SIX

Xisuthra moved swiftly to prepare a secret chariot that would move the dead princess to the secondary palace. On his way, he met with Inal Enlim.

Inal Enlim was a concubine who was promoted to become the empress after the empress died. The reason she was promoted was that the crown prince, Aranar Enlim, was her son.

Xisuthra bowed upon sighting the empress with her entourage right behind her. She stopped when she also saw him. She wondered why he was in such a hurry and where he was going.

"Your royal Highness," he said, greeting her.

"Xisuthra, what is the hurry about?" Inal said when she saw the urgency in his steps.

"He Worship had ordered something urgent to which I must tend to Your royal highness," he responded carefully enough not to give away too much information. After all, the emperor had ordered that he trust no one.

Xisuthra even suspected that the emperor was suspicious of him also. The only reason he was still on the mission was because he was the only one close enough to carry out the orders of the great ruler.

"May I ask what that is?" Inal asked.

She was quite young and almost the same age as the dead princess. When the dead empress Ninli was still alive, she tried so many times to have a son, which turned out to be an effort in futility.

The emperor kept getting married to other younger noble ladies, hoping that they would get him a son. Only Inal was able to successfully carry and birth a son to full term. So when Empress Ninli Enlim died, Inal was automatically the next in line to sit on the empress seat.

She was younger and therefore quite silly in her activities, which led her to ask questions that the court ladies, maids, eunuchs, and bodyguards considered stupid sometimes. Although nobody could boldly say to her face that she asked stupid questions and behaved silly, they all thought it.

"It is a top-secret order," Xisuthra said.

It was a crime to reply to questions of the royal bloodline with silence, hence the reason why Xisuthra was patiently answering all questions that Inal threw at him.

"That even the Empress cannot know about?" Inal asked.

She felt all sense of entitlement and felt insulted when a mere right-hand man to the king refused to let her know why she was in a hurry.

"The Emperor said to tell no one or I die," Xisuthra answered with intelligence.

Xisuthra was one of the few in the kingdom who did not consider Inal Enlim as the Empress. By rank and seniority, it was supposed to be head concubine Suna Enlim. She had a son barely a month before Inal had hers, and everyone preferred Suna to Inal.

The Emperor had been so overwhelmed with emotions on the day that Aranar was born that he told Inal to ask for anything she wanted, and she went ahead to ask for the role of the empress.

The late Empress Ninli was on a sick bed and battling with a serious illness. Shortly after the request from Inal, Ninli died, and Inal assumed the Empress role.

"Be gone then," Inal said furiously.

Xisuthra bowed again and went on his way.

Irkal watched as Xisuthra left the room. She quickly closed off the quarters of the princess and left the environment.

She had always been uncomfortable with how free the princess had been. For most of the princess's life, she had always made it a point of duty to eat untasted food.

Neither the emperor nor the empress was aware that the princess was eating food without anyone tasting it. Bringing it up now was not good for anyone.

Irkal was unaware of the plan of the Emperor, but she trusted him as a good leader who made tough decisions when necessary.

Irkal took the remaining food from what the princess had eaten and made her way out of the palace. If she used the chickens in the palace and they indeed died because there was poison inside, then the palace would be in uproar from detecting the poison and trying to find out where it came from.

She was going to buy some chickens and take them to her father's house, feed the chickens the food, and wait for the result before reporting to the emperor.

Xisuthra watched as Irkal sneakily got out of the palace. She has changed out of her maid's clothes and put on the free for commoners.

Xiauthra thought it odd that the princess's maid would be up and about the whole place and even up to the extent of leaving the palace when the princess just died. He followed behind her quietly as she left the palace gates.

Xisuthra watched her buy two chickens and walk down the road to a small house uphill. It looked like where the maids and servants retired to when they left the palace.

Irkal was a third-generation slave. Her father had sold her back to the palace even after he had gotten his freedom because of his extreme gambling and drinking habits.

At first, Irkal was angry and swore to destroy her father, but then she met the princess and grew to love her father back despite his ways.

"What are you doing?" Xisithra said, which startled Irkal.

She was unaware of the fact that he had followed her from the palace. He was still unable to get any strange reaction from her yet, and it was getting to sunset. He needed to get back to the palace so he could set up to get the dead princess out of the palace before any suspicions began to rise.

"I also suspect poisoning," Irkal said.

Although she wondered why this man followed her all the way here, he was the only one she could trust since the emperor also trusted him.

"So what are you doing?" Xisuthra asked again.

To him, Irkal had not given an appropriate answer, and he was not going to have that.

"I bought some chickens, and I am going to feed them some of the food from the princess's meal. I took a piece of everything," Irkal explains her plan.

Xisuthra immediately knew that she was there, not for an ulterior motive. He knew she wanted to uncover the culprit even though she was a young girl who could run away from the truth.

"Do it," Xisuthra said after contemplating for a while.