At Large

by Andrew Seiple

  Chase picked up a box full of circular pastries that looked to be days old, hesitated, then took one and munched as she tried to ignore the smell of smokeweed and the flaking plaster that occasionally fell from the ceiling. At least there aren’t any bugs, she told herself.

  And the pastry was kind of good, if a bit sugary and stale.

  Ten minutes later, after everyone was un-lycanthroped, Chase sat in a circle with the others. Renny had just finished clean-and-pressing every bit of furniture in the cramped apartment, so it was probably as safe as it could get. “Well,” the halven broke the silence, taking off her headscarf and flexing her ears. “That could have gone better.”

  Cagna just looked away.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Chase said. “If you want to sleep on it, take a rest before we talk this over, that’s okay. We can do that.”

  “No,” Cagna said. “No, I won’t get any sleep tonight. There’s no sense in trying. We should move on and deal with the mission. That’s what she would want me to do.”

  But her voice was raw, hiding pain. Chase knew that pushing ran the risk of breaking her. So she ignored the immediate, more serious topics, and moved on to something that might ease her friend a bit. “All right. So... Plan Gimli? Seriously?”

  Cagna and Bastien laughed simultaneously, Renny joining in a second later. The little fox spoke up.“We talked about tactics earlier. You’re the squishiest of us all. But tough enough to survive being thrown, and lucky enough you probably wouldn’t land anywhere bad. And you’ve got that hat that can make people ignore you, so you’d be safe once you were out of their direct attention.”

  “Ah. Right. The hat.” Chase coughed. She had totally forgotten about that, earlier.

  Fortunately, Renny didn’t notice her embarrassment as he continued on. “I can make illusionary barf-clouds, but they’re hard on anyone who doesn’t have much constitution. It might have knocked you out.”

  “True...” Chase admitted, wincing. Her constitution was a problem.

  “We decided to combine our strengths!” Bastien said. “And werewolves have sensitive noses, so...”

  “Like me and Renny, they can turn that off, sort of,” Cagna said. “But they weren’t expecting it, so it bought us time to get out of there, and with their noses turned off their chances of tracking us were bad. Renny’s illusions did the rest.”

  “Not that they had much time to chase us, since the guards were almost there.” Bastien shrugged. “I am sorry for throwing you without warning, but they wanted you dead, and I wasn’t sure if we could stop them.”

  “I guess it makes sense. I’d like to be invited to the next tactics talk though,” Chase said. “I’m okay with being handled like that if I expect it.”

  “Fair enough,” Cagna shrugged. “So. The famiglias are effectively dead. Don Sangue, the old terror of the underworld, is finally gone. We failed, and now they’ll have a clear shot at the last of their targets. We failed.”

  “Not completely,” Bastien pointed out. “They wanted to take you alive, for gods know why. They didn’t get that, at least.”

  “That’s an oddity,” Chase mused. “I... I’m starting to think that they’re not after vengeance after all. Or maybe they are, but it’s secondary to what they’re really after. I got a clue, but...” she sighed. “But it just raised more questions.”

  Cagna considered her. “Everything’s a jumble? You’ve got facts and clues and no way to put them together?”

  “Pretty much. Or I’ll have a way, but maybe not in time, or...” Chase shook her head. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “No. It’s a mystery. And you’re in luck. See, I’m not actually a Highwayman. That was just my Undercover identity.”

  “Your what now?”

  “I’m a Detective. We get skills related to policing and solving mysteries.” Cagna went to what Chase had taken to be a screen and twisted it, revolving a central square on wooden supports.

  It was a corkboard, and Cagna rummaged around in a nearby cupboard and pulled out a set of metal pins, small pieces of parchment, and bits of yarn. “Tackboard,” she said.

  Nothing seemed to happen. Bastien, Renny, and Chase shared a look between them.

  “It’s more subtle than that,” Cagna said. “Basically you talk about clues, and the board helps connect them, put them into context. It’s annoyingly vague at times, and if you’re completely off base it’ll try to connect the wrong things, but it’s good for sifting through and separating assumptions from facts.”

