Chapter 9: Evening of June 5th, 366 (Seth)
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Seth hunched over his beakers, some of which were gently steaming. One was bubbling furiously, a blue flame set underneath. This was a mystery, and Seth did love a good mystery. He was now certain that it hadn't been an illness. Elizabeth Fresnel, mother to Queen Isabelle, had been poisoned! But how, and what with? The symptoms did not match any of the common poisons that Seth knew about. Or any of the uncommon ones for that matter, and Seth knew of plenty of uncommon poisons. It had also failed to kill her. He'd had a quiet word with the family already, in case someone wanted to finish the job, but the only reason to use such an obscure poison would be to try and mask the fact that the death was unnatural. Failing and making a second attempt would spoil that.

Actually, there was one other possibility; that the poison was not meant to be fatal. But what reason would there be for that? The Fresnel's were remarkably divorced from politics for such high ranking nobility, aside from their daughter. The daughter... The queen of Slandhaile, who so rarely left the capital for more than a couple of days at a time, had been here the whole week. Had someone poisoned the poor old lady as a diversion, just to lure the queen out? But why draw the queen from the capital? It was true her security was lighter while she was here, but there was no sign of foul play during the visit. At least that Seth knew of. Perhaps that sort of thing would be covered up?

His thoughts were distracted when the contents of one beaker turned a bright blue. "Ah-ha! Got you!" Shamelessly talking aloud to his own equipment, he started scribbling into a notebook, grabbing a new batch of glassware, dripping reagents and samples into each. He hooked one in to a large apparatus, that looked as though someone had practised nautical knot tying with glass tubes, watching intently as vapours of many colours started to flow through. Eventually a drip of red fell from a nozzle. Seth immediately started scribbling once more, pausing on occasion to flip through thick tomes filled with inscrutable symbols, poking his pen at some of the pages.

So, it was azdner extract, contained in a bottle of perfume and absorbed through the skin. Exposure caused a slowed heart rate, lowered body temperature and an intense dizziness or coma. But it was actually relatively safe; there was a wide gap between a dosage that would trigger some very alarming symptoms and one that was actually dangerous. Combined with the delivery mechanism, which would have delivered a carefully controlled dose, it was obvious that the intent of this poisoning was indeed not to kill. It wasn't Seth's job to speculate as to why, so he simply wrote up his findings to deliver back to the Fresnel house, not mentioning his theory about the queen. It wasn't as if anyone else reading his report wouldn't immediately reach the same conclusion.

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