Chapter 271: Chapter 255 – Motives, Culprits, and Poisons

“Pay your dues on time and leave no debts behind, lest they spring up and bite you in the rear at the worst possible time.” - Old folk saying.

In the end, after a tense night of questioning and interrogation, the Duke’s men apprehended the culprits of the poisoning attempt, two kitchen staff and one servant, all of whom had been employed in the past two years. By the dawn of the next day, confessions had been wrung out of them in the dungeons by the Duke’s personal guard, who was schooled in ways to make people talk and had applied his knowledge on the culprits.

 

From the confessions, they had apparently been approached by a masked, cloaked man who had paid them handsomely up front to spike the Duke’s food with a little extra spice regularly. It took them a year before they were in a position to do that, either by working their way up the kitchen or being made part of the wait staff, but when they were positioned, it was easy to do as they were asked.

 

After all, nobody in the kitchen paid much attention over a pinch of spice, and the three were clever enough to always mix it into strongly flavored foods or drinks to cover the taste as well, with some dishes not even needing any because the recipe already contained it.

 

The locals had not known about the spice’s toxic hallucinogenic properties, beyond the old folk warning about using too much of it at once, something that was easily confirmed after a short investigation. In the end, most of the Duke’s household proved innocent, with their only guilt being that of ignorance of things they had not really known about.

 

Some talks with Asclepius revealed that he had read about the spice in a book before, but had not really recalled it until Aideen brought it to mind, which meant that information about it was present, but not widespread. Since Asclepius mentioned reading it in a medical manuscript, that meant healers were the most likely to be aware of the toxic qualities of the spice.

 

As for which healers might have a motive to slowly poison the Duke in such an insidious way, it had not taken them long to look westward and suspect the Guild. Duke Tovmund had the hardest policy set against the guild, banning them entry to his territory on pain of flogging, ever since they tried to eke out concessions from him in exchange of healing the Duchess only to fail miserably at it.

 

Needless to say, the Duke had considered them charlatans and frauds ever since, and had a very strong negative view of the Guild, a far stronger one than held by his neighbors. As for why such a slow poison was chosen rather than just to straight up assassinate the Duke, he had his own guesses.

 

Neither of his two sons were any friendlier to the Guild, so removing him just like that would have been pointless and likely turned his successor even more hostile to them, as they would be the main suspect. On the other hand, there was a strong stigma in Posuin against those who were mentally unstable or were straight up mad. There had been precedents of nobles having their hereditary titles removed because of such cases, even.

 

Had the Duke gone mad from the poison, his enemies were likely to call on such precedents and try to have his family demoted or stripped of his titles.

 

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It was an unpleasant bit of political plotting, and given how hostile the general relations between the three border Duchies and the five Central ones, who backed the Guild to boot, the Duke had no end of possibilities on who might have been the one to call for such a thing.

 

“Pray tell, Miss deVreys,” asked the Duke two days later during the breakfast, which was again a small affair with just the six of them, Asclepius being the addition to the table. “How did you notice the poison with just a taste like that? It seemed to be rather obscure knowledge even amongst the healers I know of, and Sir Asclepius had also confirmed that.”

 

“Oh, it’s because of some studies I did, Your Grace,” replied Aideen with a smile as she took a sip of the good tea. “One of the benefits of being unliving… is that poisons simply stopped working on us, and since I am a healer myself, I devoted some years into the study of poisons to learn on how to handle them better.”

 

“So you mean…”

 

“Yes, I learnt to identify hundreds of poisons by scent and taste and symptoms. It also made for some rather interesting discoveries along the way, actually,” said Aideen nonchalantly. “For example, the venom of the Red-banded Diamondback Viper actually made for a delicious additive to tea and cakes, though I would not suggest ingesting it unless you’re either immune or had an antidote on hand.”

 

“It’s not something new, honestly. Some poisons do taste good and are often used in food preparations, especially if they were only harmful to certain races,” she added. “For example, the metallic content in the meat of some predatory lizards are mildly toxic to humans, but the dwarves, elves, orcs and goblins just felt that it made the meat more delicious and loved them.”

 

“Interesting,” said the Duchess from beside the duke as she smeared butter and marmalade on a small loaf of bread. “So you would say that eating poison has been part of our life all along, just that we don’t notice it?”

 

“Pretty much. Some of the foodstuffs we eat regularly are toxic to some other races, and vice versa, while we know some things are mildly poisonous and still consume them regardless,” said Aideen in reply as she nodded. “Take alcohol for example. It will kill you if you consume too much of it, unless you’re a dwarf, but I’m pretty sure everyone in this room drinks them on a regular basis.”

 

“Fair point, Miss deVreys,” said the Duke with a smile as he lifted his cup of tea - spiked with a dash of imported hard dwarven liquor - and offered her a toast. “Here’s to slow-acting poisons that tastes good, then!”

 

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