The Sign of the Court
The scribes swear they never wrote it, the seal looks true, and yet the decree is false from its first line. Whoever drew it up knew the Chancellery's ways by heart — and that is precisely what betrays them. Suspicion has fallen on Captain Vlaicu, Damaschin the Healer and Costache the Toll-Keeper — and until the proof is plain, none of these names leaves the room. The places named in the testimonies — the salt market, the tourney field and the scriptorium — each await their turn under scrutiny. Take up the quill, follow the thread of the clues, and set your seal upon the verdict.
From the Chancellery archive
A sign of the court — a seal, a signature, a line written in the right hand — is worth more than a purse of gold, because it opens doors gold does not. This dossier was opened when one such sign proved false after it had already done its work.
The suspects are three men who each, in their own way, deal in what is true and what is not. Captain Vlaicu commands the watch that inspects papers. Costache the Toll-Keeper weighs goods and, along with them, the word of merchants. Damaschin the Healer writes prescriptions no one reads twice.
The places are the salt market, the tourney field and the scriptorium. It is the last that gives one pause: good parchment is made there, but so, if one is minded, is bad.
A tier I dossier. The rule that holds it all together: the culprit always lies, everyone else tells the truth. Put each suspect under suspicion in turn and see which hypothesis collapses.
Suspects
He has guarded the fortress gates for twenty years. Who enters and who leaves - he decides what the ledger records.
1.84 m
right-handed
brown eyes
brown hair
He knows the cure for any illness and the dose at which the cure becomes something else. He swears he has never mistaken the dosage.
1.71 m
left-handed
green eyes
grey hair
His scales weigh the goods; his eye, the merchant. Both can be "greased" at need.
1.80 m
right-handed
dark eyes
grey hair
Locations
the salt market
Here anything is bargained for, from salt to silences. The price of silence keeps rising.
the tourney field
Empty stands outside festival days. An excellent place for meetings that never happened.
the scriptorium
Slanted desks, ink, and working silence. Here a quill creaks louder than a conscience.
Open the Grid (below) to solve the case, with the testimonies at hand.
Touch a cell: blank → ✗ (excluded) → ✓ (certain) → blank. Each pair of categories meets exactly once.
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Verdict
The culprit always lies; everyone else tells the truth.
- Whatever the market gossips: the suspect with dark eyes never set foot in the place with stands empty outside festival days.
- A maid whispered it at confession: Damaschin the Healer was in the place where anything is bargained for.
- About the culprit, the Chancellery knows one thing for certain: the culprit was at the tourney field.