Slaves of the Night

Chapter 14

Essie

Dinner comes all too quickly. Kaisa and I theorize all afternoon, but we don't get very far. The most we can come to is that Maija and Maku were both murdered, we don't know by whom. Prince Eero is a creep (she told me the gist of what she saw him say to her in the dream. I'm not an expert on romance or anything but there's a line between romance and straight up creepiness and Eero uses that line as a jump rope). Rax is probably still hiding something. Rax could have done the murdering. And the fact that Prince Eero and Rax were/are having a relationship is actually the least of our worries.

The most of our worries is how to call off the wedding so as not to upset the ghost.

"I have two questions," I meet Rax outside his room to get a fresh change of sweater and to interrogate him.

"I have no answers," he says, letting me in, "You coming with me tonight on patrol?"

"Yeah, I want to get a look at this ghost again," I say.

"Here, I brought you dinner---they pack it up for the guards," he says, tossing a paper bag on his bed. This hurts because I really love food but I also don't trust him not to poison me:

"I ate earlier."

"What were the questions?" he asks, getting his coat and mittens and hat.

"Are you pruning the plants in the forbidden rooms?"

"Yes, you've found me out Ilara, I break into the forbidden wing to prune plants that, not my queerness, is my deep dark secret."

"Okay, fine, I thought that was a no."

"What were you doing in there?"

"Looking around," I say, as I get a coat, "We thought we saw the ghost."

"Second question?"

"Did you know someone named Maku?"

"Your Princess see him in her head games? Oh, don't take me for a fool, Ilara, I know how to recognize the pull of second-sight. She's been at Prince Eero since she got here. Don't blame her. But."

"Did you know him?" I ask, folding my arms.

"Yes, we grew up together. He was a bastard like me, he died not long after Maija did."

"How did he die?"

"He froze to death. We found him one morning locked outside. No coat, nothing. By we I mean they---I wasn't here. We came back from Maija's funeral to hear of his passing."

"I see," no one to back him up on that. But he just alibied himself. I would suspect that would be easy enough to check. "Is that something that happens—getting locked outside?"

"Not really---but it's possible if no one knew he'd gone out and locked the doors. That said, Maku didn't have a lot of friends, mostly me and that was more by default than anything else," Rax shrugs.

"Do you miss him?" he's rather callous talking about it.

"There are certain people that need to be at peace—it that makes sense. Not everyone can find peace here on this earth. I'd suspect he's better off where he is."

"Huh. Okay."

"Now, if you're not going to eat—want to go walk around? You said you saw the ghost in the forbidden rooms last."

"Yeah---who has the keys to over there?"

"Me?"

"Other than you, obviously."

"Most of the staff could probably access them if they really wanted to. I doubt any of them would risk their job just to prune a few plants, however."

"They'd get fired for going in there?"

"Not really but---theoretically they might. Also as you've seen our daily schedules, someone would have to be awfully committed to going in there at all hours of the night," Rax points out, as we walk towards the forbidden hall. We stay inside tonight, blessedly. As exhilarating as it was I'd rather not repeat last night's experiences. "More than that---knowledge of horticulture isn't necessarily common."

"That's true—I don't know a thing about plants—let alone all of those."

"Such interests—specifically tropical plants, are usually reserved for the aristocracy," Rax says.

"So you're saying it could be benign, like the queen doing it or something?"

"I don't think anything is benign but—it may not have anything to do with the late princess."