Rosslyn’s party returned to the palace, a carriage ride that was mostly quiet and far from comfortable for Rosslyn and William alike, though Frederick did not seem to pick up on that—he would occasionally try to start a conversation with one of them, only for the discussion to peter out after a minute or two.
Finally, they were back at the stables. As Rosslyn stepped out of the carriage, she noticed a familiar figure standing near the carriage—a figure she would not have expected to see.
She gave Oran a cautious look. The gray-haired head butler simply bowed his head, keeping his expression carefully blank.
He has more important duties than greeting us after we returned from touring the city, Rosslyn thought. How long has he been waiting here? Is something wrong?
“Welcome back, Your Highness,” the head butler said in a subdued tone, his expression carefully blank.
He raised his head after a moment, and Rosslyn looked into his steady gray eyes. For a moment, the old man’s brow furrowed with worry.
Then William was beside Rosslyn.
“Um, I thought we should talk a bit, Rosslyn—Princess.” He seemed to have sobered a bit. Rosslyn guessed he was a little embarrassed about their interaction outside the Royal Box.
“We should,” she said, swallowing a lump in her throat, “but can it wait until tomorrow? I am afraid I have remembered a matter that requires my attention this evening.”
“Of course,” he said, taking a step back.
She could not tell whether he had taken offense—whether he believed that she was just putting him off or genuinely had another matter she needed to attend to.
As William and Frederick stepped away, however, she could not spare as much thought for them as she might otherwise have liked. The more she thought about it, the more Oran’s presence outside unsettled her mind. In addition to the points her mind had raised earlier, she had recalled how her father trusted Oran.
Whatever he was waiting there for, theirs would not be a happy conversation, she felt certain.
“Your Highness, is there anything further that I can do for you just now?” asked Elspeth, curtsying beside Rosslyn as the door closed behind the young lords.
The Princess turned to look at her and barely saw the maid. Rosslyn’s mind was simply elsewhere.
“No, thank you,” Rosslyn said quietly. “Thank you for your company earlier, Elspeth.”
“It has been my great honor, Your Highness,” Elspeth said quickly.
Rosslyn forced her lips into a smile that she did not feel, and she gave a more effortful response.
“Please try and see that your schedule is kept open for future outings,” Rosslyn said, taking the maid’s hands in her own for a moment. “You have fulfilled your role perfectly, and you made me much more comfortable than I otherwise would have been.”
Elspeth’s hands shook, and her face reddened slightly. She curtsied once more and thanked Rosslyn again, then rushed back into the palace through the same door the young lords had used. The coachman was maneuvering the carriage into its proper place when Rosslyn finally had the opening she had wanted to speak with Oran.
He started the conversation.
“I hope your evening went well, Your Highness,” Oran said. “I feel certain that His Majesty will want to hear about it.”
“Yes, Oran, thank you,” Rosslyn said, almost mechanically, without regard to what the words she was speaking meant. “Did you have some reason for waiting out here for us?”
He furrowed his brow again, nodded, and then leaned in slightly closer.
“I cannot speak of it out here, Your Highness,” he said. “You understand? And your father will wish to see you.”
Rosslyn nodded, taking the hint. “Yes, please take me to him,” she said in a slightly louder tone. “I would love to tell my father all about the guests’ visit so far.”
Oran returned the nod and led the way into the palace.
Rosslyn followed him, and the butler led her across the palace, through the least traveled sections he could find, sometimes navigating through little used secondary royal living spaces, sometimes through servant quarters, trying to avoid anyone seeing them.
As they neared the end of their journey, Rosslyn recognized that the butler had led her on an extremely indirect route to the chapel.
“No one knows of what you are about to see, Your Highness,” Oran said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Just me, your father, and yourself. There were two servants who saw something—but they have been detained for the duration of the crisis. I will go to them now and ensure that they are secured in their place. If you hear that someone else knows about what you and your father discuss in there, and you cannot explain it—” He gestured at the chapel doors—“then you should assume that I have betrayed you and summarily execute me. Whether the information leaks from me or the two servants, the failure will be mine.”
He bowed low after he spoke those words, and his voice was dead serious, but there was a part of Rosslyn that wanted to raise an eyebrow.
Of course, he does not know that we have a telepathic butterfly living in the palace, but it has made keeping a secret much more complicated, she thought. For a moment, she considered telling Oran about that, but for the moment, her father had instructed her that it was to be kept between the Royal family and the mystic beasts. Even if Oran was the most fully trusted person in the palace, the King would have told the butler about Adon himself if he wanted him to know about the butterfly.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Thank you, Oran,” she said instead. “Please be careful. I know that you would never betray our family. I do not believe any of the staff would, but you in particular—”
“Trust no one, Your Highness,” Oran replied, interrupting her for perhaps the first time in his life. “No one. These are dangerous times.” He lowered his voice. “There are certainly enemies about, even within the capital city itself. Perhaps within—no, no…” He shook his head. “I have said too much already, in a place where I could be overheard. Please go in, Your Highness. Your father will explain the rest.”
Oran opened the door to the chapel, and Rosslyn stepped inside.
She saw her father seated in the same place he had been when they last met in this room—but her eye was drawn away from him, toward the altar. A body lay atop the stone tablet. At first, all Rosslyn saw was that it was a man, his complexion gone the ashy gray of death.
As the door closed behind her, however, and she stepped closer, she recognized that this was not just any man. Though his complexion had turned gray, and his flaming red hair had lost much of its luster, she could not mistake someone who had been a fixture in the palace for the last decade.
“Oh Goddess…”
“It is good to see you, Rosslyn,” her father said in a croaking voice.
