‘As for your relationship with the deceased,’ said Sir Edwin, ‘I will have to take your account of it now. Please start from the very beginning and end at when you last saw him, alive.’

~You want to go for honesty here as well? Because it’s not going to look good either.~

‘Good sirs, please leave me in the company of Sir Edwin,’ said Claribel, nodding at the knights that served her House.

‘But…’

‘I wish to speak with him alone.’

Sir Dagon nodded and ushered Sir Irriforth out of the study while dragging Sir Beren by the wrist, behind. Natty gave her a thumbs-up, then scratched behind her right ear as she, too, filed out of the room: a promise to check for and remove any eavesdroppers.

~Here goes…~

Claribel swallowed, and channelled her account through Ari.

It was the spring of her thirteenth year, and the promise of a tournament hung in the air, making the pear tree blossoms all the more romantic.

She was standing under one such tree, basking in its falling petals and laughing at one of Lady Guinevere’s japes when a boy a head taller stepped out from behind the tree and fell to one knee.

‘Please may I have your hand in marriage, my dearest Lady Claribel?’

‘I…’

The rich embroidered azaleas and well-tailored slashes on the sleeves of his doublet made her swallow back the words she wanted to speak. She could swear that she’d never laid eyes on him before, but if he was from an esteemed family, it’d be best for House Aquilon if she kept her manners.

‘I am afraid I do not know your face, my lord,’ she said.

‘Others call me Duke Taur, but to you, I am Tristram at your service, my lady.’

That was how she received her first marriage proposal from Tristram.

The second came the day after, accompanied by a bouquet of flowers: roses for love, ivy for loyalty, and dahlias for an eternity. Followed by the third, the fourth, the fifth.

Why. Why her?

Yes, it was a good match, but matches should have gone through Mother. And Mother would have asked him to duel her with her left hand, to make it a fair match.

The sixth came as she hid in Lady Guinevere’s manor, right as Lady Guinevere urged her to tell her parents, the relations between House Aquilon and House Taur be damned. He recited her a love poem this time, rhyming ‘Claribel’ with ‘ring my bell’.

Nanny Jesse delivered the seventh with an apologetic bow. He’d slipped dried rose petals under the love letter he’d written, comparing her eyes to the sun.

‘Please show him some consideration, my lady. He has been without a father since the age of six, and his mother is rather sickly. He doesn’t often open his heart to others, but he saw you helping Lady Malory with her embroidery and fell for your kindness. My lady, he is of the same age as you, handsome of face, and though House Taur cannot boast of the same riches as House Aquilon, he is still a duke.’

The eighth came during the tournament, right before Dame Justa entered the lists for her tilt against Sir Neem, one of Duke Auster’s bannermen. Once again, he went down on one knee and waved for sapphire and diamond necklaces to be gifted to her.

Before she could say no once again, before Mother and Father could understand the situation, Lady Oriana batted him over the head with a dead rabbit she’d brought to the tournament from her morning hunt.

‘Move. Don’t you see I’m trying to watch Dame Justa unhorse my knight? You are blocking my view.’

‘How dare you order me to move! Don’t you know who I am? I am the Duke of Taur!’

‘All right, Your Grace, you really should learn when you’re not wanted. Like I said, you are blocking my view. If I miss the moment when Dame Justa tucks her braid into the back of her tunic and puts on her helm, I shall ask my father to remove you from the map.’

‘How dare you…’

‘I thank you, Lady Oriana,’ said Mother. ‘With all due respect, my daughter has no interest in diamonds and sapphires. Bring me an untouched Eye of Una and I shall consider the marriage on her behalf.’

There was never a ninth time.

What now? Wasn’t Tristram a brusque, bristly character just a degree farther from drenching his soul in darkness compared to Hesperus, both of whom bathed in the glow of the male lead, Leolin, though Tristram had also been drawn to the flame that was Rosalind. The Tristram that she knew through the pages would have never proposed to a lady who wasn’t Rosalind, much less eight times.

