Cui Bono

Posted on 10 Nov 2021 @ 3:37am by Mage Kalian Winter & Warrior Martin Josceran & Warrior Rhiannon Cadash

3,175 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Summerday La Fête
Location: Jader
Timeline: Cloudreach 25th

Once the opening ceremony had concluded, people began to celebrate in earnest. A small group of bards started playing a lively tune by the pole, so that those who wished could keep dancing. Maybe they'd be the ones tying the ribbon next year. Mother Giselle was going from person to person, greeting them and giving blessings in equal measure. Martin noticed Gauvain standing nearby, far enough to not intimidate people but close enough to intervene should there be any threat. Best not bother him while he was on official duty.

"I think the children are getting hungry," Raoul said. "Should we have something to eat ?"

"Sure," Martin said. "Tell you what, you find somewhere to sit and I'll go buy the food."

"I wouldn't mind a snack… and a drink," said Kalian. He looked to Rhiannon. "Will you accompany Martin and I?"

Rhiannon listened as the group talked about getting food and drink. She gave a smile to the kids then looked to Kalian. "I am famished." She took Kalians hand and started to go look for food.

There were a lot of booths selling food and the lines were only getting longer. One booth sold Fereldan spicy stew in hollowed out loaves of bread ; another had waffles and pastries, a third a choice of Rivaini appetizers. Jader was a port city, after all. A dwarf sold dwarven biscuits shaped like gems with colourful icing and beer pies, and a little further, two elves manned a booth with Dalish specialties. Several booths also sold beer, wine and cider, hot or cold, with or without spices.

"So many choices," declared Kalian, grinning at Rhiannon and Martin. "It's a good thing the festival lasts for seven days, so we can sample everything."

Before Martin had time to ponder the many choices available his attention was drawn by a man, stumbling out of the privy with bulging eyes and a panicked look on his face. Maybe he was just horrified at the state of the temporary privy erected at the edge of the Chantry buildings, but somehow Martin didn't think so.

"Help !" The man mouthed, looking around desperately, but he seemed to be so shocked that his voice didn't rise above the general noise and chatter.

"Ser ?" Martin strode over to him. "Is everything alright ?"

The man - he recognized him as Jerard, the Miller - looked intensely relieved when he saw Martin's uniform. Although he wasn't on duty until later he was wearing it as he wouldn't have time to head home to change before the start of his shift.

"Thank the Maker ! You - I - They - " Jerard stammered, then soundlessly pointed at the privy.

Kalian wrinkled his nose and followed Martin toward the privy and the man calling for help. His first thought was that Martin should let a guardsman on duty handle this drunkard, and his second thought was that on the first day of the festival the privy less likely to be unpleasant than on the last. But then he recognized the miller, an upright and generally sober man who was unlikely to demand attention for something of his own making in a privy. With a glance at Martin and Rhiannon, Kalian ventured past the Miller, and looked inside.

A person slumped in front of the privy seat in the recognizable position of someone who had passed out during the act of vomiting. "Looks like the poor sod started over-indulging early this Summerday festival," Kalian observed.

Rhi was with Kalian and Martin as they were discussing what food to her. Everything sounded good to her. She had been pretty quiet since they had went to get food for them, the kids and Raoul. She had been about to give her opinion about what to get, when a man came from the privy area and started to talk to Martin.

Apparently Martin knew the man so he followed him back to the privies. It was there that they found a man slumped in one of the privies. Rhi had seen drunks before and had also seen dead bodies. This was not a drunk. She took a step closer to Martin and spoke quietly. "This is no drunk." She looked to the man who brought them here. "He needs to stay calm. (pause) I can take care of him if you want to deal with this."

At first the scene did look like a drunkard passed out in an embarrassing position ; but the unnatural stillness of the body made something unpleasant churn in Martin's stomach. Rhiannon's words crystallized his uneasy feeling into a more concrete conclusion. Damn. The day had started so well.

"Don't," he replied to Rhiannon's offer, uncertain what exactly she meant by 'taking care of him'. "I'll handle this."

The person in the privy was human, with thinning straight dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, like many on the Jader chantry grounds he was dressed like a citizen of moderate means. Kalian had seen plenty of drunks before, and on taking a closer look he knew Rhiannon was right. He pressed the fingers of one hand to the man's throat. His skin was cool to the touch, but not completely cold. "No pulse," he said as he attempted to apply healing magic, but it was like trying to pour water into a sealed-shut container. "Definitely dead, but not for long. I don't see any wounds. Who is he?"

Jerard, the Miller swayed and then sank to the ground right where he was standing. "His name is Arnould Rigal. I just met him earlier today."

Rhiannon stood aside to let Kalian look over the body. He confirmed that the man was dead and had not been for long. She looked to Jerard when He said the mans name. Stepping over to him, "You have any idea what might have happened?"

"I don't know what happened," said Jerard. "We were watching the opening ceremony together, and planned to, uh… continue celebrating back at my place. I offered to show him the mill. We were drinking. He bought a bottle of wine from some elves. I don't like wine, I had beer from one of the vendor stalls. Then suddenly Arnould clutched his stomach and ran to the privies. I waited a bit, but when he didn't come back I went to check on him."

