Chương 201: 28.Autopsy Report 3

Once the orders were complete, the morgue settled into silence again. But this silence was different. The earlier quiet had been like packed ice—still, inert, the silence of things already finished. This was something else entirely. It was the final held breath before a bowstring releases.

Everyone knew exactly where they were headed next, and everyone understood that after tonight, this harbor would never again maintain its particular equilibrium—grimy and corrupt, yes, but at least still breathing on its own terms. Ignicia swept her gaze across us one final time.

"Whoever catches the running thread first reports back to me first." Maro grinned.

"What if all four threads come running at once?" Ignicia looked at him, and in the cold light of the ice-filled room, the fire in her golden-red eyes flared once, brief and absolute.

"Then I pull them in one by one and strip every tooth from their mouths." Something crystallized in my understanding at that moment. Starting tonight, Haerding's death was no longer simply one corpse, one scandal, a few corrupted ledgers. The body on the iron slab was merely the first stone turned over. And beneath it, things had already begun to scatter. I left the examination room carrying a cold that defied easy description.

Not the simple physical cold of ice against skin, but something closer to what settles in your spine after witnessing something you were never meant to understand—your mind still running hot while your back has already gone cold on your behalf. Haerding's ashen face, the sigil carved beneath his tongue, the thing coiled in that jar like a curse that had grown legs, and the coroner's perfectly composed "Correct"—all of it had stuck to the inside of my skull, and none of it was interested in letting go.

I stopped at the corridor's mouth and drew a deep breath. What came back was blood, medicinal astringency, char, and the accumulated heat of wooden floorboards that had been paced across so many times they were considering spontaneous combustion. Wonderful. Even breathing here felt like being interrogated. I looked down at the record board in my hands and grudgingly admitted Ignicia had a point. Compared to her, Lei Lian, and Maro, I genuinely was better suited to chasing testimony.

When those three stepped in front of someone, the person either wanted to kneel or wanted to run. I, on the other hand, still retained a marginal quality of "probably won't immediately set you on fire" that passed for approachability. Marginal. But present. I started with the harbor clerk. The easiest target. Because ledgers lie, people lie, but sometimes ink is more honest than tongues.

A side chamber adjoining the command post had been hastily converted into an interview room—one table, three chairs, one lamp, and one young clerk whose complexion had achieved the exact shade of spent lamp oil. He looked to be in his early twenties, cuffs and fingertips stained with ink, dark crescents carved beneath his eyes, wearing the expression of someone who had always suspected paperwork would be his cause of death.

The screaming filtering in from outside completed the portrait: he looked exactly like a sheet of paper someone had crumpled after making a mistake. I closed the door and sat across from him.

"Name."

"R-Robin, sir."

"I'm not a sir." I set the record board on the table.

"I'm the poor bastard who ended up cleaning up after several sirs tonight. Cooperate, and my mood might improve." He blinked, something flickering across his face that might have been the impulse to smile—but given the circumstances, smiling was clearly not a survivable option, so he swallowed it with admirable self-preservation instinct.

"Yes."

"What are your duties?"

"Dock entry and exit logs, berth declarations, supplementary cargo manifests, and—and transcription of duplicates requested by the Governor-General's office." I noted that. Perfect. This man had hands in both the docks and the Governor-General's paperwork. Like a bureaucratic fish that had helpfully evolved legs and delivered itself to my table.

"When did the cannon fire reach the harbor district?" He swallowed.

"Around… late in the shen hour."

"Around?"

"Because—because initially no one was certain it was cannon fire." He rushed to clarify.

"When the harbor wind picks up, sounds carry strangely across the water. Sometimes like bells, sometimes like distant thunder—""But you heard it."

"…Yes."

"When did the harbor commander receive official notification?" He went quiet. A small silence, brief, but as conspicuous as ink dropping into clear water. I picked up my pen and deliberately didn't press. People work like that sometimes. Push too hard and they contract. Stay quiet, and they start worrying their hesitation has already said too much. Sure enough, he cracked quickly.

"The official document submitted records it as half an hour later." I looked up.

"The official document submitted?" His face went paler.

"I—I mean—the report filed with the commander's office. That's the recorded timestamp."

"And in reality?" His throat moved.

"Later."

"How much later?"

"At least—at least another quarter-hour." My pen stopped. Half an hour delayed, and that was the sanitized version. Reality was worse. I genuinely considered returning to read this information beside Haerding's corpse, just to see if a dead man could be moved to rise again from sheer appreciation of how thoroughly his incompetence had been covered up.

"Who told you to change it?"

"It wasn't changed!" The denial burst out instantly—then he caught himself, registered the overreaction, and visibly deflated.

"It was… a correction." I looked at him steadily.

"What was it called?" His lips trembled twice before he whispered:"…A change." There we go.

"Who gave the order?"

"Haerding's personal attendant." He couldn't meet my eyes.

"He said it was the Governor-General's verbal instruction. That the original timing had been recorded in confusion, and I should transcribe a clean copy using wording that 'aligned with standard procedure.'" I nearly laughed. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Aligned with standard procedure. Remarkable.

