The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish. -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Upon arriving in the capital Gialma's first action was to visit his housekeeper. Lauyajim lived several streets away from his house, in one of the little neighbourhoods inhabited by those who were well-to-do but not ostentatiously rich. Many other servants of the royal family lived in that neighbourhood or the ones around it. All the same, it was almost unheard of for a royal to personally visit the place.

Gialma insisted he would go alone to avoid attracting unwanted attention. His retinue insisted he would most certainly not go alone. They argued about it for half of the journey to Esergot. By the time they arrived they had reached a compromise. Gialma would only take one guard with him.

"It's the height of stupidity," his valet muttered when he thought the prince was out of earshot. "Avoid notice by all means, but what prince in his right mind goes anywhere without guards? That's just asking for assassins and kidnappers and who knows what."

One universal truth is that when someone thinks a person can't hear them, that person most certainly can hear them. Many misunderstandings have ensued. So has much embarrassment for the people involved, and amusement for the onlookers. And sometimes someone overhears something not meant for their ears, but simply rolls their eyes and moves on. That was what Gialma did. He sincerely doubted he was in any danger from assassins or kidnappers. His cousin was one of Death's servants. His house was almost always full of the dratted creatures. Almost as soon as he arrived in the city he realised a small crowd of Reapers had started following him around -- and apparently thought they were doing a good job of avoiding his notice. Heaven help any would-be kidnapper who tried to get near him.

Even if the guard hadn't accompanied him, he wouldn't have been alone. As it was he went to the house accompanied by one living person and at least ten dead ones. The Reapers had the decency to stay back and not speak to him.

Why are they here? Gialma wondered. Do they want to confess they were the ones Lauyajim saw?

Their confession, if that was what it was, would just have to wait. He couldn't speak to them in public. There were quite enough rumours about him being odd without him fanning the flames by talking to invisible people. Servants everywhere loved to gossip about their employers. He could only try to give his servants as little gossip as possible.

One of Lauyajim's servants answered the door. Her eyes widened when she saw who it was. She quickly bowed and stepped aside.

"Good morning, your Highness," she said, recovering from her surprise. "Lauyajim-hiyaoten[1] is expecting you. Follow me, please."

Quite a crowd followed the servant to the main sitting room. As well as the two people she could see, there was an ever-lengthening line of Reapers behind them. The original ten or so had apparently called their friends to come and hear this conversation. There were now at least twenty.

Gialma devoutly hoped Lauyajim couldn't see them now. That would truly be a nightmare to explain.

His housekeeper bowed as soon as she saw him. Thank the gods, she apparently didn't notice the long line of Reapers behind him. "Your Highness! It really wasn't necessary to come all the way out here to see me."

"I thought perhaps you would not like to return to my house again, after what happened," Gialma said. That wasn't the real reason he hadn't asked her to come to him and explain the incident. But he didn't like to admit that he was reluctant to go home just yet. This whole fuss was almost certainly caused by some careless Reapers. Yet there was still just the slightest chance that it wasn't. "I hope you haven't had any similar experiences since then."

Lauyajim shook her head. "I haven't dared go into the house alone since. Some of the palace guards offered to come with me. Every day we go through the place, room by room, and make sure no one's been there. They don't believe me about the ghosts; they think I saw assassins. I know what I saw, and it was nothing from this world."

Gialma glanced up at the crowd of Reapers clustered in the doorway. All of them listened with wide eyes. One of them saw him looking at them and shook her head emphatically. She opened her mouth to speak, paused to look at Lauyajim and the guard, and thought better of it.

What did she want to say? Gialma thought, puzzled. To insist she had nothing to do with it?

"Have you found any sign of how they got in?" he asked.

The housekeeper shook her head. "All the windows and doors were locked. Nothing was disturbed. Your great-grandmother's collection of vases weren't touched."

Those vases had been antiques when Princess Beijue first acquired them. Nowadays they were worth a great deal. Gialma had no interest in antique vases and no wish to part with an ancestor's belongings, so it mattered very little to him how much they were worth. For the first time he realised that perhaps leaving such valuable property in an empty house, with no protection other than a locked glass cupboard, was an unwise course of action. In fact it was an open invitation to a thief.

"All the portraits -- worth thousands, all of them! -- are still on the walls," Lauyajim continued. "Even the police had to admit those creatures weren't thieves. As for that nonsense about them being assassins, do you think an assassin would let themselves be caught so easily? No, no. If those were normal criminals then I'm the Ghost Queen[2]. I know a monster from the otherworld when I see one."

Gialma carefully did not look towards the Reapers.

"What did the creatures look like?" he asked. They didn't by any chance have wings and carry scythes? he wanted to ask. But there was no easy way to work that into the conversation. It would just make her ask awkward questions. Besides, that was the sort of detail she would certainly have mentioned to the police. Their report was conspicuously lacking any mention of it.

"Dead," Lauyajim said. That hardly gave him any information. "And they hopped when they moved."

None of the Reapers ever felt the need to hop from place to place. Well, not unless they were playing some sort of jumping game. Gialma gave the assembled crowd a bemused look. Several of them noticed it and shook their heads again.