Rhi listened as Jerard told them what he knew. The mention of elves and wine drew her attention. She looked to Martin. "Being festival, I am sure that wine is being sold by quite a few. Still, it is quite a coincidence that as soon as he drank it, he runs to the privy, then dies."

"Could be the wine, could be anything else," Martin observed. He knelt by the side of the body to take a closer look.

It was still warm, a clear indication that the death was quite recent. The mess - and the smell - suggested that whatever had killed Arnould, it had definitely involved the content of his bowels. His clothing suggested he was middle class, and his hands - callused and thick, with a number of scars - suggested he was some kind of artesan. A mason or carpenter would be Martin's guess, or maybe a smith. In his mid-to-late thirties, he didn't look sickly, the vomiting and dying aside. Unlikely to be a disease then. Upon closer inspection, Martin noticed specks of white foam on the man's lips.

"What else did you have, aside from the wine and beer ?" he asked, turning back to look at Jerard.

"Huh..." Jerard blinked, clearly still in shock. "Meat pies."

"Both of you ate the same thing ?"

"Yes."

That didn't prove anything - meat pies from the same vendor could have different ingredients, and one of them could have had spoilt ingredients. But the wine did seem like a more likely culprit.

"Where's the empty bottle ?"

"He... he threw it away. I can show you where."

"What about the elves who sold the wine ? Where were they, what did they look like ?"

"They didn't have a proper stall," Jerard said. "They were going around the crowd with their bottles, selling by the glass. I didn't really look at them. I think one of them had long brown hair, braided, and a blue shirt. That's all I remember."

Rhiannon gave Jerard a nod when he said that he could show them where the bottle was thrown away. "Of we can find the bottle, I might be able to tell if it was poisoned." She looked to both Martin and Kalian, her eyes glittered in the sunlight as she lowered her voice. "I've delt with things like that before."

Kalian had moved away from the cooling body, and knelt next to the miller, putting a supportive hand on the poor man's shoulder whilst Martin went into full-investigation mode. At the mention of wine, he caught Rhiannon's gaze. Could it be the wine the Night's Kiss brought back from Val Royeaux? "Martin, I think we should – discretely - call over another guardsman to take care of the body, and then – if Jerard feels up to it – try to find that bottle."

"Dealt" with things like that before ? Martin had always known that Rhiannon was involved in shady activities - the way they had met made it hard to ignore - but poison and potential murder were a notch above what he'd expected. And, if Rhiannon had been the perpetrator rather than the victim of such, that made her... well. Probably someone a guard should not be associating with.

Possibly someone he ought to investigate.

Perhaps even someone he might have to arrest someday.

Pushing back those uneasy thoughts he tried to focus back on the task at hand. Right now it did not matter where Rhiannon got her expertise, only that she was willing to use it to help them untangle a man's death.

"We may need an alchemist or potionmaker's help to identify the poison, if this is indeed poison," he said to Rhiannon. "But any insight you can share is more than welcome." A glance at Jerard revealed that the man looked shaken but no longer like he was about to faint on the spot. "Do you feel able to show us now ?"

The miller nodded, and Kalian helped him to his feet just as a Guardswoman appeared, he recognized her as the one who had taken custody of that robber, the evening he'd met Martin.

Rhi caught Kalians glance and shifted closer to him as he was helping Jerard up. She looked up at the miller, tilted her head slightly, "Alright. Let's see if we can find the bottle. Lead the way."

"A moment," said Kalian. They couldn't just leave Martin with a dead body. He wanted to watch what happened with the guardswoman. The way certain members of the guard operated, if he and Rhiannon walked away with Jerard now they might be accused of the crime.

"A good Summerday to you, Martin," Audrey was saying as she approached. "Here you are again, working on your time off, taking care of drunks…" She got a better look at the man and gasped. "He's dead."

"Quite dead," Martin confirmed. He hesitated momentarily. Ordinarily he'd have asked her for help, rather than civilians. But Kalian's gifts, and Rhiannon's expertise, were invaluable and they would be hard-pressed to make use of either within sight of another guard. "It looks like it just happened. We may have a lead but we need to follow it now. Can I leave the crime scene in your care ?"

"We may have a lead ?" Audrey repeated somewhat caustically, glancing pointedly at Kalian and Rhiannon, an eyebrow arched.

Martin tried not to grimace. After the stunt he'd already pulled, insisting on working with civilians was going to land him in trouble. Well. More trouble. He couldn't see a way out of it though, not if he wanted to find out why Arnould was dead. "I'll explain," he said. Or he'd try, anyway, without betraying his friends' confidence in the process. "Please, Audrey."

"You better have a really good explanation," she muttered. "And the next round of beers is on you."

"Thanks." Martin gave her a tense smile, then looked at his friends and Jerard. "Let's go." Before Audrey changed her mind.

With the on-duty guard now in charge of the body, Kalian nodded to Rhiannon and Martin. To the miller, he said, "Try to remember where Arnould threw the bottle."

