Raven's Bane

by Will Bly

  She loosened his hand. “Yes. Happiness is guaranteed to the world, but it is not guaranteed to individuals. Some suffer and some rejoice. Often these two groups will switch roles.”

  The bags beneath his eyes weighed heavily. “I’m ready for my role to switch. All I ever wanted was to make enough coin to escape somewhere peaceful. Live out my days. Maybe I’ll learn how to herd sheep or something. Keep goats. Make goat milk.”

  “Maybe I’ll join you...” Her eyes grabbed ahold of his hand again. She stood and brushed her clothes straight. “Or maybe someone else…” she finished as she left.

  Irulen stood to follow her, but Quinn came around the way she left. He smiled a bit broader than previously. “That lad Leofrick and I gathered what you asked for. We’ll be taking a share of the profits, just so you know. Though I haven’t yet seen the scoundrel this morn.” He handed Irulen a stack of parchments.

  “Good,” Irulen responded as Farah disappeared from view over Quinn’s shoulder. “This should be all I need to identify the murderer.”

  “I hope so—I brought you something extra.”

  Chapter 25: Barnabas

  Irulen had become a professional at making groups of people form half-circles. He organized them around a table. “Please, please, gather around everyone. I have important news.” He looked to make sure everyone was accounted for. “My investigation into the murder of Bertrand is complete.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mirtha.”

  Gasps cursed the air.

  Disgust looked as if it might split Mirtha’s face in two. “What is this? You are sick. A sick person to insult me like this.”

  “And Marisa.”

  Marisa stepped up to Irulen and made to slap him across the face. He caught her hand. He anticipated she’d try to knee him in the crotch and blocked her kick with his knee. Quinn grabbed her from behind.

  “Now hold on a moment,” said the tallest man of the three men who’d pulled Bertrand from the river. “We’ll hear you out, but let the lady go. This is our town, our people.”

  Irulen nodded to Quinn, who obliged. Marisa shrugged her shoulder away from the withered brute as he let go, but she stood in place this time.

  The tall man spoke. “We’d have your evidence, sir.”

  “You shall have it. While I was… busy, my colleagues collected evidence for me. Allow me to elaborate:

  “First, there is the love letter, of course. Found in Oliver’s pocket when I looked over his body, declaring his undying devotion to Helga—his one true love. Though at first I had little reason to suspect another hand in this mess, I’ve made it a habit as of late to search for conspiracy. To leave no stone unturned, as they say. Discovering the letter led to the very real possibility of involvement from another party. I asked my partners to collect writing samples from the main persons of interest; Marisa, Helga, and even the aggrieved party, Mirtha herself. They even gathered samples from all the workers below Bertrand who could write. It was a beginning, at the least.

  “So my colleagues visited Oliver’s dwelling on Mirtha and Bertrand’s land. Low and behold they found a lock of hair dropped in the middle of the floor in the most random fashion—the rest of the floor looked freshly swept, the hair being the only thing on the ground. Tightly bound and neatly knotted, ornament in nature, it appeared to be the kind of keepsake that one lover leaves to the other. Because of this, and to his credit, Quinn decided to take more samples—this time of hair, naturally—of all the suspects.”

  Irulen pulled out the looking glass instrument Merlane had given him and showed it to the audience. “I tested both the hair and the writing using this looking glass, a gift from a friend which magnifies things for me. The letter, it turns out, looks to be written by Marisa. For whatever reason, she wrote out a letter implicating her older sister, Helga, who received the fortune Marisa felt she deserved.”

  “How can you prove something like that?” asked the tall man.

  “Here, I’ll show you.”

  The man obliged. Irulen put Marisa’s sample next to the note.

  “Even the untrained eye can make out similarities in writing style.” Irulen sat the man down and set him up with the looking glass. “Look through there, just like that, good. Perhaps the easiest to decipher are her F’s. Notice how the lower bar bends down at a slight degree, but also how the angle stays consistent no matter which F you look at.”

  The man took his time going back and forth through both documents. Eventually, he laid the looking glass down and sighed. “Alas, yes. You are right.”

