Book 4 Chapter 23: Implicated

++Anything as complex as blood spatter analysis, let alone DNA testing or fingerprint indexing, was sadly still unknown to Garamon’s law enforcement as of the late 19th century, and one must wonder how many unsolved crimes may have been followed to the end if these technologies spread sooner.++

- From ‘The Evolution of Forensics in Law’.

Blakely was still in the ballroom when I re-entered it, and fortunately he had not managed to get himself occupied by anything in my absence. He saw me return and started making his way over with post-haste, slithering up beside me as I headed for the exit.

“Something went wrong?” he asked under his breath. I could see his hands flitting to his clothing, then falling back. He was experienced enough to know not to give away the position of his stashed guns by patting them even a moment before the time where they were needed.

“Discussions turned hostile,” I admitted. “I do not think we will be attacked, but I would rather not bet on the fact.”

Blakely nodded, and said no more. The man was calm and focused in an instant, every hint of uncertainty disappeared. People often mistook David Blakely for a nervous or cowardly man, but this was far from the truth. He was simply optimized for functioning in a very specific set of circumstances. With an enemy gunning for him, and no decisions to make save from how to avoid being killed, he was perhaps the most mentally coordinated human I had ever met.

It was all the other times, the times with no enemy and more cold cognition in need of doing, that Blakely’s nerves became more detriment than help.

But this was either a crisis, or rapidly approaching one, and so vintage Blakely was just what I needed to get out of it.

We cut towards the exit like a pair of sharks closing on prey. People still wanted to speak to me, but now that the situation had turned dangerous Blakely was being far more overt about warding off that inconvenience. Nobody was willing to approach and risk my bodyguard’s ire, and we were out into the corridor in ten seconds. We accelerated there, moving through the mansion and emerging in another minute.

Fortunately, my rented carriage was still waiting for us. I considered flying off but decided against it. If Elqarth was stupid enough to try and make a political stink about the incident that had transpired between us, I did not want to have any eyewitnesses attesting to the fact that I had fled the scene at mach-adjacent speeds. I doubted prison, or any legal punishment at all, was on the table, but doubt was not certainty, and I saw no reason to risk it.

I took the carriage’s control myself and ushered the horses off at a merely ‘brisk’ pace, finding myself cursing the creatures for their sluggishness while Blakely not-so-subtly searched the area around us, his eyes seeming almost to shine in the dark.

“Can’t bloody see,” he growled. “It’s those fucking lamps.”

“Do not shoot them,” I told him.

“I wasn’t going to.”

I ignored his lie and just focused on steering.

“...Fine,” Blakely grumbled, hand sliding back out of his pocket.

We were beyond the grounds shortly, then beyond sight of the mansion itself. I almost started to relax, though of course I was not that foolish. While the vehicle rolled along I sent out radiating waves of magic to feel all around us.

My range had increased immensely since the early days where I first perfected this technique. Then I had been lucky to manage a mere ten paces, but now, with dozens of times as much power to work with, I could just about make out surrounding shapes and movements at a range of two hundred feet.

The inverse-square law, unfortunately, was giving me diminishing returns in my efforts at using this particular technique, and the rattling carriage underneath me was certainly not helping. Still, it was as effective an insight as ever.

And it let me know, as we moved through one of the poorer districts of Yir on our way to the city’s centre, that men were approaching around us.

“Not warriors,” I whispered to Blakely. “I can tell they are not warriors by how fast they move, though they seem quite athletic all the same.”

“How many, what’s their position, how are they armed?” he murmured, calm as ever.

“Perhaps ten, they are closing quicker than a normal man could jog, and I cannot comment on their armament.”

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Blakely didn’t nod, or swear, or do anything else that might give away that we were having a silent conversation, he just kept his eyes ahead and slightly adjusted his seating, ready to pounce if the situation demanded it.

I left the carriage parked at the side of the street, then started climbing from it.

“I am going to pretend to get angry with you,” I told Blakely. “Get ready.”

“Wha—” I slapped him.

“AND DON’T THINK I HAVE NOT SEEN YOU OGLING ME WHEN YOU THINK I WAS NOT LOOKING, YOU PIG!” I yelled in the shrillest, most irritating voice I could muster, then leapt from the carriage and stormed off into the night while Blakely cursed. “Fine then, go off you little bitch!” Whether he had caught on fast or was just genuinely angry, I could not tell, but I disappeared from his sight a moment later in any case.

