As a bureaucrat noble, there was Ivan; and Barosi and Herto, the two Hungarians, had earned the right to attend as well. They had joined the Streit family, so excluding them was out of the question.
Barosi and Herto seemed moved by the gesture. They were outsiders no longer. Ivan served as their interpreter.
"Sir Beort, explain the situation in detail."
"Once we delivered your written request and the commander’s orders, the Capital Sentinel Commander publicly announced a full-scale sweep of the slums. The slums could offer little resistance, and we occupied the district without trouble. However—"
"You searched the slum district and still couldn’t find Bodo?"
"Forgive me, Master! We couldn’t find a single trace of him."
Anton bowed his head, looking ashamed. We had been certain the raid would turn up Bodo, but right up until my arrival, not a single trace of him had surfaced.
"The Viscount Neunil family must have acted first."
"I believe so as well. But before we raided the slums, a strange rumor was going around: that Viscountess Elsheimer had not died of illness but had died in the slums. That makes it all but certain the Finance Department’s inspector unit was already combing the place before the duchy army stormed in."
Oscar and Ted, both formerly of the inspector unit, exchanged glances.
They too had realized that things were headed in a very strange direction.
"Strange indeed. How did the viscountess come to die in the slums?"
"My apologies, but we couldn’t find that out."
"There’s nothing for you to apologize for. It’s the situation itself that’s turning strange."
The grand duke said the viscountess had died of illness, but he never mentioned that she had died in the slums. Why had her death been reported falsely? Was there some reason the truth of it had to be concealed?
On top of that, she had once been a candidate for an arranged marriage with me, which left my feelings tangled.
"Sir Beort, was it Inspector General Mort who mobilized the inspector unit?"
"As I understand it, it wasn’t the Inspector General but the acting Finance Minister."
"Adelbert? Mort would make sense, but Adelbert..."
Had it been Mort, her husband, losing his head over his wife’s death would at least be understandable. For Adelbert to mobilize the inspector unit in his place went well beyond overstepping his authority. It was downright suspicious.
"It seems I’ll have to meet Adelbert. Oscar, you go to Feuzen and explain the situation to Hilda. Tell her the schedule will be delayed a little, but that I will find Bodo, without fail, and bring him home."
"I’m sure the madam will understand your circumstances, Master."
The situation was difficult, but hope remained. In any case, Bodo’s body had not been found. If he truly was the Child of the Magnolia, as I suspected, he would be of great value to his kidnappers.
All I could do was trust in that.
"And take Markus with you."
"Markus, the Brandenburg man we brought from Schafen?"
"That’s right. He says he doesn’t want to waste any more time, so you’ll have to look after him."
Markus was itching to claim the best site for the saltpeter business before anyone else could. He had spent years drifting from place to place and didn’t want to waste another day.
I could hardly fault him for feeling that way, so I decided to send him along with Oscar.
I had meant to send Viola too, but her first long journey had left her completely drained, and her mother was now nursing her devotedly.
Viola tried to fulfill her duty as a handmaid, but I forced her to rest. If a pregnant woman overexerted herself and miscarried, I would never be able to face Louis in the next life. That, above all, had to be avoided.
"Sir Beort, keep tracking Bodo’s trail in the slums, and take Anton with you."
"Forgive my impertinence, but shouldn’t investigating the acting Finance Minister come first?"
"If we keep stirring up the slums, that’s where all eyes will turn."
"Ah, so that’s the idea. Understood."
A feint draws the guard; the real stroke lands elsewhere. What mattered was making the scheming faction believe I was focused on the slums.
"Ted, go to Marquis Bertheim’s mansion and send word to Göring."
"Yes, sir. It’s been ages since I last saw old Göring. If only brother Hans or Daniel could be here."
"Hans did nothing but get scolded by Göring, didn’t he? He was terrified of the man."
"Even so, he says he misses the old man now and then. Now and then, mind you."
Göring had taught my retainers the proper mindset for serving a noble, among many other things. To Hans and Daniel especially, he was practically a mentor. Sending word ahead to him was no more than proper courtesy.
This time I turned my gaze to Ferke.
His face was full of anticipation as he wondered what duty I would entrust to him.
