‘Trace amounts of oil in the mouth. And of blood, bile, and stomach acid.’
‘Light yellow mixed with pale green. Oil-based. Thickened with beeswax.’
‘Soft brown. Water-based. Extracted with heat.’
‘Hand joint inflammation. Elderly man. Old inquisitor, retired, and now a tribunal.’
And the final, damning evidence, still fresh in her mind …Ingestion of comfrey ointment.
Ice ran through her veins. Her method had uncovered no other possibilities. Therewasno other possibility.
The salve the tribunal used to treat his pain couldn’t have been made in any of the peninsula’s city-states: their apothecaries could only sell common comfrey, notpricklycomfrey. Because of its lethal potency in unskilled hands, the trade of that variant had been outlawed in all of Vandalesia … except where the princes couldn’t regulate it. Like on coven grounds.
And while the plant was dangerous in the long term, transforming a remedy made from it into a virulent, deadly poison required an intentional act: a concentration of comfrey strong enough to shock the body into organ failure.
Old Crone take her; a witch had killed the old man.
Semras tore her eyes away from the table. Estevan was standing with his back turned to her, engrossed in examining the corpse once more. He hadn’t seen her reaction.
He hadnotseen it.
She could hide the truth. Say she found nothing conclusive, or that old age took the tribunal, or that an accident did. She could tell him a witch hadn’t been involved in his death.
She could lie … and prove him right. Inquisitor Velten had dragged her away from her home, already convinced she would conceal the truth.
“It’s over,” she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded wrong. Strained.
Estevan crouched to slide his finger over the floor. “And?”
Semras had never lied before—at least, never about something so big, so important. Blood thundered in her ears. She never had a reason, a proper reason to.
Until now.
The inquisitor stood again, still facing the wall away from her. He seemed so relaxed.
All witches were liars, he had said. He expected her to lie. She told him she’d prove him wrong, that she’d do it for her coven sisters. That they were innocent.
But one of them wasn’t.
Semras took a deep breath. “A witch poisoned him.”
Her breath shuddered out. It was over. She looked at her hands, expecting … something. Blood drenching them, perhaps. But nothing stained them.
The inquisitor turned slowly. He stared at her, his face cast in an unreadable expression.
Semras wrung her hands. “It was indeed poison. Or, more exactly, medicine turned into poison. It’s … sloppy.”
“Sloppy?”
“Yes, sloppy. Had the witch been patient and made her victim use his ointment for long enough, the poison would have seeped through his skin and afflicted his liver eventually. That would have killed him much more subtly than making him digest it. It’s meant to be spread on the skin, not taken orally.”
“What took his life exactly?”
Her eyes dropped to her notes. “Acute comfrey poisoning. It’s a potent analgesic. Toxic too, but deadly only if used for too long.I …” She paused, guts twisting. “I-I found traces of the ointment in the samples you brought me. Some remnants of willow bark tea too; he may have drunk it in a panic to lessen the pain of dying. Comfrey overdoses can induce confusion and lead to erratic behaviour. That would be why you didn’t find any of his medicine. He took it all at once, and it killed him.”
“I see.”
From a man of so many words, this uncharacteristic sobriety caught her off guard. Semras turned her attention to him.
