Visions: Knights of Salucia - Book 1

by C. D. Espeseth

  He left the already forgotten body where it was. Whatever allure it had once held had disappeared with Elise Syun’s life. He didn’t bother hiding the corpses; he knew it would take time for any pursuers to find out where Princess Elise had disappeared to. By then, he would be long gone.

  Without a look back, Thannis disappeared from Aluvik like a whisper on the wind.

  * * *

  The forest remained still long after Thannis had left and as the sun began to rise. The wrongness of what had happened had left its imprint upon the very air. The stillness tensed further as the giant cedars watched a shadow slither towards the scene, detaching itself from the trees to stand softly beside the dead woman.

  A sigh of annoyance slithered from its purple and black stained lips. The King of Nothavre would be happy with this result, but more needed to be added to the scene to delay those who were far closer to Thannis than the young prince presumed. The shadow was named Esmerak, who was a witch in the employ of Thannis’s father.

  Esmerak moved to grab the delicate porcelain body. Left like this, the body would prompt too many questions from the Senior Prefect, who was far too close to discovering the truth about these murders.

  A hound’s deep bark tore through the choking silence and Esmerak hissed in anger. She could hear the sounds of people crashing through the brush calling the dead woman’s name.

  She would have no time to fix this! The Senior Prefect must have already been in the Narrows. He must have been watching the royal gala. She slipped back into the darkness between the trees and watched as the constables in their long brown cloaks began to surround the body of Elise Syun.

  Esmerak watched the constables gasp in horror as they rolled Princess Elise over and saw her vacant dark brown eyes screaming silently up to the heavens. Everyone seemed shocked, except for one, the Senior Prefect; he already had his pen out and was taking notes.

  Esmerak would have to think of something else to distract this Senior Prefect. Her Prince had left too much of a mess this time.

  5 - Detritus – John Stonebridge

  Orcanus, great servant of the deep

  Harbinger to souls of the endless sleep

  Great Grandmother, into your eye I peer.

  The end of my wandering path has drawn near.

  You must escort me down beneath the sea,

  Lest my soul quiver and I try to flee.

  Your black fins guide towards another plane.

  Great Spirit, keep me safe, it’s grown cold and my heart has begun to wane.

  - Poem originating somewhere in the Northern Shards – Chronicler Henrietta Martin in A Study of Salucian Mythology

  John saw a single knife slash across the young girl’s neck. Her skin was ghostly pale; the dark red stains on the detritus of the forest floor showed exactly where her colour had gone. The information around him told John Stonebridge that Elise Syun was quite obviously dead, but the patterns he saw also indicated exactly who had murdered this poor young girl.

  A Xinnish girl. Another dead Xinnish girl lying at his feet. The spectres of John’s past threatened to overwhelm his calm exterior, but he said a silent prayer to Halom and asked for forgiveness. Eventually, his memories faded and he forced his mind to focus on just this girl instead of the ghosts in his mind.

  She was not just any girl either; she was a gods damned princess. The Xinnish Princess. Her nationality and race shouldn’t matter in these modern times, but they did to a fossil like him. He knew that to be sinful, so John made a mental note to ask the local chaplain for absolution later. Now he forced himself to truly see the little girl he hadn’t been able to protect.

  Lady take him, he had seen too many dead Xinnish eyes, and John had nightmares aplenty without any more being added; yet these dead Xinnish eyes were different. Those eyes…they were his calling cards. They were the signature of the killer John had been chasing for months. It was always the eyes, looking strangely alive, as if frozen in a scream.

  A bit like Keisha’s after we found her. John’s mind drifted to the old aching pain buried deep within his memories. His younger sister’s eyes had screamed at him then as well, yet that had been different. That was nearly fifty years ago, a simpler and more violent time. But John still saw her face as clearly as if it had been yesterday. They had found Keisha face up in an alleyway, her tiny neck snapped as if it were a twig. Jefferson Akevan, a brutal bull of a psychopath, had been the one doing the snapping. That bloody animal had left Keisha lying there in the street like another piece of trash to be swept away in the gutters. I shouldn’t have left her. I should have been home.

