Kuriyama's current identity was genuine.
The neighboring territory's guard registry had found no forged seals.
His birthplace, guarantor, tax records, and trade-route assignments over the past five years all checked out.
When he applied for guard credentials five years earlier, the old Kiriya case had not been on the verification list.
It was not that someone had deleted his name.
That old case had never established who the Gray Blade wielder was.
The registry could only check existing warrants, judgments, and identity conflicts.
Someone who had never been named in the case files would naturally pass through the old system.
A legitimate identity could not prove that Kuriyama had never committed a crime.
Nor could unresolved leads from the past invalidate all his legitimate records.
The investigation team checked the short blade first.
The itinerant blacksmith had long since died, and the ledger he left behind recorded only quantities, weights, and delivery locations.
The Triangular Forging Mark matched nine short blades.
Six had no distinguishing features.
Two had guards thickened on the outside.
The last had a curved notch ground into the inside.
The blacksmith's apprentice was still alive.
He remembered someone complaining that the guard caught on his sleeve and borrowing a whetstone to alter it himself.
"Was that person Kuriyama?"
The investigator did not show him the portrait first.
The apprentice shook his head.
"I can't recognize a face from more than ten years ago."
All he could confirm was that the person used a reverse grip with his right hand, had narrow cuffs, and had once been called something that sounded like "yama" by a companion.
That pointed toward Kuriyama.
It still did not establish his identity.
The short blade found in Kiriya's drainage ditch was examined again.
The residue on its edge could no longer yield