Get Permission Before Committing Suicide
When I arrived at the residence of Imperial Physician Edrick Senel, they were already moving the body.
A stretcher covered in white cloth. Four Imperial Palace guards in black uniforms. One medical officer wearing the insignia of the Imperial Medical Bureau.
The mansion’s front gate was shut tight, and only an old butler sat slumped against the wall beneath it, weeping.
A step too late.
Damn it.
“Stop right there.”
I said it as I stepped down from the carriage.
The guards carrying the stretcher halted. The medical officer at the front turned to look at me.
“And who might you be?”
“Cassian Berdel.”
At the sound of my name his expression shifted, and not in a friendly direction. Apparently my reputation had spread rather far in a short time.
“I’ve come to see Edrick Senel.”
“You’re too late.”
The medical officer glanced at the stretcher.
“Lord Senel passed away a short while ago.”
“How?”
“Suicide.”
“Without permission?”
The officer’s eyebrow twitched.
“What permission does suicide require?”
“Edrick Senel is a key witness in the matter of His Majesty’s collapse.”
I lifted my hand so he could see the red seal on my finger.
“An investigation under Her Highness Adelia’s authority. It would be rather inconvenient if a material witness simply decided to die on his own, don’t you think?”
“It has already happened.”
“I see.”
I walked toward the stretcher.
“Then I’ll confirm it myself.”
The medical officer stepped into my path.
“The body is to be transferred to the Imperial Medical Bureau.”
“On whose orders?”
“The Director’s.”
“And the paperwork?”
“It was an urgent matter. The order was delivered verbally.”
“How long since death was declared?”
“About half an hour.”
“So in half an hour you confirmed the death, reported it to the Director, received transfer orders, and managed to bring palace guards along for the ride.”
The medical officer’s lips pressed into a hard line.
“We work efficiently.”
“Very efficiently. Almost as if someone already knew when the man was going to die.”
I turned to the Inspector who had followed me.
“Halt the transfer.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The Inspector signaled the guards. Adelia’s personal guards closed in around the stretcher. The palace guards exchanged uneasy glances.
The medical officer’s voice rose.
“By what authority do you do this?”
“Full investigative authority.”
I shoved the seal toward his face.
“If you have a complaint, take it up with Her Highness Adelia yourself.”
His mouth snapped shut.
“Move the body back inside.”
“That will contaminate the scene.”
“A strange objection coming from the people who already carried him outdoors.”
A sweet scent of liquor hung in Edrick’s study.
An empty glass sat on the desk. Beside it lay an unsealed letter. And on the floor, neatly arranged, was the rope supposedly used to hang himself.
Far too neat.
Did the man who hanged himself untie the rope and fold it afterward?
“Where was he found?”
I asked. The medical officer pointed at the ceiling.
“Hanging from that beam.”
“Who discovered him first?”
“A maid of the household.”
“Bring her here.”
The officer’s eyes flickered.
“She’s resting. The shock was considerable.”
“Where?”
“That is…”
The Inspector opened the household staff register.
“There are currently no maids employed at Lord Edrick Senel’s residence.”
Silence settled over the room.
After Edrick had been placed under house arrest, most of the servants had been dismissed. Only the old butler and one apprentice who assisted with compounding medicines remained.
“So a maid who doesn’t exist found the body.”
I looked at the medical officer.
“Harder to produce than the dead man himself, it seems.”
“…I must have received incorrect information.”
“From whom?”
“From the guards.”
Every palace guard in the room turned to stare at the medical officer. No one spoke. They clearly had not been given time to get their stories straight.
“A suicide note was discovered.”
The medical officer changed the subject in a hurry.
“The handwriting matches Lord Senel’s.”
I picked up the letter from the desk.
In obedience to the command of Her Highness the First Imperial Princess Adelia,
I mixed poison into the medicine offered to His Majesty the Emperor.
Unable to endure the guilt, I atone with my life.
Short. Clear. More than enough to send Adelia to the gallows.
A personal confession. A personal signature. And suicide.
The dead do not change their stories.
It was perfect.
“Who verified the handwriting?”
“I did.”
“A medical officer is familiar with Lord Edrick’s hand?”