These people had managed to make falsification bureaucratic—as if dressing lies in official language could automatically upgrade negligence into procedural variance.

"When did the attendant approach you?"

"Not long after the cannon fire—no, after the chaos started outside." He pressed his memory.

"First he told me not to submit the original draft, said the Governor-General needed to review it. Then he returned with revised details and told me to transcribe from that." I caught the thread immediately.

"The original draft. Where is it?" His expression shifted.

"I—I thought it had been collected…"

"Thought it had been collected?"

"I have a habit of slipping a backing sheet under my work surface to prevent ink bleed-through." His voice dropped.

"If it hasn't been soaked or burned, it should still be in the hidden compartment under my desk." I looked at him, genuinely wanting to applaud. Excellent habit. This entire harbor owes its survival tonight to your pathological fear of ink seepage. I recorded that and pressed for more details—first cannon blast, initial harbor dispatch, who had passed through the records office, who had said "sit on it," who had scrambled for old manifests as cover.

Robin's answers came fragmented, but together they painted an ugly picture: information hadn't failed to arrive. Someone had deliberately suppressed it, and when suppression became impossible, they'd panicked and tried to scrub the timeline. When I finished, I stood and tapped his desk once.

"If that backing sheet is still there, you'll probably survive tonight." He stared at me. I added: "If it isn't, you'll need to work very hard to prove you're not just a decorative inkwell that helped the Governor-General sell this harbor." He flinched violently, nodding repeatedly with great conviction. I left the side room with my first thread in hand. Haerding hadn't just delayed the report—he'd tried to retroactively rewrite time itself. Wonderful.

The dead don't lie, but the living will organize a corpse's lies until they're practically presentable. This job was becoming more resignation-worthy by the minute. Next: Haerding's personal attendant. This one would be considerably less cooperative. He was being held separately in a small second-floor room, wrists bound behind him. But his face was clean, collar straight, overall presentation notably more composed than the officials outside weeping into their sleeves.

Presumably the privilege of proximity to power: even his misfortune carried itself with dignity. When I entered, he looked up and assessed me immediately—the practiced evaluation of someone determining whether I was here to interrogate or relay messages on someone's behalf. I sat down without rushing to speak. With someone like this, approach required calibration. Go in too hard and he plays the loyal servant. Too soft and he decides you're manageable.

The optimal strategy was making him feel that this foreign envoy—who admittedly didn't look like someone who'd resort to physical coercion—might nonetheless be considerably more tedious than whoever would.

"Name."

"Karn."

"How long were you with Haerding?"

"Six years."

"Six years." I nodded.

"Then you should know exactly what hour your master drank, what hour he lost his temper, what hour he collected payments, and what hour he ordered documents rewritten." The corner of his eye twitched.

"You jest, sir."

"I'm not a sir," I said.

"And I'm not jesting." I slid the timeline I'd recorded across the table.

"You went to the records office and altered the reported time." He was quiet for a moment, then answered with practiced composure: "The Governor-General instructed me to correct the records. Given the chaos at the time, a clerical error in the timestamps was hardly surprising." Beautiful. Official register, steady delivery, and he'd even cushioned himself with a nice "chaos at the time" to soften any hard landings.

Unfortunately for him, bureaucratic doublespeak was the one commodity I had in absolute surplus tonight.

"Did the Governor-General also instruct you to suppress the original draft?"

"No."

"Did he instruct you to delay forwarding it to the harbor commander?"

"No."

"Did he instruct you to continue preparing his evening wine and incense after cannon fire had already reached the harbor?" This time, he paused. A very small pause. But I caught it. I leaned back in my chair and smiled.

"Interesting. The first three answers came without hesitation. The fourth one made you think. What's the matter—was there something in the evening wine that required more careful explanation?" His jaw tightened.

"The Governor-General had a habit of taking a calming tonic before sleep."

"Tonight as well?"

"…Yes."

"Who delivered it?"

"I did."

"Who prepared it?"

"The kitchen."

"Who ordered it prepared?"

"The Governor-General."

"Who lit the incense?"

"…Also me." I let out a quiet internal whistle. Excellent. This attendant had just been formally promoted from "the man who falsified documents" to "the last person to handle items that went near the Governor-General's mouth." I tapped my pen against the table.

"Where is the wine vessel now?"

"Still in the Governor-General's quarters, I assume."

"And the incense?"

"Burned through."

"What kind of incense?"

"A calming blend from the Eastern Reaches." I looked up at him.

"Eastern Reaches?"

"A common variety available in the markets," he added quickly.

"The Governor-General only used it occasionally—""Occasionally, yet you recall the origin with such precision?" He went quiet. I was beginning to understand why Ignicia had sent me specifically. Someone like this, faced with her, would simply kneel and shake. Faced with Lei Lian, he'd spend the entire conversation calculating whether his next sentence could be construed as conspiracy with Eastern sorcery. But faced with me—he still thought he could be clever, which made it that much easier to watch him overextend.

"Last question," I said.

"Between the cannon fire and the Governor-General's death, who else entered his chambers besides you?" Karn's eyes shifted. Not panic. Calculation. He was running the numbers on how to answer with minimum personal damage. I softened my voice slightly.

