Chapter 54

"So..."

Harold couldn't quite believe he'd understood it right.

Not that there was anything to misunderstand. Grisha had laid it out so plainly there was no room for it. Which somehow only made it harder to grasp.

"He'd assassinate his own father just to become king?"

"Believe it or not."

"That..."

Harold waved a hand at the air.

He wanted to say something but his mouth wouldn't move. Right. Did you have to be crown prince to take the throne? If you were born the king's son, you could inherit.

Why hadn't that obvious point crossed Harold's mind?

Obviously — who in their right mind would kill their own father just to grab a title?

"That's what power is, Harold."

Grisha's voice softened, like he was trying to console him.

"Even so..."

Harold barely got the words out.

"To have His Majesty... assassinated..."

Harold waved his hand hard.

"Wouldn't it be... what — take out the competition instead? Isn't that simpler? Rather than... assassinating the King?"

Grisha smiled faintly and gave his leg a swing. The splint and bandages were still on.

"..."

Harold buried his face in both hands.

Honestly — no end to the nonsense.

"Well, so far it's only suspicion. No evidence."

Complicated royal business aside, plenty of people were fed up with Carlisle's behavior. Nobles who saw the prince at close range, of course — and even the citizens of the capital were catching the fallout of having a prince like that.

If Grisha stepped forward there'd be an uproar, sure, but plenty of people would back him. Carlisle had to know that. He might be thick, but he wasn't a fool. Which was probably why he was pushing this hard.

"Anyway — that's why we can't move until we have solid evidence."

They'd confirmed the Kingdom of Barun was involved in some form, but the evidence was thin.

Try telling anyone that a shepherd's signature on a Count's estate looked off, and they'd think you'd lost it. Right. Got it.

"Up till now he hadn't left anything usable behind, though..."

"He took Adrien Renard away."

"Not that I want to provoke Carlisle, so we'll have to hold off on the arrest for now."

"No, catching that one man wasn't going to solve it anyway."

Grisha agreed.

"Carlisle wouldn't have acted on impulse just from seeing your face. And investigating Adrien Renard is easier than going at Carlisle directly."

The secret behind his brother's death was starting to make sense too. So this was why his brother had prepared for his own sudden death.

Right. He'd been chewing on it all along. Why Albrecht Bertholdt had had to die, even granting he'd been Intelligence director. Why those small children were being targeted.

The fact that Adrien Renard hadn't touched the estate's assets. Right. Right...

"...So — in effect, this is about stopping an assassination of His Majesty?"

"That's the biggest piece of it."

"..."

"The household guard is in the First Prince's hands, you know that. I want to avoid a bloodbath inside the capital too. Worst case is Carlisle using the household guard to start a civil war."

After hearing the word assassination, civil war almost sounded plausible by comparison.

"All right."

At Harold's easy answer, Grisha hesitated before asking,

"...You're all right with this?"

"If they're going this far, honestly, it makes things simpler."

Harold scrubbed his hands down his face. Yes, it was jarring. He was annoyed too.

He understood now why Grisha had told him to take his nephews and go abroad. That way there was much less chance of getting tangled in domestic politics.

"Wait. Why are they after my nephews?"

"Because they knew Albrecht well."

"My brother?"

"They'd have assumed your brother hid evidence somewhere."

"Evidence... you said you hadn't found any."

"Do they know that?"

"..."

Good point.

If they'd assumed the evidence was at the estate or in the family vault, they hadn't been that far off. His brother had, in fact, left a journal in the vault. If he'd found decisive evidence and died before he could get it to Grisha...

Now that he knew what was going on, slipping away wouldn't be hard. But Harold wasn't going back on his decision.

If something ugly happened and Carlisle Adler became king, his nephews would truly lose their home. Those poor boys who'd said they didn't want to leave the house they'd shared with their father.

And, well — respectable pretext or not, the fact was Harold had a personal grudge in it now too.

He was done debating it.

"Right."

A cold light came into Harold's eyes.

The knight said to be the strongest in the Kingdom of Alharn's history.

Harold Bertholdt awaited the orders of his closest friend — the liege he'd sworn, long ago, to stand beside.

"What do you need me to do?"

---

If you had to name the root cause of all of it, Harold would point to the current king, Ryan Adler.

Not a bad king. Not a great one — no reign for the ages — but no historically damning mistakes either. No achievements, no failures. The kind of king who'd get a single line in a history book a hundred years on — an "ah, right, there was one of those."

But he wasn't a good father. In an ordinary household it might have passed without incident. Unfortunately, Ryan Adler was a king, and because he wasn't a good father, he became a bad king.

A king who would otherwise have gone down as a footnote was going to be judged harshly by later generations.

For deliberately ignoring his sons, leaving the succession open, and throwing the kingdom into disorder.

Carlisle Adler wasn't a young prince. He was closing on forty. At that age, a first prince would ordinarily have grown children of his own by now, be helping his aging father with the work of the crown, and be preparing to inherit.

But Ryan Adler hadn't married the First Prince off. Not even an engagement. He gave him no responsibilities. And he wasn't outright ignoring him, either. Carlisle Adler was still the First Prince, and at state occasions he fulfilled the duties of one.

