Crownsmith Chronicles

Castor held up one very angry finger at Lucia. "Do you expect me to believe that if we go all the way down to the cathedral based on your 'perception' that one of Ren's men will magically confess to committing a murder? A murder, I should specify, that someone has already been convicted of?"

"Who?" Lucia asked, brow furled with concern.

"I don't know; it's all there in the box," Castor directed his finger to his right.

Lucia ran to the box, sifted through the papers, and took out a few with names on them. "You want me to believe Nolan Frie happened to find an assassin's knife to assassinate someone? An assassin, I feel the need to specify, who kills people for a living!"

"Fine, you know what? Let's go then. Let's go to the cathedral, you and me, and see if anyone confesses to a murder," Castor was livid; he had not scheduled a wild goose hunt.

"Fine, just let me do the talking, I don't need you walking in there and trying to brute force your way to a confession."

Castor and Lucia barged out of the office like a married couple on their way to the in-laws. Benj gave Lucia a questioning look, and she told him to come with her. Castor invited Key along, too, and soon the four of them left the office and the prince in Trudie's capable hands.

"Where do I know you from?" Key asked Benj, unsure why everyone was so tense.

"These two are members of the organization where everyone was knitting," Castor helped. "I owe Benj a sort of debt; he was integral in helping me take down their last leader. Or, he was helping me, but then just took the ogre down himself."

"I knew he was part ogre!" Lucia exclaimed. "I'm surprised no one else saw it. His lower teeth were all wrong."

"I was using a hyperbolic colloquialism," Castor said, not caring if anyone understood.

"So, Benj and Lucia then?" Key asked, trying to get their names right. "I'm Key."

"You're Key?" Lucia asked as if he were the cause of some monumental disaster. "I was told you didn't get a good look at the people who abducted you. Is that true?"

He nearly blushed. "I, uh, no. Unfortunately, not."

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"Can you tell me where they found you?" Lucia asked, noticing Key's discomfort.

"We should probably talk about all that later," Key changed the subject, no thanks to Castor. "It's a touchy subject."

Their following small talk soon dissolved under the pressure of Castor's mood. Silence took them all the way down the dusty roads that led to the cathedral. When it came into sight, Key felt the comfort of his sword, and Benj slipped his wedding band on. Lucia tugged at the kerchief around her head. Benj got her attention and reminded her to also wear her ring.

They passed through broken and rusted gates to the front courtyard. Bones was vacant from his usual spot, making the place feel more abandoned than usual.

Castor was the first off his horse, but he waited for Lucia. When she came near, he opened the door for her and let her in. It was a reminder that he was going to let her ask the questions and fail on her own.

Benj and Lucia noticed how cluttered the place was now, compared to when it had been empty enough for echoes. The table in the center was vacant with the exception of half-knit shapes of wool with spikes sticking out at nonuniform angles.

"It must be meal time," Lucia mentioned before cautiously heading to where the assassins gathered. She entered a door near the spiral staircase, and when everyone had caught up to her, she knocked on a second door.

"Come in," invited a voice, muffled through the thick wood. Lucia went in and looked around.

Six people looked at her from around their dinner table. They appeared more curious than upset at the interruption. She greeted them and explained that she could be back at another time when she saw her man. Sitting to Ren's left with his back turned was the owner of the knife.

She turned around, muttered a few words to Castor, and walked back into the room.

"I'm really sorry to bother you all, but I found this knife and I was wondering if it belongs to anyone here." Lucia held the murder weapon up for everyone to see.

"Let me see it," the man she recognized as Poler held out his hand.

Lucia hoped he wouldn't claim it himself, but he held it up and confessed it wasn't his.

"Tye, I think this is one of yours," he said, passing the knife to the man that Lucia had marked.

"Oh, yeah, I thought I…" Tye started before abruptly cutting his words off.

"Tye..." Lucia committed the name to memory, circling the table to get a better look at him. "Do you know where we found this knife?"

"Are you going to try to get me arrested because someone stole my knife?" The man scoffed.

"No, I'm only here to get someone unarrested," Lucia tried being as disarming as possible. "Hypothetically, if there was a man in prison for killing this guy named Brasby, with your knife found at the hypothetical scene, would he be hypothetically innocent?"

"If we're talking in hypothetics, I may look into the guilty party's wife, who hypothetically hired me to kill two birds with one stone. Or rather, kill one hypothetical bird and frame the other." Tye answered, to the chagrin of the rest of the table.

The assassins groaned in disappointment as if Tye had made a breach in dinner etiquette.

"What?" He stretched out the word, "She couldn't hypothetically pay me if her husband's money went to his business partner, now could she?"

His excuse didn't seem to satisfy the table, but it satisfied Lucia. "Tye, you've been hypothetically helpful. Thank you all for your time, and I'm sorry again for bothering you."