Chapter 80: DARIC AND ALMA IN THE ARCHIVES

DARIC’S POV

Belland had found almost nothing.

Daric considered that useful enough to be irritating.

He had opened the packet with Raigoro the night before. By morning, the Belland response had joined the identity file Daric carried into the third archive room to compare against the older requests and surviving records.

Alma was already there.

She stood at one of the side tables with a stack of Northline transport records and several pages covered in the Duchess’s handwriting.

Apparently, the Duchess had sent her down for records connected to the sabotage audit.

Northline had become more complicated since she circled the name.

The commercial registry showed nine years of legitimate procurement work and hundreds of ordinary military-linked shipments each season. Northline did not personally move every crate passing through its network. It arranged civilian wagons, leased warehouse space, connected suppliers to military depots, and approved transport brokers where Blackharrow’s own system ended.

All three false shipments had touched Northline.

They had not touched the same Northline office or employee.

That made Northline a shared system worth investigating, not evidence that the company itself was guilty.

Daric recognized one of the pages in Alma’s stack.

"The Duchess’s route sheet?"

"One of them."

He took it from her.

Several arrows crossed the shipment chain, along with questions in the Duchess’s hand. Daric could have stopped to decipher them now.

Belland had already waited months to disappoint him.

He placed the route sheet beside the identity file.

Alma followed with the remaining Northline records and sat across from him.

Daric returned to Belland.

The relevant royal-household volume from Queen Elara’s final years no longer existed.

Fire had taken the original, and the surviving Belland copy had been created afterward from official Valence notices, after Elara’s death and after the period Daric increasingly suspected mattered.

The Belland records still named Selena.

They simply could not prove that an independent Belland record had named her before Valence’s history changed.

Alma had recognized the foreign seal as soon as she sat across from him and had been quieter since.

Daric folded the first page.

"Nothing independent."

Alma looked up. "Nothing?"

"Nothing that establishes the royal household before Elara died."

Her hands relaxed slightly over the Duchess’s notes.

Daric filed that away and reached for the smaller document that had arrived inside the same packet. It came from a religious archive and carried the same problem. The surviving household list had been recopied later from a Valence ceremonial notice.

Derivative again.

Daric placed it beside the Belland response.

Alma read the request heading.

Royal household composition. Queen Elara period.

"You know what I am looking for."

"Yes."

"And you know why."

"Yes."

Daric waited.

Alma seemed perfectly willing to do the same.

He asked anyway.

"Who was she before the wedding?"

Alma’s fingers stopped on the page.

"Her Grace."

That was enough of an answer to remind Daric why asking her could never finish the investigation.

She was loyal to the Duchess before she was useful to Blackharrow. She had participated in the wedding deception in some capacity, willingly or otherwise. Even if Daric forced a name out of her, her word would not become independent evidence merely because he wanted the search to end.

"You know that is not what I asked."

"Yes."

"And you are not going to answer."

"No."

Daric could have made the refusal more difficult. He could have separated Alma from the archive work, required a formal statement, or turned her silence into an internal-security problem until someone with more authority decided how far to press.

None of that would give him what he actually needed.

A name forced out of the Duchess’s attendant would still be the word of a woman personally loyal to the Duchess and already entangled in the marriage deception. It might become testimony. It would not become independent proof.

Worse, it would teach Alma that every piece of cooperation she gave Command could eventually be used to corner the woman she protected.

Daric closed the identity folder.

Alma’s fingers loosened against the edge of the Duchess’s notes.

She understood what he had chosen not to do.

Daric had no need for gratitude from her. It was enough that both of them understood the boundary.

He filed the Belland response.

"You are still looking," Alma said.

"Yes."

"Even though every record says Selena."

"A later copy cannot prove an earlier record said the same thing."

Alma paused over the notes.

Perhaps she had expected him to accept whichever paper was most convenient. Daric had no interest in convenient evidence.

"That investigation is stalled."

"Comforting."

"I was not attempting comfort."

"I know."

