by John Ruch
She was already gone when Rinka and Cunodua arrived in response to the screams of the children and his own unnerved cries. The hole in her throat no longer spurted, and a dent in her clothing revealed how deep a wound the creature had dug into her stomach. Its bloodied head appeared, blinking, at her neckline, as Cunodua exclaimed about the very beasts of nature being turned against them.
Only after Rinka brought her boot down on the creature did Alfie realize that he had knelt there the entire time. Even when it was a soft, round bump crawling beneath her skins, even when it blinked through her blood…
“Night help me, it was adorable,” he croaked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The guards bustled Ashton and Mieux into the mansion, up an endless flight of stairs, and into a cavernous parlor. Packed with ornate furniture, it resembled a Lampley’s showroom. A bunch of stuffed animal heads on the walls gave the place the manly air of a zoo wiped out by the grippe. The place was dim, with dark wood paneling absorbing the scant natural light admitted through tall, narrow windows of leaded glass. An overly exuberant fire of the sort beloved by elderly hospital patients and pyromaniacs roared in a massive fireplace, making the room prickingly hot.
Since “Daeton Craigh” had arrived late, he had missed his appointed meeting with the dominus and would have to wait in line with the half-dozen gentry perched on the couches and armchairs. There was a grizzled veteran with a lapel medal and out-of-fashion facial hair, a debutante chewing a hangnail, a young couple mooning at each other and speculating whether they could buy a similar rug for their renovated music room, a few even less interesting types. Ashton hated them all immediately. He spotted a sideboard holding a bunch of liquor decanters and made a beeline for it, passing some kind of butler who gave his dirty boots an equally dirty look.
Ashton had barely thumbed the little crystal plug out of a whisky decanter when a weird gong sounded and a portcullis slammed down in a cloud of dust to block the main doors. He shot a glance at the couch-load of assholes, but they looked as surprised as he was. The butler, not so much. His eyes shifted to Mieux, who looked tiny and vulnerable from afar, her arms dangling awkwardly at her sides. She was alert as ever, though, and he followed her gaze above the fireplace to a balcony he hadn’t noticed.
Before backing up to get a better view, Ashton took a swig straight out of the decanter. Whatever was up there, he figured it would look better with a drink in him.
A portly figure stood with one foot braced on the balcony’s low railing, a night-black cape draped over a shoulder and his face half-covered by a bizarre black hood with a square top. Little silver pendants shaped like swords dangled from each corner.
“There is a murderer among us,” the bare jowls beneath the mask intoned.
The couch of assholes chittered nervously and Mieux’s eyes expanded to dinner plates. Ashton took another pull off the decanter and wiped a glove across his lips. As a veteran scammer, weird theatrical displays like this made him automatically look at everything except the ringmaster distracting everyone. Ashton squinted at the butler, who seemed to be the only one not spooked.
“That all of you have committed other evils is well-known,” the pudgy executioner continued in his funereal baritone. “But only one of you killed the high priest Sagviticus. Whether it was to halt his investigation into the Leveling or for your own nefarious ends matters not. The result is the same—the devastation of our effort to stop this plague. And the judgment is the same—unforgivable.”
Ashton hadn’t quite paid attention through all that due to noticing that the debutante’s cleavage was sort of nice, but then it sunk in. Shit, that doesn’t sound good, he thought, and poured himself a double straight into his mouth.
“And so you shall all remained imprisoned within the House of Ludusoccasus,” the bizarre speaker announced.
Amid the gasps and grumblings, Ashton set the booze carefully down on the sideboard. He looked at everyone. Everyone looked at each other. Finally, Ashton broke the silence.
“Yeah, well, fuck that,” he said, yanking a boar head off the wall and heaving it through one of the skinny windows.
“Damn it all, you’re not allowed to do that!” the voice of House Ludusoccasus yelled as Ashton hopped onto the windowsill and kicked out the remaining shards of glass.
“Come on, Mieux! Let’s get out of here!” he shouted as he squeezed through it sideways. She nodded and clambered out behind him, remarking on the super-messed-up turn things had taken.
