SSS-Ranked Trash Hero: I Was Scammed Into Being Summoned-Chapter 78: The Assignment

She put the last of the supplies away and went to check on the evening meal.

The kitchen was warm. One of the servants, an older woman named Pris, was managing the pot without needing direction. Lena confirmed the portions, made a note about the flour being lower than she’d like, and left her to it. The routine of the estate moved on its own track and all she had to do was stay on it.

She was grateful for that right now.

She walked to the hallway and stood there for a moment with nothing immediately requiring her attention. That was the strange part about all of this.

The estate had its own rhythm and it didn’t stop for anything. There were meals to serve, accounts to update, a dozen small tasks that existed whether or not the person doing them had just found out she was planted here to commit murder.

Everything just continued forward at the same pace it always had, and the only difference was the person moving through it.

She straightened her coat and went to set the table. She was setting the table for Caelum’s dinner when he appeared in the doorway.

He didn’t usually come to the dining room early. The surface memories told her he ate late and without much interest in the meal itself, treating food as a practical matter rather than anything worth looking forward to.

She looked up when she heard him and he was already watching her, one hand resting on the door frame, the same quality of stillness he carried everywhere.

"I need to speak with you," he said. "After dinner."

She nodded. "Of course."

He sat down and she served the meal and neither of them said anything else. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

---

She cleared the plates and brought tea to the small sitting room where he waited. He was standing at the window when she came in, looking out at the dark grounds. She set the tray down and moved to leave.

"Stay," he said.

She stayed.

He turned from the window and sat in the chair across from hers, which was unusual. He normally kept the desk between them for any kind of household discussion, the physical arrangement of employer and staff preserved out of habit rather than deliberate formality.

Sitting across from her like this meant the conversation was going to be something different.

"During my time in the capital," he said, "I received a request from Lord Harren of the Veth estate. His territory borders ours on the eastern side. He has a pest problem in the woodland between our boundaries. It has been affecting his livestock for the past month and his own people haven’t been able to resolve it."

He paused and looked at her steadily.

"I told him I would send someone."

Lena waited.

"I’m sending you," he said. "You’ll leave tomorrow morning. Take what you need from the storage. Lord Harren’s estate is half a day’s ride east. His steward will meet you at the boundary marker."

She processed this. A butler sent to handle a noble’s pest problem. It was an odd assignment on its surface, the kind of thing you’d send a groundskeeper for, or one of the guards, not your household administrator.

She thought about asking why her specifically, but the surface memories told her Lena had always been the one Caelum sent when something needed to be handled quietly and without incident. She was the estate’s only reliable resource.

"How long should I expect to be there," she said.

"However long it takes. Two nights at most. Lord Harren will provide lodging."

She nodded. She was already thinking about Dav, about the Aldrath courier house, about the Hollow Seal. Two nights was a long time to be away from the estate right now.

"What kind of pest problem," she said.

Caelum set his tea down. "The kind that doesn’t respond to the usual methods. Lord Harren’s men have tried twice already. Whatever is in that woodland has been pushing closer to the livestock pens each time they drive it back." He paused. "Ollen will have the full details when you arrive. I don’t have them myself."

She picked up her notepad from habit and wrote the name down. Lord Harren. Veth estate. Eastern boundary. She wrote it the way Lena would have written it without unnecessary notation.

"Should I handle it quietly or does Lord Harren want it reported to the border garrison afterward." She asked.

The room was quiet for a moment.

She looked up.

Caelum was watching her with the same expression he always wore, which was almost no expression at all. But something had shifted slightly in the quality of his attention. The way you look at something when it has just done something that doesn’t quite match what you expected from it.

She realised that she had done something unusual. "I’m sorry," she said. "I’m tired. Long day."

He held her gaze for one second longer than felt comfortable. Then he looked down at his tea.

"The steward’s name is Ollen," he said. "He’ll have the details when you arrive."

"Understood."

She finished writing and closed the notepad and excused herself.

---

She sat on the edge of her bed when she was done packing and thought about the question she had asked.

One slip. A single question that she had no reason to ask. She had felt it leave her mouth before she could stop it and there was nothing to do after that except cover it and move on.

He didn’t ask questions or push back or show anything on his face. He just received information and went quiet with it, and that was somehow worse than if he had simply said something.

She couldn’t keep making mistakes like that. Every word she said around him needed to be checked before it came out. Not just the obvious things the big questions, the wrong reactions but the small ones too.

The small ones were what built a pattern. And a pattern was something she couldn’t afford.