‘The Walser East Coast Under Eighteen Tennis Championship’ sported both the longest name in the tennis calendar, and had one of the most prestigious prizes that one could earn without going professional. A large cash prize and a trophy that was so big that most people wouldn’t be able to fit it through their front door without disassembling it.
There was a sister tournament on the West Coast, but it was smaller in scale due to the lower population density in the area and therefore considered a step down from winning on the East. Still – they were both places where promoters and agents tried to track down the next generation of tennis talent. A cursory glance would give you a firm grasp of who would be on top of the sport in a few years’ time, they just needed to have a good run.
Lance was not expecting any of our club members to get that deep into the bracket. They were good. Good enough to win smaller tournaments and inter-school competitions, but it would take a prodigious effort from our representatives to beat the best of the best.
The primary purpose of our attendance was to show everyone what a competition really looked like. It would run through the whole day, from an early morning start to a late evening finish. The entire area around the court was dressed for the occasion, with stalls serving food and providing entertainment for the spectators between matches. There must have been a few thousand people actively mulling around, even more, if we included those who wandered through to see what was going on.
I’d learn later that there were several members of the Liberal Democratic Party in attendance too. However – at the time I didn’t know, nor did I have any faces to put to the names I’d read from the list in my uncle’s office. I stuck with Lance and watched what the club was up to, rather than wandering off and getting lost.
“When is the first match?” I asked.
Lance nodded in Emily’s direction; “Emily is up in thirty minutes on the third court. These early rounds aren’t the most exciting – even at a national tournament like this, the skill gap between the different competitors is very high. This is where they separate the hobbyists from the ones who take it seriously.”
I crossed my arms disapprovingly, “I’m a hobbyist too.”
He scrambled to reiterate his previous statement, “There’s nothing wrong with playing tennis for fun or your health, but the folks who want to go professional with it spend a lot more time and effort training than the others. Some of them take competition like this too lightly.”
I was just busting his balls a little.
Emily tugged his shoulder, “Is there a spot for us to warm up?”
“Oh, right. It’s over here.”
Lance escorted us through an open gateway and into an empty courtyard where several benches had been left for the competitors to use. Some of the other competitors had already staked their claim and left their equipment bags here for later. A nearby brick wall was the only opponent Emily was going to find.
She groaned, “Squash rallies?”
Lance chuckled, “Looks like it. None of the others are going to want to tire themselves out so early.”
Emily resigned herself to her fate and pulled out her racquet and a ball. The rhythmic impact of that ball against the wall lulled me into an unfamiliar trance. Something was engrossing about watching her move from side to side, returning it to her unthinking partner with some serious force.
“You’re going to hurt your neck if you keep doing that.”
I shook my head, “Hardly.”
“You should go out and explore the festival before the match starts. You can find the schedule on the notice boards, they’re everywhere. The food is always fantastic.”
I wasn’t hungry yet – but I filed that away for consideration. The food was half of the reason to bother attending according to the other club members. They’d all scattered to the four corners of the three-block festival area to find their favourites. The studious members with matches were not yet permitted to go hunting.
“I’ll see you there.”
I left Lance to wrangle the rest of his athletes. He didn’t have time to babysit me all day, so I chose to get out of his hair and make life easier. There was plenty for one to occupy themselves with. Officially it was a tennis tournament, but the local businesspeople were not going to pass up the opportunity to exploit a captive audience of customers from across the nation. Each year the size and extravagance of the tournament increased in proportion to the money made available.
At this point – it was a large-scale festival that dominated three to four blocks of a semi-urban area on the edge of the city. This came about out of necessity. Facilities capable of hosting this many visitors were few and far between. For a single day every year, the people who lived nearby were sucked into a major athletic competition.
The courts themselves were arranged in a L-shape, with two stacked horizontally and another two positioned vertically at the bottom. A large three-story residential building followed the inner edge of the courts, while the opposite side was taken up by a set of wooden bleachers. The fence on the building’s side had to be higher to prevent balls from flying over and smashing their windows.
There was plenty to keep my mind occupied while we waited for the club’s first match. I arrived with no intention or plans to become a hyper-vigilant guard dog for anyone at the event, though fate clearly had other plans because it was impossible to miss the stressed expression of one Caius Willow through the thrum of the crowd. He spotted me, lit up like a Christmas tree, and made a beeline for my position.
I moved to an area off of the main road and waited for him to catch up.
“Good morning, my lady!”
He was back to his usual self.
“Hello Caius. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I honestly wasn’t planning on attending this event, but my informant handed me some interesting information about some of the attendees. There’s a strong possibility that they might try to launch an attack on them. Did you reach the same conclusion?”
