Maataz was acting like he was greedy and changing position between those noble and king but he was following orders of the king and that is too feed the drug to those nobles and their followers to disassembled the unity between temple and the civilians.
I don’t know if you remember but our ML/king gives order to his people separately so that no one can figure out what exactly the king is aiming for not even his men. So in this chapter the Guard figured out what exactly maataz was doing.
I will write my reply in parts. So Abel and co. is trying to figure out the Dukes next move and what he may know, Abel has a hunch he may have had recognised him as a regas since he displayed interest in him despite his black hair.
Also the Dragon forest must have renewed its magic maybe and that the king may have goyten adducted to the poison.
They also talk about Mermont and his findings while there's a rumour,a strage crazyness is spreading.
When Mermont was looking for the black poisons ingredients - he found something very similiar, addictive and makes ppl behave strangle and it was a while crystal like matter. Of course Karas knows about everything since Mermonts been reporting to him since the beginning. I think he made ppl fetch him that poison and someone else(Mataaz and the war profiteers) to spread to some ppl, my hunch is they are ppl of council or the Temple only
I reread it once more - His Majesty is immune to all poison aside from the black poison but by smell could identify the black poison-only this one was effective on him and Mermont visited him when he found something... In the end he did find something with very similar symptoms as the Black Poison(BP), a white crystalline poison - whe King while at war was looking for it everywhere... Ppl knew he was looking for something but noone knew what is was, even the closest to him didn't know, but Ashler is piercing it together it must have bben the white poison and onve he succeeded he went back to the capital... His Majesty is still in the game, stull scheming, he has a plan and probably just pretends to be addicted to the BP, while being at war with Truyde... It seems Norhox also got addicted to the white poison- they said he slayed some of his own men while being on the way to the dinner with His Majesty... Norhox is getting crazy too
Can someone explain the last chapter i didn't get it