Mary led me through dark, convoluted streets while I held my nose and hummed happily behind her. We were holding hands, just like mother and daughter, although such a duo would be completely out of place during the night. Naturally, none of us wore any noble clothing but rather chose to wear something less eye-catching. For me, it was a black coat above my dress while Mary wore a common attire for maids.

The streets were completely deserted except for a few thugs who were honourable enough not to rob a defenceless mother with her child. Not that we were that defenceless though. If someone had a death wish, I would be more than willing to fulfil it in a dark, secluded alley … sadly for me, or luckily for Mary, this didn’t happen.

As such, she led me through streets with three-storey high buildings that seemed to have stores on the bottom floor. This was the merchant street and honestly looked way better than the smaller alleys I saw time and time again. The walkway was clean enough to work on and while the street wasn’t paved, it was still cleaned from any horse excrements daily. It was fascinating to imagine all the humans weaselling around during the day, an experience I would probably never have.

Ten minutes later or so, we stood in front of a stone building. It was rare to see one of those around here as stone was apparently quite costly. She knocked on the door politely, but as nobody opened it after a few minutes, I knocked on the door rather angrily. The sounds of my fist hammering against the wooden door should have woken up everyone inside and even some of the neighbours started to wonder if there was a thief around as I could see candles being lit in several windows.

“Who´s there?” I smiled happily and looked towards Mary as my approach to meeting the mayor proved a lot more successful.

“Mary White. If you would be so kind to open the door, Mr. Mustermann.”  Obviously, the door was opened swiftly and we were led inside by an old, grey-haired man. I still held Mary´s hand as we entered and as such, he immediately recognised me as her child and smiled friendly.

“Lady Mary, it is an honour to welcome you to this late hour. And I presume this is your daughter everyone is talking about? Lucy was it?” I nodded with a beaming smile on my face but still chose to be silent for now.

“Yes, she is. She lived in the north with her aunt for a long time and I rarely had the chance to see her. And now that Arthur is no more …” Mary said and closed her eyes. The sadness she had was … well, she wasn’t sad. She was trying to look like she was and that may have worked for the mayor, but she couldn’t fool me.

“I am incredibly sorry about your loss, Milady. If you need anything, a roof over your head, food, whatever you wish for, don’t hesitate to ask.” I immensely started to dislike the mayor because he was basically licking her boots by then. I assumed he wasn’t the only one and it was more of a rule to please the higher ranking nobles, but it was disgusting to see nonetheless.

“Thank you for your kind words. We are … we are here to look through the birth registries.” Mary said and the mayor immediately started to lead the way.

“At this late hour? May I ask what you are searching for?” He was still curious about our endeavour though.

“We are searching for …” Mary was stuck as she couldn’t find any good excuse for being here at all.

“ … proof that she is my mum.” I blurted out, slightly disappointed she couldn’t come up with something on her own.

“I see. It is this room. Do you require my help?” He opened a door and revealed a library of some sort. It was incredibly messy and the books were sometimes quite brittle as far as I could see.

“A warm tea would be would be very welcome.” The mayor nodded respectfully and closed the door behind us. After I confirmed he left us for sure, Mary and I began to look through the inventory. Most books were about public finances, management of the city and so on. One part though was the birth registry.

“How do you want to prove I am your mother in the first place?” Mary asked, slightly curious about all the possible ways to convince everyone. The most simplistic one Tom and I could come up with was a rather simple document.

“Tom will forge a birth certificate, I hope you don’t mind if he uses a bit of the money stored in the cellar of the mansion. All we basically need for that is the name of a doctor Arthur trusted in the past. Hopefully, he is dead by now.” Frustrated, I found out that the books were ordered chronologically and not alphabetically. I didn’t know what age group was out of Arthurs strike zone and as such, we could only go through the last fifty years or so.

“And if the doctor isn´t dead?” I frowned at her question and just wanted to answer sarcastically again as I remembered my promise.

“We wouldn’t be able to murder him anyway as the timing would be too suspicious. Although it is a bit less trustworthy, we would be forced to pick another doctor.” I concluded and glanced towards Mary to see her reaction. It was strangely positive as if she expected me to solve everything through violence and only now started to realize that this wasn’t the case.

“Luke Himmelsläufer is the name of Arthur´s doctor, who died a year ago.” I couldn’t help but smile as she willingly cooperated with me. Maybe we were on the right way to improve this messy relationship between us.

“Thanks.” I said and had a rather strange idea. Much to Mary´s surprise, I put an older book away and went to the newer section. That Arthur never even tried to produce an heir with Mary kept bugging me. Shouldn’t he at least try to, or did he simply not care about his legacy? Or did he plan something entirely different? As far as I knew, Arthur married into the family … meaning he planned to do exactly what I was currently doing. As such, I started to search not for the name, but rather for everyone the doctor brought into this world.

There was just one slight problem …