I smirked, “No. I joined the tennis club to try and get close to the Franzheim family. They brought me along to study what the seniors were doing.”
“What a wonderful coincidence,” he joked, “There are two important members of the Republican movement here. Darian Fulmar, the speaker of the house – he’s going to be a big prize for those folk. The other is the Social Democrat’s treasurer, Don Wesel.”
“They have family here?”
“I’m not sure. Darian is famously infatuated with the sport and tries to attend every event he can, at least according to the rumours. Don Wesel’s eldest daughter attends the Royal Academy, she might be a member of your club.”
The name did ring a bell, but I hadn’t been a member for long enough to memorise every face and name. She was definitely not one of the athletes who’d been submitted by Lance to qualify for the tournament.
Caius looked uneasy, “I dropped by Thersyn’s manor a few days ago...”
“Thersyn Van Walser?” I said incredulously.
“No, not the King – the other one! Thersyn Bradley. He runs all of the conservative newspapers around here.”
I should have assumed that he was talking about somebody else. Thersyn was a popular name, and there were a lot of people who hoped that some of the royal shine would rub off onto their children if they were given the same name. Thersyn Bradley was born into a generation where the King was newly crowned at the age of twenty.
And besides, it was no easy feat to break into the royal estate. It was more accurate to describe it as a fortress than a home, surrounded on all sides by towering walls and a full complement of armed guards. Caius was good at getting away, but that was a suicidal idea even for him.
Caius refocused on the topic at hand, “I dropped by to try and dig up some dirt on whether he was involved with Cordia and the rest, but what I found was... much worse than what I expected.”
“Get to the point.”
Caius hushed his tone, “He’s a bloody Scuncath. I thought I was walking into a secret storage room, but I found a poor bloke with his ribcage ripped open.”
I scowled, “A Scuncath? In this day and age?”
“I thought the same thing, but there was no forgetting that sight, or the smell. I bought a bar of soap from a local shop and shove it in my face whenever I recall it.”
“And that’s his reason for joining their plan then? To seed discord in Walser so that he can take advantage.”
“I can’t say for certain, who knows what his sick mind is thinking about. He might be genuine about his intent to restore the monarchy, or he might be taking advantage of them to cause chaos. The outcome’s the same.”
He couldn’t find documents tying him to Cordia though. Given the man’s proclivities and biases, it was likely that he was in cahoots with one of them. Controlling the media space was essential to currying support for their side. Thersyn Bradley had a wide reach and influence to spare, some would even consider him a hero. To me, he was a dime-a-dozen populist.
To his credit – the murderous cult member angle was new.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“From what we’ve seen so far, these monarchists aren’t as united as they’d like to seem from the outside. Cordia is keeping blackmail on the others, Thersyn is trying to push them into a violent conflict, and Franzheim thinks she’s in control when she isn’t. I’ve never been part of a conspiracy to restore the monarchy, but those are the types of people you don’t want if your plan is to get away with a crime.”
“I agree, but merely showcasing faults in their alliance is not enough to prevent them from doing real harm. We can’t assume that they’ll fail because of their contrasting motivations. And here I was hoping to enjoy a day at the fair.”
He tipped his hat, “I’ll keep an eye out for any suspicious characters, after all – it takes one to know one.”
“Don’t do anything too risky. Alice is still waiting for you back at the manor.”
He smiled, “Naturally. Thank you for your concern.”
Caius merged back into the crowd and went about his business. I took a second to digest what he’d discovered about Thersyn Bradley. I knew of him. He was very wealthy for a man his age, coming in two decades younger than the sort of man you’d find at a noble garden party. Being a Scuncath was a ludicrous claim, but why would Caius make that up? It served no purpose.
The Scuncath were extremist followers of the Dark Goddess, but they were long since crushed out of existence by a government crackdown after a series of violent attacks. Their beliefs were diverse and incongruous in most cases – each sect had its own ideas about how to revive said Dark Goddess from her eternal slumber.
Ultimately, those ideas often involved gruesome acts of violence against innocent people, or self-mutilation that was levied unto vulnerable folks who were often targeted for their malleability. Being a part of a community or sect could force them into drastic action. They’d sooner remove an arm than find themselves excluded from a network that supported them.
It was almost time for the first match. I navigated my way through the crowds and found the entryway to the stands. Lance was seated near the back with the others, and he’d even saved a seat for me.
“You didn’t buy anything?” Lance asked.
“No. I’m not hungry just yet.”
Looking at the other students – I could understand the confusion. All of them were holding something to chow down on, from sandwiches to drinks, to hot food. If anything, it seemed that they were more interested in the food than the match. I soon discovered why that was.