"You'd do well to think carefully. I'm not the one currently on the examination slab." That landed. His throat moved, and he finally spoke quietly.

"A guard came in to deliver an outside report. And… someone from the Governor-General's household administration came once. Said there was an urgent document."

"Name."

"I don't know."

"Appearance."

"Wearing a hat, pulled very low. I couldn't see clearly."

"You're the personal attendant. Someone enters your master's private chambers and you couldn't see their face?" This time, the sweat was genuine.

"They were carrying the Governor-General's private seal token. I didn't feel I could refuse entry." I recorded that and didn't push further. Push too hard at this stage and he'd start fabricating. Fabricated testimony has its uses, but tonight I wanted the truth while it still had blood on it. At the door, I paused and glanced back.

"One more thing, Karn." He looked up.

"If that wine vessel is still there, and if there's something in it that shouldn't be—you'd better start praying you were nothing more than an obedient fool following orders."

"…And if there isn't?" I gave him a thin smile.

"Then pray you're worth more alive than the Governor-General turned out to be." Every last trace of color drained from his face. The final interview was the guard. Guards are generally easier to question than civil officials, and considerably more straightforward than personal attendants. Their lying technique lacks refinement—what they rely on instead is instinct: who they fear, who they follow, when to pretend they didn't see something.

Ask one of these men which direction he was actually looking at a given moment, and the answer tends to be more honest than he realizes. The guard had been brought to a corner alcove in the outer corridor. His knees still carried dust, as though he'd spent a meaningful portion of the day kneeling. The moment he saw me, he snapped to attention with the rigid precision of a post driven into a wall.

"Name."

"Gwen."

"Assigned position."

"Outer corridor of the Governor-General's sleeping quarters."

"Where were you when the cannon fire was heard?"

"The outer corridor, sir."

"I'm not—" I waved it off.

"What did you do when you heard the cannon fire?"

"I looked out the window first, then went to consult the personal attendant."

"You didn't report directly?"

"The Governor-General's standing orders prohibited unauthorized entry to his quarters at night." I closed my eyes briefly. This place. Every corner you dig in, you find another regulation specifically designed to make you want to say something unprintable.

"So you consulted the attendant. What did he tell you?"

"That the Governor-General was handling documents and was not to be disturbed."

"How long before you reported a second time?"

"Approximately… two quarters of an hour." Two quarters. I let out a silent, humorless laugh. The harbor was practically striking sparks out on the water, and this man was standing outside a bedroom door counting procedural regulations.

"When you made your second report, who was in the room?" Gwen thought for a moment.

"The attendant. The Governor-General. And someone who had just delivered an urgent document—they were leaving as I arrived." I looked up.

"Did you see their face?"

"No. They were wearing a cloak, hat pulled very low." Wonderful. Another faceless visitor. But this time the guard added something useful.

"They moved quickly, though. And they didn't leave through the main entrance—they went toward the inner staircase." My pen stopped.

"The inner staircase?"

"Yes, sir." I knew that staircase. Not the one officials used for legitimate movement—the one favored by household staff, book carriers, and anyone delivering private items. It ran all the way to the rear corridor and the storerooms, bypassing the majority of the building's foot traffic entirely. Which meant the cloaked figure with the private seal token hadn't merely gained access to the Governor-General's chambers.

They knew the building's interior geography well enough to use the servants' route on their way out. I pressed further—height, sound of boots, fabric quality, any smell. Gwen's answers were imprecise, but one detail came through with unexpected clarity.

"There was a smell."

"What kind?"

"Fragrant." He frowned, reaching back.

"Not the usual wine and incense smell from the Governor-General's rooms. Sweeter. Like the kind Eastern merchants sometimes carry—a powdery scent." Powdery. The Eastern calming incense Karn had mentioned surfaced in my mind immediately. The thread was beginning to curve, and all of it was curving in the same direction. I closed the record board and stood.

"Every word you've said tonight will be verified. If it holds up, you'll probably keep your post guarding this miserable harbor. If it doesn't—" Gwen's throat tightened. I looked at him and finished the sentence in the same level tone.

"Then you'd better hope Ignicia is in a generous mood at the time." I heard myself say it and immediately recognized the absurdity. Given the current situation, asking a dragon princess who had just discovered that someone had pre-poisoned her prey to be in a generous mood was roughly as realistic as asking the thing in that glass jar to kindly come back to life and explain itself. By the time I walked back down the corridor with three sets of testimony in hand, the sky outside had gone completely dark.

Lamps lit throughout the command post cast their glow through the paper windows in shades of exhausted yellow, like the faces of people who had been awake too long. I had managed to pull the rough shape of a first timeline out of the wreckage. After the cannon fire reached the harbor district, the report was suppressed. The suppression came from within Haerding's own circle. The personal attendant had delivered the evening wine and lit Eastern incense in the chamber.

A guard had witnessed a cloaked figure carrying the Governor-General's private seal token, entering and exiting via the inner staircase—and trailing a sweet, powdery Eastern fragrance. It wasn't enough to nail anyone to the wall. But it was enough for a corpse to start pulling the living toward it. And I was entirely certain Ignicia was going to like this kind of answer.