Chapter Seventeen: Princess Detective Laeanna

Watching Myrwaeli die in front of me, stabbed by a knife coated with accursed poison… that got me to finally unfurl my wings and fly my behind back to the garden ballroom. My wings abuzz, I hurtled down from out of the night, my gown fluttering all over the place - I think I maintained my dignity there, but somebody might have got a lucky peek. Some of the folks from Wyrmsreach were startled or scared - even in the fae realms, it's unusual to see somebody flying around for no good reason. It's considered a little rude, like somebody on a crowded street breaking into a full sprint just for giggles. But I did have good reason - somebody'd killed Myrwaeli and time was of the essence.

I spotted Meliswe, who'd just returned from the bathroom, and who was surveying the dance floor for me. I landed next to her, bumping and batting the paper lanterns about and buffeting the garden behind me with the turbulence from my wings.

"Laeanna… what is it?" she asked. She could probably see that I was crying under my mask.

"Your sister - somebody killed her with an accursed dagger. I… she died right in front of me. We need candles…"

"Candles?" was all Meliswe could say for a moment. Shock, grief, anger, and confusion all jockeyed for control of her face. "Candles!" she was right behind me, dashing from table to table to grab enough candles for a ritual circle.

We'd also need to make a purifying potion… actually, that wouldn't work. She'd been stabbed through the heart or very close to it, which meant there'd be no bodily resurrection. Sure, we could bring her back to her body, but she'd die immediately and it would be years before she returned from Elysheim to tell us what had happened to her. And that was if we could whip up a potion in time.

"One of the merchants here was talking about magical education books and supplies… which one of you was that?" Meliswe snapped.

A fey-faun merchant stepped forward. "Me, miss… may I ask what's the matter?"

"We need a grimkey skull now," I said. "Have you got one?"

"It's not the finest grimkey…" the merchant admitted.

"Now!" Meliswe shouted.

The man shuffled to a rucksack-sized product bag and unzipped it. Inside was a small reagent set - one that was certainly inadequate for making a purifying decoction; several magical tomes in press-printed, idiosyncratic Faeric script (nobody has yet managed to mass-print Faeric well); and a small grimkey made from what looked to be a monkey's skull. It had less magical juice than I'd have liked and the inscribed runes were second-rate… well, third-rate if Master Dhyr was right and there were five levels of rate. But my horse sense told me the thing would probably work for our purposes.

"Do you need my…"

I assume he was asking if he could help, but he didn't get a chance. Meliswe and I took off into the night - with each passing second it became more and more likely that Meliswe's sister would be claimed by the strange demiurges of limbo. Yes, we could have used any help with a resurrection ritual, but by the time anybody who couldn't fly figured out where we were, it would probably be too late. I took the lead, spotting the little spiral pathway around the open area where I'd found Myrwaeli dying. We dove down, skimming over the hedge and touching down. In my case, I splashed down, landing up to my knees in water in the little fountain and soaking my gown. With a wave of my hand, I cast propuls to knock the top tier off the fountain - the burbling watery basin below it would be a workable altar.

Meliswe was about done making the circle of candles, so I took Myrwaeli's body and dragged her to the basin, getting the assist from Meliswe for the lift into our makeshift altar. As she took in the sight of her sister's body, limbs dangling limp out of the basin, the knife still sticking out of her chest and blood soaked through her gown, tears streamed freely down Meliswe's face. But she forced herself to stay focused for the ritual. She knew what was at stake. Meliswe had run a resurrection ritual twice before, whereas I had zero experience with them, so Meliswe ran the hard part, using some brushes and ink we'd commandeered from the cheap apprentice's kit to trace the sigils out and start the chant:

Limbo, land of demiurge's claim,

I rescind this spirit from your bourn,

I call the soul of Myrwaeli by name

and bring to Alfheim her immortal form!

The last time I'd observed the ritual I hadn't understood Sigilic, which is to Faeric what Middle English is to English - easier than a foreign language, but gibberish if you're not expecting it. But I understood it well enough now, and I was determined to make this work. My job during the ritual was to focus the grimkey and, when Meliswe's palms slapped the ground to seal the ritual, to make sure it was her sister's soul that came to reside in the little skull. Just because we were calling for Myrwaeli, that didn't mean she'd be the only one who answered the call.