  “But this is where it gets weird for me. The lock of hair is also Marisa’s. I can’t help but think to myself: If this were a cherished item, why wouldn’t it be on Oliver’s person like the note had seemed to be? If it was Marisa who Oliver loved, would he not keep that lock of hair on his person? It makes very little sense for the hair to be found so callously disregarded on the floor. And in such an obvious place. I had to ask myself if someone tried pointing me in Marisa’s direction.

  “These two strains of thought being so at odds, I figured I might test a method I read about once. Rubbing. I knew that Marisa wrote the letter—the etches and lines were distinctively hers—but I didn’t know where she wrote it. So what I did was go to each of the places in question and find spots people were likely to do their writing. Desks, tables and the like. Over each surface I placed parchment, and over each parchment I scribbled graphite. But doing this I am provided with a map of each table-top’s topography. That is, rubbing the graphite against the parchment revealed to me each nook and cranny on any given table or desk. Using this technique it was only a matter of time before I discovered where Marisa wrote the note. And boy did this beckon another surprise.

  “Marisa wrote the note inside Mirtha’s home. So then why, oh why, would she do that? Except if they collaborated to indicate Helga in Bertrand’s death. Mirtha eliminates a rival. Marisa eliminates a rival. Marisa and Oliver are positioned to assume Helga’s land should she be imprisoned over Bertrand’s death.

  “It was a poorly kept secret that Helga had been sleeping with Bertrand for some time. The note was written at Mirtha’s estate and planted on Oliver’s corpse once they brought him to town and Mirtha made a show about hitting his body. Before I could have a look at him. Helga, perhaps, saw the writing on the wall as to where suspicion would fall, that she was in the middle of a trap about to be sprung. So she dropped the lock of Marisa’s hair at Oliver’s place to hurry the investigation along. Is this true, Helga?”

  She nodded solemnly, the quietest Irulen had seen her. “It’s true.”

  “Which, by the way, I’d like to know how you obtained it and how long ago. The ends seemed rather frayed.”

  “We traded locks as girls some years ago, promising we would never let a man come between us.”

  “But Gerald did. And the rest is, should we say, sad history. Still, I needed something solid to tie Mirtha into all this. So I went back to the scene of the crime. The beginning. I took the splinter I had removed from Mirtha’s hand and compared it to the branch that had been run through poor Bertrand. Under magnification it becomes clear that the splinter came from that very branch. I can demonstrate—”

  “You liar!” Mirtha screamed.

  Irulen spoke through her, “In conclusion, Mirtha knew she had a splinter embedded in her hand from plunging the stick into Bertrand’s chest. The uproar at the old wooden cart carrying Oliver’s body provided a great opportunity to fake getting a splinter. A distraught, maddened wife beating the body of the man who killed her beloved husband. No one would think twice if you happened to run your hand too quickly along the side of the cart. But that sort of shit doesn’t escape my notice.”

  At some point Irulen failed to notice the crowd had drawn back from Mirtha and Marisa.

  “Barnabas!” cried Helga.

  The crowd withdrew more.

  Irulen thought he felt the ground shake.

  Marisa turned to
her sister. “No, it isn’t true. I wouldn’t do that to you. I knew you loved Bertrand—I wouldn’t rob you of that… the way you robbed me of Gerald!”

  “Barnabas!” Helga screamed again.

  The giant simpleton came before the crowd and stood silent as stone.

  Terror crept into Irulen’s heart. For as satisfying as it was to see Mirtha laid low, it was equally as sad to find Marisa guilty. He had, for better or worse, a strong connection with her now. She really was no worse than him. A few bad choices further along, perhaps, but similar in stature of the soul. He didn’t want to see anything bad happen to her. A little forgiveness might do well with the way things had gone lately.

  But forgiveness is a rare thing indeed.

  Helga pointed at Marisa. “Barnabas, kill!”

  Marisa flailed her arms at the simpleton as he grabbed her neck, lifted her off the ground and nonchalantly snapped it like a twig. It sounded like stepping on a dry branch in the middle of summer. Irulen knew he would never forget that sound, nor the sound of her body hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes.

