Chapter 27

The King's Woods, on the outskirts of the capital.

The royal house owned by Grisha Lambert.

In the sunlit first-floor drawing room, three people sat with grim faces entirely at odds with the bright surroundings.

"..."

Harold let out a sigh.

The two across from him flinched at the sound and glanced up to gauge his mood. But Harold, absorbed in thought, hadn't noticed a thing.

Right about now, Günter's funeral would be underway.

There was a letter in Harold's hand. Careful not to crumple it, he consciously eased his grip.

Please take care, young master.

The letter Günter had sent just before his death.

How long had it been since he'd last seen Günter? His brother's wedding, maybe?

Not many people knew Harold outside of him being a knight. Even fewer called him anything other than Lord Bertholdt. Günter had been one of them.

Günter Bleiss had worked for the Bertholdt family a long time. He'd been one of the few who could scold the young Harold when he'd been tearing around like a wild colt.

And now, to Harold, he was one of the people he could talk to about his late parents and his dead brother.

...Maybe I should have gone down after all.

The staff at the old manor must have been badly shaken too. If Mattheus had told them why Harold couldn't come down, that would only have unsettled them more.

Ramsey, the one who'd brought news of Günter's death, had actually fainted when he'd heard the boys had gone missing.

No. I need to be here.

But no matter how he turned it over, Harold couldn't not go down to the domain.

On the heels of his brother's death, the caretaker of the manor had been murdered. Some part of him knew he ought at least to show his face at the funeral. There'd be paperwork to handle over the succession, too.

But he couldn't possibly leave his young nephews behind. Taking them along wasn't an option either. He hadn't planned on bringing them for a while anyway, since they didn't want to go — and after reading Günter's letter, it was...

Absolutely out of the question.

The domain wasn't the point.

He couldn't tell who to trust. Even now, being apart from the boys had him wound so tight his whole body felt twisted up.

He still had to do what he had to do. Harold ground his teeth. At the sharp sound, the two across from him, already on edge, held their breath.

Shall we push the schedule back, Lord Bertholdt?

After they'd gone through Günter's parcel together, Mattheus had been worrying over Harold right up until he boarded the train.

No...

It would be a lie to say he hadn't been tempted. But Harold shook his head.

It's exactly in a situation like this that you have to go. Don't leave the Intelligence men's side, not for a moment.

Understood, Lord Bertholdt.

To everyone else at the manor, say you're down for the funeral. On my behalf. With me gone since my brother died, things in the domain have been unsettled, so put it as tidying that up as well...

Rambling as it all was, Mattheus nodded along with everything. Even though the lawyer probably knew this better than he did.

I'll take every precaution.

...I'm sorry, Mattheus.

No. What worries me more is you making yourself ill fretting over an old man.

Mattheus, too, was someone who'd known the young Harold.

I'll be off, then, young master.

The Intelligence men, made up as Mattheus's assistants, boarded the train after him.

Harold watched until the train had gone.

With no one at the old Bertholdt manor he could trust right now, all Harold could do was pray Mattheus came back safely.

"Ah — ahem."

Harold came out of his thoughts at the cough.

When their eyes met, Anne startled visibly.

"Uh — sorry. The air's a bit dry in here..."

"Is it?"

Harold tilted his head. Anne gave an awkward smile.

"Anyway, Senior. Are we really all right to just be here like this?"

"It's fine."

"I know you and the boys are going to live here... but is it really all right for me and Viscount Manfred to be here too?"

Anne looked around uneasily.

A small manor in the King's Woods. On the outside, it looked bright enough to belong in a picture book, but what this modest house symbolized in the kingdom wasn't so quaint.

"I told you, Grisha said we could use it however we like."

Harold had said it was fine several times, and even Anne herself had acknowledged this was the most secure place available at the moment — and yet she still couldn't quite adjust to it.

Harold turned his gaze. There was another face, one that had grown familiar by now.

Gauss Manfred looked as worn out as he had when they'd first met.

"Even so, actually taking him at his word — that takes nerves like yours, Senior."

"Grisha doesn't say things he doesn't mean."

"I'm sure..."

Anne kept getting the last word in, but the moment Harold, moving to the matter at hand, brought out the parcel, her eyes changed.

The reason he'd chosen this place — not Anne's house, not Lily Manor where Albrecht Bertholdt's body still lay — was security. It was important enough that they needed to be certain no one could approach.

At least by Harold's and Mattheus's judgment. What Günter had sent was that troubling.

It had been a mercy he hadn't rushed the boys down to the domain.

That the children hadn't wanted to go down to the domain took on a different meaning now. Small children sometimes picked up on things adults missed. Edgar and Edwin might have sensed it too, on some instinctive level.

That there were undesirable people mixed in at the old Bertholdt manor.

Most of them, of course, were ordinary people doing honest work. But hidden among them were others — unidentified, with motives Harold still couldn't guess at.

What had those people done to his brother? What had happened to Günter?

