Chapter 38 #4
Alsen blinked. “My alibi?”
“One of my men has been watching you since the dragon audience.” Renauld said it the way someone might mention the weather.
“Routine surveillance. You’re the mage who makes things explode, and my lord Verathras expressed a passing interest in your activities.
My guardsman watched you sleep in a chair at the healer’s apartment the entire night, from the building across the street. ”
Alsen opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. He felt several emotions compete for priority. The winning one surprised him. “That’s actually useful.”
“It is. It means I can trust you with this investigation without wondering whether I’m helping the killer cover his tracks.” Renauld’s gaze flicked to Garrett. “I’ve known you for years, so you’re beyond question.”
Luna offered no reaction. He completely ignored her, as if she wasn’t there. Back to being Alsen’s self-moving luggage, apparently. She stood with her hands in her pockets, the posture of someone patiently waiting for a conversation that didn’t involve her to end.
Renauld kept his attention on Alsen. “I don’t have the manpower or the expertise for this. My guards are good at keeping drunks in line and settling disputes. This is completely above our pay grade.”
“We’ll investigate,” Alsen said. “Garrett?”
Garrett nodded.
Luna glared at him. Did he really ask Garrett but not her? She couldn’t believe her ears.
Renauld extended his hand.
Alsen shook it. The captain’s grip was firm, professional.
Renauld turned to supervise his men. The stretcher teams had already started entering the building. Many returned outside to add to the vomit pile.
Alsen turned away.
Outside, the morning air hit him again. The smell clung to his clothes. He couldn’t change them himself, and he didn’t even give Arleria a chance to help him last night.
“The summoner idea,” he said.
Luna looked up. “What about it?”
“You mentioned it almost immediately after seeing the scene. A mage walks in, summons a monster, unsummons it, leaves.”
“It fits,” she said. “No entry or exit for something that big. No blood trail outside. The barricade was from inside, so the killer didn’t need to break through anything to get to them. The simplest explanation is that the killer was never physically large enough to leave traces.”
“It’s a good theory.” He filed the thought. That she’d arrived at it within thirty seconds of walking into the room, while he and Garrett had spent over an hour examining evidence without considering it, was something he noted without commenting on.
Luna was always fast. Fast at moving, at evaluating situations, at understanding threat landscapes, at arriving at conclusions. He’d seen her do it with terrain, with combat, with people. She processed information at a rate that made everyone around her look like they were thinking through mud.
But this was too fast even for her.
She’d walked in, vomited, and produced a complete theory of the crime in less time than it took to wipe her mouth.
A theory that neither he nor Garrett, both of whom had been examining evidence for over an hour, had considered.
A theory that was suspiciously clean and suspiciously correct and arrived at with suspicious speed.
Unless she already knew. Unless she walked in already knowing, and the theory was just the most reasonable explanation she could offer for knowledge she shouldn’t have had.
Or she had seen scenes like this before, so she simply gave the answer that had been true the last few times.
He couldn’t tell. That was the whole problem.
Garrett joined them outside, pulling the guild door shut behind him. His face had aged five years in the last two hours. “We should start looking for a potential summoner.”
Alsen nodded. “I detected no magical residue, so we’re looking for someone good enough to clean up after himself.” He could probably do that, if he ever cared. But it wouldn’t be easy for him, because any spell used to erase the residue would leave its own residue.
“The underground watches who enters and leaves the city,” Garrett said. “Savnoj had them do that. We should go ask around.” He glanced at Luna. “And we should move separately. My contacts would freak out if I showed up with either of you two.”
“Let’s meet at the Diamond Tree after sunset,” Alsen said. “Luna has a room there.”
“All right.” Garrett headed out.
They watched him leave. Alsen also had the matter of the meeting with Verathras in two days. They had today and tomorrow to solve this.
They headed out with Luna, stopping by her favorite sausage stand to have a quick meal on the way.
