Athena had not slept for two days. And had not had a hit of Purestar in several which is significantly worse. Her head pounded and her vision was becoming blurry and distorted. She still could not stop. She had not stopped since Greenville Valley. Until the moon had sunk and arose once again, and the green lights of the city appeared on the horizon. The city ran by a monster; she thought bitterly. A King that burnt hundreds of innocents because of some twisted and pious delusion. A King that covered it up from his people as if nothing were amiss. And I served him. I served him for years. She pulled on the reins of her buckskin, and the mare glided to a halt outside the palace gates. She had to find Redtower. She had evidence. Eustice’s ledger… and the giant tomb of remains in Greenville Valley. Just thinking about that abyss again made her skin crawl under her armour.
The gatekeeper’s head popped over the high white walls. The green dome of a helmet he wore was so shiny that moonlight bounced from it and assaulted Athena’s vision. He glanced down at the Deputy with a derisive and insubordinate glare. “Where the bloody hell have you been?” he yelled down from above.
Athena gritted her teeth. “Open the door, Crawly!” she shouted back. The towering palace walls made her feel small, and she did not like it one iota. When the green gate cranked open, she kicked at the stirrups and her buckskin stormed through the green hill and towards the palace gardens. She passed the luminous fountain and dismounted in front of the palace doors. Two guardsmen stepped forward to greet her. She didn’t want to hear any of it. “Where’s Redtower?” she asked them both sharply. He wasn’t at the Dorfchester barracks. That had been some wasted miles to add to her sobering misery.
The two guardsmen glanced at each other awkwardly, giving her gormless looks. “He has set up his quarters in the late Duke’s bedchamber,” one of them said with a dopey face. She brushed past them without saying another word.
She hoped not to bump into any other watchmen before reaching the Sheriff. She trusted no one else with the information, especially if the Ninja’s claims of Inferno compromising her department were truthful.
Duke Hugo’s bedchamber was dimly lit when she entered. Daylight remained outside, yet the curtains were drawn. The Sheriff was hunched over a desk, next to the only lit candle in the bedchamber. He was not writing on parchment. His head was resting in his hands, covering his gaunt face. The look of a man who had seemingly given up. When Athena faintly called out to him, the Sheriff lifted his head from his hands and squinted at the Deputy. “Where the hell were you?” he asked with a snarl when he recognised her. He stood from the desk and paced over. Athena then saw the empty wine bottles left scattered across the floor. “Reynard Woodard is dead, his daughter is also slain.” He grabbed Athena and slammed her against a wall. She had never seen his anger so brazen. His eyes were red and watery, his strong jaw grinding. Athena recognised that facial tick. It was the countenance of a man who had recently indulged himself in Purestar. “Where were you when this was all happening? The people are losing faith in me! King Sigismund is losing faith in me!”
Athena was in too much shock to speak. She reached into her satchel and raised the High Scholar’s ledger above them. “You need to read this,” she struggled to say. Victor Redtower’s enraged eyes turned towards the ledger and appeared to soften. He took it from her and swept through the pages, unsure of what he was looking at. “Every name that’s written in there was someone Sigismund and the Royalists had burned for witchcraft.” Released from Redtower’s iron grip, she adjusted herself and coughed out the nerves. “Our King was a Violet Light puritan that murdered near hundreds.” He dropped the book and sat at the end of Hugo Barlet’s bed. The bed that once belonged to a murdering arsonist. He placed his head in his hands. He didn’t say much. Spirits be good, she thought she heard him whimpering like a scared pup. She broke the cold silence. “New Jade was never a kingdom that killed people over unprovable delusions like this. There were rules against religious violence before Sigismund was ever crowned. He broke the law-”
“He is our King!” Redtower yelled. It made Athena jump back. Not many people had that effect on her. “You can’t arrest a king. He’s the blood of Sona. He gave me my star, like I did yours. What are our positions really worth if we arrest and hang the man who put us in them?”
Athena felt her throat croak. She picked up the ledger and opened it. “Gilda Fitzpatrick,” she pointed at the inked name with the cross next to it. “I met her daughters. Their mother disappeared years ago, and they have been living poor and alone in some abandoned shack in the Shards. They’re still unaware that their mother has been burnt to a crisp.” She slammed the ledger on the carpet by Redtower’s feet. “This can’t go unanswered.”
Redtower stood and walked over to the desk silently, rummaging through the empty bottles in search of any drops he might have missed. “Perhaps you always had the right idea,” he said. “Better to give up and drink myself into oblivion.” When nought a drop was found, he threw all the glass bottles off the desk. They shattered into the ground. He slammed his fist into the wall repeatedly and screamed.
Athena was seeing a lot of herself in Redtower. She didn’t like it. This angry and bitter man, too drunk to pronounce words correctly, too eager to hit things when everything wasn’t going his way. She felt ugly inside.
What do I tell Tilly? she then wondered soberly. No doubt her little mute sister would weep endless tears when the bad and mean Deputy comes around to tell them what their gracious and noble King did to their mother. Sorry, kid. Wrong deity. Wrong time. Wrong place. “Where is the King?” she asked. “We can gather what loyal watchmen we have and arrest him tonight.”
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Redtower did not turn away from the fractured window that had been poorly fixed after the Ninja’s little punch-up all those moons ago. It felt like a lifetime since she had inspected that suspicious-looking blue dust.
“Sigismund is hidden away in the upper chambers,” he said with a breaking voice. “He refuses to deal with his daughter after her breakdown.”