  “Like a fortuna reading!” Chase said, eyes wide.

  “Bah, it’s much better than that mystical crap.”

  “That mystical crap got me through some pretty bad things, in the past,” Chase pointed out. “And it saved me from a shallow grave when Don Coltello wanted me dead for passing Fool’s Gold.”

  “What?” The Muscle Wizaard stared at her.

  “I was framed. Long story. Gah, Tom, you idiot...” Chase rubbed her face. “I’ll worry about that later. Okay, so how does it work?”

  “Well, this case is about werewolves. So let’s start at the beginning.” Cagna held up a piece of parchment. “The werewolf murders fifteen years ago.”

  The parchment disappeared from her hand, and popped onto the board, up top with a soft “whump.” Now it showed a pair of cartoon werewolves killing stick figures.

  “Ha! Neat trick!” Bastien said.

  But Renny was studying the figures.

  “There’s two werewolves. Was that all there were?”

  “All we ever found,” Cagna said. “The Alpha and her mate.”

  She held up pieces of paper as she spoke, and they flickered to the board, showing a werewolf stick figure with exaggerated hips and round circles for breasts, and a charcoal sketch of the Alpha’s face, looking sinister. Tacks and yarn appeared at the board, connecting between the three pictures, forming a small triangle.

  Then a red X, almost bloody, slashed itself over the female werewolf’s note.

  “That’s... an odd difference,” Chase said looking from the crude art of the stick figure to the well-done drawing of the current Alpha.

  “I’ve personally seen the male. I never saw the female. Nobody ever figured out what she looked like when she wasn’t a werewolf.” Cagna shrugged. “The tackboard pulls from the collected experiences of everyone in the room while we talk this over. It’s not a god’s eye view or anything.”

  “I can maybe help with that later,” Chase said. “You bring the logical; I’ll bring the mystical. But let’s keep going this is working out.”

  “All right. So the next part is the group that went out and hunted the werewolves. A mix of the city’s elite and its best killers in the underworld.” One by one, the parchment flickered, and one by one, charcoal portraits appeared on the board, with names in neat letters under their faces. Sonora Bianchi. Don Coltello. Enrico Rossi. Don Sangue. Dona Tarantino. Maddalena Verde.

  “That’s one short of a full party,” Renny noted. “Are you sure there’s not one more hunter who never got named?”

  “Positive,” Cagna said. “We investigated this angle. Sonora was a paladin, and she insisted her horse be in the party to benefit from the buffs. And no, before you ask, the horse died a few years back so he’s safe from potential furry vengeance. In fact, there’s only one target left.” Red X’s scrawled themselves over every one of the hunters, save for the stern-looking woman that was Maddalena Verde.

  “Wait.” Chase said, squinting at the tackboard. “We need a new note. Call it... the new werewolf murders.”

  “All right.” Cagna complied, and the new note whumped onto the board and started connecting itself to the hunting party.

  “I see where you’re going with this,” Cagna said, after studying it a second. “These are vengeance kills, and then you’ve got the bystander kills.” New notes appeared. One showed Friatta Castillo, the leatherworker’s daughter.

  There were other faces there, but Cha
se ignored them and stretched up to tap the board under Friatta. “This one. The small werewolf killed Friatta.”

  “Small werewolf?”

  “Enrico Rossi said that three of them attacked his compound. The over-muscled one, the Alpha, and a tiny werewolf.”

  “Oh, right, the thing with the knife. You’re sure that’s a valid clue?”

  “It is,” Chase said, as the paper disappeared and reappeared on the board, putting the squat werewolf and the tiny one next to the Alpha. They got lines to Enrico, and the tiny one got his own yarn strand all the way over to the leatherworker. “In fact, I ran into him, after you threw me.”

  “What?” Cagna stared at Chase, and Bastien and Renny whipped around to face her so quickly she thought they’d given themselves whiplash for a second.

  Chase described the meeting, and at the end of her story, there were two new posts on the board. One smiling portrait of herself, and a post that read simply ’Skin?’

