Barron winced as the ivory needle drove roughly into the tender flesh that bordered the throbbing wound under his rib.
“Quit yer cryin’, ya ninny,” Agnes chided him, but she softened the barb by winking up at him with one pale gray eye. Barron smiled down at the old widow affectionately as she resumed stitching the cut closed.
“So, you was tryin’ ta save some orphans that was bein’ attacked when you got all chopped up, you say?” she continued. “Now, that doesn’t explain why ya showed up ‘ere all smellin’ like a sodding stablehand, though...”
Barron winced again as the dull needle scraped off of a tender rib. The old woman had been an accomplished seamstress in her earlier years, but cloth and leather didn’t tend to feel pain when the needle punctures it and she had long lost the delicate touch of youth and relied instead upon sheer stubborn resolve.
“Well, there was some horses in the street,” Barron lied, knowing full well the woman would not believe him, “I guess I could have tumbled into a mess o’ shite during the rumble.”
“Well, I can’t ‘ave ya comin’ back ‘ere at all hours of the night, reeking of shit and leaking blood e’erywhere,” she admonished him sternly, though the look of concern on her kindly, wrinkled face did not change. “I’ll knit and clean yer coat...again...though ya might wanna consider getting’ another set of clothes someday soon; I’m not sure even I can keep that raggedy ol’ suit in one piece much longer.”
“Well, I’d change my outfit in a moment if anyone in this sodding city knew the tiniest bit about fashion,” Barron responded, flashing Agnes a mischievous smile. Then his expression grew serious and he continued with a sincere, “Thank you.”
He had been very lucky to stumble across Ms. Primrose in the storm cellar when he had arrived in Eadwald; the two of them had hit it off almost immediately. The stern woman had reminded Barron of the Abbess of the Orphanarium that had tried to raise him up proper, and she in turn said that he reminded her of her dead husband; he had been a sailor from Manea she would tell him often, with a faraway look in her pale eyes. Agnes promptly invited him to come and stay with her when the storm finally passed them by, and Barron gratefully made his bed upon a hard cot in the cozy sitting room of her tiny house. He pitched in with some coin when he could and with bottles of her favorite plum brandy when the dice rolled in his favor. Most of the time he repaid her by doing the seemingly never-ending list of housework and chores as a meagre compensation for her kindness; and she in turn never bothered him with his comings and goings.
Agnes finished with her suturing of the cut on his side with a flourish, and then roughly spun him around so that she could begin working on the less grievous cut on his back, tsking in annoyance and worry the whole time.
As she stitched, Barron let his mind wander in an effort to distract himself from the tedium of the pain. Life here in the Capitol city had been pleasantly boring for a short while, but in the past few days had brought a lot of ominous activity: the sister of his friend had been murdered; they had stopped some Enclave witches from trying to kill a small boy; and they had found themselves in the presence of a talking dog. Oh, and he had also been forced to offer his services to the sodding Dusters in return for them calling off the vendetta they had against the strange group that Barron had found himself running with the past few days. All of these events were also peppered with stories of magic portals, and eyeless Inquisitors, and deadly clouds of smoke, which all helped add to the chaos and intrigue of the previous couple days.
The cloud of smoke story really gnawed away at Barron. Bexley and Sinikka certainly did not seem like the types to lose their cool in a fight, nor did they seem to be folks who would swagger on about things that did not happen. The two women had sworn that a fog had descended upon them and had tried to bite them – a fog with teeth? – and they had only barely fought it off before the City guards arrived. This attack had occurred in the exact same spot where Ysera’s body had been found, and – in spite of all of the distractions of the past couple days – finding her killer still remained his top priority.
He needed to go back to the scene of the crime and see if he could find any more clues as to what might have happened to Ysera there – the authorities certainly seemed to show little care during their investigation of the area, not even noticing the dead Mul that also littered the area. Somehow, Barron had missed them the first time too, it occurred to him later...how was that possible? Bexley and Mordantyr would certainly be better at examining the area than he would he realized glumly, and it would also be wiser to go in the company of capable fighters like Sinikka, Marrow, or Burryaga in case the deadly cloud decided to come back for a quick snack while he was out there. But Barron could not shake the feeling that they had missed something important at the site, and that time was of the essence. The trail to Ysera’s killer grew colder and fainter with every day that passed since her murder. Unease ate away at him, and he realized that he could not wait until morning - he would return to the scene as soon as Agnes turned in for the night, and he sincerely hoped that this would not turn out to be a terrible idea.
As soon as he made his decision, cryptic words began to dance upon the periphery of his subconscious, “Don’t split the party.” What could that possibly mean?