18. Belles to the Walls VI.

“Why did you, Lady Christina, murder Sir Amadeus Woodward?” asked the Constable, his voice a little bit muffled from the handkerchief covering his nose. 

“Hmph! I did no such thing!” Winn shot back. 

“Ah-ha!” the Constable yelled. “You say that, yet multiple people saw you and Lady Amelia make a break towards the powder room after your little… shall we say, accident…” 

He leaned forward and raised an accusatory eyebrow. “Fleeing from the scene, were we?”

The skunk closed her eyes and pointed her nose in the air. “I figured that my presence wasn’t the most… desired at that particular moment, so I decided to step out until the smell died down.” 

“I see…” René said before he began to walk in circles around her. “You know… that would be the perfect distraction for murder, I think—releasing a spray so awful, so potent that nobody will want to even be close to the body! Because that’s where you did spray, Lady Christina—right next to the grazing table, right next to where the victim was found!” 

Winn continued to snoot. “Sir Woodward was still alive by the time of my accident, I’ll have you know! Lady Amelia and I weren’t even near the table whenever the body was discovered, we were over by the powder room!”   

“It’s true,” Majel nodded with a mouth full of room-temperature Wellington. “At that moment, I was preoccupied with consulting Lady Christina, since she was still crying about her accident.”

Winn shot her a dirty look. Not one of betrayal, but an acidic “You bastard…” 

The Constable sneered. “Miss Marchmain, please be quiet until I speak to you…” 

“But you are speaking to me at this very moment…?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his non-handkerchief-holding hand. “Lady Marchmain, after I finish this sentence, do not talk again until I start questioning you. Got it?”

Majel’s brow furrowed in confusion. “So… now?” 

“Shut up!” he yelled. He turned on his heel and walked away. “Nevermind! It’s obvious that you two couldn’t have done it—this one would be too busy stuffing her face, while everybody knows where this one is at all times, thanks to her constant, odoriferous aroma! You twits couldn’t even tie a knot, let alone get away with murder!” 

Majel, who spent most of her days tying The Festering Wound’s rigging, furrowed her brow. “I’ll have you know, sir, that I’ve tied many a—oomph!” she said before Winn shoved the rest of the Wellington into her mouth. 

Whenever D’anna finally came to, it felt like her head couldn’t support the weight of her brain. She winced in pain as she sat up, wiping specks of dirt off her face and trying to piece together what had happened before she passed out. Cain’s calling out her name echoed in her mind, to the point where she thought he was still there.  

“Captain…!” the elf called out. 

No response. 

She stood up, immediately hunched over in pain, and began to limp in the general direction the dogs had dragged the skeleton. Around the corner of a neighboring house, she heard a collection of noises that made her pointy ears twitch. It was a mix of muffled panting and the repeated scraping of something solid yet hollow. It sounded like whenever Majel could afford one of those huge, fried seagull legs at Saint Khan’s—or the undead crew enjoying the aftermath of a Navy boarding.

The elf limped towards the noise, too woozy (and, albeit, a little naive) to realize the potential danger of doing so. “C-Captain…?” she repeated, that time more of a whimper than a yell. 

Peeking around the corner of the house, she saw the pack of dogs laying on the grass and enjoying the fruits of their hunt. Each of them chewed on a weathered bone, drooling and gnashing their teeth against them. While most of the skeleton (including his skull) were nowhere around, Cain’s belt and his clothes laid only a couple feet away. (Although, if they were even more tattered than before, D’anna couldn’t tell.) His sword laid in the grass, reflecting the moonlight against its polished blade. 

“Captain!” D’anna screamed out, her limited vocabulary remaining unchallenged. It would’ve attracted the attention of the guards of Fiddler’s Green, had they all not mysteriously disappeared.

“You… you… you…” the elf stuttered, clenching her gloved fists. Brimming with rage, she picked up a stone from the pathway and threw it in the direction of the dogs. It missed (as intended), with a few more following in its path. Once the rocks started to get too close for comfort, the hounds retreated, leaving their spoils behind.

The elf fell to her hands and knees again and crawled towards the discarded remains. With a twitching lip, she picked up a skeletal arm (the humerus all the way to hand), and hugged it tightly. As the beginning bouts of ugly sobbing began to heave their way upward, the elf shakily bundled what was left of Cain together and sulked her way back to The Festering Wound. 

“At least Majel will be a good captain…” she thought.

“And you are absolutely sure that you and Sir Woodward did not attend the same fencing class at Drummond?” 

“No. He took fencing, I took Steel Arts,” said a bleary looking guest. “It’s easy to mix them up if you haven’t taken the class.” 

“I see…” the Constable sighed. He smacked his lips together and took a swig of lemon water for his now-sore throat before addressing the ballroom. “Attention, everyone! Besides Mr. Everbright, no leads have made themselves known. I will now start a second, more thorough round of questioning in just a few moments, please rema—” 

A collective groan of protest erupted from the miserable partygoers. It had been three hours since the body was discovered, the grazing table smelled bad, and everybody was wearing uncomfortable shoes. 

