The Handwriting of the Dead
“They’re the same.”
Serena said.
On the table lay only the decree to halt the investigation, the one that had just arrived at the emperor’s bedchamber.
The other one—the original appointment that had made Adelia Regent—had already vanished into the Imperial Princess’s coat.
No one was about to ask her to take it out again.
Not anyone who valued their own neck, at any rate.
“What is the same?” I asked.
Serena touched the body of the decree with her fingertip.
“The handwriting of the person who wrote the main text.”
“Compared to what?”
“It matches the Regent’s appointment.”
I looked at Adelia.
Her hand drifted briefly toward the inside of her coat, where she had tucked the original of that appointment only moments before.
Serena was the sort who memorized documents—not the content of the words, but the grain of the paper, the shade of the ink, the quirks of every stroke.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
She kept her eyes on the characters of the halt decree as she spoke.
“The way the ends of the strokes are flicked, the spacing in long sentences, even the habit of writing the two characters for ‘Your Majesty’ pressed tightly together when referring to His Majesty the Emperor—all of it is identical.”
I looked down at the decree.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell.
To my eyes it was just handwriting.
Neat.
Elegant.
The kind of script that looked well-suited to getting a lot of people killed.
“Whose handwriting is it?” I asked.
Serena did not look up from the decree.
“My father’s.”
The reading room went quiet.
Adelia stood with her arms folded, staring at the paper.
“So a dead man left behind his handwriting.”
Her voice was cold.
Serena’s face went white.
“My father died three years ago.”
“He could have written it while he was still alive.”
“The ink tone of the main text is recent.”
Serena clenched her teeth.
“This was not written by my father.”
“You just said it was his hand.”
“Only the handwriting is.”
Her body was trembling.
Whether from rage or fear, I couldn’t tell.
Perhaps both. There was a bitter, grief-soaked edge to her voice either way.
She had entered the palace to clear her father’s name.
And now a forged imperial decree written in that same father’s hand sat right in front of her.
It was the worst possible outcome.
Her dead father would be recorded once again as a man who had deserved to die.
Leonel spoke.
“Director Eberhardt has already been executed. He could not have written this document.”
“Or someone could have imitated him,” Adelia said.
“Very carefully.”
Why Serena’s father, of all people?
If you were going to forge a hand, it would have been easier to copy someone still alive.
Yet they had used a dead man’s script.
The hand of the Document Commissioner executed for the theft of the Emergency Imperial Decrees, no less.
“There’s a purpose to this,” I muttered.
Adelia looked at me.
“Speak.”
“If this decree succeeds, the Director of the Medical Bureau returns and Edric is arrested. They take control of His Majesty’s medicine again.”
“And if it fails?”
“Serena Eberhardt becomes the culprit.”
Her gaze snapped to me.
“The traitor’s daughter forged an imperial command in her father’s handwriting.”
I rested a finger on the decree.
“A very tidy picture, isn’t it?”
The corner of Adelia’s mouth slowly curved up.
“Then I would have killed Serena.”
“And in that instant the whole affair would be over.”
“Over?”
“The real culprit vanishes, and Director Eberhardt’s name surfaces again. Young Lady Serena becomes the traitor who inherited her father’s crimes, and Your Highness becomes the tyrant who killed yet another innocent.”
Serena’s face hardened.
I went on.
“Someone wanted exactly that. To erase the evidence, lock in the false charge, and grow Your Highness’s notoriety at the same time.”
Adelia looked down at the decree.
“Thrifty of them.”
“Yes. With a single sheet of paper they meant to kill three people.”
And the original novel must have flowed the same way.
I swallowed the thought.
This conspiracy did not end with people dying.
It set the survivors tearing into one another.
Serena and Adelia.
Leonel and Adelia.
The prince’s faction and the Regent Imperial Princess.
The document officers and the Inspectorate.
All of them.
A truly diligent bastard.
I really hated diligent bastards.
The inspector Adelia had summoned arrived in the room shortly after.
To copy a hand, you needed originals.
I turned to the inspector.
“Where are the documents of executed traitors kept?”
He answered at once.
“As a rule, in the underground archive of the Inspectorate.”
“Director Eberhardt’s records as well?”
“That would be the case.”
Serena spoke.
“My father’s letters, work records, personal diaries, and transcriptions were all seized.”
“Good.”
“What is good about it?”
“I think I know where the thief stole his practice sheets.”
Serena’s eyes wavered.
“We need to examine the Inspectorate archive.”
The inspector bowed immediately.
“I will bring the access logs.”
The moment he left, I made the suggestion.
“Your Highness. Assign someone to watch the inspector as well. Right now.”
“No.”
The Imperial Princess smiled at me, sharp and bright.
“You will go yourself.”
It had been a tiring day.
The underground chambers of the Inspectorate were cold and dry.
I followed the inspector down the stairs.
Serena walked beside me.
I had brought her myself.
If I left the daughter out of the moment her father’s record box was opened, I would only be giving her one more reason to cut my throat later.
Thick stone walls.
Storage rooms barred with iron grilles.
Each compartment bore a case number and a charge.
Treason.
Embezzlement.
Forgery of imperial commands.
Theft of the Imperial Seal.
The keeper came running with the face of a man just dragged from sleep, then stopped short when he saw Serena and me.
A little of the drowsiness left his expression.
