Beneath the royal council chamber lay a narrow brick‑lined crawl‑space, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways.
It had originally been a smoke vent built two hundred years ago during the palace’s initial construction, later sealed and abandoned amid expansions. Elara had spent three painstaking months, eating away at the mortar between bricks with highly corrosive potions, carving herself this hidden vantage point to spy on her enemies.
Dust mingled with desiccated bat droppings filled the air with a sharp, acrid stench. She covered half her face with thick cloth steeped in mint juice, breathing in shallow, quiet gasps. Through a crack no wider than half a finger, the stifling, opulent tension inside the council chamber seeped down like frigid, tangible water.
“Your Majesty, I beg you — launch a full investigation into this affair!”
The voice of Colin Harris, the Empire’s Left Chancellor, was aged yet powerful, reverberating with a low hum across the spacious hall. The old fox had donned his purple‑and‑gold robes, regalia of the highest civil rank; every fold radiated righteous indignation.
Peering through the fissure, Elara saw the King upon his lofty throne, his complexion ashen, as though he had not slept properly for days. He stroked the gem set in his scepter absent‑mindedly, his gaze drifting sideways. There sat Queen Isabella. She wore none of her dazzling ceremonial gowns today, only a plain dark‑grey dress fastened high at the neck. Her eyes were cast down, wearing a mask of quiet grief.
“Lord Harris, these… ledgers you present do bear seals. Yet who can say for certain they have not been forged by schemers?” The King spoke at last, his voice hoarse, plainly striving to smooth things over.
“Your Majesty, the paper, ink, and exclusive anti‑counterfeit runes of the Ministry of Finance on the original ledgers have all been verified by the Royal Mage Circle.” Boris, Deputy Minister of Finance, stepped sharply forward. He drew a wax‑sealed certificate from his tunic and held it out with both hands. “Furthermore, massive tax shortfalls have been uncovered across Berkeley’s private trade routes. We confirmed these through overnight archival research.”
“Where is Berkeley? Drag him out to speak for himself!” The King slammed a fist against his armrest, frustration boiling over.
“Your Majesty, Lord Berkeley awaits questioning outside the hall.” Captain Raine’s voice rumbled from a corner. Clad head‑to‑toe in black‑iron plate armor, he leaned weight on his drawn sword, an emotionless stone statue. Through the crack, Elara watched his gaze lock firmly on the chamber doors.
Heavy footsteps echoed as Lord Berkeley, Minister of Finance, was marched inside under guard of two royal sentries.
Only a handful of days had passed, yet the once‑proud fat man who held the Empire’s purse strings was unrecognizable. His custom brocade robes hung loose on his frame, stained about the collar. His formerly ruddy cheeks had sunken in, and flecks of vomit clung to his beard.
“Your Majesty… I am innocent! I have been framed!” Shrugging off the guards, Berkeley crashed to his knees on the cold stone floor, banging his forehead hard against the ground.
“Innocent?” Harris let out a cold laugh, pressing his advantage. “Then explain how military funds recorded in these ledgers turned to gold coins stacked inside your private cellars?”
Berkeley trembled all over. He lifted his bloodshot eyes, staring past Harris straight up toward Isabella on the dais.
Shifting her aching limbs in her hiding spot, Elara knew that look well. It was the desperate gaze of a cornered creature begging its master for protection. Berkeley still held damning proof of the Queen’s embezzlement of military funds. He believed that so long as he kept silent, Isabella would shield him as she had done before.
But Isabella did not so much as lift her eyelids.
“Lord Berkeley.” The Queen’s voice fell soft as a sigh, yet carried a bone‑chilling chill. “You have served the Empire faithfully for many years, and His Majesty and I have long trusted you. Yet if you truly committed such graft, acts that shake the very foundations of our realm… then I can do nothing but sacrifice you, though it grieves my heart.”
Berkeley’s lips began to quiver violently. He stared at her in disbelief, as though his very backbone had been ripped from his body.
“Your Grace… you…” His voice withered like dry dead leaves. He tried scrambling to his feet, only for Raine to step forward and press him back down by the shoulder.
“Your Majesty, the facts are plain and evidence conclusive.” Harris seized the moment, turning toward the King. “To let this go unpunished would incense our northern border troops and break the faith of common folk across the land.”
The King sighed. No longer glancing toward the Queen for cues, he waved a weary hand. “Issue the decree. Strip Berkeley of his title as Minister of Finance, seize all his estates and wealth, and cast him into the death‑row dungeons. In three days… he shall hang.”
“Your Majesty!”
Berkeley let out a shrill, horrified cry. He knew that locked in the death dungeons, he would never live those three days out. The Queen would silence him forever before he could talk. He thrashed wildly, trying to shout warnings, but Raine moved faster. A powerful palm clamped tight over his mouth, while two other guards bound his arms behind his back with enchanted gold‑thread ropes steeped in sleeping potion.
