Chapter 127

A few days later.

Lambert manor, capital of the Kingdom of Alharn.

"That's how it went."

Grisha looked at Harold. Harold looked back at Grisha.

Harold nodded, dead serious.

"You get it, right?"

"I'd love to say I don't get it at all, but I do."

Grisha sighed.

"So now there are two ciphers I have no idea how to crack."

"That's right."

"Why?"

"Even if you ask me why……"

"You're Albrecht's brother. You don't have any guesses?"

"You've seen more of him than I have these last few years. Shouldn't you be the one with a guess?"

"……"

"……"

Harold and Grisha glared at the journal and notebook on the desk.

Not that any amount of glaring would change what was inside. Albrecht Bertholdt's beautiful handwriting, even just sitting there, felt like looking at a lovingly crafted work of art — no comfort to anyone whose job was to actually figure out what it said.

Grisha opened the small notebook Harold had found at the old Bertholdt manor.

"They're probably not the same."

The fact that you couldn't be certain of that was the frightening thing about Albrecht.

The journal from the capital manor and the notebook from the old one didn't share any duplicated pages, but at least on the surface, both were written in a script with the same grammar. Certain characters recurred at intervals. Some looked like they served as sentence endings. Both observations held equally for both books.

But knowing that didn't mean the cipher could be cracked. Even one sentence, even one word — if he could pin down a single exact meaning, he'd have something to work from.

"Any thought of getting help?"

When Grisha broke off and sank into thought, Harold asked, carefully.

He'd already told Grisha before that he could show it to someone else, but Grisha had refused. He was asking now on the chance Grisha had changed his mind, but Grisha shook his head again.

"It's not about trust. I just don't know who could actually crack this."

"……Well."

"There are people in Intelligence trained for this. But, Harold……"

Grisha gave a wry smile.

"What do you think I learned from Albrecht?"

"……From my brother?"

"Your brother needed me alive, remember? He put a lot of care into making sure I could survive."

Grisha went quiet for a moment. He wasn't one to weigh his words before speaking, but there was a strange hesitation as he asked:

"Listen, Harold. You don't think I made Head of Intelligence on His Majesty's favor alone, do you?"

"……"

"Harold."

"Well, no—"

"Look me in the eye and say that."

"You're not wearing your glasses right now — you can't see anything."

"Harold!"

Grisha was thoroughly exasperated.

But in the end, he sighed and conceded.

"…I mean, that wasn't nothing."

"See."

"But do you think Albrecht would have been satisfied with just that?"

This time, Harold hesitated. The answer was plain.

"No, he wouldn't have."

"Obviously I can't reach Albrecht's level. Honestly, I thought I'd be lucky just to imitate him, and I can't even manage that."

"Most people wouldn't even think to try imitating him."

The very fact that he could think that way was proof Grisha was no ordinary man himself. Grisha laughed awkwardly at the incredulous look on Harold's face.

"So anyway — you're saying no one can crack the cipher better than you?"

Harold circled back to the original topic.

"It's not that there's no one……"

"So it comes down to trust."

"Pretty much."

Grisha leafed through the cipher, frustration showing in his fingertips.

"Does this really have anything to do with the current case?"

"Hm?"

"No, I mean — I'd been thinking of it as evidence tied to the prince."

Grisha tilted his head and went on.

"When it turned up at the capital manor, that seemed plausible. Really, it was pretty much the only possibility."

"But?"

"He left a cipher in the Bertholdt domain too? That, I don't know. Harold. You didn't see it coming either."

"No."

Harold confirmed it.

"If he was going to leave something in the domain, I'd think he'd have mailed it to me or handed it to you instead."

"And if it were really important to what's happening now, I don't think he'd have written it in a cipher no one can read."

"……Even if he did use a cipher, he'd have given you the key."

"Right. Because I'd need to know."

If that was true, it raised another problem.

Whatever else was going on, Albrecht wouldn't have made something useless. So what were these ciphers for?

Grisha frowned. You couldn't exactly beat the answers out of a dead man, and apparently deciding there was nothing to be done about it at the moment, Grisha lifted his hands from the notebook and gave a hollow laugh.

"Anyway, is the domain alright?"

Harold shrugged.

"It's fine. People were shaken, but there's nothing to be done about that."

Anyone would be shaken if their home was set on fire and a stabbed body turned up in it. It would have been more suspicious if someone hadn't been.

He wouldn't have minded if one of them had slipped up…… but the reactions to the news of the body had been genuine, without a hint of pretense. Fooling Harold's eye took more than being a decent actor.

"They'll be swamped with the cleanup for a while."

And logically, if a spy had already been planted among the old manor's servants, there'd have been no need to raise that kind of hell just to get inside.

An advantage of being a country lord, if you could call it that.

Harold looked at the two notebooks his brother had left behind.

What in the world had his brother been trying to do? Rather than unload on his friend, Harold pulled his eyes from what his brother had left and spoke evenly.

"When I get back to the capital, looks like I'll be imposing on your villa a while longer."

"It's not my villa. And I told you to use it as much as you like."

