by John Ruch
“I’m not Daetan Craigh,” he blurted while looking at the stone ceiling.
“I know,” she replied.
He lay silent for a moment, absorbing this bruise to his ego. The novel pleasure of feeling virtuously honest sure didn’t last long. He should have known it was never worth it.
“How?” he finally asked.
She folded her arms behind her head on the pillow. “A while after you arrived last night, Craigh showed up, pounding on the gate and demanding to be let in. When I asked for his papers, he called me ‘Sugar Tits.” Said he’d have my job for not recognizing the most famous man in Trelpas. I told him to get on the other side of the Porta by dawn or the Vigiles would escort him there at spear-point.”
“Why didn’t you rat me out to the dominus?”
“You were clever enough to get through the gate when the real detective couldn’t, so I figured you’re probably smarter than he is.” She grinned at him. “Besides, you got a cute butt and you’re sort of a sexy badass.”
She pulled him against her in a strong hug. She was grabby in a way he guessed was second nature to watchmen who were used to manhandling people without consequence.
“My name’s Ashton Arrowmask,” he said.
“Nice to meet you, Ashton.”
“That Craigh guy was a dick, but I must agree that you do have pretty sweet tits.”
“A bit fresh-mouthed with the watch, aren’t you?” she mock-warned, digging tickling fingers into his armpits. He squirmed involuntarily, but he was getting a kick out of being helpless at her teasing. She reached for something on the stool that passed for a nightstand, its surface piled with minor coins and Cap’n Trent brand romance novels. When she rolled back over, she was armed with a pale-burgundy lipstick.
He squirmed again as she applied it to his lips. “Quit being a baby,” she teased. “This will be fun.” She ran her fingers through his shaggy locks as she finished coloring his lips. He rubbed them together at the waxy taste.
Fisarex rolled over again, this time fetching a tin of eye shadow. He closed his eyes trustingly as she spread the blue powder on his lids. Her mouth was slack with arousal as she surveyed her handiwork.
“You look cute,” she murmured, following up with a kiss on his chin. He felt unusually sheepish, laying there on his side and letting her adjust him. “Try these on,” she suggested, handing him her sensible panties and lace-trimmed nightgown. Her tongue in his mouth forestalled any protests, but in fact, he was inclined to roll with this intensely sensual moment. The panties were a little too big for his skinny hips, the nightgown a little too small for his shoulders, but their unfamiliar satiny embrace on his skin was pleasant all the same.
“Hot,” Fisarex whispered, running her hand along his flank through the nightgown and giving him a slow, soft kiss.
Everything after that was slower and softer than his standard practice, and he loved every minute of it. Fisarex straddled his shoulders and lowered herself onto his painted face, stroking his hair as he mouthed her luscious folds to the edge of orgasm. Then she turned around and they locked into a mutal embrace. For long, delicious minutes, they tongued each other’s navels until they both were shivering. Finally, Fisarex pulled the panties aside and took him in her mouth. They suckled each other to climax and drank each other in.
In the afterglow, Ashton cuddled up with Fisarex in the luxuriously responsibility-free position of being the girlfriend. She toyed with his hair silently for a time until announcing she had to return to duty.
“I love you,” he said experimentally.
The gray eyes looked at him sideways. “No, you don’t.”
“No.”
She stood and began hiding her curves under the livery and chainmail of her uniform. “Don’t you have some work of your own? A murder to solve?”
He rolled around in the covers. I really should go see exactly how far into insanity Mieux has taken the investigation so far.
“Yes,” he replied. “Who do you think did it?”
She shrugged. “If I had a decent guess, we’d be extracting a confession in the dungeon, not calling in Daetan Craigh. Too many suspects, too many alibis. And you’ve seen the coded letter and the message in blood.”
“Of course,” he lied, wondering what other crucial, potentially lethal information he had overlooked. “Did you do it?” he added. She shot him a look and he planted a playful kiss on her bare asscheek before she got her pants up. He left red lip-prints.
“I don’t suppose you’d let me sneak out to have a look at the temple?” he continued.
She shook her head. “If you’re sleeping with the Vigiles for side benefits, I might not let you come back tonight.”
