Chapter 129

Third District city watch headquarters, capital.

"Anne. Got a minute?"

"No."

"Sorry. That wasn't actually a question."

Despite the sharp look Anne shot him, another stack of documents landed on her desk. Anne let her head thump down onto it.

The papers pushed her hair up in a tangled crown, but she was past caring. This was how she ended up every time the paperwork got away from her. It wasn't as though she made a habit of letting things stack up. If it happened every time, the load itself was the problem.

"What's this one from now?"

"The employee investigation report on Today's Summer Square."

"Damn it…… That's mine to go through."

Anne swore under her breath as she went through the documents her colleague had passed over.

A shame, really. The higher you climbed, the more time you spent behind a desk instead of in the field. It wasn't fair. But ignoring reality only meant leaving work later.

God, right about now that jerk Harold was probably basking in the warm sun and the gorgeous sea in Reichnek territory. If it weren't for everything else going on, she might've been on her hands and knees begging to be taken along. She didn't particularly want to get tangled up with Marquis Roys, but the fantasy of dazzling waves and sweet wine was enough to make the discomfort seem worth it.

Of course, she knew Harold hadn't really gone off to soak up a vacation. He had young nephews to look after. And there was a much grimmer reason he'd gone down to Reichnek territory in the first place. The papers piled in front of Anne right now were all cases tied to it.

From Dustin Glenn's arrest to the city watch hospital fire.

Or rather, if you traced it back to the start, it began with Albrecht Bertholdt's death.

Not one of the cases that had come piling up over the past six months had been properly solved. So of course the work wasn't tapering off.

"Inspector Archibald."

"……"

"Inspector Archibald?"

Only after the colleague beside her tapped her shoulder did Anne, still glaring blankly at the papers, look up.

"Inspector Archibald."

"Y-yes! Superintendent Bauman! What is it?"

She wasn't the only one buried in work. Her superior — several rungs up the chain — never looked particularly healthy on the best of days, and today she seemed even more haggard than usual.

Anne barely managed to keep her fogging thoughts in check.

"Sorry to bother you when you're busy, but do you have a moment?"

"Yes!"

Anne shot to her feet and fell in behind her superior. Her face stayed composed as she walked, but her head was a wreck.

Had there been something wrong with a recent report? She thought she'd reviewed it properly. Had she missed something? Had someone overheard her chatting with colleagues? She hadn't said anything odd, had she…… had she?

Feeling a tightness at her throat, Anne discreetly did up the top button of her shirt.

Back in her office, her superior — instead of leaving Anne standing as usual — gestured to the guest sofa. As Anne hesitantly took a seat, she watched her superior with mounting tension.

Superintendent Bauman sighed. "I'll correct it right away" almost jumped out of her on reflex; Anne barely swallowed it back. She didn't know yet what this was about. The sigh notwithstanding, the atmosphere itself wasn't hostile.

"Busy these days?"

…So there had been a mistake in the report after all?

"No, Superintendent."

"I can't remember the last time outside circumstances threw things this far off course."

"That……"

"You've done nothing wrong. There's no need to be so tense."

She'd never heard her superior offer anything so gentle. Her eyes went round.

An ominous feeling settled in. How many people could actually unclench just because their superior said to? She knew Bauman wasn't the sort to say "you did nothing wrong" and then turn around and rebuke her — but she couldn't help dreading what was coming next.

"I'd rather not add to your load, but this came down directly from the royal palace."

Just as she'd feared.

She had no wish to get tangled up with the royal family. But she wasn't stupid enough to miss that this wasn't an order she could turn down.

"What do you need me to do?"

"You know the Second Prince is delivering the invocation on this year's Founding Day?"

"Yes."

"The First Prince isn't married, but the Second Prince has a fiancée."

Only then did Anne see where the conversation was heading.

Once she could guess what the royal family's "request" was, some of her tension eased. That didn't make her happy about it.

"Have you ever met her?"

"No."

"Anything you know about her?"

"I've heard she's been abroad."

Thinking back to the uproar when the Second Prince's engagement had been announced, her brow furrowed. The King had announced it unilaterally, without consulting anyone.

The Second Prince getting engaged before the First was headache enough on its own. On top of that, the house he'd been engaged into was a minor one, practically foreign at that.

"There aren't any female knights in the capital right now up to the job of protecting Lady Peres."

"Isn't there the household guard? I can see why the royal guard is out — they haven't been handling royal protection lately, but……"

"When His Majesty confined the First Prince, he came down hard on the household guard as well."

The First Prince's confinement was public knowledge, but Anne hadn't known the household guard had been dragged into it too.

Noticing Anne's surprise, Superintendent Bauman elaborated a bit.

"Security at Summerflower Palace is the household guard's responsibility. Dereliction of duty was the pretext."

"I…… yes. Understood. I see why the household guard isn't an option."

Royal protection wasn't just a job. It was a kind of power and privilege — a mark that the king trusted you that much.

"Right. It also means His Majesty doesn't intend to let the First Prince off easily."

