Chapter 322: Justice Wears a Uniform
The Danube, the second-longest river in Europe, begins in southern Germany and flows through Romania into the Black Sea. Ulm was a trading hub along its upper reaches, and at one time enjoyed self-rule as a free imperial city.
When the Delich family bought up this city, they amassed wealth through trade between Bavaria and Beren. Then the city was absorbed into Beren, and the Counts Delich of Ulm rose to become a mighty power in the east.
And now, a hundred years later, they had volunteered to serve as mediators between Bavaria and Radensdorf, aiming to secure eastern hegemony alongside the Duke of Radensdorf.
It was thanks to this Count Delich family that cannons were brought in, too. They had staked everything on the Altringen civil war, pouring enormous sums into hiring mercenaries and spearheading war preparations, but in the end they lost.
They would hardly have warm feelings toward me, the man whose spectacular performance in that civil war had dealt them their defeat, and now that I had cracked down on a slum tangled up in their interests, the hostility between us had only deepened.
Western princes were bound to be on bad terms with eastern princes from the start, so I felt no particular sense of alarm. With the massive reparations following their defeat, they wouldn’t be flexing their power for quite a while.
The crown prince excused himself from the imperial crown prince for a moment and came over to me.
Now for the sensitive talk.
"Baron, isn’t that man a vassal noble of Ulm?"
The crown prince, who had built connections with the eastern nobles while staying at the Radensdorf palace, had recognized Viscount Erbach. He couldn’t understand why men who should have had nothing to do with this were protesting the slum crackdown.
"Your Royal Highness, this slum may well be a treasure vault."
"A treasure vault... You mean like the cozy ties between the Finance Department and the slums?"
The crown prince caught the metaphor and hit the nail on the head. I gave him a brief account of Count Palatine Heinlein, the man who had tried to kidnap Viola.
"So the count palatine recommended the handmaid to Louis, and then he tried to kidnap her. How curious. Louis sent that handmaid to you, so why go after her now, after all this time?"
"I doubt an old man was after her simply out of lust."
"Only a fool makes an enemy of a prince over a mere woman."
The crown prince seemed to sense there was something hidden about Viola, but I didn’t tell him the truth. Even the grand duke was reluctant to speak of it; it wasn’t a matter I could share with the crown prince.
That Viola carries the child of the younger brother she loved.
"We’ll know once we investigate, but the problem is that the eastern princes are tangled up in this too."
"The eastern princes could rally around Ulm and denounce you, Baron."
"Then the old men of the west will step up for me."
The western old men, who gnash their teeth at the east, would rain down attacks all on their own. Politics and factional logic are inseparable, and it was obvious the east held the weaker hand in the battle for justification as well.
Knowing the old men, they would use this to squeeze the eastern faction, and in that opening all I had to do was flatten the slum completely and extract what I wanted. This time it was the imperial crown prince who sought me out.
"Who was that noble who came by just now?"
"Viscount Erbach. A vassal noble of the Counts of Ulm."
"I overheard a bit just now. You saved him when he was being chased down by Bavarian cavalry?"
The imperial crown prince’s interest lay elsewhere. I told him about saving Viscount Erbach, who had been battered half to death and hunted by the Bavarian cavalry, and about how the man had refused to send me cavalry support. The imperial crown prince clicked his tongue.
"A noble with no sense of honor. I thought that breed existed only among the Habsburgs."
"Y-Your Highness! Watch your words, we are in a foreign land!"
"Ahem. Kindly keep it a secret that I insulted my own house."
At the sight of the flustered court marquis and the unrepentant imperial crown prince, the crown prince couldn’t hold back his laughter. I was just as dumbfounded, but it wasn’t hard to understand the imperial crown prince’s position.
They say it was the imperial crown prince who finally pulled the fractured Habsburgs together; how hellish must that process have been for words like that to slip out so naturally? It wasn’t even some other house but his own, which must have made it all the more maddening.
The saying that the Habsburgs’ greatest enemy is the Habsburgs is no idle talk. Without Maximilian’s deft diplomacy and Hungary’s invasion, the Habsburgs would never have united.
