The Hero System Glitched And Now It Pays Me to Love My Assassin Wives

The formal accusation arrived the next noon with seals from the imperial tribunal and the speed of things prepared in advance.

Zelina Flintstone imperial consort accused of poisoning a subject of the crown.

The central proof was the poison and its registered formula found in the confiscated archives of her old network.

The supporting proof were two witnesses who placed her near the Corven pass.

The prosecutor requested the cliff fortress.

Decimus didn’t appear in a single line of the file. That was his signature.

I found her in her quarters packing.

She wasn’t packing clothes.

She was packing vials and notebooks and a whole life of false pockets reduced to two travel bags.

"Don’t even think about it," I said from the door.

"Fleeing is the right move and we both know it."

She kept packing without looking at me.

"The file is perfect. My formula my routes and witnesses bought with old gold. The chancellor doesn’t fabricate bad evidence. In a week I will be condemned and in two I will be dead from certified prison fever confirmed by three doctors."

"Or we fight the case."

"With your word as a reformed tyrant? With mine as a poisoner? The only way to break that file is to open my entire network to the court. Names and routes and twenty years of people who trusted my silence. My life in exchange for everyone holding it up."

She yanked the bag shut. "You don’t pay that price. You flee."

"There is a third way."

"There isn’t. I have spent two nights looking for it."

"There is one. You just don’t like it yet."

She let go of the bag.

She crossed her arms while leaning against the table of her vials and granted me the most generous gesture in her repertoire.

"Surprise me."

"Not yet. I need the morning to put it together and I need you not to flee tonight. Give me until the trial."

"You are asking me for faith." She said it with the face other people use to say disease. "Me."

"I am asking you for credit. Twelve hours. You set the interest yourself."

Zelina studied me for the time.

I know exactly what she was looking for because I spent a lifetime looking for the exact same thing in the faces across the desk.

And I know exactly when she didn’t find it because that was the moment she got furious.

"I hate this," she said. "That you can’t be read. Three years of notes on the man you used to be and not a single page is useful for the one you are now. Do you know what that does to someone in my profession?"

"A new job?"

"Insomnia." She uncrossed her arms. "Twelve hours. We will call the interest this. If you fail me the original dose leaves its three locks."

"Fair deal."

"It is a terrible deal and I am accepting it anyway." She turned toward her vials to avoid looking at me while saying that last part. "That goes on your tab too."

The preliminary trial was held behind closed doors before the council and the tribunal judges.

Decimus presided from the high table looking like it was just a formality.

The prosecutor presented the poison and the formula and the witnesses. It was solid and airtight and lethal.

Zelina listened standing up handcuffed by protocol with the expression of someone attending her own funeral out of courtesy.

When the prosecutor finished I asked for the vial with the evidence.

"Your Majesty," the judge hesitated, "the poison is..."

"I know what it is. Bring it."

The vial crossed the room from hand to hand. I uncapped it before the full council and before anyone could fully understand I wet the tip of my finger and brought it to my tongue.

The whole room stood up.

Two judges shouted at once and a councilor knocked over his inkwell and the palace doctor ran across the room with his briefcase open.

Zelina took a step pulling against her handcuffs with her eyes truly wide for the first time in her public life.

"Vaelion!"

I raised a hand toward the doctor who stopped two steps away.

"Relax. A finger’s dose takes an hour to cause a fever and six to kill. We have plenty of time for the interesting part."

"Your Majesty this is madness!" The highest judge slammed the table. "The protocol..."

"The protocol presented a vial as proof that nobody verified. I am verifying it."

I held the vial up to the light.

"With the only instrument in this room the chancellor couldn’t buy. My own tongue."

The taste told me the whole story.

The cooking skill the System gifted me on the night of the knives that garbage reward that made me smell poisoned wine a lifetime ago unfolded the vial on my palate just like an open book.

[Analysis: lunar aconite. Bitter resin base.]

[Ratio: seven to three.]

[Maceration: twelve days.]

"Seven to three,"

I said to the room with Silver Tongue loading every syllable.

"The ratio of this vial is seven to three with twelve days of maceration. The registered formula of the accused which this tribunal presented as proof is seven to two with forty days. Any apothecary in the empire can verify it before nightfall. This is not her poison. It is a copy made by someone with a stolen recipe and without the author’s patience."

[True value: recalculating losses.]

Three apothecaries were sworn in that very afternoon by order of the tribunal and much to the prosecutor’s reluctance.

All three measured and all three macerated and all three agreed. Seven to three and twelve days. An apprentice’s copy of a master’s recipe.

"The copy proves forgery," the prosecutor conceded sweating over his papers, "but it does not exonerate. The witnesses place the consort at the Corven pass and the criminal network operating under her old name accumulates charges this tribunal cannot ignore. Sixty one documented crimes Your Honors. Forging the poison does not erase the organization."

There was the second knife in the file and it was the real one.

The poison was the excuse and the network was the noose.

Decimus had built it in layers and taking apart the first one only left the second one in plain sight cleaner and more legal.

Zelina knew it. She looked for me from her spot with a gaze that said run away too idiot you still can.

"Her network," I said, "is the matter of the next point."

And I looked at Zelina who had already understood.

She who didn’t even beg poisons was silently begging me not to say what I was about to say.

I said it anyway.

"The spy network this tribunal attributes to Consort Flintstone," I announced with the silver voice filling the room up to the rafters, "is mine."