Chapter 116

"Miss. If we're going to make it back to the estate before sundown, we need to leave now."

"Aw."

Adelheid made a disappointed noise, but she didn't refuse the towel wrapped around her. The sun had been hot and the seawater cool. It wasn't as cold as the coachman had made it out to be, but she'd played hard enough to soak her hair, and now the wind was giving her the shivers.

Linda sighed as she watched the girl. Only then did Adelheid feel a pang of guilt at how tired her nurse looked. Meek now, she pulled the big towel around herself like a cape. The wet sand stuck to her feet was bothering her, and she wiggled her toes. She didn't want to put her shoes on like this.

As she rubbed her feet against the dry sand, Adelheid tilted her head. Off in the distance, two pairs of blue eyes were fixed on her.

The Bertholdt twins were sitting quietly on the towel Linda had spread out so their clothes wouldn't get dirty. Fussing about dirty clothes — city kids, through and through. Adelheid snorted and picked up her shoes.

"Edgar! Edwin!"

"...Done playing?"

Edwin asked with a shy smile.

"Want to come in the water too?"

"I don't like getting my clothes wet."

"That's what makes it fun!"

Adelheid burst out laughing.

If the weather had been just a bit hotter, she'd have dragged them straight into the water. Adelheid glanced back at the sea and shrugged.

If she ran back in, Linda wouldn't let it go. But...

"Young miss, young sirs. If we don't set off now, the sun will be down. We need to get you home in time for dinner."

Sensing her hesitation, the coachman cut in.

Adelheid looked between the coachman and the sea, Linda and the twins, and sighed. Catching on to the tomboy's surrender, Linda got the twins on their feet.

"Edgar, come on!"

"..."

"Master Edgar?"

"Edgar didn't sleep well!"

Adelheid gave Edgar a worried look. His eyes had been clear enough when they'd seen Uncle Harold off; now they were foggy. Edwin grinned and took Edgar's hand and gave it a shake.

The adults hadn't spelled it out, but she knew Edgar and Edwin's father had passed away. Linda checked on Edgar with an anxious face.

"...No fever. Master Edgar, are you all right?"

"..."

"He'll be okay once he gets home and has a nap."

Edwin, beside him, said it to Linda with a serious face. To Adelheid's eye too Edgar's face was pale, and what Edwin was saying made sense.

Adelheid climbed into the carriage without putting her shoes back on. Sand dropped to the floor. Linda watched Adelheid's bare feet with clear disapproval but said nothing. A shame Edgar looked so tired, but it did work in her favor.

Edgar closed his eyes before the carriage had even started moving. He didn't look asleep, exactly, but that ghost-white face was hard to look at.

Adelheid wriggled her toes so the dry sand would fall away. Her shoes rolled around in the corner of the carriage.

Outside the window, nothing but the boring sea and countryside rolling past.

Any other time, she'd have chatted with Edgar and Edwin, but she didn't want to bother a boy who was already starting to nod off.

"..."

Her eyes met Edwin's.

Edwin smiled shyly at her. His blue eyes were sparkling like sea in sunlight, pretty enough that Adelheid smiled back.

---

Not dreaming for a moment that the children who'd gotten rid of their bothersome uncle were in the throes of an existential crisis about whether the world would end or go on—

Harold stepped off at the train station.

Half of his taut nerves were still with the nephews he'd left back at the Reichnek estate.

The boys would be fine. Right now, the people at Reichnek were the ones Harold trusted most. Nothing was likely to go wrong, but even if the very worst happened, they'd keep the boys safe.

Harold pulled himself together. Either way, until the Founding Day events were over, he wasn't getting back to his nephews. So — focus.

Finishing up fast didn't mean he'd get back fast, but dawdling would definitely push his return further out.

"..."

It had been a while since he'd been back, but not much had changed. A few new buildings he didn't recognize had gone up, and a restaurant he'd never seen sat where a familiar shop used to be. That was about the extent of it. A country domain was always going to be like that.

Right. A country domain.

The Bertholdt domain.

Comparing it to the capital — one of the largest cities not just in the kingdom but on the continent — would be cruel. But even set against the Reichnek domain he'd just come from, it was too shabby to call a city. Of course, that was partly because Reichnek's Arnmolt was one of the busiest cities in the east.

Astonishingly, this modest town was the most prosperous city in the south.

The roads had places where the tiles had cracked and dirt was showing through. The buildings were old, with visible patchwork repairs. The train station smelled musty.

The Bertholdt domain wasn't alone in it — the whole south was the slowest-developing region in Alharn. Too many problems were tangled up in it to lay at the lord's feet alone. The south had also been the region hit hardest in the war with Barun. The border was close.

Which was why, even after the war ended, anything beyond repairing war damage risked being read as provocation. His brother would have had a hard time developing the domain too.

...Though now, thinking about it — well. He might have deliberately kept his own domain riddled with holes. Very much Albrecht Bertholdt's style.

"Third Avenue! Third Avenue loop leaves in ten!"

Harold twisted his lips.

