At fifty-two, she was young for a Souverain. Her pale face was comfortable in death, her white-bleached hair fanned behind her as if each strand had been delicately placed. There were no obvious wounds or bruises, no sign of attack. Nik had found the headlines in the papers strange, but the proof of no obvious sign of death confirmed his suspicions: She’d been murdered.
Souverains never died of natural causes this young. Age was the only disease Souverains succumbed to, because Arts Humains was paid handsomely to have a doctor in every Directeur and Souverain home. They tended to paper cuts and coughs, conducted weekly checkups for their families, and ensured all blood tests were perfectly healthy. Only the best for Anespérer’s social elite.
“Well?” Lafontaine asked.
Right. Focus.
He removed the leather pouch from his coat and readied a syringe with a hair-thin needle. He’d been assured this part would become easier with practice, that his mind would compartmentalize and adapt.
He understood all those things.
But he didn’t feel them.
Yes, the world needed doctors who could reset bones, stitch skin, and heal invisible ailments. Those people saved lives.
The truth was, the syringe never fit his large hand, and he fumbled for veins, causing more harm than good.
He lifted Souverain Plouffe’s arm, grateful his rust-colored gloves blocked the feel of her cold skin as he inserted the needle. Plouffe’s vein rolled several times before he managed to draw blood. Next, he added drops of solution to the white pads inside his kit, followed by a sample of blood. They turned green immediately.
“It wasn’t a heart attack,” he said. “Her blood lacks the cardiac enzymes.”
“Then what happened to her?”
One cause down. Thousands more to go.
He went for a physical examination, analyzing her fingernails. “No tissue present. No abrasions or bruises.”
Lafontaine stepped aside, motioning to a collection of delicate crystal jars and decanters filled with lotions and makeups.
“Her effects.”
Nik took a sample from each and added the solution.
Green.
“No detectable poisons,” he muttered.
Other Aspirants like Basset would have a dozen more tests they could conduct, but Nik only had one more idea. He withdrew a set of spectacles from his pocket and hunched over the body. He flipped the first lens, then the second, increasing the magnification until he could see the individual small hairs upon her fingers. Observation was a powerful tool. It had kept him alive better than any book ever had.
He was near to giving up when a mark near her throat caught his attention… the jugular vein? It was a minuscule point, smaller thanany intravenous wound he’d ever seen. The skin around it lacked signs of irritation or bruising. Strange.
“She was injected with something that left behind no trace.” Nik looked over the top of his glasses.
“Continue your examination. What could have done this?”
His mouth dried. The truth, he had learned in these last four years, was something Lafontaine coveted above all else. He did not suffer fools who tried to con their way into his good graces, and he would not abide liars.
“I don’t know,” he admitted quietly.
“Then it is some new poison,” Souverain Lafontaine said. “Who could have done it?”
New? Lafontaine was the medical expert of Anespérer. Nothing was new to him.
Lafontaine offered a white file, which Nik took hungrily. According to the coroner notes, she’d been found in her bed by a servant sent to wake her. Even the coroner admitted Plouffe looked as if she’d simply fallen asleep and refused to wake. There’d been no signs of forced entry, no evidence of a struggle.
Meaning her killer had been someone she knew well or…
Someone she feared enough to never turn away.
