Chapter 28

"..."

"..."

Despite Harold's sharp look, Gauss didn't glance away.

Harold gave a small shrug. The tension that had been hanging over the drawing room dissolved.

"You started looking into it in the first place because Edwin mentioned a shepherd named Nicola, didn't you?"

Harold leaned back against the sofa as he spoke to Gauss.

"Let's see where this goes."

His brother must have found the shepherd suspicious too, or he wouldn't have bothered checking up on someone so ordinary.

Like Gauss, his brother had had a way of picking up small pieces and reasoning back to the whole shape. That might just be a basic Intelligence trait. It wasn't the same as being a knight, where the job came down to cutting down what was in front of you.

It would be easier if he could just smash the suspicious lot flat and be done with it.

But right now, they still had to find out who those suspicious people were. At least he didn't feel the same helplessness he had when the news of his brother's death had reached him. He couldn't say whether it was the right way, but they did seem to be following the trail Albrecht Bertholdt had left behind.

"We're checking the connection to Dustin Glenn. Once he comes to, things should move faster."

Dustin Glenn still hadn't come around.

Harold snorted. He was aware he'd been rougher than necessary, but he didn't regret it.

"Not that I'm sure he'll talk willingly."

"He's got a girlfriend, right? What was her name?"

"Siri."

Anne thought for a moment, then added,

"I keep thinking Adrien Renard was the one pulling Dustin Glenn's strings. But how Adrien Renard connects to the Kingdom of Barun — that I still can't see."

"That's our end of things. We're on it. I know the lack of progress must be frustrating, Lord Bertholdt."

It was frustrating, but Harold wasn't going to hold it against Intelligence. If any of this were the kind of thing that could be resolved in a moment, his brother wouldn't be dead.

"The Viscount isn't the only one Adrien Renard is giving a headache. Honestly, I still don't know what my brother was thinking when he hired him."

Because his missing sister-in-law had recommended him?

Even that raised the question of why she'd wanted a man like that hired in the first place.

His sister-in-law's disappearance had haunted his brother. But even so, Albrecht Bertholdt wasn't the sort to let emotion push him into hiring some suspicious man into a house with children in it.

Gauss agreed.

"The Count wouldn't have hired just anyone. However hard we dig, there's nothing obviously wrong."

The usually impassive face twisted, just faintly.

"He's the top priority for the city watch and for Intelligence both. There's no way an ordinary butler could shake off a pursuit like this for this long."

"So it really is more of an international matter?"

The war with Barun had ended fifty years ago, but old grudges didn't die easily.

The border between the two kingdoms had only been opened for exchange twenty years ago. Passage without a permit had taken another ten.

Back in his mercenary days, Harold had crossed swords with mercenaries from Barun a few times. The current young king over there was said to be hawkish; he might well want to pick up where his father had left off.

"It's a strong possibility."

Neither Harold nor Anne looked surprised.

They'd just kept from saying it out loud — everyone had been sitting on the same guess.

His brother wouldn't have written down the name of a neighboring kingdom for no reason. It was only that they hadn't been able to see how the other names connected to it, so they'd set it aside.

And now Gauss was saying the signatures on these contracts were that connection.

Gauss shuffled through the pasture contracts. Mattheus hadn't found anything odd apart from signatures that looked as though different people had written each one.

Gauss, though, ran his eye over the contracts with narrowed eyes.

Because the shepherds who signed on often couldn't read, the Bertholdt domain's pasture leases used the simplest sentences possible in place of complicated terms. The location and size of the leased pasture was even drawn out as a map.

Whoever had actually signed, all three contracts were with the same shepherd — one Nicola Rowell.

"Among the reports the Count left... do you remember Gordon Devlin?"

Compared to the obviously suspicious Dustin Glenn, or Nicola Rowell with his direct tie to the Bertholdt domain, the report bearing Gordon Devlin's name had felt rather out of place.

Gordon Devlin wasn't in the capital. He didn't live in the Bertholdt domain either.

He was a shop hand at a small grocer in the western town of Katelburg.

"When we only had the name, we couldn't even start looking. But after we found the report, I put someone on him."

"You said he was just a shop hand, didn't you?"

"Bewilderingly so."

Gauss put his finger on the map drawn on one of the contracts.

"It isn't a directly neighboring town. Because there's a river between them marking a clear boundary, it's easy to miss."

"Hm...?"

Anne blinked. This time it was Harold who furrowed his brow.

It had been a long while since he'd been down to the domain, and even longer since he'd gone south. But Harold was a knight. Back at the academy, he'd spent enough hours staring at maps in class to feel sick of it.

More than half of the Bertholdt domain was farmland and pasture. Beyond the broad plains ran the Benheim River, called the boundary between the south and the west.

Beyond the Benheim...

"Cross the river and head up west, and you're closer than you'd think to —"

"Marberg."

"Katelburg... what?"

Hearing an entirely different town come out of Harold's mouth, Gauss let a rare flicker of surprise show.