“My motives are pure. Except for the completely lying about my identity part.” He produced a potentially charming grin.
She turned and smirked as she brushed her hair. “And what does your true identity do for a living? Can you solve this crime?”
“I’m actually a freelance agent for the Tetragate, among others. I have experience in solving mysteries, retrieving unusual items…”
“It takes a criminal to catch a criminal, eh? Well, good luck finding your culprit. And remember that I’ll count the mansion’s silverware afterward.”
He laughed jovially while making a mental note to ditch the brace of silver spoons he’d hidden in his pillowcase.
When she left to do her duty, he tossed on his clothes and went to do his. He’d stayed up late with Mieux, interrogating her about ludicrous stories in thriller plays—ghosts, conspiracies, murder by spellcalled daggers. Then he had fiendishly gotten her overexcited about how some or all of these must be the secret behind the murder. She should be unleashing the dogs of plot twists on the suspects at breakfast right about now.
He trotted across the courtyard, up the stairs, and into the massive parlor, pausing only to light up a cubeb. He found the gang of suspects in their familiar seats while Mieux held forth. Her hair, he noted, was now bundled into a topknot and stubby pigtails. None of the assholes looked like they had slept well.
“…and so you are probably all evil twins!” Mieux was concluding. “But, one is even more evil than all the others!”
“You find all this amusing, do you?” challenged one middle-aged guy Ashton had never really paid attention to before.
“A murder is not amusing!” Mieux lectured back. “This is amusing!” She suddenly cut a backflip, completing two mid-air somersaults before landing neatly on her slippered feet.
Ashton strode into the room from the doorway. “You must admit that was pretty damn amazing,” he remarked.
Everyone looked at him silently with expressions ranging from sneers to astonishment. Shit. I forgot to wipe the makeup off.
Only Mieux was nonplussed. “You must shave better to look totally pretty!” she harangued.
“So it’s been said,” Ashton replied randomly. He turned to the debutante, gesturing with his cubeb. “Don’t worry, madame, you’ll get over your jealousy about my gorgeous looks.”
Night and Fury, wearing makeup makes me act like Rinka, he realized in a spasm of existential horror. He covered by simply puffing smoke in her direction.
“What is the meaning of this unusual line of questioning?” the dominus broke in.
“An unusual crime demands unusual questions,” Ashton rambled, flicking the cubeb into the fireplace. “Meanwhile, I have been hard at work, exploring every nook and cranny…” Images of Fisarex’s soft nooks and warm crannies momentarily distracted him. “Anyhow, I have managed to decode the coded message.”
He studied everyone’s reactions carefully, but was disappointed by the lack of tells.
“What does it say?” asked the dominus.
“For now, I’ll keep that between me and the killer. But perhaps it has something to do with…the Leveling.” He looked again at the faces for any giveaway response. No dice. “Something to consider over breakfast. Assuming the killer doesn’t poison us all,”
he continued.
“I made Chef Mainsyl taste everything first already! And then I tasted it also!” Mieux cried.
She probably ate three breakfasts already. Ashton made an appreciative gesture as the group filed out amid grumbling and muttering. As the dominus and the weasley butler approached, Ashton held up a hand.
“A private word, gentlemen.”
The dominus crossed his arms with a regal nod while the butler skulked. Ashton bumped a hip against a sideboard, knocking off a fancy hourglass and a silver candlestick shaped like an adorably blunt-finned, big-eyed whale. He let the hourglass shatter while deftly catching the candlestick, only to smash it through the sideboard’s glass front.
“Oh, I’m so clumsy!” Ashton said. “I’ll probably keep accidentally smashing valuables until somebody confesses and you get rid of me.” He looked hard at them both.
“You little shit,” mouthed the butler silently.
“Don’t worry yourself with such foibles, Mr. Craigh,” the dominus said reassuringly. “Furnishings are easier to replace than lives, after all. Money is no object compared to justice. We’re happy to have you.”
Ashton gave a grouchy smile as he stood aside. “Yeah, I suppose your servant can clean it up later.” The butler bumped his shoulder as they passed.
