Chương 59: Run!

Interlude 6 The knock on the door of the hostel had been aggressive in a way that no visitor had been before. Eve had been out at her tinkerer's job, so only Miriam and Daryl were home as the Marybel Secret Police darkened their door. They had burst in as soon as the door had swung open even an inch, beating Daryl unconscious with squat billy clubs. Miriam had attempted to flee out the window, but several burly pairs of hands dragged her back in. Fifteen hours Miriam sat in a cold empty cell.

There was a single window, but it was narrow and caked with dirt. It would have been foot-level at best as the jail was underneath the police headquarters. For fifteen hours Miriam had no idea why she was there, or if Daryl was all right. For the first time since she set sail on the Isabella, she wanted to go home. Shivering and exhausted, Miriam was finally shoved into a plain white room with a sturdy table in the middle. On the other side of the table was a man, balding, paunchy.

He looked like any middle-aged worker who made their home in Marybel and Miriam assumed that was the point. He asked her if she had helped Thomas kill five men over the course of the last two years. Of course, Miriam had denied any knowledge of it - she had come to the city only a handful of months ago! They must have made some mistake - Thomas didn't kill people. Oh, indeed he had, the inspector insisted.

They had caught him in the act, attempting to garotte a wealthy merchant at a local bathhouse while he slumbered in the steaming water. This questioning continued for hours more. The inspector would ask outrageous questions to which there could seem to be no innocent answer, to which Miriam would sputter and deny. The picture the inspector painted of Thomas was a grim one. Far from making his money by poaching deer as she'd assumed, his real source of income had been killings of a more sinister nature.

Merchants, minor nobles - even a random peasant or two, it seemed. That was when Miriam understood that this was all a farce. Every question, every insinuation, every accusation, was just to butter her up for the real coup de grace. This was not a real investigation. These might not even be real police. No secret police investigator in the history of Marybel had ever given two shits about some peasants being killed.

They wouldn't have even considered looking deeper into why some candlemaker had his throat slit - to them it was the nature of the poor to die poorly. This was something else. She continued to beg and to blubber, but if the investigator had been half the policeman he should have been he would have noticed new steel in her eyes. The punchline came a full twenty-four hours after her arrest, when a bruised and bloody Thomas was dragged into the cell.

He begged for her forgiveness, insisted that he was innocent, to please, for the love of the gods, do whatever they said. When the inspector returned, he closed the blinds on the window behind him from which other policemen had been observing.

"You are the hunter girl, we are to understand."

"Yes."

"You are an excellent shot. You move quietly. You know the forests."

"Yes." The inspector sighed deeply.

"This presents a conundrum for us." Miriam's eyes narrowed, but she kept up the act.

"I never had anything to do with any murders! I promise you! I'll never hunt in the King's forest again, just let me go!" If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The inspector lit a cigarette and puffed it halfway down in one breath.

"That's the thing, Ms. Callihan. We need Thomas to continue, for one last job. In the interest of the city, you understand. But as you can see, the boy is in no condition to apply his skills on our behalf."

"What… what are you asking me to do?"

"To pick up where he left off, my dear. Turn those skills into something you can be proud of. For your new home." The inspector wasn't bothering to look at her anymore, but even he wouldn't have missed the clenched jaw, the white fingers gripping the table. Out in that forest, Thomas actually had set a trap. Only she had been the one to trip it. ✧✧✧ Some villagers refused to leave. Some had no choice but to stay. Kelly the Minstrel set her jaw firmly and continued to re-string a lute.

"I can't go anywhere. You lot never asked, but I'm a visitor too. I can't just stroll on out of here like the wind. Whatever's coming… I guess I'll have to face it in my home." There were nearly a dozen like Kelly, former visitors turned residents. After some frustrated arguments, everyone agreed there was simply nothing they could do for them.

Panic had set in to destroy all the careful preparation and planning Láthair Maol had done in the last few weeks and most of the seven hundred souls stuck on the island simply abandoned their belongings and ran for the trees. Their faith in Cian was such that if he was worried, they were terrified. A fire had broken out in one cottage but it had just been abandoned to burn as the family who had lived there left and never bothered to return.

Even the fish in the river were gone, retreating down to the depths of the endless fish pond.

"We have to go," Cormac told Miriam gently, as the four visitors stood at the northernmost point of Láthair Maol.

"We've done all we can. They will have an easier time of it than we will. Whatever Cian is telling us to run from, it won't wait." Miriam growled in frustration.

"It just feels like there should be more we could do. I don't like running and leaving friends in danger." It was something she had done before out of necessity, added to the pile of regrets she had left in the Realms Above, and she didn't fancy repeating it.

"They'll be fine," Róise said, looking around them at the streams of people filing into the jungle.

"Or at least, more fine than we will be."

"She's talking about Cian," Sol said abruptly.

"And she's right. It is wrong to leave him in distress." Róise and Cormac shared another look.

"Guys," Cormac said haltingly.

"We're talking about King Cianán here. You're both, well… new, so I don't blame you if you don't understand. But the existence of this island itself should clue you in on the sort of threat he would be if you made an enemy of him. We can't help Cian, not because we don't have the courage, or the resolve… but because we literally can't help him. Our best efforts would be… nothing…" He trailed off, looking back toward Láthair Maol.

"What is it?" Miriam turned to look for herself. At first, she detected nothing unusual, but then she noticed the darkness coming from the far side of the bald spot. Night was coming to Láthair Maol, and it was doing so slowly, like a predator, rolling over what had been early afternoon in smooth steps. Where it moved was an empty blackness. Looking at that unknowable terror inching its way closer, even Miriam had to tearfully admit: "You're right. We have to go." They double-checked themselves and their gear.

Miriam fashioned a sharp vine spear from her Life fórsa. Róise summoned her two blue blades. Cormac settled his brass knuckles securely on his fingers. Sol double checked the two customized pistols Cian had made for him, each secured on one hip, with a bandolier of material fórsa pouches over his shoulder. It was dangerous, but Sol wanted to take the first few steps into the jungle armed and ready to fight, even if he didn't really need to.

The pistols looked a lot like flintlocks, except there was no black powder required. Instead Sol manifested material water fórsa into an unseen chamber until the sphere couldn't stay coherent any more. At that point it shattered, sending pressurized water out of the tube. Inside the barrel was any technique sphere Sol wanted to load. He grasped a handful of water fórsa spheres he had made from draining Miriam earlier and re-absorbed them, filling his storage. He looked at the other three.

"Ready." Cormac forced a smile.

"See you all at Domhain." They each stepped together into the jungle and disappeared. Miriam closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, steeling herself for the trek ahead.

"Well, that's unexpected," She heard to her right. There was Sol, with her in a place it should have been impossible for anyone else but Cian to be.

"Sol? How are you with me?" Sol smiled in quiet delight.

"It would seem we haven't reached the end of the mystery of me. How wonderful!"

"It must be because our fórsa is the same," Miriam said in disbelief.

"I didn't think it was supposed to work that way!"

"Well, it would seem that it does. Though I'm not sure…" Suddenly Sol began to fade away, and she was alone again.

"Well that is a very interesting thing… that I'll have to think about later," Miriam said, refusing to look back at the darkness still chasing them. Don't worry about that. Only worry about getting to Domhain in one piece.