kaitou

Do not let me hear that vulgar whistling again, Heinz. At the very least, I forbid it in my spire.

Sorry, Your Excellency. I got carried away.

It's the first time I've ever set foot atop the spire of a Graf. From up here, all the buildings of Grinden look like hunchbacks who couldn't straighten their postures.

I'm not here to listen to your philosophical insights, Heinz. The Empresses' Voice arrives today. Where is the Zwillingstürmeträume?

On the table, Your Excellency.

When I was little, I liked to strain my neck looking up from the dirty shacks.

I often imagined feeling the wind atop the spire, like it must feel so clean and fresh up there...

Silence, Heinz!

Is this the gem you counterfeited for me? This is the Zwillingstürmeträume?

The wooden box holding the gem strikes the ground. The Graf holds a bicolor crystal between his thumb and forefinger.

His voice has gone coarse from screaming at Heinz at the top of his lungs, his self-restraint faltering before his anger.

Careful. You don't want to drop it.

I gave you seven days, gave you all the supplies and support you needed, all so that you could make full use of your talents in cutting and crafting. And THIS is your answer?

J-Ja, Your Excellency.

'Ja'? Do you take me for a fool?

You're the best appraiser in Grinden. Can you not tell that this... thing... is not even the equal of the glass beads one can buy by the bagful at the marketplace for a pittance?

This dirty shade of gold! The interior is uneven, causing the light to refract as though in a maze.

And this black! Rough like a mundane rock in the barrens, cheap like the curtains in a backwater bar.

And the combination of the two is disorganized and stilted.

Where is the fantastic color? The starlight within? The unique beauty of the colors blending?

You expect me to offer this contemptible rock to the Kaiserin?

Are you <i>trying</i> to get my skull crushed under Their Majesties' boots? My spire leveled to the ground?

How dare you take me for a fool, Heinz!

Clack.

With a crack, the Zwillingstürmeträume is no longer whole, the bicolor crystal reduced to fragments by the fingers of Graf Saxon.

I'll have your head for this, Heinz.

Please, Your Excellency, I can explain!

Heinz opens the valve on his wand. He bends down to retrieve a few fragments and inserts them into it.

Taking a few steps back, Heinz finds the right angle, then snaps his fingers. The tip of the wand lights up.

Beneath the light, the deep black and dignified gold shine like a lake at sunset.

This...

You could have submitted it to the Kaiserin. That was the original Zwillingstürmeträume.

How could this be?

I examined it so closely...

Simple, Your Excellency. The Zwillingstürmeträume was an ordinary crystal.

Did you forget? I was the one who appraised it. It was placed in an ornate box, and illuminated by the light of my wand. Find just the right angle, and just the right brightness...

And there. The fantastic color, and the starlight within.

I might be so bold as to call refraction one of my special talents.

You?

You, a layman, should not doubt the skill of a professional.

You made me promise Her Majesty, then stole the gem, then tricked me into destroying it with my own hands?

You've brought ruin to the spire of Graf Saxon! And for what?!

Do not forget that I was the one who took you in, who gave you a living working with gems at my spire!

With your laughable resume and all the people you've fallen afoul of... did you really think you had a future in Grinden?

Of course I remember your kindness, Your Excellency.

I was just an ordinary man ready to give up.

I couldn't sleep the night I ground that stolen gem into dust, worried that the secretary who sold it would use his connections within the city council to find me.

And when I made the fake appraisal and ruined Vizegraf Saxon's reputation...

I was worried my plan was so rough around the edges that an accomplished schemer like yourself would see through it in an instant.

I <i>did</i> catch your attention, but fortunately you were only interested in how you could use me.

You didn't even bother to do a background check on the ruined baron and the jailed secretary.

And why <i>would</i> you remember? It's been twenty years, and they were just some insignificant, lowly commoners.

What... what do you mean?

I mean I was after you from the very beginning.

I've been after you, Graf Saxon, ever since I returned to Grinden a year and a half ago and sold a poorly forged gem to that baron.

...But why?

Like I said, you wouldn't remember.

The Empresses' Voice should be at the spire now. You boasted to the Golden Empress that you would submit a unique gem as your tribute for the Empresses' Celebration...

So what will you do now?

Guards!

Catch that bastard!

Another snap of the fingers.

The balcony becomes a cacophony of light, with the wand as the starting point. Only then does the Graf realize that there are countless mirrors, hidden in every corner.

The light obscures his vision, then converges on Heinz, and then—

The jeweler disappears from the Graf's sight.

In the last moments, the Graf sees him smile.

The groveling jeweler has always been meek, humble, timid... he has never smiled so brazenly.

With such scorn, hatred.

Good luck, Graf.

M-Meine Herr, the Empresses' Voice is here.

This isn't an instrument shop, kid. I can't repair that for you.

You thought you'd get away that easily, after making a fool of the Graf of Grinden?

Herr Heinz, am I right?

Michael, of Zwillingstürme.

You're awfully young for an Empresses' Voice.

Because I'm not, just a messenger of her will.

The spire of Graf Saxon has been impounded. He will be escorted to Zwillingstürme, where he will face the judgment of the Kaiserin. As for you...

Uh-huh.

Er, put down your wand. Take it easy.

I just wanted to confirm a few things.

There's something in common between the clients of your gem business who've had misfortune befall them over the past year and a half.

The baron who lost his entire fortune was the overseer of a mine. The secretary who went to prison for embezzling the gem drafted the report of a certain mine disaster.

...And the mine was jointly owned by Vizegraf and Graf Saxon.

I thought I'd be rotting in the spire dungeons by now. Looks like you've been busy since yesterday.

You were after revenge, weren't you?

Twenty years ago, Graf Saxon ran a secret mine in Grinden, supplying Originium to the Witch King's contraptions.

The Twin Empresses' coup turned Leithanien upside down. Two new spires rose from the capital.

To facilitate his change in loyalties, Graf Saxon ordered the Originium mine blown up, with all the workers inside.

In his report to Zwillingstürme, he wrote that a collapse had occurred at a mine for exotic crystals.

...Ja. My parents worked in that mine.

My life was never the same afterwards.

I left Grinden, met a lot of people, saw a lot of things, caught Oripathy, acquired this staff, and had no choice but to go back to dealing in shining rocks.

I suppose you're too young to understand all this.

If you came to corroborate my crimes, I can tell you that I was planning to cause an explosion and bury Graf Saxon in the dirt along with the crystal fragments.

I never expected to get away with destroying the gem meant for the Golden Empress. Just tell me the punishment I'll receive.

I see no need to prosecute you, Herr Heinz. For me, the incident with the gem is merely an interlude.

Oh?

For some time now, Graf Saxon has attempted to ingratiate himself with the Kaiserinnen, all while secretly funding the remnants of the Witch King. He's been linked to several insurrections in recent years.

As Grimmacht's envoy, I'm here to bring that avaricious, subversive worm back to Zwillingstürme.

As for destroying the gem Ewigegnade sought for the Empresses' Celebration... I doubt Grimmacht has much interest in such frivolous things.