If there'd been no hope at all, Carlisle Adler would have given up long ago.

The fact that his much younger brother, Gerald Adler, had been engaged at all must have gotten under Carlisle's skin. Whether that engagement would actually turn into a marriage was another matter. But at least the engagement itself suggested the younger brother was the better fit for carrying on the "next generation" than Carlisle, didn't it?

The King's refusal to marry off the First Prince, the wide age gap between his sons, the decades of stalling on naming a crown prince — all of it, of course, was for one person.

Grisha Lambert.

That Grisha himself had never wanted it was what dragged the whole business into the mire. No one was happy, no one was satisfied.

If only the King had made up his mind at the start.

Whether the younger generation these days knew about Grisha Lambert, Harold couldn't say. Back when Harold was at the academy, plenty of parents had warned their children about him. It wouldn't do for their kids to slip up around him with all of them at the same school.

But these days there weren't many children Grisha would run into...

Still — how could anyone not know how openly the King favored Grisha? Ryan Adler had never once hidden that favor, from the moment Grisha was born to now.

Ryan Adler was not a good father. That was what made him a bad king.

Unable to let Grisha go, unable to disown his own sons. It wasn't that he didn't love his sons — but he couldn't take his eyes off Grisha either.

No one should become king with a heart like that. Truthfully, no one had expected Ryan Adler to become king in the first place.

Which was why the flaws stood out all the more.

Ryan Adler was a bad father.

"Sir Bertholdt — you're here!"

"Mattheus."

Mattheus, back from the domain, had returned to the capital.

He'd been getting reports by letter, of course, but seeing him in person and talking face to face was another thing. Harold had been worrying about him ever since sending him off, and only now, seeing Mattheus's cheerful color, could he breathe out.

"How are the young masters?"

"They've taken to riding, and it's a bit of a circus."

"Ha, that's the age for it — energy to burn."

Bright as the warming weather, Mattheus greeted Harold in an equally bright voice.

The two didn't go straight into Mattheus's office; they stood outside talking for a moment.

"Any other trouble down at the domain?"

"None. And the people at the manor were relieved to hear Günter's killer had been caught."

Mattheus glanced up the stairs as he spoke.

"I didn't turn up anything else. Günter had kept things well in hand... As I said in my letter, though, the people at the old manor still want you to come down and show your face, sir."

"That's fair enough. My brother didn't get down to the domain very often either, from what I hear."

"Right."

Maybe another trip down there in person would turn something up.

He couldn't take the boys, but leaving them with Grisha briefly and going down to the domain wasn't a bad idea.

"Günter's successor?"

"Given Günter's age, he'd kept a niece on as a secretary for a while now and had been teaching her the work."

"The one you mentioned in the letter? Did she seem all right to you?"

"She's still young, so there are a few points I'm not fully sure of yet, but..."

Mattheus stepped aside so Harold could go up the stairs.

"But she's sharp. And the staff at the old manor thought well of her."

"Do you think she can handle running the old manor?"

Harold asked as he climbed the stairs.

"She'll need time to settle in, but she looks up to it."

If Mattheus said that much, it would be fine. What Mattheus hadn't been able to check on, the Intelligence agents who'd gone down with him would have looked into.

Harold nodded.

"By the way — sure you don't want more time to rest?"

"What would I even do with more rest?"

"Still, the trips down to the domain and back must have worn you out."

"All I have to do is sit on a train. What's there to wear me out?"

Harold opened the office door.

Any dust that had built up while the office's owner was away had long since been aired out through the wide-open windows. The tidied office looked no different from the day Mattheus had left.

But there was one big difference.

"Oh — hello, Sir Bertholdt!"

The woman standing by the window greeted him, her face tight with nerves. Even in a sharp-cut suit, the stiffness in her posture made her seem somehow young.

Mattheus hadn't come up from the domain alone. He'd brought Günter's niece — the incoming butler of the old Bertholdt manor.

"This is Leona Bleiss, the one I mentioned."

"L-L-Leona Bleiss, sir! It's an honor to meet you!"

"Harold Bertholdt. A pleasure."

When Harold offered his hand, Leona only came to and took it after Mattheus gave a small cough. Watching her tremble so hard she could barely manage the grip, Harold found himself quietly amused.

Not a face he recognized. Mid-twenties, at most. And that was being generous.

It had been years since Harold was down at the domain, so even if they had crossed paths, she'd have been a child.

"You're Günter's niece, I hear."

"Y-yes! I'm still quite green, but my uncle — er, my predecessor — trained me, so, um, I can at least manage the work!"

"You don't need to be that nervous."

"She's still young, but I can vouch for her ability."

Leona looked at Mattheus with wet eyes. Visibly moved.

He had a rough idea of how things had gone at the domain. Mattheus must have been demanding.

"I'm sorry about your uncle. But the killer's been caught, and he'll get what's coming to him."

"Oh, well, that..."

Leona spoke hesitantly.

"If — if it's all right with you, would I be allowed to attend the... the killer's trial?"