Sure enough, we had imposters. They came zooming in from the aether, which is a lot like zooming in from above, only in an imaginary direction. I pushed them aside, sending them zooming back out of our plane of existence. Some kind of fire daemon… something that felt like an intelligent, evil fish… and there. It was a person's soul… reasonably pure, reasonably powerful, and zooming in faster than a freight train. I shaped my mana into a little net so that, like a trapeze artist missing her grip, Myrwaeli could spring back up into the grimkey skull. With a little pop of magical energy, the soul lodged in there and the energy of our summoning circle fizzled in a brilliant flash of every color.

Two seconds later, a horde of people came shuffling through the hedge maze to see what in Alfheim we'd got ourselves into.

+++++

"They're intended to be learning materials," the magical education merchant reiterated. He was visibly pleased that we'd managed an intermediate spirit summoning with his shoddy kit, even if he hadn't been there to witness it. "Four mithrins per kit if you buy twenty or more."

"That's actually not bad…" somebody said. And, honestly, that was damn cheap for magic supplies.

After being tracked down, and having just completed our ritual, we all marched back through the maze. Some of the guards carried Myrwaeli's body, hoisting her with the care that the devoted might offer to a martyred saint. A few fae hovered above the maze to light it and make sure nobody tried to escape - we were going to get to the bottom of the murder.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

King Fostolas looked grumpy - he'd been about to board his royal coach when the pandemonium started and, being the highest ranking person still on the grounds of the Ancient Green, he'd been called back to oversee things. He'd discarded his mask and now sat at the central banquet table, fingers steepled and a look half-way between drowsiness and annoyance on his face. The magical education merchant brought the grimkey to the table, making sure everybody got a good look at its third-rate craftsmanship.

"Let's hear it from the poor girl's mouth," Fostolas said. "Child, who killed you?"

Now, keep in mind we had Myrwaeli inside an enchanted monkey's skull. The occupant of a grimkey is limited in sensation and communication - it takes the soul a modicum of effort to see and hear, which makes the eye and ear sockets glow faintly. They can only feel tapping or knocking upon the skull and there's no sensation of taste or smell whatsoever. Neither can they speak, except through magical emanations. To anybody attuned to magic, this sounds like an echoey, resonant likeness of the soul's old voice, but you have to be within fifteen or twenty feet of the thing. People not attuned to magic can't hear it at all. Fostolas tapped the top of the skull, the eyes and ears of the grimkey pulsed to life, at which point he repeated the question. We waited.

"I can't…" the voice of Myrwaeli echoed.

"You cannot tell us, child?" Fostolas said.

"I can't believe I'm in a stupid monkey skull," she said.

I should note that that awareness of the soul housed in the grimkey isn't restricted to only the grimkey. They can float about like a ghost, which is how our zephrylite managed to be useful for household chores without our needing to carry its grimkey everywhere. In time, the soul can travel a mile or more from its vessel, but Myrwaeli's third-rate skull and her limited experience with being a barely-embodied soul limited her ability. Still, she managed to get out far enough to do an about-face and glimpse where she was being housed.

"Did you see who killed you, child?"

"It was… it was Laeanna!" she said.

There was gasping and yelping among the gathered folk and lots of attention in my direction. "She's confused!" I said. "You're confused, Myrwaeli. I found you when you were dying, after you'd been stabbed!"

"No… I saw… I saw you stab me!"

"I saw the princess creeping into the hedge maze with a knife," somebody said.

"To defend myself!" I insisted. "I saw Myrwaeli go in there earlier with Earl Baeswhe, which is none of my business. But then I saw a… well, it looked like a dancer creeping into the hedge maze, so I followed in after it. Dancers tried to kill me twice, and I thought this one might have mistaken Myrwaeli for me, since our gowns and figures are so similar, and decided to go in to stop him. When I went into the maze, though, I didn't see a dancer… I saw Prince Velda creeping through the place. And, when I went to follow him, I found Myrwaeli alone and very close to death. I was the last person she saw while alive."

"Maybe… maybe she only looked like you," Myrwaeli allowed. "If she was a dancer…"

"I'm sorry, princess, but I cannot corroborate this story," Earl Baeswhe said. "I was discussing a contract with Mr. Ghint here and didn't go into the maze with Myrwaeli. I wish I had now, because then she might still be alive."

"I… I thought I went in with Baeswhe…" Myrwaeli said. "I thought…" There was a little click from the direction of the grimkey - the skull had just developed a crack.

