DEPT. OF INTERIOR

FOR

DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENCE [REDACTED]

CASE FILE: ARKA6711H

HOUSE BOURBON

JOSEF

The Directory of Public Safety and a great majority of the Highlands common population are very concerned with the potential for extremist and regressive activities from the House of Bourbon. In the First Era, this was our most contentious House to bring to heel. The House is probably the most ancient of all surviving Houses and their lands are tightly held by Founding Rights that we cannot repeal without provoking complex international conflict.

PROPOSED COUNTERINTELLIGENCE MEASURE

It is proposed that the following letter be typewritten on commercial paper and forwarded to JOSEF BOURBON at his Highland estate. It should bear the post markings of the Roark Merchants' Guild chapter house in Malicity.

“Josef Bourbon —

The closed-door activities and conduct of you and your Named peers at the recently concluded Spring Market Open have disturbed the Highland Merchants’ community who have noticed increasing intimidation methods and the promotion of nihilistic doctrines among your congregations. Your immature actions of sponsoring a sporting rifle event on A-11 have further alienated you and your peers from the spirit and tone in which our regional community is steering. Your past involvement in various quasi-criminal activities further exemplifies the inappropriateness of your House's possession of electoral authority in the Highlands. Your conduct and demeanor are representative of traits and habits that we as a nation are trying to move away from.

Should you feel that this is a hollow warning and not heed our diplomatic and well-thought-out considerations we shall discuss contacting Directory authorities regarding some of your activities or take other measures available to us which would have a more direct effect and which would not be as cordial as this note. “

OBJECTIVE

It is hoped that this letter if approved and forwarded to House Bourbon will give Josef the impression that he has been discredited in the Highlands and is no longer welcomed there. It could discourage him from a high-profile public life and may even cause him to emigrate to less troublesome pastures.

[CONCLUDED]

I’ve never personally met Josef Bourbon, but I had always wished I could. My place in the Directory, and Josef’s capabilities, will likely never give me a chance. The Bourbons were and still are our country’s equivalent to a royal family, we just don’t admit that anymore. He employs a vast network of people in his ambiguous enterprises, but he employs no one in his home. And he, of course, works from home.

There’s always been some half-built case against Josef that’s consistently floundered by the Directory. The House of Bourbon is the only House that is, how do I put it, above my pay grade. Until I received this letter. To me it looks like an act of desperation, but what do I know? The Directory’s cases fall apart because they can never get anyone to corroborate what little they have. Even people that don’t like the Bourbons won’t talk about them.

A few years back the Roark Merchants' Guild did file a formal complaint, very similar to the one attached above. Before the Directory had even attempted to make contact with Josef he held a massive dinner party in honor of the Guild. The next morning they’d sent their secretary to withdraw the complaint. The interviews afterward were unremarkable.

The reason I became involved is due to a report I processed about six months ago. A citizen was stopped at the border, the Lowland zone's exit gate. The woman was hostile and had been stopped in a registered Bourbon company vehicle. I spoke to her privately and it took forever.

“I think you should know that I’m willing to let you go on with your business. I’m sure the setting makes you feel… detained or something, but you’re not. I just need to check some boxes so that the people here hassling you can check their boxes,” I told her.

“What answers do you want?” She responded.

“The car…”

“It seems you all already know its registry.“

“Yes, but it’s a contract car. Is it yours, or is it someone else’s?”

“You mean to ask if I stole it?”

“Did you?”

“What happens if you think I did?”

“You’d be arrested, unfortunately. You’d be charged and transported to the Highland facility until trial.”

“Would the Bourbons become involved?”

“They’d have a right to involve themselves, but that wouldn’t be typical—“

“And if I do have proper rights to the vehicle?”

“We’ll verify your passbook with House Bourbon and send you on your way.”

“Fine, it’s mine. My passbook is in the car.”

“Where is it located?”

“I’ll have to look.”

“Sure, I do have to send an escort with you though. Policy, you know…” I smiled and looked down at my papers. “So it looks like they initially stopped you for having a large number of personal possessions in the vehicle. The border inspectors do this because it can sometimes be a sign that someone is exiting informally. The car being contracted compounded the issue.”

“Some business takes longer than others.”

“Very true, and common. But your employer should have provided you a pass grant.”

“They didn’t, will you tell me to go apply for those then?”

I was a bit disappointed with the exchange. I’d had to suppress so much personal curiosity when I saw the name Bourbon in the report. I don’t know what I had expected from the conversation, but hostile cooperation had not been it. I called for an escort officer to take her to the vehicle. He came back after a moment alone with the woman’s passbook. He gave it to one of the inspectors to start making calls on and I ask him where the woman is.

“She asked to wait in the car. Said the lobby was too bright and it made her uncomfortable.”

I looked at the lights, “Guess things could be softened up a bit—“

Our conversation was interrupted by one of the officers scrambling into the building and yelling to my companion, “Your girl just left…”

We both turned. “What do you mean ‘left’?” I asked.

“She just walked off. I saw you walking back with her papers. She just got out of the car and started off. I tried yelling but she just started running.”

“Which direction?”

“Into town.”

“Okay. Call the impounder for a tow. Tell them it’s for me and ask them to store it at the on-site garage. I want to take both inspectors who initially searched it with me, inform them of that, please. When I finish this form, we go.”

So what did we find in the car? Questions followed by mysteries, really. Physically, I found a duffel bag that had been stuffed with a clean sheet for seemingly no other reason than to make it appear full. There was some unused makeup in the front pocket. In the trunk were four boxes full of files. In these files were detailed accounts of what seemed to be a few hundred code-named peoples’ most scandalous and most mundane moments. The Directory would assemble a special team to try to decode it by cross-referencing their massive archive of surveillance reports. The project yielded no more than a few theories and was ultimately a failure.

Nothing shakes the Directory more than moments like this. Caught off guard and desperate for answers that all their power and resources cannot find, it reminds them that their grip on this brave new world they made isn’t as strong as they thought.