PDCOO Chapter 29

"Not only that. After the war, during the prisoner exchange, a bunch of our own wounded men vanished without a trace. Happened somewhere near here. When the higher-ups showed up to 'investigate'—what a nightmare. Give us meat, give us beds, carry us around—"

"That must have been hard."

"No kidding. And before the war too, some pretty-faced nobleman came and—no, never mind. What's the point. I'm just making myself angry."

Another worker added his share.

"Right. Nobles are so irritating. Not a bit of use, any of them!"

"If another one shows up and turns this village upside down, that's it. We'll bury him up to his neck in the farm field. Anna would probably allow it."

The workers laughed at each other.

In the meantime, Bertram arrived at a firm resolution.

Under no circumstances would he reveal his identity.

The pot came to a boil. Tasteless vegetable broth, into which the workers dunked dry bread to soften it. They kept themselves fed with conversation for nutrition, then left for the fields—leaving a message: if Bertram saw Anna later, could he get them some snacks.

He was just heading down toward the restaurant when he saw someone climbing toward him fast. Not Anna. A village man, hands empty. Not a meal delivery.

"Hey, Bertram! ...Why are you looking at my hands first?"

"No reason. What's happened?"

"Some fancy people are looking for you. The chief is buying time at the restaurant, but who knows when they'll start wandering. Stay in the dormitory, he said."

Fancy people.

He had a reasonable guess. He asked anyway.

"Was there a particularly handsome man among them?"

"Couldn't say myself, but the chief said—'You could cut that face off and sell it for a solid gold ingot, but the buyer would be returning it in three days for bad temperament'—so, one of those, apparently."

No need for a second question.

Franz Gerhardt.

His old friend had come himself.

Franz Gerhardt, third son of a ducal house, had lived a life unmarked by hardship or hunger.

When the war began, he'd remained in Schleisen under the designation Guardian of the Capital—a privilege extended to members of the Gerhardt family.

Some men in the family—the ones who'd spent years eating scraps of recognition, hoping to accumulate any small achievement—had volunteered for the front anyway. But not Franz, ranked among the finest knights in three generations of family history. He'd stood in the palace with the ancestral sword, keeping the city safe.

Even as Bertram stood on the front lines.

He'd told himself it was duty. Most of the time, he could nearly believe it. The war had ended. Bertram had come home alive. Franz had thought perhaps he could finally live a reasonably uncomplicated life.

"...How did I end up here."

A backwater village, delivered to him as a mission by the king. This place had been introducing him to every strange form of difficulty he'd never encountered before.

A quiet village with hardly any people—he'd thought half a day would yield something useful. Instead, the four soldiers he'd deployed for questioning had each spent the afternoon achieving something specifically useless.

One was caught sharing dried meat with a local and gossiping, apparently hoping Franz wouldn't notice.

One was found swimming in a clear mountain stream with the villagers, announcing that nature was the finest thing in the world.

The third—who had been carrying an elderly woman on his back, an old woman muttering my son, find my son, he must be buried somewhere nearby—was at least human, Franz conceded.

When he finally found Erich, he questioned his own vision.

Why was this man crouching at the laundry area, wringing out somebody else's clothes?

"Erich. What exactly are you doing."

Erich stood with the alert posture of a man attempting to look casual while being entirely incriminating. Sleeves rolled. Soap foam and water running down solid forearms. Water droplets across his glasses, which made him look even more helplessly innocent than usual.

His explanation was equally unimpressive.

"I—I was gathering information, sir!"

"What information do you expect to find in that cloth."

"..."

Franz swallowed a sigh and a shout, and looked elsewhere. A short distance away, Erich's horse and Monat grazed contentedly side by side. A laundry basket had hoofprints stamped into the clothes inside it. The narrative assembled itself.

'Got dragged by Monat and trampled some village woman's washing.'

'Well. Better than Monat trampling the woman.'

Franz nodded—handle it—and Erich immediately began attacking the hoofprint with soap. Franz turned toward the woman nearby.

Time to demonstrate to his subordinates what effective information-gathering actually looked like.

"Good afternoon, my lady."

At my lady, the woman at the washing—Lara—startled.

"Me?"

He recognized the voice.

This was the woman who'd passed information through Erich at the previous city, claiming Bertram was targeting a flock of sheep somewhere to the southeast.

Franz acknowledged her at once.

"You're the one who sent us that important information through Sir Erich, aren't you."

