The door squealed like a stuck pig as it slowly opened.
The sound set Rosslyn’s teeth on edge. Then a pair of bleary eyes stared out of the shadowy gap. The space between the door and the jamb quickly widened as the gaze lit on the Princess.
Rosslyn swallowed a sudden lump in her throat as she looked into the face of Chef MacGregor. She had not known this particular room was his. It was just a place to begin, just the room at the end of the hall.
Please do not be him, please not him… Rosslyn silently prayed.
Memories ran through her mind of sneaking snacks from under MacGregor’s faux-unknowing eye, of the chef catering afternoons spent in the garden with her mother, of MacGregor’s gentle laughter…
If the poisoner somehow turned out to be the kindly aging chef, Rosslyn did not know if she would be able to walk by the kitchen ever again. Not without remembering how she had apparently been so thoroughly deceived by someone she had trusted implicitly.
“Your—Your Highness?” the palace’s head chef asked sleepily. “What brings you here tonight?” His hands pulled his sleep robe tighter around him, apparently self-conscious that a few gray chest hairs were showing in the middle.
“Good evening, chef,” Rosslyn said quietly, somberly. “What do you know about poisoning?”
The red-and-gray-haired man suddenly seemed to spring awake, eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to process what she had said.
“Poisoning?” he whispered. “Who?”
He knows nothing, Adon sent.
Thank Goddess, Rosslyn thought, exhaling softly, trying not to show her relief.
“I cannot share names just now, because we may be overheard by someone less loyal than yourself,” she replied reflexively. “I am going around testing the loyalty of everyone who had access to the food we eat. Only specific targets seem to have been poisoned, which means the food was not contaminated when it arrived at the palace.”
The chef nodded slowly, the information seemingly hitting him on a slight delay.
“How can I help, Your Highness?” he asked.
“You are alone in your room, correct, chef?” Rosslyn asked. As the head of the kitchens, he should have a room to himself.
Chef MacGregor nodded.
“Then I would just ask that you stay there for now,” Rosslyn replied. “If I have some difficulty in dealing with other members of the kitchen staff, I will come back to get your assistance.”
“Very well, Your Highness,” the chef said, bowing his head.
He dipped backward into the room and closed the door gently behind him.
I’m glad that the chef wasn’t the poisoner, Adon transmitted.
Me too, Rosslyn thought.
It seems like he cares a lot about you, Adon added.
She simply smiled.
“First door at the end of the hallway is a loyal man,” she said to a knight who was approaching her from the group at the entrance to the space. “You can stand over by his door, and be prepared to spring into action in case anything goes wrong with one of the neighboring rooms.”
The man nodded.
Rosslyn continued the slow, repetitive process of knocking on doors, priming the servants for telepathic interrogation, and waiting for Adon’s verdict on each subject’s complicity or lack thereof.
She pumped a small amount of Mana into her brain just to counter the growing feeling of fatigue that made itself known as she continued the purge of Demon Empire sympathizers.
And she tried to distract herself between conversations by talking to Adon.
You know, you could make police work in the Kingdom a lot easier if you could teach Telepathy to people, Rosslyn thought.
That would be amazing, assuming none of the police were spies, Adon sent.
A little part of Rosslyn wanted to laugh at that attempt at humor, but another part of her silenced that impulse. Maybe some of the police force were spies. She did not know who to trust anymore. Two of the knights had been agents of the Empire, and Rosslyn had only bothered verifying their loyalty so that she would know she could trust everyone around her to have her back. She had known the poisoner would not be a knight.
We might have to actually check on the police force at some point in the future, assuming we have the time, she finally thought in response.
Adon sent nothing back to that. Perhaps he was as perplexed as she was.
The kitchen staff after Chef MacGregor were cleared much more efficiently than he had been. Rosslyn kept idle chatter to a minimum as much as she reasonably could, and most of the staff did not have the same level of familiarity with the Princess as the head chef. The lower ranking kitchen staff also all had roommates, which meant that Rosslyn eliminated two people from her inquiries at once with each room she cleared.
Puzzlingly, none of the kitchen staff that she spoke to set off Adon’s alarm bells.
Though it would be a relief to Chef MacGregor that none of his subordinates seemed to be involved in the plot, this information raised more questions than answers.
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If none of the kitchen staff were in on this, the number of people who could be responsible for her father’s poisoning shrunk drastically.
Rosslyn ordered one of the knights to make certain that no one entered or left this area of the building, and she shifted to a different area of the servants’ quarters. There were hundreds more people to investigate.
She wanted to finish her search before the night was over, to keep the nobles in the dark about what had happened until she and her father determined the direction their explanation would take. They would not want to reveal Adon’s Telepathy to people outside the Royal Family unless it was absolutely necessary, but she was not certain yet how they would explain the events of this evening without exposing that secret.
At the beginning of the next hallway, there was a room set apart from the rest. It was still clearly a residential room, but there were metal slots in the door that none of the other rooms had. Rosslyn examined them briefly and recognized there was one at eye height, for the room’s occupant and any visitor to see each other, and one close to the ground, apparently sized for a tray of food to pass through. There were levers to open both slots on the outside of the room.
It took her tired brain a moment to process what her eyes were seeing.
The room was a cell.
Oh, I know who this room is for, she realized suddenly.
There was only one person in the palace who was effectively a prisoner.