“We belong to the same Imperial Medical Bureau.”
“Then you must have documents you’ve exchanged.”
“Of course.”
“Fetch them.”
“I don’t have any with me at present.”
“And yet you declared the handwriting a match with absolute certainty?”
Sweat beaded on the medical officer’s forehead.
I set the suicide note back on the desk.
“Where is Lord Edrick’s apprentice?”
The Inspector answered.
“He was locked in the pharmacy downstairs.”
“Locked?”
“The door was barred from the outside.”
Well now.
A short while later a guard brought in a young man. Disheveled hair. Pale face. Bruises on his wrists from pounding on the door.
The moment he saw Edrick on the stretcher he lunged forward.
“Master!”
“Stay back.”
The medical officer blocked him.
“He’s already gone.”
“Step aside.”
At my words the medical officer turned.
“My lord Count, you cannot simply—”
“Isn’t the apprentice a physician?”
“He’s only a compounding apprentice still in training.”
“He looks more trustworthy than you do.”
The medical officer’s face hardened.
I spoke to the apprentice.
“Examine him.”
The young man pressed his fingers to Edrick’s neck. A moment later his eyes went wide.
“He’s alive.”
All the color drained from the medical officer’s face.
“That’s impossible!”
“The pulse is weak, but it’s there.”
The apprentice pulled open Edrick’s collar.
“There’s no ligature mark either—nothing that should appear on a man who hanged himself.”
He lifted Edrick’s eyelids, checked the scent of his breath, examined under the fingernails.
“He was given sleepwort and ashroot together.”
“Poison?”
I asked. The apprentice shook his head.
“A large enough dose stops the breath, but right now he’s only in a deep sleep. If more time had passed it would have been dangerous.”
I looked at the medical officer.
“You said you confirmed death.”
“There was no pulse.”
“There’s one now.”
“The drugs may have caused a misjudgment.”
“An Imperial medical officer confuses the living with the dead?”
He took a step backward.
“It was a mistake.”
“You seem to make a great many of those.”
A maid who didn’t exist. A transfer order that didn’t exist. A corpse that was still breathing. A suicide note confessing the Princess’s murder of the Emperor.
I spoke to the guards.
“Arrest him.”
“Wait!”
The medical officer shouted.
“I did nothing!”
“We’ll find that out soon enough.”
“Where’s the evidence!”
“A living man is fairly compelling evidence, don’t you think?”
The guards seized his arms. He thrashed.
“It was the Director’s order! I was only told to move the body—”
He stopped.
Everyone in the room was staring at him.
I tilted my head slowly.
“You were told in advance that it was a body?”
“….”
“By the Director.”
His lips trembled.
“That’s not—what I meant—”
“You received an order to transfer a corpse from someone who hadn’t even seen Lord Edrick’s condition yet.”
“A slip of the tongue.”
“Record that as well.”
The secretaries’ pens scratched across paper.
Scratch. Scratch.
The medical officer was dragged out.
I turned to Edrick’s apprentice.
“Can you save him?”
“If we make him vomit the drugs and administer the antidote, yes.”
“Do it now.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And check that glass as well.”
The apprentice brought his nose close to the cup.
“It isn’t liquor.”
“Then what is it?”
“A solution of dissolved sleepwort.”
I examined the suicide note again. The ink had not fully dried. There was no ink on Edrick’s fingers.
“Master cannot write with his right hand.”
The apprentice said.
“Why not?”
“He injured his wrist on the battlefield when he was young. He can examine patients with his right hand, but for any lengthy document he uses his left.”
I held up the note. The script slanted gently to the right.
The treatment records we found in the desk drawer were the opposite—angular letters pressed hard by a left hand.
They had imitated the shape well enough.
But they hadn’t known which hand he wrote with.
“Not quite perfect, then.”
The Inspector said.
“They must have been short on time.”
I arrived too quickly.
If I had stayed behind to count the trading company’s assets, Edrick would truly have died. The ink would have dried. The body would have been moved to the Medical Bureau. And all that would have remained was a confession that Adelia had poisoned the Emperor.
The apprentice forced the antidote into Edrick and struck his back. A moment later Edrick coughed violently. Dark red fluid poured into a basin. His breathing gradually strengthened.
