The Merchant Who Would be King

Bite of the Vampire

Hadiin

He barely saw her go, his own anger and emotional fragility making him shake. A thought popped unbidden into his head: that he was sorry he'd paid her out. Should have just kept the money in his account and left her broke. He tried to ignore the more mature voice in the back of his head that knew that ripping her off that way would have been utterly wrong.

Embarrassed by the attention that he was getting, he pushed his way past people in the street and took the first turn, just wanting to get away from her, from everyone. He wandered. He had yet to explore the town of Belleville. Not that he cared to right now. Mostly, he just let his feet carry him in random directions and felt sorry for himself.

It was with some surprise that he found himself strolling behind the inn he'd stayed at the previous night. His feelings had had time to cool down and his self-loathing was rising up something fierce.

An officer of the Watch stood behind the inn, taking notes as a man on a ladder cleaned blood from where the female assassin or thief had gone down early this morning. He didn't recognize the officer from the night before, so perhaps it was someone only assigned the case today.

Seeing this as a way to distract himself, he sauntered over. "Hey there. You investigating the theft from last night?"

The officer barely looked up. "I am."

"Any leads? Will you be able to get the money back?" he asked in earnest. Because he could really use that gold.

The officer actually snorted and chuckled. "No."

"Really?"

"We're not even going to investigate. There's no point. By all accounts, it was a pro assassin or rogue that hit that couple. Damn fools for carrying around that kind of coin without protection, just asking for that kind of attention. Money's gone. Guy who did it is probably already back in the big city, spending it."

"What about the woman? The one who fled?"

"Probably dead somewhere, given how much blood she left behind." He gestured towards the man cleaning the wall.

"Are you going to search for her?"

The officer sighed. "Look, this isn't my first time with something like this. The town watch simply doesn't have the resources to conduct in-depth investigations for every little crime that comes up. Now, if one or both of the ice cream couple had died, it might be a different story. We'd probably put a little more effort into it. But we honestly wouldn't come up with anything. We're guards, not investigators. And the underworld runs dark and deep, even in a mostly peaceful town like this." He flipped his notebook closed, tipped his helmet to Hadiin and strode off. He called over his shoulder. "Everyone lived. Dumb bastards should just consider themselves lucky and leave it at that."

What an...underwhelming yet probably realistic appraisal of the situation. It was so realistic, in fact, that Hadiin couldn't even bring himself to get mad about it. Actually, he couldn't help but chuckle. "He's right. I should consider myself lucky." Then he even laughed, slumping up against the corner of the factory opposite the rear of the inn and sliding down to sit on the ground. The laughter did him good, sweeping his bad mood out of his heart until only remnants remained.

"Well, this is probably why rich people have bodyguards and stuff, right?" He shook his head at himself. Then he thought of Marian. "I'm such a resoundingly poor-mannered fool." He leaned his head back against the wall.

And felt something tacky.

He looked over his shoulder and saw a red stain, now with marks from his hair in it. Was that more of that woman's blood from last night? Curious, he stood back up and looked for more. To his surprise, he found some in a street running away from the inn. He lost the trail in the next intersection, but after canvassing the area for about twenty minutes, he picked up a few more specks of blood at the entrance to an alley.