Chapter Eight
Mind Your Business
We held Tanner’s wake just two days later at The Mage and Rose. His casket took the place of the little Yule tree in the main tavern, with his estranged wife and grown son sitting at a nearby table, accepting the condolences of Stormsby locals with identical shell-shocked faces.
Roy had been among the first to amble over to their table.
They’d received him politely enough, but it was plain that Tanner’s wife, who had been living in her home village for over thirty years now, had no idea who this quiet, solemn man had been to her warm and garrulous husband.
The son greeted him with a vague flicker of recognition, but they exchanged only a few stoic words before Roy made way for the next mourner in line.
And then he had stood over Tanner’s casket for a very long time.
He sat now at the bar, with Tanner’s empty seat held open beside him.
He had no family of his own, no wife nor heirs.
No one, really, to acknowledge the gravity of his loss.
Even the few Mage and Rose regulars who came by the bar to clap his rounded shoulder and mutter a few words of comfort had been more Tanner’s friends than his own.
Tanner had been all he had, such a lifeline to this quiet, isolated man.
It seemed that all of Stormsby had turned up to pay tribute.
I wanted to be glad of it, but a bitter little voice within me said half of them were here to sniff out gossip like pigs after truffles.
I could see it in the way their eyes flicked around as the few Kingsmen in attendance passed them by; in the way they clustered near the Captain, leaning toward him bit by bit while they carried on their pretend conversations.
There was not a soul in Stormsby who hadn’t heard the rumour.
The Serpent had finally struck.
Nothing had been confirmed, but I’d been there when the Kingsmen on morning patrol had pulled Tanner’s frozen corpse from the snow and hauled him inside.
Between Sorcha gasping and sobbing on my shoulder and the distant roar building in my ears, I hadn’t made out much of the conversation, but I’d heard enough.
I’d heard the word Serpent thrown back and forth, seen the dark look on the Captain’s face when silence finally fell among the men.
“We can’t rule it out,” he had said.
I couldn’t stop hearing it. Couldn’t stop seeing Tanner’s endless stare blurred with frost, no matter how wide a berth I gave his casket.
All I could do was work myself to distraction, to exhaustion, to the point where I hadn’t the energy to think or remember.
The tavern was almost as busy as it had been on Yule, and I’d convinced Sorcha to join Roy’s quiet vigil over Tanner’s old seat at the bar.
And then I went about my business, seeing to drinks orders of the mourners, the spread of food in the dining hall, and the requests of the local Priest when he turned up to perform the blessing.
He stood at Tanner’s casket and a hush fell over the room as he began speaking in his low, rhythmic intone and all eyes fell to the unmoving form in the coffin.
And I just…
Couldn’t.
I didn’t realise I was backing away until Sorcha glanced my way and offered a soft, weary smile. I turned my back before I could even remember to return it. I had to move, the echoes of that morning already ringing in my ears above the deep murmur of the Priest.
The Serpent’s doing.
Serpent.
In cold blood.
Have to assume, don’t we?
We can’t rule it out.
My head was swimming, and I found I had to catch at the door to keep from swaying as I stood aside to let the few stragglers from the dining hall pass into the tavern.
Once they had passed, cups of tea in hand, the dining hall stood empty.
For a moment, panic fluttered in my belly.
There was so little to focus on in here, the ringing silence doing little to drown out the Priest’s voice nor the ones in my memory.
I went to the table and started stacking the used plates and cups, making more clatter than may have been entirely necessary.
“Are you alright, Rosie?”
I hadn’t heard him come in, but for some reason I wasn’t surprised. It was as though some peripheral part of me had expected him to follow, and I didn’t startle when his lyrical voice washed over me. I didn’t look up, but felt him move around the table to catch my eye.
“I’m fine.”
“Really?
Without answering, I reached over to grab another used plate, but the Captain was faster.
He took the dish from me, and when his fingers brushed mine, Flame erupted in the cavern of my chest that had been so black and cold since Tanner’s death.
I snatched my hand back. His eyes narrowed on the gesture, then turned to my face.
“Let me help you. I haven’t seen you sit down once today.”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
“Have you even eaten yet?”
I snapped, temper breaking at the same moment I gave in to the magnetic pull and let my gaze lock on his.