Emily walked out onto the court and shook her opponent’s hand. Everyone clapped along as Emily made the first serve. The ball rocketed across the court, skimmed the top of the net, and shot past the opposing player like a bullet. It quickly became clear that she was not prepared for Emily’s level of skill, and the rest of the match was little more than a formality. Emily consistently outpaced and out-positioned the other player. She scored a paltry handful of points before finally being put to a merciful end.
“Nice play, Emily!” Lance cheered.
I could have probably won that match if I put my mind to it. I thought Lance was exaggerating when he said that the skill gap was extremely large in the early stages. Emily wasn’t happy about winning per se, she shook her hand again and walked off of the court without celebrating further. She was the competitive type. An easy game like that wasn’t going to satisfy her.
Lance grimaced as she moved out of sight, “She isn’t going to be happy about that one. Emily hates it when she gets an easy opponent. Hopefully, a sour mood doesn’t spoil her chances at a good run into the bracket.”
The tournament worked off of a seeded system. Players were assigned based on previous results and split into brackets. There was a second chance for the losers on the lower side – but I got the distinct impression that Emily’s opponent wasn’t going to have much of a chance down there either.
“Emily is very talented,” I commented. The main brunt of my attention was being hyper-focused on what Caius had told me. Now that I knew two members of the party were here, I couldn’t stop myself from scanning every face in the crowd to try and single out the potential assassin.
That guy looks mad. I bet he’s going to do the deed.
No, he merely dropped his beer at the foot of the bleachers. The look of sheer anguish on his features was quite unlike anything I’d seen in my two lifetimes. That was the face of a man who had just witnessed his entire family die in a car accident. I could only guess that the beer in question was unreasonably priced and designed to sucker in the tourists.
While I was preparing for the moment when the chaos started, everyone else was having a good time. I couldn’t put myself into that position knowing what I did, and it was all thanks to Caius stumbling across me and revealing what he’d found. Two hours went by, and several longer matches took place that got the crowd heated up. I was desperate to dip out and go to the lady’s room.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” I said to Lance – descending the stairs and walking between the stands. I kept an eye out for any suspect characters, but there was nothing that caught my eye during the trip there. Much to my frustration, there was a queue to use the bathroom.
So this was the reality of turning into a woman.
Okay, that wasn’t true. Women queuing to use the restroom was a bad stereotype, the organisers were just morons who underestimated how many people were going to show up for the tournament. This event was going to have to find some new digs sooner or later. The residents were probably at the end of their rope having to deal with this every year.
The silence was broken by a cloaked figure pushing her way through the crowd, initiating a commotion from the bystanders who were caught up in the chase. A moment later Caius appeared, already out of breath. I approached him from behind and tugged on his shoulder.
“What on Earth are you doing?”
“It’s her! Cordia! She was lurking around the VIP area and I found her! Where did she go?”
The bathroom break could wait. I took off in the direction where Cordia was last seen with Caius in pursuit. There were far too many people around to make quick headway. They were always getting in the way, in clusters and clumps of chattering buffoons. I grew tired of it quickly and started pushing them out of the way with some serious force.
Cordia, if it was her, was trying to escape the event area now that her cover was blown. To think that she was waiting near the VIP area for her targets to arrive, I really ought to have checked there first instead of leaving it to Caius.
“Out of the way! Coming through!”
I caught a glimpse of the cloaked figure scrambling up the fire escape of the nearby building. She was planning on moving into the more densely built area to evade us. It was a crying shame that I was both faster and more resilient than the likes of her. The metal rattled beneath my feet while I sprinted my way up each ladder until I hopped out on the roof.
They froze up by the edge of the next building and stared at me. The tall stature and sharpened features - that was unmistakably her. Cordia looked like a deer in the headlights. Caius finally caught up with me.
“Get over here before I do something I’ll regret,” I warned her.
Cordia was not surprised to see me, which struck me as odd. She didn’t know who I was, or that I was the person who held her at gunpoint a week before. Recognising my voice wasn’t so easy, so why was she not shocked?
“You... you damnable brat!” she spat, “Don’t you know when to quit?”
“This is the first time we’ve met, actually.”
Cordia paused but did not contend my claim as I expected. She turned on her heel and leapt from one roof to the next.
Caius was not being helpful, “She’s getting away.”
“I noticed!”
In my past life, if I was ever forced into a situation where parkour was demanded, that meant I’d royally screwed up along the way. I was agile – but moving around these spaces demanded a special kind of spacial awareness that took practice and time. Cordia was struggling herself, but it was her best shot at getting away from me. I couldn’t shoot her down, I didn’t have a gun.
