Chapter 249 --249
The second consort looked at her. "You knew."
"I knew pieces," the Seventh consort said. "I knew enough to know the shape of it without knowing the specifics." She looked at Elara. "I was not approached through a child. I have no children. I was approached differently." A pause. "Through debt. My family’s estate has been carrying an unusual financial arrangement for fifteen years. Payments made irregularly, no clear source, tied to my continued presence in the palace and my continued silence about certain things I had observed."
"What things," Elara said.
"The seventh prince," the Seventh consort said.
The room went still.
"I was in the physicians’ corridor on the evening of his final examination," she said. "Fourteen months ago. I was there because my own physician has chambers on that floor and my appointment ran late. I was not supposed to be present. I saw the secondary physician enter the seventh prince’s room and exit twenty minutes later." She paused. "He was carrying a case I recognized. I had seen that case before. The Empress Dowager’s secretary carries it." Another pause. "The seventh prince died eight days later."
The second consort had gone white.
The eighth consort had both hands pressed flat on the desk.
Elara wrote three lines on the document in front of her. "You’ve been holding that for fourteen months."
"I’ve been holding that for fourteen months," the Seventh consort confirmed. "Under the terms of the arrangement, certain observations were to remain private. I was told explicitly." She looked at her hands. "I am an old woman. I have been in this palace long enough to understand what silence costs and what speaking costs." She raised her eyes to Elara. "I decided this morning that I was done calculating."
"What changed," Elara said.
"The sixth consort came to me last night," the Seventh consort said. "She told me what you had said to her. Specifically what you said about her son." She paused. "About harm done to him rather than by him. About not making a child pay for what his mother was made to do." She looked at Elara. "A person who thinks in those terms is a person I can speak to."