History Rewritten

I disliked the way Isabelle looked at me after that.

“I thought Carnage was older.”

“So do most people.”

She kept looking at me. I had seen enough people recognise the name to know what usually came next, but Isabelle did not step back or suddenly find somewhere else to look.

If anything, she seemed more curious than before.

“What about the stories?”

“Some are true.”

“Some?”

I sighed, realising what I had just got myself into.

“Others have been exaggerated.”

“How so?”

“That depends on the story.”

Of course I had heard most of them.

Apparently I had once killed twelve men alone after being surrounded in an alley.

That one was true.

There was another about me tracking a smuggler through the northern mountains for six days before catching him beyond the ridge.

In reality, it had been three days, and he never made it to the other side.

People tended to remove the details that made these stories less impressive.

Then there was the one about me taking a contract on an entire mercenary company and killing their commander in front of the survivors.

I had never met the man.

Gideon looked up from the papers.

“You should hear about the other ones.”

“No,” I said, turning towards him.

Isabelle’s attention shifted immediately.

“What other ones?”

Here we go.

“Most people who actually hire him have very different things to say.”

“Gideon. Don’t—”

“One merchant spent ten minutes telling me what a lovely man he was.”

Isabelle looked back at me.

I decided that I preferred the exaggerated stories.

“He was old.”

“There was also the woman who sent you home with food.”

“She had too much.”

“And the family who invited you back for dinner.”

Isabelle was smiling now.

“You can stop,” I said, looking towards Gideon.

“I could.”

He clearly had no intention of doing so.

“So which version is true?” Isabelle said, folding her arms.

That was a more difficult question than it should have been.

Alexander’s mouth twitched before he tapped the open ledger in front of him.

“Unfortunately, our missing imports remain missing regardless of Leon’s endeavours.”

The room settled.

That was probably for the best.

The discussion Isabelle and I had interrupted returned almost immediately.

Three shipments had failed to reach their listed destinations in the last month. Grain from the south. Medical supplies brought upriver. Iron fittings meant for workshops in the poorer districts.

The records said all three had entered the capital.

After that, they disappeared.

“Not disappeared,” Nico said, tapping the page. “Redirected.”

His family controlled enough of the grain trade that half the numbers on the page seemed to belong to him personally.

Marlo tapped a route marked beside the river.

“They cleared Imperial inspection. Somebody changed the manifests afterwards.”

Rafael leaned over the map.

I had seen the Second Prince only from a distance before, usually standing beside the Imperial family while several thousand people tried not to stare at them. He looked considerably less impressive with ink on one finger and a shipping ledger open beneath his hand.

That was probably safer.

“By whose authority?” Alexander asked.

“I’m trying to find that out without asking so loudly that my brother wonders why I care,” Rafael replied.

Outside the half-repaired windows, hammers struck timber somewhere in the yard. A cart rolled past. Two men shouted at each other about a crate that had apparently been put in the wrong storehouse.

“Grain prices are already climbing in the eastern wards,” Gideon said.

“And apothecaries are rationing supplies,” Nico added.

Nobody sounded particularly shocked that ordinary people were suffering while the Crown blamed merchants and delays.

That was perhaps the worst part.

Alexander closed the ledger.

“We’ll come back to the shipments. Leon needs to understand what he’s walked into.”

Alexander turned the map slightly, revealing four names marked near one edge.

Valemont. Falkenberg. Brankovic. Rochefort.

I had grown up hearing them as history.

Alexander spoke about them as evidence.

“You know what happened to Valemont?”

“Yes.”

His finger moved to Falkenberg.

“And Falkenberg?”

I shook my head.

“Lady Falkenberg was poisoned. Her husband was found hanging in his study several months later. They had no heir.”

“Suicide,” Marlo said.

His tone made the word an accusation.

Rafael shook his head.

“The original guard report described the knot differently from the version eventually released.”

I looked at him.

“Differently how?”

“The knot suggested someone had tied it from behind.”

“Then the report changed.”

“Yes.”

Alexander moved to Brankovic.

“Lord Brankovic was ordered to support an Imperial campaign and never returned. His wife had been pregnant when he left. She miscarried around the same time news of his death reached the estate.”

I remembered the rest from the official histories.

Grief.

Instability.

A widow judged no longer fit for her duties and confined to the estate.

“We don’t know that the miscarriage was deliberate,” Alexander said before I could ask. “We do know what followed was convenient.”

Rafael’s expression tightened.

“She may genuinely have been unwell. Losing a husband and child would break plenty of people.”

“And then everyone around her decided grief meant she no longer deserved a voice,” Isabelle said.

Three houses gone. One remained.

I looked at her.

Rochefort.

Alexander noticed.

“For years we had suspicion. Payments that made no sense. Orders changed after they were issued. People appearing near more than one incident under different names.”

“And now?” I asked.

“Now those trails are crossing.”

Rafael placed one hand against the table.

“We’re also close enough that my family has begun noticing the questions I ask.”

“How close?”

“Two requests I made last month were challenged for the first time.”

“By?”

“My brother.”

Nobody needed him to explain why that mattered.

My attention moved towards a sketch of a silver brooch among the papers.