I swallowed my hesitation and charged towards the lip of the rooftop, leaping up and planting my foot along the edge. The wind whipped through my hair as I travelled from one building to the next. The sensation of falling down to the other side forced my stomach into my throat.
Caius skidded to a halt behind me, “Bloody hell! I didn’t know you could do that!”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“You’re fast too!”
I wasn’t even trying yet, and the skirt I was wearing made moving my legs more difficult. I ignored his observations and powered on. Cordia wasn’t going to get away from me. I’d chase her down to the end of the city if that was what it took. Quitters never prospered. She was already halfway down another set of stairs before we reached the edge. The differing heights of the buildings would make navigation difficult.
“Stop right there!” Caius demanded as if that was going to work.
“Use your magic for Goddess’ sake!”
“I don’t know any offensive spells!”
I grunted, “I don’t care – just slow her down somehow.”
We were too far away for him to use his bag of tricks, much to my displeasure. I pumped my legs and got moving, rushing down the metal scaffolding and leaping from the ladder into a roll. The gap was closing somewhat. Cordia was in a tough spot of her own making.
I steadied my breathing and sprinted after her, leaping over ledges, clambering over stairwells, and coming dangerously close to tumbling down into the alleyways below as I did so. I could see the panic starting to form on her face every time she glanced back to see me getting closer and closer.
Until she hit a dead end.
There were no more buildings for her to scamper over. Caius and I crested the last set of steps and stared her down from across the way. Cordia reached up and pulled down her hood, revealing an expression that spoke to a deeper history than I first thought.
“You, you meddling little brat! I should have known it was you!”
“You don’t even know who I am,” I responded.
She backed away until her heels knocked against the sheer drop that led into the alleyway below. She pointed a finger at me, “I should have killed you when I had the chance. You were the one who broke into my apartment!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Caius held me back, “Careful, she has a knife.”
“And you, Caius – you disgusting worm. Here you are, grovelling at the feet of a rich little lady like a slave!”
Caius laughed, “She offered me a much better deal than you – and that before you tried to kill my sister. Isn’t that the joy of the free market? You never had any intention of paying me for the work.”
“You never had any intention of doing the job,” she responded, “Why would I pay you for such a shoddy performance? All that talk but there isn’t a single professional bone in your body.”
Caius tipped his hat, “You aren’t going to convince me of anything, Cordia – not after the stunt you pulled at the sanatorium. If you want an example of shoddy work, then there it is.”
I stepped closer while keeping her weapon in mind, “I’d like to make you an offer. You tell me everything you know about the monarchist’s plot, and I let you walk without a scratch.”
I expected her to laugh me off as someone filled with hot air, but she took the threat seriously. Her eyes narrowed, “There is nothing that I can tell you that you don’t already know, Maria Walston-Carter.”
“So you do recognise me.”
“How could I not? Clemens Walston-Carter is one of our key targets.”
“You sound disconnected from the idea. I thought you were a true-blue monarchist like the rest of them.”
Her left hand edged closer to her coat pocket; “I believe in our goal, but I don’t agree with how our other members have been going about things.”
Too slow, too obvious. I stepped out of the way as her knife flew through the air and struck the brickwork behind me. Cordia did not want to face me in a direct fight. She turned around and climbed up onto the wall, looking down at the next building with nerves frayed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Caius called out, “You’re going to break your legs if you jump from there!”
She scowled, “I’m not staying up here with her. You can take your chances by making a deal with the devil, and I’ll take mine by getting as far away from her as possible!”
Everything happened in an instant. Cordia tried to make the jump, but she lost her footing at the worst possible moment. Her figure tumbled over the edge and disappeared out of sight, a loud, meaty thump overpowering the sounds of the city.
Caius winced.
I ran over and looked over the edge. She was lying on the pavement, with one leg facing the wrong way and a puddle of blood leaking from her head. There was no way she survived that fall from four stories up.
“I think she broke her own neck,” I grimaced. What an utterly ridiculous way to go.
Caius was in no hurry to see the grisly sight himself, he turned his nose up into the air and refused to look.
“What is wrong with her? She thought that jumping from there was safer than being around us?”
Around me – more likely.
“She’s dead.”
“I figured that much!” Caius groaned.
We retraced our steps until we found another fire escape and descended back onto street level, returning to the alleyway where her body had fallen. Caius stayed by the entrance while I stepped inside to investigate. I donned my gloves, which I never left the dorm without, and checked her pulse.
Nothing. She was already gone.
The impact on the back of her head was brutal. It must have cracked her skull and potentially contorted her neck. Her leg was also broken. She must have hit something on the way down. She didn’t have the chance to protect herself from the fall. Humans were both durable and fragile. They could survive falls much higher than this one or die from the impact on landing. I never presumed that any one action was a guarantee of my safety.