“I know, I know!” the Constable consulted them, “but it remains extremely crucial that—” 

Scritch, scritch, scritch…

The Constable’s words reached an abrupt halt. Confused, he turned around.

“What was that?” he asked. 

“Someone’s at the door…” one of the guards answered. 

“Something’s at the door…” the other one corrected. “It was a scratching, sounded like a dog whenever it wants to be let outside.”

The Constable took a step away from the door, reaching for his pistol. “Stand guard, open when ready…” 

One of the guards pointed his musket and bayonet towards the door. The other slowly opened it. 

Standing there was an impossibly skinny silhouette. It didn’t look to be whole, The Constable could see slivers of the night sky through its body. The crowd screamed in terror as a flash of lightning illuminated its corpse-like appearance. It was Cain.

After boarding the Festering Wound with some assistance from the crew, D’anna locked herself in the Captain’s Quarters for around half an hour. It was her first time crying over the loss of a loved one since her cow, Tasha, had eaten some moldy hay. Her sobbing carried through the cracks of the ship’s wooden floors, echoing throughout the lower decks. Even the zombies, while largely emotionless, knew that something was wrong. 

As the ship’s temporary captain, Malone shuffled up to the Quarters’ front door and knocked the best he could. (Meaning his stiff, twitching hand slapping against the wood a couple times.)

After a couple seconds, a red-eyed D’anna opened the door. “Y-yeah?” 

The zombie held out a dripping scalp for her. He tilted his head to the side and clacked his jaw together a couple times. 

“I’m… not hungry, but thank you for the gesture…” the elf sniffed before closing the door on him.

Malone turned around and helped himself to some yummy forehead. 

The bony captain was in an even rougher state than usual. He was completely bare, unarmed, missing his right arm, and covered in grime. He shambled forward, uncharacteristically quiet yet still (stupidly) bold.  

“What the hell is he doing?!” Winn cried. 

Majel held her hands in her head. She didn’t have an answer.

The skeleton stood still for a moment or two, shifting his body around as he adjusted to the weight of having only one arm. His gaze laid on Winn and Majel. Before he could blow their cover, though, one of the guards took the opportunity to rush at him. Hearing the frantic stomping of boots against the hard ballroom floor, the skeleton shifted to the side and narrowly avoided a bayonet to the chest. With the guard trapped in a precarious, stabbing-at-nothing position, Cain managed to wrestle the gun out of his hands. The skeleton rammed it through the guard’s stomach so hard that it pinned him to the ballroom wall, running a lovely floral wallpaper.  

“Alger!” the other guard gasped. He watched as his friend remained motionless, save for his pupils. They turned towards his direction before Alger’s head finally flopped downward and his chest decompressed.

The skeleton threw the bayonet onto the floor and looked around the ballroom. He slowly twisted his skull around, carefully scanning everyone in attendance. Wide-eyed socialites and shivering aristocrats stared back at him, too petrified to run away, let alone scream. He finally stopped whenever his gaze met with the group lined against the northern wall—the residents of Fiddler’s Green. With his one arm, the skeleton pointed to the Duke. 

“Peregrine…” he hoarsed, “I’ve come fer you…” 

“L-Leopold Halsey…!” the Duke muttered underneath his breath. His eyes fixed on the ghoul’s missing arm. “Why aren’t you dead…?”

Winn gave a confused look to the equally confused Majel. “Who?” 

The cat just shook her head and shrugged. 

The skeleton began to shuffle towards the Duke, pointing at the coronet. “Give it… ta me!” 

“If this is about Darkoyer, you’re too late!” the Duke yelled, backing up. “With you out of my way, I finally sold the deed!”

“Yer head!” the skeleton yelled, unhinging his jaw. He sped towards the Duke and wrestled him to the floor, strangling him until the Duke’s white skin began to turn color. 

“René…! For gods’ sakes, help…!” Peregrine garbled. They were the only intelligible things he could say, given the skeletal fingers actively squeezing his throat. 

The Constable, not knowing what to do against this undead abomination against the gods, watched in horror. Just before the Duke’s neck collapsed in on itself, the skeleton eased his grip and stood up. Pregrine, too busy gasping for air, didn’t protest when the skeleton took the coronet off his head. Satisfied with his plunder, Cain turned to the crowd. 

“Yer days of reckonin’ be nigh…” he croaked in a monotone voice. “Yer empires and yer parties be built on tha bones of tha weak and tha exploited. All of ye have blood on yer hands… and fer that, you’ll pay in due time.”

He left without incident, leaving a wheezing Duke and bloody guard in his wake. 

The ballroom became alive again as the Constable took to the Duke’s injuries while Wallace unpinned Alger from the wall. Everybody was talking—fearing for their eternal souls, blaming the murder of Woodward on the skeleton, or talking about this ‘Leopold Halsey’ character.

In the midst of this flurry, Winn leaned towards Majel. “…do you think we should leave now, or…?”