Chapter 5

"I-I don't know anything!"

"Mm-hmm."

Anne hummed musically and nodded at the man's reply.

"Then why were you peering in?"

Harold stood quietly among the watchmen, taking it in.

Difficult work like an interrogation was best left to the professionals. If Harold stepped in, the odds were good he'd cause some other legal complication. He'd already been warned about it once by Anne.

But hadn't he managed to catch the runner without breaking anything? That counted as plenty of effort, as far as Harold was concerned.

"Th-the door was open, so I just looked, out of curiosity!"

"Curious enough to come right inside the estate?"

Even if this man really had only been looking around out of innocent curiosity, that didn't change the fact that he'd trespassed.

The man's face went stark white as he gaped.

"Well — I, I work at the Bertholdt estate!"

"...Do you?"

Anne grinned. The contrast with how harshly she'd been bearing down on the man a moment before made the smile chilling.

"And what work would you be doing at the Bertholdt estate? Nobody should be there right now."

"Uh, uhh..."

The man's head swiveled this way and that, as if hunting for a lifeline that didn't exist.

"Uh..."

Then all at once the fight went out of him.

"P-please, spare me! I'm just an errand-runner!"

Mattheus, standing among the watchmen alongside Harold, raised an eyebrow.

The last place the man's gaze had landed was Mattheus. When Mattheus's eyes met Harold's, he shook his head. He didn't recognize the man.

But the man had recognized Mattheus. And yet he hadn't recognized Harold.

"...."

Of course, it had been a while since Harold had been in the capital, and even before that he'd never stayed long, so nobody outside his close circle really knew his face.

...Somehow it stung his pride. No reason it should have, but it did.

Not that he had any intention of stepping forward and announcing himself as a Bertholdt.

Harold gave Anne a glance and headed back to the Bertholdt estate. Mattheus tried to follow, but Harold waved him off. With Mattheus there, anything Harold had missed would get caught.

It was almost as if he could hear his brother's nagging in his ear.

Don't run off just because it's a hassle. It's your job to handle, anyway.

Right. Which was why he was heading back to the estate.

The first thing Anne did with the man Harold had subdued was check his belongings. Among a few coins and a crumpled pay stub came a card for a tavern near the harbor.

The Song of Hemeril.

The same tavern as the one on the flyer Harold had picked up from his brother's coat.

That was enough.

It had been enough for Harold, and it would be the same for Anne.

Unfortunately, Harold, attached to the northern base, had no investigative authority in the capital. That was why Anne had kept warning him.

If his brother had still been alive, Harold could have done whatever he wanted and dumped the cleanup on him. Not anymore. If something happened to Harold now, there were children who'd be left with no one.

Harold passed through the open door of the estate. This time he walked the empty house alone, without Mattheus.

Was this still Harold's home?

It was.

Whenever Harold thought of home, this was the place that came to mind.

The place with his brother, who'd nagged him every time to grow up already but laughed and pressed pocket money into his hand anyway, and his sister-in-law, who'd mocked the brother for it and let him carry on. The garden full of lemon trees his mother had planted, where his father had pruned the branches himself.

The home Harold remembered wasn't this cold place — it was somewhere bright and warm.

Leaving those memories behind, Harold made for his brother's bedroom.

He'd already seen the wreckage, so it didn't anger him quite the way it had the first time. That didn't mean he was all right with it.

The anger still rose all the way to the top of his head, but his brother had been right. However angry he got, the work was his to do.

The kitchen and the study had angered him too, but not like this. Part of it was that the family's private space had been violated, but more than anything, it was that this had been his brother's room.

His dead brother's things had been defiled. That was what Harold couldn't bear.

"...."

Harold picked up a frame that had fallen by the bed. Maybe he should be grateful it had survived the chaos unbroken.

Inside the frame was a blonde woman, smiling gently. One of the twins sat on her lap; the other clung to her leg, standing up straight. Harold couldn't tell which one was Edgar and which was Edwin.

He gazed at the photograph for a while, then set it back on the side table where the frame must have stood.

Harold drew a long breath and made himself relax. Opening the family vault didn't take much strength, but there was no reason to waste energy on it either.

Harold held his hand out in front of him. He didn't know how other families opened their vaults, but the Bertholdts had stuck to the traditional method, the one passed down from long ago.

Drip. Drip.

Blood ran. Not much was needed. Only enough for the magic wrapped around the vault to read the information carried in it.

The blood that hit the carpet was absorbed into it and disappeared. Harold waited quietly. Click, click. Gears meshed somewhere, and an ornate wooden box appeared in the space where a moment before there had been nothing.

But I'm not even the heir....

You still need to know.

It had been one of the rare days his father, who normally let his sons do as they pleased, had spoken sternly. His brother had snorted beside him.