  The decision he had made that night had haunted him for the past forty-eight years, and John knew it would follow him to his grave. If I had been home, she would never have run away, she would have been safe. He ground his teeth in an attempt to force his memories away once more. I killed Akevan though; at least he had given Keisha that. Not that the constabulary knew about it. He wouldn’t be wearing the constabulary’s long brown coat if they did.

  John touched the dead leaves and soft soil beside the body. It was still sticky, as not all of the blood had soaked down through the forest floor yet. In another few hours the blood would be hidden, spirited away into the earth beneath his feet. The long fronds of the ferns, lying like a lime green carpet below the silent cedar pillars, would have drunk it in like a sour cocktail.

  Even the ground has a taste for blood, he thought darkly. The forest took care to sweep its past away. Death was only another part of the cycle here.

  A bird chirped high above in the canopy as a few rays of light slipped between the full cedar bows. It would have been better for Keisha to die in a place like this. More peaceful.

  John stood up and motioned the waiting constabulary over to the body.

  This was going to be bad, really bad. The Xinnish Princess murdered on Aluvikan soil. What a gods damned mess. This was going to go all the way up to the High King, it had to. If this monster could get to Elise Syun, heir to the Xinnish throne, then … the thought didn’t bear finishing.

  Gods, this was bad.

  A crow tried to land next to the body, no doubt after the eyes, and John waved it away angrily. “Mangy scrounger,” he growled, “go find something else to pick at.” The bird croaked a protest and flew back up to a branch just above the body. John eyed the crow silently as the brown-jacketed constabulary officers wrapped up Elise Syun’s body. She was to be taken back to Narrows and her family, to be entombed with all the other Syun monarchs.

  I take it back, he thought, Keisha wouldn’t have been better off here.

  “So what do you make of this then, Johnny? You don’t mind if I call you Johnny do you?” Miranda Holvstad, his new junior partner, chirped beside him.

  He fixed her with as hard a look as he could conjure. “Yes, I mind.” He let the word hangs and his gaze linger until Miranda dropped her eyes. No one but Keisha had ever called him that, and John was going to keep it that way.

  He looked over at the lithe Junior Prefect whom the constabulary had deemed it necessary to work with him. She was pale, hard, wiry, and had a crop of short dark hair, but what drew John’s attention most was the bone ring punched through her eyebrow. That only meant one thing in this part of the Salucia: Xinnish.

  She had to be bloody Xinnish. A dead Xinnish Princess and a Halom’s damned fresh Xinnish recruit. He was surrounded by them. The bloody world was making it hard for him to forget things. Sure, Kenz and Xin Ya were allies now, but he still had vivid memories of scale-armoured Xinnish warriors butchering men and women he had fought shoulder to shoulder with during the Border Wars.

  Yet that was thirty years ago, and everyone was expected to play nice now under the High King’s Salucian Union.

  “It’s our guy,” he grumbled, after letting her squirm under his angry gaze for long enough.

  “You don’t say. Details maybe?” Miranda said, quirking her eyebrow at him in obvious irritation.

  He had hope
d to cow whatever enthusiasm this Miranda Holvstad had, but his first attempt was shrugged off like water off a duck’s back. John sighed to himself. She’s going to be hard work.

  “He can’t be far off, right? Princess Syun went missing last night – so he’s, what? less than a day ahead of us?” She seemed to be expecting a response.

  “Astute of you,” John replied coldly. He knew she didn’t deserve his anger. She was supposed to be a good prefect by all reports: young, strong, determined and very sharp from what he had heard, but he found it difficult to forget the past. She idly touched the jagged bone ring on her brow and he shivered. I remember when that meant they were going to kill you; now it’s nothing more than a tic. The world had moved on, he had to remember that.