  Mirtha ran, but she wasn’t a good runner, and it took only a few long strides for Barnabas to grab her up. Irulen wanted it all to stop, but felt helpless to do so. With his magic gone, his confidence waned. It happened so fast.

  “Barnabas, wait!”

  Helga’s creature turned to look at her, his eyes soft and obedient.

  “Barnabas, rip!”

  He nodded and lifted Mirtha into the air. His left hand holding her torso, his right hand her legs, Barnabas pulled her apart. Mirtha’s scream rang short and shrill. A sound of broken suction tore the air. Guts hit the ground.

  The weight of consequence fell upon Irulen like a pile of stones.

  ◆◆◆

  Quinn still did not forgive Irulen for his betrayal, but he didn’t bear the same level of ill will as he once did. There were certainly instances, sitting in the shadows of the dungeon, where Quinn dreamt up wicked ways of maiming Irulen as a way of saying thanks for a broken heart and captivity among Ithial’s strange creatures. But they just witnessed something terrible, and though the events earlier in the day touched Quinn in a serious way, he suspected Irulen was somehow more bothered by what transpired. Quinn and Irulen had compared notes before the grand reveal, and it came to light that they not only experienced the same woman, but that this very woman was one of the murderers they sought.

  Maybe they were still naive in spite of it all, but neither of them believed something so ruthless would happen to her. She was but a fringe accomplice, and many places granted leniency to people with such a role. But not here, apparently. He shook his head at the ground and looked up at Irulen, sitting on the back of Merlane’s cart. Justice is beautiful and cruel. Wicked and righteous.

  “At least Kay, Farah, and the rest weren’t there,” Quinn offered.

  Irulen sucked his gums. “Yeah. S’pose you’re right. I wish we weren’t there, either.”

  Quinn found it impossible to feel regret. Feeling regret never led anywhere good. “But you had a job to do. You did it. It’s not your fault what happened. It’s their law—their way of life. That’s what you’ve always said. You catch ‘em, they judge ‘em. Rules change. Not our place to judge. Your words, not mine.” Regret leads to more regret. Regret is a waste of time.

  “Yeah.”

  “But that’s not making you feel better, is it?”

  “No.”

  “But hasn’t it in the past?”

  “Yes. Man, I’m weary. Tired.”

  “Me too, for what it’s worth.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Didn’t you apologize already?”

  “You know what. I’m sorry. I’ve been a terrible friend.”

  “No argument there.” Quinn walked around Irulen and reached over the side of the cart to retrieve something Merlane left behind. “I’d say you owe me a night of free drinks, at the least!”

  Quinn came back around and sat. Irulen’s betrayal seemed like a smaller thing now after seeing how Irulen suffered. He always took it hard when the brutality of the justice outweighed the crime. “I have something for you, from Merlane.”

  “Oh?”

  “But before I give it to you, I must say, I don’t think he’s with us anymore.”

  “Well, of course he isn’t—haven’t seen his dumb hat in ages.”

  “Yeah, well, I mean… of this world anymore. Ithial showed up—Merlane didn’t.” Quinn threw the brown sack on Irulen’s lap. “I haven’t looked inside, but the day before I left him, he told me to give this to you. That you might need it.”

  Irulen hesitated a moment as if digesting a thought. He shook his head. “Stupid old man.” Then he opened the sack. Out tumbled a rock of some sort and a note.

  Quinn couldn’t help himself. “What’s it say?”

  “Dear Irulen, Remember that everything evens out in the end. I have an idea of what Ithial plans for you, and so have procured this exceedingly rare item. It is a receiver shard. This is the equivalent of what Ithial uses to harvest the power of others. When someone is harvested using a death diamond, their essence runs to the nearest receiver shard and into the person who holds it. I know you understand the gravity of what this means so I won’t lecture you any more. Suffice it to say, should you need it, here it is.”

  Quinn silently applauded Merlane’s intuition and preparation.

