Chapter Twenty-Three: Esselle

I flinched with every rustle of a bush, even when the wind made the branches and leaves shudder. As well as the sounding footfall of twitchy hares along the path through Tram. My mind invented dins—the clanking and clattering of nothingness building upon a growing tuft of paranoia.

Nothing compared to the terror of passing the pitch black alleyways—knowing Lyewkin may have beaten me to one, holed up in its shadows, and awaited my passing with a gun or dagger to finish the job. So that he might collect whatever bounty my head was worth.

My head. I pictured it severed from the rest of me and bouncing on the floor like a balloon. I pictured Stoney encasing it in glass, like Chester with his jewels, and placing it on the mantle of his fireplace. Perhaps his nobbish friends could laugh and point at it during shared suppers and tea-time.

At least my mind was no longer focused on how tired I was and how sticky the mud felt under my feet.

As I ran, irregular breaths seeped from my mouth in spurts, and the tears would not stop streaming. I wasn't upset because I thought I might die. I was upset because I felt betrayed, because I felt naive for thinking Lyewkin was ever anything more than a man whose job it was to hunt me down.

I should have expected this. I shouldn't have tailed that damned shadow. I should have gone home tonight. If nothing else, at least my memory of Lyewkin would never have been tainted so. How could the man whose mission was to kill me be the same man convincing of his trustworthiness?

I had to admit, he was good.

I was surprised to arrive at the shop in one piece—head still intact and heart very much beating. Though it wasn't relief that coursed through me. For if I were a cutthroat, I'd wait to dagger my victims in their sleep. And seeing that Lyewkin and I were more alike than I thought, I wouldn't put it past him to be watching me right now, waiting for me to return to my tri-fold. Chester would awaken to my bloodied corpse, or the scents of rotting flesh wafting through the floorboards. And the entire thing would be one gory heap. One that Chester would have to scrub clean, himself.

Oh, by Djinn…

I noticed light still beaming through the barred windows of our storefront, and the theories of my bitter end were put on pause. When I opened the front entryway with ease, I grew concerned. That door was always locked at this hour. The candles and torches were always blown out. And it wasn't like Chester to forget.

"Chester?" I called out, my voice bouncing between the shelves. It was deathly still, quiet, apart from the floorboards creaking under my weight.

Rounding the shelf nearest the door, I peaked my head around it. The shelves carved a barren walkway to Chester's desk and jewelry display, the latter having been ransacked and the lid of glass broken in, like an axe was driven through it. My breathing picked up, as I propelled myself to the aisle adjacent to the first—my feet kicking through fallen knick knacks—my eyes scanning the messied shelves.

"Chester!" I yelled this time. I treaded slowly, carefully, and peaked my head around the next shelf.

Then I froze.

My nose and eyes began to sting, and before I could help it, tears and mucus were dripping out of them.

My grandfather laid limp and blued, slain with a spear lanced fully through his throat. Only the butt of the weapon remained at the fore of his frame, just below his Adam's apple. The remainder of the steel piece—which I recognized from our weapon rack—continued out the other end, perching his head at an angle in the air, whilst the rest of him laid lifelessly against the blood-soaked floor. Every inch of him had been dyed red—his garments, his shoes. Even the cane that had rolled off to one side of his leg now laid flat in a puddle of blood.

I began to gasp for air—sobs causing my chest to heave and mind to stall entirely. My lower lip, now trembling, curled into my teeth.

And before I could think, my body reacted—sprinting toward my grandfather. I kneeled before him, not thinking twice of the blood and gore that drenched my gown and wet my skin beneath it. Alas, the spear was jammed tightly at his nape, and no way I could position him would change the fact that his skin was cold to the touch, and no part of him drummed anymore. Not his right wrist, nor his left wrist, nor his heart.

I fell back onto my heels and wailed. In time for the thoughts to hit me at once.

Who could do such a thing—wreak such havoc? The pain that Chester must have felt in his final moments… I let a sob slip from my chest, one loud enough to wake all of Devon.

The one thing I cherished above all—gone—and to a place I couldn't even picture. I'd never wake to his puckered, monocle-donned face again. Nor his curses spiraling up the staircase and passing through its thin walls. I'd never hear that cane of his smacking into this or that, nor would I smile again at that sweet, raspy sound of his choking laughter.

More tears. More sobs.

Wrapping my arms around him, I did my best to ignore the stickiness of his ruby-drenched garments—thick like tree sap and everywhere at once. It was the last hug we would share, and doing so now made me regret hugging Chester so seldomly in the years he could have squeezed back. This time, I did so as tightly as I could, no longer having to worry about his feeble bones. I squeezed. I sobbed. I cried.

What would I do? Where would I go? Who would ever love me again?

And who could do this? Who could be so cruel? Who could be so vile, so heartless?

Who could kill? I was much too stunned in disbelief to let what I had discovered tonight sink in. Still, it did. Slowly, my face uncoiled, eyes widened, and mouth gaped.

