#numin

Skill. Warning. Mind games. Poisoning her wine in a way that slips past her taster -- meaning it took time to activate. A rare poison. High market. Expensive and hard to find.

"As if I'd ascend the throne as the first solo empress and not have safeguards for assassination attempts. This is the fourth poisoning. They're ruining all my wine."

"That's... not the important part? We need to stop whoever's doing this. They're trying to kill you."

"I can live a little poison," she shrugs. "I just wish it wasn't always in my wine." Why not her morning tea? Why not her dinner? She glares at the chalice, turns her gaze to his. Softens it after a moment. "Do you think yours is, too?"

He pushes it away, disgust filtering across the face like he's appalled by the thought. "If you want to try--"

She snatches it up and takes a big gulp. No sour tingle, but... She frowns at it. Did they have to be so obvious? "I am going to behead them on sight. Your wine is fine. Do you think if I post a notice in the town square, they'll poison my tea instead?"

"No?"

A pinch to his brow, confusion.

"Pity." Rissa takes another sip, rolls it over her tongue to confirm. Poisoned, still. A different kind. Subtler. Weaker. It narrows the possibilities, adds more weight to her theory. "At least it narrows the possibilities," she says aloud. "They poisoned the cup, not the barrel."

Captain Numin drums his fingers on his thigh. A poisoned cup typically points to a servant -- the taster, or the one who delivered it, or poured the bottle, though that wasn't applicable here. This, however, was no servant. "We'll still have to toss the wine."

She slams the chalice down. "But my cup was poisoned. Not the whole supply. My cup."

"It's a precaution," he shrugs. "That's how it is."

The empress downs the rest of his chalice to make her point. "Well, when they've snuck a poisoned cup past the tasters, what's the point? As long as I regulate myself, I'll be fine."

"And what if it's a slow building poison?"

She pouts at the bottom of the chalice. As if she can't recognize a poison on taste. "It's not. This is the standard high-brow stuff." A specialized version of it, but. She shouldn't admit to knowing that. Safety purposes and all. "How is it that they're dedicated enough to slip into the castle but not to get a better poison?"

"We don't want that to happen," he reminds her.

For council's sake. The plan, obviously, was not to have her dead. Yet, at least. They needed time to finalize their plan. As if she'd let the council remain if she didn't have a rat or two on the seat.

"Yeah, yeah." She waves a calming hand at him. She can't die during a personal dinner with him. It was too damning. "Poison is bad for you. I'm just... thinking. It's strange. Is it not?"

"It is. And we're working on it."

She sighs, long and weary. "I would hope so. I miss unpoisoned wine." As fun as the game was, it was getting boring.

Captain Numin clears his throat. "About that."

Her head whips towards him. She gives him the glare she reserves for the worst of prisoners in the dungeon, knowing he'll attribute it to her love of drink. "You're not banning me from wine."

"It's for your safety."

Tricking you into trusting us, his eyes say. Making you weak. The people will riot if their new bastard empress cannot eradicate her first threat.

"I'm the empress. I say you can't."

She knows him too well. Their plan might have worked, maybe, if she hadn't known Numin since they were both children. He could not sit as a rat at her table and have her overlook the vermin because she once called him friend. She was a child then. She knew no better.

Now she did.

"It is a law made by emperors of late and their councils, Your Majesty."

She narrows her eyes further, wonders how he can pretend to be so concerned as he looks her in the face. When did depravity set upon his mind? "Then I will change it."

“You have more important matters to attend to. Like the rebellion.”

A pretty little distraction, that. A well crafted one, but she was always a master of her strategy and negotiation classes. She knew a show when she saw one.

“But my sanity.”

“It’s just wine, Your Majesty.”

A gasp. “Just wine? Just wine? Did your father not raise you respectably? He never would have said such a thing to my father.”

He never would have turned his heel to her father.

“The late emperor was not being poisoned.”

“That is beside the point.”

“It is not.”

She blows a breath out her nose, rubs the bridge of it. Politics, especially when brought into her private matters, were exhausting. She might hold off the beheading and have the man behind this tortured first. Simply out of their lack of taste.

Simply out of their betrayal.

Her eyes linger on Numin. He's giving her the same look he did last time, when she'd actually groaned about the wine. Pride meshed with faux concern. As if he's playing her. As if she doesn't know.

Rissa looks at her dinner and sighs. At least she doesn’t bring out the good wine for these dinners, though as soon as this is over, she’s getting herself a generous pour of the best bottle they had.

She’ll have earned it, for weeding out the corruption plaguing her court.

*****