Harold dragged a dry hand down his face and held out Günter's letter.

"Günter said he was stopping at Marberg first."

"Marberg?"

As Gauss had said, Katelburg was farther west than Marberg.

But if Harold's memory was right, the two towns weren't far apart. Half a day by carriage.

"..."

Gauss read Günter's letter quickly and passed it on to Anne. The city watch's jurisdiction was the capital, but with all of them working together, keeping it from Anne alone would have been absurd.

Gauss spoke quietly.

"If something like this comes up, I'd appreciate being told."

Harold raked a hand through his hair.

He wasn't so out of it that he'd missed the irritation in Gauss's voice.

And Gauss was right. This was clearly his own mistake.

"I'm sorry. The past few days have been chaotic. My head hasn't been running properly."

Gauss knew perfectly well what Harold had been through the past month.

The letter in his hand was, at its core, a last testament. From someone who hadn't dreamed for a moment he was about to be killed.

He didn't know what Günter had wanted to check in Marberg. With any luck, Mattheus would turn up something in Günter's room.

But even if not, everything was faintly connected.

"They're tied together somehow — that much I can see. Once we know what's being hidden, finding it should be simple."

"Isn't this... isn't this getting a bit big? Is this really something the city watch should be hearing about?"

Anne asked uneasily.

"What am I supposed to do about it. Count Archibald isn't going to go around gossiping."

"How would I even tell anyone this?"

Anne gave him a helpless look.

Harold carefully tucked away the letter Anne had returned to him.

This was the second time Harold had received a letter from a dead man. The first had been the letter from his brother, held at the bank.

The rest, you don't need to do.

The words in that letter were starting, little by little, to make sense.

---

"Still, that's some progress at least."

"Feels like it's only gotten more complicated."

"We'll have to keep at it... but the city watch can't work that side, so it'll fall on you, Viscount."

"It's Intelligence's job."

There was only so much more the three of them could say going in circles.

There were still plenty of mysteries.

If it was going to come to this, couldn't he have just left the clues in a form anyone could read?

That thought kept circling in Harold's mind too.

"Oh — Senior. The funeral. It's coming up now."

Anne said it as she helped him tidy up the pasture contracts.

"The boys?"

"They said they want to go."

"Will they be all right?"

"They said they at least want to say goodbye. I couldn't very well tell them no."

His brother's funeral really wasn't far off.

"National cemetery, wasn't it?"

"He was Director of Intelligence, after all. A decoration ceremony will be held alongside it."

Gauss said it looking noticeably more tired than when he'd arrived.

"The ceremony had been scheduled for the spring... His Majesty was grave about it, too."

"...You'll be there, Viscount?"

"If it's all right with you, Lord Bertholdt."

"Why would I stop you?"

Harold was just as tired.

But between his fingers as he ran a hand down his face, his eyes glinted sharp.

He'd wrestled with it up until the last moment. Truth was, he was still wrestling with it.

But the moment Gauss had mentioned the Kunakshe of the highlands, he'd realized he had no choice.

This too was one of the small connections his brother had never spelled out. Even without hiding it, no one would have thought it strange.

But there had to be a reason his brother had tucked it somewhere no one else could see.

"There's something."

Harold shut his eyes for a moment, then opened them.

"I haven't told the two of you about one thing."

Not something he'd overlooked, like Günter's letter — something he'd deliberately kept from them.

Gauss's and Anne's expressions changed. Both of them looked at Harold, stiff and tense.

"There was something in the safe."

"...You said there wasn't."

"I'd meant not to say anything."

Harold said it flatly.

There was a firmness in his voice that made clear that whatever complaints Gauss or Anne might raise, he wasn't going to call the choice a mistake.

Perhaps for that reason, neither of them said anything more.

Harold retrieved a bag from behind the sofa. He'd brought it just in case; if it hadn't felt right, he'd have taken it away again without a word.

Harold pulled a stack of documents out of the bag.

"This is..."

The moment Anne saw the top page, she understood why he'd hesitated.

"It's too personal a thing. I didn't want to talk about it."

At the top was a single newspaper page, yellowed at the edges.

A woman with her long blonde hair tied up high stood among a group of people. Nothing like what you'd picture as a noblewoman. She wore practical clothing, and she was standing on a rugged expanse of open country. Others in similar clothing stood talking with her.

Cecilia Barbosa.

A cultural anthropologist of the Kingdom of Alharn, and the wife of Count Albrecht Bertholdt.

"This is what my brother was looking into."

Cecilia Barbosa had gone missing four years ago.

"It never went to the press..."

His brother had made sure of that on his own.

Harold spread the stack of papers out. There was the unfinished paper his sister-in-law had last been working on.

"When my sister-in-law went missing, she was traveling with fellow scholars she knew, on the way out to study the culture of the nomadic people of the highlands."

Anne raised a trembling hand to her mouth.

An only child, Anne had thought of Cecilia Barbosa as an older sister.

That familiar, achingly missed handwriting was spelling out the word that had come up over and over that day.

Kunakshe.