“Dagda’s arse, what are you doing?”
He just stared back, jaw set. Not cowed, not alarmed at the dangerous thinning of my voice, but stubborn. As if it didn’t matter what I said; he’d decided he was going to help me and that was that. It made my blood boil with an anger untouched by my Flame.
“Let me spare you some hassle,” I said evenly, even as irritation bled heat into my cheeks and neck. “You made me come in one late night Yuletide fumble. It was fun. But one little orgasm doesn’t suddenly give you responsibility over my wellbeing.”
“Little?” He cut in dryly.
“I said I was fine, and I meant it.”
The stubborn expression did not wane; if anything, a muscle jumped beneath his beard as though I’d only made him clench his jaw tighter.
“Look, what happened between us was–”
“Oh gods,” I groaned, hands flying up to press into my eyes until black spots burst behind my lids. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
Exasperated, he turned a frown around the room, looking to an invisible audience for validation before he reminded me; “You brought it up!”
“Within context! My friend died, while I was getting felt up in a cupboard by the man responsible for protecting him. Forgive me if I’m not really in the mood to relive that particular sequence of poor choices.”
The determined set of his brow finally shifted; shot up. He looked as though I had slapped him.
“Rosie, fucking hell,” he breathed, so quietly that a little flare of guilt nestled against the anger within me. “What happened to Tanner was awful, but it wasn’t my fault – and it certainly wasn’t yours.”
I shrugged, even as the guilt writhed a little more insistently in my gut. Pressure burned behind my eyes and I refused to let it break.
“Great. Fine. We didn’t kill him. He’s dead anyway, isn’t he?” My throat ached, but I blinked hard and gritted my teeth. “The least I can do is make it easier for his friends and family to mourn. The least you can do is find his murderer.”
“His murderer?”
“Isn’t that the whole reason you’re here? You have a hunt to get back to, Captain.”
Something dawned over his face, but he was far too skilled at taming his features.
A skill fundamental to his job, I supposed, and one I should have been all too familiar with by now.
I could never read him; not if he didn’t want to be read.
And right now, as he stood there letting me snap and snarl like the prickly fire-breathing beast that I was, his expression was vacant, a book slammed shut.
“That I do,” he said finally. “I’ll leave you be then, Rosie.”
My Flame whimpered.
“Fantastic. Goodbye now.”
The clatter of dishes was all I heard for a long moment.
My hands shook hard enough that I had to compensate by stacking them a touch too aggressively, and sent a tiny hairline fissure halfway through a saucer.
For fuck’s sake. It was only when the Captain moved away that I let myself take a full breath, let myself slow down and soothe my shredded nerves.
His footsteps paused at the door, and my own movements followed, every muscle freezing in place without my say-so.
“I’d tell you to take care, but I get the feeling you don’t want to hear it from me. If you won’t look after yourself right now – let someone else do it, alright? If not me, then Sorcha, or – gods, I don’t know. Anyone.”
I didn’t turn, but I knew he had finally left then. Knew it with the solemn silence in my chest the very moment it went cold.
???
Tanner would rest in The Mage and Rose overnight, a window open to allow his spirit to depart when he was ready. Which, knowing Tanner, would be some time after midnight.
I sat in the dining hall for a long time after the mourners departed.
The night shift men had yet to descend, perhaps slightly put off by the dead body laid out in the centre of the tavern.
Sorcha had gone with a small convoy of locals to see Tanner’s family to his home, and there was a strange silence to the tavern, a stillness so eerie I might have thought time itself had stood still were it not for the insistent patter of rain on the window behind me.
I wasn’t aware of having given in to the unrelenting pressure of tears behind my eyes, but every blink of my lashes caught wet shimmers in my vision, and my cheeks were stiff with dried salt.
And I felt what I’d been numb to all day; the heavy, dragging horror of it all.
Tanner, dying alone in a bed of ice.
The murderous creature I’d written off as a persecuted, misunderstood compeer.
The Captain, and the look on his face when I’d as good as told him to fuck off.
I wasn’t sure what extent of damage I’d inflicted there; if he’d approach me again, because gods knew I was too ashamed now to seek him out, much as I might long to. And I did long to. I longed to talk to him. Or have him talk to me. Or just… be here.
More than anything, I longed for the people around me to stop leaving.