The walls talk in Gaidos… or so they say.

When the formal invitation for tea and cards with Princess Unah arrived at Resort Black, Nikase triple checked with the courier that it was sent from her. She skipped around her suite for an embarrassing number of hours, and had an existential crisis for the latter four. 

By now the princess would have heard about Nikase and her circumstances regarding her stay in Gaidos. This meant, that in spite of all, she was willing to give Nikase a chance. 

Although… doubt simmered in a crevice of her subconscious. Your colleagues don’t forget when you take a life.

The Ojedas were well known for their generational wealth, and the generational wisdom that came with being Saigar of Rites, pillars of the community, and pushing the country forward by upholding the customs and laws that governed it. For centuries, the men of her family had assisted in shaping Dofev into the glorious nation it was today. And while it wasn’t perfect or unrivaled, it stood out among its peers for being one of the fastest growing superpowers. 

The Nikase of before would have been proud of this. 

The Nikase of before would have been proud of the finest dresses she owned, the finest bags, and the finest jewelry.  Fine, not gaudy. Old money was subtle, it didn’t try as hard. It wasn’t about the notoriety of the brands, it was about the quality of the materials. 

She couldn’t recall when she last cared about that, but she had to make an effort given the importance of the woman who extended the invitation. 

Walking out of her suite, in the best dress, in the best hair, in the best makeup, she was that person again. Nikase Ojeda. A person of respect. A person others wanted to be, despite being a person Nikase didn’t want to be.

“I’ll let Princess Unah know you are here, Lady Nikase,” said the uniformed footman, bowing and excusing himself from the hall. 

“Thank you,” she said after him. Taking the opportunity to marvel at the architecture of the private wing. 

She had visited the upper part of the palace on a previous occasion, not the section reserved for the royal family, as it was limited access. The exorbitant nature of everything she had seen screamed everything her family tried to suppress. Gaidos was very much ‘new money’, and in all fairness, Bevij as a whole was a newer country compared to its neighbors. 

“Lady Nikase?” The voice wasn’t that of the returned footman, but it was a familiar one.

Standing under an archway was the ‘sun’ of Bevij, Valkom Arte Mios, taken aback by her presence.

“Your highness,” she bowed instead of curtsying this time, realizing her error too late. 

Unlike before, he omitted commenting on her formality. 

“What brings you here?” he asked.

“Ah, Princess Unah invited me over to play cards.”

He nodded, connecting the dots. “Right, she invited friends over for cards today. Even sent out for pastries. I’m glad she’s making friends, it can be difficult here.”

“I’ll admit it was surprising – her invitation – but I can’t deny my looking forward to it.”

The footman reappeared, coming down the stairs. He looked concerned, and at the base of the stairs he clasped his hands together apologetically, “Lady Nikase, her highness Princess Unah sends her greatest apologies. It seems a matter of great importance has come up, and she will be unable to see you today.”

Valkom reacted first, visibly confused. “Is that so? That doesn’t make sense–”

They realized it together, she saw it in his face. Sometime between the princess sending the invitation and Nikase’s arrival she had caught wind of the story. The whole story. And if her intention was to make friends among the court, having Nikase there would only hinder that.

In her embarrassment, she broke eye contact with him and feigned interest in a painting. Suddenly, Nikase became the person nobody wanted to be. 

“It’s alright, I understand… Perhaps another time.” She held out the gift she brought Unah, an expensive fruit desert from her country. “Here, do you like pancettos?”

“Wait, stop.” He lowered the paper bag in her hands gently, and glanced at the large carved clock face built into the wall above them. “How good are you at cards? Are you any good at table football?”

“Read another one Lior,” clapped Chaya, a stunning muscular woman sitting on the billiard table. 

Moments after her awkward encounter with Prince Valkom, Nikase found herself in the game room at his friend’s estate. He near-pleaded for her to come along, assuring her that he was on his way there anyway, and not something he put together on behalf of her hurt feelings. 

And that was true. On their arrival at the Saëns’ household, she was introduced to Liorit Saëns and Chaya of the Ruda Ridge. They explained that Chaya was visiting, and that their get-together was a result of that. 

Liorit read the game card in her right hand with an animated voice, and gestured with the drink in her left:

“Alright, alright. The victim is Penny Barnett, 56, botanist. The suspects are Leon Barnett, 45, the spouse of the victim. Kristina Waters, 47, the victim’s business partner. Angela Clay, 35, the solicitor in charge of her estate. Marie McCann, 27, the hired help. And Dominique Moody, 33, an ex-associate. 

“Penny Barnett was found collapsed in her garden late in the afternoon, seemingly a victim of a heat stroke, until the guard discovered several stab wounds through her abdomen—”

“Stabbing! That’s a crime of passion!” Valkom shouted from the other side of the billiard table, popping a couple of pancettos in his mouth among other desserts.

Lior held a finger up and continued, “The coroner declared that the first stab was the fatal one and that the direction of the wounds went from left to right—”

“The killer was left-handed!” Chaya clapped again. 

“The body was discovered by Marie McCann, who waited 20 minutes before calling the guard, claiming resuscitation attempts as her reason for waiting. According to witnesses, Walters and Moody were the last to see her alive, they left the Barnett home around noon. Witnesses have corroborated this. Her husband was upstairs on the opposite side of the house according to their staff during the act, and didn’t hear a thing. I’ll take your questions now, remember you have seven.”

The card game was new to Nikase, and popular in Idon according to Valkom’s friends. Each card had a prompt with a puzzle to solve, and the players were allowed to ask no more than seven questions before coming up with a solution. This was the first card of the evening with a violent crime, but it was to be expected with the genre. 

