Chapter 324: Gallows or the Stake
Greed always invites disaster, and men only repent after they’ve taken a beating. That is an eternal, unchanging truth. I tried to treat him kindly and he pushed his luck without end. The lackey, who had been walking all over me, was now trembling like a leaf.
"Feel like answering properly now?"
"Th-The butler of the Heinlein house!"
His lips were as light as a feather.
He hadn’t received orders from Count Heinlein directly. The count had sent the lackey into the slum through his butler, and the kidnapping of Viola had been outsourced to the Bull. The count had built himself an escape hatch in advance.
A very cunning bastard. If things went wrong, he could deny everything and claim the butler and the lackey had acted on their own. Splitting hairs over wording is a noble’s art of survival.
It would have been convenient if this era had audio recordings, but I had something even more reliable—the Scouter—so I could judge whether the lackey’s information was true or false. The interrogation starts now.
"How long have you worked for the count’s house?"
"About ten years. I’m from Madenburg, and after I was driven out of my village, I settled in the Radensdorf slum and scraped by until the Heinlein house butler took notice of me, and I’ve been running errands as their lackey ever since."
"A bit long-winded, but I like the cooperative attitude."
"Th-Thank you, sir. Heh heh."
Grinning ear to ear like that, the man truly had no spine at all. No wonder he’d spent ten years as nothing but a lackey. Unlike nobles, who live for honor and die for pride, commoners of this breed are genuinely easy to handle.
"So, what sort of work did you mainly do?"
"I was mostly assigned to the slum side of things, so anything illegal—like kidnapping your handmaid, my lord—I outsourced to the Bull. This slum used to have all sorts of gangs running wild, but the Bull subdued every last one of them. That’s when that ignorant butcher started being called the ruler of the underworld."
"Funnel everything through a single window and he’s easier to put to work. Was it Count Heinlein who backed the Bull?"
"Not just Heinlein. I once heard him bragging over drinks that he also worked with the Counts Delich of Ulm and the Counts Neustadt of Dellingen. Whether that was hot air or the truth, I couldn’t say."
Talk over drinks is usually ninety percent hot air, but the fact that Viscount Erbach, Count Delich’s proxy, came to protest to me was proof enough that Delich and Neustadt were surely customers of the slum.
Even the testimony of this lackey, prattling away with feather-light lips about every little thing, carried plenty of credibility. The lackey even packaged his words as top-grade intelligence and told me where the errand runners for those houses could be found.
"That errand runner, as far as I know, should be somewhere around the south end of the slum. Heh heh."
"Decent information, as far as it goes, but I have no interest in those men. Give me something else."
I didn’t know what Delich and Neustadt were sucking out of Radensdorf, but my target was, first and last, the Heinlein house alone. The slum had been wrecked, but slums grow back like weeds.
Besides, the residents were all set to be released once the blockade lifted, so only the Bull’s faction had been smashed; new slum gangs would sprout like poisonous mushrooms soon enough. Isn’t that the filthy way of the world?
"Th-Then how about the story of the butler having his way with a nun of Schafen..."
"I couldn’t care less whether he beds a nun or the abbess herself. What I want to know is Count Heinlein’s business outside the slum and his connection to the Finance Minister of Breisburg."
Judging by how they employed a man with feather-light lips as their lackey, the Heinlein house was sloppier than I’d thought. There are many devious men in this world, but there are far more stupid ones.
"I-I’m just the slum-side errand boy, so I don’t know much about that sort of thing."
"You dare lie to my face? Clearly your education isn’t finished. Anton!"
The great flag bearer of our Gale Knights slammed the lackey’s skull into the table with perfect timing. When his reddened forehead began to swell and bruise, the lackey confessed.
"I-I know the rumors! S-Stop! Aagh!"
"Anton, stop. Good. What rumors?"
"I heard it from a friend, so I can’t swear it’s true!"
The Scouter let me see through every lie, but this time it was the truth. What errand runners babble while gambling and drowning in drink rarely holds a shred of truth, but even a rumor would do.
If even a scrap of good information came out, then next time it wouldn’t be the slum but those nobles we’d be hauling in. Friction with Delich or Neustadt might follow, but if anything, they were the ones who needed to be careful.
The way I saw it, this illicit business could only have turned such a fat profit because the Duke of Radensdorf, who had needed to rally the east, allowed it. But this territory now belongs to the grand duke.
They were at a stage where they needed to negotiate with the grand duke to defend those profits by any means, so clashing with a leading figure of the grand duke’s faction would be shooting themselves in the foot. That’s why they had stopped at a mere protest.
"There’s regular lake trade running between Schafen and Homanson. But according to my friend, sometimes ships come in outside the regular trade."
"Could just be off-schedule trade. Trade doesn’t only happen on fixed days, does it?"
"A friend of my friend works as a dockhand at the Boden harbor, and he says that late one night, under a full moon so bright you didn’t even need a lamp, he saw a ship quietly mooring at the pier!"
"Not even a light? Now that’s suspicious. Most of it is probably hot air, but there’s no harm in investigating. Still, is there even anything worth smuggling around these parts?"
"That I couldn’t tell you either, heh heh."
I didn’t know what was being smuggled, but smuggling was one of the few crimes through which a merchant could make a fortune. It carried the ultimate penalty; get caught, and it wasn’t the gallows but the stake. It all comes down to taxes.
I couldn’t yet judge whether this information was solid, but at the very least, the lackey’s testimony was truthful. Since there was no mention of anyone getting roasted over a fire, it seemed most people had dismissed it as hot air.
Poaching is just as widespread as the smuggling and black-market dealing of merchants. Commoners only have the right to eat meat from livestock; obtaining meat by hunting is illegal.
Only the owner of the land holds the right to hunt. It’s the same as how the distribution of aurochs meat became illegal after I banned aurochs hunting in Feuzen.
I did plan to permit hunting again once the population recovered.
Of course, only the hunter families of Feuzen may hunt on the lord’s behalf.
"So there’s a chance Count Heinlein has a hand in smuggling."
"Heh heh, my employer is a terribly greedy man, so he’s certainly involved."
The lackey ran down his own employer without a moment’s hesitation, apparently hoping to curry favor and be released. Ten years of feeding at that trough, yet true to his self-serving nature, he was a man devoted to saving his own skin.
At any rate, there was a possibility that Count Heinlein of Schafen was dabbling in smuggling. The lord of that land might even be in on it. Best to keep every possibility open.
Baron Schafen, a vassal lord of Radensdorf, is the man who manages the Boden trade, and he is bound to render a fixed tax to the master of Radensdorf.
But if it’s smuggling?
Set aside the illicit profits; that’s embezzlement of tax revenue.
In this era, a noble padding his own purse isn’t especially damning. The problem is skimming the king’s taxes. If the charges were proven, the heads of the Lord of Schafen and Count Heinlein could both roll.
But without hard evidence, rash speculation is forbidden.
Treating a drunkard’s babble as evidence would be idiocy.
"Interesting information. See, you can do it when you try. Anything else?"
"I believe a guest from Breisburg is staying at the Heinlein estate."
"A guest? How would a lackey like you know that?"
"I eavesdropped on the butler and an attendant talking. Heh heh."
Sharp ears on this one, too.
A guest from Breisburg.