Viking: Master of the Icy Sea

Chapter 232: The Vanishing Palace Steward

After wandering the back mountains of the silver mining district for days, Blackfish finally spotted the sneaky figures he had been waiting for. There were five of them in total, leaning on wooden sticks and carrying traveling packs on their backs, dressed entirely like ordinary commoners.

Blackfish lay flat behind a large rock. Wrapped in a tattered gray cloak, he blended in perfectly with the mountain terrain from a distance. He waited until the five men had moved further away before silently tailing them, navigating the rugged, treacherous trails out of the mountains.

Upon reaching the plains, the five men purchased a carriage and headed southeast along the main road. Fighting through sheer exhaustion, Blackfish continued his pursuit. He maintained a safe distance during the day, then crept close to their camps at night in an attempt to eavesdrop on their conversations.

The problem was their thick local dialect. Even though it was a branch of Anglo-Saxon, it proved to be a major obstacle for a northern Angle like Blackfish. Compounded by the fact that they deliberately kept their voices hushed, he could only pick up a few fragmented sentences that seemed useful.

"The cabinet is auditing the accounts. Our good days are over. Before they notice, we need to flee to..."

"It is all that fatty's fault. He ran off without a word and did not even bother to warn us..."

Eavesdropping on their hushed exchange, Blackfish grew intensely curious about this fatty they mentioned. He carefully tiptoed closer to the crackling campfire.

Snap. The sharp sound of a crushed twig immediately halted their conversation. The five men around the fire went on high alert; one drew a dagger, while another snatched up a hunting bow, firing an arrow toward the general direction of the intruder.

"Do not run!"

They chased after the fading footsteps for quite a while but failed to catch the eavesdropper. All they found were a few small droplets of blood on the ground—whether it belonged to a man or a wild deer, they could not be sure."Stop chasing. Let us head back."

Terrified that roaming refugees might stumble upon the silver they had left by the campfire, the five men abandoned the pursuit. They quickly packed up their belongings and fled into the night.

An unknown amount of time passed.

Blackfish finally opened his eyes, realizing he was lying face down in a moving carriage. A sharp, tearing pain radiated from his back. He instinctively reached back to touch the wound, but a strong hand seized his wrist.

"Do not touch it. You will infect the wound."

Blackfish lifted his head, struggling to focus on the chainmail-clad knight riding beside the carriage, and then on the surrounding convoy. The lead carriage flew an unfamiliar flag—a blue field bearing the crest of a black castle.

"Nobles?"

The knight in chainmail responded, "That is right. My master is Butcherbird, the Lord of Bournemouth. We are traveling alongside Thorkel, the Lord of Copthorne, heading south to their fiefdoms." The knight pointed toward another carriage flying a flag emblazoned with a clover.

Realizing who he had run into, Blackfish instantly perked up. He identified himself as an investigator from Londinium and urgently requested the assistance of the two noble lords.

"I hope you are not joking."

The knight squeezed his horse's flanks and galloped to the front of the convoy. A few moments later, he returned with the two great nobles.

One of the men looked down at him. "I am Butcherbird. Investigator, what business do you have with us?"

Omitting a few classified details, Blackfish gave a rough summary of his mission and pleaded with the nobles to lend him some men to aid in the investigation.

Butcherbird politely refused. "We found you at dawn yesterday, and it is now noon of the following day. Those assailants are long gone. Furthermore, the roads are swarming with refugees and bandits. Our top priority must be the safety of this convoy."

In the past, Joren's relocation convoy had been ambushed by the Black Flag Brotherhood. Though they survived without any major losses, the incident had put all their peers on high alert. Having survived brutal wars to finally earn their estates and titles, dying at the hands of petty bandits would be a pitiful end.

At that moment, Thorkel noticed a glaring inconsistency. "You claim to be an investigator from Londinium, so why did you run all the way to Nottingham alone? Who are your direct superiors—your detective, your inspector, and your chief inspector?"

Left with no other choice, Blackfish truthfully revealed his identity and shared his deductions, which instantly drained the color from the two nobles' faces. They conferred in low voices for half a minute before proposing to send a rider back to Londinium with a message, stating that it was entirely inconvenient for them to involve themselves any further.

"Understood. Thank you for your help, my noble lords."

Drained from severe blood loss, Blackfish lacked the energy to say anything more and quickly slipped back into a deep slumber.

By early March, Blackfish had returned to Londinium. Lying on his stomach in a hospital bed, he reported the full course of his mission to his inspector and the colleagues from the analytics department.

Halfway through the debriefing, the inspector frowned. "You keep repeating the word fatty. Do you suspect this is somehow connected to the former Palace Steward?"

Despite having been missing for half a year, Paffis's name remained highly active in the reports of the civilian officials.

For instance, when the foundation of a watchtower along the walls of Londinium started to crumble, the official in charge immediately shifted the blame to Paffis, claiming he had embezzled the construction funds. Whenever the scattered estates of the Old King's royal family submitted their financial ledgers, any deficits were conveniently blamed on the Palace Steward.

In short, because of his atrocious reputation, the missing Paffis had become everyone's favorite scapegoat; absolutely anything could be tied to him. Because of this, Blackfish found it incredibly difficult to convince his superior and his peers in analytics.

"The civilian officials are auditing the mining district. Have they found any other clues?"

The inspector gazed out at the lawn beyond the window and replied airily, "None. The mining supervisor and his trusted aides absconded with the funds. The remaining miners know next to nothing. The cabinet has already concluded that it was a simple case of embezzlement and submitted their report to His Majesty."

With the recent transition of kingship, many administrative matters were a convoluted mess. The inspector sighed and urged the investigator to focus on recovering in the hospital, assuring him that his assessment for this mission would be marked as good and that he should only return to work once fully healed.

The intelligence report eventually landed on Wigg's desk. He skimmed through it, finding it largely identical to the cabinet's conclusion. However, a small addendum at the very end noted that the fatty mentioned by the fugitives was suspected to be connected to Paffis.

"Suspected?"

Wigg could not even count how many times he had seen the former Palace Steward's name pop up in official reports. That man had truly become the ultimate scapegoat and the perfect excuse for balancing the books.

Before he could voice his complaints, his attendant, Sebert, brought in yet another towering stack of documents. Wigg scribbled a few notes at the bottom of the report, delegating the follow-up matters to the cabinet's Minister of Industry, Lucar.

He thought to himself, 'As long as the three silver mines hand over seven hundred kilograms of silver ingots by the end of this year, we can let the previous incidents slide. England's silver reserves are limited; we still need to find other ways to make money.'

During the wars of the previous year, the entirety of southern Britain had been smashed to pieces. Londinium, Cambridge, and Tamworth were simply incapable of providing much tax revenue.

The Minister of Agriculture, Kemi Wildfire, had suggested promoting the cultivation of clover and turnips across the south, but the results were far too slow to resolve their immediate financial crisis.

On the commercial front, ever since Ragnar's second invasion of West Francia, relations between the Vikings and the Franks had completely ruptured. The sheer volume of trade had plummeted, and consequently, the customs revenues from Dover and Southampton had taken a massive hit.

To generate wealth quickly, Wigg pulled out a parchment scroll he had kept stored away for years: the blueprints for the Spinning Jenny.

As far back as the initial founding of Teyne Town, he had considered introducing this era-defining invention. However, because the potential profits were so staggeringly high that they would exceed his ability to control them, he had shelved the idea until now.

In addition, he harbored thoughts of producing strong liquor. Distillation technology had already been discovered, but the large-scale popularization of distilled spirits had yet to sweep across Europe. "It is time to make a fortune."