“Two please,” Cayd said to the Swine’s Pearls bartender. “For now, of course.” He waited for the mugs of draught ale while turning to look at the dark, run down tavern. Zora was seated alone at the largest table in the room. She was thumbing through the tips from the afternoon of work, grumbling about how much was about to be wasted on the city watch with one hand. The other hand was gently holding the bottle amulet from Tidus.

  “Here you go, Cayd,” the bartender said, sliding the mugs to him. “The boys’ mugs are frosting. Thanks again for bumping up those spells.”

  “Of course,” Cayd said, winking. “Least I could do for you.” Cayd walked to Zora, taking the seat right beside her. Zora shifted away. Not enough to move the chair or seem rude. But enough to make a statement.

  “They’re usually here by now,” she said before he could say anything about what he surely noticed.

  “You’re right,” Cayd said as he took a drink. “I feel bad for cutting my shift so short on Linda.”

  “You didn’t have to start late,” Zora chided. “How was the market, by the way?”

  “How’d you know I went to the market?”

  “Because you brought more magical trash back with you! And you aren’t smart enough to just pick it out of the cans. You’d buy it, you big idiot.” Zora poked his shoulder playfully.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it! Like, I can leave you a message and can replay it every day. Whenever you want to hear my voice.” Cayd tried not to look at the amulet. He did not want to be too obvious.

  He could hear Tidus whispering to her whenever she bathed in the tenement’s miniscule tub, or worked the kitchen’s deep sink. He knew they had something between them. But for some reason, Cayd felt he deserved to know. They had been together for a month now. Zora would claim she hid nothing, and to be fair, the way she burped and farted after a meal, she had a point.

  “Then I would sling whatever it was out a window or straight into a fire, eh?” Zora laughed.

  The door to the Swine’s Pearls swung in with urgency, catching the attention of the three. Usually people hoped to be quiet when they came into the dump. But that night, a young, skinny member of the city watch, barely able to hold two mugs of ale, was in the doorway breathless.

  “Zora, Cayd,” he sputtered as he moved to the table. He grabbed for Cayd’s beer and threw it back in one go, drinking it so fast he began hacking.

  “Relax,” Cayd urged, jumping to his feet. “What’s going on?”

  The guard caught his breath and sighed. “The captain. He sent me. The boys won’t make it tonight.”

  “What, you all get in trouble for drinking on the clock?” Zora asked, eyes narrowing.

  The young man looked away. “Nah, no trouble, miss. Worse. There’s been another death. Found her just a while ago. Same as all the others. Right eye gouged out. Three stab wounds.”

  “Truly?” Cayd asked. “That’s great!”

  “Cayd!” Zora gasped.

  “No, no,” Cayd sputtered. “No, it’s bad, I mean. But, I mean. Can we get to the scene? Can we look things over?”

  “Not this one, Cayd,” the guard said. “The church was on it like Chael on a battlefield. They’re getting freaked out by this, too, ya know. Fifth murder so far. Confirmed that is. Fourteen women are still missing.”

  “So what did the captain want us to do?” Zora asked.

  The guard stood up and reached into his back pocket to remove two leather booklets. He slid them across the table to Cayd and Zora.

  Cayd opened one and grinned. A bronze badge depicting a bunch of grain and a roll of cloth crossed over a buckler. The seal of the Crossroads Metropolis. The badge was shoddy and dull, but still handsome.

  “Welcome to the city watch, says Captain,” the guard said. “Now you won’t have much time. But the captain says you need to beat the Church to the victim’s mom. Learn what you can from her.”

  “Why don’t you guys do that?” Zora asked, taking a swig from her mug. “Since these are your badges and all?”

  “You think the Church will let us figure this out? They keep taking every bit of evidence we would find. And take credit when they collect the evidence. If y’all are as serious about catching this guy as you say, then learn what you can.

  “Worst case, you just warm mom up for the next round of questioning when the Church gets to her.”

  “It can’t hurt, Zora,” Cayd said. “We need to try.”

  Zora finished her drink and grunted as she rose to her feet. “Whatever. I was looking forward to drinking and playing some Divine Intervention tonight. Guess we’ll go tell a mom her daughter’s dead.”