It was a long way down to the courtyard’s cobbles, where the boar’s snout pointed skyward in a bed of broken glass, and Ashton was dangerously toasted, but there were plenty of ledges and gargoyles to hop around on. They were halfway to the ground when the black hood poked out the window above them.
“Mr. Craigh! It is I, Dominus Urbi Ludusoccasus!” he called, pulling off the disguise to reveal a round, bland and thoroughly unmenacing face. “I had no idea you had arrived! I thought you lost to the Leveling and I took matters into my own hands, simply detaining all of the suspects! Please return to us!”
Ashton ignored him. But by the time they got their feet on the ground, the dominus was awaiting them with Gray Eyes and a dozen other guards. Gray Eyes had pleasing plump cheeks and auburn hair spilling from beneath her helm. Ashton lobbed a little smile in her direction and got one volleyed back, but everybody else looked grumpy.
Ashton noted with amusement that the balding dominus was rosy-cheeked and out of breath, his fingers swelling around his several gold rings.
“Looks like you can handle this investigation on your own, domino,” Ashton said deliberately.
“Dominus,” the dominus corrected.
“Like I said,” Ashton replied casually, smiling again at Gray Eyes.
“It is super weird that you even had a mask like that in your home!” Mieux piped in. “It is totally freaky!”
“The hood is traditional garb among our judges. We held masquerades in the pleasant days before the horror of the Leveling,” the dominus said with the quick impatience of a man not used to explaining himself. “A horror I am simply trying to end. Mr. Craigh, I understand your distaste with my amateur methods, but you must help me. I will not confine everyone to the parlor, but please concede that I cannot let anyone leave the mansion grounds. Solving the mystery of the Leveling is far too important.”
Ashton couldn’t argue with that. “We’ve seen this Leveling up close. It looks like a kind of magica called a biddening.”
The dominus nodded and grunted approvingly. “As shrewd as your reputation suggests. It is indeed a biddening—but who is behind it, and where my citizens have gone, we know not. The high priest Sagviticus was attempting to track the magica and told me he was nearing success. But he was found slain last tenday, dead on the floor of his library, his head smashed in with a statue of the Pons Cynrica; I am sure you have already examined the crime scene as previously scheduled. If we can uncover the culprit, perhaps they will know the source of the Leveling.”
Ashton nodded. If one of those fuckers knows where Alfie and Rinka are, it’s certainly worth a shot. “And I get paid a hundred aurei in any case. Half up-front and non-refundable,” he added automatically. As the dominus assented, Mieux glowered up at Ashton. He tossed her a miniature shrug.
Before following the dominus’s invitation to return to the house, Ashton leaned in to brush shoulders with Gray Eyes.
“I’ll be right back after I solve the crime of the century,” he murmured into her ear.
With a lusty grin, she laid a stinging slap and a strong squeeze on his ass. What in Night and Fury am I getting myself into? he thought behind his smile, half about the lurking killer he was about to tangle with and half about Gray Eyes.
The dominus escorted Ashton and Mieux up the long staircase and into the parlor, where the butler was nailing a tapestry over the broken window and the couch creaked under its burden of assholes. The dominus gestured toward them.
“M
r. Craigh, allow me to introduce our other guests. Centurion M—,” he began before Ashton interrupted.
“Yeah, great to meet you. I don’t think this will take that long.” He twirled the hem of his cape in a dramatic flourish and laid a hand on Mieux’s granite shoulder. “You all know who I am. This is Mieux Vigouroux of the Sénche-do…Detective Agency.”
“It is not a detective agency!” Mieux immediately cried. “It is…” She screwed her mouth up and looked at the ceiling for a moment before continuing in a mystical air: “It is like how wood is both hard and flexible at the same time!”
Ashton chuckled loudly. He had talked Mieux in going along with this whole Daeton Craigh dodge by saying it’s just like a play with an important moral at the end. But obviously they still had some work to do on her improv skills.
“She’s been undercover for many months. As a priestess of Nature or something,” he explained, patting Mieux’s shoulder. “She’s in demand because she is Shardai’s greatest detective. In fact, she is better than me at solving certain types of cases—including the murder of religious authorities.”