I checked her pockets. There was nothing of note until I reached the last one, where something hard and circular was tucked away. I pulled it free and held it up to the light.
It was the watch.
Why did Cordia have this? I hustled my way back to Caius and held it out to him.
“She had the watch. I thought you said that this was a powerful magical item. I can barely feel a trace from it.”
Caius placed his hand just above the surface and entered a trance, “Hm. It’s absorbing our magical energy right now. The battery is drained, she must have used it recently. The trace I felt when I stole it was much stronger.”
“Is that so? It’s a shame we can’t take it and find the answers. We should leave it with her and tell the police that we found her body here. They’ll return it to Adrian once the investigation wraps up.”
Caius sighed, “That is the safest way of handling this – but now we can’t get answers out of her. I thought we had her cornered there.”
“She clearly didn’t want us asking questions if she was willing to take a risk like this.”
I stepped away and returned the watch to where I found it. With any luck, the police would connect the dots and launch an investigation. A valuable item stolen from the Royal Academy, in the hands of a stranger found dead at a tennis tournament.
It was an anti-climatic ending for one of my quarries, but that was life. Death came quickly and without remorse – and no amount of confidence could defend you from it. There was only one case where it was justified to feel like the main character, and that was being reincarnated into the body of someone like Maria.
“Well, I’m not certain if you agree – but this was a harrowing affair. I find the sight of a dead body repulsive. You have a very strong stomach.”
“I don’t like it either.”
I tolerated them.
I could tell that Caius was affected by seeing an associate die. He shivered and turned away.
“Let’s find a police box and get Cordia some attention.”
Caius did so and told the officer on duty that he’d spotted someone in a bad way in one of the alleys as he passed by. The officer quickly attended to the scene while another headed off to inform someone higher up so that they could investigate. Given her position and injuries – it was likely to be ruled a suicide.
I was filled with questions that would not be answered. Cordia was more willing to risk falling to her death than explain what was going on. What struck me as strange was how familiar she acted around me. Aside from the time I entered her apartment, we’d never spoken or seen each other.
The watch was the only thing on her body. Answers were not going to be forthcoming now that she was dead. I stuck around for a minute and watched the police bag up her body and haul it away from the scene. There was nothing to find down there. Cordia made her own bed, for better or worse.
With that apparent assassination attempt foiled, I returned to the courts for the rest of the tournament. Lance would get suspicious if I stayed away for too long.
‘The Walser East Coast Under Eighteen Tennis Championship’ sported both the longest name in the tennis calendar, and had one of the most prestigious prizes that one could earn without going professional. A large cash prize and a trophy that was so big that most people wouldn’t be able to fit it through their front door without disassembling it.
There was a sister tournament on the West Coast, but it was smaller in scale due to the lower population density in the area and therefore considered a step down from winning on the East. Still – they were both places where promoters and agents tried to track down the next generation of tennis talent. A cursory glance would give you a firm grasp of who would be on top of the sport in a few years’ time, they just needed to have a good run.
Lance was not expecting any of our club members to get that deep into the bracket. They were good. Good enough to win smaller tournaments and inter-school competitions, but it would take a prodigious effort from our representatives to beat the best of the best.
The primary purpose of our attendance was to show everyone what a competition really looked like. It would run through the whole day, from an early morning start to a late evening finish. The entire area around the court was dressed for the occasion, with stalls serving food and providing entertainment for the spectators between matches. There must have been a few thousand people actively mulling around, even more, if we included those who wandered through to see what was going on.
I’d learn later that there were several members of the Liberal Democratic Party in attendance too. However – at the time I didn’t know, nor did I have any faces to put to the names I’d read from the list in my uncle’s office. I stuck with Lance and watched what the club was up to, rather than wandering off and getting lost.
“When is the first match?” I asked.
Lance nodded in Emily’s direction; “Emily is up in thirty minutes on the third court. These early rounds aren’t the most exciting – even at a national tournament like this, the skill gap between the different competitors is very high. This is where they separate the hobbyists from the ones who take it seriously.”
I crossed my arms disapprovingly, “I’m a hobbyist too.”
He scrambled to reiterate his previous statement, “There’s nothing wrong with playing tennis for fun or your health, but the folks who want to go professional with it spend a lot more time and effort training than the others. Some of them take competition like this too lightly.”
I was just busting his balls a little.
Emily tugged his shoulder, “Is there a spot for us to warm up?”
“Oh, right. It’s over here.”
Lance escorted us through an open gateway and into an empty courtyard where several benches had been left for the competitors to use. Some of the other competitors had already staked their claim and left their equipment bags here for later. A nearby brick wall was the only opponent Emily was going to find.