Crowded around a long table in the overly cozy breakfast room downstairs, the gang of suspects looked miserable, Ashton noted with satisfaction. Besides general irritation and anxiety, the place was a bit suffocating with its roaring fire and abundance of dried herbs dangling from the rafters. They chewed omelets forlornly like lost cattle with nothing but cud for comfort. Unfortunately, the suspects were also multiplying, he noticed glumly—at least two table-servers coming and going through a pair of doors.
Mieux perched crosslegged in her chair, her elbows barely making it to the tabletop. She had stuck pitted black olives on each of her fingertips and was slowly sucking them into her mouth, one by one, as she stared judgmentally at the suspects. If they met her gaze at all, it was with eye-rolling.
“Maybe one of you is an empousa! They kill people for the blood!” Mieux suddenly cried, flailing her olive-tipped hands. “Some of them are just fake empousas, though.”
Ashton grabbed a bottle of wine from a sideboard and threw himself into a chair beside her, which had been pointedly left vacant. “An excellent point, Mieux. It brings to mind the fake manticore murders in Port Nightrock, or as we called it, the Case of the Cat O’Nine Kills.”
“Why are you wearing that makeup?” the debutante’s boyfriend interrupted with newborn belligerence.
“Why not?” Ashton shot back, stumping the idiot. “Besides, my fans love the eccentricities of the West’s greatest detective. And I do have some fans among the staff of this place—surely more than the killer does,” he added as ominously as he could muster under the circumstances.
Makeup was a great topic of conversation because he was making everything up. Unfortunately, to no avail. The herd of assholes was unsettled, but no one had broken yet. The free food was great, anyhow, and he consoled himself with wine, cheesy omelet, and more wine. Mieux ate everything he couldn’t finish. She gripped his cloak chummily while biting into a piece of toast.
“What a fine ladle!” she commented to the group, showing off her mastery of the word as she stirred a bowl of fruit juice on the center of the table.
As she beamed up at him with glistening jam-smeared cheeks, her joy and trust made something retract inside him like a cat’s claw. Part of it was his heart shrinking at the responsibility of somehow rescuing Alfie and Rinka from a dungeon even more obscure than the one they’d busted him out of. Part of it was something he tossed into the mental junk drawer with the rest of his obscure motives before he could identify its unpleasant form and function.
He nursed on the wine bottle and gave up trying to keep track of the various suspects as they came and went—to the bathroom, to gossip about makeup-wearing detectives, to crack offensive Shardai jokes, whatever. He picked up a news sheet telling of a cuteness-ranking dispute between the city’s pug-breeding guilds, and half-listened as Mieux, between chomps on a muffin, outlined a theory that “everyone did it!”
This pleasant freeloading was interrupted by terrified screams of the table-servers from behind the kitchen door. Leaping into action, Ashton was first on the scene, which turned out to be a pantry with its door standing open and the chef pointing a meaty, quavering finger inside it. Peeking within, he beheld a gruesome sight.
The old centurion hung from a meathook, his head bloodied by a blow.
Shit! We really are locked in here with a murderer! Before the others arrived, Ashton quickly stuck some dried-herb sprigs into the dead soldier’s ears and looped a chain of sausages around his neck, figuring that would weird everyone out even more, the killer included.
When everyone else gathered around the pantry door, the scene had predictable effects—and unfortunately, some unexpected ones as well.
“What good is it to have the world’s greatest detectives if the killer is free to keep killing!” demanded the guy hooked up with the debutante.
“It happens all the time in plays!” Mieux cried, giving Ashton precious time to think up an excuse. “Probably the four kings of the Tetragate Empire want us to know that it is super hard to defeat evil because there is so much of it! As the twenty-third of the One-Thousand-And-Three Fables says, ‘Evil is like the wasp. Anyone may endure and revenge a single sting, but the swarm is always near, and only those well-prepared may survive it.’”
“What are you talking about, you little freak?!” the guy shouted in a near-panic.
“What kind of freak!” Mieux demanded, looking up him placidly. “People call me that over and over but I have wondered for ages what they mean!”
Ashton impulsively slapped a glove across the guy’s cheek.