“The case records of Document Commissioner Eberhardt,” the inspector said.
“Open them at once.”
The keeper’s face stiffened.
“That case is under sealed record.”
“I am aware.”
I raised my hand so he could see it.
The Imperial Princess’s crest, carved into the red seal ring, caught the faint lamplight.
“By order of Her Highness the Regent Imperial Princess. Break the seal and confirm both the access log and the condition of storage at the same time.”
The keeper looked to the inspector.
The inspector nodded.
“I will record the procedure myself.”
Only then did the keeper produce his ring of keys.
The iron key turned three times.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Inside the storage box the documents lay in neat rows.
Too neat.
I did not like that orderliness.
I had learned something these past few days.
A crime scene could look suspicious when it was messy.
It looked just as suspicious when it was too clean.
Serena caught her breath.
For a long moment she only stared into the box.
The records of the father she had searched for over three years lay right in front of her.
Yet she could not bring herself to touch them.
I looked at the keeper.
“Are you going to leave it open for us to admire from a distance?”
He flinched.
“Access is permitted.”
Serena’s hands moved first.
The verdict.
The inventory of seized items.
Witness statements.
The record of the discovery of the wax mold.
The report on the charge of conspiracy to commit treason.
Her fingertips moved faster and faster.
Then they stopped.
“They’re missing.”
“What is?”
“My father’s personal letters and his transcriptions.”
Serena’s face hardened.
“They are on the inventory of seized items, but they are not inside the box.”
The inspector checked the inventory.
“Twenty-three personal letters. Eight volumes of work transcriptions. Two diaries.”
“All excellent material for verifying a hand,” I said.
Serena turned on the keeper.
“Who took them?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Then find out,” I said.
“If you leave something unknown as it is, that becomes complicity, doesn’t it?”
The keeper’s face went pale.
“I will bring the access log.”
A short while later a thick ledger was carried up.
The access register of the Inspectorate’s underground archive.
A record of who had examined the stored treason documents, when, and for what reason.
The inspector opened it.
In the past three months, three people had accessed the Eberhardt case box.
First: an assistant secretary of the Inspectorate.
Reason: reclassification.
Second: a document officer of the Imperial Secretariat.
Reason: reference for a case of forged imperial commands.
Third—
I stopped reading the name.
Document Commissioner Eberhardt.
Reason for access: request for correction of own case.
I turned the ledger toward Serena.
Her face went rigid.
“My father died three years ago.”
“So he did.”
“Then why is my father’s name here?”
The color drained from the keeper’s face.
“Th-that is…”
I looked at the access register again.
Someone had opened the archive under a dead man’s name.
Taken a dead man’s letters and transcriptions.
And written an emperor’s decree in a dead man’s hand.
Had he come back to life?
Of course not.
“What about the entry signature?”
When the inspector asked, the keeper opened the lower half of the ledger.
The signature column for visitors.
The name of Document Commissioner Eberhardt was written there.
Serena’s hand shook.
“This is my father’s handwriting as well.”
“They even imitated the signature.”
I looked down at the signature line.
“Or they affixed a signature they had obtained while he was still alive.”
Serena glared at me.
“My lord Count.”
“I was only listing possibilities.”
“My father never cooperated with anything of the sort.”
“Then we will simply have to dig deeper.”
I checked the date on the access register.
Two days before the emperor collapsed.
At that time the Regency, the Blood Register, and the manipulation of the emperor’s medicine had not yet come to light.
Which meant someone had already been preparing from then.
“Were any other records accessed on that same day?”
The inspector turned the pages.
The same day.
The storage box for imperial decree forms.
Precedents related to the dethronement of imperial family members and the pronouncement of treason.
Records of the procedures for executing members of the imperial bloodline.
I felt my fingertips go cold.
The phrasing was familiar.
Late in the original novel.
The day Adelia was dragged to the gallows.
The decree read aloud in the square.
First Imperial Princess Adelia von Ermain is hereby relieved of the office of Regent.
She is to be arrested on the charges of regicide and the incitement of treason.
It was almost the same form as those sentences.
The decree itself had not yet been written.
But the form was already being prepared.
“Is something the matter?” the inspector asked.
Had I been smiling?
I hadn’t noticed.
Probably from sheer disbelief.
“Nothing at all.”
I closed the ledger.
“They were preparing the document that would kill Your Highness.”
Serena drew a sharp breath.
The inspector’s expression hardened as well.
“You mean Her Highness the Regent Imperial Princess?”
“Yes.”
I rested my hand on the closed ledger.
“The last Emergency Imperial Decree has still not been found.”
The inspector spoke in a low voice.
“You mean they intended to write that form onto the remaining decree?”
“Most likely.”
“Who?”
“A living person who uses a dead man’s name.”
Serena said, her voice trembling,
“We have to find the one who stole my father’s name.”
“We will,” I said.
“We have to clear your father’s name, and we have to keep Your Highness’s head on her shoulders.”
“And your own neck as well, my lord Count?”
“That is the most important part.”
Serena’s face twisted again.
I was starting to get used to that reaction.
I opened the access register once more.
Two days before the emperor fell.
An archive opened under a dead Document Commissioner’s name.
Handwriting samples that had vanished.
Forms for the dethronement of an imperial and the pronouncement of treason, examined on the same day.
The last Emergency Imperial Decree.
Even now, someone was preparing that final sentence.