She groaned, “Squash rallies?”
Lance chuckled, “Looks like it. None of the others are going to want to tire themselves out so early.”
Emily resigned herself to her fate and pulled out her racquet and a ball. The rhythmic impact of that ball against the wall lulled me into an unfamiliar trance. Something was engrossing about watching her move from side to side, returning it to her unthinking partner with some serious force.
“You’re going to hurt your neck if you keep doing that.”
I shook my head, “Hardly.”
“You should go out and explore the festival before the match starts. You can find the schedule on the notice boards, they’re everywhere. The food is always fantastic.”
I wasn’t hungry yet – but I filed that away for consideration. The food was half of the reason to bother attending according to the other club members. They’d all scattered to the four corners of the three-block festival area to find their favourites. The studious members with matches were not yet permitted to go hunting.
“I’ll see you there.”
I left Lance to wrangle the rest of his athletes. He didn’t have time to babysit me all day, so I chose to get out of his hair and make life easier. There was plenty for one to occupy themselves with. Officially it was a tennis tournament, but the local businesspeople were not going to pass up the opportunity to exploit a captive audience of customers from across the nation. Each year the size and extravagance of the tournament increased in proportion to the money made available.
At this point – it was a large-scale festival that dominated three to four blocks of a semi-urban area on the edge of the city. This came about out of necessity. Facilities capable of hosting this many visitors were few and far between. For a single day every year, the people who lived nearby were sucked into a major athletic competition.
The courts themselves were arranged in a L-shape, with two stacked horizontally and another two positioned vertically at the bottom. A large three-story residential building followed the inner edge of the courts, while the opposite side was taken up by a set of wooden bleachers. The fence on the building’s side had to be higher to prevent balls from flying over and smashing their windows.
There was plenty to keep my mind occupied while we waited for the club’s first match. I arrived with no intention or plans to become a hyper-vigilant guard dog for anyone at the event, though fate clearly had other plans because it was impossible to miss the stressed expression of one Caius Willow through the thrum of the crowd. He spotted me, lit up like a Christmas tree, and made a beeline for my position.
I moved to an area off of the main road and waited for him to catch up.
“Good morning, my lady!”
He was back to his usual self.
“Hello Caius. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I honestly wasn’t planning on attending this event, but my informant handed me some interesting information about some of the attendees. There’s a strong possibility that they might try to launch an attack on them. Did you reach the same conclusion?”
I smirked, “No. I joined the tennis club to try and get close to the Franzheim family. They brought me along to study what the seniors were doing.”
“What a wonderful coincidence,” he joked, “There are two important members of the Republican movement here. Darian Fulmar, the speaker of the house – he’s going to be a big prize for those folk. The other is the Social Democrat’s treasurer, Don Wesel.”
“They have family here?”
“I’m not sure. Darian is famously infatuated with the sport and tries to attend every event he can, at least according to the rumours. Don Wesel’s eldest daughter attends the Royal Academy, she might be a member of your club.”
The name did ring a bell, but I hadn’t been a member for long enough to memorise every face and name. She was definitely not one of the athletes who’d been submitted by Lance to qualify for the tournament.
Caius looked uneasy, “I dropped by Thersyn’s manor a few days ago...”
“Thersyn Van Walser?” I said incredulously.
“No, not the King – the other one! Thersyn Bradley. He runs all of the conservative newspapers around here.”
I should have assumed that he was talking about somebody else. Thersyn was a popular name, and there were a lot of people who hoped that some of the royal shine would rub off onto their children if they were given the same name. Thersyn Bradley was born into a generation where the King was newly crowned at the age of twenty.
And besides, it was no easy feat to break into the royal estate. It was more accurate to describe it as a fortress than a home, surrounded on all sides by towering walls and a full complement of armed guards. Caius was good at getting away, but that was a suicidal idea even for him.
Caius refocused on the topic at hand, “I dropped by to try and dig up some dirt on whether he was involved with Cordia and the rest, but what I found was... much worse than what I expected.”
“Get to the point.”
Caius hushed his tone, “He’s a bloody Scuncath. I thought I was walking into a secret storage room, but I found a poor bloke with his ribcage ripped open.”
I scowled, “A Scuncath? In this day and age?”
“I thought the same thing, but there was no forgetting that sight, or the smell. I bought a bar of soap from a local shop and shove it in my face whenever I recall it.”
“And that’s his reason for joining their plan then? To seed discord in Walser so that he can take advantage.”
“I can’t say for certain, who knows what his sick mind is thinking about. He might be genuine about his intent to restore the monarchy, or he might be taking advantage of them to cause chaos. The outcome’s the same.”
