Sasha has serious trouble trying to sneak Lucia back into the castle. Locating a back door by the kitchens, Sasha sneaks in easily but discovers that there is an old woman up early preparing root vegetables close by. She goes back and and stashes the confused Lucia in a bush, then fetches Buntrian and gets him to request root vegetable soup for his master. This distracts the old woman, but in the process she picks up a tail from the Elven staff, who goes out the door and finds Lucia wandering about (having totally lost track of what was going on). He decides to try to drug Lucia by offering her a poisoned handkerchief, which she accepts confusedly. The combination is too much for her and she passes out. He is then ambushed by Sasha, who kisses him with knockout lipstick on the back of his neck. After some more fussing with Buntrian and the old woman, who have returned, Sasha drags Lucia inside, leaving the Elvish tail outside. She stashes Lucia in a storage room, careful to put her somewhere she will be found after breakfast.
Sasha and Buntrian then go to the seneschal and tell him that Lucia has disappeared and they are worried about what might have happened to her - "keep ahead of the frame curve" is Sasha's reasoning. This results in some kerfluffle, though Lucia is predictably found mid-morning. Once she is made conscious again by a doctor, she tells a muzzy tale of being drugged from behind. Then both Lucia and Gaius (who staggered back to his bed about dawn before passing out) are left to recuperate.
The next day begins a bit of a diplomatic duel. The Empire is of course indignant that Lucia could be drugged and kidnapped. The Duke tries to get to the bottom of it, but can't quite, and the elves claim that it's all a frame-up.
But then by the next day, the fact of trouble at the mine turns up, and it's pointed out that the tray-carrying man, a known fixture of the Elvish entourage, has vanished in all this trouble. Then his body is recovered from the west valley. This is seen (due mostly to Gaius and Lucia hammering on it) as proof of their involvement, and they end up having to pack up in disgrace. Our team does intercept an outgoing encrypted message by pigeon before the Elves go, but do not have time to decrypt it.
Gaius and Lucia then together wear the Duke down so that in the end he has to admit to not having anything to negotiate with any more, and leaving the status of the Empire in these parts relatively untarnished. No one is left with the best feeling about the whole thing, but nothing is provable.
As a parting shot on their day of departure, Sasha breaks into the ancestral vault and steals the Duchy's mithril dagger, replacing it with a dagger taken from the female half-elven spy from the mine.