The best thing Ablenkung could say for them was that they did get their work done, but the queens’ maids were a collection of back-stabbing, elitist brats. He’d been observing them for… a month and a half now? Two months? Too long. He’d lost track, and he was so sick of eavesdropping on petty squabbles, way too much gossip, much of which was slander on Beta’s name, and just… meanness. But, being mean wasn’t a crime, nor was it evidence of a conspiracy. The maids remained above suspicion.

Ish.

Ablenkung still felt that he was missing something. It didn’t help that once the maids went inside the dowager queen’s chambers, he couldn’t see nor hear anything. If the dowager queen was the “she” from Erkunden’s overheard conversation, the evidence he needed was behind closed doors that he couldn’t devise a sufficient excuse to breach.

Professor’s New Year’s ball report on Ustrina had been tantalizing but also lacking any actual evidence. What were the odds that the queen would choose a rose and dagger motif for her costume? A motif that matched the black wax seal on the cryptic notes he’d found months ago in the relevant councilmen’s chambers? But circumstantial evidence was just that, and the evidence was thin besides.

Professor’s analysis on the dowager’s profile was interesting; intelligence and bitterness had the potential to become a lethal combination, but the queen remained isolated in her room constantly. When Ablenkung got tired of eavesdropping on maids, he’d sometimes stake out the door to the queen’s chambers. It was extremely boring; apart from the maids coming and going, he’d only ever seen notes pass through that door — notes that he could not really see from the distance he had to keep. Most of the notes were ingoing, and the few outgoing notes he’d tracked to all sorts of different people all over the palace. He rarely got an opportunity to sneak peeks at the contents of those notes, and they never seemed to say much when he did. It was all very frustrating.

He sighed and slapped at his drowsy face while he waited for the maids to finish dusting the young queen’s room. He couldn’t imagine what there was to dust in a room that the maids cleaned daily when no one was living there currently, but the maids were taking their time fluffing the pillows and beating the carpets.

Today’s self-determined task: collect fresh samples of all the things in the queen’s room for testing… again. Yeah. The well of ideas was running dry. Which wasn’t good. But it felt like they were close. They should be close — no — they had to be close. It was mid-February; the deadline was sometime in March. At that point, if they hadn’t successfully uncovered the conspiracy, the mission would become as much about protecting the young queen and, hopefully, an infant as it would be about exposing those seeking to harm them. At that point, it would be a mess, and the stakes would be unacceptably high.

Finally, he grumbled internally as the maids began to file out of the young queen’s chambers, waiting for them to clear the area before leaving his hiding spot behind a door down the hallway.

Maid one: “No, I don’t think so. She hasn’t been to see a doctor, at least.”

Maid two: “She could be seeing a private doctor though. If it were me, I’d be seeing a doctor every week until they could tell me something.”

One: “Regardless, her condition would become obvious eventually. You can’t hide something like that. That’s my point!”

Two: “But if you are waiting to see symptoms, you have to hope it’s not too late to do something about them. That’s my point. The medicine is only guaranteed effective when administered early.”

One: “Well, it’s all speculation either way, and until there’s actual symptoms, there’s nothing to be done for it.”

Two: “Then you need to catch it early. If she does ‘become symptomatic’, how do you think that will affect the crew?”

One: “Well, I, for one, would take great pleasure in dishing out some overdue consequences, even if it breaks our crew up. I’d love to see her disgraced and humiliated.”

Two: “Yeah. It’s her own fault putting herself in this situation.”

Maid three: “Disgraced and humiliated? It’ll never happen. She’s not an idiot. I think she knows exactly what she’s doing, and I’m sure she has a plan.”

One: “Oh, let me dream!”

Ablenkung rolled his eyes at the squabbly gossip and made his move as the maids turned a corner. He entered the young queen’s deserted chambers and dumped a collection of small, cork-stoppered vials onto the bed, quickly getting to work sampling and labeling each and every product in her makeup vanity and the bathroom. He even collected articles of clothing in case the poison had been applied to her laundry somehow. And then he went to the bed and stole (and replaced) the fragrant pillowcase, because why not?! At this point, they were desperate. Shoving everything into a leather bag at his waist, he looked around for a final time. Maybe he’d missed something.

The nightstand. Last time he’d checked the nightstand, the single drawer had only contained a collection of books, letters, and pictures, but it couldn’t hurt to look again. He knelt down, pulling the drawer open and rummaging around inside. Yes, everything was as he remembered it. Except…

It was a small perfume bottle. Or something like it? That hadn’t been there the first time he’d done this. Or maybe it had and he’d just missed it? And if it was new, there was no way of knowing who had put it there. He sighed and collected a sample in a fresh vial and labeled it. It smelled soapy and floral-y — kind of like the pillowcase. Maybe this was a pillow perfume? Ablenkung had never heard of such a luxury before, but then, he’d never before associated with royalty or even the nobility for that matter, well, apart from Professor.

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He stood up, and with another scan of the room checking to make sure he hadn’t left a trace of his intrusion, he left. Dressed in the uniform of a steward’s assistant today, Ablenkung simply strolled to the nearest set of stairs, descended to the ground-level servant’s floor, and exited through a back door. Moving with purpose while being too high in rank to ask for help with menial things and too low in rank to be in charge, no one looked at him twice.

The walk to the stables was a pleasant one despite the chilly weather. It was starting to warm up again. Spring seemed just around the corner. That was a disturbing thought. He’d been in the Lion Tribe for seven months, and it felt like he’d accomplished so little. His brow pinched into a scowl as the familiar gardens, roads, and courtyards passed.

