Chapter 118

Action came fast.

As soon as the word reached him, he moved. A well-trained horse doesn't lose its bearings even when the human drops the reins. Muddy road, running horse, carriage rocking.

An old, run-down carriage of the sort common in the country. There was no proper window, the way there'd been on the ones he'd ridden in the capital. The coachman's hand shot in through the open gap they'd been talking through all this time. A sharp knife glinted between the folds of his sleeve.

Good judgment. Harold didn't underestimate the man's recklessness. Open country. Run, and every move would be exposed. And since the man had been going on about Harold's reputation the whole way, he'd have concluded running wasn't an option.

On horseback might have been another matter, but you couldn't just unhitch yourself from a carriage. If running was impossible, then attack was the right call. A cornered rat bites, after all.

Assuming it could.

"Kh...!"

Naturally, Harold wasn't about to sit still for it. If he'd meant to let it happen, he wouldn't have said anything in the first place.

He seized the wrist and twisted. Something snapped. Not the sensation of bone breaking. Since a blade had shot out of the sleeve, there must have been some kind of mechanism.

The knife fell. Harold pinned it under his foot as it slid across the floor of the carriage. Evidence.

He kept hold of the wrist. The man thrashed, but not hard enough to break Harold's grip. Harold considered the direction of the carriage for a moment, then yanked the coachman's arm inward. The window from the driver's seat into the cabin was too small for a person to fit through — which meant that once caught in it, the coachman couldn't move at all.

Harold reached with his other hand. He grabbed the trapped man by the throat.

"Kh! Kkghh!"

Apparently he'd hidden a weapon on the other side too — the coachman swung a knife. Harold briefly let go of the throat. In the moment the man was forced to gasp for the breath he'd lost, Harold knocked the knife hand aside and caught the throat again.

The man's breath stopped. Watching the reddening face, Harold held on a little longer, just in case.

Beneath the hat, his eyelids rolled up. Only after Harold saw the man's hands twitch and then fall limp did he let go.

The man's body sagged. But coachman or no coachman, the horse kept going down the road at the same pace. Getting out of the carriage to stop the horse wouldn't be hard, but if he let go, the man might tumble out. He didn't care if a man like this broke a few bones, but a wheel running him over and killing him would be a problem. He'd been careful not to snap the neck for a reason.

But letting the carriage keep going like this was a problem too. Harold held the man's throat and thought it over as he looked at the horse.

Definitely a trained horse. And.

"..."

Harold's eyes went to the knife under his foot. Unlike the one who'd attacked the capital's watch hospital, this was a proper weapon. Not a kitchen knife — the kind actually made as a weapon.

Harold pursed his lips.

Whistle.

A whistle sounded. Long, short. A brief pause, then one more short whit.

The horse slowly came to a stop. He'd suspected as much... Harold, looking tired, let go and climbed down from the carriage. The man slumped down under the driver's seat and landed face-first in the mud.

Harold flipped the body with his foot so the man he'd taken the trouble to keep alive wouldn't drown in mud, then patted the snorting horse and let out a sigh.

That whistle was a signal used to train horses in the Alharn army.

---

The day before.

Harold hadn't gone up to the capital from the Reichnek domain.

That much was true. But he hadn't come straight to the Bertholdt domain either. Before that, Harold had headed west. To Katelburg, more precisely — where the Second Prince's estate was.

Katelburg was a small city with no train station. Harold traveled in from a nearby city. Dressed no differently from the laborers who worked the surrounding farms, a dusty bag slung over his shoulder, he must have looked like a man come to find work — no one paid him any mind. With harvest season not far off, laborers loitering around wasn't unusual.

"Kid."

Harold called out to a boy drinking water beside a bundle of newspapers at his feet. Seeing Harold's getup, the boy broke into a bright smile.

"Yes, sir! What paper are you after? From the southern Arnmolt papers all the way up to the northern ones, we've got every paper you can name!"

"One workers' paper."

"Here you go!"

Harold handed the boy a coin, took the paper, and unfolded it.

There were similar figures scattered along the street.

Harold read the paper as he moved slowly along. Soon a busier street came into view, and he tucked the paper under his arm.

"Oh! Excuse me!"

"...Yes?"

"You dropped your paper."

Harold slowly lowered his eyes. The paper was still tucked under his arm. But the woman in a headscarf was waving a newspaper in front of his face.

When Harold took it, she flashed a grin.

"Here for work?"

"Mm."

"You're tall. Ever worked an orchard?"

Harold nodded.

"You'll need lodgings too. Our orchard provides them. Three coins a day. One for meals. Hot water in the evenings included."

"Day's wages?"

"That depends on how hard you work! We settle up by the day's haul. It's weight, not count, so no need to worry about that."

Harold followed the woman at a slow pace. Once he showed interest, she chattered on as she walked.

