Chapter 19 — A Name Buried Twice

The Denvrin estate was too quiet.

No guards. No staff. Not even the usual rustle of garden workers or the ticking sound of a windcatcher vane. The hedges were trimmed. The curtains drawn. The gravel paths raked into neat lines without a single footprint crossing them.

Perry stood at the gate for a full minute, observing.

No birds. No heat from the kitchen chimney. Not even a lantern left burning by the main walkway.

He pressed one knuckle to the lion-shaped post and rapped twice.

The door opened too quickly.

Edric stood behind it. Collar unfastened. Hair neat but not styled. His expression was composed in that overly deliberate way that suggested effort.

"Detective," he said. "I expected you'd come."

"No staff?" Perry asked, stepping inside.

"I dismissed them for the day. Thought it best, after… everything."

"That wasn't the reason," Perry said.

The young man hesitated. "You think I'm hiding something."

"I think you're managing appearances."

They crossed into the main hall. Marble floors polished mirror-bright. Portraits of dead ancestors lined the left corridor—Perry counted three missing frames.

"Where's Lord Elian's portrait?" he asked, gesturing.

Edric didn't break stride. "Taken down. It felt… improper."

Perry gave a noncommittal sound.

They reached the parlor.

"Tea?" Edric offered.

"No."

He sat, coat still buttoned, and placed a small folded cloth on the lacquered table. Inside it: a torn gold-threaded crest. Its edges were singed, the threading too loose.

"You recognize this?"

Edric frowned. "That's my father's sigil."

"It's a mimic," Perry said. "Weave pattern fails a trace scan. Threads are dyed to match—badly. Close enough to pass at a glance."

He placed a second item beside it: another crest. This one scorched at the base, pulled from the scaffold. Bent, but authentic.

"Someone planted both," Perry said. "First one to mislead. Second to confirm."

Edric said nothing.

"Why the duplication?" Perry asked. "Why leave a forged badge at the crime scene, then make sure the real one surfaces later?"

"I don't know."

"You do. You just haven't said it yet."

Edric's jaw twitched. "I didn't stage anything."

"Then someone did. And they used your name."

Perry reached into his coat and withdrew a folded Bureau document.

"A copy of the estate transfer. Two weeks before the hanging. Full inheritance to the heir. Signed by the steward."

Edric accepted it reluctantly. His eyes moved faster than they should. Reading too quickly. Already familiar.

"See the problem?" Perry asked.

Edric didn't answer.

"Althrin," Perry said. "Your family steward. Deceased two years ago."

A pause.

"Maybe the signature was ceremonial. Reused from an older filing."

"Forgery," Perry said. "The glyph layer was overwritten."

"That wasn't my doing."

"You submitted the file."

"I delivered what I was given."

"By who?"

"A legal intermediary. Calven Rell."

That name again.

Perry didn't write it. He already had.

"Where is he now?"

Edric looked away. "Left last month. Claimed his work was done."

"He ever meet your father?"

Edric's pause was half a breath too long.

"…Once or twice."

"Which is it?"

"I don't remember."

Perry stood.

Edric didn't stop him.

---

Back at the Bureau, Perry opened the sealed crest pouch. He examined both crests under glowdust.

The mimic's burn mark wasn't random. It scorched directly through a secondary glyph—an old authority marker once used for entry to closed-court tribunals. Outdated. But rare.

It was staged. Whoever planted it wanted it just damaged enough to discourage inspection.

Perry laid the two estate transfer documents side by side—one clean, one tampered. The steward's name was overwritten with precise glyph-layer compression. Under magnification, the original signature read:

Calven Rell.

So Rell forged the document using a dead man's name.

Not just fraud.

An impersonation disguised as tradition.

---

By midnight, Perry sat in his quarters, coat draped over his chair.

The mimic crest.

The overwritten will.

The quiet house.

And Calven Rell, whose name had surfaced too many times.

He activated the system.

System. Sealed Bureau record request. Query: Calven Rell.

Accessing…

Case #4481 – Charges: Identity mimicry, estate manipulation, construct abuse. Sentence: indefinite containment. Initiated eight years ago.

Construct abuse.

Interesting.

"Status of incarceration?"

Data mismatch. Subject unaccounted for.

Perry leaned back.

Rell was supposed to be contained.

But a man named Calven Rell had filed a noble's entire estate transfer—and then disappeared a month before the execution.

The noble vanishes. The forger vanishes.

And the only one left holding the inheritance?

A calm, unreadable heir.

---

At dawn, Perry returned to the scaffold.

There was nothing new.

But he wasn't there for the scene.

He was there for the absence.

He stood on the edge of the platform, watching the wind curl around the noose's shadow.

The vanish was too perfect. A spell timed with weight and position. Too clean. No arcane leakage. No disruption fields.

This wasn't a spontaneous escape.

This was a rehearsal.

A performance.

He turned—and walked straight to the Theatre Guild Registry.

The clerk on duty blinked as Perry entered. "Detective?"

"Records on performers contracted for public acts in the last month. Especially nobles."

The man hesitated, then retrieved a bound ledger.

Perry flipped quickly. No entry for Lord Elian.

But one notation caught his eye.

A private booking. Three days before the hanging. Paid in cash. Request: ropework expert, glyph illusionist, and stage trigger specialist.

Client: "E. D."

He didn't need to guess.

"Names of the contractors?"

"All unlisted," the clerk said. "They were marked as freelance."

Perry closed the book.

"I want the signature on the booking cross-checked with the inheritance transfer form."

"On it."

---

Back at the Bureau, he found Captain Rourke at the records desk.

"You look like someone pulled a rabbit out of your hat and it bit you," Rourke said.

"Worse," Perry replied, dropping the mimic crest on the table. "A corpse jumped off a stage and left a tax receipt."

Rourke grunted. "Updates?"

"Forged estate document. Signature overwritten with a convicted mimic's. Missing record in the spell registry. An heir who pretends to be clueless but is too well prepared."

"And?"

"A show booked three days before the execution. Trigger magic, ropework, and illusion."

Rourke frowned. "You think Edric staged the suicide?"

"No."

Perry picked up the real crest. "I think he staged the end of a construct."

Rourke blinked. "Come again?"

"Everything about Elian's death was artificial. No evidence of a real body. No biological traces. Only rune circuits, mimic artifacts, and too many vanishing names."

"You think the man who died wasn't… real?"

"Not anymore. Maybe not ever."

"You're saying Lord Elian was a construct?"

Perry folded the documents carefully. "I'm saying someone used that name. For years. Then staged his death. And Edric inherited everything."

"Convenient."

"Yes," Perry said. "Too convenient."

---

Later that night, Perry wrote the updated case note:

> Case ID: Disappearance under false suicide

Primary Suspicion: Fabricated noble identity, estate manipulation

Status: Live – fraud and impersonation suspected

Target: Edric Denvrin – heir, potential co-conspirator

Anomalies:

Construct mimicry possible

Temporal glyph displacement confirmed

Illegal inheritance transfer filed

Key agent (Calven Rell) presumed escaped

He paused.

Then added one final line.

> Objective: Determine who the real Lord Elian was—and when he died.

Because Perry no longer believed he died on the scaffold.

He suspected the real man had died long before that.

And everything since had been a ghost in borrowed skin.