"Your Majesty, my name is Hasifa. I am but a poor market woman who sells vegetables on the daily. My son here is called… was called Hashman. He was a youth who had been accepted to our school of Sand Arts as an Elite Student due to his high talent."
When she revealed the background of her son, the faces of all those present changed. Now it made sense to others why Darius took this matter seriously, because it wasn't one he could brush away easily!
"Recently, the Tri-Semester Competition came to an end, and my son had won the championship against his rival, a lass named Hephzibah. The two of them had never seen eye to eye, so before the tournament, they made a wager. If either one of them ended up as the champion, the loser would become the winner's slave."
"After winning, this should be when my son enjoyed the fruits of his victory, but rather, the vile Hephzibah girl was unwilling to fulfill her part of the bargain."
"She was known to be one of the many lovers of a very powerful person in the Royal Palace, so she used her backing to deal with my son!"
The old woman's eyes gleamed with graveness as she pointed at Martin. "That's right, she is one of the lovers of the Royal Prince!"
The throne room burst into murmurs and uproar, as this was big news. By this point, many believed the story as this woman wouldn't have the guts to come here and spew rubbish otherwise.
Martin himself was aghast, staring at the body of the lad on the table as if he couldn't believe it.
Darius stopped the woman from continuing the story and then turned to Martin. "Son, speak the truth before the world. Let's hear what you have to say."
Martin heard his father's powerful voice and shook himself out of his stupor. He stood out and bowed before everyone and began speaking with a solemn tone.
"Madam Hasifa spoke the truth. One of my lovers is indeed Hephzibah from the Royal Sand Academy. Two weeks ago, she told me that a person in her school had resorted to underhanded tricks to force her into a possible slave contract. As such, she begged for my help to deal with the person involved."
"When I asked her to give me the details so I could apprehend the person, she claimed there was no need. She only requested that I provide her with some toxins to deal with the person, which I did, thinking it wasn't a big issue."
Martin looked downcast, because he knew he had severely messed up this time. "However, I can now clearly see that this was not the case."
The crowd began to discuss in low tones. The matter was exceeding troublesome, and they knew that it wasn't going to be easy to solve for the Sultan.
Darius nodded to Martin and gazed at a nearby guard. "Go and arrest this Hephzibah lass and bring her here."
He then focused on Madam Hasifa. "Please tell me how you found evidence linking the death of your son to Hephzibah and mine."
Madam Hasifa was startled. "It was my son who told me. Before he succumbed to his state, he told me everything. About the tournament, about how Hephzibah had seduced him and lain with him, before giving him the toxin that led to this horrible disease."
Martin's face became black when he heard that one of his lovers had actually gone as far as to sleep with someone else. If his reputation hadn't been ruined enough for one day, it had just further entered the gutter.
Darius hummed in silence. His mind proceeded the details of the case so far, and he couldn't help but applaud either the tower or his subconscious for its ruthlessness.
How to test someone and see if they will remain just? Well, one needed ample temptation of the right form to betray Justice.
In this case, Martin was technically an indirect cause for the death of Hashman. The lad was someone who was protected by law given his status, so Darius could have rubbished the case away with ease.
However, hearing Martin's story, he appeared to have been more of an ignorant accomplice, his main crime being negligence. It was negligence of the type where he could be theoretically be pardoned, but that would neither be fair nor just in the truest sense.
Darius' eyes narrowed. He didn't feel cornered yet, but he was sharp. He anticipated that something would happen soon that would prevent him from just killing off the lass to put everything in place.
Lo and behold, the guard soon returned with a pale face. "My Lord… the Hephzibah girl has been found in her bedchambers, dead through suicide!"
There was a round of gasps in the room as they were shocked. This matter had taken so many turns and had gone up and down in ways that left bystanders dizzy with shock and horror.
Just what the hell was going on?!
Darius sighed internally. So this was it, the checkmate.
Now, let's breakdown the entire matter. The crime was murder, to which the punishment, according to Ludoian law, would be death by the same method.
The victim was Hashman, a prodigious talent important to the entire state who had come from humble beginnings. This made it such that legally and morally, Darius could not skirt around the issue since there were intense legal protections for students of the academy, and due to the talent of the victim that would set a very problematic precedent.
The perpetrator was the girl Hephzibah, who had seduced the target and poisoned him after being unwilling to fulfill a bet she had willingly entered into. She then committed suicide to avoid the repercussions of her actions.
The main accomplice was Martin, who had been the lover of the deceased perpetrator and was deceived by her into providing the means of the murder.
As the Royal Prince, he was also protected by law in the sense that he could take the life of criminals, and the story Hephzibah fed him had initially painted Hashman as a criminal.
However, Martin had failed to investigate thoroughly, taking his lover's word for the truth. He should have been the one to deal punishment with his own two hands.
This had made him negligent and a pseudo-victim as well.
