TIME SKIP
Ted chanted the nonsensical sentence alone in his manor, walking through the rooms and already taking mental notes of what had to be changed for the ball.
He had received the robes from Amy, who still complained about the workload.
He had practiced the occult rituals with Eknie, but there was still something that he wished to confirm.
Whether the corna leaves were able to work their magic in his brew was still a matter of chance. Ted really was no expert in herbal matters.
He decided to test the brew taken orally with a servant girl.
Her name was Anie, bearing an annoying resemblance to the name Amy. Ted thought he would have to make her change her name. Anie would have agreed; she did all kinds of things for money.
Besides, Ted really wanted to see how good the trance induced by corna and chanting would turn out to be. He never wanted to try such things himself. A man had to have two virtues to compensate. His own were his affection-like attachment to Eknie and his relative sobriety.
That, and being good to dogs. Ted was still not over what had happened with his last one.
"Anie?"
Servants were less loyal and not as much fun to have around as dogs. If she got sick, she could always take a day off.
"Yes, cor?" The woman appeared with tea and sandwiches, as requested.
"I have an experiment that I would prefer to keep as a secret. Can I trust you to like my gold enough for that?"
Anie nodded twice, so Ted did the same. He felt that it was important to mirror her.
She let him lead her to his workspace.
Smelling the putrid scent in the air, Anie scrunched up her nose a little.
"I will need you to drink this," Ted said and gave her the corna brew. "It is perfectly harmless. Your reward will be great."
"All right, cor Tobias," she said and guzzled down the drink without any questions.
Ted did not know how long he waited, but all of a sudden, Anie started convulsing. The brew had been way too strong for her.
It was always fun to watch people die. Ted touched her arched back with his shoe, mildly curious about the nature of the seizure.
Of course, this could be problematic. Anie had family. They would inquire about the way of the passing of the poor servant girl, but that was not Ted's fault, anyway, she should not have trusted him so blindly.
He could have ended her suffering right away. Only as bloody foam started spewing from her mouth, reminding him of her dear dog, he decided to step on her neck and take her life in order to spare himself the painful memories and the reawakening of the fury he had felt back then.
It was not like medical help would have been anywhere near, anyway.
Ted cleaned every trace of the brew carefully, utilizing a place in the wine cellar that no one knew about.
Now Ted had to plant evidence of Anie's corna addiction in her room. He knew that the city watch had technology for discerning one fingerprint from another. He was not stupid. He wore gloves, crumbling corna leaves under her bed and in her drawers.
He was careful to follow the imaginary thought patterns of an addict. Where would she chew the leaves? Where would she be careless, and where would she be unnecessarily careful? It was a fun game for a moment, but then someone knocked on the door.
It was Doira, the male servant whose unkempt beard had been the source of Ted's frustration many times. Doira was good enough that he could get away with an obscene amount of facial hair, but still, an appearance like that was unfit for the servant of a high cor.
Ted slipped under the bed, but it seemed like Doira gave up.
Ted dusted off corna crumbs from his jacket and stretched his legs.
"Oh, you are hiding from me, lass!" Doira shouted. "You just missed a card game! You could've won me, you know!"
Ted decided to appear to the hallway with a concerned frown.
He had to be at his most confident to pull this off.
"I think she has missed a lot more than that," he said with such grave seriousness that Doira got all silent and his beard started trembling.
"Doira, did you know she uses corna? There are bits and pieces all over her room."
"Corna! No!" Doira shook his head, but still, he pushed his way into the room of the servant girl and saw the evidence Ted had just planted.
"Have you seen her?" Ted asked, faking anxiousness. "It is imperative that she is given a stern talk about the dangers of this lifestyle."
"I can't believe this, cor. Has she left?"
"I do hope not. We…you and I, Doira, we have a chance to bring her back to the light of reason. She will listen to me, I promise you, I know you like her, Doira."
It was also a good thing to repeat a person's name often to make them imagine they were worth remembering.
They found the body. Ted scooped her up so that Doira could not see her neck. Ted had made a mistake cracking her neck, but that could be masked as a natural fracture caused by the seizure.
He still thought of his dog from time to time. It was the only time he had truly felt like he had lost something. Seeing blood in foam made him crazy – it was worse than all the rays of the solar god.
Doira wept openly, with ugly tears of a grown man who really should not have been subjected to the sight. His colleague, his fellow servant, nineteen years old, lying dead in the lap of their master, it was inhumane, and Ted loved it, he loved putting Doira back into his proper place. Perhaps the death of the girl would be enough to make the servant shave his face for the funeral.