He couldn’t find documents tying him to Cordia though. Given the man’s proclivities and biases, it was likely that he was in cahoots with one of them. Controlling the media space was essential to currying support for their side. Thersyn Bradley had a wide reach and influence to spare, some would even consider him a hero. To me, he was a dime-a-dozen populist.
To his credit – the murderous cult member angle was new.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“From what we’ve seen so far, these monarchists aren’t as united as they’d like to seem from the outside. Cordia is keeping blackmail on the others, Thersyn is trying to push them into a violent conflict, and Franzheim thinks she’s in control when she isn’t. I’ve never been part of a conspiracy to restore the monarchy, but those are the types of people you don’t want if your plan is to get away with a crime.”
“I agree, but merely showcasing faults in their alliance is not enough to prevent them from doing real harm. We can’t assume that they’ll fail because of their contrasting motivations. And here I was hoping to enjoy a day at the fair.”
He tipped his hat, “I’ll keep an eye out for any suspicious characters, after all – it takes one to know one.”
“Don’t do anything too risky. Alice is still waiting for you back at the manor.”
He smiled, “Naturally. Thank you for your concern.”
Caius merged back into the crowd and went about his business. I took a second to digest what he’d discovered about Thersyn Bradley. I knew of him. He was very wealthy for a man his age, coming in two decades younger than the sort of man you’d find at a noble garden party. Being a Scuncath was a ludicrous claim, but why would Caius make that up? It served no purpose.
The Scuncath were extremist followers of the Dark Goddess, but they were long since crushed out of existence by a government crackdown after a series of violent attacks. Their beliefs were diverse and incongruous in most cases – each sect had its own ideas about how to revive said Dark Goddess from her eternal slumber.
Ultimately, those ideas often involved gruesome acts of violence against innocent people, or self-mutilation that was levied unto vulnerable folks who were often targeted for their malleability. Being a part of a community or sect could force them into drastic action. They’d sooner remove an arm than find themselves excluded from a network that supported them.
It was almost time for the first match. I navigated my way through the crowds and found the entryway to the stands. Lance was seated near the back with the others, and he’d even saved a seat for me.
“You didn’t buy anything?” Lance asked.
“No. I’m not hungry just yet.”
Looking at the other students – I could understand the confusion. All of them were holding something to chow down on, from sandwiches to drinks, to hot food. If anything, it seemed that they were more interested in the food than the match. I soon discovered why that was.
Emily walked out onto the court and shook her opponent’s hand. Everyone clapped along as Emily made the first serve. The ball rocketed across the court, skimmed the top of the net, and shot past the opposing player like a bullet. It quickly became clear that she was not prepared for Emily’s level of skill, and the rest of the match was little more than a formality. Emily consistently outpaced and out-positioned the other player. She scored a paltry handful of points before finally being put to a merciful end.
“Nice play, Emily!” Lance cheered.
I could have probably won that match if I put my mind to it. I thought Lance was exaggerating when he said that the skill gap was extremely large in the early stages. Emily wasn’t happy about winning per se, she shook her hand again and walked off of the court without celebrating further. She was the competitive type. An easy game like that wasn’t going to satisfy her.
Lance grimaced as she moved out of sight, “She isn’t going to be happy about that one. Emily hates it when she gets an easy opponent. Hopefully, a sour mood doesn’t spoil her chances at a good run into the bracket.”
The tournament worked off of a seeded system. Players were assigned based on previous results and split into brackets. There was a second chance for the losers on the lower side – but I got the distinct impression that Emily’s opponent wasn’t going to have much of a chance down there either.
“Emily is very talented,” I commented. The main brunt of my attention was being hyper-focused on what Caius had told me. Now that I knew two members of the party were here, I couldn’t stop myself from scanning every face in the crowd to try and single out the potential assassin.
That guy looks mad. I bet he’s going to do the deed.
No, he merely dropped his beer at the foot of the bleachers. The look of sheer anguish on his features was quite unlike anything I’d seen in my two lifetimes. That was the face of a man who had just witnessed his entire family die in a car accident. I could only guess that the beer in question was unreasonably priced and designed to sucker in the tourists.
While I was preparing for the moment when the chaos started, everyone else was having a good time. I couldn’t put myself into that position knowing what I did, and it was all thanks to Caius stumbling across me and revealing what he’d found. Two hours went by, and several longer matches took place that got the crowd heated up. I was desperate to dip out and go to the lady’s room.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” I said to Lance – descending the stairs and walking between the stands. I kept an eye out for any suspect characters, but there was nothing that caught my eye during the trip there. Much to my frustration, there was a queue to use the bathroom.