“How long until he regains consciousness?”
“Half an hour if we’re fortunate.”
“Then we wait.”
I sat down in a chair.
Today seems full of waiting. Outstanding payments. Confessions. And now a corpse that refuses to stay dead.
Edrick opened his eyes before the half hour was up.
His unfocused gaze wandered across the ceiling, then found me sitting beside the bed.
“Who…”
“Cassian Berdel.”
Terror spread across his face. Apparently my name was not the sort that put people at ease.
“Have you come to kill me?”
“Not yet.”
“Not… yet…”
“Depending on the circumstances, that could change. So tell me the truth.”
Edrick’s lips had gone dry. The apprentice gave him a little water.
I unfolded the suicide note in front of him.
“Did you write this?”
Edrick read the words. His eyes shook violently.
“No.”
“Did Her Highness Adelia order you to poison His Majesty?”
“Absolutely not.”
He shook his head with effort.
“Her Highness never even came to His Majesty’s chambers that day.”
“A messenger? A letter?”
“None.”
“Then who poisoned His Majesty?”
Edrick looked at me.
“No one.”
“No one?”
“His Majesty did not collapse from poison.”
I frowned.
The entire capital suspected Adelia of poisoning. Even the Blood Register had been fabricated to turn that suspicion into fact.
And yet it had not been poison.
“What was the cause?”
“A long-standing illness.”
Edrick clutched his chest.
“For years His Majesty’s heart rhythm has been irregular. Overwork and agitation combined to bring on a seizure.”
“Could he have recovered?”
“Three days.”
“What?”
“Under normal circumstances he should have regained consciousness within three days.”
Fear surfaced in Edrick’s eyes.
“While I remained at his side on the first day, his condition was stabilizing. The pulse returned. His fingers moved.”
“But he still hasn’t woken.”
“I was removed from his care.”
The day after the Emperor collapsed, Edrick had been expelled from the palace for “failure of treatment.” After that the Director of the Medical Bureau personally managed every prescription.
“Were the prescriptions altered?”
“There was one medicine I checked last before I was forced out.”
“What was it?”
“A sedative to help him sleep. It was meant only to buy the body time to recover after the seizure.”
Edrick seized my sleeve.
“But he cannot still be sleeping now.”
His grip tightened.
“Someone is adding something to the medicine.”
“What?”
“A drug that slows the pulse and clouds the mind.”
“What happens if it’s given continuously?”
“He will never wake.”
“But he won’t die?”
“If the dosage is controlled carefully, he can be kept alive for months.”
Alive, yet unable to speak.
Still occupying the throne, yet unable to issue a single command.
The designation of the Crown Prince had stalled. Adelia had become Regent. The Second Prince’s faction suspected Adelia of poisoning. Adelia suspected the Second Prince’s faction of treason. While both sides tightened their hands around each other’s throats, someone inside the Emperor’s bedchamber was managing the medicine.
No one had brought the Emperor down.
Someone was simply making certain the fallen Emperor never rose again.
“I must go to the palace.”
Edrick said.
“At once.”
“You can barely move in this condition.”
“Not me—you, my lord Count.”
He gripped my sleeve harder.
“The medicine being given to His Majesty must be stopped.”
I rose from the chair.
The Arzen Trading Company had been seized. The medical officer who tried to kill Edrick had been arrested. If the masterminds were inside the Imperial Palace, the time they needed to erase evidence would not be long.
“Inspector.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Send a messenger to the Guard.”
“What orders shall I give?”
I slid the red seal onto my finger.
Why not.
“Seal His Majesty the Emperor’s bedchamber and the pharmacy as well.”
The Inspector’s expression froze.
“His Majesty’s bedchamber, my lord?”
It was the place of highest authority in the entire Imperial Palace—somewhere even the Regent Princess could not freely enter.
And yet inside it, someone was keeping the Emperor asleep.
“Yes.”
You think I can’t?
I ordered the Inspectorate to secure the Director of the Medical Bureau’s person first. The reply that came back was that he refused to appear, citing his responsibility for the Emperor’s treatment in the Imperial bedchamber.
In that case, I would have to go to the Imperial Palace myself.