"Should have done it sooner" rose to the tip of her tongue. The trail of incidents the First Prince had left behind flashed before her eyes.

"So Her Majesty the Queen has requested you personally. Have you ever met her?"

"……No. But she may have heard of me through Sir Bertholdt. Ah — I did pay my respects at a medal ceremony once, years ago."

Anne indicated the medal she'd received seven years earlier. It had been awarded for apprehending a serial killer. Not a particularly high-ranking medal, but given the notoriety of the killer who'd been rattling the capital at the time, the King and Queen had presented it themselves.

"For a talent of your standing, Her Majesty would remember."

"Thank you."

"In any case, that's why you'll be handling Lady Peres's protection. Her Majesty intends to assign a few young ladies of similar age as companions, but……"

"……"

Anne gave a vague smile.

Superintendent Bauman saw the smile and nodded.

"You know better than I do what will happen there. I can't imagine what kind of welcome the capital's stuck-up noble daughters will give Lady Peres."

"At least with me there, they won't dare step out of line."

That was probably part of why the Queen had asked for Anne.

Like her husband, Queen Gloria appeared only at state occasions she genuinely couldn't skip, and lived in seclusion the rest of the time. Plenty of rumors surrounded that too, but she apparently retained — just barely — enough political sense to know she shouldn't personally step into the matter of her son's fiancée.

"There have been plenty of headaches lately, but the city watch has to obey royal orders."

Superintendent Bauman spoke flatly.

"Understood."

"I trust I don't have to spell out the current situation. Regardless of your title of Count, don't forget that you are city watch."

The content sounded sharp, but her tone wasn't. None of the stiff, forceful command from before. Even knowing that wasn't Bauman's way, Anne began to wonder whether her superior was actually treading around her.

This was, after all, a prince's fiancée's protection detail. Depending on how things played out, the woman could be the next queen — or, further down the line, the mother of the king after. That was assuming First Prince Carlisle took the throne and failed to produce an heir.

But one look at her superior's eyes made clear how absurd that line of thought was. For all the softened voice, the look was another story. Raw feeling directed at someone who wasn't in the room. Eyes that, given the chance, would tear a throat out bare-handed.

The mood inside the city watch, on edge ever since the gambling-den arrests, might have finally hit its breaking point after the hospital fire.

"Your current caseload — "

"It'll keep for now. There isn't much I can push forward on it at the moment anyway."

Anne swallowed before she spoke — for all the good it did, her mouth was bone dry.

Superintendent Bauman's eyes gleamed dangerously again.

With a subtle satisfaction underneath.

"Good. Let me know if you need more people."

"Yes. Thank you."

"That's all. The formal order will come down from the palace before long — clear your desk by then."

Anne rose from the sofa and saluted. Just before she left the office, the superintendent added, out of nowhere:

"I've told you I have high hopes for you, haven't I?"

"……Yes. I've been working to live up to them."

"I wish everyone were as quick on the uptake as you."

A faint amusement colored the superintendent's voice.

"Your promotion was pushed back recently through no fault of your own. Shame, that. Once Founding Day is over, you'll be transferring under me."

Only in the corridor did Anne let herself breathe.

Not the worst. Not a job she was thrilled about, but better than whatever else it could have been. …Was it, though? Guarding a prince's fiancée?

When she'd joined the city watch, this wasn't the kind of duty she'd ever imagined.

"Inspector Archibald!"

Trying to catch up on the urgent items before the royal summons arrived, Anne was cornered in the corridor by colleagues.

"Sorry to bother you. But there's something we really need to ask you."

"Me?"

"Could we step somewhere else for a minute?"

"……Fine."

Anne eyed her colleagues warily. They weren't people she was on bad terms with or particularly distant from, but they weren't close friends either.

Coworkers, pure and simple. But the ones ringed around Anne right now had one thing in common.

"Sorry to catch you at your busiest. But—"

"…If not now, we're not going to get another chance."

"You're headed to the palace soon, aren't you?"

They were noble-born. The second son of a Count. The eldest daughter of a Viscount. A man who had already inherited a Viscountcy……

"That's already making the rounds?"

Anne herself had only just learned she'd been picked for the detail. The colleagues exchanged glances, then nodded.

"Ever since the First Prince's confinement, everyone's been on edge. You'll need to be careful too, Inspector. The palace has eyes everywhere."

"What a nuisance."

"Well — you're a Count in your own right. Given how close you are with Sir Bertholdt, if you… play it a little as you please, no one will find it strange."

"Not something I want. So — is this what you cornered me for? Curious what the fiancée is like?"

Anne herself had no family to answer to, but the others didn't have that luxury. They were more attuned to political shifts than anyone.

Her colleagues laughed awkwardly.

"We would like to know what she's like, of course, but……"

But the prince's fiancée wasn't what her colleagues were really after. The second son of Count Merkel glanced around and asked, cautious. The others wore the same tense expression.

"……Could you tell us what sort of person Marquis Roys is?"

Something was shifting inside the city watch too.

Which way that shift would roll, Anne couldn't tell.