Chapter 177: New Identity

A messenger could have carried the letter, but the fact that the Grand Duke was insisting on sending it through me was proof of how important the matter was. Having me deliver it personally, rather than some random courier, carried weight.

"I have many to recommend, but I don’t know if any will fit what you’re looking for."

"His ability as a magistrate has to be solid, naturally. Beyond that, fair and just in all matters, and bold enough not to bend under outside pressure. Is there anyone like that?"

"If such a person existed, I would have promoted him myself, first thing."

The Chief Justice clicked his tongue, calling my conditions absurd. Fair enough. If men who met those requirements were common, the world would be a genuinely just place, wouldn’t it? The Chief Justice fell into deep thought.

"There is one suitable candidate that comes to mind."

"I thought you said you’d promote anyone like that yourself?"

"He’s a retired magistrate. He was the very picture of stubbornness among the magistrates. He held to principle so rigidly that even I had trouble managing him. I heard he’s fallen on hard times recently."

The very picture of stubbornness? Wasn’t stubbornness just another way of saying inflexible and pigheaded? For someone handling the law, that kind of temperament might actually be preferable, but whether he’d suit me was another question.

"If he’s retired, he must be fairly elderly."

"Not at all. He’s only just past forty."

"Isn’t that far too young to retire?"

"He was fair, but his stubbornness drew so much hostility from those around him that he was forced into retirement."

Apparently it didn’t matter what era you lived in—standing out too much at work got you ostracized. And in this medieval era, the consequences could be even more severe. Hmm, this was getting interesting.

I had my own outsider streak, so I felt a certain kinship with him.

I asked the Chief Justice to set up an introduction.

With the execution of the heinous Schwarz Wolves decided, their atrocities were spread widely among the citizens of Breisburg. The fact that I had been the one to capture them was kept under wraps. I’d had enough fame.

"Damn it. I was trying to enjoy a relaxing vacation."

Michael, who had been on vacation in Feuzen, ended up being forcibly summoned back to Breisburg. At a crucial moment like this, there was no way the heir to the Military Department could be lounging on vacation.

A messenger had been dispatched along with my father-in-law’s furious orders, and Michael had been dragged back that very night. After hearing the whole story, he was so dumbfounded he couldn’t speak for a while. That was how everyone reacted on first hearing.

"With civil war potentially brewing, it doesn’t make sense for an important figure like my brother-in-law to be absent, does it?"

"That’s exactly what’s frustrating me. The tax embezzlement is one thing, but civil war out of nowhere? Weren’t you supposed to be off catching a vicious criminal? How did you end up tangled in all of this?"

That was exactly what I wanted to ask. If I traced it back, the whole thing had started five years ago when survivors of the Great War had begun dying under mysterious circumstances. Back then, I’d had no idea things would balloon to this scale.

To make it up to a sulking Michael for the forced summons, we were now out at the Breisburg Grand Plaza watching the executions. The Chief Justice had told me there’d be an entertaining spectacle.

Maybe because it was the day the Schwarz Wolves were being executed, the crowd in the plaza had gathered like storm clouds. We weren’t mixed in with them, of course. We were watching from the rooftop of the university building, which offered a great view.

And it wasn’t just Michael with me—Adelbert was there too. He’d arrived a little late. The moment the two spotted each other, their expressions turned sour. After all, this was a meeting of Military and Finance.

Still, they didn’t immediately throw punches the way my father-in-law would have.

My father-in-law was too much to handle.

The younger generation really was more rational.

"Well, look who it is. The unfilial son who locked his father in a back room."

"You’re still riding my brother-in-law’s coattails and somehow you’ve still got the nerve to show your face."

Rational, my ass.

They might as well start swinging.

Michael and Adelbert hadn’t always gotten along this badly. Hilda used to call Adelbert by the affectionate nickname Adel, and there had been some friendly exchange between them. The problem, as always, was the Finance Minister.

The way he’d antagonized the entire Military Department had soured the relationship between Michael and Adelbert by association. With the Finance Minister, the root cause, now out of the picture, I’d hoped the heirs could at least build some rapport.

Before the executions began, a priest was reading prayers over the Schwarz Wolves, who had been beaten nearly to a pulp by torture. They didn’t even have the strength to respond, simply waiting for death like the pitiful creatures they’d become.

Anyone who’d seen the state of the Berten hideout and the hunter’s cabin could never feel a shred of pity for those bastards. The executioners emerged with their hoods pulled over their heads.