  John removed the wide-brimmed Akubra hat from atop his head. He always played with it when he was thinking. It was a good hat. His fingers played across its course texture, found the centre dent, shuffled down to the brim and back again; a familiar dance for his old fingers. “He hunted her,” he began. “This was premeditated and carefully executed. Look at how well it was planned. That thorn we found has an extremely rare toxin on it, and there is a small mark on the Princess’s right buttock suggesting she sat on it. That was no accident.” John gestured back to the clearing where they had found the two other corpses, of Henriette Gelding and Ole Sigurn. “A single throw took the Hafaza down, straight through the neck from a dozen paces, and this same man somehow bested a fully armoured Syklan, a Captain no less. These bodyguards would never have let an armed man this close to the Princess, meaning the weapons used were already hidden in this spot.”

  John pointed back to the dead princess. “He let her run, even though he had her dead to rights with that toxin. He must enjoy these hunts, like it’s some sort of game.” John stood, “You will find no defensive wounds on the body, which indicates how incredibly fast and accurate our killer was. These are the same sort of precise cuts we’ve seen before.”

  John leaned back and pushed his fists into the small of his back and heard a satisfying pop. “We need to get a ship. He’s got nearly four days on us judging by the body.” He tried to regain a somewhat professional demeanour: the eyes of the corpse had unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.

  “A ship?” She looked over to him.

  “Yes, a bloody ship. Are you going to question everything?!” he growled, fighting the urge to yell at her and that ridiculous clipped accent of hers. “Just go get us booked on the fastest naval ship you can find, you bloody slant-eyed bone-worshipper.”

  There was a collective gasp from the officers around him, and John cursed himself for his misstep. Stupid, he cursed himself again, hating how, try as he might, he couldn’t keep his bloody mouth shut. I’m such a racist prick. He eyed the white and navy shield shaped patch sewn onto the shoulder of her uniform jacket, the same as his. Two crossed sai pointed down, to symbolize defence, with the scales of the court behind them, and the rope of a meteor hammer encircling all of it. That crest, the practical dark brown uniform of the constabulary, and the odd Akubra hat had become symbols of safety to the new Salucian Union. That included safety from racism as well.

  “Wait!” he growled before Miranda could run off. He was meant to be teaching her, not berating her or insulting her. For all his faults, John did believe in the constabulary and what they tried to do. He had to be better, he had to swallow half a lifetime of being racist and move on. He took a breath and forced himself to speak. He knew he should really be apologising, yet he couldn’t make himself say the words. The best he could do was explain. “He’s gone. This was a major assassination and I’ve ordered the constabulary to have the Narrows locked down. Our perpetrator is already in the wind.” He pulled his hat back down on his head hard. “This killing was on another level. If he can get to Elise Syun…”

  “He can get to anybody,” Miranda finished, not giving any hint of being insulted. Rather, she was all ears, listening to what he had to say. She pulled a long, ornately carved calumet pipe from a coat pocket and packed a thumbnail-sized portion of tobacco into it. Small pictures of wasteland cats were carved into the flat sides of the bowl and stem. Miranda’s hand-held flint-striker dropped sparks into the bowl.

  John waited for her to take a few puffs. “Smoking gives you the wet cough you know,” he said, smelling the full fruity smoke.

  “Health tips? That’s rich, coming from an old Guilan who drinks like a fish,” Miranda said. Her use of racial slur was equally offensive as John’s own, yet there was a playful sparkle in her eye when she delivered it.

  John barked a laugh. “I haven’t heard that one in years.” Guilan was Xinnish and translated to something like ‘white-skinned book fornicator’. At the time, it had enraged the Kenzians like nothing else, and was usually heard just before the Xinnish charged their lines. Gods, this kid had balls saying that to him. It made him smile.

  He watched Miranda as she carefully fanned the smoke over herself and then towards the body of the young princess. It was a mark of respect for the dead. He had seen the ritual several times.