  “That.” Chase said, tapping it. “That’s a really strong suggestion that this isn’t about vengeance at all. This is something else entirely.”

  “I’m more interested in knowing how the little werewolf recognized you. He might have heard your first name, if he’s spying on Don Coltello. But Berrymore is your last name, yeah?” she frowned. “He might be a Scout. Could have read it off your status screen.”

  “No.” Chase said, although something about Cagna’s statement sparked in the back of her mind and she wasn’t sure why. “He was going to bite my face off. Then he recognized me and stopped. That’s the only reason I’m alive right now. I’m sure of it! And he told me to leave afterward... he cared. For some reason he cared.”

  “Halven solidarity, maybe?” Cagna asked.

  Chase snorted. “When we’re done, remind me to tell you about Jooger Hunnybudger and how he killed off the honey business in Bothernot forever. Trust me, halvens can be just as nasty to each other as humans. No, he knew me. I’ll sleep on it. It’ll come to me later, I’m sure. I don’t know THAT many halvens, really. Process of elimination will sort it out.”

  “The skin...” The Muscle Wizaard said, tapping his chin. They looked at him, and saw his eyes widen. “I just got an intelligence boost! One step closer to true wizardry, oooh yeah!”

  “What did you think of?” Chase asked. “That means it’s probably important. Share, please!”

  “There’s a legend where I grew up, about Loup Garous. They’re like werewolves... okay, they’re pretty much werewolves. Only instead of turning into one after being bitten, they skin a wolf. Then they skin themselves. Then they put the wolfskin off, and boom! You’ve got a loup garou.”

  Another whump, and a note entitled ’loup garou myth?’ tacked itself above ’Skin?’

  Chase took a breath and frowned at the two of them... and then her eyes went wide. “Don Coltello had the old alpha skinned. And he put her skin on his wall. He bragged about this when I first met him.” I still have the female’s skin on the wall! The old man’s voice resounded, in the chambers of her mind.

  Instantly a line of yarn snapped between ‘Skin?’ and Don Coltello. And the question mark vanished with a popping sound, she was pleased to notice.

  And another thing occurred to her. “She needs the skin,” Chase said. “That’s what the halven werewolf said to me. She. SHE needs the skin.”

  The yarn snapped to the deceased Alpha werewolf... and the red X undid itself.

  Of course it did, Chase nodded.

  “What the hell?” Cagna barked. “She’s dead!”

  “No. No, she’s not. She’s like Pwner.” Chase said, as the cloaked assassin’s picture snapped onto the board, and yarn connected them. “She’s a player. And only one other werewolf has been confirmed as a player, so far....”

  The squat werewolf disappeared from the board and took the place of the old werewolf alpha. The yarn reconnected itself along new lines accordingly.

  “What?” Cagna stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “This is going to take some time. Do you have anything to drink?”

  Cagna retrieved some sort of bitter stuff that was like tea only nastier, but did the job of keeping Chase awake as she talked and related the story of Bothernot, the secret prison, and the immortal demigods who walked among the unknowing mortals of the world.

  That necessitated explaining the Camerlengo’s role in things and how Chase was... technically probably a fugitive from whatever conspiracy the baroness was involved in.

  One by one the players she’d met snapped onto the tackboard below the Camerlengo...

  ...and at the last one, the Muscle Wizaard gave a bellow and shot to his feet. “Thomasi? You know Thomasi?”

  “Yes!” Chase jumped up, surprised beyond reason. “Wait, you know him too?” She slapped her forehead. “Your wagon is the same color and make as his! He made that wagon for you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes! So long ago... Back when I was in his circus, with everyone else. He was the only one I knew who could go into player’s areas in the casinos. Not that he did that all that often, just when he wanted to get people’s attention.”

  “How was he, overall?” Chase asked. “Was he a good man?”

  “The best! He looked after us, cared for us, made sure we had nothing but good opportunities and the best venues.” Bastien sighed. “After he disappeared it all turned to merde. It was like everybody had forgotten our name, and people started charging us more for supplies and taxes, for no real reason.”

