The Ringmaster's Revenge

The Ringmaster's Revenge: Phase Five

Phase Five

10 years: 19 days: 3hours

Until the Ringmaster’s Revenge

Wynne

When she’d woken up to find the blankets beside her bare, she couldn’t believe he’d actually left.  She’d checked the mirror finding only her own reflection staring back, and even then wondered if perhaps he’d just gone out.  But when he had not returned by that morning, or the next, or the one after that, Wynne knew that he had left her.  Just as he’d said he would seven months earlier.  She cursed him, wishing she’d never turned back to drag him out of the alley or risked her life to save his.  Then she cried because she hadn’t meant it.  Their time together had been brief, but special.  Even passionate.  But those days were gone and best forgotten.  Or so Wynne told herself four weeks later as she stumbled back to the dilapidated shack they’d shared, having spent the evening sifting through the market’s rubbish heap in search of food.  She found mostly rotting vegetables, withered fruits peels, and bread crusts so hard they would make finer hammers than a meal, but she took what she could get and arrived back at the house carrying a dripping basket of rations.

Wynne briefly paused in the entryway, studying the parlor.  Something seemed different but she couldn’t figure out immediately.  It required a trip to the kitchen where she placed the basket in the coolest corner in an effort to thwart further decomposition.  From this vantage point she could see what her eyes had not previously registered.  The door in the hall was open.  That’s it.  Wynne raced back into the room, hoping to see the man she’d saved, but instead found the man who’d once offered to save her.

“Enjoying the nightlife?”

“Roland.”

He stood between the parlor and kitchen, just beneath the mistletoe made from green fabric and old beads which she had sewn weeks ago for Christmas.  The lamplight pouring in from the window briefly touched on his long gray coat and the ornamental sword dangling from his waist.  Half his face was lit up and, from what she could see, Roland looked less than pleased by their unscrupulous surroundings. 

But then, why would he?  He’d just tracked down the woman who had married him then threatened to shoot him, hiding in a fairly obvious building in a city under his constant supervision. 

His scowl deepened the longer she stood silent.  There was nothing for her to say and nowhere to run.

“Imagine it.  All this time, the squatter on Potters Avenue I’ve heard so many rumors of is my very own runaway bride.  Eating garbage.  Suffering in darkness.  Wearing rags.  Living such a charmed life as this it’s easy to see why being my wife is so objectionable,” he said when finally the lack of hearing his own complaints grew too unbearable.  “I should call the whole watch in here.  I should chain you and drag you into the streets.  I should arrest you and lock you away for the rest of your miserable life.  You have been here alone this whole time?” he asked, studying the kitchen as if men might come spilling out of the pantry.  Wynne nodded.  “Good.  Better homeless than a whore.”

As Wynne was forced into an old chair so Roland could loom over her in a more sinister manner, she asked, “What are you going to do with me?”

“For over eight months I’ve been looking for you.  I’ve had the watch looking.  I’ve sent out search parties.  I’ve even personally checked the corpses of every nameless female to grace the coroner’s house.  And do you realize just how many young women are murdered in the slums of Quill Hollow?  You’re lucky you’ve managed this long.  And with the magistrate hovering over me, raging about my incompetence at loosing you.  You’re an albino!  You should have been easier to find.  My own men laughing… my sister.”