"Have we... met?"

"Not in person, I'm afraid. But I remember your voice. I confess I hadn't quite imagined someone so charming."

Franz lowered himself to one knee before her, accepting wet trousers as the cost of doing business. What mattered was extracting any further trace of Bertram from this woman.

He began with his most reliable opening.

"My name is Franz Gerhardt. May I ask yours?"

"I—I'm Lara."

"A lovely name. It suits those eyes. Are you from this village originally?"

The technique: ask questions he didn't actually need answered—establish I find you interesting—and once she was talking, move to the ones that mattered. In Franz's experience, once he smiled, most women began telling him everything they knew in order to extend the conversation by another few minutes.

This time, it went badly. Almost immediately.

"Wait! You were just trying to make your eyes smile at me!"

"...Pardon?"

"The elders always said to watch out for handsome men! So that's what they meant!"

Lara held her washing up between her face and his. The problematic face vanished from her line of sight. Franz, who had not yet registered that this approach was over, said blankly:

"My lady...?"

"Charm me with lovely and then fillet me to the bone? I won't be fooled! I—I genuinely don't know anything useful. I'm completely worthless to you! I'm not even that pretty!"

"That wasn't my intention at all—"

"Who compliments a woman they've just met without something to gain? What do you actually want? There are far more beautiful women in the city. Are you—are you after my innocence?"

"Absolutely not—"

Franz broke.

He snatched the laundry out of her hands and threw it behind him. Erich sprinted after it.

Lara stared up at him with eyes wide as a startled deer.

"I'm looking for a man called Bertram," Franz said, flatly, honestly, all technique abandoned.

"Well! You could have said so at the start!"

"If I had, would you have given me accurate information? Rather than an unverifiable story about sheep?"

"So you're calling me a liar? I told you what I'd heard! City people are so suspicious about everything!"

Lara grumbled and bent back toward her laundry. From above, she looked like someone pointedly concentrating on her own business. But from where she stood, hidden from Franz's view, her hands were shaking.

He'd looked like a prince, moments ago. Beautiful in the way that made sense from a distance. Then he'd shouted, and his eyes had gone hard as weaponry. This was precisely why the old warnings about handsome men from the city existed. She was receiving a comprehensive education in the subject right now.

The problem was what came next.

'What do I do? Bertram is hiding in the communal dormitory. If they put pressure on me, I won't last ten seconds.'

But fortunately, what she was imagining did not happen.

"I apologize for raising my voice."

Franz offered the apology without decoration. Lara straightened and watched him carefully. The anger was gone. More than gone—he was looking at her the way a person might look at an ordinary stone in the road.

"Have you learned anything new about Bertram?"

"I've been doing housework all day. Haven't spoken to anyone. I just came out to do laundry, and then this gentleman with the glasses decided to—"

"Answer."

The entire apparatus of gentle inquiry had vanished. Franz's sentences were blunt. Clipped. One at a time.

Lara, diminished, answered.

"I don't know anything. The chief would know—whenever something happens in the village, he's the first to find out."

"I spoke with him this afternoon. He had nothing."

"The chief is always running around somewhere. He might have spoken to someone since then."

"...Understood. Let's go."

Franz gestured for his soldiers. Erich—holding the laundry with the careful uncertainty of a man returning something he'd made somewhat worse—was included in the gesture.

Erich mouthed sorry as he handed the bundle back. What arrived in Lara's arms was washing she'd have to do again.

Once she'd confirmed all five men and six horses had put sufficient distance between themselves and her, Lara threw the laundry into the basket and shouted after their retreating backs.

"Absolutely unbelievable!"

The soldiers, for their part, felt no cleaner about the day than she did. One of the older men spoke quietly to Franz.

"We're not going to get anywhere by antagonizing the locals, sir. Offering to carry that laundry home would have built goodwill. We could have had Erich do it."

"We're not staying long enough to invest in goodwill. If a formal apology becomes necessary, Erich can deliver it."

So that's what I'm here for, Erich thought, releasing the quietest possible sigh. But privately he hoped he'd be given the chance. She'd been muttering the whole time she washed—about having so few clothes she needed to hang them quickly or she'd have nothing to change into. Had she gone back alone and washed all of it again?

The thought was cut short. Even on horseback, Franz stopped whenever he spotted a villager, ordering his soldiers to question them. Even Erich, who had been unfailingly courteous throughout the day, looked visibly worn by evening.