Rosslyn knocked on the eyehole slot and then waited for the sound of movement from within. Once the slight noise of a human stirring filtered through the door, the Princess opened the slot.
Sure enough, sitting upright in a small bunk, twisting her body to face toward the door, was Matilda.
“Princess, what brings you to the servants’ quarters?” her cold voice asked. “Did you get bored in your part of the palace? Came to have some fun slumming it with the servants?” There was a taunting note in her voice, but Rosslyn was completely used to that from her by now.
“I am not bored,” Rosslyn replied quietly. “I came to learn what you know about poisons.”
“Someone tried to poison your father, then?” Matilda asked.
Rosslyn did not respond, and she tried her best to maintain a poker face. The former Duchess was just trying to rattle her.
“Oh, they did poison your father?” Matilda said, rising from her bunk.
Rosslyn did not meet the woman’s eyes. She wanted to be out of this conversation. Rosslyn’s gaze darted anywhere and everywhere but to Matilda’s—to the sparse furniture, to the bare walls, and to the collar that remained around the slave’s neck even during sleep.
Adon, do we know what she knows? Rosslyn thought.
Matilda stalked toward the door, moving slowly, like a beast of prey, seeming to savor the feeling of Matilda’s discomfort.
So hateful, Adon transmitted. She hates your family so much. Who is she? No, never mind, she knows something—she knew this might happen, but she isn’t involved herself. She just hears things. Knows things. When she hears someone is plotting to kill your family, it delights her. What kind of sick person is this woman?
“You do not know anything, do you?” Rosslyn asked. She finally met Matilda’s gaze.
Matilda stood inches away, just on the other side of the door—so close that Rosslyn could not even make out her expression clearly.
“That might be a fair description, Princess,” Matilda replied. “I know little. The Demon Empire knows that it would be a waste of time trying to recruit me to their cause.” Though Rosslyn could not see her lips, she saw from the movement of Matilda’s eyes that the woman had twisted her face into an evil grin. “But I knew more than you, eh? I knew that something was coming. I know what happened. I am amazed that it succeeded, but I should not be. Your father was always a fool. He probably does not even have someone tasting his food. Where is he now? Is he lying in a bed, clutching the sheets while they try to leech the poison from his body? Is he already gone? Where will that leave you, little Princess—”
Rosslyn slammed the viewing slot shut, suddenly unable to hear any more from the woman.
“So spiteful,” she muttered. “I could not make myself listen any longer.”
There was a low laugh on the other side of the door, and Rosslyn was reminded that Matilda could still hear her.
What do we know, Adon? Rosslyn thought. What did her thoughts reveal? Anything that can help us? Who did she overhear? Who was plotting? Even a simple physical description of the people behind this, if Matilda’s thoughts emerged in pictures as well as words, would be most helpful.
“I would never help anyone else kill King Alistair,” came Matilda’s muffled voice from her cell. “That man is mine to murder. I would not allow another person to steal my victory from me.”
She really means it, Adon transmitted. About wanting to kill your father herself. And I think she meant everything she said. There was so much going on inside her brain, it was a little hard to keep track of, but… Oh, my head is throbbing. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been doing this for so long, coupled with the Transformation, but I need a minute or two, if that’s all right. I won’t forget anything I absorbed, I just need to break the Transformation and turn off Telepathy.
All right, Rosslyn thought. She reached her hands back behind her head. Just climb down into my hands, then? I can hold you, so you will not have to even support your own body weight, and you can stay hidden from the guards.
Yes, Adon sent wearily. Then she felt the tiny weight of the butterfly in her fingers. It was still surreal how little Biomass he had, how little space he occupied. He was too large, with his wingspan, for her relatively small hands to completely hide him, but she quickly moved her hands around to her front and cupped them against her abdomen, more or less concealing him between her palms and her clothing.
She closed her eyes for a moment. Just then, she would have liked nothing better than to lie down and sleep.
“Are you all right, Your Highness?”
Rosslyn opened her eyes again and saw Sir Ringan looking down at her with concern. She forced herself to smile and nod.
“I am fine, Sir. I will be completely back to normal only when we bring every person responsible for this crime to justice, but I am all right.”
He nodded. “We could not help but overhear some of that wicked woman’s rantings.” He tilted his head to indicate the other knights, several feet behind him, who were standing near the entrance to this section of the servants’ quarters. “Would you like us to do something about her? Place her in a cell as well? Her remarks are treasonous in their own right.”
Rosslyn shook her head. “No, she is already being punished in the manner most fitting to her crimes. She is forced to live in her present condition. Forced to live with herself every day and into the night. I cannot imagine a worse outcome.”
Sir Ringan snorted slightly. “Well, please do let us know if you change your mind, Your Highness. We do not care for anyone speaking ill of our King, or wishing him dead, any more than we would if she had taken action on those desires.”
There was movement among the knights as he spoke, and Rosslyn realized there was someone else there now—perhaps more than one someone. One of the newly arrived figures appeared to be trying to make their way through the tangle of people. Initially, Rosslyn could only see an arm, as the newcomer’s body was blocked from view by several knights who appeared to have stopped the person from moving forward.
But as Sir Ringan turned toward the sound, placing a hand on his sword, Rosslyn finally saw the face of the person who was trying to get through the gaggle of warriors—apparently trying to reach the Princess herself.
“Celeste!” Rosslyn called out.