Chapter 63

The boys didn't linger near Grisha.

They peeked at him from behind their uncle, and when Harold gave them a nudge to go and play with Nabi, the twins hesitated only briefly before bolting.

"They look a lot like Albrecht."

Grisha's shoulders shook as he laughed under his breath.

"And a bit like you too."

"Me? Well, I did hear a lot growing up that my brother and I looked alike."

"No. Not looks."

Harold looked at Grisha. Grisha only smiled and didn't explain further.

Family members resembling each other — that much made sense. Maybe an outside eye saw something different. Harold didn't dwell on it and showed Grisha into the house.

Since Grisha was the owner of the house to begin with, "showing him in" wasn't quite the right phrase.

"They seem like good boys."

The moment Harold entered the sitting room that doubled as a study, he made sure the door was properly shut.

Edwin might be wrapped up in Nabi right now, but he still liked wandering every corner of the house. Getting briefly trapped in the ceiling hadn't put him off.

Harold had only just discovered how many nooks this small a house had. The boy moved so quietly that if you weren't paying attention, you'd sometimes lose track of him.

"They're good boys."

If they weren't getting up to at least that much mischief, they wouldn't be his nephews. Only after confirming once more that Edwin was in the garden did Harold turn to Grisha.

"You came all this way just to give me a letter?"

"Obviously not."

His face looked much brighter than it had at the hospital.

That wasn't only because they were meeting in daylight.

"I told my father."

Grisha threw it out with no lead-up. Harold caught his meaning immediately.

"The duke? You hadn't told him yet?"

"He'd had a rough idea."

Duke Hendrick Lambert held the eastern military command. Given that the south had barely any army left after the war, and the west still hadn't recovered from the purge tied to the assassination attempt on the retired king, that made his forces effectively the kingdom's only functioning army.

If he set his mind to it, he could stage a coup right now. Grisha, of course, had no intention of doing so. Legitimacy was on their side anyway.

"But my father would never say a thing like that to me. He said it was a situation there was no helping."

"Well..."

"Mother will worry, but there's really no helping that either."

Harold nodded, his face unenthusiastic.

He knew he was a bit slow when it came to political maneuvering, but even so — this wasn't something you could miss, was it?

"Isn't it basically over already?"

"I told you, Harold."

"No, no. That is — I get it. I get it. If His Majesty were to die suddenly, the options for handling things get thin, and there's no telling what Barun would do... I understand."

Harold waved a hand vaguely. Grisha had drummed it into him at the hospital.

"But if push came to shove..."

Harold mimed handcuffs. What if they just arrested him, without bothering to build a case first?

"It'd cause a scene, sure, but Barun isn't crazy enough to intervene in another country's internal affairs without a pretext."

"..."

"They... wouldn't. Right?"

Grisha gazed steadily at Harold despite barely being able to see him, then sighed.

"You know I mentioned I'd been abroad for a while?"

"Right. You said you'd only just gotten back?"

Because of Albrecht's funeral.

Grisha had succeeded Harold's brother as director of Intelligence. There must have been things tied to that. Harold only now connected those threads.

"I'd been handling diplomatic work in place of the Second Prince. I hadn't wanted to leave the country... well, that's in the past. In connection with the forty-ninth anniversary of the war's end, I dropped in on Barun."

Harold raised his eyebrows.

Harold had crossed paths with mercenaries from Barun himself. Not a fond memory. He could hope it was only a thing among mercenaries, but from Grisha's tone the higher-ups were much the same.

If so, Grisha's hesitation, even with the forces at his back, made perfect sense.

"The cabinet is too young. Twenties to thirties. I even saw teenagers."

"Teenagers?"

"They say a run of epidemics and unlucky accidents these last few years has thinned out their people."

"...That's suspicious, right?"

"Of course."

Grisha snorted.

"Never mind their ages — there are too many military men in there. Same with the king."

"I'd heard the rumor that their king's a warlike type."

"If it's made it as far as a rumor, what do you think the reality's like?"

"..."

"He didn't hide it much either. Give him an opening and he'd start a war in a heartbeat."

Grisha's face, which had brightened for a moment, went haggard again. He raked a hand through hair that wasn't even out of place.

"My father's holding things down, but honestly, this country's defenses are..."

"A joke."

"Right. A joke. The only forces still running properly are in the north and the east."

King Ryan Adler's politics were, at best, maintenance of the status quo. He might have somewhat thrown weight behind restoring the west and the south, but the king shied away from starting anything new.

Whether that came down to his own temperament, or to a belief that a man who ought never to have become king shouldn't wield his power, Harold couldn't say.

As a knight, Harold found it a policy hard to swallow, but plenty of people welcomed the king's military-related decisions. Citizens who'd suffered through a long war.

"In any case, I want to settle this as quietly as possible. I know how you feel, but..."

Grisha smiled bitterly.

"I don't dislike the king."

"You don't like him either."

"Not liking someone isn't the same as disliking them."

If the man himself said so, there was nothing to argue. Harold let it drop.

That Grisha had a complicated feeling toward the royal family was plain enough. To Harold's eye, Ryan Adler was neither a good king nor a good father, but to Grisha...