“There, I just solved a crime. You’re guilty of being an asshole,” Ashton proclaimed as the guy reeled backward in shock. “It’s on the house,” he added deferentially to the dominus while dodging a counter-slap from the debutante.
A hallway packed with rich fuckheads unaccustomed to being terrified and angry was a sticky scenario. Ashton held up a calming hand as his own guts twisted and twirled.
“Settle down, everyone,” he commanded. “I know this incredibly gruesome, corpse-abusing murder of a helpless old man is upsetting. However, killing more people is the murderer’s first mistake. It gives me fewer suspects and even more clues. In fact, the more people that are murdered, the safer we are.”
He watched confusion spread over their faces like a hunter’s net over a wild boar. It was enough that they wanted to believe this nonsense, as long as he kept them distracted from thinking it over.
“How do we know you didn’t do it?” the butler interjected, sneering over the dominus’s shoulder. “You’ve been threatening us and hitting people. You could be an imposter sent here to assassinate an accomplice or more targets.”
“I can see why you deliver tea and sorbet to the rooms of detectives rather than working as one yourself, sir,” Ashton said with a panicked smile. “Obviously, I am too drunk to have committed this murder, and Mieux was too busy eating everything on the table.”
Truth was a seasoning that, like any wise chef, Ashton used sparingly. It worked to great effect on this hot-air soufflé.
“Lime sorbet is totally great!” Mieux added.
“Now, I strongly suggest that you lock yourselves in your rooms,” Ashton continued. “Yes, you will spend some time in complete mortal terror and corrosive mistrust of everyone around you. But the killer will be even more afraid, knowing that I am peeling away the onion of deception, crying at its tragic juices—but crying for justice. Open your doors for no one but me, when I call you to gather in the parlor for the unveiling of the guilty.”
After they had shuffled out—the dominus clapping a trusting hand on his shoulder on the way—Ashton looked down at Mieux and gave one of
her pigtails a playful tug.
“The hairdo of H.R. Kewl, I assume?”
Her gigantic eyes swelled enormously. “My stars and garters! You guess even better than Pesh! Maybe you really are a good detective!”
“You’re doing a good job, too. I think we’re closer to the truth than we can possibly know.”
“Killing an elder during breakfast is totally crazy! Plus hanging him on a hook also!” She shook her head in distaste, making her topknot wiggle. “How will we figure out who the evil murderer is before they kill again!”
Ashton kicked the pantry door shut on the unpleasant scene and lit up a cubeb. “We must follow the example of history’s most noble detectives,” he vowed, trying and failing to blow a smoke ring. “We’ll snoop through somebody’s house without permission.”
Alfie had seen a spot or two of trouble in the Jadal, but this quite took the cake, and the crumpet, and indeed the tea kettle, too.
Rinka loomed over him, her torso armor removed to reveal a garish pink bra with silver spangles, and a horrendous wound upon her chest that gaped and healed in a bizarre cycle. Her face contorted with a woman’s rage and a girl’s tears, and her fingers danced on the grip of her sword, as she decided whether to finish what she had started on him. Behind her in the waning evening light he saw the young people inching toward the edge of the pit and their deaths.
Alfie spat blood and pushed teeth loosened by her punch back into place with his tongue.
“Let them go, lass,” he advised again, knowing she wouldn’t. With a curse, she released her grip on her sword and crawled out onto the projecting logs after the young sacrifices.
Like most incidents involving a deity of vengeance, this one had gone hooves-up near the start.
Upon their return from Thaneyll, Rinka had presented Tywi’s leaf-wrapped head to Cunodua like a cat depositing a dead rat on its master’s stoop. Cunodua was back at work grimly spell-sculpting something that looked unnervingly like a burial mound, and beholding the severed head of a fellow widuwita, even one who had gone bad pre-mortem, did not leaven his mood. Before looking up at them, he took his time wiping the blood-toned clay from his hands and digging it from under his nails. Delivered the good news first—the adder stones reported that he could indeed use Alfie’s anchoring ward to reverse the biddening and return them to Calisia. Before he began sticking any feathers in his cap, however, Alfie remained aware that the stones spoke for Yslifrag, a god who ruled by the motto, “Blood for blood, life for life.” Alfie took a pinch of snuff to brace himself.