Chapter 38

Third District of the capital.

City watch headquarters.

Captain Anne Archibald crossed the corridor and stopped in front of the heavy door. She straightened a collar that hadn't gone crooked in the first place and knocked.

Knock. Knock.

"Captain Archibald."

"Come in."

The reply came back at once, as if she'd been expected. Anne took a breath and opened the door.

The room wasn't large. But for all the bookshelves and documents packed along every wall, the floor was spotless — not a speck of dust — and the neatly ordered desk gave the room a strange weight.

It might have had more to do with the person seated across from the door. A lean woman in the same uniform as Anne. Her hair was pulled back so tightly there wasn't a strand out of place; her spectacle chain lay across her shoulders. The medals pinned to her chest were too many to count at a glance.

Anne clicked her heels together and saluted.

"Superintendent Bauman. I was told you wanted to see me."

Superintendent Bau
man nodded.

"I hear you're the one running the Bertholdt case."

"Yes. That's correct."

"I've read all your reports. One of the suspects is still on the run, I understand?"

"Yes. That's correct."

"Think you'll catch him soon?"

"We've narrowed down the possible hideouts considerably."

Superintendent Bauman looked at Anne with cold eyes.

"Captain Archibald. I have high expectations of you."

"Thank you."

"Lord Bertholdt used rather... heavy-handed methods, but since he isn't with the watch, we could let it go. Be more careful going forward."

"I understand, Superintendent."

"There are many eyes on this one. Don't slip up."

When she'd been summoned by the superintendent, Anne had half-wondered whether her jurisdiction over the case was about to be pulled, but thankfully that didn't seem to be the mood.

Anne nodded and answered dutifully.

"If you need any assistance, come to me anytime."

The reply that came back wasn't what she'd expected.

Perhaps sensing Anne's brief hesitation, the superintendent sighed — the first time in the meeting.

"I meant it about the many eyes. The situation is more complicated than it looks. This isn't going to end with a carriage accident or child abuse charges."

"Ah... yes."

"You were a year behind Lord Bertholdt at the academy, weren't you?"

Strictly speaking, the watch had plenty of people who could be called Harold Bertholdt's juniors.

There weren't many career paths open to academy graduates.

But the kind of junior Superintendent Bauman meant wasn't the sort on paper.

"And you were the one who protected the young Bertholdt boys."

"We're neighbors, ma'am. There's been a friendship since we were children."

"Which means it wouldn't be strange for you to be in personal contact with Lord Bertholdt."

"I... I'm sorry. I don't quite follow, ma'am."

"Lord Bertholdt is fine. Marquis Roys isn't. Are you close with Marquis Roys?"

Marquis Roys. Grisha Lambert.

For the eldest son of a duke to hold a separate title of his own wasn't unusual. It was a form of respectability before he inherited the dukedom.

"No, ma'am. I've met him a few times through Lord Bertholdt, but I have no personal acquaintance with him."

The circumstances around Grisha Lambert, though, were another matter. The title of Marquis Roys was the one the King had held while he was still a prince.

"The city watch has to remain neutral. Things aren't the way they are for the royal guard or the household guard. Captain Archibald, do you understand?"

Anne understood exactly what the superintendent was warning her about.

"I have no interest in being swept out the moment the next king takes the throne."

"..."

Anne kept her posture and didn't react.

The superintendent nodded, satisfied.

"When this case is closed, you'll be promoted."

"Thank you, ma'am!"

"So catch the man. Understood, Captain?"

Without waiting for Anne's reply, the superintendent told her she could go.

It was only after Anne had stepped out into the corridor and closed the office door that she let the tension out. In that short span, she'd been strung tight enough that her neck ached.

It hadn't been as bad as she'd feared. In some ways, it had been what she'd expected.

And it hadn't strayed far from what Anne was already doing. The watch caught criminals — didn't it?

"..."

Anne headed downstairs. She'd rather not have reason to come back up any time soon.

"Meeting go all right?"

"What was it about?"

"You weren't in trouble, were you?"

Her colleagues and subordinates edged closer, watching Anne's face but too curious to hold back.

It was a politically sensitive time. Anyone with a decent read on the room would have picked up on it by now. Every time in the watch's history that it had failed to stay neutral, people had died.

Not ordinary citizens. Watch officers themselves.

When it wasn't promotion season and a colleague with no incidents on her record got called upstairs, of course everyone was going to be edgy.

Anne waved a hand.

"It's fine. It was about the case I'm running."

"Ah, the kidnapping?"

"Some nerve. Snatching a nephew right under Lord Bertholdt's nose."

"Amazing the guy's still alive."

Anne gave a wry smile.

Among those gathered in the break room was a watch officer who'd run into the Bertholdt estate on her heels that day.

"I was there too, that day. I'd only ever heard the rumors about Lord Bertholdt before..."

"How was it, seeing him in person?"

"Oh, don't get me started. Captain Archibald said he was even holding back, and I still can't believe it."

"Well, if he hadn't held back, the guy'd be dead."

Laughter rolled around the room at the man's comment.

Ranks and titles mingled without any awkwardness.

This was what Anne had chosen the watch for. The watch wasn't a perfect place, but it had its own real virtues.

That was why she understood the superintendent's warning, too. So long as the royal guard and household guard stood as a wall above them, and so long as the watch stayed out of political trouble, it held together from within.

