Status Reports

  Chapter 218

  Earl Augustine Savex the Sixth was seated at his desk in his secondary office in the city prison. Few nobles generally visited such places, but his preference to have a hand in matters of justice made it expedient for him to visit a few days a month rather than bother transporting individuals to face him in the castle.

  Particularly since he had removed the facility from the castle and located it just outside the city. It seemed pointless to leave it as a liability in the event of a siege. It also prevented the rare escapee from immediately going to ground. A man was much more easily hunted in the fields and forest than a busy city.

  Working through his morning duties he oversaw several interrogations and two confessions. One with pardon granted and the other leading to an expedited beheading. Schedule permitting, he liked to conduct executions himself.

  Not out of obligation, but because there was a certain satisfaction in doing it by his own hand. A private indulgence, nothing more. Unfortunately, his docket was a touch overfull at the moment. He’d have to let the headsman earn his keep.

  The morning brought nothing remarkable. Though in fairness that was a word he was using increasingly sparingly. The honor of its use at present belonged to what most would mistake for a knickknack on his desk, if they noticed it at all.

  He stared at the little glass bottle in front of him as if it might yield secrets just by looking. It resembled a heart cut from a man’s chest and turned to glass, the cavity inside cradling a thumb-sized pool of red liquid.

  They had begun appearing half a year earlier, though not always the same bottle or color. They came in response to illness or injury among his family and despite his initial distrust had once saved his life in a moment of desperation. This time, however, the bottle had answered nothing worse than his own carelessness while shaving. He didn’t drink it.

  “My Lord… the prisoner you requested,” came a guard’s voice.

  “Enter,” Augustine called. His brow rose at the delay that followed until three guards entered. One carried a report and two held the prisoner up between them. The unconscious man was in a bad way and the healer trailing after the group looked nervous, which didn’t bode well.

  “Report,” Augustine said flatly. The guard carrying it laid the papers on his desk then stepped back. The other two set the man in the chair meant for interrogation with care, not wanting to make his extensive injuries worse.

  “Leave,” Augustine growled after skimming the report. He was looking at Ackley Camphor, knight of the Oath of Tiamon. A man who had the piss beaten out of him earlier, though not on Augustine’s orders. Discipline in the prison would need addressing; that should never have happened.

  The group who had brought Camphor departed quickly. Likely relieved to be free for the moment though they knew enough not to expect that grace to last.

  The healer in the report gave Camphor’s odds of waking at fifty-fifty with no certainty healing magic would take. Head injuries were fickle things. An unacceptable state of affairs, as Augustine had questions and no patience for delay. Tilting the man’s head back, he poured the bottle’s contents down his throat.

  The effect was swift. Bruising and swelling began to fade before Augustine’s eyes. Not a full recovery, the knight had been badly hurt, but enough to bring him back from the brink. Augustine always found healing fascinating, the way it laid bare the body’s damage as it knit itself whole.

  Another bottle appeared with a plaintive little chime, as if the force behind it were annoyed at the nick on his chin. Augustine used it, then a third, before Camphor finally stirred.

  “Sir Camphor, mind telling me how you got in such a state?” Augustine asked once the knight’s eyes steadied.

  It was almost amusing, the bottles had appeared in answer to nothing more than a shaving cut, yet three of them had been enough to drag a dying knight back to consciousness. If this was the smallest measure the force could provide, he wondered what its greater works might accomplish, and what price they might carry.

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  “Fight with other inmates,” Ackley said bluntly, his voice thick with effort.

  “No guard stepped in?” Augustine pressed. The report had said six men were involved, two of them dead. That would not have been a quick fight.

  “Not while I was still awake,” Ackley said. He worked his jaw and swallowed. Likely blood. Even so, he had the courtesy not to spit it on the stone floor. Some men kept their manners, no matter the situation.

  “Well, I apologize for that. You’re not a guest, but that is no excuse. You haven’t been convicted of anything,” Augustine said with a nod. There were standards, and even the condemned were due a measure of them. Those who did not deserve such courtesies met the death penalty quickly in the field. Wasting civility on animals was pointless.