He allowed this ridiculous news to sink in. The couch emitted sounds of surprise and skepticism, but it looked like the dominus’s ego was pleased at having the world’s two greatest detectives for the price of one.
“Mieux, why don’t you go ahead and reveal the guilty party?” Ashton said smugly as he strolled back to the vicinity of the whisky decanter.
Mieux spread her feet and planted her fists on her hips as she glared at the suspects.
“Who did it—for real!” she demanded.
Oblivious to the titters and groans, she next went down the line, bending slightly to stare each suspect in the face while asking, “Did you do it!”
Ashton leaned his forehead against the oak paneling, banging it lightly every time she repeated the phrase, and poured a full glass of whisky. Amid snorts and protests to the dominus, Mieux finally turned to him and flung her arms wide.
“They all say they did not do it! It is a total mystery!” she cried.
Ashton tossed a quarter of the drink down his gullet before facing her. “Yes, baffling,” he replied. “What about their…” He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers to suggest an aura.
“All of their auras are super messed-up! Any of them could be a crazy killer! Probably they mostly just steal money and beat their servants, though,” she replied, blinking placidly. Further snorts and objections emanated from the couches.
Ashton sipped from his drink to drown his rising nausea and curse discreetly into the glass. Nothing was more loathesome than the easy way not working.
“How comforting that you’re all potentially homicidal maniacs locked in here with us,” he quipped, then turned to the volcanic fire. He prodded it with the poker as if pondering a strategy instead of feeling rage and panic fucking each other on the thin mattress of his brain.
“In a mystery as complex as this,” he mused aloud, “there’s only one thing to do.”
He turned to face them, the whisky glass in his left hand and the sooty, smoldering fireplace tool in his right. “I’m gonna brand every one of you fuckers with this hot iron until somebody spills.”
The outburst of fear and outrage was about what he expected as he weaved drunkenly across the parquet floor.
“You can’t torture people with a hot poker!” Mieux cried, leaping in front of him.
“Sure I can, if you’ll just get out of my way,” Ashton countered. He had anticipated her intervention, too, but she was really short. He took a poke over her head in the direction of that old bastard-looking centurion.
“Nooooo!” Mieux cried, leaping up to bat the poker off course. “It’s mean to do, plus also they might be innocent!”
Ashton had trouble getting the poker to point straight again. Must be something wrong with it, he thought as he took another pull off the glass and squinted with one eye down the shaft to check whether it was true. He couldn’t focus on any of the three pokers that appeared before his eyes. He gave up.
“You’re right. I’ll just set this place on fire and cook all these overfed pigs alive,” he said, suddenly feeling like a much shorter and wimpier Rinka as he flung the poker onto another couch. A round pillow burst into flames, emitting a horsehair stench.
“Killing instead of torture is not an improvement!” Mieux screeched. “If you burn everyone up then you are the murderer!”
Ashton shrugged. “At least we’ll know the identity of a murderer here—and that the high priest’s death was avenged. Mystery solved.”
“That is sort of true…” Mieux allowed, her brow crinkling as she pondered skeptically.
Meanwhile, the dude half of the young couple decided to play hero, tossing both pillow and poker into the fireplace, and slapping the burning couch with that rug they liked so much. The rest of them got mob courage, too, and began advancing on Ashton. The dominus was in the lead.
“By the gods, are you mad or simply drunk, sir!” demanded the dominus.
For a split second, Ashton considered stabbing him with the push dagger just for the chaos of it, and brawling with as many of these fucks as possible before Mieux could react. He couldn’t stand the idea of spending days trying to play detective while Alfie and Rinka went through Night knew what. But he had to admit, making it messy would only take even more time. Unless he tried not caring and let Fortune have its way.
He looked at Mieux, still blinking and frowning over his unconvincing logic. He suddenly felt rotten for fucking with her limited Corcorid-language skills. She was probably the only decent person who’d ever stuck around him. Was his play to get her killed in some war with the city guards? Maybe I should think about protecting the friends I know for certain are still alive.