They delved into the underground. They tried both together, and separately, asking shopkeepers, snooping around inns, bribing random thugs if they knew anything.
Alsen had to change a bunch of gold coins into silver to have something to bribe them with.
They got a variety of answers. Either nothing, or a whole list of names that was obviously nonsensical, or one or two seemingly random names, most likely someone that had pissed off the person they asked.
Not much of use.
They also watched the rumors spread. In the morning, nobody reacted to them.
In the afternoon, people looked terrified when they saw them. He understood why.
First the rumor of Alsen being a harbinger, then that all local adventurers, who had decided to pursue the harbinger, died at the adventurer’s guild, and then he showed up.
The story wrote itself.
No matter what the city guard knew, what the truth was, or what his intentions were, everyone knew Alsen was the harbinger, and that he killed the adventurers. He was guilty simply by the story making too much sense by itself, evidence be damned.
He realized it was the same with his suspicion of Luna.
In his mind, she was ninety-five percent guilty, and the evidence, of which he had none, mattered only to his rational self. His emotional self knew it was her.
Just not by summoning, but by some form of shifting and then an unexplained cleanup of herself.
He tried to banish the thoughts. He couldn’t.
The evening came, and they retreated to the inn. They took a table by the side, and ordered drinks.
Garrett showed up in a few minutes, taking a seat by them. They had already ordered a meal for four, their treat.
“What did you find?” Garrett asked.
“One name came up repeatedly,” Alsen said, “Volsk. He’s supposed to be an old mage, who sometimes helps blacksmiths by summoning a fire spirit into their forge.”
Garrett nodded. “That fits my findings too. There’s no record or rumor of anyone new entering or exiting the city, and Volsk is the only man in the city ever seen having summoned anything.”
“We should go ask him tomorrow, then.” Alsen already felt exhausted. And he had a long night ahead of himself.
They ate, the chitchat slow and forced. No one felt like talking. As they ate, Alsen pondered how he could investigate further.
He remembered a system skill. With a focused thought, Alsen pulled up the menu. He went to system skills, selected the first one, and allocated it:
Name: LevelscannerEffect: Scan a person to find out their levelUsage: Up to four times per day.
No vision for this one.
He closed the menu, and used the level scanner on Garrett. A text popped up floating next to him.
Name: Garrett LandonAge: 29Level: 32
All right. This worked. With a tight chest, he used it on Luna.
Name: Lunariel Laen’AshAge: 22Level: 28
That… was not the name she introduced herself with. The age probably matched the person into whom her spirit moved. But the level also didn’t fit. He was level twenty-two. That wasn’t all that close to twenty-eight.
She must have gained a lot of experience independently of him. Like by killing over twenty adventurers at the guild.
He closed his eyes, thinking. That was too simple of a conclusion. He had to be sure.
There were two instances where Luna was separated from him. At the mountain, and after the kill chute in the temple.
No way she gained enough experience on the mountain.
So, the temple. He could ask her about it. But he knew no answer she would give would be believable for him.
He had to go there and see for himself. Because if he couldn’t find there any evidence of her getting extra experience, then this was proof.
He refocused on the meal.
Garrett bid them a good night, and left after the meal.
Luna led Alsen up to her room. They walked in, and she motioned at the bed. “The bed’s big enough for two.”
He snorted. After today, with a messed up arm, that would have never crossed his mind. “My left arm’s still so bad I can’t change by myself. I can barely sleep alone without further injuring myself.”
She shrugged, and headed for her sleeping bag, tucked by the wall next to her backpack and spear. “I’ll take the roof then.”
“May I ask for a favor?”
She paused. “Sure.”
“Could you go to Arleria’s and bring my things. I… don’t have the heart to go there.”
“Sure. I’ll get it. It’ll be here in the morning.” She opened the window, leaned out, and pulled herself up on the roof.
Alsen didn’t go to the bed. Instead, he walked to the window, and pulled on his strength.
Fly.
He flew out of the window, heading for the temple dungeon.