Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #18: The Mystery of the Purloined Past (Chapter 5)

Death was late.

It was actually quite irritating. I'd stood at the window for hours, waiting, hoping. The end was near. Of course I would not simply roll over and accept my fate, but finally, after six months of dallying in Five Fingers, I was going to have some sort of resolution to the curse that had plagued me since my memory began.

When the dawn came it was an unwelcome respite from my vigil at the window. I was tired and stiff, and rather cranky at having stayed up all night awaiting a courtesan that never arrived. Orsch had remained sitting on his bed, still as a statue, and I couldn't tell whether he had nodded off or not during the wait. Regardless, it became apparent that he was currently awake when I stretched with a yawn and he immediately rose to assist me.

"Sir, you really must rest."

"She didn't come," I complained. "Not a whisper, not a shadow. You said she would come."

Orsch shrugged. "The nocturnal activities of your personal reaper are not within my scope of expertise; I assumed she would immediately appear once her prize was ready. That she has not should be counted as a blessing, not an irritation."

"Says you, mate," I drawled, my eyes heavy with sleep. The threadbare sheets over my lumpy bed never looked so inviting.

"I will stand the watch as you sleep, sir," Orsch said as he reached under his own cot and slid out a small case. I struggled to stay awake even as I burrowed down into the bed, observing my companion while he opened the mysterious valise. During our time in Five Fingers I had often left him alone in the room while I prowled the dock bars, nary a care to what his boredom drove the ogrun to do to alleviate the downtime. However, I found I had reason to question those lost hours when he pulled the knife out.

As weapons went it was rather unassuming, slender with tiny runes carved painstakingly across the blade. The weapon, a dagger made for a human grip, seemed tiny as my friend carefully sighted the dawn's streaming light down along its blade. Inside the case I saw etching tools, a whetstone, and a silk cloth that Orsch pulled out to run along the blade.

"You've been playing at metalworking?" I asked, my voice a slumber-damped mumble.

"Not as such; more like alterations. If you like when you awaken I can show you a much larger project I have hired the local smith to assist me in forging. It is far more impressive than this little ritual blade."

"So why have it then?" I managed to ask.

Orsch knelt on the floor, careful to brush at the boards before assuming a contemplative position on the stained wood. "It is a necessary tool for the tasks to come, sir. You will understand, in time."

If I said anything in response I lost it mid-sentence as I slipped off to sleep. It had been a very long day and night, and my body was simply too tired to continue.

There was no way to tell how long I was out, and my dreams were more akin to nightmares. Images and sounds mashed together with old memories and visions of things that had never happened, and throughout all of them Orsch kept reappearing, still kneeling with the blade over his thigh or being polished by the silk. Pain laced my dreams, never quite waking me up, but burning through every odd permutation that my sleeping mind twisted through. But in the timeless depths of sleep the agony continued, intensified, and finally I could take no more. I awoke gasping, with a scream on my lips. But the nightmare had just begun.

Orsch was cutting into my left arm with his ritual dagger.

It took my addled mind a moment to take it all in and respond. Orsch had me propped up against the wall with a blood-soaked towel under my forearm, hacking and hewing away at my flesh like a drunken butcher. The scarlet tattoos had risen in response to my injury, and their appearance seemed to drive my companion into frenzy as he stabbed the blade down into my arm, cutting through tattoo and flesh down to the bone underneath. Orsch's bowler had fallen to the side during his exertions, leaving his forehead curiously naked and gleaming with perspiration. The veins in his arms and neck stood out in strained attention, and his white linen shirt was soaked through with both my blood and his sweat. My fugue state cleared rapidly as Orsch scraped against the bone again. The pain intensified and cut through all other thoughts.