Bounder Ch. 01

Danelle had clearly been asking questions about the murder of her sister and she had refused to let the matter die, or remain quiet about the matter. She had talked to the wrong people or the wrong person and then had compounded her error by invoking my name into the business. I'd only been here for less than a year, about nine months since the end of last summer, but in that time I'd had enjoyed several prominent successes and my name and reputation were not unknown. Anyone with connections either up the hill towards the keep where the nobility or the rich lived would have heard of my success as a consultant. Same for the meaner folks further down the hill near the river and the squalor of the warrens to the west. I knew of or had conducted business with every significant criminal or gang lord in town, albeit quietly.

The murderous hack driver couldn't know how much Danelle had told me. Logically, she could have told me everything that she knew... which I hadn't had the foresight to have asked about. In her trance, she had indeed answered my questions, but I did not delve deeply into her own investigation into Rochelle's death, as it had not interested me at the time. Now, I regretted not emptying out her thoughts and memories of this as well. Undoubtedly she had a suspect or two, knowledge that was now lost forever to me.

I'd once met in Mirabelle a necromancer, a warlock of some power and ability to speak with and even control the dead. He was completely insane of course, a man too dangerous to even know let alone do business with, but once he had been useful to me when I was trying to locate a lost hidden treasure. He had made a dead man speak for me, telling me in substance where to go to find this lost item, but the experience chilled me to the very bone! The spirits of the dead when summoned must obey and speak truthfully, but their answers are evasive and while technically truthful, often very misleading.

I have no knowledge of what happened to that necromancer after the night that I had hired him. Undoubtedly living in some cave wearing garments of flayed human skin and surrounded by a heap of skulls and other bones of his victims. Warlocks all become utterly deranged at some point, lost forever on dark paths to power involving countless human sacrifices, ritual torture and murder, and the like until someone hunts them down like the rabid dogs they are. I hope that our paths never cross again!

The imperial policy towards the official governmental use of magic is limited at best. They might keep a few healers at the castle, maybe even a diviner or perhaps a war mage, but not even the Lord Coroner would keep a necromancer around. It would be a handy way of questioning dead witnesses, like Danelle, but if known publicly the citizens of most towns or cities would never stand for it. Not that I could wrangle myself into the castle to commune with her corpse in any case, not without an invitation or some obvious imperial related business.

I work exclusively for just three people - me, myself and I. I came here to Ormsford so that I could continue to make a fortune. Revenge, especially justice, wasn't cost efficient or wise... but I was still filled with rancor for the killer and my internal fury was seriously clouding my judgment.

I ordered a third bottle of wine and drank most of it, but it still didn't give me any wisdom, but it did give me some clarity. I wanted to solve this murder... and likely also the earlier murder of her sister. Not because I felt any guilt for her death, but because someone had taken something from me that had once been mine! Or at least this is what I was trying to convince myself of!

It was foolishness to get myself involved in this purely civic matter. The vigiles would certainly handle this and properly investigate her death. This didn't need to concern me, I kept reminding myself! I ordered more wine... but true wisdom and peace of mind continued to elude me, so I settled for numbing my wits to a near stupor instead.

*******************

I couldn't say with any honesty that by the time I left the Silver Fox a few hours later that I had firmly decided to sleep on the whole matter and that by tomorrow morning that I might have forgotten all about the entire business entirely. That would be something of an exaggeration, but I was having a great deal of second and third thoughts about the wisdom of getting involved when a small dark cab driven hard by two coal black horses came up fast behind with its wheels on the narrow cobblestone walkway. I should have allowed the tapster to call a cab for me, something that I normally would have done in any case, but I had decided that I wanted to walk home, to clear my head a bit in the cool evening air.

Although I'd had a great deal to drink, much more than usual in fact, but my wits were still lucid and my senses sharp enough so when I heard the loud sound of hooves approaching fast from behind me I hurled myself without turning around to look first into the nearest doorway, and with just a bare second to spare. The dark carriage passed by close enough that its side lantern (which was unlit against city regulations) brushed roughly against my cape and tore it as it passed within inches of me. The cab disappeared quickly into the darkness and all I could see of the back of the driver was a dark cap and cape, with nothing else noticeable.

With it being the middle of the evening, Silver Avenue was largely devoid of witnesses. Being one of the largest commercial streets, Silver is usually packed busy all during the day and it is equally as quiet at night, except for a few of the better and more expensive eating and drinking houses, but with the lateness of the hour most of these establishments were closed. I saw no one else around to help identify any other features of the driver or his hack, but it was obvious to me that this was our same dark clad murderous friend from earlier this evening.

The killer was indeed afraid that I also now knew whatever secret Danelle might have discovered before her death. Clearly, I was now to be his next victim, preferably also resulting from a street accident. Cab and wagon accidents do occur in the street, and somewhat often, but plainly this was no coincidence. I'd been lucky this time. Another goblet of wine more would have dulled my senses and reflexes enough to have made his accident entirely quite believable, and probably entirely successful. If the killer was smart the next time, he'd probably give up on the carriage accident method and just shoot me down in the street with a pistol fired from some dark alley.

In my father's time, an assassination attempt with a matchlock pistol or even a blunderbuss musket would have been a chancy thing, full of risk and uncertainty. The newest wheellock models were still uncommon, each handcrafted and expensive requiring the services of an expert gunsmith to fabricate and maintain, but the weapon was easy to use, concealable and more importantly reasonably reliable... and the expense was now within the means of a determined killer with means. I kept a matching pair myself, one in my desk at chambers and the other at home, but neither was on my personage now, unfortunately.

Like it or not, I was now involved. The killer had made it personal this time!

The internal mental anguish within me still felt like regret... but I ignored it. I couldn't have prevented Danelle's death, even if I had accepted her commission, but perhaps it was worth the while to find some means of avenging her with my own variety of justice.