“We were coming to him,” Alexander said.

“No. I am.”

Gideon watched me carefully.

I put both hands against the table.

“His name is Cedric Hawricks. He was the sword instructor at House Valemont.”

Nobody spoke.

Nico frowned first.

“No, he wasn’t—”

“Yes, he was.”

Marlo straightened.

“We checked Valemont’s surviving household records.”

“Then you checked the wrong records.”

“There is no Cedric Hawricks.”

The words struck harder than they should have.

Alexander pulled a folder from beneath several maps and opened it.

“Knight retainers. Tutors. Imperial liaisons. Household salaries. Surviving correspondence. His name never appears.”

I stared at the pages.

“That’s impossible.”

“I believe you,” Alexander said.

For three years, Cedric had stood in our training yard nearly every morning. He had walked through our gardens. He had accompanied us to the capital. Mother and Father had spoken to him as naturally as they spoke to anyone else who belonged there.

History said he never existed.

Rafael’s voice was careful.

“How certain are you that the man you saw last night was him?”

“As certain as I can be.”

“Because you recognised his face?”

“Yes.”

“And the man was at House Valemont thirteen years ago?”

I nodded.

Rafael watched me for a moment.

“How do you know?”

For a moment, every sensible reason I had for telling them disappeared.

Father’s voice came back instead.

Hide your name. Hide where you came from. Trust no one.

Thirteen years had done very little to make those words easier to ignore.

Isabelle already knew. Alexander was preparing to turn against the Crown. Rafael was risking everything by standing against his own family, while Nico and Marlo had trusted everyone here with enough information to destroy themselves several times over.

I knew all that, but my mouth still refused to move.

I looked towards Gideon and noticed he had been watching me quietly.

He did not tell me what to do or try to decide for me.

He simply nodded.

“My name is Leon Valemont. I am the last surviving heir of House Valemont. And that is the man who killed my parents.”

The room grew quiet.

Alexander stared at me. Rafael had stopped leaning over the table entirely, while Marlo looked towards Nico as though waiting to see whether he had reached the same conclusion.

He had not.

“Can you prove that?”

It was a reasonable question.

I reached beneath my shirt, pulled the chain over my head and dropped the pendant on the table.

The silver wolf landed across the edge of the map.

Rafael was the first to speak.

“What happened thirteen years ago?”

I looked at the table.

For a moment, all I saw was stone closing between me and my mother.

“The manor was already under attack. Elara got me out of my room. She died protecting me. Valemont Knights rescued me. Imperial Knights found us. I reached my parents in Father’s study afterwards.”

My voice sounded like someone reporting a job. The way it caught on certain words rather ruined the effect.

“My father opened a hidden passage. They sent me through with Sir Edmund.”

Gideon stared at me.

I had told him pieces over the years.

But never this.

“Before it closed, I saw a man in a black cloak enter the room. Silver brooch. Firelight made his eyes look red.”

My hand tightened against the table.

“The passage shut. I heard my parents screaming.”

Nobody moved.

“Sir Edmund took me through the tunnel. It was breached before we reached the end, so he stayed behind. I ran into the forest. When I looked back, the manor was burning, and Imperial Knights were searching the grounds.”

My throat had gone dry.

“The same man was giving them orders. He told them to find the boy.”

I looked at Gideon.

“I ran until you found me.”

Silence followed.

Not the sympathetic kind, just people understanding there was nothing useful to say immediately.

I appreciated that.

Alexander eventually asked, “You knew it was Cedric then?”

“No,” I said. “I never saw his face clearly that night. I remembered the cloak and the brooch.”

“And last night?”

“He lowered the hood.”

I looked towards the papers.

“It was Cedric.”

Something slipped from Gideon’s hand. A bundle of documents struck the table and spread across the map. He stared at one page, then at me.

“What?” I asked.

“The information guild sent me these this morning.”

Alexander moved beside him.

“You said they identified the man?”

“They did.”

Gideon turned the top sheet towards us.

Cedric Hawricks.

The name sat above an official Imperial service record.

Not Valemont.

Imperial.

Registered as an Imperial Knight during the same years he had supposedly been teaching me.

No transfer to our household. No leave. Nothing.

On paper, the man from my childhood had never been ours at all.

The records followed him forward.

Assignments near the capital. Promotions. Operations whose dates brushed far too close to Falkenberg and Brankovic to feel accidental anymore. The same shadow moving along the edge of the same collapsing families.

Then I reached the final page: a draft announcement bearing the Imperial seal.

Gideon spoke before I finished reading.

“It hasn’t been made public yet.”

My eyes remained on the title.

Captain of the Imperial Knights.

Rafael leaned against the table.

“The announcement is expected soon.”

Alexander looked towards the Rochefort name on the map.

“Three Houses gone. One remains. And now the man tied to all three is being given command of the Imperial Knights.”

“A reward?” Isabelle asked.

“Perhaps,” Rafael said.

“Or an incentive,” Nico added.

Nobody needed to say for what.

I looked down at Cedric’s name again. For thirteen years, I had imagined him hidden somewhere beyond the reach of the law.

He had not been hiding from the Empire.

He had been rising through it.