"The Director General is asking for you, Baron!"
While I was dealing with the imperial crown prince and the crown prince, Michael had been steadily sweeping through the slum, and at last he had most of the area under control. Sending for me was the signal that they had found suspicious characters.
The imperial crown prince and the crown prince followed me deep into the slum.
Having them tag along all the way to the scene didn’t sit right, so I tried to shoo them away on the grounds of safety.
"There are soldiers on every side. Isn’t this safer than a battlefield?"
"That may be, but absolutely no wandering off on your own."
"Hahaha! I shall obey your orders, Baron of Rosenheim."
Giving up on the shameless imperial crown prince, I turned my glare on the court marquis. The court marquis desperately dodged my gaze and cleared his throat over and over. Far from reining the imperial crown prince in, he was being dragged along at every turn.
"Your Royal Highness, you truly have my sympathies."
"I’m delighted someone appreciates my hard work."
Now I understood why the grand duke had dumped the job of entertaining the imperial crown prince on the crown prince. He had only put on a dignified front at the mediation between the duchies; at heart, the imperial crown prince was a boy brimming with curiosity and a thirst for adventure.
At any rate, bloody clashes had broken out during the suppression, and corpses lay strewn everywhere. The imperial crown prince, seeing the filthy back alleys of a slum for the first time, made a great fuss over it all. The court marquis looked like he was developing a headache.
The crown prince asked:
"Is this truly the first time Your Imperial Highness has seen back alleys like these?"
"My mother absolutely forbids me from going anywhere like this. If not for this opportunity, I might never have known what a slum even was. I imagine the slums of Innsbruck or Vienna are no different."
"Even so, to that extent..."
"If you ever met my mother, you would understand. Her overprotectiveness goes too far. Why else would I have slipped out of Tyrol behind her back? I’ll be in for quite the lecture when I return."
"The empress must cherish Your Imperial Highness dearly."
At the crown prince’s words, the imperial crown prince only smiled bitterly. It seems the imperial family over there has its own share of domestic troubles. The slum suppression was still ongoing, but most of those who resisted violently had been killed.
Michael shuddered and showed me the prisoners.
"These were the only ones we took alive. Stubborn bastards, the lot of them."
"Good work. Any dead among the duchy troops?"
"Five dead and thirty wounded."
"I’ll personally send condolence money to them."
"Oh, they’ll be thrilled to hear it."
I am never stingy with those who work for me. That’s also why I remain so popular with the duchy army. I could sense anxiety and unease in the eyes of the five captured men.
I questioned one of them.
"Are you the ones who tried to kidnap my handmaid?"
"Go rot in purgatory, you damned westerner!"
"How dare a filthy beggar like you!"
"Gyaaah!"
Thwack! Whack! Thwack! Thwack!
The furious knights kicked the gang member in the face and stomped him without mercy. If I hadn’t stopped them, he would have been beaten to death. We questioned them one by one, methodically, but most of them dodged the questions or kept their mouths shut.
But the last one glanced around nervously and asked:
"I-If I tell you everything, will you let me go?"
"I’ll protect you until this case is closed."
"Damn you, talk and you’ll be the first one I kill!"
The man who made the threat was dragged off by the knights and stomped mercilessly. Not every slum gangster strives to keep secrets. There are always plenty willing to betray others to save their own skin.
And that, I suppose, is the limit of a slum organization.
"It was the boss who ordered us to kidnap the handmaid called Viola."
"Of course it was. Brother-in-law, did we catch their boss?"
"If we comb the remaining blocks, he’ll come crawling out on his own, don’t you think?"
It would take a while, but if we could arrest the boss or anyone at officer level, I could get answers through interrogation whenever I pleased. Or else we’d find more damning evidence. The gang member, eyes darting, cried out:
"No need for that! The boss is hiding in the basement of that building!"
"You damned Hurensohn! Gyaaah!"
The rest of the gang members thrashed and struggled, and the soldiers stomped them down. The soldiers had already tasted blood, and there wasn’t a shred of mercy left. Before long the gangsters’ bodies went limp. Most of them looked dead, but it didn’t matter.
We had the decisive lead.