eyebrows.
Duke Thorin put the cup down and chuckled, "Gold nuggets? Hahaha, your highness, you must be mistaken. We are humble farmers and businessmen, we have gold coins, legal gold coins acquired from various business transactions."
Lady Iryne fanned herself nervously, "Oh yes, your highness you must be mistaken. Why, the very thought of owning gold nuggets makes me want to swoon. Can you imagine that mother?"
Duchess Mila smiled stiffly, she was wondering if they had to move those chests that very night. They had about one hundred chests all stuffed to the brim with unprocessed gold. She noticed that Roland’s eyes had yet to move away from her so she responded to Iryne, "My oh my, we would be the wealthiest family in Eldoria. We would not even need to farm and yet every morning we rise with the cocks and head out to till the soil."
Roland became even more skeptical, what kind of nobles tilled the land personally? The Thorin’s were probably putting on a show to avoid suspicion.
Duke Thorin leaned forward in his chair with a grin, looking at Roland. "Your highness, we own some land which my father was awarded by the former king. On that land, there is a possibility that there are two gold mines but we cannot be certain if there is actual gold inside because we have never checked or even used that land."
"We don’t even know where it is." John blurted out.
"It is the first we are hearing of this." Sigrid added.
Roland looked up and groaned. "My knight saw you moving those trunks two months ago. He brought me a gold nugget that was picked up on your estate."
The Thorin’s looked at each other briefly before turning their eyes to Roland again.
"A gold nugget! Why, it must have fallen from the sky or perhaps a bird dropped it in our estate!!" Duchess Mila faked surprise.
Her husband the duke nodded, "It is true that birds carry all sorts of things from one point to another."
"It is a bird with good taste." Lord Paxton laughed. "I propose that we rise a few birds of that kind, who knows if they might actually bring us more gold nuggets."
The more they pretended and lied so obviously, the more Roland’s face turned red because he was very exasperated, angry and feeling foolish. No wonder Sigrid had the ability to confuse people with her words, she came from a bizarre family.
"Duke Thorin, you do realize that I can send my knights to your estate and have them search the entire property," Roland raised his eyebrow high, "Starting with the attic."
The duke gasped, "The attic, why would you search our attic? That’s where we keep all of our cheese, dozens of chests filled with exotic cheese."
"Who keeps cheese in chests!!" Roland bellowed.
"We do." The Thorin’s replied all together at the same time.
Roland groaned, he pulled on the tips of his hair with his fingers. "Fine," he growled out, "What if they search your cellars and basement?"
Lady Deanne joined in, "That’s where we keep the chests with all the wine."
Sigrid nodded, "Cheese and wine go hand in hand, oh Roland if you had told me that you were interested I would have brought you some."
"I will deliver a chest to the Vale this evening." John volunteered.
Roland leaned back in the chair, he could not see this conversation going anymore differently than it had. He had been ready for sensible lies that could be defended or defeated by logic, what he got in response to his question was a bundle of ridiculousness.
Cheese and wine!! did they actually think that he believe them?
"You all realize that if the accusations the prime minister wants to levy against your family make it before the king he will order for your entire estate to be searched." he reminded them.
"We do," They answered together again.
"We have nothing to hide." The duke replied confidently.
He had told the rest of the family but every night, Cosmos came by the Thorin estate and took away the gold in the chests on Sigrid’s orders. The gold was replaced with a magical stone known as Lumosite. It was similar to luminite but held no special purpose, all it was good for was decoration and working as a night light.
Come the day when the chests would be dragged out, it would be the prime minister and Emmah that would meet the king’s wrath.
"You have already moved the gold, haven’t you?" Roland laughed in disbelief.
"What gold?" The duke asked.
All of the Thorin’s had the same pretentious ignorant look on their faces. Roland gnashed his teeth and decided to move on, there were other things in Sigrid’s unfathomable dream to deal with. He had a lot of questions he wanted answers to.
"I have a question, knowing your family you are not the type of people to sit by idly and allow an enemy to live." Roland leaned forward, "Why move a part of your family out of the city? Why make all these counter moves rather than eliminate the source of danger directly?"
They were a military family, even though the duke had surrendered half of his military power, he had thousands of knights at his beck and call. Any one of them was skilled enough to kill Emmah.
There was also the fact that they were a wealthy, they could afford to pay an assassin to get rid of Emmah without raising suspicion. A great family like the Thorin’s should not be scrambling to deal with a small commoner like her.
Sigrid snorted, "Do you think we didn’t consider it?"
Roland shrugged, he had no idea.
"She is protected," Sigrid told him. "When she was younger, she got her hands on a magical artifact which makes her incredibly lucky so she is always surviving danger. Things always work out in her favor. The universe wants to satisfy her greatest desire and you can guess what it is."
Roland sneered, "To be queen."
"Empress." Sigrid amended. "She wants it badly and everyone that is in the way or considered useless will be eliminated."
He shook his head, it sounded too ridiculous, what kind of artifact was that powerful?
"You don’t believe me, right?" Sigrid nodded her head slowly and then her eyes trailed over the Thorin’s. "I have a question for everyone apart from Roland. How many of you have attempted to kill miss Emmah?"