I left His Lordship in Karl’s care, descended the tower, and made my way alone to King Sighart and Queen Natasha. I’d expected that I wouldn’t be able to meet with them until nightfall, but to my surprise, I was admitted to their office immediately. For some reason, the two of them seemed a little worn out as they debriefed me; with a bit of curiosity in a corner of my mind, I presented the information I’d just obtained.
“That concludes my report,” I finished.
“Hmm...” His Majesty mused. “So, he feels guilty over his past crimes... He told you so himself?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. He concealed his illness because he didn’t believe it to be a significant concern, apparently. I had him promise to tell me everything on future occasions, rather than making such judgments on his own.”
“Can we really trust him on that?” Her Majesty asked. “What if it’s all an act? We can’t exactly give you new orders after he kills you in your sleep.”
“In his days as a villain, he was never the sort of man to devise such strategies. He might have contemplated how exactly to take my life, but never what he ought to do to arrive at that point—such was the nature of his madness. To my mind, the fact that he hasn’t charged at me to kill me on the spot is proof enough that he remains sane.”
“That’s a pretty disturbing standard of judgment... But, all right. I see...”
After hearing my report, His Majesty closed his eyes in contemplation. I carefully kept my shoulders relaxed as I awaited his response, trying not to let my nervousness show. I didn’t feel good about concealing my failure like this; there was something deeply self-serving about it all. However, I’d given them the full truth about the source of Lord Heinreid’s stress—as much as I’d been able to glean from him, at least. I could have reported the cause as the trivial matters he’d described initially, but if I distorted things that far, I really would be perjuring myself. I just needed to show them that as he was now, he wasn’t a threat to the kingdom. If I couldn’t do that, he’d have no future. I wouldn’t have been able to keep the truth from them for long in any case. The pair sitting before me weren’t a mere boy and girl—they were king and queen. The saviors who’d freed our kingdom were harsh and unyielding against evil, and they had sharp noses for deception.
After a time, His Majesty’s eyelids slowly opened. His clear blue eyes stared straight at me, and I stiffened where I stood.
“Craig, about yesterday... After you and Karl gave your reports, Natasha and I actually went through the palace archives to look into his history.”
“You did, Your Majesty?”
“Yeah. Thinking back to the reports you’ve given us and the way he looked at the trial, he does seem to have become much more meek and peaceful. I was wondering whether maybe that was his true self to begin with. In that case, there might have been something specific that made him lose his mind, right? I thought if we could find out what that was, it might be the key to resolving this whole situation.”
That made sense—I had to admit I’d been blind to to that possibility. I still believed that the villainous duke and the present Lord Heinreid were different people entirely, but the fact was that they shared a single body. Rather than imagining that such a cruel, brutal nature could blossom completely unprompted, it was more natural to assume that he must have suffered some sort of trauma terrible enough to drive him to villainy.
“My deepest thanks for making time to attend to this matter amid your busy schedule, Your Majesty,” I said, bowing my head. “In any case, were you able to uncover any clues?”
I felt a little impatient as I questioned him, but he continued speaking with visible discomfort.
“The thing is... Pretty much all of the records on House Rodvelia—or, more precisely, all the records from before Heinreid von Rodvelia became duke—were completely missing.”
The records were missing?
Question marks floated in my head. I didn’t understand what he meant.
“When you say ‘missing,’ Your Majesty...”
“I mean exactly what it sounds like. All of the records older than eight years ago are gone—his entire family tree too.”
That was bizarre—no, unthinkable. The royal palace of Amagis held records on all the noble houses tasked with overseeing territories of the kingdom. Especially for a family as important as House Rodvelia, there ought to have been in-depth documentation of their finances and their dealings with other nobles. To erase those was to cut out an entire chunk of history. This was a major issue—it could easily lead to problems for the kingdom down the line. Given House Rodvelia’s significance, there would be plenty of people familiar with their history, of course, but completely reconstructing those extensive records from oral testimony would be impossible. The duchy of Rodvelia was currently being governed by the house’s various vassals as an interim measure—but eventually, when His Majesty formally appointed a new duke, the missing records would definitely cause an administrative headache. After all, the only model we had for how to run the duchy was from those days of evil.
His and Her Majesty were also acutely aware of the strangeness of the situation. The three of us in the room were all wearing the same expression of concern.
“The records were all suppressed—or destroyed, maybe. Either way, it must have been my brother’s work, knowing how obsessed he was with the duke.”
“Sig, I’m sorry to talk about your family this way, but your brother was absolutely insane...” Her Majesty said wearily. “We were trying to find out what turned the duke evil, but now it’s looking more and more like the duke was the culprit behind everything from the start.”