Kill them! Kill them! Kill them!

The stressed-out citizens of Breisburg loved this bloody spectacle that set their nerves on edge. They roared with excitement at the executioners with their axes raised.

Splat!

Roaaar!

Every time a condemned man’s head fell, the cheers swelled like at a festival. Honestly, it looked like a concert. One by one, the eight prisoners lost their heads, until only the last one remained.

The final executioner failed to take the head off cleanly in one stroke.

I checked with my Manager Scouter, just in case. It was Stock.

Boooo!

The crowd began jeering. Flustered, Stock swung the axe again, but this time he missed entirely. Furious now, the crowd started throwing stones.

"The lowborn fool ruined the mood."

"He’ll be beaten to death by the crowd."

Michael and Adelbert clicked their tongues.

Not a trace of sympathy for the executioner in either of them.

I’d heard that an executioner who failed to take a head cleanly would be beaten to death by the crowd, but I’d never expected to see it happen in front of me. Another executioner took over and finished the job, but the booing only grew louder.

Wait—if he got killed in this mess, my precious doctor was gone! Just as I was about to step in to rescue Stock, the Manager Scouter showed me his unexpectedly calm state of mind, and I stopped.

Some of the people in the crowd putting a noose around his neck turned out to be from the Judicial Department. In other words, this was a performance. They were making it look like the enraged crowd was dragging the executioner away to lynch him.

So this was the strategy? Staging a death to launder an identity? Stock was hauled off in an instant by the Judicial men disguised as the mob. I finally understood what the Chief Justice had wanted me to see.

"Well, that was a decent diversion. By the way, Mister Finance Heir—we’re mobilizing five hundred ducal troops, so how about you front us the training expenses?"

"Stop talking nonsense and submit a formal request to the Finance Department through proper channels."

"You and your father really are two of a kind when it comes to inflexibility."

"And pigheadedness must run in your family?"

If you’re going to fight, take it outside, you bastards. I’d deliberately brought the two of them together, and now I was regretting it. If the heirs were like this, even after they took over their fathers’ seats they’d be brawling with each other.

The mobilization of ducal troops was a countermeasure against the training exercises being conducted by the eastern princes. My father-in-law planned to gather ducal forces around Breisburg for large-scale drills of his own as a check.

My father-in-law had recently picked up an additional worry—namely, my younger brother-in-law Ulrich. Nothing weighed on a father’s heart like a child slipping out of his control. And Ulrich had ample reason to do so.

As the second son, Ulrich was always going to be pushed aside in favor of Michael. That being the case, there was a good chance the Grand Duke had pulled him in with the offer of a good position or some equivalent reward.

The two of them had been busy and headed off first, but I stayed behind to wait for word. A while later, a man from the Judicial Department came for me. He led me to the slums. They had apparently moved Stock from the plaza into the slums.

I used to find walking the dangerous slum streets stressful, but now the slum kids ran the moment they spotted me. I’d heard Treppen and a new organization were expanding their influence in the slums. Maybe I should pay them a visit sometime.

"This way."

When we rounded the corner, we found the spot where Stock and his wife were hiding. The unease vanished from their faces the moment they saw me, replaced by clear relief.

"My lord, these two are officially dead to the outside world. If you give them new given names and a surname and settle them on your estate, no one will know. They mustn’t be seen by other executioners, of course."

"And the executioner clan thinks they’re dead too?"

"Of course. They’ll never set foot anywhere near this area again."

The Judicial guide tried to soften his disgusted expression. I pressed two silver coins into his hand as a personal thank-you. The guide vanished, looking satisfied. He’d probably been hoping for exactly that.

"W-we, we are n-now your p-people, my lord?"

"Yes. You are no longer executioners. You are my people."

"W-we no longer h-have to k-kill anyone?"

"If you’ve built up sin by taking lives, then from now on you can wash it away by saving them."

It had taken a long time to bring this couple into my fold since we first met in the rain. They’d left the lowest of the low behind and would now live as doctors on my estate.

I’d already thought of the surname I would give them.

Arzt. The German word for doctor, but a word not yet in use in this era.

"Arzt... that, that is our s-surname?"

"Yes. And throw away the name Stock. Choose new names for yourselves."

The Stocks wept and kept repeating the surname they’d been newly granted. The surname Arzt, I believed, would be the beginning of a new family of doctors centered in Feuzen.

And finally, word came from the crown prince.

The audience with the queen had been arranged.