  “So where would he go?” John asked. If I’m meant to teach, I’ll teach. “Analyse the pattern.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his notepad. He had been taught to write and made sure he made good use of that skill. He recorded every detail of every crime scene he had ever been to on his notepads. You never knew when something which seemed insignificant at the time would turn out to be useful. He cleared his throat and began summarising his notes. “First some farming villages in Nothavre, then the same in Labran. Then the brother and sister in Tawa; the Singer and her guard in Wadashi; and the Princess and her guards now makes five in and around Narrows.” John flipped closed his notepad. “What does that tell you?”

  Miranda thought for a moment before pointing the butt of her pipe at him as if it were a conductor’s baton. “The centres are getting larger each time. Narrows was the biggest so far. He’s growing more confident and is escalating. He’s either going to go after a harder target or try a much more complicated hunt.”

  John nodded, slightly surprised. “Right, so he’s headed to ...”

  “New Toeron would be my guess.” Miranda spoke with confidence. “Palisgrad is too dangerous. The Paleshurians would tear the city apart looking for him and not care about collateral damage. Dawn would most likely be too uptight and boring for him, given the pattern of stalking beforehand. New Toeron, however, is so big he could hide for months and months on end before anyone even knew he was there, and it has an extensive selection of nightlife, and high-profile visitors. We need to find the ferries headed to the Shards.”

  John looked at his young Xinnish partner appreciatively. Not bad, kid, he thought. “Guess where a ferry is meant to leave for just this morning?” He grinned. “He’s probably sitting on that boat right now waiting to leave the port. We need to get there first, but if I can’t stop it from leaving, I want you to get us a naval ship, something fast and nasty. I’ll meet you at the docks.”

  “Where are you going?” She stopped, and gave him a rather obstinate glare.

  “You my mother now?” he snapped. “To question that fella they got locked up. Where d'you think? Now shut it and go get us a ship.”

  Miranda rolled her eyes but did as she was told.

  “You there, big fella!” John waved over at one of the local constables. “Take me to the prisoner.”

  A bloody Xinnish partner. John shook his head. At least she’s got spirit.

  * * *

  “What do you mean the travel request has been denied?” John asked the woman sitting behind the long wooden desk in the Narrows Constabulary office.

  “I, uh, I have the paperwork right here,” the mousy-looking woman squeaked back at him with an apologetic face. The woman gingerly handed him a written note with the Narrows Chief’s seal stamped in red ink and a clearly lettered ‘Denied’ at the bottom of the request.

  John looked behind the desk to the off
ice. The High Constable was watching him through his office door.

  Bloody Gary Hornwright, it had to be him, that little snake. John smiled politely and held up the request for the High Constable to see. “What sort of bureaucratic tripe is this?” he said, loud enough for the whole office to hear.

  “I’m sorry, Prefect, the Chief is busy at the moment,” the mousy clerk piped at him.

  “Is he now?” John smiled down at the woman. “You won’t mind if I check.”

  John calmly unlocked the knee-high divider and pushed it aside. He caught the clerk’s hand in his own as she tried to stop him. “You have lovely hands, my dear. Best use them for their intended purpose.” He planted a kiss on the top of the one he held. She jerked it back in surprise.

  “I won’t be a moment. See that we’re not disturbed,” John said calmly.

  A large young constable stepped in front of him with his brown coat hanging across his broad shoulders. He held up a hand, apparently meaning to stop him.

  Poor stupid kid.

  John pretended to stumble, and the big Constable caught his arm reflexively, trying to help. “Careful, old-timer, don’t want to get yourself hurt.”

  “It’s Prefect actually.” John stood and snapped the butt end of the sai he had drawn against the young Constable’s inner thigh. The young man went down in a heap as his leg buckled. “And I was about to suggest the same thing to you, son.” John smiled and tipped his hat politely as he walked by. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Oh, Gary?!” John tapped the pommel of his sai on the door, “I just need a quick word with you is all.” He tried the handle, but it was locked. He sighed and slid the request under the door. “Gary, come on now. I need you to explain this paperwork. Gary?” He reached into his pocket and found the leather-bound set of lock-picking tools.