As I walk away from the hideout, I hear the rickety entrance door open and shut behind me. I turn, annoyed, thinking it's going to be Triel or maybe Falas wanting to follow me around again. I'm wrong. It's Enturi. Guess the pretty boy doesn't feel like hanging around either. Probably figures he's done enough bootlicking for the day. Then again, he never seems to get tired of it.

Whatever. I have more troubling things on my mind than him. I keep moving.

"Arq?" He calls out after me.

"Ugh," I snarl in irritation, my voice rising. "What is it?"

"Sounds like you had a busy night last night," he says, catching up to me and matching my pace.

"Yeah."

"So you saw Bolin after he was killed?"

"Yeah."

He is silent for a moment. When he speaks, it is not what I expect.

"I'm sorry he was killed. He seemed like a good dwarf - a good person."

Enturi's an idiot. Bolin wasn't a good person. He was a child-killer. A sick and greedy monster hidden beneath a disguise of naiveté and prolixity. I guess that makes me an idiot too, though, because he seemed decent enough to me too. Until I learned better.

"Yeah, well, he's dead now," I mumble.

Enturi stops walking.

"Arq?" Something in his voice makes me stop walking as well. I turn around. He looks at me searchingly.

"Last night, at Bolin's workshop," he says, watching me very closely. "Was there . . . ?" He pauses again. He's having trouble spitting it out. But I know where he's going with this.

"Did you . . . ?"

"Kill Bolin?" I reply. "No. Did you?"

He stares at me, shocked.

"What? Why would I-?" he asks, flustered for a moment, before regaining his composure. "No. No, Arq. I did not kill Bolin." He shakes his head. "That's not what I was going to ask you."

"Fine," I say. "So what were you going to ask me?"

The pretty boy licks his lips. "I was just wondering whether you saw anything in Bolin's workshop that might indicate who killed him?"

I roll my eyes.

"Did you miss the part about me being framed?" I snarl. "The only clues left in Bolin's workshop pointed right at me. A sickle stuck in Bolin's brain, exactly the way I do it. My cuirass on the worktable. Slime, even a stinking witness, since Triel walked in as I was bending over Bolin's corpse. Once I cleared out those false clues, there was nothing left."

"Nothing unusual or that didn't seem right?"

Damn it. Enturi's got me back in investigation mode. I go over the workshop again in my mind.

"Hmmmmmm . . . " 

"What is it?"

"Well," I say. "It doesn't really point to anyone in particular as the murderer, but you've seen me kill with my sickle that way. It's a tricky execution method. I have to be right in front of the victim, who has to be restrained or surprised. It's an easy attack to block or deflect if the victim is on his guard."

I can see him recalling the times he has seen me do that. "You're right," he says slowly.

"Bolin wasn't bound," I tell him. "But he sure as hell looked surprised. So he wasn't on his guard."

"That's suggestive," Enturi says. He ponders this information, getting that distant look he gets when he's thinking, like he's looking right through me. After a few moments, his focus turns outward again and he gives me the same worried, serious expression he had when I walked into the map room earlier.

"I'm glad you got there in time to undo the set-up, Arq," he says softly. "Jet would have killed you for sure, and Bolin's murder would probably have started a ward boss war." He smirks. "And I would have lost my best partner."

He reaches out his hand toward me. I remember his trick with the half-ogre in Jeamo's studio. A magic touch of fear.

"Stop," I tell him. "Keep your hands away from me."

He lowers his arm. For a moment, he looks hurt. Then he sneers.

"Relax, Arq. No harm meant." He turns away, and then turns back to me again.

"I was just going to say that next time you have some half-baked idea to steal magic runes or get into goddess knows what else, if you need some backup, let me know."

"Why? So you can run off to Jet and take all the credit if it goes well or blame me if it blows up? No thanks."

He laughs. "Fair enough. See you in a couple days, two-blade." He turns and walks away down the alley.

I stare after him for a moment. What the slime was that all about? Ugh, who knows? I need to get some food. And then some more sleep. 

I have plans for tonight.