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He remained quiet for a moment, his eyes seemed distant, before answering,“Another Spirit wishes to speak with me.”My eyebrows furrowed in question.“I will come back and wait here when I return.”
Odarum was gone in the blink of an eye. I glared at where he had just stood and released a frustrated huff.
Again with the disappearing. He’s supposed to be with me, helping me.
I rolled my eyes and turned back around to catch up to Nikan. At least the burning feeling inside of me had stopped, the soothing swirls having taken its place. I thought that perhaps it was correlated to Odarum’s proximity, but then that didn’t explain when it stopped the first time in Morah or why it stopped againbeforehe left just then. Maybe it had to do with my unmanifested magic.
Nikan and I pulled up our masks as we rode our horses into the city. People parted for us in the street, giving us a wide berth out of fear for the Roav, identifiable by the broach attached to each of our cloaks. An unprovoked reputation from those that were innocent. We had never harmed anyone who didn’t deserve it. Even the soldiers that we passed remained wary of us. Cowards.
We wove our way through the busy streets to the northern side of the city, where Nikan dismounted and entered one of the buildings. I remained outside on my horse and held the reins of Nikan’s as I kept watch.
The hair on the back of my neck rose with the feeling of being watched. I searched the faces and stone buildings for any threat but found nothing of real merit, and most averted their eyes.
After a few minutes, Nikan came out of the building and nodded to me, then led us to another location. We tied our horses to a post outside a run-down building with several smallresidences within. The stone building was cracked in multiple places, with broken windows and painted vulgarity on the outside. The smell was horrible. The residents’ excrement puddled in the alley next to the building, likely because the building didn’t have a water system and they dumped their waste out the windows.
I still had the feeling of being watched, and that meant they were also following. Training my eyes all around me and feeling for anyone coming closer, I searched for who it was. Nikan silently waited, sensing my apprehension, and looked around on alert.
After a couple of minutes, I turned to Nikan and shrugged, unable to detect anything substantial. We made our way to the revolting building.
My nose crinkled in disgust. I pitied anyone who had to live next to this putrid aroma. We entered the building and I followed Nikan up the dim, narrow staircase. A man lay unconscious on the stairs inside, and we had to step over him. We made our way up to the fourth floor before Nikan kicked in one of the wooden doors in the hallway. A rancid scent flooded my nose and stung my eyes. I had to cover my masked face to keep from vomiting.
A mattress on the other end of the room sat on the bare floor, stained and reeking due to the dead male atop it. I closed the splintered door behind me and walked over to the corpse. He was small in stature and completely naked, giving a full view of the Onyx-colored veins webbing over his pale skin.
“It’s the Onyx Kiss.” I bent down to inspect the body closer. There was a small puncture wound in his shoulder. That’s all it would take to poison the blood and with a small amount, it would have taken longer to fully kill him rather than the amount I use on the tips of my arrows. “From the smell and discoloration, I’d say he’s been dead for at least a week.”
“Discoloration?” Nikan bent down next to me.
“Yeah. The black color in the veins begins to fade over time. Usually around a week. See here?” I pointed to the male’s fingertips, the veins taking on a charcoal gray tint.
His eyes narrowed at me. “How do you know that?”
I fidgeted with my fingers and refused to meet his stare. “I may have conducted an experiment on one of my victims a few years back for a toxicology Scholar.” I tilted my head and gazed up at Nikan with an innocent look.
His eyes widened in horror.
“For the love of Xar, it wasn’t that bad. It was for knowledge.”
“I’m sure it was.” Nikan stood and shook his head. He gestured to the dead male. “This is bad. Really bad.” Nikan said as he walked over to the small, rickety desk. “No one uses the Onyx’s poison as a weapon besides you. It makes it look like you did it.”
“My work doesn’t look like this. Anyone who knows it well enough to recognize it would realize the differences. I’m much more merciful, opting for a quick death rather than dragging it out, where they would have time to get help. Not to mention, no one knows it’smewho uses it. They just know it’s a Roav thing. I doubt they even know it’s only a single person.” I stood to face Nikan. He was rummaging through the papers on the desk.
“He’s definitely our anonymous seller,” he said holding up a sheet of paper with the Morah emblem stamped at the bottom. “This is the proof of purchase and payment from the intake Scholar.”
“Is there anything else in there? Anything at all about where he got the book in the first place?”
“No. I don’t see anything indicating that. But I think his name was Moury,” Nikan said, looking down at me with a worrisome expression.
“We need to figure out who else knew about the book. It’s likely that wherever it came from was also who took it from Morah. They probably came for him first, extracted the location, then killed him,” I stated.
Something so big and so threatening to our realm lay within the pages of a single book. I wanted to curse the Spirits for keeping the Gods from interfering.
“That leaves us with no leads,” Nikan sighed.
I nodded slowly as I contemplated this information.
“Meet me on the outskirts of the city in an hour,” I said as I turned to leave. I didn’t give Nikan the chance to speak before I slammed the door behind me and left.
I stopped my horse in front of a small, quaint home on the western end of the city. I had always adored that house. Its limestone walls gave it a pleasing milky color that felt homey and welcoming. Large bushes of flowers lined the base all around the exterior, and the door was dark cedar that gave a striking contrast to the brightness of the stone around it. I tied up the gelding to the porch post and knocked on the wooden door after removing my mask, taking in a deep breath of that cedar scent.