  Irulen put the shard and note back into the pouch and tossed it onto the cart. “I don’t even know what to make of this. Does he think we’ll kill people for power? It’s almost as if he knew I’d lose my magic.”

  “He knew Ithial, and he knew you. He figured Ithial would win.”

  Irulen laughed a short laugh. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “Well, he did win, didn’t he? He got you to run yourself out,” Quinn pointed out.

  “He needs me weak for some reason. Weak but not dead.”

  “He thinks he has that.”

  “He does have that,” Irulen confirmed.

  “But now you have a means to be powerful again.”

  “Don’t you know what it takes to harvest power? Don’t you get it? We have to kill people.” Irulen waved his arms as he spoke.

  “Well, we could kill the right people.” Quinn chuckled.

  “Oh my—what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Ithial kills all people. We can, well, kill bad people. Or at least a few bad people, once in a while—like the people you deal with. We could build your power back slowly.” Quinn folded his arms as if wrapping his idea in confidence.

  “Didn’t you just quote me talking about how I don’t judge, don’t execute? Do you know what causing violence does to me? To my magic? I won’t defeat Ithial, I’ll become him.”

  “Not if I kill for you. Or Kay when she’s on the mend. You need someone non-magical to do it anyway, right?”

  “That’s…”

  Quinn could see that Irulen reluctantly accepted his point. “All I’m going to say is that Merlane is the one who knows what’s going on and how to handle it. He saved me. Laid down his life so that I could come back to you. That’s the reason I even hung around in the first place. He wanted me back here with you, and he wanted that receiver stone with you.”

  Irulen shook his head.

  Quinn had pushed too far. He pushed himself too far, and it scared him to talk about killing people. “Tell you what, let’s just hold onto it. I don’t want to hurt anyone any more than you do.” He scratched an itch on his head and changed angles. “You know how when two people walk together, one tends to sort of just follow the other?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “That’s you. You walk, I kind of just follow. I’m not ready to walk on my own yet. I don’t feel quite like Quinn yet.”

  “I understand. I—I can’t think anymore. I just want to get the others, pack up, and leave this shithole.”

  Chapter 26: South Again

 
; Farah knew what happened, that Marisa and Mirtha had been implicated in the crime, but she didn’t know the details. It couldn’t have been anything good by the way the townsfolk kept their distance as they readied Merlane’s cart for travel. Fight and uneasiness lurked about the place, but she didn’t even want to know the details. She kept clear of the huddled clusters of humans pecking like hens at juicy morsels of scandal and drama. She huffed her cheeks. South, I am so bored of south. We headed east once, that’d be nice to do again.

  “Must we travel south?”

  “Yes,” Kay responded. “We couldn’t find Ithial’s body. This is the way that black-hearted demonspawn wanted us heading, so we’ll keep heading. Right through trap or terror, right up ‘til I carve a smile in his throat.”

  Quinn grunted his approval.

  Irulen remained silent and more oblivious than even Merek.

  Farah would have to find out the truth of what happened, but when the time was right. Practicing patience often yielded better results. She slumped her shoulders. South it is, hopefully for the last time. “Where’s Leofrick?”

  “Coward skipped town. He duped us with all that talk of hidden treasure and all that. Add him to the list of men I need to emasculate.”

  Somehow that didn’t feel right, but Farah couldn’t deny Leofrick’s duplicitous nature. Maybe he did run off, but maybe he’ll wisen up and come back.

  “Let’s get going,” Quinn said as he overlooked everything. “Faster we’re gone, the better.”

  Helga strode toward them at a brisk pace. “Wait! Here.” She tossed a small brown sack at Irulen, who caught it. The sound of many coins clattered together. Irulen stared at the bag as if it might hurt him in some way then glanced toward Quinn.

  The brute shrugged. “Keep it. Money has no morals.”

  Irulen nodded. “Let’s go.”

  They rolled out of town slow and quiet. Max and his mate, Sarah—in Farah’s mind only, she hadn’t actually told anyone she was named Sarah—perched along the walls of the cart. Farah sat in the cart with Merek while the other three walked. They decided to take rotations so as not to tire the mule.