The Mad Audit Chief of the Capital - 3
I had long since lost count of how many emergency summons the Crown Prince had issued this half-year alone. By now the whole routine was starting to feel familiar—almost fond.
Fond of something like this? Absolutely not.
With a bitter twist in my chest I deleted the grotesque message at once. It was far too hideous to leave sitting in my communicator.
The second it vanished I contacted Margeta.
No telling how long they’ll keep me.
Honestly, I didn’t expect disciplinary action this time. A man who has been disciplined as often as I have develops a sixth sense for what actually earns a formal slap on the wrist. Even if the high and mighty clutched their necks over this mess, it wasn’t the sort of thing they could pin on me.
There was no justification to begin with. The crime of making a duke cry? The crime of walking the capital arm-in-arm in perfect harmony? Not exactly things one can announce with a straight face.
So escaping formal punishment was a relief. The problem was that without a clear disciplinary track I had no idea what they intended to do with me instead. Answering the Crown Prince’s summons now left open the question of when—or even if—I would make it back to the Academy.
I have to avoid a repeat of last time.
If they held me for hours I wouldn’t return until afternoon. That would mean blowing past Margeta without a word, exactly like before.
Worse, the longer I stayed the higher the chance the capital’s gossip would reach her ears. Then the Margeta who had finally found peace would shatter all over again.
That could not be allowed. If circumstances kept me away I would say so in advance, and anything she might overhear and misinterpret I would explain with my own mouth. That was only proper.
“Oh my, Karl?”
“Mar.”
Margeta answered almost at once. A teacup sat to one side of the image; she must have been having her post-meal tea.
“A call first thing in the morning… were you missing me that badly?”
Her eyes had gone wide with surprise, but she quickly softened into a smile.
From her perspective it was odd—after all, I would normally drop by the vice-president’s office before noon anyway—yet she could just as easily take it as proof of how much I wanted to see her.
“Yes. I called because I missed you. I’m afraid I’ll be late today.”
The smile tilted into a puzzled tilt of her head.
“Has something happened?”
“I came to the capital yesterday for a meeting with Her Grace the Demon Duke. His Highness the Crown Prince has summoned me now. Returning to the Academy will almost certainly be delayed.”
The words struck her hard enough that her whole body flinched—visible even through the communicator.
Of course it did. The man who had received a confession from the Demon Duke was now meeting the Demon Duke. The man with a history of confinement and house arrest was now meeting the Crown Prince. From Margeta’s seat neither event could simply be waved aside.
“The New Year’s Audience is right around the corner. Once it’s over I still have to obtain the Iron Blood Duke’s blessing for our marriage. It would be troublesome if things around us stayed noisy.”
“Ah… yes. Th-that’s true. It is right around the corner.”
The rigid tension melted out of her the moment the word “marriage” appeared. All her anxiety seemed to evaporate.
What Margeta needed above all else was trust and reassurance. Give her those two things and she would welcome me with a smile every time.
“Yes. And after talking things over with the Demon Duke… your place is secure, Mar.”
The soft, beaming eyes went round again.
Secure meant she would not have to yield first place to the Demon Duke.
“Simply loving him does not give me the right to claim Karl’s first seat…”
After the whole camping-out fiasco Margeta had actually abandoned her hunger for first place. She had looked ready to accept any rank so long as she could stay by my side, ready to put my wounds ahead of her own desire.
But a person’s heart does not change so cleanly. Even after renouncing the ambition, she would still rather have the prize if it were offered. Hearing me confirm she was first was bound to make her happy.
“H-Her Grace really said that?”
She pressed her face so close to the communicator I couldn’t help smiling. Yes—she liked it that much.
“I’ll explain the details when I see you in person.”
It was too long and complicated for a call.
“Won’t you at least allow me to watch the child from afar… to keep him in my heart?”
How was I supposed to summarize the Demon Duke’s heartbreaking plea in a few casual words?
In effect it had been a declaration of surrender—she would follow my will. Heart-wrenching, yes, but also a promise that I no longer needed to walk on eggshells around her. She would not cling to first place, nor to monogamy.
And if the Demon Duke no longer demanded monogamy, and if both she and Margeta had loosened their grip on the idea of “first,” then a rather elegant solution presented itself.
Not merely elegant—unique. The only real answer. I could not believe it had taken me this long to see it.
“A-all right. I’ll wait.”
“Just in case, leave the dormitory window open. I’ll come even if it’s night.”
Margeta flushed scarlet yet still nodded.
After finishing with her I called the principal and explained the situation: I had gone to the capital on business and now the Crown Prince’s summons might make me late for club time.
For a split second the principal’s eyes flashed with something like What the hell has this bastard done that he meets the Crown Prince like other people eat meals? I pretended not to notice.
“Is the Audit Department Chief here?”
“I present myself before Your Highness.”
What mattered now was not the principal’s curiosity but my own immediate future.
I had stood outside the Crown Prince’s palace for a long while, debating. This would not be a neat disciplinary ruling with a fixed outcome; it would be a thorough joint-cracking whose severity depended entirely on the Crown Prince’s mood.
Should I start with a full prostration to show remorse? Enter with a somersault? If the knights on duty had told me, “His Highness orders you to crawl all the way to the office,” I was fully prepared to wriggle along the floor without hesitation.