Grisha's answer had an edge of annoyance to it, but he wasn't really annoyed. Harold had figured Grisha would be under strain from dealing with the prince while stuck in the capital, but it didn't seem to have gotten too bad.

The confinement order keeping Carlisle inside Summerflower Palace was likely a big part of it. Even Carlisle, dim as he was, had probably had the sense to lie low after the city watch fire.

"Anything else come up?"

"Besides the investigation getting nowhere?"

"Hmm."

"It's fine. Thanks to you, Intelligence has full authority over the investigation now."

Grisha smiled bashfully. Not a smile that matched the words coming out of his mouth. That, no question, he'd learned from Albrecht. That the gentle, quiet kid Grisha had once been had turned into this was largely his brother's fault. Inwardly, Harold apologized to Claudia. There was no denying that a good share of the blame for Claudia's worry over her son fell on his brother and himself.

Given how things had turned out, the prince's head as a Founding Day gift…… no, that was pushing it. But a little window-smashing performance at Summerflower Palace ought to at least make Claudia happy, wouldn't it? She'd more than earned a gift on that scale.

"……What. What's with that face?"

"Hm? What?"

"You always get that look right before you hit something."

"No idea what you mean. Are you even seeing properly without your glasses? Since neither I nor your mother is around to nag, you've decided you don't need them at all, is that it?"

"Stop changing the subject."

"No idea what you're talking about."

---

Summerflower Palace.

"For once you've got something like actual work in front of you. Can't you at least try to look motivated?"

"……I'm sorry, brother."

"If you were really sorry, you'd do better, Gerald. Anyone can say sorry."

Carlisle spoke with a look of pained sympathy. His soft voice was as sweet as if he were coaxing a small child.

But his eyes were nothing of the sort. Not summer-warm, not flower-petal-soft. They were sharp and cold, as if ready to draw blood at any moment.

"I'm taking time out of my day to look after you. Please, if you feel any gratitude toward your brother, do it right. Alright?"

Carlisle gave his brother's cheek a light slap with his palm. Since there was no force behind it, only the sound came out loud. Gerald Adler flinched at the sound.

Carlisle clicked his tongue.

"Why are you so jumpy? Anyone watching would think I'd actually hit you."

"N-no, I……"

"Alright, Gerald. Let me go over it from the top one more time. This is your first time out at a…… big event like this, isn't it? Just imagine the embarrassment if you were to trip out there."

"I'm sorry……"

"So stop just saying it. Alright?"

Carlisle smiled genially. Gerald hunched his shoulders.

"Let's start with walking. I've told you a hundred times. Come on — shoulders back. Straighten up. Why are you slouching like that? Tighten your gut so your voice doesn't shake. You've got to read the invocation, remember. Have you memorized it? The scroll isn't there for you to read from. It's there for other people to see."

With each word from his brother, the Second Prince's head sank lower.

"Tsk."

At his brother's tongue click, Gerald's shoulders jerked hard.

"Do it right. Understood?"

"Y-yeah……"

"You can't even give me a proper answer?"

"I'm sorry……"

"That's what I keep telling you. That word doesn't mean anything — anyone can say it. You're not a child anymore, so how long do I—"

Knock, knock, knock.

Carlisle broke off. Where Carlisle glared at the door in irritation, Gerald raised his head, visibly relieved.

"Your Highness. The young lady of House Peres has arrived."

"Show her in."

Carlisle looked at his brother. The same brother who a moment ago couldn't memorize a single Founding Day invocation was now all ears at the news his fiancée had arrived.

"Your fiancée, huh."

Gerald hurried his eyes back down.

"Uh, um, mother said she'd help her get settled."

"You think I don't know that?"

"S-sorry."

"She's foreign, isn't she? I hear she doesn't have relatives in the capital either, so where's she been staying?"

"At — at the Winter Palace……"

"Your palace?"

Carlisle whistled.

"Before you're even married? Well, I suppose you're at the age for it."

"N-no, that's not it!"

Gerald flinched and raised his voice.

"We're not married yet, but we're engaged, so staying at the same palace is what etiquette calls for. Especially since she has to attend Founding Day……"

His raised voice shrank away little by little. Once Founding Day came up, he was watching Carlisle's expression and let his words trail off.

The sight sent a fresh surge of irritation through Carlisle.

But before he could vent that anger, another knock came.

There was no way she'd only just arrived and been brought straight up — they must have kept her nearby from the start. Carlisle sighed. In any case, this was his first meeting with his brother's fiancée — losing his temper here would look ridiculous. This was clearly William's doing, calculated for the fact that he'd be irritated.

"Come in."

Escorted by William, a woman in a bright pink dress came inside.

Perhaps because of the sky-blue ribbons on the dress, she was small enough to seem more girl than woman. Her face, tight with concentration, looked like a squirrel with food in its cheeks. Especially the way it lit up at the sight of Gerald.

Gerald Adler held out his hand to his fiancée. A small hand rested on top of his. For all his shyness, Gerald introduced his fiancée to his brother.

"Brother. This is my fiancée, Lady Maya of House Peres."