Elias investigates Rowan's missing watch and learns the general's memory was replaced, not erased.
Rowan's memory broke at the ninth bell and resumed at the twelfth, but the general insisted nothing was missing. That was the first reason Elias knew someone had stolen from him carefully. Men with erased minds panicked at empty space. Rowan described three ordinary minutes with military precision: west corridor, two guards, cracked lamp glass, rain under the door. The details were too tidy. A lie made by a professional often wore polished boots.
Elias set three bell weights on the guardroom table. "Tell it again."
Rowan folded his arms. "I have told it six times."
"Then the seventh should cost you nothing."
Malrec stood near the door with two temple observers. "The kingdom has a named killer. This humiliation of the royal guard is indulgence."
"A sealed chapel opened around a dead king," Elias said. "Indulgence would be pretending the door had good manners."
One of Rowan's lieutenants coughed to hide a laugh. Rowan did not. His face had gone hard in the way soldiers used when they feared damage more than pain.
"Ninth bell," Elias said.
Rowan shut his eyes. "I stood outside the chapel. The blood seal burned steady. Rain under the south door. I checked the west corridor. Two guards at post. Lamp glass cracked from thunder. I returned at the twelfth bell. The seal opened."
Elias moved the first weight. "Your patrol mark from the west corridor is dry."
"It is under a roof."
"The south door rain reached the same stones. Your boot soles were wet when you signed the discovery report. The west mark should have smeared."
Rowan opened his eyes.
Elias moved the second weight. "The cracked lamp glass was reported yesterday afternoon. You could have remembered it from any patrol."
"Enough," Malrec said.
Elias moved the third weight. "The two guards you remember at west post were reassigned to the north gate before sunset."
The room changed. Not loudly. Soldiers did not gasp when their commander was wounded. They straightened.
Rowan looked at his own hands. "I remember them there."
"I know."
"Then they were there."
"No. Someone gave you a memory that could survive questioning."
Malrec's mouth tightened. "Memory witchcraft is illegal in royal murder procedure."
"So is murdering a king."
The forbidden midwife arrived under a hood after sunset, escorted through kitchen passages by a maid who refused to give her name. Nera was smaller than court rumor made her, with silver needles braided through her hair and a gaze that measured pulse before rank. The guards crossed themselves. Malrec looked as if Elias had dragged mud across an altar.
"You brought a womb-witch into the king's guardroom," the High Seer said.
Nera smiled. "I prefer midwife. Womb-witch sounds expensive."
Rowan did not smile. "Can you fix it?"
"No," Nera said. "Fixing is what priests promise when they mean hiding. I can find the seam."
She placed three silver needles on the table, each aligned with a bell weight. "Tell the memory again, General. Slower. Do not make it brave."
Rowan's jaw worked. "Ninth bell. Chapel seal steady. Rain under the south door."
Nera touched the first needle. It rang faintly.
"West corridor," Rowan continued. "Two guards at post."
The second needle vibrated so hard it rolled.
"Stop," Nera said. She leaned close to Rowan's face and lifted one eyelid with a thumb that did not tremble. A thin black fleck moved across the white of his eye and vanished.
Rowan jerked back. "What was that?"
"A stitch."
Elias felt the word land. "Deleted memory?"
"No." Nera set the needle down. "Deletion scars. This is cleaner. Your general still has the minutes. He just cannot reach them because someone put a borrowed scene on top."
"Where are the real minutes?" Rowan asked.
Nera looked toward the palace interior, not toward the chapel. "Not where a living man keeps them."
Malrec stepped forward. "Speak plainly."
"Plain speech gets women burned in this palace." Nera gathered her needles. "But since the king is already making everyone impolite: the memory was stored in a dead mind."
The lieutenant at the door whispered, "Whose?"
Before Nera could answer, a runner burst in without knocking. "General. Scribe. The laundry maid from the chapel watch--she died before dawn. Her body just opened its eyes."
Rowan grabbed his sword. Malrec reached for a prayer chain. Elias reached for the Judgment Ledger because fear had begun to arrange itself into procedure.
Nera was the only one who looked unsurprised.
"Good," she said. "Dead witnesses do not lie for long."