• Mature • [Bolstrum] Blood and Lies (Graded)

[Kasoria]

24th Trial, Vhalar, 718a
Bolstrum
21st Bell

Continued from here





"Nothing I can say in my defense, I suppose?"

Kasoria didn't reply: he just started walking. Yancy knew the answer to that, anyway. The way he'd spoken his first words upon entering... they were not a question. With the uncertainty and foggy future that implied. It was a statement of fact. Not just in tone, but in his bearing. The way his shoulders slumped and his breath rushed out of him with their fall. He could have sworn there was even a brief whisper of relief in his words. As if he were tired of the whole deception, arcs long and profitable, true, but still grinding on his sanity.

Now there was nothing left to hide. Nowhere to run. No protection to be had nor deals to be made. Yancy looked at this little man carrying his death warrant and the dagger of his bodyguard, and knew what would happen.

"I... I'm not sorry."

Kasoria stopped at his side. He hadn't even got up from his chair. Instead he just looked up at Kasoria, and his stare did not waver. Some will, dark and black and desperate, was being fed into his features. Stopping him from falling apart, begging, crying, pleading, promising, lying and lying and lying until he found the one speck of sand among a desert of fast-talking that might sway the man in rags.

He wouldn't do that. Kasoria saw a tight jaw and eyes that were wet but not weeping. He would face this... like a man, he supposed the phrase went? Though he knew from experience, having a cock and balls did not give one dignity to accept the Crossing with courage.

Ah. Those are the right words.

"With dignity, then?"

Yancy blinked at the words. He wasn't expecting anything resembling cultured, educated vocabulary from this man. Just another dread abyssal like Pelham, only much more capable, apparently. To hear this shambling, hairy, dirty figure speak of such a thing... it surprised the lawyer. He barely remembered to nod, swallowing hard. His throat was parched and the little man seemed to notice. He gestured to the bottle on the table with the dagger.

"One more?"

"If you don't mind."

No tremble. No quaver. A man resigned, and accepting. Kasoria actually smiled, and nodded.

"Go ahead."

Yancy reached out his arm, taking his eyes off the man-

THUNK

-and Kasoria's arm moved in a blur. He'd been waiting for this opening since he'd walked in the door. Studying the angles, the distance. The speed he'd need, the position of the blade. Flat, parallel to the floor, to get between the ribs. Which ones? The fourth and fifth. There was a reason Kasoria owned a medical manual. He'd read that tome more than once, and knew the diagrams by heart. More importantly, he'd been here many, many times before. He knew just where to put the steel, before he'd even know the fancy medical names for the parts of the heart, the valves inside it.

Yancy gasped as the dagger slid between his ribs, and rammed clean into his heart. Not his lungs, though. He filled them both with a breath like a second dagger and was about to scream when-

-the ledger slapped the floor as Kasoria dropped it-

-suddenly free hand smacking across his mouth, killing the scream, lawyer trying to rise, all dignity forgotten-

Kasoria pushed him back into his seat. Stared with wide, animal eyes as he held the blade inside that pumping, gushing organ. Already his hand was soaked with the stuff, blood spewing out from around the blade embedded in Yancy. The man tried to grope at the blade with both hands, and Kasoria could have thanked him. He waited until both trembling hands were around his own-

-before snapping them away from the dagger's handle and Yancy's mouth, letting the lawyer's hands fall onto the grip-

-then immediately gripping it again, only with Yancy's hands trapped under them. Now it looked like Yancy had pushed the dagger into his own heart, and Kasoria was just... helping him on the way. The lawyer looked down, eyes bulging, and saw his hands turned scarlet. Along with his tailored shirt and seal-hide breeches, dripping down onto his leather chair and across the waxed floor. All these things of substance and coin, and he'd trade them all for another few moments that he would not get.

His body started to spasm. His lungs were good for one scream, but not another. Too much blood had left him, spilling and pooling onto the floor. He looked up again, into the face of his killer. The man holding the knife inside him. But painting the picture of a suicide, rather than murder. It was... well done. Some part of his blood-starved mind could see the symmetry of it. The lack of fuss. No hunts for a killer, no shame or gossip surrounding Bangun Vorund. Just a pathetic coward who'd killed himself, but... but there were other factors...

"Wh... What about..."

Kasoria judged it a good moment to take his hands away. He stepped back and grimaced at the blood staining his hand. Well, that wouldn't do. He'd have to clean that. He started to look around for some rag or cloth, and found one by the window. He started to scrub and clean, ignoring the man staring at him, shuddering with every precious breath, hands starting to fall gently from the knife in his chest.

"You... Yuh..."

Kasoria finally looked around, just as the light dripped from Yancy's eyes. There were questions that. He could guess half of them. But he did not answer. He walked back over to the dying man, in a room that was a bastion of light in a dark building, and shoved the soiled towel into his pocket. One more piece of evidence he didn't need to be found.

"No longer your concern."

A spark of outrage. A dram of hatred. Then all fight fled from that doomed corpse, and his eyes became as carved stones. A six-foot doll in a sumptuous chair, dressed in finery, surrounded by the most tasteful fitting an executive of his status could afford. Yet he bore no more life than a puppet. No more import than a slab of meat, before the butcher had a go at it with his cleavers. Kasoria walked around him, careful not to step in blood and leave gory footprints leading out the office.

A few more touches, then we're done.