"Anyway. What did the northern base say?"

"What did they say..."

Only now did Harold open the letter Grisha had brought.

The letter, sealed with the northern commander's mark, was even shorter than the one Harold had sent.

"He says he'll be coming to the capital early this year."

"I've never visited the northern base. What sort of man is the commander?"

"Well..."

A hard question.

Harold thought for a moment, then answered.

"My employer?"

"..."

Grisha looked at Harold. Honestly, Harold had expected an annoyed reaction, but to his surprise Grisha nodded along.

"I see."

What exactly he'd seen, Harold had no idea, but he let it go.

"He's coming because of the watch cooperation angle, so he's bound to ask. Need an introduction?"

"No."

Grisha shook his head.

"The northern commander's dislike for the First Prince is well known, so I'm fine. And I'm not exactly looking to borrow his hand."

Carlisle Adler had really put in the work.

To have people all across the kingdom hate you this thoroughly wasn't easy. Even if he wasn't crown prince, he was still the First Prince.

Grisha let out a small sigh. That worried look was one Harold had been seeing a lot of lately. Before Grisha even opened his mouth, Harold knew what was coming.

"Are you really sure it's all right for you to be helping me?"

He'd assumed Grisha wouldn't bring it up again after the gambling den business.

Grisha waved an arm toward the window.

"Your nephews..."

Harold could understand it. If their positions were flipped, Harold would have kept asking Grisha the same thing. He'd have talked him out of it harder.

For your little sister's sake, shouldn't you be more careful?

Perhaps because he'd just seen children around his sister's age, Grisha had, unusually for him, turned sentimental.

"I've already decided."

If Carlisle hadn't protected Adrien Renard, Harold might have wavered more. That much was certain.

"I understand you're worried. But there's still something not right about my brother's carriage accident."

Harold shook his head.

"Whether it was really an accident or not... it doesn't change anything. There were people looking to use my brother's death. There still are."

Sixteen. The Harold who'd first met Grisha at fifteen would have acted on impulse without a second thought.

But he couldn't do that now. Harold had two small, fragile warmths who leaned on him.

"Imagine Carlisle becomes king."

Wandering as a mercenary, Harold had seen the world.

Bit by bit he began to understand the lectures he'd once thought of as nagging from his brother. A strange experience. He suspected that was why his brother hadn't tried harder to stop him.

The more of the world Harold saw, the more he grew up.

"Do you think Carlisle would leave alone the family whose head clearly helped you?"

The more he grew up, the more he could see.

"Even if I were overseas, in that man's eyes we'd all be one lot. He hates me as much as he hates you."

Was it a selfish decision?

Maybe.

Every one of these worries might be nothing. On the surface, the kingdom was peaceful, and maybe Carlisle would pull himself together once he was actually king. Maybe Barun really had just had a run of bad luck and had no intent behind it.

But Harold couldn't stake his nephews' safety on those slim odds. Carlisle had already made his intentions clear.

"You can't give Adelheid a future like that, and neither can I."

I'm counting on you, Harold.

His brother's final request — from the man who'd handled every irritating chore for him.

Look after the boys.

Even without his brother's words, Harold had had no intention of turning his back on the boys.

"So, Grisha. Let's drop it. I'm not changing my mind."

Grisha stared at Harold for a long moment, then finally nodded.

Maybe Grisha was using Harold as an excuse for his own hesitation. That wasn't something Harold could do anything about.

More than Harold, Grisha himself couldn't step back from this.

"Anyway, this is why I called you here."

Harold said it deliberately lightly.

Harold got up and headed for the fireplace. His hand went unerringly to the inside of it. Grisha blinked.

"You still remember?"

"Of course."

Inside the fireplace, if you pried loose a stone, a small space opened up. A safe of the sort easy to find in old houses.

Given the location, storing anything flammable would have been tricky, but the weather was warm enough that the fireplace wasn't in use, so it wasn't a problem. Harold pulled out a thick notebook.

The journal his brother had left in the family vault.

"This is...?"

"Something my brother left behind."

Grisha hesitated, then carefully opened the notebook.

Albrecht Bertholdt's elegant handwriting was famous. Even without Harold's explanation, there was no mistaking it for anyone else's.

Grisha pulled his glasses out from his coat and put them on.

"...What is this?"

A cipher.

Grisha's face pulled into a deep frown. He'd started turning pages slowly, but the pace picked up as he skimmed to check whether the rest of the journal was the same.

"I think this is... a record of the investigation my brother was running, or something like it."

"Who writes that kind of thing in code?"

"My brother?"

"..."

"He might not have written it for anyone to read."

"Hmm..."

He'd thought Grisha might know, but apparently not. It really might have been a record only for Albrecht himself.

"There's no way to read this right now."

Flipping through the journal, Grisha shook his head.

"Would it be all right if I took this? I'd like to work on it."

"Fine. That's why I showed it to you. There's no way I can crack it."

"I'm not confident either."

"If there's someone you really trust, feel free to show it to them."

At that, Grisha smiled with a rueful look.

"You're going to be no help at all."