Mystery!

by Chantelle Aimée Osman

  “More dangerous, you mean,” Lock said, glancing at Wat. “But we take your meaning, Lord Inspector. Give us a few minutes to speak to the prime suspects.”

  Strade nodded and walked away, calling to the guards near the goblins as he went.

  “Separately or together?” Wat asked his companion.

  “Separately,” Lock replied. “Harder to keep a story straight if you’re telling it three different ways.” He sized up the three goblins. “I’ll start with the merchant’s servant; you take the baron’s.”

  The two goblins walked to the three suspects. “Hello,” Lock said, his voice even and crisp, looking at the goblin dressed in silk. “We’re working with the Lord Inspector. If you could come this way, please, while my companion chats with the baron’s servant?” The silk-wearing goblin glanced at the other two, then followed as Lock walked to an unoccupied area of the stage. “All right, let’s start with the basics. What’s your name?”

  “Arty,” the goblin replied in heavily accented Cannisian. He was shorter than Lock and had a crooked nose, but otherwise seemed unremarkable.

  “Arty,” Lock repeated. “Good. My name is Lock.” He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, but the goblin simply licked his lips, eyes darting back and forth. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “Already told human,” Arty said. “Standing there, watched human in red fall, then the one in the blue cloak, then my master. Then everyone runs everywhere, and I stay. Then men come and take us. That’s all.”

  “All right,” Lock replied. “Did your master seem sick before the ceremony?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anyone who would want to hurt your master?”

  Arty shrugged. “Master have friends, master have…not-friends,” he said, struggling with the Cannisian word. “Master makes people feel better. Don’t know about hurt.”

  It was well known that Mammerk had made his name as an apothecary, creating various concoctions for all sorts of conditions, before rising within the Merchant Guild to become its leader. From Lock’s point of view, whether those things made people feel better or worse was an open question. Lock hesitated; this final inquiry could cut the deepest. “Did your master treat you well?”

  Arty’s eyes met and held Lock’s. “Sometimes. Sometimes not. But master give food, give water, give home, give money. Better than some humans do in Cannis.” He paused. “I not hurt him.”

  Lock nodded. “All right, thank you. You can go back to the others now.” He followed Arty back to the group, just as Wat was returning with the baron’s servant. “You,” he said to the Prelate’s servant, a female goblin dressed in white in the manner of her master. “Come with us, please.” The goblin, less fidgety than Arty, silently stepped forward and obediently followed Lock and Wat as they went a safe distance from the group.

  “Name?” Lock asked.

  “Reen,” the goblin said, her voice lower than Lock had expected. She spoke clearly, with little accent.

  “Reen. I’m Lock; this is my colleague Wat. We just have a few questions for you.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” she suddenly said, her voice sounding plaintive. “Served master a long time, helped with service, walked in the Light. The Light helps all. Murder isn’t right. I didn’t do anything.” She spoke quietly but quickly, as if she were afraid she would be interrupted before she could finish.

  Lock and Wat exchanged a quick glance. “What happened here, then?” Lock went on after a moment.

  “Master fell, right after the human in the red cloak. Then the human in the blue-green silks. All dead. We stood there, then everyone ran around shouting, and then the men came to get us and said we had to stay. Then we answered more questions, and then…we waited. There.” She gestured to where the other two goblins stood waiting.

  Lock nodded. “You speak with very little accent, Reen. Have you studied Cannisian?”

  Reen suddenly smiled. “I started years ago, at night after master went to bed. I wanted to sound as if I had been here all my life, instead of brought here from the Outer Mines when I was little. I’ve made progress…but I haven’t been able to keep up with my studies for several months. Master wasn’t that happy I was taking the time to learn Cannisian.”

  “Did your master ever get sick before? Did he ever need a healer?”

  “No,” Reen replied, looking puzzled. “He has the Light.”

  “Of course,” Lock said, nodding. “And…you. Did your master treat you well?”

  Reen was silent for a moment, looking back and forth from Lock to Wat. Then she gave a tight nod. “He gave me the Light. If I went outside the Light…he brought me back.”

  “How?”

  “His voice,” she said. “You hear it, even when no one else hears it.” Her expression was a mask, but Lock knew the rumors of the powers of the Order of the Light’s priests—to speak to others telepathically, cause confusion, stress, enforce obedience, perhaps even worse—had been legion within the citizenry of Cannis for many years, no matter how much the Order denied them.

  “Very well,” Lock replied. “You can go back to the others.” When she was safely out of earshot, Lock turned to his larger companion. “What luck did you have with the baron’s servant?”

  Wat snorted. “Not much more than we had with this one,” he said. “Name’s Char, which he told me about six times before I got done asking him the first question. Says he was with the baron the whole time, saw him fall, then the Prelate, then the merchant…then everyone started yelling and running, then some men showed up and told them they had to stay. Same story as Reen’s…and the merchant’s errand boy too, eh?”

  Lock nodded. “Arty, yes. What did Char say about how the baron treated him?”

  “Said he was fine so long as Char didn’t mess up. If he did, well…then it’s ‘Char’s fault,’ he says, ‘Char should know better, Char should be more careful.’ Bah.” Wat shook his head angrily. “Bad enough our people get treated like slaves and spit on for it; half of them act like they deserve it.”