"Sir Ferke, take the bandits we captured near Breisburg to the Judicial Department and have their identities investigated. Any who turn out to be wanted men you may hand over as they are."
"If I heard correctly, Baron, didn’t you say you’d be making those bandit prisoners into serfs?"
At first I had planned to make the bandit prisoners into serfs for the saltpeter farm. The work there involves handling excrement at close quarters, so ordinary subjects want nothing to do with it.
Feuzen holds around a hundred prisoners of war, but depending on the farm’s scale we might need still more hands. So the plan had been to put the bandit prisoners to work there, and yet something about it didn’t sit right.
Hence the instruction to Ferke: run a first round of screening.
As for the truly vile ones, the world is better off with them hanged.
"Serfdom is one thing, but the truly vile ones, the sort who end up on wanted lists, we’ll make an exception of. Besides, this is a chance to earn real goodwill with the Judicial Department, so take charge and handle it well."
"Leave it to me."
Next my gaze moved to Drek, who was watching me with a flushed face and his anticipation plain to see. The duty I gave him was guarding the mansion.
He stood there dazed, like a puppet with its strings cut, then snapped back to attention.
"I’ll guard it like a fortress, so that no one can so much as approach!"
The disappointment was written all over his face, but guarding the mansion mattered a great deal too. In chaotic times like these, with schemers so active, there were bound to be people trying to reach me by one means or another.
Keeping them out was Drek’s mission.
I clapped him on the shoulder to lift his spirits.
"Ivan, you and the two vice commanders will accompany me."
"M-me? Am I truly qualified to attend you so closely, Baron?"
"It’s precisely because you seem to lack the self-awareness that I intend to teach you, once and for all."
Ivan, humbled, bowed deeply and paid his respects.
Ivan had apparently intended to settle for a minor bureaucrat’s post under me, but as Viola’s father and as a man who spoke Hungarian, he was not someone I could leave in some middling position.
Barosi and Herto in particular relied on Ivan more than on anyone but me. Such is the weight of a shared language. The two Hungarian vice commanders considered it an honor to be assigned as my close guard.
"Your families are still in Bavaria, you said?"
"Yes. Once a settlement site is decided, I intend to bring them all over."
There was no guarantee the Grand Duke of Bavaria would release Hungarian families easily, but a request from me and Grand Duke Karlus was not something he could ignore. Until then, the two men meant to establish themselves here.
"Now, everyone, move out. From here on, it’s a race against time."
After my men dispersed, I paid a visit to the Finance Department’s offices. Unlike at Old Man Bertheim’s mansion, where I had sent word ahead, here I showed up unannounced, drawing flustered stares from every finance bureaucrat in the building.
The one I gave advance notice out of courtesy; the other I hit with a surprise raid, to deny them time to scheme. Never moving the way the enemy expects is my specialty, after all.
A brave young finance bureaucrat addressed me politely.
"The acting Finance Minister says his duties keep him occupied today, and asks that you return tomorrow."
"Then go and tell him that I’ll wait right here until tomorrow."
The bureaucrat’s face turned ashen. He was probably kicking himself for stepping forward and taking the brunt of it. Adelbert was clearly avoiding me. But did he really think he could?
The Gale Knight, the noble wolf, never releases his prey once his jaws have closed on it. By not forcing the door open and barging in, I had already spared him his dignity.
In the end, Adelbert granted me an audience.
"It’s been a while, acting Finance Minister. Hmm, have you been eating properly?"
"You have quite the talent for salting a man’s wounds, Baron."
Adelbert glared at me with open hostility, gaunt to the point of being skin and bone. The man who had never once lost his easy composure was now a bundle of raw nerves.
The false charge of parricide must have put him through hell.
I could feel something like killing intent in his burning gaze.
"I’ll pray that Count Reinfeldt’s soul finds rest."
"Hmph. That old fox is thrashing about in purgatory as we speak."
No one had wished for his father’s death more than Adelbert. That death had given him his chance to rise to Finance Minister; the trouble was the charge of parricide. Adelbert spoke as though tearing the words from his chest.
"I did not kill my father, Baron!"
He was telling the truth.