The Demon Emperor's System: I Rose From a Dead Body

Chapter 7: A Weak Noble's Secret

Seraphina scooped the crossbow off the floor and held it out by the stock.

"It's loose," she said. "The string's cut halfway. You couldn't hit a barn."

"I'm not going to shoot it." Adrian took it in both hands. It was heavier than it looked. "I want to keep it. I want everything in this room that a dead man was carrying."

"Why?"

"I'll know in about five minutes."

She stared at him.

"Watch the stairs," he said. "And tell me if the singing stops."

"Why would it stop?"

"Because they've got work to do."

For a second he thought she would argue. Then she turned on her heel, crossed to the door, and put her ear against the wood. She didn't answer, and he didn't expect her to. He noticed she took her post at once, though, with her sword hand loose and her weight on the balls of her feet.

Downstairs, something big and wooden went over. Men laughed. A glass broke. Boots pounded across the marble in the great hall, and somebody started singing.

Adrian set the crossbow on the broken desk and let out a breath. Then he stood very still, because a memory had come up out of the dark without being asked.

A smell first. Pipe tobacco. Old leather. A big warm hand wrapped around a small one. A man's voice, deep and tired, saying *Press the eye, Adrian. No, the left one. Gently now. Wolves don't like being hurried.*

His father. The old Lord Vale.

Adrian crouched beside the desk. The top had split down the middle, but the legs had held. Each one was carved into a crouching wolf with a heavy head and two chips of green glass for eyes.

He pressed the left eye of the nearest wolf.

*Click.*

A thin drawer slid out of the desk's side, no wider than his hand. Dust puffed off the wood. The drawer smelled like a closed room and a long time.

Inside lay a small leather book and a folded sheet sealed with red wax.

He took the sheet first. The seal was cracked in half, a crown over three stars. The Royal Archive. He opened it with shaking fingers.

*NOTICE OF INQUIRY. By order of the Keeper of the Royal Reliquary. The artifact catalogued as the Warden's Key was removed from the Reliquary vault on the night of the twelfth. The access slip bears the signature of ADRIAN VALE, heir of House Vale. The Heir is hereby summoned to account for its disposal...*

The signature sat at the bottom, black and neat. *A. Vale.*

Adrian held it close to the candle.

Then he went down on his knees and began to gather the papers off the floor, one at a time. Letters. Bills. A half-finished note to a tailor. There were about forty of them. He flipped through them quickly, matching shape to shape.

Every real *A. Vale* had a looping V. A little fat circle at the top, as if the writer had gotten bored and decorated it.

The signature on the notice had a clean, pointed V.

A good forgery. Careful. Whoever made it had spent time with the real thing, and they had come close. Almost close enough.

Almost.

"That's wrong," he muttered.

"What is?"

Seraphina had drifted back from the door. She looked over his shoulder, then took the notice out of his hand without asking and read it. Her red eyes went along the lines once, fast.

"Warden's Key," she said. "I've heard of it."

"What is it?"

"No idea. Some old relic. Nobles go missing for stealing things like that." She turned the paper over. "Why's the signature different?"

"Because I didn't sign it." He caught himself. "He didn't. The man who used to be in this body."

She looked at him for a long moment. He realized what he'd just said out loud, and what she'd heard, and waited for her to ask.

She didn't. She handed the paper back.

"Read the book," she said.

The leather journal was warm from the drawer. The handwriting inside was loose and slanting, a young man's, with ink blots in the margins.

*Third day since the Inquiry. They say I signed for the Warden's Key at the Reliquary. I have never been inside the Reliquary. I've only ever seen it from the street.*

*Fifth day. Pike's men at the front gate again. The Ledger is calling the loans early. Lucien says he'll handle it. Lucien is smiling.*

*Ninth day. A man in a grey coat outside the house. Again. I think he works for someone.*

Adrian's mouth had gone dry. He turned the page.

*Tomorrow is the Gilded Hall. Lucien insists. If I go they'll laugh at me. If I don't, it looks like guilt. I'll go. I'd rather be laughed at than be a coward.*

That was the last entry.

A weak man, Adrian thought. Careless with money, easy to flatter, bad with cards. Everyone in the house had probably said so. Everyone in the city had probably said so. But he'd written that line, in a bright, stubborn hand, and meant it.

The candle shook as Seraphina breathed beside him.

"Somebody built this," she said.

"Yeah."

"Slowly."

"I was at the Hall," Seraphina said. She wasn't looking at him. "Before. Scouting the room. Two hundred nobles, all of them laughing at him, and he stood in the middle with a cup in his hand and kept smiling. I thought he was drunk."

"Was he?"

"No." She frowned at the candle. "I think he was trying not to cry."

Adrian ran his thumb along the edge of the journal. He closed it, gently, the way you close a door on someone who's sleeping.

"Yeah." He lifted the notice. "Debts first. Then the stolen relic. Then the party where everybody gets to laugh at him. Then, the night after, you."

She said nothing. A muscle in her jaw tightened.

"Whoever did this wanted him broke, then shamed, then dead," Adrian said. "Maybe in that order. Maybe on purpose. It's a lot of work for a rich boy with bad credit."

"So why?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know a lot of things."

"I know the signature's fake, and I know somebody close to him made it." He folded the notice and tucked the journal and the paper inside his ruined shirt, against his skin. "And I know that anybody who wants him dead is going to be real annoyed when they hear he isn't."

Below them, a floorboard groaned.

Both of them looked at the floor.

One long creak. Then another. Slow steps, climbing, coming toward the second landing.

Down in the hall, the singing had stopped.

"Second floor," Seraphina said, very softly. "They're splitting up."

Adrian grabbed the crossbow.