Chapter 77

In the capital, only three groups were officially permitted to carry weapons.

The city watch. The royal guard. The household guard.

As a member of the northern base, Harold wasn't technically forbidden from being armed. But except in genuinely unavoidable circumstances, he wasn't supposed to use them.

The stranger at the watch hospital had used a kitchen knife and a paring knife — things you could get hold of anywhere. But Dustin Glenn's cause of death was suffocation. The watch had a reason for mistaking it for suicide at first.

The watch hospital fire was confirmed to be arson. Everyone had assumed as much from the moment the flames wouldn't go down, so it didn't change much.

"Headache."

Instead of the black carriage Grisha usually rode in, they took an ornate carriage with the Lambert crest set in the middle.

The black carriage was the one Harold had smashed the wheels off of, and it was currently being held by the watch as evidence. Even setting that aside, given today's destination, they couldn't have taken it.

Harold, too, had put his formal wear back on. He even had a sword at his hip. That was because today he'd come as Grisha's escort.

"Not something I can help with."

"I was going to request an audience before long, but not for something like this."

"Finally made up your mind?"

Harold's face lit up. Grisha immediately scowled and kicked Harold in the shin. He'd apparently put a fair amount of force into it, but it didn't even tickle.

Grisha had to have heard Harold trying to hold back a laugh, but he pretended not to.

"Made up my mind, nothing."

"Then why? You hate going to see His Majesty too."

"It's not that I hate it..."

Grisha let out a sigh — surely one of many, these days.

"There's someone who makes a scene every time I show up."

"The First Prince?"

"..."

"No one's listening. Just say it."

"That's not the reason."

Grisha clicked his tongue.

"I was originally going to tell you the day you came to the estate."

"That day?"

"There was something Albrecht and I had been talking over. After Albrecht..."

Grisha glanced at Harold before going on.

"...died, I judged the risk was too high and was going to let it go."

"But?"

"Viscount Manfred said that with you around, it might be worth trying after all."

"Hm."

To come right out and say he needed him like that.

Come to think of it, Gauss had been pretty candid about his intentions too. He'd even sounded Harold out about whether he could sneak into the Doak estate.

Any way you looked at it, there was only one kind of job that called for Harold Bertholdt's help.

"So we're finally resorting to force."

"That's not what I meant!"

"Kidding."

Of course, if they actually asked, he wouldn't refuse.

"..."

They hadn't seen each other in years, but Grisha was still Harold's closest friend. As well as Harold knew Grisha, Grisha knew Harold.

Even meeting Grisha's sharp look, Harold's expression didn't change. Grisha nodded.

"Thanks for at least saying it."

"Sure."

"Don't go around saying that anywhere else."

"I'm only saying it to you."

He meant it.

"Because you'll figure it out."

Adrien Renard alone was already testing the limits of what Harold could sit still for. But he was waiting quietly because he trusted Grisha. Rather than storming into Summerflower Palace right this minute.

"That's a lot to live up to."

"You've got a plan, don't you? That's why we're going to the palace."

"Hm..."

Grisha didn't deny it — he just smiled quietly. The tired look in his eyes was still there, but there was resolve underneath.

Harold wasn't the only one being pushed to his limits.

If it had only been the assassination attempt, Grisha would have handled it as quietly as he always did.

But too much had happened for that. Of everything two days ago, the attempt on Grisha Lambert's life was the least of it.

First, Dustin Glenn had died. Found hanged in his own sickroom. Harold had confirmed the body yesterday. He'd wondered what he was going to say to Leona Bleiss.

Just before Dustin Glenn was found, a fire had broken out in the hospital's main building.

The watch had done their best, all things considered. They'd found Dustin Glenn, worked out quickly that it was murder, and sent a courier to the Lambert estate, where the head of Intelligence was.

And at the same time.

There'd been an intruder in the King's Woods. As it happened, at the same time the watch hospital was burning, a thief had broken into the First Prince's residence at Summerflower Palace. Enraged, the First Prince had summoned the captain of the royal guard and the guardsmen on patrol duty and given them a severe dressing-down.

The intruder had tried to enter the crown prince's country retreat by impersonating a royal guardsman, but had been spotted by the guard and, while trying to escape, had set off a bomb he'd brought along in resistance. He'd been shot dead.

And there'd been an attempt on the life of the head of Intelligence, who'd rushed to the watch hospital. The would-be assassin had fled across the city and gone over the side of a bridge into the river. Nothing had been left of them but the hat they'd been wearing.

"So. What was it you and my brother were going to do?"

He didn't know exactly what Grisha was planning. But then again, what other reason was there to go to the palace?

Grisha had made his choice, and Harold had made his. It was only fair that the man closest to being the root cause of all this had to make his too.

Grisha shrugged at the question.

"To put it bluntly, we were going to provoke Carlisle. Back then he wasn't doing anything that particularly stood out."

"Sounds like he got full of himself after my brother died."

Grisha paused at that. He didn't deny it, which suggested he'd been thinking the same thing.

There was no obvious link between what had happened in the King's Woods and what had happened at the watch hospital.

