“Your time is up,” White said, closing her pocket watch with a click.
“If the Kemptin family is willing to order one of their own cousins to murder a viscount in cold blood, they would be willing to hire a powder mage to frame a competing businessman. They will go to any lengths to protect their interests and that has to catch the interest of the royal cabal!” Adamat could hear the desperation in his own voice as he finished talking. White’s eyes remained cold, her demeanor unconvinced.
Slowly, as if with great regret, she took the paper from his hands. Her eyes scanned the article announcing Viscount Brezé’s intentions.
“Why,” she asked, “would a distant cousin of the Kemptin family commit a crime that sends her to the guillotine?”
“Her execution isn’t until tomorrow,” Adamat said. “Let’s go ask her.”
White handed the paper back to Adamat. “Return the codex to the Public Archives,” she said.
“Of course.”
“You have my attention, Adamat. Let us pray you keep it.”
“I have nothing more to say to the police.”
Genetrie Kemptin was a stout woman in her mid-twenties. She had a round face and thick, powerful arms, and she still wore the soiled uniform of a Brezé family servant. Her cell in Sablethorn was tiny, hardly bigger than an outdoor privy. Adamat and White had to stand in the hallway, talking to her through the cell bars.
“I think you do,” Adamat said gently.
Genetrie sat in the dirty straw on the floor, shoulder toward them, staring straight ahead at the wall. There were bruises on her faces and arms, likely from Lieutenant Dorry’s “interrogation.”
“I do not.”
“We can help you,” Adamat said.
“If you please,” she said, “I will face my sentence with some dignity.”
Adamat could see no hope in her eyes. No interest in talking or begging for a stay of execution. This, he realized, was a woman who already considered herself dead. He put his back to the wall of the prison hallway and sank down to sit in the filth on the floor. What were his options? Was he going to open the cell and beat the woman until she confessed to, what? Brezé’s murder? She’d already done that.
“It’s interesting,” he said, “that your execution was scheduled so swiftly. These things normally take months of sitting around in prison, even after the sentence has been passed. What has it been, three days since you bludgeoned the viscount to death?”
“He was a vile man and got what he deserved.”
“Perhaps he did,” Adamat said. “But even nobles often have to wait weeks to see a judge and weeks after that for their sentence to be handed out. You must have powerful friends indeed to receive such swift treatment.” He looked over at White, who stood against the opposite wall, watching Genetrie through the bars. She didn’t look to be in a patient mood.
Genetrie stiffened. “I don’t have any friends. If I did, do you think I would be facing the guillotine tomorrow?”
“Family, then.”
“My family doesn’t care about me.”
Adamat looked up at the prison ceiling. Black stone, cut in immense slabs, weighty and oppressive for anyone unlucky enough to be put in these lower cells. Genetrie’s swift execution was no doubt phrased as some sort of a gift, so that she wouldn’t have to rot in the cells, when in fact it was convenience for the Kemptin family to get her out of the way so much sooner.
“I’m a policeman, you know,” Adamat said.
“Yes, you told me that when you came in.”
Adamat climbed to his feet. “I do have some powerful friends,” he lied. “Your situation intrigues me. I believe I can have your execution put off for at least six months.”
There was a sound inside the cell as Genetrie scrambled to the bars. “No,” she said, pressing her face against them. “I cannot live like that. Please don’t do it.”
“It’s for your own good,” Adamat said. “It’ll give you another chance at life and give you more opportunity to think about what else you have to tell us.”
Adamat had never seen so much anguish on a person’s face before, and he knew it was going to keep him awake for many nights. But he needed to do this. For his own career, for Ricard’s life, and to find justice for Melany.
“There’s nothing else,” Genetrie said, the words coming out a whimper. She slid down the bars and rested her face against their base. “So be it,” she whispered.
White suddenly stepped forward, looking down on the woman clinically. “The child,” she said.
“What?” Genetrie lifted her head.
“There’s a child, isn’t there? Probably a bastard, someone with no one else to care for him or her.”
“You know nothing of my son,” Genetrie said quietly.
“No, but I will.” White produced her card and held it down where Genetrie could see it. “This is my card. It marks me as a servant of the royal cabal of Adro. If you don’t believe me you can describe it to your lawyer. He’ll know of it, or know someone who does.” She put the card back in her pocket. “Your parents were disgraced, no longer members of the Kemptin clan. Someone must have come to you and told you that if you were to kill Viscount Brezé that your son would later be quietly adopted back into the family and given the opportunities that you never were. Whimper once if I’m right.”
Genetrie let out a low moan.
Adamat almost stepped forward. White’s voice was unnecessarily cold, her demeanor cruel. He found himself transfixed.
“You’ll tell me who this was,” White continued, “and you’ll sign a confession which names the relatives that put you up to this crime.”
“I can’t!”
“If you don’t, I will find your son and I will see that he goes to the guillotine in your place tomorrow. I don’t care if he’s nothing more than a babe. I’ll make it happen, and I’ll force you to watch. Then I will deposit you back in this cell where you will spend the rest of your life remembering that you could have saved your child.”
Genetrie pressed her face to the floor of the cell, and her whole body was wracked with sobs.
“White,” Adamat said, hearing the cracking of his own voice, “that is really too far.”
White looked over her shoulder at Adamat. Her eyes were distant, a fire to them he had not yet seen. He thought for a moment she would turn her cruelty on him, but the fire slowly drained from her face.
She hunkered down on her haunches and reached through the bars to run her fingers gently through Genetrie’s hair. Genetrie stiffened at the touch, her body shaking with fear.
“If you do this,” White said, “you will still go to the guillotine for your crimes. But your boy will not. I give you my word that he will be looked after, educated, and connected. He will be given a better life than that of an unwanted bastard in a second-rate noble family.”
Genetrie slowly got a hold of herself. When she finally looked up, her eyes were wet, face streaked with tears, but there was a resolve that hadn’t been there before. “You swear on the royal cabal? On the king?”
“I do.”
“Then I’ll do it.”
White stood up and looked back at Adamat. Adamat forced himself to meet her gaze. The horrible smile had returned to her eyes. What kind of creatures did the cabal create in their employ that were capable of such things?
Thirty minutes later they had a written confession from Genetrie. Adamat held it at arm’s length, partially to let the ink dry and partially because of how shocked he was to have it in his possession.
He felt emotionally drained, exhausted by having taken part in such an exchange. He forced himself to straighten, summoning all his faculties. He would need every bit of his nerve for the next bit.
“White,” he said, reading the confession one more time and checking the ink before tucking it into a leather folder. “You said you were given leave by your masters with regard to the Kemptin family. How far, exactly, are you allowed to go?”