Two days later.
Good news arrived from Audrey. The Prosecutor's credentials had been sorted.
Just as she had said — the role was deeply unpopular in Backlund. But it still formally represented the Crown and the state, so the vetting process was no small matter. That said, when the pull of the Earl of Holl's family was brought to bear, the examiners were naturally willing to smooth things along, cutting a process that normally took at least half a month down to under a week.
On the morning of the third day, Vincent officially began his first shift as a newly credentialed Prosecutor at the East Backlund Prosecution Office.
East Backlund, naturally — one of the two most chaotic districts in the city, which meant the Prosecution Office there was perpetually short-staffed. In that entire sprawling building, including its director, there were only six people total.
Walking into the office, Vincent found four men averaging somewhere around forty-five years old: one reading a newspaper, one playing cards, one sound asleep. The feeling hit him immediately — he had walked into a government office where no one worked.
"Looking for someone?"
The newspaper man was a white-haired old fellow who looked up at Vincent with mild surprise.
"I'm the new Prosecutor starting today. The name's Charles."
The moment he said it, all the others looked up. They stared at him as if he had done something extraordinary.
The old man smiled and came over. "I'm the director here — Mountbatten. Welcome."
He glanced around the room and gestured toward a window-side desk. "That'll be yours. As it happens, you'll be sitting face-to-face with the other newcomer who started today."
"There's another person today?"
"That's right — which is why we all looked so startled. It's been years since anyone new came in. And now two show up at once — both young people, freshly qualified." The old man chuckled. "I do have to wonder what drives you young folk to wade into this particular swamp."
"What do you mean, sir?"
Vincent played the part of the puzzled newcomer. "Isn't the Prosecution Office a representative of the Crown and the state?"
"Ha ha ha! That's technically true for some of the other districts. But the East End, Jorwood, the Docklands — those places are a different story entirely."
Mountbatten grinned. "Ah, no point me going on. You'll feel it for yourself soon enough."
Is this some intentional suppression? Somebody deliberately keeping the law toothless in these districts to maintain the chaos — the Ruem Emperor's handiwork, perhaps?
"Understood."
Vincent sat down. Mountbatten promptly stacked a thick pile of case files in front of him. "Have a look through those."
"Thank you. I'll make sure to study them carefully."
"Study them? Ha ha! You mean study how to lose?" Mountbatten laughed again. "Every case in front of you ended in our defeat. I'm only showing them to you so you can accept reality as quickly as possible."
He glanced at the empty desk opposite Vincent. "The other newcomer just finished reading through those. She was a bit overwhelmed — went to the washroom."
"..."
Vincent opened the first file. A murder charge — witnesses, physical evidence, everything present. Under normal circumstances, all it should take is a standard hearing and the presentation of the evidence to win easily.
Come the day of the hearing, the witness recanted. The physical evidence vanished. The entire session became a one-man performance by the defence barrister. The suspect walked free.
The second case was even more absurd — a charge against a wealthy businessman for forcing a factory to operate in violation of regulations, causing an accident. The facts were clear. But on the day of the hearing, the defence lawyer suddenly accused the prosecution of fabricating evidence — and the complainant actually confessed to having done exactly that.
The third case...
Vincent worked through the whole stack. Not all of them were losses, but the ones that failed shared a common thread: whenever the suspect had money and connections, they won. The rare successes were when the defendants were ordinary people with nothing to protect them.
Anyone who wasn't a fool could see the pattern. And since it kept happening again and again, it could only mean that someone was deliberately making it so.
No wonder no one wanted to work here. This office was a pit.
And in a situation like this — how am I supposed to Act as a Prosecutor? Am I meant to go after ordinary people? The poor and powerless?
Bernadette's voice came from within: "Don't forget — the reason we came here wasn't to genuinely build a career and digest the potion that way. It was to go through the Prosecutor's workflow and extract Acting Guidelines from it."
"I know. But right now the question is: how do we get our first case started?"
At that moment, quick, light footsteps came from the corridor. A girl walked in — female blazer, light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that bounced with each step, clear deep-green eyes.
That's... Elly.
Hadn't she said she was going to open her own firm? How did she end up here?
Vincent's instinct was to say hello, but he caught himself — he was wearing a Faceless disguise right now, not the face Elly had known as "Natasha."
"Oh!"
Elly sat down at her desk, then immediately noticed someone across from her. "You're also new today?"
"That's right. You can call me Charles."
"I'm Elly."
The faint cloud that had been on her face vanished instantly. She reached across and shook his hand with barely contained energy. "This is wonderful. I knew I wasn't fighting alone!"
Er... I think you might be mistaken about something.
She spun toward Mountbatten. "Sir, I've decided I still want to try."
The card players looked up. "Ha ha ha! Youth and enthusiasm — let her try!"
"Exactly. She'll understand eventually."
"Ha ha ha ha! We were all like that once, weren't we?"
One of the relatively younger men said: "Honestly, once you let go of the idealism, you realise it's not so bad here. The pay isn't as good as private practice, but it's stable — and extremely comfortable."
They really have turned this place into a civil service sinecure.
Elly smiled brightly. "I'll join you for cards someday."
"Ha ha, you're welcome any time."
Mountbatten set down his newspaper, thought for a moment, and picked up a case file. "All right, then. You two can start with this one — get a feel for how things work."
"It came to us from the South District. A poisoning and assault-on-a-constable case at a hospital. The suspect was caught on the scene but has refused to confess, so the case was transferred here for formal prosecution."
Elly sat up straight. "Consider it done."
Vincent, listening from beside her, felt a slight jolt of recognition. A hospital. Poisoning. Assault on a constable. That all sounded oddly familiar.
Very quickly, Elly brought the case file back over to his side and moved her chair next to his. "Let's look at it together."
The moment Vincent opened the first page, he saw the chubby photograph, and a quick scan of the description confirmed it: this was almost certainly the round fellow he had bumped into outside the hospital that night — the one who'd looked like some kind of suspicious apothecary.
He had assumed at the time that the misunderstanding would be cleared up quickly. He hadn't imagined it would drag on this long, let alone escalate to a formal prosecution.
Wait.
Darkwill.
That name was ringing a bell. Quite a loud one, actually.
Darkwill — the caustic, sarcastic fat apothecary from the original story?
Right — in the original, Darkwill had been trying to treat the broken-legged child, and he had been misidentified as a poisoner and chased. One thing had led to another and it had evolved into an assault-on-a-constable charge. The whole thing looked like a streak of spectacularly bad luck.
But given the identity of that broken-legged child — this hadn't been bad luck at all. The Little Snake had almost certainly arranged this deliberately.
Though — wasn't Darkwill supposed to be the Little Snake's great-grand-student, or something like that?
To be continued…
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