The carriage they’d shoved me into shuddered and shook violently. With each jolt, I bumped my head hard, and stars danced on the insides of my eyelids. The roads from my estate to the palace weren’t all that bad, but the soldier serving as the coachman—I was pretty sure he was the man who’d come to speak with me on behalf of Heinreid’s devotees—was driving the horses as fast as he could. With the poison still in my system, I was stuck sliding back and forth as the carriage buffeted my body.
Karl, on the other hand, wore a calm, undisturbed expression as he sat on the other side with his legs crossed.
“I bet it’d be a way more comfortable ride if you were the one driving.”
I assumed he’d ignore me, so I was just muttering to myself, but to my surprise, Karl actually responded.
“If that were the case, then the current coachman would be sitting here in my place. Even among your former devotees, he bears you an especially strong resentment, and I imagine that you would simply find yourself bruised by fists rather than inanimate objects.”
“You really say the nastiest stuff with a straight face...”
Well, betraying people who’d trusted you would always come back to bite you one way or another, I supposed. Not that I had any real sympathy as I recalled exactly what those guys and Heinreid had used to do together.
“By the way, how long have you been one of Eberhart’s people anyway?”
As long as Karl was actually talking to me, I tried asking about one of the things I’d been wondering. Even as fast as we were going, we still had a long ride ahead of us.
“Were you not already aware?”
“No—I wasn’t totally sure until yesterday.”
I’d never thought that Karl was totally loyal to Heinreid, but I’d only figured out that he was fully working for the king once I’d returned from the palace, as I’d dragged my body around the manor. He’d carried out my order to have the estate cleaned up a little too perfectly. Even setting aside the fact that he’d emptied out the First Dungeon, the soldiers I’d thrown in there absolutely hated my guts—it didn’t make any sense that I’d returned home without running into an ambush. There was always the possibility that he’d just killed them all... But in the end, the answer had been pretty much what I’d expected. Karl had offered them a chance for revenge, neatly gathered them under his command, and made them his pawns.
This butler’s poker face was just too perfect, and I’d genuinely had no clue who he was working for until right before he’d revealed it himself. The things I’d realized earlier on about Karl had all been more...well, obvious, normal stuff.
“It would be difficult to say precisely how long, but I was tasked by His Majesty with your surveillance following my predecessor’s passing—once I had officially taken over his position. Until that point, I was genuinely a perfectly ordinary household servant, nothing more.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. I imagine that my predecessor served in the same capacity prior to me. When I took up residence in his quarters, I discovered this in the bottom of a securely locked drawer. I am authorized to use it freely as the situation requires.”
Karl stuck a finger into his collar and pulled out a ring on a thin chain.
Wait, is that... Shit, it’s a signet ring?! And it’s even got an amaryllis on it! So that means...
“You wrote that damn letter?!”
“For the record, I do not believe I was able to perfectly reproduce His Majesty’s handwriting.”
“How the hell was I supposed to check the handwriting on all those tiny, crammed-together words?”
After I’d released Elmer from the Second Dungeon, Karl had brought over that cursed letter from Eberhart. The entire page had been covered in black ink, and I hadn’t had the will to read back over it again. I’d definitely clocked that it had shown up too quickly—but Karl had ghostwritten it, huh?
Normally, forging a letter from the king would be just about as treasonous as you could possibly get, but Eberhart must’ve personally given Karl permission. Originally, it had probably been meant as an emergency restraint mechanism in case Heinreid started getting too out of control... But even then, what the hell? Something was seriously wrong with Eberhart’s head.
“Nevertheless, my primary role was still to serve His Grace the Duke. His Majesty merely wished me to report to him periodically on the duke’s activities and demeanor, not to fully place myself under his service. However...”
The ring twirled around in his dexterous fingers, then vanished back into his collar.
“Following the sudden disappearance of the master I actually served, the frequency and content of my reports did change to a degree.”
Karl spoke matter-of-factly as he fussily smoothed out a slight rumple near his collar.
“So, when did you actually notice that ‘disappearance,’ exactly?”
“Immediately upon your awakening after your fall, when you refrained from executing Carlos Bureau.”
Well, that tracks—he brought over that letter the very next day, so he had to have noticed early. But that’s practically right from the beginning! Didn’t he jump to that conclusion a little too fast?
“However, I only obtained irrefutable proof following your release of Elmer Kisch from the Second Dungeon. If you’ll recall, I asked you at the time whether his release was in accordance with your wishes, and you answered that it was.”
“That’s all it took?”
“The content of your answer was certainly strange, but your mistake was in answering my question at all. You had tasked me solely with investigation into the First Dungeon. If I were to inquire into matters unrelated to my orders, His Grace would say—”
“‘Who brought up the Second Dungeon? Enough of your frivolous prying, Karl. To death with you.’ Would that have been about right?” I cut him off with words pulled straight from my Heinreid Phrasebook.