He felt for the pyramidal dice in his belt pouch and jammed a point hard into his fingertip, causing enough pain to create about three minutes worth of temporary sobriety. He straightened his spine and tried to steady his gaze on the dominus.
“Neither, sir,” he finally replied. “I apologize for feigning homicidal insanity—but it told me much about your own.” He looked meaningfully at the dominus, the butler, each of the guests, pretending he read something deep behind their facades. They squirmed appropriately.
He turned back to the dominus. “Again, my pardons for the ruse. I know you yourself understand the utility of a bit of theater.”
The dominus slowly smiled and slapped the weird black hood he was still holding into his palm. “Aha! Aha-ha-ha!” he chortled, pointing jovially. “Incredibly clever, Mr. Craigh!”
Ashton waved the praise aside modestly with a shakey hand. “A crude but effective tactic that was instrumental in several of my cases, such as the infamous pottery-glaze fume death in Etonia. Or as we called it, the Case of the Vases of Death,” he blathered, lying fluidly as the drunkenness clawed its way back.
The dominus frowned disturbingly. “I thought Counsel Regulus had solved that mystery.”
Shit. Where’s the weird everyone’s-forgetting-stuff phenomenon when you need it? “I consulted with Marcus on that case, among others,” Ashton name-dropped. “No need to get my name in the papers every time,” he said modestly, adding a wink for good measure.
The possibility that he would get the credit when “Craigh” solved the high priest’s murder was something the dominus’s ego sopped up like sand swallowing piss. He grinned widely and issued an “amazing!” at Ashton.
Keep the richest guy flattered and everything else will seem easy, Ashton mused to himself. I wonder what Gray Eyes’ mouth tastes like? he suddenly wondered idly. Probably like spring dew and cream.
He realized everyone was looking at him expectantly. He rubbed his ill-shaven chin to look thoughtful. Or like cinnamon and sugar, he guessed.
“Well, obviously this case is going to take some old-fashioned methodical investigation,” Ashton finally said aloud. “Mieux and I will have to ferret out every possible clue.”
/> Mieux whipped around to face the cagey group. “Everyone, show all the clues you have!” she demanded.
“Perhaps we’ll get to that tomorrow,” Ashton cut in. “It’s quite late, and I think we’ll all do better after some rest. Besides, maybe the killer will strike again, murder someone in their sleep, and make our job easier by shrinking the list of suspects.”
He savored the renewed looks of fear and distaste that continued until the dominus again chortled cooperatively and had the butler escort them all to their glorified cells. The butler was a young, sharp-featured guy with a nasty sneer that eroded Ashton’s usual sympathy for the help. He “accidentally” stepped on the guy’s foot as he followed Mieux into their two-bed guestroom. She predictably ordered a late supper while he threw himself into an armchair to brood until he passed out.
Thirty minutes later, he was still awake, chewing a fingertail between gulps of semi-sobering tea. Responsibility for Alfie and Rinka’s fate clawed at him like a drowning sailor. Mieux sat crosslegged on her bed, silent except for the slap of her tongue on the glassful of lime sorbet she was licking. He could smell it all the way across the room.
She paused to lick the built-up lime juice from the corners of her mouth. “What do you think happened to the paladin Telvyr!” she cried, her tongue flashing green. “I hope he didn’t come here also! He was a total psychobitch!”
“‘Psychobitch’ is a term for a woman. Like Rinka,” Ashton replied grumpily. He immediately regretted not only the dig, but the breach of their unspoken contract not to discuss their lost companions. Rinka manages to make me feel like shit with or without her. “Sorry,” he said as Mieux pressed her lips together a moment.
Her eyes half-closed placidly. “I still think he is probably a psychobitch,” she concluded.
“Fair enough.” As she resumed lapping, he looked at her thoughtfully. “Mieux, is there a popular detective in plays these days?”
“Yes!” she nearly screamed in a mist of lime juice, deftly dropping the sorbet glass on the nightstand as she hurled herself to her feet. “H.R. Kewl of Poor Root village!” she cried, explaining that the initals stood for “Helene Radisheater” and that villains often assumed she was just a stupid hick. Ashton felt himself perk up at the notion of an underestimated heroine.