"Stop! Do not exert yourself, child!" Fostolas said. "This small grimkey cannot contain your soul for long - it is meant for smaller-souled things. Exerting your fae powers will only bring the device to ruin, and we will not be able to save you. Myrwaeli cannot speak further unless it's absolutely essential - otherwise, we may lose her forever." Fostolas stood from his seat and paced over to Prince Velda, taking him in with a critical eye. The two men were of a similar height, though the prince was broader and more robust. "I do not recall seeing you around the dance floor, Prince Velda… were you in the hedge maze?"

The prince nodded. "I was, King Fostolas. I… I'm sorry to admit this, but I have not been entirely transparent. I have several dancers in my employ. I ordered them to disguise themselves during the masquerade because I knew they wouldn't be well-received by your people, not given recent events. So, when I saw one creeping off into the hedge maze, I was incensed, and I thought to find the fellow and give him a stern rebuke. Alas, I soon became lost in the maze… until I spotted a woman. The Princess Laeanna - I'm sure of it - sneaking about with a knife. I followed after her, but lost her in the twists and turns. Not long after that, I heard two calls for help, but I couldn't find my way to the source of it. I didn't find my way out of the maze until I heard everybody tromping through to get to poor Miss Myrwaeli."

"It is no crime to ask your servants to be presentable to the sensibilities of their guests," Fostolas allowed. "But what are we to make from this? Differing accounts, seemingly in earnest, and none of them matching up? One or more of you must be lying, but whom? I know my daughter is a gentle soul, and yet she herself admits to creeping into the hedge maze, armed with a knife. Your people seem honorable and forthright, and yet you admit to ordering your servants to disguise themselves. And how could poor Myrwaeli possibly be confused about both who accompanied her into the maze and who killed her? Surely, she didn't drink that much."

"There is an explanation, and I can prove it!" Meliswe said.

She snapped a twig off of a nearby bush - Dill wouldn't have been happy about that - and rushed over to the apprentice magic kit, rummaging through for a little jar of berry powder, which she mixed with a splash of wine and daubed over the end of the twig. She waved it for everyone to see. "After the first attempt on the princess's life, I learned a spell to suck toxins from a person's body, if administered quickly enough. However, it works for more than just toxins - any alchemical solution can be drawn from the body and rendered ineffective."

She strode up to Prince Velda, who tried to back up but wound up bumping into the base of Alathea's royal statue. Meliswe held the daubed end of the twig up to his face, shaped her mana, and pushed the spell through the channeling twig. The prince gasped, burped, and then spit out a mouthful of beet-red solution, wiping his mouth. An instant later, his whole body wavered, his limbs spooling out, his form becoming spindly and shooting up half a head from his already substantial height - he was a dancer!

"It was you, wasn't it? You killed my sister!" She clenched her fists and I could see the beginnings of little purple arcs of energy jumping between her fingers. She was seconds away from killing the man.

"Stop!" Fostolas shouted. He stepped between her and Velda, now tall and gangly, his mask drooping from a strangely cherubic face with its beady, cobalt-blue eyes. "Velda told the queen and myself about his true identity last week, and we both agreed it wise for him to continue his duplicity. Think, girl! You've clearly got a knack for alchemy, so tell me - when the prince takes a potion to stabilize his disguised form, wouldn't that prevent him from reverting back to his normal self? And, even if this weren't the case, and correct me if I'm wrong, dancers can only change the appearances of their bodies. Their clothes do not miraculously change with them. Prince Velda, I apologize…"

It was clear that he was right - the prince's finely-tailored clothes were visibly too short and too broad for his frame. Swapping into a uniform like the earl's or a gown like mine and back would have been a miracle worthy of a legendary wizard, and Velda did not appear to be a legendary wizard.

"It was not my intent to deceive, but to avoid discomfort," Velda said. Strangely enough, his voice was unchanged. Where most dancers have wavering, slightly-reedy voices, his was deep and pleasant. "I see that I've failed on both accounts… and now we may never discover who killed poor Miss Myrwaeli… we cannot square these starkly varying accounts. What a disaster."

His shoulders sagged, and I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for a dancer for the first time ever. I realized that they're just people like everybody else and I'd let a few very negative experiences color my view on a much-maligned race. And yet… I knew for a fact that a trio of assassins, including two dancers, had been trying to kill me for some time. They weren't all bad, but those ones sure were.

"I think I can square that circle, Prince Velda," I said. "But I’m going to need the help of my handmaiden."