When morning dawned on the town of Mitissilva, clouds had rolled in. They were patchy, with gashes of sunlight spilling through, but all around those patches was a cold, dreary grey. It was hard to tell if it would burn off by noon or stick around and grow darker, more ominous, with time. The weather muted the town’s activity in familiar, autumnal ways. The shopkeeps were setting up their stands the same as always, but there was an almost sleepy note to their movements. They didn’t joke and laugh quite as much as usual.
Torvan Clemens stood at the door to the peacekeepers’ hall with coffee in hand. He was still thinking about that masked man. The whole interaction felt so strange to him. Mitissilva was just a humble, quiet town where nothing particularly strange happened. Since the war had started, even traveling traders had grown scarce. The town was in a veritable lull of normalcy. But even so: Why the mask? Why condemn oneself to scrutiny and ostracization when the solution is so plainly simple? Was it religious? He had heard of religions that cover themselves head to toe as a way of preserving dignity and guarding against unwanted attention. But the colors and design of this person’s regalia were anything but humbling.
The longer the stood there, the more he desperately wanted to understand what was going on in the head of that masked man. He had questions. Not probing, not accusing. It was a mystery that seemed unfair to present without any sort of explanation. There was a story. A man inside the mask. Who was he, and what did he want?
“You alright there, Clemens?”
“Wha-?’
Solstice was strolling down the road. She hadn’t bundled up in the least for the cooler morning except for a scarf that flowed out behind her when she moved. “You have the thousand-yard stare about you. What’s eating you? --Wait you aren’t still thinking about that harlequin, are you?”
Torvan shuffled his feet and twisted at the handle of his mug. “I’m justified, alright? I promised the guy I’d send someone by to check on him. Just tryin’a decide who.”
She rolled her eyes as she mounted the final step to stand in front of him and look him dubiously face to face. “You know you want to.”
“I mean--”
“I know you do, Clemens. Just go. Frankly, I want a report when you get back to me. That guy was strange.”
“Are you...sure?”
“I’ll get someone else to cover your morning rounds. As far as I’m concerned, this case belongs to you. Go on.” She didn’t wait to give him further chance to argue but disappeared into the building with a swish of scarf.
That was that, then. Torvan looked down into his mug and chewed his lip. He sure hoped he was the right person for this. Mister Mask hadn’t seemed particularly fond of him yesterday; though, maybe that had something to do with whatever illness was making him wobbly on his feet. He shook his head. Right. Let’s get this over with then.
Ms. Reevin sat at the reception desk, thumbing through a book. The few tables that had been set out were empty, though the smells of breakfast food still clung pungently to the air. Torvan raised his mug by way of greeting on his way to room number four, one of two occupied rooms in the hallway.
He knocked.
He waited. He looked around at the paintings on the walls, that doormat in front of room seven, the depths of his coffee. The coffee had long since gone cold, but it was still something to fidget with, to peer into while he was thinking. He cleared his throat.
He knocked again. “Ahh, hey there, ah... --well, we never really got a name for you, did we? It’s me, Torvan, again. Promised I’d check up on ya.”
The room on the other side of the door remained silent.
He shifted his weight between his feet. “Look, ah. I just want to know you’re okay, yeah? And if y’want, we can go to the market and find ya some breakfast. Just...please open the door so I can see that you’re alright.”
Another moment. Still nothing. Worry sank to the pit of his stomach. He should have called a doctor over yesterday. The masked man could easily have passed out the moment they parted ways, with no one to find him until now.
Torvan grimaced and pounded his fist on the door. “Mister Mask?” he called more urgently. “Mister Mask, I’m going to open the door. Count of five. four. three. two…” He grabbed the doorknob and twisted, but it clacked against the lock. Shoot. Shoot.
“Emley!” he shouted, “tell me you have a spare key for room four. ...Emley?”
“I’m checking, dear.”
“Check a little faster, please!”
“Here, I have one.” Ms. Reevin came around the corner with a key held aloft like the tail of a dead rat. “You were right, though. He didn’t cause me any trouble. Very quiet. Very… strange.” She took her time drifting down the hallway and knocking on the door once for herself, before inserting the key to open the door.