But it was suspicious that a suspect in a case being jointly investigated by Intelligence and the watch had been killed, and that at the very same time, the royal guard — closely tied to Intelligence — had been kept from moving.

The intrusion into the King's Woods and the arson at the hospital couldn't be dismissed as ordinary crimes either. The royal guard, the watch, and Intelligence had all reached the same conclusion: this couldn't have been done without help from someone with detailed inside knowledge.

Like the master of Summerflower Palace, who'd called out the royal guard when nobody had actually seen the thief and nothing was missing.

"What I was originally going to do was tell him I'd take charge of the Founding Day preparations."

Harold looked at Grisha.

Founding Day was Alharn's most important national holiday. Ever since Carlisle had come of age, the rite honoring the founding king — the centerpiece of the Founding Day festival — had been his to run. It was the one occasion where a First Prince who wasn't even married yet could put royal authority on display.

"...If you said you'd take it on, His Majesty would."

"Grant it."

Harold didn't doubt that.

Grisha smiled bitterly and went on.

"It was half a last resort. If I stepped into that role, it'd mean I was moving to have my status... restored."

"So the First Prince wouldn't be able to help himself?"

"If you know he'll do something, it's easier to respond."

Simple, but reliable. The risks were just as big, but if it had been his brother, he'd have managed it somehow.

Harold nodded.

"So the idea was, as long as I'm around, I can at least keep you safe?"

"And if it came to it, you could keep watch on Carlisle too."

That was the kind of answer only someone who knew Harold well could give.

But Grisha's tone was negative. That was how sharply the situation had shifted. The Carlisle Adler Grisha and Albrecht had been planning against wasn't the Carlisle Adler they had now.

Just as Harold had said, after Albrecht's death, whatever confidence Carlisle had really seemed to have grown; his moves had only gotten bolder.

"That plan's off the table now, but..."

He was already doing plenty of insane things. There was no telling what would happen if they poked at him from here.

If he really did try to take the palace with the household guard leading the way, that would be civil war. Something Grisha would do absolutely anything to avoid.

"Before, if he was just going after me, that was one thing — but he's past that now, isn't he?"

They'd come close to something they couldn't have taken back.

No — it had already happened. The chase through the streets had, thankfully, had no fatalities, and the royal guard had injuries but no deaths.

But there had been watchmen who hadn't made it out of the burning hospital.

"Either way, I've got an excuse to report to His Majesty. Adrien Renard alone crossed the line."

"Evidence, though..."

"Well, Carlisle aside, what happened two days ago has to be reported. It's my duty as head of Intelligence. There's clearly some unidentified group behind all this."

"..."

"He also called out the royal guard on his own authority. His Majesty transferring some of the household guard appointment power to Carlisle was a warning not to touch the royal guard."

When Harold had been about his nephews' age, the household guard had been a ceremonial post — waving flags at state holidays.

But once Wilhelm Lambert had been appointed captain of the royal guard, Carlisle hadn't been able to stand them. Fed up with him calling the royal guard out over nothing, the king had told his son in no uncertain terms not to meddle with how the royal guard was run.

He'd brought it on himself, but apparently Carlisle hadn't cared for that either. Over a period of years he'd wrung the household guard's appointment power out of the king, and had painstakingly filled its ranks with his own people.

That was the household guard as it stood now.

But.

"The one that symbolizes protecting the royal house is the royal guard."

Grisha didn't react to Harold's words.

Now and then Harold got the sense that every decision the king made had Grisha Lambert factored into it. The fact that the Eastern Commander's younger brother had ended up head of the royal guard, for one. No king would normally want to hand that kind of power to a house that was already powerful.

Grisha looked out the window. Just one bridge, and they were at the palace.

Harold wasn't the only one in formal dress. Grisha didn't usually go around as casually as Harold did, but today he'd put on the full formal attire too. They were riding in the Lambert carriage precisely because they were going to an audience with the king.

Harold spoke up on impulse. If Grisha wanted to provoke Carlisle.

"How about you put your glasses on?"

"Have you lost your mind?"

"You said you wanted to provoke the First Prince. It'd work well."

"No, right now I don't want to provoke him."

But telling him to wear his glasses wasn't only for that reason.

"Your mother was right."

"...About what?"

"I know why you don't like wearing them, but not being able to see properly is dangerous."

"I can see."

"You grab the railing every time you come down the stairs."

The scolding Claudia had poured on her son at the Lambert estate a few days ago.

Because of everything that had happened after, Harold had had to let it go, but that was exactly why he had to bring it up now.

"This time too. You couldn't really see what happened in that sickroom, could you?"

"...Not everyone's you, Harold. Even if I'd been able to see, I couldn't have done anything."

"No, I don't want that from you either. But you should at least be able to see a blade coming at you and try to dodge."

"..."

Harold understood, better than anyone, why Grisha didn't wear his glasses. Of course — he saw the reason every day now, didn't he. Waldemar Alharn's portrait still hung in the first-floor gallery, still looking every bit like Grisha himself.

"With or without the glasses, you look enough like him already."

Harold said, on Grisha's behalf, what Grisha knew perfectly well but had never once been able to say out loud.

"Like your real father."