Twenty-year-old Anne Archibald wouldn't have understood, but thirty-three-year-old Anne Archibald did.

"Captain. How much of what people say about Lord Bertholdt is true?"

"What have you heard, Lieutenant?"

"Well, a bit of everything, honestly... to tell the truth, I'd assumed half of it was made up."

One of the lieutenants handed Anne a cup of warm tea.

"And now?"

"After seeing him work at the estate... well. It struck me that maybe more of it was true than I'd thought."

Compared to what she drank at home, the tea from the break room stock was as cheap as it got, but Anne didn't hesitate. It was steeped too strong for her taste, but the warmth was the same.

Someone next to them, catching the exchange, slipped in.

"That! I was curious about that one too."

"Which one?"

"The story about the professor at the academy — the sparring match—"

One by one, others joined in.

Once the conversation reached that point, it ran on without needing Anne's input. Which suited her fine. With everything that had happened, the watch's interest in the Bertholdt family was every bit as sharp as the general public's.

If that interest could be turned away from the Bertholdt family and onto Harold Bertholdt personally, so much the better.

"I'm not sure you can even call it sparring."

"...I heard the professor lost. Is that true?"

"Wouldn't calling it a loss be a bit disrespectful to Lord Bertholdt?"

However this whole business turned out, the wild rumors about Harold were going to serve as a screen for a while.

"'Got the daylights beaten out of him' is closer."

"Honestly, it wasn't even sparring."

"And it wasn't in the training hall either — it was on the open field where anyone could see it."

Anne settled back in her chair, sipping her tea, and listened.

"Right after that I heard the professor quit the academy and went back to his hometown."

"He calls it retirement, but he was hospitalized after getting thrashed by a student he'd been looking down on. If he'd kept teaching after that, that'd have been something in its own right."

And the more fearsome Harold Bertholdt's reputation grew, the better.

Fewer people would risk making light of Harold and going after the children. Viscount Manfred had already mentioned he was having a headache holding off the papers.

"Apparently he's still like that at the northern base. My cousin's stationed there, and he said Lord Bertholdt walked into a snowbound mountain with nothing but the clothes on his back and came out a week later carrying a deserter over his shoulder — the man was half frozen to death."

"The northern mountains are always snowbound, though."

"Winter mountains. In the north."

"Lord Bertholdt isn't human, is he."

She could only hope no one out there was planning to poke at her senior — who was already on edge as it was.

"Oh — that. There's that one too."

"What?"

"That thing with the knight statue. Is the mark still there?"

"The one at the front gate?"

"You mean the one with the dented chest?"

"That was Lord Bertholdt."

Was Albrecht Bertholdt's death not enough?

"I heard that was a performance for Armistice Day. About how medals earned in war were worthless."

"That's how they're telling it these days? Well, it'd be awkward to explain that it was him telling the captain of the household guard, with his fists, that he had no interest in joining."

Anne, who had actually been there that day, smiled ruefully to herself.

The superintendent had said Harold Bertholdt was all right. Because Anne had a personal friendship with him.

But Anne knew Harold well. However long Harold had been away from the capital, that man wasn't the kind to turn on Grisha Lambert.

If a certain thing she hoped wouldn't happen did happen, Harold wasn't going to betray an old friend.

The royal guard had come knocking too, of course, and Harold had turned them down. That wasn't speculation but fact. For all the incidents and scandals, Harold Bertholdt had been one of the finest talents the academy had produced.

But the royal guard's offer never became part of the stories that got passed around. The statue business had loomed too large. And right after that, Harold had said he was going to be a mercenary and left the country.

"Was the captain of the household guard—?"

"The former captain. Retired, and I can't for the life of me figure out why he keeps sniffing around watch business. Even so, he's so terrified of Lord Bertholdt he won't set foot in the Second District."

"Hah!"

The room filled with laughter.

Anne, holding her now-empty cup tight, smiled faintly.

"Captain Archibald."

"Mm?"

"A runner brought this for you."

Anne checked the letter. There was no name on the envelope, but there was a small geometric doodle in one corner.

Gauss Manfred's mark.

"..."

Amid her colleagues' laughter, Anne quietly opened the letter.

Assuming the letter was case-related, the sergeant who'd handed it over politely turned his eyes away. Well — if you called it case-related, it was. Just not something they could disclose openly.

Whatever anyone privately believed, officially Albrecht Bertholdt's death was on record as an accident.

What they'd uncovered since wasn't directly connected to the carriage accident either. The sleeping drug found in his body wasn't enough evidence on its own. Views had been split within the watch too, but in the end it had been closed as an accident.

But everything about it was pointedly, exquisitely suspicious.

Anne's continued investigation with Harold and Gauss was, to all appearances, purely a private matter.

No — with Albrecht's death leading straight to the attempted kidnapping of Edgar and Edwin, it wasn't only private either. Still, that wasn't something the rest of the world needed to know.

"Ah, heading out?"

"Something's come up."

Anne tucked Gauss's letter inside her jacket and got to her feet.

Whatever waited at the end of this case, Anne's job was clear.

Bring criminals to justice.

Ever since she'd chosen the city watch over the royal guard or the household guard, that goal hadn't changed.

Especially after what had happened seven years ago, that resolve had become the whole of Anne.

The medals on her uniform felt heavier than usual.