In the end I simply walked in.
“Seeing the Audit Department Chief so often these days brings me genuine pleasure. A small delight amid the grind of daily duties.”
Translation: I’m busy as hell and you keep blowing things up the moment I forget about you—thanks a lot, you son of a bitch.
I bowed my head at once under the Crown Prince’s opening round of elegant dual insults.
Unfair as it felt, this was the moment to bow. Technically the one who had wandered around crying was the Demon Duke, and the hand-holding trip to the Magic Tower had been an attempt to kill the rumors… but I was not entirely without a share of the blame.
“And I am delighted to see the pillars of the Empire intertwining so closely.”
“I am humbled, Your Highness.”
I bowed even lower. That line clearly meant the whole Demon Duke entanglement was extremely unwelcome.
Less than a month remained until the New Year’s Audience, when every titled noble would gather. For a Crown Prince already buried in preparations, a full-blown scandal erupting in the middle of the Imperial Capital was the last thing he needed.
“Sit, for now. I have kept a guest standing too long.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Fortunately the verbal beating was short. Or perhaps he merely intended to seat me before delivering the rest.
“That said, I find myself growing more curious by the day. Which house will claim the Audit Department Chief’s first wife?”
Seated in the place of honor, the Crown Prince smiled faintly as he spoke.
Regrettably it had not been short after all; he had only sat me down so he could hit harder. The moment my backside touched the chair he threw a high-speed fastball straight at my face.
The blatant probe made me swallow hard without meaning to. My first wife—the woman who would stand first at my side.
There is a way.
A way that let them stop fighting. A way that freed everyone from obsessing over the word “first.”
I had reached the truth. I had cut the Gordian knot and stood Columbus’s egg on its end. After successive shocks that morning, the gate of truth had opened.
“All of them.”
“Yes, all—”
The hand that had been lifting the cup froze.
I stared down at the cup still in my hand.
Was I drunk? Had I somehow poured myself a glass of unfinished vodka?
Water.
It was water—odorless, flavorless, utterly boring water.
Perhaps the vodka from earlier was still chewing on my brain? No. I had been perfectly functional right up until the Audit Department Chief walked in.
The only remaining option was to confirm it with the man himself.
“…All of them?”
I asked the Audit Department Chief again. Had I heard correctly?
“Yes. All of them.”
I had. The insane answer I thought I heard was exactly what he had said.
“A wife is family one spends a lifetime with. Even if one cannot love them all equally, ranking them is improper.”
I bit back the obvious retort—And yet you still chose polygamy?—because without the Demon Duke’s sudden intrusion he would have married only Lady Margeta.
“Everyone will want the title of first. Even if a dramatic compromise produces a concession, it can become a lifelong regret.”
I found myself nodding before a strange dissonance struck me. Had the Audit Department Chief always been this talkative? He was usually a man of few words, sticking strictly to business. Right now his tongue was running unnaturally long.
Exactly like someone with a guilty conscience desperately justifying himself.
“First, second—aren’t those simply the order of marriage?”
“Ordinarily, yes.”
I played along with the desperate light in the Audit Department Chief’s eyes. I was curious, after all, what he was driving at.
“Then I will marry them all at the same time.”
“What.”
That was pure nonsense.
The utterly unexpected declaration locked my jaw shut.
“If the order of marriage decides who is first or second, then by marrying them simultaneously, every one of them becomes first.”
When I still said nothing the Audit Department Chief only accelerated. He was spouting pure lunacy, yet he kept rattling off justifications as if they were solid logic.
I watched him blankly. Was he serious? No—surely joking? But would the Audit Department Chief joke about something like this? Absolutely not. Then was he the sort of man who could casually utter such madness? Also no.
I clutched my spinning head and looked at him again. Our eyes met head-on.
Ah.
Only then did I understand.
He’s lost it.
Yes. The man had gone mad. After one incident after another, the Audit Department Chief’s mind had finally snapped.
From seventeen he had fought as a warrior on the battlefield; from nineteen he had served as a department chief in the political arena. Four unbroken years of suffering and endurance.
Then came the Demon Duke’s utterly unforeseen confession, and with it the fate of being ground between two ducal houses.
Unable to bear the pressure, the Audit Department Chief had finally collapsed from within.
How tragic…
A solemn feeling settled over me. I even found myself reflecting—had I worked the man too hard and broken him?
“What do you think, Your Highness? That way there are no problems at all, are there?”
Having rattled on and on, the Audit Department Chief finished with proud finality.
Yes. No problems—inside your head, at least.
“Yes… remarkable.”
I could not bring myself to contradict him. More precisely, I no longer felt like contradicting him.
Looking at the Audit Department Chief, every urge to tease or interrogate simply vanished. All I wanted now was to comfort this pitiful man who had lost his mind.
I nodded along vaguely and sent him away.
“…Is that so.”
Then I hurried to His Majesty the Emperor and reported the Audit Department Chief’s condition. His state was not good, I said, but there was no need to doubt his loyalty.
“The Audit Department Chief’s labors have truly been many.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“…Make time during the New Year’s Audience. I shall personally commend the Audit Department Chief.”
In the end His Majesty also abandoned any plan to test the Audit Department Chief.
He simply wished to comfort a loyal subject who had quietly gone mad without anyone noticing.