It began with a cough.
Then vomiting. A low-ranked consort, barely favored, barely noticed.
She collapsed just after morning prayers.
The physician diagnosed indigestion.
Too many pickled plums on an empty stomach, he said.
The meal tray was cleared. The tea discarded.
Another servant swept up the mess, muttering that she wasn't worth the fuss.
But I'd seen her tray before they removed it.
And I'd smelled it.
Not the tea. The rice cakes.
I returned to the kitchens later, pretending to pick up water.
Most of the cooks ignored me except the youngest.
She looked shaken.
"I thought she'd requested almond," the girl whispered. "She always requests almond. But then she said she hadn't. That it was bitter."
Almond. Bitter.
And yet… not almond at all.
I waited until the kitchens cleared, then searched the waste bin where scraps were thrown.
One bite of the leftover cake. Dry. Dense.
And unmistakably laced with apricot kernel paste too much of it. Enough to release traces of cyanide if heated with honey, which had been drizzled across the top.
But this wasn't assassination.
Not quite.
The wrong pastry.
The wrong dose.
But the right effect: confusion, nausea, fear.
Someone was testing something.
Or someone.
I reported none of it.
Just left a folded note on the physician's table,
"Apricot. Honey. Watch the kitchen girl."
"From someone who can taste what others overlook."
No signature.
But the next day, I was told the kitchen girl had been reassigned.
And I was summoned to serve tea at a private gathering of court ladies the first time I'd ever been requested by name.