My Name Is There Too
The moment the conference room doors shut, the Minister of Finance rose from his seat.
He pretended to move slowly, but his strides were quick.
The old man was heading straight back to the Ministry of Finance.
Not to hand over the ledgers—to destroy them.
"Your Excellency."
At my call, the Minister's steps halted.
He turned slowly.
"What is it, Count Berdel?"
Only moments ago he had kept his mouth shut before the Imperial Princess. The instant we left the conference room, strength returned to his voice.
It meant the Princess was terrifying—but I was not. The original Cassian Berdel had been nothing more than a sycophant who knew only how to laugh and chatter at her side.
"Are you going to the Ministry of Finance?"
"Her Highness ordered the ledgers surrendered, did she not?"
"She did."
"Then step aside."
I did not move.
The Minister's brows twitched.
"Count."
"Yes."
"Just because Her Highness granted you authority does not make you the master of the Ministry of Finance."
"I am aware."
I lifted the ring on my finger.
Carved into the red gem were the imperial crest and the mark of the regency.
The gazes of the imperial guards stationed along both sides of the corridor snapped to the ring.
"Which is precisely why I intend to verify it starting now."
"Verify what?"
"Who the true master of the Ministry of Finance is."
The Minister's face hardened.
I raised a hand toward the guards.
"You two—return to Guard Headquarters. Take a full squad and seal the main gates and the archives of the Ministry of Finance."
The guards did not move at once.
Of course they didn't. By imperial rank alone I was the sort of man who should have been sitting in a corner of the conference room. Holding the Princess's ring did not make me the Princess.
I slipped the ring free and set it on my open palm.
"By order of Her Highness Adelia."
They were the men who had been guarding the conference room doors. They had heard with their own ears the Princess entrusting full authority to me.
"Seal every entrance to the Ministry of Finance. Do not let a single person leave, and bar anyone from entering."
The Minister raised his voice.
"What do you think you're doing!"
I ignored him and continued.
"Secure the archives and the accounting offices first. Douse every brazier with water. Anyone who burns so much as a single sheet of paper is to be arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit treason."
"Berdel!"
"And one messenger."
A guard stepped forward.
"There will be a rear gate and a dedicated passage for transporting records. Send word to the palace security forces to block them all."
The Minister's fury wavered for an instant.
A flustered face.
So they exist. A rear gate, and a record-transport passage.
"The Count does not even know the layout of the Ministry."
"Which is why I ordered everything sealed."
"Paralyzing a ministry like this will throw state affairs into chaos."
"Better than the ledgers vanishing, wouldn't you say?"
The Minister glared at me.
I smiled back.
"Shall we go, Your Excellency?"
"Where?"
"To the Ministry of Finance."
I started walking first.
"We ought to check whether Your Excellency's ledgers are still intact, don't you think?"
The Ministry of Finance was not quiet.
By the time we arrived, the entire building had already been turned upside down.
Imperial guards under the Princess's direct command stood arrayed before the main gates, while officials, seized in the corridors, were shouting protests.
"We are in the middle of official business!"
"This is an act that will paralyze imperial finances!"
"On whose authority!"
The voices only grew louder when I stepped inside.
Then, the moment they saw the ring on my finger, they quieted—just a little.
"Count Cassian Berdel?"
Someone spoke with a sneer.
"Does the Count even know how to read a ledger?"
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
The original Cassian might have flown into a rage. Or he might have threatened to run and tattle to the Princess.
I did not bother looking for the one who had laughed.
Instead I looked down the corridor, where smoke was rising from a room at the far end.
"What is that room?"
The laughter died.
One of the officials answered.
"The incineration room for discarded documents."
"Were there documents to discard today as well?"
"There are every day."
"Excellent."
I jerked my chin toward the guards.
"Drag everyone out of the incineration room first."
"Wait!"
Ministry officials blocked the way.
I brushed past them and pushed open the incineration room door.
Inside, three clerks were stuffing bundles of paper into a brazier.
Flames were already eating the edges of the sheets.
"Water."
A guard brought a bucket and dumped it over the brazier.
Hiss!
Black ash and water splattered across the floor.
One of the clerks screamed.
"Imperial settlement documents are mixed in!"
"How fortunate."
I flipped the sodden mass of paper with the toe of my boot.
"Since it didn't finish burning."
The Minister of Finance entered the room late.
"They are merely documents scheduled for regular disposal."
"I'm sure they are."
"Are you suspecting me?"
"Not at all."
I picked up one envelope from the wet pile—half-burned, still bearing red sealing wax.
The crest of the Ministry of Military Affairs.
"Do regularly discarded documents also contain sealed reports from other ministries?"
The Minister's mouth snapped shut.
I handed the envelope to a guard.
"Separate and detain the three who were burning papers. Make sure they cannot coordinate their stories."
"Yes, sir."
"Gather everyone else in the main conference hall, and do not let them touch any desks or drawers."
One of the officials bristled.
"We are not criminals!"
I looked at him.
"I hope that remains true."
"This is an insult."
"Then let's finish quickly."
"What exactly is the Count looking for?"
I drew the Blood Register from my coat.
"Where the one hundred and eight names came from."
The original reports submitted by each ministry listed a total of forty-seven individuals suspected of treason.