He reclaimed the ledger, shoved it inside his coat... and pulled out something else.

[Kasoria]

To Whom It May Concern,

This is my Confession. I am a Thief, and now a Killer. I have Stolen from my Employer. A Man who showed me nothing but Kindness. I repaid that Kindness with Betrayal. For Three Arcs, I have been Pilfering from Mister Bangun Vorund. The Coin I took is Vanish'd. Spent on Whores and Drink and Cards and other such Sins.

I Believed that Guilt was Beyond Me. But I have come to Know Different. For the past Arc, my Conscience has been Tormented. But I could not Bear the Shame of Admission. To Shame my Family. To Shame my Employer and Friend. To Shame my Name and my Legacy. I Ask only that my Wife and Son may not be Held to the same Guilt as Myself. They are Blameless.

My Bodyguard Pelham is Not. He assisted in my Thieving. Like Me, he Owed his station to Bangun Vorund. Unlike Me, he did not Believe in Confession. He said he would Kill Me if I attempted to Confess. In a Rage, I ended his life. My Hands Tremble to Write those Words. I am Become Killer and Thief. I am a Monster.

I am Sorry. I am Sorry to All, for All I have done.

Dearest Wife, Darling Son, Friend Bangun,

Please Forgive this Fool. Both his Sins, and his Cowardice.

Yancy Marlowe

Now that there, is some outstanding fucking bullshit.

Kasoria was proud of his work, and rightly so. It was four drafts in the making, and he'd committed himself to his words. Pelham's death and Yancy's had to fit it, of course. Thus there would be no scandal hanging over Vorund, save a single man that had cracked and betrayed him, rather than a trio of murders that could be maliciously tied to him.

Or maybe just two, actually. They might not even link the girl to them. Perhaps, but... it would not matter.

He left the letter on the desk, after clearing everything else off it. All very neat and tidy, completely bare save for ink and quill and that single, stark sheet of parchment. Like a painter at the cusp of a completed work, Kasoria stepped back and beheld all that he had done. A man who had killed himself, after confessing to his crimes. With no evidence to claim otherwise. He was worried about the handwriting, but not over-much.

The man was not himself. A recent killer with trembling hands. Of course he would write differently.

The little killer smiled. He was not one for sadism and wanton slaughter, this was a point of pride for him. But he would allow that armor to loosen, and enjoy this... construction. This fiction. This grand lie built on blood and bodies, that had taken cunning artifice to create. He'd imagined it and judged it sound, then he had gone about making his conception a reality. Would he even say this was a greater satisfaction that the aftermath of battle, when his blood bubbled in his veins and he was the last man standing, leaving all other cleaved and vanquished?

Maybe. Pretty fucking close.

"Now, now," he muttered. "Remember yourself."

This was still a thing unfinished, after all. Just a few steps left in the race, but the line had to be crossed, all the same. He walked out the office and down the stairs, exchanging lamplight for cloying darkness. Shadows dogged him as he wound his way back to the walkway, the window. He checked beyond it, and neither heard nor saw any patrolling figures. All the voices he'd heard had come from the front, probably still clustered around their fire. He opened it back up, climbed out onto the stable roof, and closed it behind him.

Come on, come on.

It wasn't recklessness, more a... desire to be done. The end was so close. All he had to do was get away, and that urge sped his feet across the damp wood. When he got to the edge, he let himself fall off without a jump, then as he started to fall he twisted around, so he was facing the roof as he fell-

-arms reaching out-

THUNK

-gripping the edge of the walls with a grunt, arms suddenly straining but his plummeting stopped... just shy of the ground. He let go and his aching hands smacked onto his knees as he landed. He was getting too old to forget to bend them when he did something like that. Fates, and he was feeling it more and more nowadays. But not so much that he didn't scuttle across the mud to the wall he'd first climbed over, reaching up and anchoring his hands before-

One-two-THREE

-heaving his legs to the side, pelvis and hips screaming as they swung up, past his head, feet smacking the top of the wall. He kept the momentum going, letting his almost-horizontal body follow that flowing movement, up and rolling-

-over the top of the wall-

SPLAT

"Shit!"

Fine, that landing could have been better. But Kasoria was up and running a moment later, wiping the mud from his face and letting the shadows swallow him up yet again. His lodging house wasn't far from here, a simple affair with a handful of rooms, and a couple owning it that knew not to ask many questions. He was a street or two away before his pace slowed to a walk... and then a stumble... and then he was just The Vagrant, the guise he wore to often and so well.

"Mind yer walkin'!"

A rude shoulder sent him tottering, and Kasoria just mumbled an apology and kept walking. Letting none see the smile still on his face as he went.

Concluded here

[Oberan]

Review Rewards

Smelly scoundrel

Points awarded: 10

Knowledge:

Acrobatics: Twisting in Mid-Air
Acrobatics: Swinging Legs Up and Onto a Wall
Deception: Forging a Suicide Note
Deception: Removing Evidence from a Fake Suicide, That Would Suggest Otherwise
Medicine: Knowing Where the Ribs Are (and the gaps between them)
Stealth: Stopping a Victim from Crying Out

Magic: No magic exp

Other: N/A

Notes:
Excellent conclusion to another great storyline. I must admit I kind of liked Yancy. His attempt at dying with dignity earned him some points in my book. Then again, fighting tooth and nail for just another moment of life does too. Great work!

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