“What was she stabbed with?” asked Chaya.

“A gardening fork.”

“What was the reason for the business partner and the ex-associate’s visit?” Nikase asked, rather invested in the game despite the dark turn.

“Walter’s and Moody were meeting about Moody’s dismissal. Dominique Moody was having an affair with the victim's husband.”

“Ooh!” Valkom leaped over the back of a couch and made himself comfortable. ”Is the husband left-handed?”

“The husband is right-handed.”

Nikase took a swig of her drink. The heir himself had mixed it, and it wasn’t as sweet as she had hoped it would be. 

“Why is her solicitor a suspect?” she asked. 

“That’s a good question,” noted Chaya.

“In the will admitted to the probate court, Angela Clay was named executor and sole beneficiary, despite having no familial ties to the deceased.” Liorit read from the card.

“That is very suspicious, but if her husband was cheating on her, she might have changed her will shortly before the incident,” Chaya leaned back and spread herself flat on the inner part of the table. 

“Yes, but the stabbing seems excessive for someone with no personal ties to the victim.” Valkom interjected, “What reason would she have for being so upset at her?”

“Well, perhaps that was the intention. You assumed it was a crime of passion because of the number of stabbings, but what if that is what Angela was counting on?” It was late enough in the evening that Nikase was less reserved with her comments, so she continued, “Say the victim disclosed her reasoning for writing her husband out of her will when she changed it – that’s if she changed it. There’s a chance she simply wrote him out of it, and the solicitor made an additional adjustment later. My point is that she might’ve seen the husband or the affair partner as the opportune suspect.”

“I kind of like that,” said Chaya from her odd position. “ What question are we on? Five? Can I ask if the solicitor is left-handed?”

Liorit looked at Valkom and Nikase with a wry smile.

 “Do you guys want to spend a question on that?”

Valkom glanced first at Nikase who shrugged.

 “Sure.”

“The solicitor is in fact left-handed,” verified Lior, taking a drink. 

“Oh heck yeah,” Chaya sat up in excitement. “That was good Nika! My money’s on Angela for the murder then.”

Valkom struggled visibly, only partly convinced. “I suppose I too vote for Angela. Is it Angela, Lior?”

The woman turned the card upside down to read the solution written on the back: 

“When Penny Barnett wrote her adulterous husband out of her will, Angela Clay saw an opportunity to pay off her steadily increasing gambling debts. She staged the woman’s murder to appear as if it was committed by her husband.” Lior laughed and winked at Nikase. “Great catch.”

Liorit Saëns was the red-haired woman Princess Unah spoke of that day in the puzzle room, the woman who was good at everything. And so far that proved to be true. She’d won a majority of the card games, then the table football, and the billiards. She did it all while holding an ungodly amount of liquor in that thin fae-like frame of hers. 

Nikase didn’t find it intimidating however, because there was a sadness in her light green eyes that grounded her to the earth. 

Another thing of note was Valkom’s demeanor. Nikase liked the way he regarded Liorit. He would tease about losing to her at the games, but his pride wasn’t wounded by her beating him, and he didn’t try to make her feel like less of a woman for it either. 

If Princess Unah saw Liorit being good at everything as something she had to compete with, she was wrong. Lior wasn’t the competition, Valkom saw her as someone beyond him, perhaps beyond anyone.

Chaya of the Ruda Ridge, had been Valkom’s first wife a number of years ago. Seeing that they treated each other as genuine friends meant that Valkom hadn’t always been as horrible as he was rumored to be. Nikase even felt somewhat optimistic for Unah.

As the night wound down, Chaya spilled a drink on her blouse and Liorit invited her upstairs to find her a change of clothes. They were gone a long while, and Nikase felt validated for it. She detected traces of their chemistry throughout the night, and if she was right, Princess Unah had even less reason to worry about Lior. 

Valkom, a little tipsy, was rambling about some Dofec dessert he couldn’t remember the name of. He eventually realized that Nikase’s thoughts were elsewhere and changed the topic.

“Earlier, when we were playing that whodunit game, I made that awful comment about stabbing being a crime of passion. I wasn’t thinking when I said that, I apologize. Looking back on it, playing that game was probably in poor taste.”

“Oh, not at all. I rather enjoyed it!” Nikase blurted. “I didn’t think anything of the comment either. I don’t think about… that constantly. Well– I do but I don’t. It’s different when I’m in the company of others, depending on the company of course… Actually, before all this I very much liked the genre.”

There were layers of tension on her face hardening into a mask. She’d come to know a little about Valkom during the evening, and she felt that she could be herself around him, but she found herself overcompensating in a different way. She didn’t want people around her to tiptoe around her in order to spare her feelings, so she over projected her ‘okayness’.

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” he said. “I’m sorry about Princess Unah.”

“It’s alright. At the end of the day, I can’t fault her for it.” Nikase rationalized both to Valkom and herself. 

Even in his inebriation, he saw through that effort. “She could’ve handled it better.”

“I’ll admit the timing was unfortunate,” she tried to sound cheeky, but he was displeased at her making light of the transgression against her. 

Did he believe Nikase? The story she told him the day they met? No. He was too clever for that. He wanted to believe her, she could tell.

He sighed, “Nikase, the sooner you realize that we’re all sharks swimming in a pool of sharks, the sooner you’ll realize that sometimes we have no choice but to bite back.” 

His eyes looked at her, then through her, as if he were recalling both instances. Being the bitten shark and being the shark who bit. Nikase resonated with that inner conflict, despite a minor flaw in his way of thinking. She failed to name it because she never found it in her own thinking. Instead, she thanked him for the sentiment and called it a night.