Cutthroats. Cutthroats killed. A cutthroat could do this—could be so cruel—could be so vile and heartless.

My sorrow blended with fury, as I let myself flood with hatred. I hated everyone and everything—the city, the thugs, the dust, the nobs. I hated that Chester never felt wanted by Pale, that he couldn't afford to leave it, and that he loathed it just as I did. I hated that he spent every moment working, and that he never was awarded a single luxury for it. I hated Port. I hated Ristic. I hated the bloody shops and stalls crammed full of pricey things and whatsits.

But most of all, I hated Lyewkin. For he knew how much I loved my grandfather, and still, he drove that spear through his throat.

I found myself doubting his will to do such a thing, and thinking that he was the only one capable. One thought contradicted the next, clouding my judgment that much more. But what were the odds I'd learn of Lyewkin's secrets on the same night of discovering Chester's mutilated corpse?

Of all the louts and cads, men and women, nobs and wharfs—why did it have to be him? And why Chester? Why did Chester have to be taken from me, too?

Of all the queries that struck me at once, one was particularly gripping. Where was Lyewkin's pendant?

For clearly the killer was searching for something—the jewelry display had been bashed and looted. So if Lyewkin's pendant was missing, there would be no denying his being here tonight, nor his involvement in the murder of my grandfather.

My head pounded and eyes stung from the tears and lack of sleep, and my legs felt like they'd been plugged full of clay. Still, I pushed my way up the staircase en route to my attic bedroom. I couldn't lay beside Chester all night, anyway—not when his rotting corpse stared at me. And not when the scent of rust-like metal steamed from his puddles of blood. No—I'd be forced to climb these steps eventually. Though each creaking one was a struggle.

When I reached the top, I traversed the hallway, pausing at the sight of Chester's bedroom door. My lips pursed, and eyes burned, but I kept the mourning at bay. Now was not yet the time. Besides, my entire body clenched in gut-wrenching cramps due to fatigue and dehydration. I had to preserve whatever tears I had left. If not for sanity, for survival.

I entered my own room and took in its subtly scavenged appearance—the way my chest-of-drawers was not as I left it, the way my tri-fold was shifted a pace, and the way my glass pocket watch was seemingly kicked across the floorboards to my window, where it rested against the wall. It never rested against the wall.

And flipping my tri-fold over—giving it a good shake to be certain—I had my answer. And it burned my chest. It stung my heart. It was enough to make those tears I held at bay come flooding again.

The pendant was gone.

I may as well have slain Chester myself. For none of this would have happened had I not stolen that pendant in the first place. If nothing good ever came of stealing family heirlooms, death and suffering surely came of stealing tokens of lout life.

➸

I crashed down onto my tri-fold and cried for Djinn knows how long. Long enough for the crack of dawn to wash the sky in saffron swirls. Gusts of wind picked up and sent our shop's signpost banging against the wall beneath my window. I cranked it open and felt as the ocean gales surged through, knocking me to my derrierè in all of my withered up weakness.

I laid there for another period of time, feeling my core tighten in cramps that made me submit to the fetal position. The wind was cold, and it blew the contents of my room this way and that. It caused my skin to awaken with goosebumps and my hair to blow up from my face, exposing my neck and ears to the crisp gales that blanketed me in more goosebumps.

Some of the gusts were so harsh that I thought our shop might crumble to pieces. Especially when their tails whooshed between the cracks of our wooden walls and shook the pillars that lifted me. Our shop had pushed through its fair share of storms, but considering that its heart was gone, I half expected this to be the end. I'd be crushed between the beams above and ground below. Beside Chester.

I decided I'd let it happen. I wouldn't fight it. But when the gusts died down to but a light breeze, I realized I'd have to find another way to end this pain.

It took me another good hour or two—sporadically crying, cramping, and dozing—to find my feet again. When I did, I wobbled, and the room spun. I made it to my chest of drawers and clutched the wood of its make for balance, pulling the bottom one out and removing the layer of stockings and hosiery.

Beneath the garments were pouches of shillings… and pouches of dust. I stared at them. I blinked at them. I felt stripped of all emotion as I pawed them.

If used accordingly, the pouches of dust were leather clad bundles of death. I had known so my whole life. I think some buried part of my conscience collected them for that very reason—for this moment.

I could end the misery now, but then what would become of Lyewkin? What would become of his buyer, Stoney Diamond? The two would get off scot-free, Chester would receive no justice, and everything about his death and mine would be in vain.

I leered at the pouches of Djinn dust, turning one over between my hands.

A leather clad bundle of death. It was one of many that sat in my drawer.

And thus, the plan was hatched. I had nothing left to live for, nor defend. But all I could see was red. I refused to do Stoney's job for him. If he paid for a thief, a thief he would get. Just not in the way he expected.

I'd give him something to kill for. Something beyond petty larceny.