Chapter 30

Albrecht Bertholdt's funeral was held, at the family's wish, in a quiet atmosphere, attended only by family and close acquaintances.

That wasn't a lie.

The national cemetery was reserved for those with second-class or higher decorations for service to the state. It hadn't drawn the attention Harold had feared, but it also wasn't as quiet as he'd hoped.

More than a month had passed since his brother's death. That the papers hadn't run the story was partly thanks to Anne and Gauss, but it probably also meant Count Bertholdt's death was no longer news anyone wanted to gossip about.

Still — even if the public had lost interest, there were those who remembered. The royal guard sent by the King was proof of that. In dark navy dress uniforms, the guard saw Albrecht Bertholdt off with due dignity.

Beyond that, the attendance was small.

Mattheus had only reached the capital that morning. Stepping off the train, he'd hurried straight to the national cemetery to bid farewell to the man he'd served since boyhood.

It wasn't that Harold wasn't curious about what he'd turned up at the domain, but he could wait a little while longer. If there'd been anything Harold needed to know right away, Mattheus would have told him.

Two children stood beside Mattheus, dressed in neat black clothes that didn't suit their age. Edgar and Edwin gripped each other's hands tight and watched the earth being shoveled over their father's coffin.

The two children stood there without any expression. They didn't cry, as Harold had feared. Better to cry than to stare at their father's coffin with those blank eyes.

"Senior."

"...Anne."

"One way or another, it's getting settled. It didn't sit right with me either, leaving the Count like that."

Beyond that, the only other attendees were Anne Archibald and Gauss Manfred.

People claiming to have been friends of Albrecht's had reached out. But since Harold had no way of knowing whether they'd actually been close to his brother, he hadn't wanted to take the risk.

When he'd made it clear he wasn't interested, none of them had pressed further. That was enough.

The magic institute Albrecht had backed had also indicated they wanted to attend. Harold had told the two who'd come up to the capital that he had no immediate plans to cut off the funding and had sent them back, saying they'd discuss it again after his brother's funeral.

Had they been planning to bring up the funding at the funeral itself?

He didn't want to think they were quite that graceless.

Either way, the institute was dead last on Harold's list right now. It could wait.

"I don't know if you can call this settled."

"Still... are the boys all right?"

"I don't know."

Harold looked at his nephews.

However startlingly grown-up they sometimes seemed, they were still children. The stuffed bear his father had given him, clutched tight in Edgar's arms, made the small child look smaller still.

"I almost wish they'd cry."

Harold said it without thinking.

Edwin was, in fact, the one comforting Mattheus, who couldn't even manage to wipe his eyes with his handkerchief.

Anne, following Harold's gaze, gave a rueful smile. Gauss, who'd been speaking with one of the Intelligence men escorting Mattheus, saw the two of them talking and came over.

His face, weary at the best of times, was darker than usual.

The two of them were entangled in the investigation of Albrecht's death, but the line between their roles was blurred. Anne had known Albrecht since childhood, and Gauss had worked at his side for years as his aide.

Anne glanced sidelong at Gauss and spoke.

"The children knew the Count had died. The funeral was just delayed. They may have made their peace with it in their own way."

"They're eight. You know that."

"They're Albrecht Bertholdt's children. If they were ordinary, that would be the strange part."

Harold had thought something similar himself.

But there was a difference between thinking it and saying it out loud. Especially as their family and sole guardian, Harold couldn't laugh Anne's words off.

"Children are still children."

"Well, obviously."

Anne wasn't cowed by Harold's tone.

"But plenty of people won't see it that way. We can't hold them off forever. Talk about the county has already started."

Harold's face turned troubled.

That was part of why, despite the pressure from his brother, he'd avoided the capital. There were far too many people ready to read strange meaning into you just for standing there doing nothing.

Anne gave Harold's arm a light nudge.

"There are too many people in the capital who don't know you, Senior. That's the price of staying away all this time. Learn to live with it."

"...What are they saying?"

"You can guess. That you're going to be the next Count Bertholdt, so on and so on."

Anne suddenly turned her head sharply toward Gauss.

"You thought so too, didn't you, Viscount Manfred?"

"What? Me? Well, the Count's sons are young... it does make people nervous to leave the county empty for over ten years."

"..."

"...I only say this because of where we are, but even His Majesty seemed reluctant about leaving the Bertholdt county vacant."

"His Majesty?"

Unlike Anne, who was startled, Harold reacted flatly.

Whatever the King thought, this was a matter of succession within the family. Harold had no intention of becoming the count, no matter what.

"The matter from before — that stays between us?"

He couldn't raise the possibility that the Kingdom of Barun was tied to his brother's death anywhere near the royal guard.

Gauss understood at once — Harold was asking whether they didn't need to inform the King on a matter touching on foreign affairs.

"Not until we have solid evidence."

Harold nodded.

Moving too soon and letting them slip away would be a far worse setback. Hunting was, at its heart, a matter of waiting.

"...There may be pressure on you, Lord Bertholdt."