~Like I said, your sources are all over the place. Duke Taur did indeed lavish attention on Her Majesty before her ascension to the throne, but it was unfortunately not because he was taken with her. It was purely to claw back a little dignity for House Taur.~

‘I… see…’ said Sir Edwin, looping the final letter on his parchment. ‘I can probably assemble you a sympathetic jury to acquit you if you repeat that account to them. You have an excellent reputation anyway. Grab any mother or child off the streets of Eirene, and they’d likely call you innocent.’

‘But it wasn’t me, good sir. And that was a long time ago. He was only fourteen. He has changed since then.’

‘Yes, yes, I’m very aware of that. He has changed from alive to dead. One of the greatest changes you can undergo. May the Fated One savour him.’

‘May the Fated One savour him.’

She let him hang onto the silence until he filled it with a sigh.

‘All right, that shall be all for this evening. Like I said, you have shown yourself to be open and honest, and even if you did murder him, it would be for a more sympathetic reason than acquiring his land. If there’s nothing else, I’ll take my leave, which shall, no doubt, leave you much-relieved.’

But there was something else.

Ari had completed her fair share of missions with a good bit of carbon monoxide poisoning, though it was far from her favourite way to dispatch a man. Staring straight into the eyes of the prey and unloading two 9mms had a sweetness to it only matched by the swing of her first custom blades: a pair of sickles with ebony handles, promising a joyous dance with an opponent disarmed from their own firearms.

The thing about carbon monoxide was… it should be paired with winter and alcohol. By ticking one of the above, an Agent could maximise the benefits of this method of death. In Tristram’s case, the perpetrator had ticked both. Which meant that if the body had been left wherever it had originally met its end, the circumstances would make this a tragic accident in anyone’s books.

Perhaps it was.

‘My good sir, why are you so sure that it was murder?’

‘I… thought I’d just explained my thinking.’

‘You have only explained that he was red, and that you believe I had a motive. But what if the redness was caused by something natural. Something accidental.’

‘Then you’d still need to ask: why strip him.’

Why? Why drag him outside, strip him naked and… well… even just that step. He was a big, muscular man. It must have taken a lot of effort just to get his clothes off when he was all dead-weight, much less to transport him from wherever he was.

The contradiction leered at her, taunting the cloud in her head.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t…

…make sense unless. Unless. There were two opposing forces at play: a tug of war between tragic accident and screaming murder.

‘Good sir,’ she searched for words that’d plant her as his ally instead of simply an innocent victim of circumstances, ‘I have seen bodies with those cherry-red markings before, back when I was in Aquilon.’ Because he could hardly find anyone to corroborate otherwise. ‘It was on a winter’s day, much like today. They had died of an unfortunate accident. Their chimney had become blocked, yet their hearth had burned on, turning the air itself into poison. Perhaps you know of this already.’

The smug grin that usually adorned his face vanished. ‘Go on.’

‘I’m afraid I have…’

Two servants shuffled past the study door, dragging their own makeshift and sun-warmed straw-filled mattresses into the Great Hall.

…shared all I know on that subject. She bit her tongue, fighting the urge to throw his own words back at him. The mattresses. The missing piece.

This went deeper than she thought. Allies. She needed allies, not meaningless victories via sharp-tongued words.

Because… in her world, Tristram’s death might have been an accident, framed as a murder, but here… Five pallets of hay lay in Hesperus’s single-bedroom house; countless servants crammed into a single hall in Claribel’s household.

~What?~

~No…? Who would?~

~Lucy, usually, and all of my ladies-in-waiting, except I don’t have any at the moment.~

~They’d have a backroom with straw mattresses.~

~Do people sleep in their own individual boxes in your world?~

Though she was, in a way, an undead.

‘I’m afraid I have to ask,’ she said, reframing her original sentence, ‘were any other bodies with cherry-red marking found last night? Not necessarily from nobility, mind.’

‘Why do you ask, my lady? Were you expecting more?’

Ari returned his piercing gaze. ‘Initially, I was starting to suspect that Tristram had died from a tragic accident, much like the instance I was speaking of in Aquilon, then someone discovered his body and decided to move it to a suspicious location to frame me. However–’

‘You think he has been moved, prior to receiving the cardinal’s blessings?’

