Chapter 101: CONTINUING INFIRMITY OF SPEECH

DARIC’S POV

Daric read the medical record again before deciding who could safely see it.

The document concerned Princess Diana Valence as a child. It had survived among foreign correspondence because a physician’s report had been copied and enclosed with arrangements for further consultation. The original examination sheet was gone, but the witnessed copy preserved the physician’s seal, the date, Diana’s title, and the findings that mattered.

VOICE ABSENT DURING EXAMINATION. CONDITION REPORTED CONTINUING. BREATHING AND SWALLOWING UNAFFECTED. NO ACUTE FEVER OR THROAT INFLAMMATION OBSERVED.

Daric understood the words. What he did not know was how much a healer would be willing to conclude from them.

That distinction mattered.

Almost everyone in Blackharrow knew the Grand Duchess could not speak. Showing a physician the name Princess Diana Valence beside a childhood record of an established speech impairment would turn a confidential investigation into a rumor before Daric had finished proving anything.

He copied the medical portion onto a clean sheet and removed the name, title, kingdom, and exact date. He kept the patient’s approximate age and every clinical observation.

The original returned to the locked identity file.

Then Daric took the copy to the Citadel infirmary.

Broken Ward had filled half the treatment hall with soldiers who no longer needed battlefield care but were not ready to return to duty. A man with a splinted wrist argued quietly with an assistant over whether writing counted as rest. Two infantrymen practiced walking beneath the supervision of a healer. Farther down the hall, someone was being told for the third time that cracked ribs did not become harmless because he was bored.

Daric waited until the senior healer finished an examination.

She saw him and sighed.

"Commander."

"I need a medical record interpreted."

"If this is another officer claiming he can return to duty because he can stand upright, the answer is no."

"It is older than all of them."

That interested her enough to lead him into a small consultation room.

Daric closed the door behind them and placed the redacted copy on the desk.

"This concerns an active command investigation. I need to know what the physician actually established."

The healer read the page once, then again more slowly.

"What are you trying to determine?"

"Whether this describes a physical inability to speak or merely a patient who refused to."

She returned to the central entry.

"This physician believed the patient had an ongoing impairment affecting speech."

"Why?"

"Because the loss of voice is recorded as part of the examination, and the condition is described as continuing. The physician also checked breathing, swallowing, fever, and inflammation. That is an examination of a condition, not a complaint that the child would not answer."

Daric looked at the line again.

"Could refusal still produce this record?"

"Anything is possible if the physician was incompetent. The document gives me no reason to assume that."

Useful.

"What does voice absent mean here?"

"That normal voiced speech was absent during the examination. I would not claim more. The patient may have been able to whisper, cough, cry, produce strained sound, or make no sound at all. This record does not separate those possibilities."

"And continuing?"

"The problem existed before this examination and had persisted long enough to be treated as an ongoing condition."

"How long?"

"The page does not say."

"Permanent?"

"No conclusion."

"Cause?"

"Also no conclusion."

Daric pointed to the findings beneath it.

"Breathing and swallowing unaffected. No fever or inflammation."

"They make some ordinary temporary explanations less likely at the time of examination. They do not tell us what caused the loss of voice."

The healer pushed the page back toward him.

"If you want the safest medical statement, use this: the child had an established impairment of speech when this examination occurred. The physician observed the absence of normal voice and found no acute inflammatory illness explaining it."

Daric read the sentence in his head.

Clean. Limited. Useful.

"And refusal?"

"I would not interpret this as voluntary silence."

That was the answer he had come for.

The healer studied him.

"Am I supposed to ask who the child was?"

"No."

"Good. I have enough patients."

Daric folded the copy.

"You will keep no duplicate."

"I did not make one."

"And this conversation remains confidential."

She gave him a flat look.

Daric inclined his head.

"Habit."

"An irritating one."

"So I have been told."

He left the infirmary before she could add a diagnosis of her own.

By the time Daric returned to Command Archive, the medical record had become narrower and stronger.

It did not explain why Princess Diana lost her voice. It could not connect the childhood condition to Vharos, Queen Elara, or anything that happened beneath Valence.

It established something simpler.

Princess Diana Valence had a documented ongoing impairment of speech as a child.

Daric placed the healer’s interpretation beside the witnessed medical copy.

Then he looked at the rest of the identity file.

The older records already established an elder firstborn daughter of Odran and Elara. Other foreign documents supplied her name and title. The medical record now added a childhood condition that matched one of the most important facts Blackharrow had learned about Raigoro’s wife.

That did not finish the investigation by itself.

It changed the weight of what remained.

Daric opened the modern Selena file.

Selena had been publicly seen and heard speaking nineteen days before the wedding. The marriage record named Selena. The Blood Compact accepted Raigoro’s bride as genuine Valence royal blood.

Those facts still required an explanation.

So did the woman who arrived in Blackharrow already unable to speak, accompanied by an attendant who had known her for years, and recognized by Vharos from childhood.

Daric could already see how the evidence would fit when placed in order.

He refused to do that casually.

A conclusion deserved the strongest argument against it.

He took a clean sheet and wrote at the top:

EVIDENCE FOR SELENA.

Beneath it, he began arranging the documents that had once made Selena the obvious answer.

Tomorrow he would take the complete file to Raigoro.

He would begin with the case Blackharrow had believed since the wedding.

Then they would see whether it survived everything they had learned since.