For all its delicate ornamentation, the box itself looked more like an antique than a vault. The magic concealing it was the same. If the magic ever broke, no one would be able to fix it now.

Harold ran his hand slowly over the vault. The children hadn't had a scratch on them, and the vault showed no signs of being forced.

Well — it wasn't as if anything spectacular was kept inside. At most, estate papers, bank certificates, jewelry passed down as heirlooms... that sort of thing.

When he opened it, it was exactly as Harold had expected. The first thing his eye caught was a document as old as the vault itself. Bertholdt domain — reading the line at the top, Harold pushed the paper aside.

All that mattered was that the important things were safe. These would pass on to one of his nephews once the boy became Count.

"...Hm?"

But among the familiar documents was an unfamiliar notebook. A thick journal with a leather cover. Among the old papers, the journal almost gleamed like new.

Harold opened it.

There was only one person who would have put something new into the family vault. The moment he turned the cover, his brother's elegant hand came into view.

"...."

Harold's expression turned strange.

That gorgeous, perfectly readable handwriting — a feat of penmanship in its own right — was something no one but his brother could even imitate. It was easy to read now, too.

But Harold couldn't understand a single sentence.

Being able to read the letters was one thing; understanding them was another. Harold slowly followed his brother's writing. Stumbling through it word by word, the most he managed to grasp was that at least three different languages were packed into a single sentence. Moving on to the next sentence, he couldn't make anything of it at all.

Feeling cold sweat trickle down his back, Harold flipped through the journal quickly. The whole thing — a good three centimeters thick — was filled cover to cover with his brother's incomprehensible code.

"...He asks me for help, and leaves me something like this?"

Harold scrubbed his face hard with his palms.

"Who's supposed to be able to read this..."

His brother had always had unreasonably high expectations of other people's intelligence.

Even with Harold for a younger brother, the man had clung to that kind of futile hope — and Harold had never been able to understand it.

---

The capital of the Kingdom of Alharn had expanded slowly over many years.

Centered on the Central District — the original site of the capital — it had swallowed up the satellite cities around it one by one. The Third District, where the Bertholdt estate stood, had originally been the third such city absorbed.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason it had grown. Convenience had played a role too. The harbor on the east side of the capital was one example. The largest and most populous city in the kingdom, the capital received the goods needed to sustain that population through the harbor. With overseas trade picking up of late, the harbor had been growing further still.

And after a long day's work, the harbor laborers had a place they headed to.

"Welcome! We've got meat pies on tonight!"

"Three beers over here!"

"Yes, right away!"

"Evening show starts at seven!"

At this hour, the tavern was packed. People wanting a quick bite, or a drink with their mates.

The Song of Hemeril, one of the most popular taverns on the harbor, had made its name by hiring talented singers. Lively sea shanties to heart-aching ballads. As showtime approached, the place filled to capacity.

"Our thanks again tonight to everyone visiting Hemeril's."

When showtime came, the staff went around dimming the lamps inside. The bustle quieted along with them. The host stepped onto the small stage in the middle of the tavern and bowed gracefully.

The host carried smoothly through lines he'd repeated hundreds of times. Nothing remarkable — just introducing tonight's singer and musicians.

The half-drunk patrons didn't notice that the tavern was dimmer than usual. They didn't notice the host's pale face either.

Nor those slipping quietly through the dark.

"Jimmy?"

"...."

"Huh? Gck!"

As the singer started up, drunken men with red faces were dragged off one by one, mouths clamped shut.

"Hey, where you going?"

"Gotta take a leak!"

A man who'd been humming along with his friends to the singer's sea shanty stumbled out of the tavern.

The winter wind off the sea was cold enough to set a drink-warmed body shivering. But the tavern's restroom was packed, and there was a public one a block down.

Thud.

The man stumbled over something soft underfoot. When he looked down, a single shoe was lying there.

"Oh, for — some drunk..."

Thinking some drunk might have passed out in the street, the man looked around. Winter wasn't over yet. Falling asleep outside in this weather could kill you.

But what he saw was something else.

"...Official business."

A woman in the middle of cuffing a struggling man caught his eye and spoke up, looking a little sheepish. The cuffed man was missing his left shoe.

The woman pulled aside her coat and showed him the city watch badge on her chest. The man nodded.

"Ah, right.... Hard work, even at this hour."

"...Thank you?"

"Carry on."

There'd been a lot of unsettling rumors going around lately. Talk of a few gangs pulling dangerous stunts against nobles.

He and his friends had laughed it off — said anyone who valued his neck wouldn't try something like that — but apparently there really were young guys out there who didn't know what their lives were worth.

The man shook his head and headed off toward the restroom.