Gauss said it carefully.

"I'm not saying this with any other intent. And if our suspicions become certainty, the county being vacant could... make an immediate response difficult."

"It doesn't matter."

Harold brushed off Gauss's concern.

"The county will go to one of my nephews. I'm only a proxy until those two come of age."

"Understood."

At the firmness in Harold's voice, Gauss didn't press further.

Watching for a moment, Anne, perhaps trying to ease the sharp mood, made an effort at a brighter tone.

"Ah, didn't Count Bertholdt say he didn't care which of them ended up as heir? What if they both want it?"

"Ordinarily, even with twins, the one born first has priority..."

Harold wasn't thrilled that the changed subject was still the county.

Probably Anne and Gauss had both been quietly curious. The Bertholdt family was old, and the Bertholdt title carried its own weight.

"That's a long way off. It's possible neither of them will want it."

"Ah, if they take after Cecilia, that's certainly possible. But... Viscount Manfred. Didn't you say Count Bertholdt once mentioned that one of them would suit it better?"

"Not that one was more capable — he meant temperamentally."

"Right. Was it Edgar? Edgar is calmer than Edwin, isn't he?"

Gauss shook his head.

"No. It was Edwin."

"Really?"

Anne's eyes widened in surprise.

"A father might see something the rest of us don't. Edwin is more grown-up than his peers, too. So he was thinking of Edwin as the heir..."

"No. Because he didn't know which of the twins had been born first, he thought whichever of them genuinely wanted the title should have it."

Harold hadn't particularly wanted to join the conversation, but he hadn't disliked it enough to shut it down either. Now he tilted his head.

Whatever his brother had said about the boys, he'd have meant it. Albrecht wasn't the sort who'd placed much meaning in the title. He'd become the count because he happened to be the elder son; if Harold had ever said he wanted the title, Albrecht would have handed it over without a word of complaint.

But that wasn't the part that had caught Harold.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Pardon?"

"What? What part, Senior?"

"That he didn't know which of the twins was born first."

"Well..."

Gauss and Anne glanced at each other, then looked back at Harold.

Anne tried to remember, then passed on what Albrecht had told her.

"When they were newborns, the nurse dropped the identification tags. By the time anyone noticed, they couldn't tell which of them had been born first..."

"My brother said that?"

Harold let out a short, incredulous laugh.

"There's no way. When he first introduced me to the boys, he told me clearly."

Anne blinked.

"My sister-in-law was the one who got them confused. Albrecht never once failed to tell them apart."

"But..."

Harold looked at his nephew, standing close by Mattheus.

He remembered it clearly. The day his brother and sister-in-law had come over each holding one of the babies, showing them to him.

The small hand gripping tight to Harold's finger. The little one hauling himself up by Harold's leg.

His brother had said it plainly.

This one's Edwin. The one Cecilia's holding is Edgar.

...They look identical.

They're twins. Of course they do. Edgar was born first. Only ten minutes, but still.

If his brother hadn't said something, there had to be a reason.

Anne and Gauss looked thrown by Harold's response, but Harold didn't say any more.

Instead, his attention shifted to something else.

Not because he'd grown uncomfortable with the conversation. The air around them had shifted, faintly. Among the royal guard — whose only job was to stand there and look presentable — a trace of something like unease was beginning to spread.

"..."

The funeral itself was being run largely by the royal guard, not by Harold. It was a courtesy owed to a Director of Intelligence, but given how much his brother had detested the guard, it was almost funny.

The guard themselves probably weren't thrilled about having to lavish this kind of ceremony on Albrecht Bertholdt either. Harold noticed the current of resentment quietly spreading through their ranks.

But procedure was procedure. Thinking of how much it must have turned the First Prince's stomach to have to hand over his royal guard for this, his brother would have loved every minute. Albrecht Bertholdt had been that kind of man.

But the guard's unease wasn't just about their feelings toward Albrecht. There were no gasps of surprise, no breaks in formation. But the twitching hands, the uneven breathing, the eyes darting about — that was enough to catch Harold's attention.

Harold spotted the cause soon enough.

Someone was walking their way.

In the spring sunlight, the man's hair was a pale gold that seemed almost a crown around his head. Beneath the hand shielding his eyes, his face was scrunched tight.

An aide who'd hurried after him tried to say something, but the man waved him off like an annoying insect. In the end the aide gave up, and the man came toward Harold anyway, aide trailing behind him, face still knotted in a scowl.

Harold recognized him. It had been a long time, but seeing him felt as though they'd parted only yesterday.

"Ah, Harold."

Recognizing Harold a beat later, the man gave a small nod and held out his hand. Harold took it in a firm grip.

"After all this time, and you haven't changed a bit."

The man shook his head and let out a quiet laugh.

But the laugh didn't last. Frowning, the man fixed his gaze on Albrecht Bertholdt's headstone.

"Grisha."

Marquis Roys — Grisha Lambert, heir to the Duke of Lambert — looked back at Harold with eyes gone deep and heavy.

"Made it in time, thankfully."