Herald of Steel

The poor, slave girl did not even get the time to close her eyes as she fell face first onto the wooden floor, a glazed, hollow look painting her face. She had absolutely no idea what had just happened.

Seelima only slowly revealed herself out of the pitch black following the successful attack, double handing a large, bloody wooden bat with her tiny hands. She glanced down at the stunned body with only a cold and emotionless glint, like she was not looking at her friend or even a human, but just a troublesome bug.

Then, keeping that same, cold, frosty facade, she slowly raised her bat high into the air, and...

Thud... Thud... Thud...

One would have almost a hard time believing that such dainty hands could swing such a heavy bat with such strength or for that matter, even do something so cruel.

However the Queen Mother’s stony face showed not the slightest hint of hesitation as she repeatedly hit the unconscious girl, painting the room’s floor with the poor girl’s grey matter.

She was like a possessed demon summoned from the very depths of the pitch black abyss and made sure to cave her skill in, confirming the kill.

Her facade only cracked once her arms became tired and needed to rest- forcing her to open her light lips and heave with flushed perspiration slightly.

Then, upon catching her breath, Seelima dragged the dead girl to a nearby window and threw her off the window to a nearby bush thus ’cleaning’ up the crime scene- by the time her mangled body was discovered the next day, around dawn by the groundskeeper, Seelima was long gone, comfortably snuggling naked with the king in his bed.

This should be a great lesson to never get fooled by the Queen Mother’s attitude just because she was a bit friendly. Sure right now she was sitting with her chest invitingly out, alluringly tempting Alxx to feast on it as much as he liked.

But that was only because she considered gain to far outweigh this small sacrifice. The same reason went even for her daughter... her sacrifice was deemed a great necessity to bind Alxx.

Hence, if one day this equation were to suddenly reverse and it made much sense the other way around... the Queen Mother’s heart was definitely black enough to contemplate the unthinkable.

To the absolutely power hungry woman, her body and any use of it was purely utilitarian and she would never be swayed from something like ’feelings’, even if they shared many, many good memories together.

Those might have been indeed fun... but having power was even more fun.

In that regard, Lady Inayah was actually a far more ’fair and good’ lady.

Now back to Seelima’s first proper killing, because it was her first time, the girl did make some rookie mistakes.

For instance, out of shock and haste, she forgot to properly clean the room, thinking no one would find the remote location. She also hid the murder weapon in the same place and did not carry it with her as she was afraid someone might spot it along the way

But the biggest oversight of all was her imprudent move of dumping the body overboard, thus allowing the crime to be discovered quite quickly.

It would have been far wiser to simply stack the dead body in that dusty, abandoned room, as few would have gone looking for the lowly slave girl anyway. In that way, the body would have been discovered only a few days later once it began to really smell.

But the young Seelima was not thinking straight and just wanted to separate the body from the original crime scene as quickly as possible.

Thus the body was discovered within only a few hours, the clues still fresh and quite visible.

An investigation was quickly launched, the guards being very determined to find the person who had such gall to commit such a heinous crime right at the heart of the sacred palace.

The initial speculation was that an enemy assassin had infiltrated the palace, but was accidentally discovered by the slave girl. She tried to run but accidentally fell, cracking her head on the way. Why else kill such a lowly slave in such a gruesome way, came the reason.

But because of this incorrect conclusion, the news soon got to the point that it even reached Alozmer’s ear. And the mad king, paranoid about his life instantly had he full weight of his power thrown into this problem.

Specialized scholars and guardsmen were brought to the scene and their keen eyes let them very quickly locate the fateful room by just tracing the trajectory of the falling body.

Upon entering it, they instantly discovered the stained pool of darkened blood and bits of bone and brain at the center, cementing their suspicions.

The bloody bat was too found and if fingerprinting technology existed, Seelima would have been found out then and there. The handle had large, bloody traces of her fingers from the time she had gripped the wood with all she had.

But despite this lucky break, suspicion was soon once again thrown at her as one of the palace maids testified that the slave girl had told her that she was going to meet Seelima that night. This maid was a coworker and somewhat an acquaintance of the slave girl, and the latter, unable to contain her excitement over meeting with the Queen Mother, had let out this little information about their rendezvous to her.

The only thing that stopped this from being an open and shut case then and there was that the maid could not tell the exact time and place for the meeting- the slave girl had omitted that part given that what she planned to do was technically forbidden.

There were extremely few times in her life that Seelima had been as afraid as when that maid came forward. And extremely few times in her life that she felt relief like when she found her secret was safe.

While for the investigators, although that was not the ideal outcome, it was good enough- at least they were not totally clueless and had a general direction of where to look.

So they quickly turned their attention to the chief suspect and if Seelima had not been the king’s brand new toy, they would have simply taken her to the dungeon to torture a confession out of her- regardless of whether she was really guilty or not.

In this time period, this was the norm- people were considered ’guilty until proven innocent’ and as long as the guards had reasonable suspicion, unless they were a noble or very rich merchant able to pay astronomical bribes, they would be swiftly sentenced.

It was certainly horrific but also from a pragmatic perspective, this was actually necessary.

Without access to any modern forensic techniques, you could not really expect the evidence to have the same high level bar as we have now. Otherwise, no criminal would ever be tried and chaos would reign.

Hence the guards quite heavily grilled the Queen Mother on how she knew the slave girl and why and where she was to meet her.

Seelima tried her best to seem composed and answer ’truthfully’- she claimed to have met the slave girl while working her chores in the palace and wanted to simply meet, talk and share stories after the long day’s work. However her friend never came... even though she had waited for her for many hours.

"I... I thought she had suddenly gotten handed some last minute work. I just thought she was too busy to come...*Sob*... I never thought... *Sniff*... I never thought..."

The Queen Mother even faked a few teardrops... trying to show off her shock and sadness.

But despite her best effort, the nervousness and fear clearly showed in her voice, eyes and even body language.

She was not yet the Queen Mother of today, able to lie through her teeth like drinking water. Now, Seelima might even be able to perfectly fool a polygraph test even if they asked her name.

But such skills were not developed in just one day. They were developed slowly through many brutal trials of fire and fear, such as this one.

These investigators sent by Alozmer were certainly no fools. Rather they were extremely shrewd and talented; hence, every time the Queen Mother spoke, they would send her a piercing look as if verifying her. The young redhead’s heart thumped like crazy every time that happened.

But as a side perk of sleeping with the king, these men did not push her too much.

They thought more along the lines that the girl was sweating bullets under their intimidating pressure and because she was caught doing something with that slave girl that she should not have been doing -these investigations were high ranked enough to know some of the inner workings of the imperial harem.

But they also knew that although this was something certainly punishable... it was also not exactly on the same level as smashing someone’s skull in.

They were even aware that there were differences between the written and unwritten rules of the harem and that Alozmer allowed such ’fraternizing’ to an extent.

They were not also sent here for such a ’trivial issue’- they wanted to catch a murderer, not an ’adulteress’. And despite this keen insight, they failed to find any motive for the crime against the Queen Mother.

Multiple witnesses independently confirmed that the girls were very good friends.