Chapter 241 --241
"She is also," Elara continued, "the most likely person to have found the sealed record first. To have identified what the succession magic could do. To have begun the shipments." She paused. "I don’t have proof yet. I will have proof by tomorrow evening."
"And when you have proof," Ken said.
Elara looked at him steadily.
"Then I have a conversation with the Third Princess at the third bell," she said. "About what we both know and what we’re both going to do about it." She paused. "And then the Empress Dowager has a very different kind of day."
The room processed this.
Mira said, very carefully: "When you say different kind of day—"
"Legal," Elara said. "Documented. Unambiguous. The kind of removal that cannot be reversed or appealed because every piece of evidence is in order and every procedure was followed correctly." She paused. "I’m not interested in doing this quickly and messily. I’m interested in doing it in a way that cannot be undone after I’ve done it."
She moved back to the desk.
"Thirty-one years," she said. "She has had thirty-one years to build this. I’m not going to dismantle it in a day and leave loose ends she can pull when she’s sitting in whatever comfortable retirement someone tries to give her." She looked at the assembled documents. "I’m going to dismantle it completely. Every appointment. Every reporting chain. Every informal arrangement that has been running on the assumption that nobody is paying attention." She paused. "All of it."
She looked at the room.
"And when it’s dismantled," she said, "I’m going to build something that doesn’t have the same holes in it. Because the reason this was possible — all of it, the shipments, the amendments, the physician, the seventh prince, the Emperor himself — the reason all of it was possible is that the structure had spaces in it where unofficial power could operate without oversight." She paused. "I’m filling the spaces."
Nobody spoke for a moment.