“Ahem.”

He looked up, meeting a slightly pudgy and very welcome face approaching from the other direction, his pack of luggage still on his back from traveling. “Stables,” he whispered in passing, and Buhne nodded once in acknowledgement in his peripheral vision. Ablenkung smiled to himself and continued on his way. It would be good to catch up with Parrot about Mrs. Parrot and the baby Parrot — something to look forward to.

***

The cages were crude but sufficient, especially for a transient project such as this. Steward Pax had been skeptical of the idea to breed rabbits but quickly gave Erkunden permission anyway as he’d been willing to tackle the job personally and it would take the pressure off the hunters and the local wildlife populations if it was successful. Apparently, previous breeding projects hadn’t been worth much. Fortunately, this wasn’t the first time Erkunden had bred wild rabbits, and he’d learned a few things from the first round, though the circumstances of his first round were classified.

The cages to the left were currently being nested by pregnant females. These were the unfortunate test subjects. Erkunden didn’t quite have enough pregnant rabbits to test all the things that Ablenkung had sampled, so some of them were getting exposed to more than one thing in step one of a process of elimination method.

“This one has the rouge and face powder,” Erkunden said quietly to Ablenkung who was jotting everything down in a slapdash effort to be marginally scientific about the process. “Cage twelve is adding the pillowcase to her nest, and cage thirteen has… what is this, Shield?”

“Uh… underwear,” Ablenkung muttered, refusing eye contact. Ekrunden snorted then released a bout of more potent laughter.

“You rifled through…!” He checked his volume, dropping it to a whisper. “You went through her underwear?!”

Shield shrugged and rolled his eyes. “It was worth a shot.”

“A stab in the dark, more like,” Erkunden sighed. “A little over a month left?”

“Yeah.” The humor was sucked clean out of the air. Suddenly, everything felt very heavy.

“Hey, guys!” Shield perked up and turned to Buhne’s voice, and Erkunden was hardly less happy to see Parrot again. “How are things?”

“I think we’d both prefer to hear how your paternity leave went,” Ablenkung reversed the question, and Parrot immediately launched into a well-deserved gushing about his little family that left Erkunden feeling homesick for his own wife and home.

“Ruhe is… perfect. Treu is an amazing mom, which is good because I haven’t got a clue,” Buhne laughed. “Ruhe is a really good baby: calm and happy most of the time and actually sleeps pretty well at night. It made it hard to leave, but it also made it easier knowing that she’ll be good for Treu. Oh, she’s so chunky!! Ruhe, not Treu. Her cheeks are just…” Buhne puffed his cheeks out and gestured with his hands to indicate big, round chops. “Yeah. Ruhe is just… so perfect, and Treu is amazing…. Ok. I’m done now. How have things been here?”

“Well, where were we at when you left?” Shield asked.

“Erm.” Parrot frowned, trying to scrounge up what he remembered and then looking around to confirm they were alone before continuing in hushed tones. “Well, Professor and you, Stag, got confirmation of things with the targets. Shield, you’d found vague notes with the same seal in each of their rooms. You were looking for a female backer? If I recall correctly? And… that’s it.”

Ablenkung deflated a little with frustration, his voice also dropping to a whisper. “You haven’t missed much. We still have no evidence for who ‘she’ is, though I’ve been chasing a hunch that it might be the dowager queen. Right now, we are running a second round of tests looking for a source or delivery method for a poison or an abortion drug. Professor observed the same symbols as on the letter seal in the costume being worn by the dowager at the New Year’s ball, but it is all circumstantial. End of the day, we’ve got nothing.”

“No one is targeting Beta after, you know, the rumors?” Parrot asked.

Erkunden shook his head. “Not that we’ve been able to tell.”

“Wow. Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me. Maybe…. No, never mind,” Buhne changed his mind mid-thought.

“What were you going to say?” Shield prodded.

“Just… nah, man! I don’t even want to say it.”

“Spit it out anyway! We need fresh ideas.”

Parrot sighed heavily and checked the perimeter again. “I was going to suggest dangling Beta out as bait even more than she already is — making her a bigger target. Maybe she needs to, you know, get pregnant — not literally. But… if this is a conspiracy to prevent the birth of an heir…. They haven’t tried to kill the queen; they’ve only been sabotaging her pregnancies. If Beta were to become pregnant…. But I don’t like it. Somehow, Beta always winds up as the sacrificial lamb in these sorts of missions, and one of these days, it’s gonna catch up to her.”

“Agreed,” Erkunden added his two cents and returned to feeding his rabbits.

“I don’t think it’s fair to ask that of her,” Ablenkung endorsed. “I was at the New Year’s ball. As it is, she’s taking a lot of heat for the mere suggestion of the affair. Lions are… cruel that way.”

“Yeah.” Buhne returned to sighing. “Well, I need to report to my steward, let him know I’m back from leave and see if I can’t get my old job back. I’ve got a lot of work to do, it seems. It was good seeing you guys.”

“You too,” Ablenkung returned, and Erkunden seconded it with a nod and half smile.

Buhne had been gone for two months, and they had practically nothing to show for all that time. He wasn’t typically one given to despair and self-defeatism, but this case was exceptionally frustrating, and Erkunden was rather sick of the Lion Tribe. “Do you think we can do this?” he asked Shield after Parrot had left.

“Honestly? I don’t know.”