For all the recent uproar around the count's family, the mood in the domain was easygoing. Not the busy churn of Arnmolt — a plain, homely liveliness. That kind of mood was probably why the domain had barely reacted whether the count dropped dead or was murdered. The count hadn't shown much interest in the domain to begin with.

"Fifth Avenue to South Shepherds' Rest! Three seats left! Whoops, sorry!"

A coachman holding a hand-lettered sign called out his route, tossed off an apology, and hurried past.

Harold straightened his crooked hat. All he'd done was pull on a shabby coat and yank the beat-up hat low, and no one was giving him a second look. In that shabby clothing, his build must have made him look like an ordinary laborer.

People and their biases.

Harold stood at the coach stand like a laborer waiting for a ride and looked around.

Away from the bustle, one old carriage sat parked. Unlike the others, the man on the driver's seat didn't seem interested in hooking passengers — he was eating a loaf of bread.

The scruffy beard and stained trousers — you couldn't have called the man presentable, generously or otherwise. Having polished off the bread in no time, he pulled a small canteen out from inside his vest. Whether the dented canteen held water or liquor, Harold couldn't tell, but the man tipped his head all the way back and drained it.

Harold's eyes narrowed. Something about the man wasn't quite right. Harold worked out what it was, slid over quietly, and climbed into the man's carriage. Only after the carriage tipped under Harold's weight did the coachman seem to catch on that someone had boarded, and he glanced back into the cabin.

The coachman wiped his hands on his trousers and took the reins. No one paid the slightest attention to one shabby carriage rolling out.

"...How did you know it was me?"

Only after they were clear of the crowd around the train station did the coachman mutter it. Harold snorted.

"Your nails."

"What?"

"Too neatly filed."

"Ugh..."

The coachman made a pained noise.

"I'll be more careful going forward... Well, I was worried without a fixed rendezvous method — thank goodness you spotted me."

"..."

"Sorry about that..."

The coachman kept an eye on Harold's mood as he passed a document envelope back into the cabin. Harold broke the seal at once and started looking through the contents.

"Anything unusual?"

"Nothing."

"The shepherds?"

"Quiet."

"The capital?"

"As of yesterday's report, quiet."

The Intelligence agent answered evenly. But he could feel a stare on the back of his neck that raised the hair there. A cold sweat broke out.

It felt like driving a wagon with a huge caged beast in the back. From the cabin came the sound of pages turning. A moment later, Harold spoke again.

"The old manor? They don't know I'm coming?"

"That's right, sir. Even we only heard yesterday."

Harold exhaled, satisfied.

The papers the agent had passed him were disappointingly thin. Just what they'd turned up on some "shepherd."

Right. The "shepherd" who took up one of the reports his brother had hidden away — Nicola Rowell.

Harold's young nephews thought their uncle had gone back to the capital for work. That wasn't a lie. Harold did have business in the capital.

But before that.

Harold had come to check on the Bertholdt domain. Now was the right time. The children were in a safe place, and everyone thought he was on his way to the capital.

As the count's proxy, he should have made a tour of the domain long before now. Not least because a caretaker had been murdered inside the manor. He'd sent Mattheus to clean up after the fact, but as proxy — and as the count's family — it was hardly a passing grade.

But looked at the other way, precisely because he wasn't expected to come, they'd be off their guard. Grisha had started openly gathering his faction in the capital, so Carlisle had his attention on Founding Day too.

There wouldn't be a better window than now. Intelligence's surveillance hadn't picked up any suspicious activity inside the Bertholdt domain... but with a known suspicious character already on the ground, how could nothing look suspicious?

His brother would never have left an ordinary person's name in that report. And sure enough, the handwriting on the pasture contract signature had changed. Günter, who'd been looking into that, was murdered. And Günter's killer was dead too.

"Head to the old manor first?"

"No."

Harold shook his head.

"This one first."

"You planning on grabbing him?"

The coachman asked, worried.

"The Director asked me to pass along that even if you could do it, we'd have a real problem if you actually did."

"No, I'm not planning on grabbing him right now either."

Harold put a hand to his forehead.

He genuinely could not fathom what those people at Intelligence thought of him. Sure — he'd considered it, if no one was looking, but if that had been enough to fix things, he'd have taken care of it all long ago.

"I just want to see him. That's all. No ulterior motive."

"Right..."

The coachman didn't sound convinced. Harold felt aggrieved, but making excuses would only look ridiculous, so he swallowed the sound.

"Word that I've come to the domain gets out, and he'll move right away. If your boss is right about him being a spy, that is."

"Sure. I'm not disagreeing. It's just, ah, well — you know."

"What kind of rumors are going around about me in the capital, exactly?"

"Do you really want to know, sir?"

"..."

Harold clicked his tongue openly. He could guess well enough. Last time he'd been up in the capital he'd made quite a scene, so he'd brought this on himself.

But Harold wasn't foolish enough to think a hunt succeeded by charging in blindly. Patience. It was all patience.

"Fine. If the rumors have spread like that, all the better for me."

"Really?"

"What happens when a hunter looks stupid enough that the prey stops running?"

Harold bared his teeth in a grin — more animal than hunter.

"It just sits still and lets itself get eaten."