"That is currently stalled." Daric pulled the Duchess’s route sheet between them. "This is not."

"Now tell me what these arrows mean."

Alma leaned over the page.

"Which one?"

"Start there."

He pointed between the Northline warehouse copy and the military transfer sheet.

"The dates."

"The sheets are already together."

"She knows."

Daric looked at Alma.

"Then why mark them?"

"Because one says the shipment left on the eleventh."

Alma tapped the second line.

"And this one says the military system received it on the fourteenth."

Daric looked again.

Three days.

He pulled the other two false shipment chains closer.

The second route contained two days between civilian release and military receipt.

The third contained four.

Different depots.

Different destinations.

Different transport arrangements.

Northline touched all three, but not through one common employee.

The shared feature was narrower.

Each shipment disappeared for a short period between one system releasing responsibility and the next system formally accepting it.

Daric looked at another note in the Duchess’s hand near the top of the page.

THEY KNOW THE SYSTEM BETTER THAN THE PEOPLE.

He understood the sentence differently now.

Whoever had completed the false receipts knew what Blackharrow’s forms should look like. They knew valid receiving marks, station seals, shipment categories, and ordinary movement procedures.

They had not known that one recipient was dead, another was lying in the Citadel infirmary, and a third was serving at East Fortress.

Administrative knowledge.

Outdated human knowledge.

Alma followed his attention across the three routes.

"So Northline is not the answer?"

"Northline may still contain the answer."

Daric tapped the spaces between the records.

"But this is the first part narrow enough to investigate properly."

Alma looked at the gaps.

"Could weather explain them?"

"One, perhaps."

"All three?"

"Possibly."

"You do not believe that."

"I do not know yet."

Alma accepted the answer without argument.

Daric regarded her for a moment.

"You are learning."

"From the Duchess."

"I was going to say me."

"That would have been embarrassing."

Daric called for the transport-delay logs.

Alma returned to the Duchess’s notes.

For the next hour they worked without discussing Valence. Daric asked what the Duchess meant twice. Alma corrected one of his readings, and he corrected one of hers when she misunderstood a military abbreviation.

Neither enjoyed that.

Both accepted it.

By the time the delay logs arrived, Daric had stopped thinking of Alma as an obstacle temporarily occupying an archive chair.

She knew how the Duchess worked through a problem. A crossed-out line did not always mean rejection. Sometimes the Duchess had tested a question, found that the evidence could not support it yet, and moved on without forgetting it. Alma could tell the difference.

She also knew which questions the Duchess had already tried and which ones she had deliberately left open.

That saved Daric from repeating work.

He found Alma increasingly useful.

He was not certain either of them would appreciate hearing that aloud.

Daric opened the first delay log.

All three shipments had been held temporarily under civilian-transfer authority. The recorded reasons differed: weather on the first route, wheel damage on the second, warehouse congestion on the third.

Every explanation was plausible.

Every delay also placed the missing material inside the same administrative gap.

Alma read the reasons.

"Can all three be true?"

"Yes."

"Do you think they are?"

Daric checked the dates against the shipment records again.

"I think three convenient accidents deserve verification."

Alma nodded and pushed the third file toward him.

"Good."

Daric looked at her.

"That sounded like Master Clair."

"I have been spending too much time near dragons."

"Apparently."

The old identity folder remained closed at the corner of the table.

Alma glanced at it once before returning to the transport records.

Daric saw that too.

He understood why she cared whether the investigation continued. He also understood why she would not help him finish it.

That arrangement was inconvenient, but at least it was clear.

The investigation into Raigoro’s bride remained open without giving Daric anything new he could prove.

The sabotage investigation had done considerably better.

Weather.

Wheel damage.

Warehouse congestion.

Three plausible explanations for three shipments disappearing during the same kind of transfer gap.

Daric did not yet know whether any of them were false.

He knew where to look.

He marked each gap, requested the handlers, storage records, and custody logs covering those missing days, then sent the nonclassified shipment dates to the Duchess’s office.

One destination stopped him before he sealed the copy.

West Rime.