‘I know he has, good sir. The red marks were on his back, and he was found on his front. The coroner in Aquilon explained the phenomenon quite clearly to me. Anyhow, as I was recounting my experience, it came to mind that in the Aquilon case, a whole family had perished. If Tristram perished alone, then perhaps it was not an accident after all. Yet… it feels… feels so odd to turn a death that could be mistaken for an accident into such a spectacle. Even if you had to move the body, wouldn’t you try to place it somewhere less likely to be discovered than naked, in front of a blacksmith’s abode? It could be that there were circumstances around it that made it necessary, or for the murderer to strip and move the body, or…’

Max used to say that you’d get better buy-in if they think of it themselves. Ari left the rest of her hypothesis unsaid, waiting for him to offer it back to her.

A half-grin returned, crinkling his eyes. ‘You seem to know a lot about dead bodies, my lady.’ No… That wasn’t it… ‘That single sighting of a dead family must have made an impact.’

Claribel bristled. The rage that Ari had managed to contain boiled over, frothing, and she spat out, ‘Have you forgotten that it was a near thing seeing your own dead body today? I am in no mood for your condescension, and I do not like being tested. If you have half a heart to think upon the true implications of my marriage to Tristram and his subsequent death, you would understand the severity of the situation.’

‘I… I think I understand, my lady.’ Sir Edwin flinched, as if the fervent desperation that Claribel channelled through their eyes terrified him more than Ari’s momentary madness.

‘No. You do not. I was seven when the wind carried in the sea one day, and the low tide never came. The sea breeched the lowlands and reclaimed the borders of her empire from my people. The dikes we’d built out of earth and cladded in eelgrass and seaweed vanished under the unrelenting rain that fed the unrelenting sea. Houses too, washed away as if they were never there. Mother took us to the edge of the waters. My brother was screaming, but that day, she screamed back at him. She told him to look, to open his eyes and see, even if it hurt, because this was our land, this was our people, and they were hurting.

‘I still remember, my foot got stuck in the mud, so Father set me on his shoulders. I should have been able to see far into the distance, but the rain… the rain blew into our faces, allied with the wind. Everything blurred into one undulating, grey mass. The sky. The sea. The world.

‘There were tiny figures perched onto a roof, the church’s roof, because it stood higher than the other houses, and was built from stone. Mother’s knights and dames tried to reach them. Their horses refused to budge. I still remember… One of the dames who’d visit with Marquis Valery said she was a strong swimmer. We tied rope around her waist, and she tried to reach the men… but the sea swallowed her. She never even struggled. One moment, her head bobbed above the water. The next, she was gone.

‘We never did find her body. But when it was all over, the sea gave back some of the bodies, face down and bloated from the water that had killed them. A last memento.

‘Sir Edwin, there is a reason that I sacrificed my own health to strengthen the wind magic in my body, and there is a reason that my brother’s only love is poldering. Perhaps we can never win against the sea, but we will not stand by and watch those lives wash away again. However… this is different. This… state that we find ourselves in was not caused by a force of nature, but by a person or persons unknown. I will do whatever it takes to resolve the situation without further loss of life. Whatever. It. Takes.’

‘Of course, my lady,’ he said, drumming his fingers against the medallion on his chain of office. ‘I am here to serve the King’s justice.’

‘You are here to collect the King’s dues. While you investigate the true inheritor to Taur, the land falls under the temporary custody of the Crown, does it not? If it turns out that I am the perpetrator and need to be persecuted, succession to the duchy shall become a thorny issue, but whoever succeeds the lands shall need to make an offering for the King’s favour. If I am the perpetrator, and I should be pardoned, then I shall still need to pay a penalty to the King, proportional to the income under my name, from my manor, my guild, and my portion of the mana-stones from Duke Auster’s mines. If I am not the perpetrator, on the other hand…’

‘My lady! You don’t think I’d be swayed by how much gold I collect for the treasury…’ he said, shuffling his feet. ‘I wouldn’t accuse you of murder just because it’d bring in more taxes for the Crown.’