  The pair walked through gaslit neighborhoods, their hands checking the leather booklets in their pockets from time to time, just to be sure they were still there. Cayd would eye the piece of paper with an address on it whenever they walked in the halo of light from a lamp.

  “This is the street,” Cayd said, peering at a road sign on a corner.

  “And there’s the number there,” Zora said, pointing at a small row home with no yard that was right against the cobblestone street. Only one window was lit from the inside, and the porchlamp glimmered with a magical light. No pedestrians in sight. So Zora moved to cross the street.

  “One second, Zora,” Cayd said, double checking. “It’s late. I don’t want to go knocking on random doors.”

  “Hilda! Oh Dreamer, Hilda!” That one woman could make so much noise was shocking to Zora. She froze completely as an old woman emerged from the house’s door and began zipping toward her.

  “Um,” Zora tried to say something, but the old woman had her arms around Zora, holding her tight.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Hilda,” the woman cried. “I was so worried. All of these horrible stories.”

  “Ma’am,” Zora said softly, her heart thumping with discomfort at what was about to happen.

  “Ma’am,” Cayd said, swooping in to save Zora. He pulled the leather book from his pocket and flicked it open to get the old woman’s attention. “City watch.”

  The woman stopped for a moment, looking from Cayd’s leather book to Zora. And she saw Solanna’s brand on Zora’s forearm. “Who are you?”

  “C-city watch,” Zora said softly as she raised her arms to hold the old woman.

  “But,” she said, looking back up at Zora. “You look like Hilda.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Zora said softly. The woman shuddered once and began to wail. Zora held her as she broke down.

  After allowing the woman to cry for a moment in the street and begin to calm, Cayd and Zora were able to move her into her home. After lighting some lamps and steeping some tea, they tried to discuss the situation with the woman, but whenever she got a good look at Zora, the tears would come again.

  So, Zora removed herself from the room. She wandered around the main floor of the home, looking at the decorations and knickknacks. Whoever Hilda was, she had a well off family. The painting of the plaster walls was immaculate, with portraits hung in gilded frames sitting beside shadow boxes filled with jeweled statuettes. The furniture in every room was beautiful. Not a stain or speck of dust.

  In the main hallway, Zora found a family picture. It looked so real. How the picture was made, she had no idea. Cayd probably did. It was far more detailed than any painting she had ever seen.

  But what truly caught her eye was Hilda. The woman was in the picture, standing beside a decade younger version of her mother. And sure enough, Hilda was a dead ringer for Zora. There were some distinct differences in the face structure, but even Zora and Hilda had the same slight hip tilt in their posture.

  “Does she deal with anyone surly?” Cayd asked. “Unauthorized magic users or anything like that?”

  “She doesn’t have magic,” Hilda’s mother explained. “None of us were ever any good. Don’t go to church enough, my husband always said.” She sighed.

  “Did she have any strange friends? A Gavundari?”

  “No, no,” the old woman said, shaking her head. “She knew better than that. I mean, I taught her better than that.”

  Cayd glowered.

  “No offence, of course. But you know those Gavundaris. They are just power hungry. But of course, I can’t speak to her private life. She lived on her own, after all.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  “This morning,” the woman answered, beginning to get emotional. “We got a late breakfast. She told me she was going to pitch her book to a printer in town. Kraag’s host is so close. She thought she could get a great audience.”

  “Where in town?”

  “The actual Crossroads.”

  “Had she been there before?”

  “I don’t know.” the woman paused for a moment to collect herself. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. Where did you find your partner? She looks just like my Hilda. She had such a unique hair color. Always said it was her dad’s good genes.”

  “I just got lucky,” Cayd said softly.

  “We usually do when it comes to the women in our lives.”

  “Hey Cayd?” Zora called from the hallway outside the room. “Come here for a second. I want you to see something.”

  “Do you mind, ma’am?” Cayd asked Hilda’s mother.

  “Please.”

  Cayd rose from the plush armchair and moved to meet Zora in the hallway. “What’s going on?” he asked her quietly.

  “Look at this picture.”

  “Oh wow. That’s a flash capture,” Cayd said with excitement. He admired the quality as he mused about the magic involved in catching the image.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, ass,” Zora hissed. “Look at it.”

