Under the Gaze of the Queen Apparent

There had been a mild expectation that the interior of the ship would be a groaning, rocking thing where one would have to fight for balance, but the Grand Wolf, being a modern ship lashed securely to the riverside, was as stable as any terrestrial construction, and well lit with the presence of Breath-consuming lamps that provided plentiful lighting in the interior.

While the ship was inhabited by plentiful workers or, perhaps, operatives in disguise, the prior standing order by the captain left the crew more busy preparing to depart to pay much attention to the main hold – it was a storage room, what was going to happen there, as opposed to checking the engines, securing the deck, and other duties?

With such chaos, any passing glance at a group headed to the hold would have been written off as some anonymous crewmember, or perhaps some local hire, headed to fulfil their own checklist of tasks down there. Anyone who noticed would have been more than happy to know they could focus on their own work in the meantime.

Careful management of their movements and presence eventually allowed Cerise, Ruben, Andrew, and Damon to shut a bulkhead hatch behind them, leaving them the only ones inside a steel chamber whose walls were stacked with crates and barrels.

It perhaps said much that, after so much struggle, they had potentially pared all their issues down to a needle in a haystack. But at least the cargo sat still and didn’t talk back.

Nonetheless…

“I know we’re looking for ‘poison’, but do we even know what it looks like?” Damon asked, even as he wedged his weapon under the nailed-down lid of a crate to pry it open. Inside were stacks of textbooks and other reading material, all packed so tightly it seemed unlikely any toxin would be squeezed between them.

“Besides anything in bottles,” Cerise answered, while taking a crowbar offered to her to split another case open, “Potion crafting equipment like stands, burners, mixing equipment, mortars, pestles, and so on. If they’re making them local, they’ll probably cram them all somewhere together without proper packing when they’re not being used. Any poison might be found nearby.”

“And if we do find them?” Andrew asked.

Ruben was quite succinct. “Smash it.”

One crate at a time, the four opened them, and found a world of commerce in each. Glassware and ceramics. Ingots of metal. There was even a case full of musical instruments – Damon gave each a testing shake and found they were as hollow as they appeared.

As the four continued dismantling the storage area, Cerise spoke, conversationally but quietly to the side, where Ruben had just unearthed a standing grandfather clock swathed in straw.

“You think Turmen is behind this?” She asked.

Ruben paused for a moment, before digging into the packing around the clock.

“I don’t know. Blaming them seems like the easy thing to do, but I don’t know. I just know that if Lucy was here, she’d call for war. That’s why I don’t want to.”

“Even if it makes sense?” Cerise queried while looking at the prince with some uncertainty. “Turmen crooks, a Turmen base of operation. If the shoe fits, might as well kick some butt right away rather than hemming and hawwing.”

“If it was Turmen, what would you do?” Ruben cut her off fiercely. “Put yourself under the Queen Apparent’s flag? Call for all of us to march on their capital?”

Perhaps it was more the vindictiveness of the question than the logic of it that made Cerise pause. Why was it even now that the princess weighed so heavily on Ruben’s mind even while they were up to their necks in conspiracy?

Andrew hollered out, cutting into their little bubble.

“Cerise, there’s dried plants.”

The pair twisted around in an instant, to see Andrew as he stood next to Damon as he finished prying a container apart to spill dried flowers across the floor.

The witch stalked forward, crushing more than a few of the crumbling flora under foot as she approached and crouched by the exposed pile.

“Black Dog,” Cerise muttered while rubbing a petal between her fingers and feeling its leathery, preserved surface. “Are these all you found?”

“So far,” Damon answered.

“Seems like our poisoner picked what they want their accident to look like,” Cerise hummed, the clinical part of her taking over in its analysis. “However you mix this, if it gets inside a person, it’s systemic gut failure and hemorrhage. It’ll look like bad food poisoning… well, which it is.”

“So they are planning on tampering with food or drink,” Ruben concluded, as he approached the others. “Or they were.”

Cerise wasn’t satisfied, however. “Found any bottles? Any jars? It can be disguised as a liquid or processed to resemble caviar. Black Dog flowers are just raw materials. It’d be a lot better if we stopped the people here from walking off into the night with a finished mixture.”

Andrew shook his head, and opened his mouth when he heard the crack of a rifle outside, followed by panicked shouting.

“What is that!?”

“Run!”

“Please! We surrender! Don’t–”

Everyone looked up at the din of violence occurring right above their heads, and an uncertain and fearful chill moved through them.

“Is it the Guard?” Damon wondered, just loud enough for the others to hear him whisper.

Ruben frowned at the ceiling, which consisted of two hinged hatches designed to fold outward so that the holds could easily disgorge its contents. Just on the other side of that portal were shrieks of terror and the pounding of feet.

He immediately turned to leave, motioning for the others to follow with an anxious stiffness. “We’ll retrace our steps back to the captain's cabin, and jump into the river if we have to.”

Ruben touched the hatch’s handle, and then immediately retracted it with a hiss.

Frost had begun forming on the steel, thickening by the second until coated every gap, lug, and cog so that the hatch was sealed shut.

“Lucretia is here…!?” Ruben hoarsely whispered, fully absorbing the unease filling the room.

Cerise opened her mouth to ask what on earth the kingdom’s princess was armed with, but the sound of groaning steel interrupted her. As one, their heads shot up to the closed double doors sealing off the ceiling – save that it was opening.

Ice was streaking across the steel and forming icicles that fell and shattered around them. Even then the agonized hatches continued to swing upward, and when the gap between the two widened enough, arms – skeletal, ethereal arms – shoved their way through, grasping the edges of the metal gates so that they could be pulled open.

Cerise stared at what she had only heard of in passing. A power the Arnis family had been gifted by, and though it made rare appearances these days, it had not disappeared.

Instead, the cold and the dead bowed to a woman who stood imperiously at the edge of the open cargo hold to stare down at her quarry, guarded by soldiers material and spiritual, hands politely clasped in front of her, but eyes relishing much.

“And what do we have here, hiding like fugitives?” Lucretia Mariposa Ambrose Arnis wondered aloud.

Cerise glared.