  “Since we were slaves for the better part of a century, that’s not surprising,” Lock replied. “Old habits die hard, and it hasn’t been that long since the Awakening. But even when we were slaves, goblins could be pushed too far…my father used to tell me stories.”

  “I’d have been interested in those stories,” Wat said, his tone flat, “if my father had been alive to tell them to me, ’stead of dead in a mass grave because some other human thought he was giving him sass.”

  Lock winced. As frustrating as it could sometimes be to deal with, Wat came by his sarcastic anger honestly. “I understand,” Lock said, “but we have a job to do, Wat. And I know you don’t like Strade, but in Cannis, we’re not likely to get much better.”

  Wat shrugged. “I know. Don’t make it any easier.” He looked at the goblins, all three now back together in their spot on the stage. “You figure one of them’s lying? Or the whole pack, working together?”

  “I don’t know, but I see what Strade means,” Lock replied, watching the Lord Inspector engaged in earnest conversation with one of his men. “Something does feel wrong about all of this, and I can’t figure what. Even if I don’t think these three did it, who else could?”

  “Rival city?” Wat offered. “Governor’s away at the talks, Revels starting; perfect time to throw some chaos into the fun, get everyone in Cannis angry at each other.”

  “If you can think of how a city could sneak an assassin into this ceremony, tell me,” Lock said. “This event was fully secure—multiple guard shifts being moved for security reasons, huge guard presence in and outside the building. And only a hundred invited. These aren’t low profile people. And two different kinds of poison, one death with no real explanation, all having to be delivered at close range. The cost of the poisons alone are beyond what many cities could manage.”

  “You don’t know what money’s like these days,” Wat said with a sardonic grin. “But you’r
e probably right. One of the audience, then? A Cannisian?”

  “Same problem as before: access and opportunity,” Lock replied. “None of the audience had either, as far as we can tell. Beyond that, what’s the motive? Maybe if we could spend the next week interrogating everyone who was in attendance…which is six days more than we have, since the Governor will probably just order the goblins killed the minute he sets foot within Cannis’s walls tomorrow morning.” He saw Strade turn and gesture in their direction. “In fact, we probably don’t have much more than the next few minutes.”

  The larger goblin shrugged helplessly, muscles shifting along his wiry shoulders. “Then what do we do, Lock? Maker knows the goblins had access, opportunity, and motive, if you listen to what they’re actually saying. Obviously don’t mind their masters are dead, except maybe for Reen; could definitely have made it happen if they wanted. But…” He paused and looked at Lock.

  Lock sighed. “But it still feels wrong. We’re missing something, Wat. Something doesn’t add up.”

  “Well, you better figure out the math quickly, because your Lord Inspector’s coming for a report,” Wat replied. “All this trouble for those three,” he went on as he glanced at the three corpses on the stage, “like they weren’t at each other’s throats last week anyway. City’s better with them gone.”

  “Mmm,” Lock said absently. “I suppose, but that’s not—” Suddenly he stopped, eyes widening.

  At each other’s throats.

  “Lock—” Wat began as he saw Lock’s reaction, but before he could continue, Strade had reached the group.

  “All right,” the Lord Inspector said. “Word is the Governor’s heard about the incident, and he’s got his carriage and retinue practically flying the rest of the way back from Anneric. He might be here tonight. So we’ll have to wrap up here one way or the other, and—”

  “Good,” Lock said, his brain still working through possibilities. “Because I think we’re done here. Your victims and murderers all together on one stage, Lord Inspector; you should consider yourself fortunate.”

  “Ah,” Strade said. “So you do think it’s the goblins?”

  “No,” Lock said, walking over to the three dead bodies. “I think you missed a few suspects during your interrogations.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lock kneeled down next to the dead Prelate. “Graveflower, I think you said, Wat?”

  “Probably.”

  “Not something you just grind into some water, is it?”

  Wat blinked. “No…well, I mean, I don’t think so. Would need to be refined a bit.”

  “Couldn’t be done by a goblin servant; you would need a very talented apothecary, with access to the proper reagents,” Lock said, “who would know how to cover his tracks.”

  Wat stared at him, mouth open, but Strade spoke first. “Wait—you think Mammerk killed them? And himself?”

  “Not himself, Lord Inspector,” Lock replied with a slight smile. “He had probably taken a counteragent to his own poison just in case. But anyway, only one of these men was killed with graveflower. The merchant,” he continued, shifting to Mammerk and pointing to the white powder on his body, “was killed with ellonis, the powder of silence. It might well have been difficult to obtain, and illegal, as you said, certainly for a simple goblin…but not for, let us say, someone with legal and political control over a significant portion of the city.”

  “Baron Kraes Addern,” Wat breathed.

  “And no questions likely to be asked later, given the confusion.”

  “Wait. Wait,” Strade cut in, mustache twitching furiously. “This is madness. Mammerk kills the Prelate with graveflower, the baron kills Mammerk with ellonis. What about the baron? He wasn’t poisoned!”