  “Thank you, my Lord,” Camphor said after a pause, like a man unaccustomed to apologies. Augustine was not surprised.

  “At this point your stay is a formality while some details are checked,” Augustine continued, ordering his thoughts. “You’ve been cleared of wrongdoing in the Silvertree affair and will be released in a day or so.”

  “However, I have some questions about the young man involved. Elim.” Augustine let the weight of the name hang, then continued. “You understand his situation better than most, from what I’ve been told.”

  “Elim is Lady Erica’s son, and I was present for the initial scandal,” Ackley agreed. “He is her son by way of the knight who trained me. Castor Grey.”

  Augustine waited for more, a hint of doubt or an insinuation. None came. The man believed what he was saying.

  “They said that outright?” Augustine asked.

  “Yes. She claimed his parentage as such immediately and was cast out by her father, Baron Silvertree. Neither she nor Elim denied it when I spoke with them at the estate either.”

  “Did they ever say it specifically? That Castor was the father?” Augustine pressed.

  “Elim called him father and said Erica named him husband,” Camphor replied, frowning in confusion at the line of questioning.

  Augustine glanced at the decree of lineage on his desk. It listed Elim as Castor Grey’s son and laid out a family tree mostly extinct for three generations. The mother’s line was also recorded, though that had never been in doubt.

  “I see, that aligns with the other witnesses who were questioned,” Augustine conceded. “Do you have anything you’d like to add before you're returned to your cell?”

  “Nothing particularly. They talked about moving to a new farm… I’d thought about joining them after this matter is settled,” Camphor said. He looked tired, which made sense. He was also clearly looking for some indication of Augustine's intentions or at least thoughts.

  “Loyal of you to do that, and that is a good trait in a knight,” Augustine said, allowing a faint bit of approval to show.

  “Your accommodations will be improved since you’ve been cleared. You’ll be free to go soon, but can remain to heal if it suits you,” Augustine added then pulled a bell rope next to his desk. Guards came in unhurriedly to help Camphor to his feet and new cell. It would be one of the temporary rooms reserved for those who were waiting on paperwork rather than sentencing.

  “Thank you, my Lord,” Camphor said, looking relieved now.

  Once Camphor was gone Augustine looked at the papers on his desk. The chain of events that delivered Elim's decree of lineage to his desk was plausible enough. Erica Silvertree had been cast out after thwarting her father’s social climbing scheme to entrap Lindon with drugs. Equally reasonably, she had avoided the estate until long after her father’s death, only to find it in a poor state on return.

  Records missing, back taxes due. Establishing the legitimacy of the claim to the estate had been a smart first move. Someone else would have likely filed for forgiveness of penalties at that point and a payment plan for back taxes owed. Given the harassment from the new Baron, and the meager value of the estate itself, forfeiting the claim became a more sensible choice.

  Augustine hummed low in his throat. It all made sense, but he disliked how clean it was. He had half-expected that even if the Grey boy was not Lindon’s bastard, he might one day try to claim it.

  Instead he was handed proof, certified by a reliable church, that the boy was no Savex at all. Lindon’s wife had borne a trueborn heir only a month ago, but the decree had been filed before the birth. No one could have counted on that outcome after so many miscarriages, so it could not have been planned.

  Scandal was supposed to leave cracks to pry open. Even lies carried angles worth exploiting. Yet here was a truth that offered nothing to work with, a tidy excision of Elim from Savex inheritance without apparent gain to anyone.

  Despite the decree going back three generations as was normal, Augustine had looked more deeply, just in case. The Greys had brushed Savex blood half a dozen generations past, a cadet branch of a cadet branch, born of a bastard line that had been granted a minor title for legitimacy at the time.

  Even if every nearer family collapsed, the relationship was well outside the point where the crown would reclaim the property and titles. No precedent, no leverage. Nothing of worth to a schemer. Which only made the neatness of it more unsettling.

  That was what Augustine distrusted - not the boy’s lineage, but the lack of games.