‘I thought so…’ Claribel sighed. ‘Let me put it this way. The gold in the treasury and the gold in your purse, which is inevitably linked to the gold you collect for the treasury, are the least of my worries right now. Think, Sir Edwin. How would House Auster react to my supposed marriage.’

‘Well… Lady Oriana would be most dis–’

‘I said HOUSE Auster. Think, sir, think.’

~Remember the balance of power between Aquilon and Auster I talked about when answering your question? My supposed marriage just tipped the scales.~

Oh.

It was Sir Edwin who’d gasped. A look of terror crept onto his face.

‘We can still prevent the worst ending if we–’

‘My mother and sisters live in Auster!’ He paced from one end of the study to the other, drumming on the hilt of his knife. ‘This cannot come to pass! This cannot–’

‘Regain your composure if you please, Sir Edwin, Coroner of the Crown! There may still be a way if we work together. That is why I shared my tale with you. Please. I need your help. I need your trust. Please, sir. Only you can prevent the calamity upon us.’

Sir Edwin stopped pacing and drew in a deep breath. ‘All right. What do you need me do, my lady?’

‘Who else knows about my supposed marriage?’

‘I wouldn’t know…’

‘Where did you get the scrolls from? There was hardly enough time for you to investigate further than the body itself.’

‘It… accompanied the body. My assistants never saw the contents. They just know that I had discovered three scrolls. However, I have documented it as “Lady Claribel’s Certificate of Marriage” in the Book of Evidence, so–’

‘It… What?!’

‘I documented–’

‘No… before that… It was where?’

‘It was… under the Holy Guard’s cloak that covered him, in a small oilcloth satchel… I…’ He swore. ‘I should have questioned why it was there, but the whole thing was so absurd. He had an eye painted on the bottom of his foot, and–’

‘Say that again?’ The unease that had been lurking within Ari’s mind tingled down her spine.

‘There was an eye painted on the bottom of his left foot, in red ochre.’

‘There was no eye.’

‘You must have missed it when you identified his body, as I’d imagine you were looking at his face.’

‘No, there was no eye.’ There was only the memory of her gaze on his dead, clean feet. There was only the swish of a white cloak, and the featureless face of a nameless Holy Guard.

A cult within the Church: a simple answer, served on a platter.

The simplest answer was usually the right one.

Unless…

The man she was supposed to kill stiffened in his chair; had stiffened some time ago: rigor mortis. His arms had been propped up by the position of his death, mid-robot dance. His left forearm had been shaved, perhaps with the razor carelessly discarded in his basin. On it was a temporary tattoo in pillar box red: ‘I <3 The Institute!!! I <3 Ari Lee!!!’

She dialled HQ, letting the codenames tattooed in her heart override the buzzing in her head. ‘This is the Cashier. The Discount Voucher isn’t working. It’s already been used. I’m… I’m…’

The buzzing in her head grew so loud that she’d nearly missed the bloodless slit under the dead man’s chin.

With shaking hands, against her better judgement, she prised open the slit, where skin had been cleanly sutured onto a lush, red leather pouch, forming a secret compartment in what had once been a man.

The letter hidden within smelled more like leather than dead man, and read,

‘Can you tell a raven from a rook?

Can you tell a kind soul from a crook?

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To the other side it strode

Into a world of black and white:

Choose not the bishop, nor the knight.

Insincerely yours,

The Red Raven’

Another body. Another red mark, added postmortem. Another document, tucked away.

It couldn’t be.

This story was about Rosalind’s rise to power or, failing that, it was about Miri’s journey from lost to found.

Ari knew she was no main character, no Natty’s beloved Sherlock, undeserving of a nemesis that would follow her across worlds.

Still, the words from her nemesis twisted and turned in her head. Choose not the bishop, nor the knight. What remained were the rook and the–

‘I must speak with the Queen,’ ordered Claribel. ‘Sir Edwin, escort me to the palace if you please. Now.’