  Cayd stopped for a moment and studied the figures in the portrait, and went slack jawed when he saw who he knew to be Hilda. “She looked just like you.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about that, Cayd.”

  “It’s probably just a coincidence, right?”

  “I worked with a god to sail around hunting ‘bad pirates’ for a living, Cayd. And now I’m branded by the goddess of the sun to hunt a murderer. I’m starting to think that things happen for a reason.”

  “But what reason does this have?”

  “I don’t know, Cayd!” Zora whispered in exasperation. “Maybe this was all a big long play for you to fulfill your gross fetish with that Zarraz guy?”

  “Oh, yeah, I came all the way across the ocean to murder you. Idiot.”

  “Look, Cayd,” Zora said. She poked the portrait in its top right corner. “How did they know about this, Cayd?”

  “About what?” Cayd asked, following her finger. The portrait captured the family standing in the shade of a tree. Zora’s finger was jabbing an inconsequential jumble of twigs and leaves, so unimportant to the picture taker that it was left in a blurry semi-focus.

  “The eyeball, Cayd,” Zora said, her voice cracking. Cayd noticed a flash as a static charge arced from her fingertip. “The eyeball! The eyeball!”

  Cayd watched in horror as Zora began to get hysterical right in front of him. Even more off-putting was the fact that he had no idea why. Lightning zipped up and down her arms as tears began to gather in the corners of her eyes.

  She stared at the corner of the portrait, jabbing it and hissing the two words before finally turning her head away. “How did you know, Cayd?”

  “Zora, let’s go home, okay?” Cayd put a hand on Zora’s shoulder and she embraced him in her fear.

  The walk back home was tense. Zora was completely silent, and not in the terse way that Cayd had come to be used to. She was frightened. As she walked alongside Cayd, she held her pendant in her hand.

  The city was beginning to react to the news of another murder. Even in the normally late-to-bed pub areas, not a single person could be seen aside from a paladin patrolman. Cayd and Zora were even stopped once and challenged for identification.

  Cayd managed to talk their way out of it by saying they had been mugged, using Zora’s state as evidence. The paladin was not happy to let them go, but he looked the other way.

  When they finally returned to Linda’s, Cayd was disappointed to see the restaurant closed up. He was hoping to give Zora some soup or a mug of tea to calm her. Instead, they just went upstairs and she went to bathe.

  Cayd waited for her to return to the common area of their studio apartment. He was still uncomfortable from what had happened. Not as disturbed as Zora, to be sure. But what had she seen that he could not? An eye, she had said. What does that mean? And why did it scare her so badly?

  He waited for quite some time before moving to the door of their washroom. He prepared himself, even though he knew what he would hear. The muffled voice of Tidus was echoing through the small room, rather clear through the thin, cheap walls of the old building. “Zora? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, sorry,” she replied. “Give me a second.”

  After a short while, Zora emerged from the washroom in her pajamas, a loose fitting blouse and cotton pants. She looked at Cayd apologetically. “Did you get anything from Hilda’s mom?”

  “Not really,” Cayd said with a sigh. “Just that Hilda looked like you.”

  Zora did not respond. She climbed onto the one of the two twin beds she had claimed and took a deep breath.

  “So what was going on with that picture?” Cayd asked. “The eye?”

  Zora avoided eye contact for a moment, then turned to him. “It was nothing. I uh… I did this thing when I was younger where I would look for shapes in pictures. That one just kind of made me nervous is all.”

  “Come now, Zora,” Cayd said, shaking his head. He watched her for a moment, looking for some remorse that she had lied.

  “So what’s the next step?” she asked.

  Cayd stared at her, not sure if he should challenge her desire to change the subject. So badly Cayd wanted to get to the core of this woman. Especially after what had happened. She had lost control in that old woman’s home. But when he caught a hint of sorrow in her eyes, he thought better of it. “I do not know.”

  “Well,” Zora said, stretching. “You better figure it out. The faster you work, the faster I get to go home.”

  Cayd frowned. “I guess there is one lead.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We can check what the other women looked like?”

  Zora paused. “Well, do you mind if I just take an extra shift with Linda while you go and check that?”

  “Not at all, Zora.”