Suddenly the door below deck bursts open, I have just enough time to see the terrified eyes of one of my fellow guards as he shouts, “Kraken!”
I don’t even have a chance to process how ridiculous his statement is that we could possibly be attacked by a creature that went extinct a thousand years ago. I see something move out of my peripheral vision as a strong grip wraps around my head.
There is a sharp snapping sound.
And then absolutely nothing.
I don’t think that our wine cellar has ever been this crowded.
Really, it’s a popular time to be a fermented drink. Or a dead body.
I stuff my hands into the pockets of my coat. It’s too cold in here for my liking, but apparently, we are all amateur guards today, and we are going to do the town watch’s job for them by apprehending the killer tonight.
The dead man is laying sprawled across a table in the wine cellar, one of his hands dangles off the edge while the other is carelessly draped over his bloodstained chest. We are all in here except for my father, and Vera and Mika who thought it was best to wait just outside so they didn’t have to see the body again.
We have a nicely sized wine cellar, enough to store the drink needed to keep our patrons happy, and to keep our extra food stores. Along the wall are barrels full of salted meat and dried herbs hang from the ceiling. Still, I don’t think our cellar was meant to hold eight people and a dead body. We are all standing shoulder to shoulder as we are gathered around the corpse.
I hope no one gawked at me like this while I was dead.
I feel someone grab my arm and look down to see Estelle there. “He bought me a drink just earlier this evening and now…” She gives my arm a squeeze as she stares in horror atthe body. It’s a familiar gesture, one I’m sure I’ve received many times as we grew up, and I made sure to always be there for her. Every broken heart she experienced from lying sailors and I was there, lending a shoulder for her to cry on. But now it’s a bit different.
I notice Lek giving me the evil eye. Once I would have relished it, took it as a sign that I had a chance with her, but the truth of the matter is that neither he nor I ever stood a chance with her. She craved the exotic too much to ever consider the boys from her hometown.
She will only turn to turn to us when the going gets rough, then she turns those deep brown eyes our way before she sits back and waits for us to do everything in our power to make it right.
It took dying to get me out of that cycle, but I sure as the jetting gods am not going to let myself fall back in.
“Who could do something like this, Victor?”
I pull my arm out of her hold, ignoring the hurt look she throws my way as I step around Talyria to my right, situating her between me and Estelle. Talyria watches me with a raised eyebrow. When she sees me watching, she quickly glances away but not before I catch a smug smile pull her lips upward.
Estelle notices it too, drawing her lip in between her teeth as she stares after me.
I turn my attention to the matter at hand. The body. His skin is so pale, and for some reason, his eyes are back open even though I’m sure that I closed them when we found the body. The front of his tunic is riddled with many stab wounds, they range in depth. Valentine leans over them, examining them closely, his stringy gray hair almost falling into the dried blood staining the victim’s clothes.
I’m so engrossed in the study that I jump when I feel a new set of arms wrap around my arm. I glance down to see Talyria. She gives my bicep a slight squeeze, and I can’t help the smile thatsprawls across my face. It’s nice to be someone’s first choice for once.
Hey, at least I did manage to get married today. It’s not a complete ruination of a day.
“I do think…” Valentine says straightening. He clears his throat when he sees us all looking at him. “That I can determine the blade that did this.”
“How could you do that?” Talyria asks, her eyebrows furrowing.
“I’ve been a healer for a long time,” he says with a soft smile. “In that practice, I’ve become very familiar with wounds and what weapons cause them.” His eyes roam over us, and there is something about them that I failed to notice before, an intelligence but also an agelessness. It makes me wonder what this man means when he sayslong time.
Because despite him being a human it almost makes me think he means more than the forty or fifty years that he must be.
“I notice that many of you have daggers on your belts. If you will permit me to see them then I can ascertain whether or not any of them are the murder weapon.”
“Of course!” Ibram says with a clap of his hands. “It may not immediately identify the killer, but who knows, maybe they were dumb enough to keep the murder weapon on them. After all, whoever did this was dumb enough to mess with a member of the guard.”
I notice Talyria roll her eyes at the guard’s words and swallow nervously. She really doesn’t like guards, does she? I doubt her nervousness if because of Valentine’s words. She doesn’t even have a dagger.
I pause, trying to figure out how to hide the fact that I was once a guard. It’s a ruse I’ll have to somehow keep up for the rest of our lives, but I guess that’s a small price to pay to make sure that that my wife doesn’t hate me.
It may prove difficult when I have a father as talkative as I do.
Valentine holds his hands out. “I’m ready, just show me your knives and this can all be over fairly quickly.”