The smell that pooled forth made them both recoil without thinking. Each had their own expectations about what they would find on the other side of that door, and the smell fair about confirmed it for both of them.
Torvan felt his heart miss several beats and hastily threw an arm in front of the innkeep, pushing her back. “You stay out here. I don’t know what to expect from this guy.”
He didn’t have his peacekeeping belt, but his hand hovered near his waist anyway as he crept into the room. It was spacious as far as inns go, plenty of open floor space. The bed looked untouched. In fact, the room itself looked untouched save for the closed curtains and-- His breath escaped in a rush. Four disposable pie tins, one pie half-eaten, one pie untouched. It was the pie that smelled.
His voice came hoarsely, whether from relief or disappointment he couldn’t tell: “He’s gone.”
Ms. Reevin appeared at the doorway, delicately shielding her nose with one hand. “Should I get the coroner?”
“What-- No. No. I mean, he’s not here.” Torvan pushed aside the curtains and opened the window. It would have been more convenient if it looked out at the town instead of at the trees, but at least it was something to look at while he mopped his brow, sighed, and drank his coffee. “I sure hope he’s out on the town.” Because if not…? Who knows where he could have gone. What if he really had been a spy, scouting out Mitissilva’s defenses, or their lack thereof? What if he came back with raiding parties?
He swallowed and tightened his hands around the mug. “Do you mind cleaning up the pies? I need to look for him.”
The cool air felt like it had more of a bite when he emerged from the inn. The slashes of sunlight had shrunk in number while he was inside, making the world simultaneously darker and colder.
Torvan swore under his breath as he hurried down the road, scanning alleyways, doorsteps, hiding places as much as open places. When he reached the market, he found another peacekeeper meandering about and told him to keep an eye out too. Then told every other peacekeeper he passed, because the longer he went without finding the masked man, the more this felt like the raven that presages ill fortune in all those stories. After all, who would suspect a clown?
“Solstice.” He threw open the door and was swiftly shot down with a death glare from his commanding officer.
“Knock, Clemens. What’s the rush?”
“We can’t find him. He’s gone.”
“That… jestery guy?”
“Yeah. Looks like he ate the pies I got him and then left.”
“You got him pies? Plural?”
“Meat pies, okay? He almost passed out on me. I let him get what he wanted.”
She set down the folder she’d been looking at and pushed the drawer shut with a put-upon sigh. “Okay, sure. I’m guessing you looked around town. And the market?”
“Yeah. I let the others know to look out for him and bring him here if they could. At least let me know, if they couldn’t.”
“Alright. Then,” she turned her palms upward on the table with a shrug, “that’s the best we can do. If he left town, we can’t exactly chase him down.”
“But--”
“I know you’re paranoid, Clemens, but look.” She swept a hand back toward the window as if to take in the whole of Mitissilva behind her. “If a town greeted me by throwing me in jail on sight, I’d want to leave at the first opportunity too. Especially if I came from the mountains and had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world. Wouldn’t you?”
He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, feeling the adrenaline wear off the more that she talked him down from his panic. “I… s’pose you’ve got a point. S’just so… strange, though.”
“That’s a part of life. Some things we just can’t know.” She smirked. “Even if it does feel a little unfair not to get those answers.”
“...yeah. I guess you’re right.”
She eyed him for a moment from across the room. It was a careful, measuring gaze. Gauging. Calculating. Then nodded agreement to her own thoughts as she picked up another bundle of folders to prop on her knee and thumb through. “Why don’t you take watch over at the gate to Merchants’ Trail today. Some fresh air would do you good.”
The man laughed a deep, forlorn sound and nodded. “As you command.” He turned away and started to close the door.
“Hey. Clemens.”
He looked back.
“You gonna be okay?”
He couldn’t say for sure. The cases he’d had to date had all been relatively clean cut, black and white. Don’t steal. Don’t vandalise. Settle disputes with tidy compromises. But this was so thoroughly a grey area that he found himself wondering if it was possible to emerge from the situation feeling at all satisfied. Not anymore, it would seem. Not if the masked man had left town.
Torvan heaved a sigh and gave a weary smile. “Weird couple’a days, I’ll tell ya that.” He heard her chuckle as he pulled the door shut behind him.
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