Jerard walked on his own for the most part, leaning only slightly on Kalian as he wove among stalls and booths, until the miller came to a stop next to a booth selling ribbons and a stall selling paper bound into blank books. "There," he said, and pointed to the narrow space between, where trash was already starting to accumulate.

As expected during a festival day, trash was easy to come by. The space between stalls was littered with dirty wrappers, bits and pieces of half-eaten food, a torn ribbon, and several bottles. Martin came closer and had to squeeze himself between the booths to pick up the bottles. The owner of the ribbon stall looked like he was about to protest but after a look at Martin's uniform thought better of it.

"Guard business, don't mind me," Martin said, and he stepped back with his prize.

He showed Jerard what he had found ; three bottles, one made of ceramic, one made of green glass, the last made of clear glass, all with slightly different shapes. "Which one was it ?"

"This one," Jerard pointed to the ceramic bottle without hesitation. It looked the fanciest, with a sticker depicting a woman with long hair that turns into a river of wine and traces of wax where a seal used to be.

Kalian took the bottle, careful not to spill any remaining contents, and examined it closely. "I don't recall this vintner's design on the label, though Ben, my brother-in-law might." He looked to Rhiannon and raised an eyebrow as he handed it to her. Could this wine bottle be part of the shipment the Night's Kiss transported from Val Royeaux? As far as he knew, Jessamir had delivered a sealed crate to Robertson's warehouse.

Rhiannon had nodded and waited till the new guard had come and taken over at the scene. Once they were set she followed along to the spot where the miller remembered. It didn't take long for Martin to find the bottle. Rhi looked at over once Kalian had taken it. Keeping her face straight, her mind though ran through the possibility that it night be from the cases that her mother had just come back with. She glanced at Kalian and had a feeling that he might be thinking the same thing.

"We could show this bottle around, warn anyone else who bought some, and find the people who sold it to Arnould," said Kalian, thoughtfully. "And we could find a master potioner, in case there's enough left in the bottle to identify what killed him." He rubbed the stubble on his chin, wasn't that odd fellow who couldn't find the privy a potioner?

"If we walk around telling people there are poisoned drinks being sold there will be a panic," Martin said. "There are young children and older people here. I don't want to risk a stampede. We need to do this discreetly. Let's look for the elves Jerard described, and keep an eye out for anyone holding a bottle like this one. That's our priority, we'll have time to identify the poison later."

If they split up they'd cover more ground, but if they saw the suspects they would need help to capture them. The guard had specific strategies for this sort of things, but none Rhiannon and Kalian would be familiar with.

"We need to stay within sight of one another," Martin said finally. "Let's comb through the square, see if we can spot either the two elves or some of the bottles."

Rhiannon looked at Kalian and then to Martin. "I agree. Split up but stay insight of each other." She moved to stand next to Kalian, looked up at him, smiled, motioned for him to lean down. Once he did she kissed him and the hugged him, whispering in his ear that they need to talk.

Kalian did not need much encouragement at all to lean down for a kiss from Rhiannon. He nodded in response to her question, then he knelt on one knee and kissed her again more thoroughly, temporarily forgetting that Martin and others might be watching, before he finally stood, a grin on his face.

Rhi almost forgot what she had just said to Kalian as he kisses her. Oh did that man know how to kiss. Course she was no innocent herself. She gave as good as she got. When they parted, Rhi looked at Kalian, her eyes sparkling crimson as a wicked mischievous grin crossed her face. Followed by what Kalian might consider a blush.

Those intelligent eyes, that pretty pink blush, those luscious curves… Maker's breath, he was a lucky man. Kalian surreptitiously adjusted his trousers and turned his attention away from activities he hoped to engage in with Rhi later, to protecting his town and the task before them.

"What about me?" asked Jerard. This Summerday festival had started out so well, he and Arnould should be back at his place doing what those two were, but now… the miller needed a stiff drink, a good night's sleep, and a diversion at the brothel… and not necessarily in that order.

It was probably best for Jerard not to be alone right now, Martin thought. Shock could do funny things to people, he'd witnessed it more times than he cared to.

"I want you to return to Audrey - the guard we left in charge at the privy. She'll tell you what to do, alright ?" Jerard looked a little bit grey in the face at the thought of returning where the body was, and Martin softened his voice. "You don't need to go inside. Just stay outside and do what the guardswoman tells you."

"What about the... those who did this..."

"We'll catch them," Martin promised. "You can leave it to us."

"And stop anyone else from getting sick," added Kalian.

"Alright. Good. They should pay," the miller mumbled. He was twisting his own fingers so hard it had to hurt. The shock was just setting in.

Rhi moved to stand near Jerard. She looked up at him and smiled. She reached in her pouch and pulled out her small flask. She handed it to Jerard, "Here, take it. Small sips to calm your nerves. Make sure that you stay with the guard ok. I will check in on your in a bit ok"

"Thank you, serah," said Jerard, accepting the flask. "Very kind of you. I, uh, I'll go back to that guardswoman now."

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