Suspecting people he'd known since he was born was painful. But Harold couldn't afford to gamble with his nephews.

"When Edwin said he knew a shepherd named Nicola, I asked Günter to look into it just in case."

Harold laid the contents of the parcel out on the table as he explained.

He'd mentioned this once already to Anne and Gauss when sending Günter down to the domain.

"It's a common enough name, but for it to come up around the boys — calling it a coincidence..."

"Would be a stretch."

Anne and Gauss nodded.

They both knew well what had happened after Günter reached the Bertholdt domain. Harold's brow furrowed.

"But Günter was killed by Dustin Glenn. This is what he sent me that morning."

He didn't know what Günter had been planning to do in Marberg. Mattheus had offered to look into it once he was in the domain, but rather than say it was too dangerous, Harold had only managed to tell him not to push himself. Right now he needed whatever thread he could get.

At any rate, the manor's caretaker had been murdered. The killer had been caught, but there was nothing suspicious about a lawyer looking through Günter's office. Even if someone like Dustin Glenn was watching, he hoped that would pass for cover.

I'll explain the details when I reach the capital, but...

Günter had never made it.

Even so, he'd left, as he'd written in the letter, a hint Mattheus would recognize immediately.

Anne and Gauss carefully looked over the documents Günter had sent. At a glance, they were as ordinary as could be. Contracts for the lease of pasture on Bertholdt land.

Albrecht, as Director of Intelligence, had rarely left the capital. But Harold's father, the previous Count Bertholdt, had also spent more time in the capital than in the domain.

That may not have been the cause exactly, but the Bertholdt domain wasn't a well-developed piece of land. Reclaiming the broad pastures wasn't out of the question, but neither Count had needed the money, so both had leased them out cheaply to whoever needed them.

"...This."

Gauss noticed the oddity in the papers right away.

Anne was a beat behind, but her eyes went round. Harold, who hadn't noticed anything strange until Mattheus had pointed it out to him, scratched at his head sheepishly.

That must have been why Günter had specifically written Mattheus's name in the letter. Without Mattheus, it would have taken Harold a long while to see it.

"The signature's changed."

Anne tapped the paper with her fingertip.

There were three contracts in total. Pasture leases were renewed every two years.

The name on the contracts was the same. Nicola Rowell.

The Nicola Rowell signature on the oldest of them was clumsy in the extreme, to put it kindly. As if someone who couldn't read or write had just barely managed to sketch out their own name.

But in the contract two years later, the signature had grown skilled. Not exactly graceful, but the name flowed out without hesitation. Two years wasn't a short time, but when would a shepherd who could barely write his own name have had the chance to get this fluent at it?

The most recent contract was dated only half a year ago. Nicola Rowell's, again.

But the signature had changed once more. Even to Harold, a layman, once he saw it the difference was obvious.

The first signature — closer to drawn than signed.

The second — rough but assured.

The third — a smooth, flowing line laid down with a sharp nib.

One name, but too different for the same person to have signed all three.

"...The Kingdom of Barun."

Gauss said it abruptly.

"What?"

"The Count's note and the report. He'd written down the Kingdom of Barun, but there wasn't a single connection to Barun in the report itself, was there?"

Harold nodded.

The note found in his brother's coat had listed three names and the name of a neighboring kingdom.

But in the report Gauss had found in his brother's office, the neighboring kingdom hadn't come up.

Dustin Glenn's file had made sense as a murder-case matter, but Harold had wondered why he'd bothered looking into a shepherd — until Nicola Rowell's signature turned up.

"But..."

Gauss went on calmly.

"Have you ever been down to the southern part of Barun?"

"The south? No. That's a protected area, isn't it?"

"Yes. Originally, it was Kunakshe territory."

At the mention of the nomadic people of the highlands, Harold's eyebrows lifted.

"In the last war, Barun took it, and once the war ended, they absorbed it as it stood. There was heavy resistance, but... that's not relevant here, so I'll skip past it. The annexation was only fifty years ago, so a lot of Kunakshe influence remains in southern Barun."

"...And?"

"The neighboring regions too, not just the annexed land. There'd been a lot of exchange with the Kunakshe originally."

Gauss pointed to Nicola Rowell's third signature.

"Here. This part."

"What about it?"

"The stroke turning like this — that's Kunakshe influence. The Kunakshe use the El Vaid script."

The culture of an obscure minority people.

Gauss wasn't bringing it up for no reason.

"Some letters in El Vaid look similar to ours. But they draw the stroke in the opposite direction. That's why this bit hooks the way it does."

"..."

Harold's and Anne's eyes went to the signature. It was certainly the sort of hand you'd think had a particular quirk to it.

"...And that's supposed to be a connection to the Kingdom of Barun?"

Wasn't that awfully thin?

Anne didn't say it, but Harold could tell she was thinking along the same lines.

Gauss, though, wasn't shaken.

"In Intelligence, we have to read the world from small clues like this. I'm certain this is the connection."