Black Iron’s Glory

Claude whistled softly as he watched the viscount and detective leave. He finally passed that ordeal. He knew that he would be one of the suspects after killing Sir Fux, since the matter of his father was quite widely known in town. He didn’t think that they would come to him so quickly though, and was under the impression that it would take the investigation some two or three days to catch up to him.

He calmly thought back at what happened and after making sure that there were no holes in his performance and story, he returned to the office. It seemed that he ought not look down on the intelligence of people no matter what world they were in. If it hadn’t been for his intentional casting of suspicion on himself so that he could lead the direction of the case elsewhere, he would’ve been arrested as the killer already.

For instance, Detective Joseph was really cool. As Wenisk spoke to Claude, Joseph had his eyes trailed on the latter the whole time without missing a single shred of his expressions. Fortunately, his business negotiations with his boss in his past life helped him develop the ability to act completely innocent and out of the know, allowing him to deflect suspicion from himself.

Wenisk wasn’t a simple person either. Even though he seemed quite carefree on the surface, he was collaborating perfectly with Joseph by trying to get more out of Claude. Yet, he didn’t realize that gave Claude the opportunity to perform his skit in its entirety to convince them that he wasn’t involved. Claude mostly spoke the truth anyway. A simple check by them would reveal that there were indeed arrangements prepared to get Sir Fux to fail the election.

With a better revenge plot in hand, nobody would suspect Claude to have been the one who killed the council member. Claude really wanted to use that method at first, but he no longer had any more time. He would have to leave for Kafreizit in a week to join Bluefeather. New recruits or officers alike wouldn’t be allowed to go home to meet their relatives until their first three years of service was over as per the kingdom’s regulations.

Claude was worried that after he left, his plot would be altered. After all, Sir Fux did serve as the council member representing Whitestag for 24 consecutive years after all. Whitestag was his power base and while Morssen’s suicide cast quite a shadow on him, the election was going to take place next year and there was still some time until then. People were forgetful and Sir Fux only had to toss them a few bones. The number of people who would turn on their own promises were too many to count.

If Sir Fux was elected once more, even if Whitestag had two other council members, the other two wouldn’t be able to compete with Sir Fux when it came to political power. They were only nuisances at best. They could also be suppressed by Sir Fux in some way, and that was far from what Claude wanted. He would startle the snake in the grass and suffer the consequences of the venom.

All that led to Claude making the decision to kill Sir Fux. That was the only choice for the sake of his family. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if Sir Fux chose to target his mother and younger siblings after he left Whitestag. Even though they now lived at Normanley Wood, Maria was far away at the royal capital and her influence couldn’t reach that far. If something really happened to them, it would be far too late for regret.

Claude was also going to join the military and going on the battlefield was an inevitability. He couldn’t be sure that he would definitely be lucky enough to survive one battle after another. There was no saying whether a stray bullet would hit him when he was most unexpecting it. If something like that really happened to him, Maria might take care of his family on account of their past relations, but that wouldn’t last forever either. It would only be a temporary arrangement.

Killing Sir Fux on the other hand was easy. Like Claude told the viscount and the detective just now, all he had to do was to sneak inside the manor and look for the old thing when nobody else noticed. A few shanks with a blade would take care of the problem. But that way, Claude would automatically be included in the top three suspect list. Even if he had an alibi, he was only delaying the inevitable. The more detailed the investigation became, the larger his chance of becoming exposed.

Thus, the best way to commit the murder was to make it as complicated as possible so as to mislead the investigators. The flaws in reasoning would pile up one after another and the deeper one delved into it, the more pitfalls there would be. If they ever found out that they had been led on a carousel, a lot of time would’ve been wasted, and the initial impetus for finding the killer would’ve long been replaced by a political one, which would be ideal for the politicians. The presidential scandals of the leader of the free world in his previous life were such examples.

That was what Claude had planned for. After receiving Maria’s letter that informed him about the new branch of the Watch opening up in Whitestag in light of recent developments, he gave up on using magic to assassinate Sir Fux. Instead, he used a simple disguise to approach his target and finished the deed. Not only did that allow him to elude the fate of being pursued by the Watch, it also managed to mislead Joseph and remove suspicion from himself.

In the following days, news about Sir Fux’s murder spread all around Whitestag. Uncle Tomas was elated to hear the man’s karmic fate. In fact, he believed he should’ve died long ago. As the ex-chief constable of Whitestag, Sir Fux wasn’t the least bit hesitant to talk about his reservations for Sir Fux. He said that the old man had deep connections in the prefectural capital and any development project in town had to be passed by him first before permission could be requested from the prefectural capital.

Even though Claude already planned to pull the old thing down from the elections next year, Tomas wasn’t quite that confident. What he was most worried about was his own election next year. He was worried that Sir Fux would sabotage his candidacy and cause him to be unable to participate. Now that the man was killed, a huge trouble had been rid of. It was truly far too lucky.