Thirteen from the Ministry of Military Affairs.
Eleven from the Ministry of Finance.
Eight from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Fifteen from the Inspectorate.
There were no duplicates across ministries.
Yet the final register contained one hundred and eight names.
"Sixty-one."
I laid the original reports and the final register side by side.
"Sixty-one names that appear in no report whatsoever have been added."
The Minister of Finance sat across from me in silence.
Behind him, senior officials of the Ministry stood in a line.
These were the same people who had mocked me at first.
No one was laughing now.
"There may have been additional reports during the compilation process."
The Minister said.
"Where are those additional reports?"
"They may have been misplaced during storage."
"You are saying the entire report that added sixty-one names simply vanished?"
"Records can become chaotic in wartime."
"We are not at war at present."
Expecting a proper answer was useless anyway.
I opened the report reception ledger.
It was the book in which the date and seal number of every document arriving from the ministries were recorded.
Only the reports from the four ministries we had already confirmed were entered.
There was no trace of any additional list having been submitted.
"So the names were added without any accompanying report."
I marked the newly inserted names.
Viscount Herman.
Viscount Kerten.
Merchant nobles of the East.
Creditors who dealt with the imperial central treasury.
A considerable number of the added names belonged to houses known to support the young Imperial Prince.
Mixed in with them were the merchant nobles and creditors who did business with those houses.
It was far too blatant.
The Emperor had intended to name the son born late in his life as Crown Prince.
The only son he had obtained after five daughters.
Until that prince was born, Adelia had been the de facto heir.
The First Imperial Princess.
She possessed ample experience in state affairs—enough to serve as regent—and had even commanded wars in the Emperor's stead.
Yet the prince had stepped ahead of her for no reason other than being born male.
A date for the investiture ceremony had been set.
Then the Emperor collapsed.
From that day forward, people whispered that Adelia had poisoned the Emperor.
There was no evidence.
But there was motive.
And after the Emperor fell, the person who held the greatest power was Adelia herself.
In that situation, the Prince's faction and those around them had been bulk-added to a list of traitors.
If they had all been executed as things stood, how would it have looked?
The poisoner Princess massacring her little brother's supporters.
It was a list compiled with the answer already decided.
"Who prepared the final version?"
I asked.
No one answered.
"Someone must have taken the ministries' reports and compiled the names."
The Vice-Minister of Finance spoke carefully.
"The working-level staff handled it in pieces."
"Who approved it?"
"That is..."
The Vice-Minister's gaze flicked toward the Minister of Finance.
The Minister did not move.
"Your Excellency signed it," I said.
"Did you not even verify the contents?"
"Must I check one hundred and eight names one by one?"
"These are people whose heads you were going to cut off as traitors."
"I simply trusted each ministry."
"And each of those ministries submitted only forty-seven names."
The Minister's jaw tightened.
I rose from my chair.
"Kindly escort me to the room where the final register was prepared."
The register had been compiled in the Special Accounting Office on the third floor of the Ministry of Finance.
The door was locked.
No one with a key could be found, they said.
So we broke it down.
Crash!
A guard slammed his shoulder into the door and the bar snapped.
Inside were six desks and four document cabinets.
It was clean.
Excessively clean.
The ink bottles were empty. There were no discarded drafts.
For a room that had supposedly produced the final register, there was no trace at all.
"They cleaned it out."
At my words the Minister of Finance snorted.
"It may simply have been an orderly room to begin with."
"It may have been."
I checked under the desks.
The drawers.
The floor.
Behind the cabinets.
Nothing.
Then one of the guards standing near the wall spoke.
"My lord Count."
He pointed at the floor.
There were scrape marks beneath a document cabinet.
The kind left by repeatedly moving a heavy piece of furniture.
"Clear it."
Two guards shoved the cabinet aside.
A small iron door appeared in the floor.
The color drained from the Minister's face.
"Do you know what that is?"
"I do not."
"The master of the Ministry of Finance does not know about a door in the floor of his own ministry."
I opened the iron door.
Inside lay a thin sheaf of papers.
Nothing was written on the cover.
I turned to the first page.
Dates.
Names.
Amounts.
And the number of people added to the register.
A collateral branch of the Marquis of Rotman's house, Viscount Herman.
A rival trading company of Viscount Kerten.
A middleman connected to His Highness the Prince's chamberlain.
Someone had taken money to insert names.
Or had recorded it to look as though money had been taken.
I could not yet tell which.
I turned the pages one by one.
The Minister of Finance bit his lip and watched only my hands.
Halfway through, a familiar name appeared.
Cassian Berdel.
My hand stopped.
Fee for adjusting the register.
Five thousand gold coins.
Number of additional names requested.
Twelve.
Twang?
Everyone in the room stared at my face.
The Minister of Finance, who had been silent until now, smiled for the first time.
"Congratulations, Count."
Composure returned to his voice.
"It seems you have found the culprit you were looking for."
I stared for a long time at my own name written in the ledger.
Whether the real Cassian had taken the money.
Or whether someone had written the name to drag me in as well.
With the knowledge I currently possessed, I could not know.
There was only one thing I was certain of.
Apparently there had been one more reason for me to climb the gallows.