The enemy did not hesitate to start moving in around me, closing like starved wolves scenting a lone beast isolated from the herd.

And this was fine. It was precisely what I had intended to do, lure them away from the carriage while Blakely stayed there.

Or pretended to.

A minute passed before I got the first sight of one of them, a big man moving towards me on preternaturally quick strides with a cruel leer to his mouth.

“Alright there missy,” he told me, his accent thick and reminiscent of the people to Garamon’s north. “You made quite a show back there, upset some people with your bad manners. We’ve been sent to teach you the benefits of being nice and polite to your betters.”

More men were coming up behind him, encircling me. They all had the confident bearings of those who thought their target was trapped.

“You know who I am, and you still want to try this?” I asked him, deciding to focus fully on the leader and let him feel the full weight of my attention.

His smile faltered, a shade.

“We know you don’t have your little amulet,” he told me, moving forwards fast. “And we know you’re already in a bit of hot water over blowing up Laugrey.”

Ah, so was this a double-bluff? Elqarth did not intend to actually have me beaten, but to coax me into using my magic in a way that would further complicate my attention from the authorities.

It seemed I had made a powerful enemy in him, but not an especially devious one. Blakely had gone completely overlooked by these thugs, and I could feel that all of them were now gathered around me. My bodyguard chose that moment to unfurl from the darkness and glide up behind one so fast that the men opposite, seeing the whole thing, did not have a chance to call out a warning.

And then, because he was David Blakely, he quite messily cut the man’s throat rather than even attempting to incapacitate him harmlessly.

The violence only escalated from there. In the time the first man took to stumble away, Blakely had lunged for the second and buried his knife down to the hilt in their neck. I myself was spinning around as men either backed away or panicked and charged at me.

The men would have been a serious danger, if they had guns. But these were not hired killers, and I saw only cudgels and brass knuckles upon their person. Even in heeled boots I was closing in with superhuman celerity, reaching the nearest of them and striking at his chest with a closed fist. I felt the bones break, and even heard his breastbone give with a dull pop.

He was falling in an instant, but falling slow. Like gravity was taking its time to decide what to do with him. I slid around the corpse and threw a second strike, this one a low kick. It was untrained and clumsy, but I understood enough about the basic logic of hurting people with my fists and feet that it connected against the next thug’s shin and knocked the limb right out from under him. I was vaguely disappointed not to feel the bone snap this time.

More men were closing in on me now and swinging hard. I had been hoping to test the limits of my new body in a martial-only fight, but the thought of being bludgeoned killed that interest fast. I threw up a weak shield that just barely halted the incoming blows before I lashed out with a few more simple punches. One man caught a glancing blow and went stumbling, another was hit cleanly in the face and fell back with his nose practically exploded and his cheek caved in. The third I uppercutted, and actually lifted slightly off the ground before he fell.

I continued spinning, looking for more enemies and finding none. The one man I had failed to incapacitate was currently slinking away into the dark. Well, fine then. He could live, I decided. He could bring word of this to Earl Elqarth, and let the man know that—oh Blakely had just hurled a knife through the back of his skull.

My bodyguard looked fine as I turned to him, covered in blood, but none of it was his own. Several corpses littered the ground around him, and he was moving past them without even a whisper of regret.

“Why are yours alive?” he asked me.

“I assumed this may have been some ploy on Elqarth’s part to implicate me in homicide,” I explained.

“Oh.” Blakely looked around. “You’re pretty implicated then.”

“Yes,” I snapped, then sighed and controlled myself. “What would you suggest we do now?”

“Why are you asking me?” Blakely frowned. “You just assume I know how to hide bodies, is that it?”

I just stared at him, and he hesitated.

“...We can dump them in the lake a few miles out of the city. Slit their bellies first so they don’t float.”

I made a quick study of the still-groaning men I had incapacitated, magically searched the immediate surroundings for any potential witnesses, and then concluded that we were unobserved and came to a decision.

“Fine then,” I sighed. “Finish those ones off and get ready to drag them all away.”

I truly did hate making a mess like this.