"Plenty of rich gentlemen's country houses around here, so you might get sent on deliveries. Those pay separately, and the fee changes with the distance, so keep that in mind. Pays less than picking grapes, but if you're sick of working in the sun, taking one now and then isn't a bad deal. Or don't — up to you. Everyone's angling for delivery runs anyway."

Even without Harold saying much back, the woman prattled on by herself. Meanwhile her steps drifted farther and farther from the crowded main street.

When they reached a quiet alley, the woman turned in — not at an orchard at all, but at a small building that looked like an ordinary house. Harold shambled in after her.

"Sir Bertholdt."

The moment they were inside, the woman's voice changed entirely.

The plain farm woman had become sharp as a drawn sword in an instant. Nothing obvious to the eye, but she'd have a weapon on her somewhere.

Harold set the paper down without any show of surprise and took a seat. How long had it been since he'd met an Intelligence field agent — years? Or was this the first time? He ran into foreign agents now and then, but he thought this was the first time he'd met one of their own "in the field."

"If you need a name, you can call me Rena."

Harold nodded.

"I don't have much time. How are things in the Bertholdt domain?"

"As we expected."

"The shepherd?"

"Would you believe a relative dropped in on him right around the time the capital was in an uproar."

"A relative."

"Says she came to look for work."

"In the Bertholdt domain?"

However little Harold cared about running the domain, he knew the Bertholdt domain wasn't the place you went to find work. It was a big city by southern standards, sure — there'd be some work — but nothing like the west with harvest season on its way.

Sheep-shearing season was long over. She might have gone through a recommendation... unlikely. If that "shepherd" was less a shepherd than a spy, the relative probably wasn't much of a relative either.

"Gender?"

"Woman. She says she stopped in to see her relative while she was in the west looking for harvest work, but..."

"If she visited around that time, hasn't a fair stretch passed by now? She's still on the domain?"

"Yes."

Harold's brows drew together.

"Wouldn't a lover be an easier cover for a woman?"

"Nicola Rowell has worked in the Bertholdt domain a long time. A lover left behind in her hometown would look strange. Draw needless attention, too."

Harold nodded.

"Fair enough. And it's not as if anyone would normally look this closely at a shepherd's relative."

Of course, this wasn't a normal situation.

"What does the woman look like?"

"Dark brown hair, brown eyes. She didn't come across as foreign, but I can't be certain."

The woman held up a hand a little below her own eye level.

"About this tall. To be honest, we suspect she's the arsonist — but no one really got a good look at that face."

"Right. I never saw the face either."

"Would you recognize her?"

"If I saw her."

The woman had given him no end of trouble. You might forget a book you'd read yesterday, but you weren't going to forget someone like that.

Once Rena had Harold's assurance, she kept on with her briefing. That Harold didn't have much time was no lie. That he was going back to the capital wasn't a secret. By now the paperwork would be through, and word would have gone out that he'd been reassigned to the northern base and would be staying in the capital.

That he was looking after his nephews went without saying, but staying in the capital instead of coming down to the domain was a highly political move. Wasn't it well known that Count Bertholdt's second son and Grisha Lambert were close?

That he'd left the Reichnek domain would be known. If he didn't show up in the capital, they'd get suspicious. So he had to do everything he could in this short window when "still traveling" would serve as an excuse.

Taking a look at the prince's estate in Katelburg, for instance.

"I did have her looked into... but the results weren't especially satisfactory."

"If it had been easy, we wouldn't have gone through what we did in the capital."

Still, Rena walked him through what she had. As she'd said, it wasn't much to go on. A small-town origin, orphaned young, raised by relatives...

At a glance it sounded ordinary — which was exactly what left it full of holes.

"And."

The woman, who had been running through her briefing in the same flat register, twisted her face for the first time. Disgust dripped from her voice.

"I don't know whether you've heard, but our man deployed in the Bertholdt domain—"

"I heard. Once our family's lawyer left, he asked me about it."

Harold clicked his tongue.

"He said someone had been acting suspiciously."

"He'd been one of our key targets from the start. The previous Director deliberately left him in place to... resolve various other problems."

"Has he been in contact with the shepherd?"

"Contact with suspects on this job is strictly forbidden. He isn't impatient enough to disobey that order — not yet."

"But?"

"He looks a little on edge with Founding Day coming up."

Founding Day.

More than Founding Day itself, Harold suspected the bigger factor was the trouble in the capital that had gotten First Prince Carlisle placed under formal reprimand.

Maybe the man had figured all that free time from the reprimand ought to be invested in something... productive.

Would've been better if he'd just sat quietly and reflected.

"He seems to want to get near the old Bertholdt manor."

"The old manor..."

Harold murmured it slowly, as if turning the words over on his tongue.

"Right. I'll handle the business on the domain personally, then. And what I asked you for?"

"Here."

Rena took a thick sheaf of papers out from under a floorboard. As she spread them on the table, the Intelligence agent's eyes lit up like a hound that had scented prey.

"The blueprints of the Second Prince's estate."