101 Ashan 715 | Mathias Blackwood and Sylvia Lockson | Orm'del Sea
There was nothing particularly revealing in the room. One large bed that the couple had shared. One side of the room had Raaf's clothing and one side of the room had Braya's. Mathias moved over to the drawer on what appeared to be Raaf's side of the room and slowly slid it open. He'd hadn't intended to rummage through the man's things when he broke into the room but now that he was there he saw the opportunity and seized it. His plan had been to wait for Braya to return to her room at night and then he would confront her in private with his questions... but he had about a break until that would happen so he was allowing himself to get sidetracked.
In the drawer he found a journal that seemed to document all the people Raaf was trading with and another journal that seemed to hold the formulas for Raaf's various cures and poisons. Mathias thought about slipping it under his shirt and keeping that formula book forever, but he didn't. It felt wrong to steal from Raaf even though Mathias had no qualms about looting the men he killed. He hadn't killed Raaf, he'd been his friend. Mathias quickly scanned through the two books but sound nothing revealing so he put them back and opened the drawer beneath it. Inside that drawer there was a large bag, clearly Raaf's, but it had been emptied. The only reason Mathias knew it had been emptied was because he'd seen the bag before. It was where Raaf stored all the things he needed to work. His bottles, herbs, fluids, everything went in that bag in one way or another and it was empty.
That was when Mathias noticed the blood on the bag. His hands always emit a soft glow, something he was still getting used to, and when he moved to pull the bag out of the drawer his hands illuminated a red patch on the bag. Fresh blood... or at least as fresh as Raaf's had been. "The plot thickens." Mathias mumbled to himself as he set the bag on the ground in front of the drawer. He looked down at it, then the door to the room, then the semi-melted lock and chain, and then back down at the bloody bag. Where was Braya when the blood was put on the bag? Why was the bag hidden? Why was the door locked? Mathias had a lot of questions piling up in his head that Braya needed to answer.
Mathias moved over to Braya's side of the room and began searching through her drawers for some answers but found nothing more than a hand crossbow with a bolt in it (which Mathias took) and a few journals with pages and pages about how she was enjoying her days with Raaf all written in a dark black ink that Mathias found somewhat odd. All the same he left the notes and crossbow itself in their respective drawers and made his way to the exit. He only had so much time and had begun to think it was a bad idea to travel around the ship unarmed with a killer on the loose.
Mathias left the room and traveled across the cargo deck beck to his room where he grabbed his shortbow and a quiver full of arrows. He tied the quiver to his hip and held the bow over his shoulder as he walked through the cargo deck again, this time gaining the attention of a few of the whispering crew mates so he didn't go directly back into Braya's room. He couldn't risk being seen going into the room this quickly after Raaf had been killed. Perseus was being blamed and seeing one of his students poking around was likely to raise the real killer's red flags.
So Mathias sat down at a table with a good view of the room and he waited. Occasionally one of the crew members would come by and tell Mathias how shocked they were that Perseus had killed Raaf and Mathias would simply reply by reminding them that the investigation was still ongoing. Not that it mattered... no one would care until he and Sylvia found the real killer. Sylvia... it had been a while now since they parted and she had yet to return with information about Gilmyn. Then again he hadn't gotten anything useful about Braya other than some more questions.
It wasn't until Mathias heard commotion down in the steerage deck that they had turned into a brig that he realized something was wrong. He found the nearest staircase and made his way down just in time to see an unconscious Sylvia being tossed into a cell beside Perseus.
"What is going on here?" Mathias shouted, his hand instinctively dropping to his quiver.
"Gilmyn says that Sylvia attacked him. We are putting her in the brig until she comes to and can share her side of the story." Simon said in a hushed tone as he moved out of the crowd around the brig over to Mathias. Mathias didn't look at Simon though, he was looking passed Simon at Gilmyn standing in the crowd watching Sylvia being put in the brig with a smile. Gilmyn didn't have a bruise on him... and Sylvia hit hard. Mathias knew that from experience.
"She didn't. Simon, Sylvia and I were trying to figure out what happened. She went to talk to him. I went to talk to Braya." Mathias began to explain but Simon raised his hand.
"I know. Something isn't right here. Perseus is smart enough to have hidden the body and Sylvia isn't a violent girl." Well Mathias could agree with one of those things. "You have until dawn to figure it out. After that I won't be able to hold back the members of your Traveling City."
"It won't take me that long." Mathias grumbled, his eyes locked on Gilmyn.
*** *** ***
Three breaks before dawn, still deep into the night, Gilmyn returned to his room. He'd been busy talking with friends about his new plans to expand his trade into territories Raaf had covered before his untimely end. Boasting of new ideas for simple remedies. He walked slowly along the cargo deck to his cabin and pushed the door open lazily, too tired to even notice that the handle had been melted away. He stepped into his room and took a deep breath of the stale, sour air... then an arrow pierced his thigh. It cut through muscle and scratched bone then stopped. Gilmyn began to let out a cry of pain but someone drove a pillow into his mouth to silence him.
"Keep quiet, there are people sleeping." Mathias said as he grabbed the arrow embedded in Gilmyn's thigh and moved it like a child using a joystick and trying to get a prize out of a claw machine. Gilmyn produced another loud noise and so Mathias uppercut him. He'd have bitten through his tongue if not for the pillow in his mouth. Gilmyn fell backwards onto his back and Mathias kept his hand on the arrow. "Hold on, I wanna see how hard I have to hit you to get you to bruise. You said Sylvia attacked you right? Where did she hit you?" Mathias moved the arrow again, scrapping the head against the man's femur. He wanted to scream but the pillow muffled him. Mathias pulled up on the man's shirt to expose his chest and as he expected, there were no bruises... yet.
"I kill people by trade, Gilmyn. You shouldn't mess with my friends." Mathias said, tugging gently at the arrow so as not to inflict devastating pain but to instead inflict a somewhat uncomfortable addition to the already terrible pain in Gilmyn's leg. "You get one chance. I'll take the pillow out of your mouth and you will tell me the truth. If I think you are lying, I cut something off. It'll be fun, like a game." Mathias laughed slightly "Should we see just how much of you is left by the time you tell me the honest truth?"