  “Yes, and that’s the biggest question of all, isn’t it?” Lock mused, looking at the baron’s still body, his twisted face frozen in a scream. “How did the baron die, and who killed him?” He was silent for a moment, then smiled again. “The answer, as always, rests in the Light.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about religious devotion and power, Lord Inspector,” Lock replied, looking at the motionless form of the Prelate. “I’m talking about something Reen, the Prelate’s servant, told me…that she could hear his voice when she misbehaved.”

  “Are you suggesting that the Prelate thought a man to death?” Strade demanded.

  Lock stood and turned to face Strade. “I’m suggesting that a healthy man in early middle age generally doesn’t fall over dead with his heart stopped, his hands clasped to his ears in agony, in silence.” He paused, lips tightening. “Unless there is a sound which only he can hear. A sound which someone else put there.”

  The three Cannisians were silent for a long moment. “It’s all very neat,” Strade broke in at last, his voice angry. “All very clear. Except for one thing: why?”

  Lock nodded. “Yes, why? Why would three men kill each other?” He looked down at the bodies of Cannis’s finest citizens, bodies contorted in the manner of their endings. “Because these men hated each other. Because each of them saw a chance to assert his authority while the Governor was away. Because each of them could do this, and could be better than the others. But in the end they failed, because none of them could imagine any of the others being quite as ambitious as they were.”

  Strade stared at Lock wordlessly for a few more moments. Then he drew forth a small, jingling pouch, tossed it to Wat, turned and strode away, shouting to the guards to release the three servants.

  Wat opened the pouch and looked inside, then closed it, shook his head, and gave a low whistle. “Well. I think he’d rather you made something up than tell him that, Lock. Not sure he’ll want to hire us again any time soon.”

  “He might, once he figures out how to explain to the Governor that three of Cannis’s most important people killed each other,” Lock replied, watching the Lord Inspector stride away. “And anyway, we did our job.”

  Wat nodded. “Makes you wonder, though,” he said, watching the three goblins exit the Great Hall. “Each of the servants were around their masters all the time…watched ’em work, listened to ’em scheme and plan. Couldn’t they learn how to make poison? Or steal some ellonis? Even learn to channel the Light?”

  “Not very likely,” Lock said. “But yes, it does make you think.” With a smile, he headed towards the exit, the faint music from the Revels outside suddenly promising a much happier day than he had anticipated.

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  AUTHORS AT ORIGINS

  Authors have always had a place at the Origins Game Fair. In 2011, Origins established The Library program, which combines the Author Alley concept with a full slate of classes taught by and for writers. Gaming inspires an incredible amount of creativity as evidenced by the legion of bestselling authors including Aaron Allston, R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Michael A. Stackpole and Larry Bond, to name a few. The Library program provides a means for attendees to learn to harness their creativity as well as interact with authors whose work they enjoy. In 2014, Origins renamed the program The Aaron Allston Library, to honor him after his untimely death, and in 2018, has developed the Aaron Allston Scholarship program, where a young aspiring author is chosen to contribute a short story, participate in workshops, and be provided with mentorship from the authors in The Library.

  Each story in this anthology is writing by an author participating in The Library program. They can be found in the exhibitor hall or through the seminar track.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  GAMA would like to thank Eric Campbell, Chantelle Aimée Osman, Michael A. Stackpole, Bryan Young and Kat Klaybourne for their hard work in assembling the book. Likewise thanks is due to the authors, without whose work there would be no book, and John Ward, without whom there would be no author program. Thanks also to Charles Urbach for the cover painting.

  GAMA is the Game Manufacturers Association, the
sponsoring organization for the Origins Game Fair and GAMA Trade Show. Its mission is to be an advocate for gaming on all levels. To learn more, please visit gama.org.

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  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  DONALD J. BINGLE, the world’s top-ranked player of classic RPGs for fifteen years, is the author of six books: Forced Conversion, near future military scifi; Greensword, darkly comedic eco-thriller; Frame Shop, murder in a suburban writers’ group; The Love-Haight Case Files, urban fantasy; Net Impact, spy thriller; and Wet Work, a sequel to Net Impact being released at Origins). He also has written more than fifty short stories in the thriller, fantasy, horror, science fiction, mystery, and memoir genres. More about Don can be found at www.donaldjbingle.com. Follow him on FB or Twitter @donaldjbingle.

  DYLAN BIRTOLO resides in the Pacific Northwest where he spends his time as a writer, a game designer, and a professional sword-swinger. He’s published a few fantasy novels and several short stories. On the game side, he contributed to Dragonfire and designed both Henchman and Shadowrun Sprawl Ops. He trains in Systema and with the Seattle Knights, an acting troop that focuses on stage combat. He jousts, and yes, the armor is real—it weighs over a hundred pounds. You can read more about him and his works at www.dylanbirtolo.com or follow his twitter at DylanBirtolo.

  RONALD T. GARNER grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, but for the past thirteen years of his life has moved around the country in various billets as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. He holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and a Juris Doctorate from UNC-Chapel Hill. Ron spends way too much time running races around the country and building things that are of questionable use. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter, operating the small press Silence in the Library LLC and writing science fiction and fantasy whenever possible.