The payment method—Church gold, untraceable, delivered in stages.
The chain of contact—a deacon who answered to a bishop who answered to someone in the High Council whose name the man genuinely never learned.
The specific wording of the order as he remembered it: "'The Empress threatens the natural order. God's work requires her removal. Use any means necessary but make it look accidental if possible.'"
All of it. Every detail the man had. Stripped out of him piece by piece, methodically, thoroughly, because every time he hesitated or claimed not to remember, Larus would look at the unconscious woman on the floor and the man would suddenly find more words very quickly.
When it was done—when there was genuinely nothing left, when the man had given up every scrap of information he possessed—he sagged in his chair and said through tears:
"Please. Let me go. Let us both go. I've told you everything, I swear I've told you 'everything', there's nothing else, 'please just let me—'"