“What breakdown?”
“She claims that she witnessed Sir Dorian’s death at the hands of a shadow monster. Most physicians believe that she has lost the plot, broken down from all the stress.” He started to chuckle hysterically. “She’ll be the one to take Sigismund’s place if he does die, whether because of us hanging him, or by the hands of these assassins. All this chaos, and we still have no leads to unmask the killers.” He picked up an empty stained glass and threw it at the wall. It made Athena jump back in fright.
“We have one,” she said, raising her voice as she waved the ledger in front of him. “I just bloody showed it to you. The note left by the Velociraptor told Duke Hugo to burn with his bride. Cynthia didn’t die of the plague. She dabbled in the occult. Her husband caught wind of it, and they had her burnt. Those assassins, the Velociraptor… they know. They want justice for all the lives Sigismund took.”
Victor Redtower sunk deep into the desk chair. Without his badge and galea, in his drunken and wallowing state, he looked nothing like the hard and unwavering Sheriff that she had known. Is this what he saw whenever he had to deal with me? He raised his hands in the air and shrugged his shoulders. “Where does that leave us, Athena? Do I arrest the King or fruitlessly try to stop these seemingly unstoppable ninjas?”
“Sober up and keep the palace locked down,” she ordered. It felt strange to her. Being the one barking commands at him, yet he did not seem to complain. “Ensure no one that isn’t law enforcement gets past the gates. I’ll get the Princess somewhere safe, then I’m confronting Sigismund.”
Athena did not find Rosamund in her bedchamber. The door was left hanging open, furniture inside toppled and sprawled about. This was most unlike her. She paced through the corridors of the Jade Palace. She questioned chambermaids who told her similar stories. During the night, the Princess saw a monster kill Sir Dorian and then went mad. They all claimed she was in the dining hall, surrounding herself with Palace Guards. Athena did not like these tales. Believing in fabricated monsters and myths is what got Cynthia and Gilda murdered in the first place. She no longer felt sorry for the Princess in regard to how distant her father had always been with her. The last thing New Jade City needed was a mad queen in the making.
She found Malborne “patrolling” one of the hallways. He was sunk into a cushioned chair, smoking a pipe filled with Nightbliss. He gaped at her as she approached, looking guilty and doing an embarrassing job of hiding the pipe under the cushions. “Deputy,” he said shakily, “you’re back?” Red fumes that smelt of strawberry were still floating behind him.
She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him along with her. “We need to get the Princess back in her bedchamber,” she said.
Malborne laughed. “Good luck with that. She’s using her authority for once. Commanded a handful of guardsmen to surround her. First time I’ve ever seen her do it. She’s threatening to skewer anyone who comes near her.”
The Deputy wasn’t quite sure what to make of the sight she saw in the dining hall. The Princess had erected a fortress of furniture made up of many chairs and round tables. A row of five Palace Guards in jade armour and long spears blocked off the fort’s entrance, each one of them possessing an unsure and embarrassed look on each of their faces. “Rosamund?” Athena called out.
The Princess emerged from the darkness of the furniture fort and pushed past the jade wall of guards. Her hair was dishevelled. It was clear that she had been crying for many an hour. Her makeup was streaked down her cheeks and her eyes were reddened.
“It’s me, Rosamund,” Athena said softly, reaching her hand out.
“What do you want?” The Princess asked harshly. There was no emotion in her voice, as if she had cried them all out.
“I need you to tell me what happened to Dorian,” Athena said as quietly and patiently as she could.
“You won’t believe me, anyway. No one believes me.” Rosamund’s eyes started to water again. “He was the only one who gave me any of their time. He made me feel less alone. He would have believed me, but now he’s dead.”
Athena took another tentative step closer. The row of guards responded by stepping forward and pointing their spears in her direction in instinct. The Deputy stepped back, raising her hands, keeping her eyes focused on the weeping girl. “Remember the night when the Duke was first attacked? You asked me if I believed you, and I told you that I did.” She had lied at the time. She should not have doubted her. She knew Rosamund did see something happen to Dorian. Perhaps not a shadow-creature, but something for a certainty. “I’m sorry that Dorian is gone. Let me protect you instead. But to do that, I need to know everything that you saw.”
Rosamund’s lower lip quivered. Her eyes bawled out with tears. She ran from the wall of jade and clung herself around Athena’s armour. She cried and howled into her breastplate. What a mess this all is, she thought. With a serial killer King, and the Sheriff pissed on liquor, and the best knight we had seemingly dead. It leaves just me as the only one left to fix it all. She knelt down to Rosamund’s eye level and put a hand on her shoulder. “I need you to go with Malborne. He’s one of the good ones. Stay in your bedchamber until I come back. He won’t leave your side until then.”
“Where are you going?” she blubbered. “Dorian died there. I don’t want to go back!”
“We’ll take you to the Duke’s chambers then, where the Sheriff is. There’s something else in the Palace that I need to tend to first. I won’t be going far, I promise.” She gently ushered her towards Malborne.
She felt profoundly distraught. She spent so much time fretting over what to tell Gilda’s daughters. She had not considered what to tell Rosamund about her father. About the kind of man that he truly was. As she saw the Princess being led away from the Dining Hall by Malborne’s guiding hand, she felt her heart thump and her body chill. How will the people react to what he did? Adrian Thorne had warned her that the Inferno Clan intended to sow chaos and discord to the city. And they know exactly how to do it…