Clearly he needed to hear their side of the story. None of this made any sense.

~~~~

Poison had always fascinated Zafadin. A silent killer that couldn't be guarded against. Its effects could so rarely be undone. Even if a victim got to a doctor before they died, the doctor would have to determine what poison had been used. An antidote might not be at hand. The victim was almost guaranteed to die. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. It was entirely up to the poisoner and what variety they felt like using.

Best of all for someone who wanted to avoid suspicion, anyone could access poison. Even by accident. Darkwort grew in the cracks of pavements. Wolf-bloom was easily mistaken for reweaf[3]. The most experienced farmers and cooks occasionally mistook deadly mushrooms for harmless ones.

Zafadin had spent much of his life studying poisons. He had over eighty in his hidden storeroom. They ranged in potency from winter alshu -- a single drop could kill a grown man in ten minutes -- to jarsaln -- even in large doses it wasn't immediately fatal and produced no symptoms, but if administered over several weeks it slowly destroyed its victim's heart.

While Jalakanavu planned how to get the poison to Emperor Tinuviel, Zafadin carefully selected which sort would be best to use. It must be a variety that was native to Carann as well as Malish. Otherwise everyone would know who to pin the blame on. Plausible deniability was a very useful thing. It was how he had -- so far -- managed to stay one step ahead of the people beginning to suspect his involvement in certain recent deaths.

It must be an uncommon poison, one without a readily available antidote. And it must act both slowly and quickly. So slowly that the assassin could get out of the palace before anyone realised something was wrong. So quickly that once it began to work, the emperor would be dead before any doctor could help him.

Finally Zafadin settled on sural. It didn't fit his every requirement -- it worked too slowly, and in most cases took a full day to kill anyone who ingested it. But it smelt almost exactly like kimliu, the most common herb in Carannish cooking. It was rare enough that no doctor would keep the antidote ready to hand. And even in the off chance that someone was poisoned with it and survived, it caused irreparable damage to their throat and stomach. One way or the other, no one lived long after they ate sural.

He told Jalakanavu about his choice almost as soon as he made it. They may not trust each other, but they worked together against their common enemies. For now. More to the point, they needed each other's support if they wanted to get anything done. One word from Jalakanavu would have Zafadin dragged away and beheaded. But if he was dead she would be forced to go through the rigmarole of finding yet another husband all over again.

Zafadin was also aware that his appearance tended to make people trust him. His heart-shaped face and wide, innocent-looking eyes put everyone but the most suspicious off their guard. That was a very useful thing for the emperor consort. Jalakanavu knew it as well as he did. She wasn't stupid enough to sacrifice a pawn that would still be useful to her in the games she played. All he had to do was make sure he stayed useful for as long as possible, and have an escape plan ready for when he became a liability.

"Are you sure it won't fail?" Jalakanavu asked dubiously. She picked up the small vial of sural he had brought from his storeroom. The silvery liquid swirled inside the glass. Flecks of yellow and orange flickered through it when the light caught it. "We can't afford to send another assassin if he survives the first one."

"I know it won't fail," Zafadin said with confidence. Other kings and rulers could study politics and warfare all they liked. He had his poisons, he knew more about them than some doctors, and that was far more useful knowledge for a royal than any number of more traditional studies.

The trouble with traditions was that most people clung to them slavishly and never looked for any other way to approach a situation. Inevitably they found themselves left defenceless when someone came along with no regard for tradition. Using poison had always been frowned upon in Malish. Traditionally it was viewed as the weapon of a coward. Most people would never use it based on that alone.

Zafadin didn't care who called him a coward. His weapons always got him what he wanted. And this time they would get what Jalakanavu wanted too.

"Have you decided how the assassin will get there?" he asked. He folded his arms on the table, laid his head on them, and watched the poison gently splash against the sides of the vial. A flicker of movement on the other side of the table caught his eye. When he looked up there was nothing there.

"We still have some spies in Carann," Jalakanavu said. "I think I know which one to trust. When we--"

She broke off. Zafadin gaped. Before their astonished eyes the vial overbalanced. It rolled along the table and almost fell off the edge. Jalakanavu caught it just in time.

"What happened?" Zafadin asked, bewildered. There had been no breeze. Neither of them had moved the table. There was no reason for the vial to fall over like that.

~~~~

Unseen by either of them, Death glared at the back of Jalakanavu's head.

"Should have known it wouldn't be that easy," she grumbled.

Breaking the vial wouldn't have done much in the long run. Zafadin would have simply bought another one. But it would have inconvenienced them.

She took note of what sort of poison they planned to use. Then she left for Carann. If she had anything to say about it, they'd never get the poison anywhere near Kilan. But just in case, she'd better tell him to find the antidote.

Chapter Footnotes:

[1] hiyaoten = Honorific roughly equivalent to the Japanese sama, generally used by servants when speaking of their employers.

[2] Ghost Queen = A character in Carannish legend. Her nature and purpose varies wildly between stories and provinces. In some tales she's a personification of death. (This version bears a suspicious resemblance to Death.) In others she's the ruler of her own realm, an afterlife reserved for people who committed suicide. Some stories portray her as a benevolent but capricious figure, while in others she is cruel and malicious.

[3] reweaf = A spice with a slightly sharp, bitter taste, commonly added to fish.