“Mmph! Mmph‑mmph!” Desperate muffled whimpers tore from his throat. His eyes bulged toward the high dais, tears and snot streaming down his face, yet he met only the Queen’s perfectly composed, utterly unperturbed profile.
Hidden in the crawl‑space, Elara watched calmly. Her heartbeat was slow and steady. Five years ago, her own father had knelt in this very council hall, stripped of rank, condemned on fabricated charges. Back then, the court had fallen dead silent. Not a single soul had dared stand for him.
Now the jackals who had climbed to power over the Sinclair family’s blood were tearing each other apart.
The trial concluded swiftly. On the King’s order, Raine’s men dragged the limp, broken Berkeley out of the chamber.
Once the King departed, nobles began filing out in small groups. Harris and Boris exchanged a knowing glance, smiling victoriously as they conversed in low tones and walked away. Queen Isabella rose, supported by her handmaidens. Pausing briefly where Berkeley had knelt, she whispered something only her personal body‑servant could hear.
Elara could not catch the words, yet she saw the servant’s face blanch before he hurried off.
Go to the death dungeons. Give him a dignified way to end it, so he need not suffer, Elara thought, filling in the unspoken order.
She wriggled backward out of the cramped fissure, like a gecko retreating into shadow. Dust swirled in the passage. She coughed softly, smothering the sound against her palm.
Crawling a hundred paces through the dim tunnel, she pushed open a secret door disguised as brickwork and slipped into a disused storage closet for cleaning supplies. This was the palace’s lower‑servant quarter. Maids carrying dirty buckets and porters hauling bundles passed by, none noticing the woman in rough grey cloth and a silver half‑mask.
Pulling her hood lower, she hurried down the servants’ staircase. As she neared a corridor leading to the sewer exit, rapid footsteps echoed ahead.
She froze, pressing flat against the shadowed wall and holding her breath.
It was Raine. He advanced with two royal guards, returning seemingly from the death dungeons.
“Captain, Berkeley demanded a bottle of our strongest wine in his cell. The watch reports his hands shook so badly he spilled most across his clothes,” one aide murmured in report.
Raine never slowed his stride, his tone hard as forged iron. “Give him what he asked for. Better he drink himself numb than face the scaffold sober. Post double watch in his cell tonight. No visitors. Not even a fly is to get inside.”
“Sir.”
At the corridor junction, Raine halted. He turned his head, scanning every dark nook of the palace hallway.
Elara’s heart jolted. She pressed deeper into shadow, slowing her breathing almost to a stop. The man possessed the instincts of a beast. Earlier in the council chamber, he had nearly detected the faint air shift from her vent above.
After several seconds, Raine looked away and marched off with his men.
Only when the clang of metal boots faded completely did Elara exhale slowly. Stepping from the shadows, she darted to an unlocked niche at the corridor’s far end, lifted a floorboard, and descended a ladder down into the sewers.
Damp mildew closed in around her.
She followed the water’s current for roughly fifteen minutes until she spotted Gray waiting for her at a concealed junction. He held a lantern shrouded in black cloth; his single eye glowed eerily through the dark.
“Boss. Did it go through?”
“It went through. The hounds are tearing one another to shreds.” Elara’s voice stayed level. She took the clean outer garment he offered and shed her dust‑caked grey coat. “Berkeley was sentenced to hang, yet he will never reach the gallows. The Queen will arrange for him to ‘take his own life’ inside the dungeon.”
“What comes next?” Gray stuffed her soiled clothes into a waiting brazier and watched flames devour the dust‑stained fabric. “Do we break him out? Or give him a push?”
“Give him a push?” Elara lifted her face, firelight dancing in her eyes. She recalled Berkeley’s hopeless stare as he had been dragged away. “No. He was nothing more than a stepping‑stone. Only now this stone might well bruise the Queen’s own feet.”
Her tone turned cold and unyielding. “Our sole task: make certain that by tomorrow morning, word spreads from the dungeons that Berkeley ‘killed himself out of terror of royal justice’. Do you understand?”
Gray blinked, then grasped her meaning. If the Queen had Berkeley murdered, she could conveniently shift every crime onto a dead man, claiming all proof died with him. But what if whispers of the Queen silencing a high‑ranking minister leaked through black‑market channels before Berkeley perished?
“Spread the rumor that the Queen is killing him to cover her tracks before her assassins even reach the cell.” Gray grinned, the scar across his face twisting. “Cruel move, Boss. You squeeze every last scrap of value even out of a corpse.”
“It is not cruelty.” Elara refitted her mask and walked deeper into the sewer tunnels. Her voice carried sharp and clear through the blackness. “This is what he owed the Sinclair house. The day he put his name to the decree for our family’s confiscation, he should have foreseen this end.”
Far ahead, the sewer exit opened onto the capital’s busiest thoroughfares. The distant, muffled clack of the night watchman’s gong drifted down. Faint and hollow, it echoed through the underground.
“Come. Time to head back. Tomorrow holds another act of our play to witness.”