She looked at him and saw that the King was barely in better condition than the man on the altar.
So, the two servants Oran mentioned must have seen Sir Domnhall die…
She swallowed. This was an ugly business.
She walked over to her father and sat down close beside him so that they could speak in low voices. If ever there was a conversation that should not be overheard, it was this one.
“It is good to see that you are still upright, father,” Rosslyn said, trying to keep her voice light. “Considering the condition of your food taster.”
She had seen Sir Domnhall sitting quietly in the kitchen many times. On a few occasions, she had observed how he quickly and efficiently cut himself portions from the food that was to be served to the King—separating out and eating his share before the rest of the food was delivered to the table. Sir Domnhall was a low-key sort of man—he had said once that he didn’t want anyone to remember that the King had a taster at all—but she recalled that he had always been kind to the kitchen staff.
“I wanted you to see what had happened to him before anyone else,” the King said. “I wanted to strategize with you. My heir. If this is to be my end, I would like our country to at least gain some advantage from it. We could use it to root out some spy.”
There were a few phrases that Rosslyn could have latched onto among her father’s words. The fact that he called Rosslyn his heir rather than his daughter showed that his mind was in dynastic preservation mode, trying to apply cold reason rather than emotion to his situation. But her mind seized on the most disturbing thing he’d said.
“If this is to be your end?” Rosslyn repeated, her voice quaking. “Then, you consumed whatever food poisoned Sir Domnhall?”
“Not exactly,” the King said. “Well, some small amount of it. But Sir Domhall was ailing for some time. He largely ignored it, because he was a man of strong constitution like myself—which is why he accepted this duty. I barely noticed his condition, but in retrospect, his ill health should have been obvious. He had become clumsy of late, weaker than I remember seeing him in the past, and a bit near-sighted. Similar symptoms to ones that I have experienced. I think that his ailment was probably a result of the same cause that has given rise to my being in poor health for some time. My suspicion now is that someone has been slipping a slow acting poison into my food for a sustained period. If that is the case, it must be a member of our household staff. Oran bravely volunteered to taste the food that Sir Domnhall had eaten prior to dying to test my hypothesis—to determine whether it was something immediately lethal.”
Rosslyn’s horror at that idea must have been apparent on her face, because her father waved his hand and added, “He understood the risks and the importance of the task. It was his idea. We have no way of testing for some of the poisons the Empire has developed. And he knew that we needed to keep the circle of trust very close on this matter. Thus far, he has shown no ill effects. That would seem to mean that our theory is correct—that someone has been poisoning myself and Sir Domnhall for some time, and this particular dose, if there was a dose in the meal, is not what killed Sir Domnhall.”
“But you are not dead,” Rosslyn said slowly, trying to think through the implications of this. She knew little of poisons. “Yet…”
“My understanding is that with some poisons, small dosages must accumulate in the body over a long period of time. Only when the poison reaches some critical point of no return do you feel the full effect. This makes them harder to detect by using a taster.”
“Then, you may yet live,” Rosslyn said hopefully.
If I prepare all of father’s meals myself, from fruits and vegetables that I select and animals that I kill, he cannot be exposed to any poison.
“Yes, yes, I may,” the King agreed, nodding a little impatiently. “My point is that now we know why I have been ill. I—” He rubbed his temples and looked tired and unfocused. Then he shook his head. “I want you to seek the poisoner. Bring them to justice. Find anyone and everyone who may be involved. Purge the household staff completely if you must. Keep it hidden from the visiting brothers as best you can for the moment.”
“How can we hide it if you are this ill?” Rosslyn asked. Her father had looked a bit better on the night the brothers arrived, but if they remained at the palace, they would be exposed to her father while he received treatment from healers—or the Royal Family would have to take the insane risk of not treating him until the visit was over. Either way, the brothers would surely witness radical changes in the King’s health, whether improving or worsening. They would figure out that something was amiss.
“You can say that I was called away on some important matter of diplomacy, perhaps. You will be able to use your imagination to come up with something plausible. A matter to do with Parmonia may serve…”
“I think it is best if we be transparent with the brothers,” Rosslyn said. “They will wish to take your side against any and all enemies, father.”
“They will see us as weak!” the King exclaimed, suddenly almost yelling. Rosslyn’s body jerked back in surprise. Her father tried to say something else, but his voice dissolved into a rough cough. For the next thirty seconds, he continued coughing, stifling it with a handkerchief. He wiped his mouth carefully before he took the handkerchief away and spoke again. Even so, Rosslyn spied a trace of blood on his teeth.
“They will see us as victims of a superior power that we have little ability to counter,” her father said. “Even our friends do not want weak allies, Rosslyn. I know Duke Pruford. He is a good and loyal man, but also a realistic one. His sons will hardly be different. They are a virtuous family—very martially gifted, as you are no doubt aware—but they lack the instinct for softness and sympathy that would make them try to protect a weak power that they know cannot defend itself. It is a sensible position for them.”
Rosslyn thought about the time she had spent with the brothers since they began to become reacquainted, and she slowly nodded. There was little of softness about the brothers.
“What would you have me do, father?” she asked.
He thought for a moment, covering his mouth with the handkerchief again.
“If matters with my health do not improve quickly with treatment, and there is no way of hiding it, you may need to send the brothers away. We badly need a strong marriage for you, but that does not necessarily mean one of the brothers. Even if you determine that one of them is worthy, asking the two of them to return home can be done diplomatically, without ruining the courtship. As for the hunt for our traitor, I wondered if you might ask your friend the butterfly for his help.”