But after a few more days, the topic of Sir Fux’s murder suddenly stopped being spread around as if it had never existed in the first place. After Tomas found out what was going on, he told Claude secretively that Felidos and Wenisk found lots of proof of illegal dealings at Fux Manor and it was said to eclipse tens of thousands of crowns in value.

That was a stunning figure to behold. Even the royal capital no longer pestered Felidos to find the murderer, focusing their priorities instead on unearthing the back-door dealings. The archives in the city hall for the past decade were frozen for auditors from the royal capital to check. The two people in charge of channeling the funds in the national bank had also been detained. What awaited them was endless interrogation until they confessed.

Claude breathed a sigh of relief at how the whole case no longer concerned him. Sir Fux and Wharf’s sudden deaths had caused the proof of those illegal dealings to be found and maintained. All he had to do was give a slight push to prompt Felidos and Wenisk to turn their attention to the manor. There wasn’t anything more eye-catching for the royal capital than those dealings. That would help mitigate the consequences the navy would face for the murder of a council member.

His father had mentioned before when he had been teaching Arbeit that the eastward expansion of Whitestag was mainly pushed forward by Sir Fux. Some of the dealings didn’t even have to go through the town hall and the negotiations were conducted in private with the few people in power in the prefectural capital. The funds would then be funneled through the national bank into Sir Fux’s personal account. How the profits were split, however, wasn’t something Morssen could’ve hoped to know.

Morssen, the town secretary at the time, hated being summoned by the prefectural capital the most. That meant the negotiations for the expansion was already over and only Sir Fux’s signature was required. He would be the supervisor of the project and be in charge of ensuring the quality of the work. Every detail about the nature of the expansion, the prices, its start and deadline were unknown. All Morssen could do was to relay what he heard at the meeting to Sir Fux, who would proceed to deal with the matters himself.

He had hoped that sending his son over to Sir Fux would allow him to gather some evidence to be used against him so that he could turn the tables in the town hall in the future should he wish. Pushing down Sir Fux completely was impossible as he had a huge network in the prefectural capital. Whitestag was but a mere small town under the jurisdiction of that place and the slightest rumor would no doubt enter Sir Fux’s ear.

Fortunately, Sir Fux loved to swallow all the benefits himself without splitting any with the town hall. The eastward expansion was a complete black-box operation. The town hall only cooperated in a limited capacity a few times to produce some superficial documentation. That was the reason Tomas and the former treasurer and some others weren’t involved and could instead watch the show unfold from the sidelines. Quite a number of people in the prefectural capital were said to have been apprehended and countless others were dragged into the maelstrom. The case had become the number-one corruption scandal of the southwestern area of the kingdom.

Fux Manor, the largest estate in Whitestag, had been thoroughly checked. All of Sir Fux’s family members and relatives were either arrested or kept confined within the manor. One of Tomas’s old coworker who was involved in the investigation revealed when he was drunk how brave Sir Fux actually was. He had faked two small projects that cost around a thousand crowns without doing anything at all. That was all he did to get funds from the prefectural capital to put into his own pocket.

That wasn’t the only thing. There were many deals that couldn’t be checked in time. However, it was said that Sir Fux kept an account for all his dealings and profits as well as a name list. A few large figures in the royal capital were also involved, much to the shock of many.

But all that was no longer relevant to Claude. He took the old thing’s life with his own hands and managed to get away scotch free. Now, the only other person he held a grudge against was the leader of Blacksnake, Butcher Bill. He wasn’t sure whether the man was lucky or unlucky. He was now trapped in the camp of the stone outpost far away from Whitestag. Since there was no way Claude would go all the way there to kill him, he had no choice but to leave him alive for now.

Fortunately, Butcher Bill lost the entirety of his influence in Whitestag. Blacksnake was no more and their territory had been reclaimed by the naval base. All he had now was the position of bandsman. He could probably be promoted after the expansion of the town garrison into a keeper unit, but Mayor Felidos used to serve in the military as well. The mere sight of Bidlir, who was older than him, gave Felidos the urge to kick him out. But after he heard how Bidlir had contributed much to the formation of the garrison to serve the kingdom, he found himself unable to do so and allowed him to continue serving as a bandsman and transfer him to the logistics unit.

As Claude’s day of departure was coming closer and closer and Viscount Wenisk had his full attention focused on the investigation of the corruption scandal, the plans of the naval base were no longer hindered by Wenisk’s meticulousness. They were passed easily and Rodan hurriedly had the buildings in the western sector flattened so that construction could begin for real.

Claude had also finished all the work he had left at Normanley Real Estate. He was going to take two days of rest before leaving Whitestag to embark on his new journey.