  His curses are obscurity and poverty, Chase remembered. She would really have to sort this out with him at the earliest opportunity. When they weren’t on the run and fighting werewolves. “Wait. He disappeared?”

  “Just up and gone, one night.” The Muscle Wizaard shrugged. “Along with most of the wagons and horses and all. For a while we thought he had betrayed us... He had this trick where he could miniaturize the wagons, you see. But now... now I don’t think he did. I think he got taken. We were on the border of Ferrari at the time. I think your Camerlengo or her people came and grabbed him.”

  “This is above my paygrade,” Cagna shook her head. “And now the Camerlengo’s here... and Coltello had Thomasi.”

  “Until he didn’t. Thomasi stole something from him and ran. Thomasi stole something that Don Coltello thought was worthless.” Chase said...

  ...and a line of yarn ran between Thomasi and the skin.

  “That’s an assumption,” Cagna said.

  “How can we confirm it?” Chase asked.

  “Well, we could go to the Don’s house, but we risk running into werewolves.” Cagna rubbed her muzzle. “If I’d only had time to talk to Lachina. Gods, she could have...” Cagna cleared her throat, as her voice wobbled.

  Chase took a breath. “We can. If you’re up for it.”

  “What? How... ah. Oh. That.”

  “That,” Chase said. “Got any candles? And you don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to.”

  The dog-woman was quiet for a long moment. “No. Let’s do this. At the very least I can properly say goodbye.”

  It took a few minutes to hunt down candles in the clutter.

  It took another few minutes to call up Lachina.

  Your Séance skill is now level 3!

  At Cagna’s request they went into the cramped bedroom of the apartment, giving her privacy. Only when she knocked on the door, did they come back in.

  “It was the skin,” Cagna said, sagging in her chair, staring at the floor.

  “So. All this...” Chase said, thinking. “This isn’t about vengeance. Or vengeance is secondary. And Tom figured that out, somehow. Tom grabbed the skin, but why? To try and protect the Don?”

  “More likely to protect YOU,” Cagna said, and yarn snapped into place between Chase and Thomasi. “Pretty sure if he was as good a man as Bastien says, he wouldn’t give a toss about the Don.”

  “He was... is,” Bastien confirmed. “He had no love for the wicked. I’m fairly sure he
cheated many of them, as we traveled.”

  “Except... both of them are players,” Chase pointed out, and lines snapped over to the old alpha and Pwner. “He’s helped players before, even evil ones. He could be trying to give her the skin, for... for whatever player reasons he has.”

  A line stretched from all three of the players on the board and snapped into a large note that just said “?”

  “Ouch. That’s a bad one, I’ve seen it before. It means that anything we figure out along these lines is going to be conjecture.”

  Chase rubbed her eyes. It felt like they’d been at it for hours. “This eats sanity, doesn’t it?”

  “Yep. Hence why we’re drinking coffee. That restores it.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t even noticed.” Chase glanced at her cup with new respect. “Still tastes like a butt.”

  “How do you know what a butt tastes like?” Renny asked.

  “Anyway!” Chase said, shaking her head. “New line of thought. There’s one survivor from the original hunting party.”

  “But vengeance isn’t necessarily the goal,” Bastien said.

  “Right. It’s the skin. Or the skin’s a bigger goal, anyway,” Chase realized. “They didn’t just want Don Coltello, they wanted his estates and people. They wanted to check for the skin without anyone knowing they were doing that... and that would explain why they were holding back at Enrico’s place and why the little one wasn’t there! He’s stealthy! Odds are he was casing the casino, and looking for it while the others dealt with the Gambler.”

  “That’s a hell of an assumption,” Cagna said. “Actually a bunch of assumptions.”

  The yarn crawled across the board, and the ’Skin’ note shifted into a central position. “Yes, but...” Chase said, and grinned as a line stretched up to Friatta Costello. “It explains the leatherworker’s daughter. He did exotic, even magical stuff for shady clients. What do you want to bet he’s the one who skinned the werewolf for the Don fifteen years ago?”