The pouting voice seemed to have a lot more pull tonight than normal, and this time Talon couldn’t resist.
He walked over slowly to where Christopher was standing, looking so innocent, and said, “What is it that you require, my liege?” His voice was neither tired nor angered, but quite calm and serene.
“Oh, I don’t need much,” Christopher started, waving a hand towards him. “I never do from you. You already have to protect me all the time, and that’s such a big job, I won’t ask for much. Just want to go over some plans of mine, is all.”
Talon sighed quietly so Christopher wouldn’t hear. Looks like I can forget about setting up a date for tomorrow. And it was my only day off for several weeks. Oh well, duty before pleasure, I guess.
“Of course, my liege,” he said with a weak smile.
The young prince beamed up at him. “First, I was hoping we could cover the plans for my coronation ceremony which must be this Jheriemsday, along with the party afterwards. I’m going to need to find a new place for the party, if nothing else. This hall has way too many memories for me, after all. I was hoping you’d know some good places. Then, I’m going to need . . .”
Talon tuned Christopher’s prattling out and sighed again. This was going to be a long night.
* * * * * * * * * *
Four years, Adam thought as he looked around the dingy laboratory. That’s how long I’ve been working, trying to find King Richard’s killer.
In the early months he’d been active, scouring the ballroom and other rooms of the castle for evidence, following leads from all across the country. That time had been exciting, but it was long past. The rest of that time he’d spent here, trying to come up with an answer and finding none.
Adam looked at the meager evidence he had been able to find as if by rote memory, hoping somehow it would be the last time he’d have to do it. He knew it probably wouldn’t, though. He hadn’t found one shred of new evidence in the last two years, which made this task incredibly boring, so he didn’t really focus on it anymore. Four long, wasted years, he thought again.
He’d thought to complain once, a year or so back. To try and change his fate. Convince now-King Christopher it was a fool’s errand and to focus on something more productive, but the good king had gotten even worse than he had been on the night of his father’s death – stricken with grief and swollen with his newfound power. But there was no arguing with such a man.
With a bored, tired look on his face, Adam glanced over all the evidence again, this time determined to find what he had missed. There was no such thing as a perfect crime – of this he was certain. Still, Adam had not been able to find the truth, the assassin’s fatal flaw, so to speak, that when found would solve this mystery and set him free of the monotony of searching for it.
As he looked over the one major piece of evidence – the goblet that had acted as a murder weapon and still had minor traces of poison in it – he tried to think of what he knew. He knew the killer was intelligent. Likely a professional, since they had left no identifying marks anywhere on the cup.
Forensic science had evolved some to the point where you could identify someone’s fingerprints on an object, though it was an arduous task. And of course, the ancient Tytin machine next to him could identify something called DNA if you gave it a sample of the person’s skin or saliva. Not that anyone knew what DNA was anymore, only that each person had a unique combination of it known colloquially as their ‘structure.’ But the killer had left neither prints nor any skin samples that Adam could find.
The poison used was Byttan in origin, but again that didn’t say much. About all he knew for sure was that it had to be someone who was at the party, and it had to be someone close to the old king. That left more than two hundred people, including the servants and the cooks.
There just has to be something I’m missing! Adam thought, frustrated with himself yet again. He kept looking at the old king’s chalice and the table and the chair from different angles and in different places, hoping it would help clear his mind. So far, it had not been successful.
King Christopher had insisted that no one but he and Adam were to be allowed in the lab, so Adam could at least be assured the evidence wouldn’t be tampered with. Not that it mattered much. It just made Adam feel more and more lonely. Some nights he even slept here, finding the life outside pointless.
“I can’t believe this!” Adam yelled. “I’ve searched everywhere but inside the chalice and I haven’t found a thing!”
The thought gave Adam pause. He stared at himself in the mirror-like gold of the old king’s cup for a moment in disbelief, wondering how he could be so stupid.
Of course! All I have to do is search inside the chalice for a skin sample. Then I could probably find what I’m looking for.
Byttan poisons, though extremely lethal and impossible to trace, were also notoriously hard to administer. Even the most seasoned assassin would have to be careful applying the poisons properly so as to get the ratios just right. This was not the kind of job one would do wearing gloves. So if there were any chance
