Ontogeny

Chapter 4b

     “Dead!” exclaimed Minister Falow furiously. “How?”

     “Poison, Minister,” replied Balhern, forcing himself to remain calm while fury and shame raged inside him. ”Not just him but all the prisoners. Minister, I have failed you again. I have failed you twice. I hereby submit myself for...”

     “Oh shut up!” replied the Minister for Internal Security. “Our enemies surround us and are closing in. This is not the time for me to discard my best people. You will remain as head of the palace guard and you will use your anger to find the traitor.”

     “Yes, Minister. Minister, the fact that all the prisoners were killed tells us something important. None of the guards did it. They all had access to Pettiwell. Any of them could have killed just him.”

     “So who did do it?” demanded Falow. “I want a list of everyone who's been to see him since he was brought here.”

     “Everyone’s been to see him. Pretty much everyone in the palace. Minister, this wasn’t done by someone visiting him in person.”

     Minister Falow nodded his reluctant agreement. “Who had access to the food the prisoners were given?”

     “Also a long list, Minister. The food prepared for the King and the other members of the royal family is carefully watched. Only carefully selected people are allowed to take part in its preparation and delivery. Food for the prisoners, though, less so.”

      “There is a traitor in the palace, Balhern. Someone in the pay of Carrow.”

     “With respect, Minister, we already knew that. The attack on the Princess...”

     “I want him caught, Balhern. Find the traitor, before he or she strikes again. You are responsible for security in this palace. Find him.” The Minister then spun on his heel and marched out of the room, a black cloud of fury hovering around him.

     Balhern stood there for several minutes while he allowed the Minister’s fury, and his own, to boil within him. He had been humiliated twice. He had failed the King twice. There would not be a third time. He felt the traitor’s actions to be a personal insult against him, and that insult would be answered and avenged. He would catch the traitor, or traitors, if it was the last thing he did.

     The possibility that there might be more than one traitor haunted him. Surely he couldn’t be so incompetent as to allow more than one fox into his henhouse. Of course, it was possible that the traitor had been in the palace for many years, that the mistake was not his but that of his predecessor...

     He shut off that train of thought with a snarl of self contempt. It would be so easy to blame others, but he was the current captain of the palace guard. The responsibility was his, both for the hiring of new staff and the scrutiny of veteran staff members, even those whose families had been serving the King for generations. Nobody was beyond suspicion. Not even his own men. Killing all the prisoners might have been a deliberate distraction to draw suspicion away from the guards, who could have slipped a knife between his ribs any time they wanted. Yes, he realised, a sour taste rising in his throat. Any of his men could have done it. Anyone except Thurley, of course, who'd been down with a throat infection for the past few days...

     He paused as a memory came to him. It had been Thurley who had originally pointed the finger at Pettiwell, claiming to have heard incriminating gossip in the tavern he frequented when off duty. Councidence? He thought further. Pettiwell had been arrested by the city guard on suspicion of burgling the Besswell house. He'd been seen flashing money around town, money that he couldn’t explain having. There was no concrete evidence to link him to the Besswell burglary, though. The idea that he was a traitor, that his money was payment for helping attack the Princess, had been, and still was, entirely plausible. If that was so, he had been killed to prevent him from naming his co-conspirators. In the cells of the city watch, though, he had been out of reach. His murderer would have had to arrange for his transfer to a place where he could get at him. And it had been Thurley who had accomplished this...