So this was the reality of turning into a woman.
Okay, that wasn’t true. Women queuing to use the restroom was a bad stereotype, the organisers were just morons who underestimated how many people were going to show up for the tournament. This event was going to have to find some new digs sooner or later. The residents were probably at the end of their rope having to deal with this every year.
The silence was broken by a cloaked figure pushing her way through the crowd, initiating a commotion from the bystanders who were caught up in the chase. A moment later Caius appeared, already out of breath. I approached him from behind and tugged on his shoulder.
“What on Earth are you doing?”
“It’s her! Cordia! She was lurking around the VIP area and I found her! Where did she go?”
The bathroom break could wait. I took off in the direction where Cordia was last seen with Caius in pursuit. There were far too many people around to make quick headway. They were always getting in the way, in clusters and clumps of chattering buffoons. I grew tired of it quickly and started pushing them out of the way with some serious force.
Cordia, if it was her, was trying to escape the event area now that her cover was blown. To think that she was waiting near the VIP area for her targets to arrive, I really ought to have checked there first instead of leaving it to Caius.
“Out of the way! Coming through!”
I caught a glimpse of the cloaked figure scrambling up the fire escape of the nearby building. She was planning on moving into the more densely built area to evade us. It was a crying shame that I was both faster and more resilient than the likes of her. The metal rattled beneath my feet while I sprinted my way up each ladder until I hopped out on the roof.
They froze up by the edge of the next building and stared at me. The tall stature and sharpened features - that was unmistakably her. Cordia looked like a deer in the headlights. Caius finally caught up with me.
“Get over here before I do something I’ll regret,” I warned her.
Cordia was not surprised to see me, which struck me as odd. She didn’t know who I was, or that I was the person who held her at gunpoint a week before. Recognising my voice wasn’t so easy, so why was she not shocked?
“You... you damnable brat!” she spat, “Don’t you know when to quit?”
“This is the first time we’ve met, actually.”
Cordia paused but did not contend my claim as I expected. She turned on her heel and leapt from one roof to the next.
Caius was not being helpful, “She’s getting away.”
“I noticed!”
In my past life, if I was ever forced into a situation where parkour was demanded, that meant I’d royally screwed up along the way. I was agile – but moving around these spaces demanded a special kind of spacial awareness that took practice and time. Cordia was struggling herself, but it was her best shot at getting away from me. I couldn’t shoot her down, I didn’t have a gun.
I swallowed my hesitation and charged towards the lip of the rooftop, leaping up and planting my foot along the edge. The wind whipped through my hair as I travelled from one building to the next. The sensation of falling down to the other side forced my stomach into my throat.
Caius skidded to a halt behind me, “Bloody hell! I didn’t know you could do that!”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“You’re fast too!”
I wasn’t even trying yet, and the skirt I was wearing made moving my legs more difficult. I ignored his observations and powered on. Cordia wasn’t going to get away from me. I’d chase her down to the end of the city if that was what it took. Quitters never prospered. She was already halfway down another set of stairs before we reached the edge. The differing heights of the buildings would make navigation difficult.
“Stop right there!” Caius demanded as if that was going to work.
“Use your magic for Goddess’ sake!”
“I don’t know any offensive spells!”
I grunted, “I don’t care – just slow her down somehow.”
We were too far away for him to use his bag of tricks, much to my displeasure. I pumped my legs and got moving, rushing down the metal scaffolding and leaping from the ladder into a roll. The gap was closing somewhat. Cordia was in a tough spot of her own making.
I steadied my breathing and sprinted after her, leaping over ledges, clambering over stairwells, and coming dangerously close to tumbling down into the alleyways below as I did so. I could see the panic starting to form on her face every time she glanced back to see me getting closer and closer.
Until she hit a dead end.
There were no more buildings for her to scamper over. Caius and I crested the last set of steps and stared her down from across the way. Cordia reached up and pulled down her hood, revealing an expression that spoke to a deeper history than I first thought.
“You, you meddling little brat! I should have known it was you!”
“You don’t even know who I am,” I responded.
She backed away until her heels knocked against the sheer drop that led into the alleyway below. She pointed a finger at me, “I should have killed you when I had the chance. You were the one who broke into my apartment!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Caius held me back, “Careful, she has a knife.”
“And you, Caius – you disgusting worm. Here you are, grovelling at the feet of a rich little lady like a slave!”
Caius laughed, “She offered me a much better deal than you – and that before you tried to kill my sister. Isn’t that the joy of the free market? You never had any intention of paying me for the work.”
“You never had any intention of doing the job,” she responded, “Why would I pay you for such a shoddy performance? All that talk but there isn’t a single professional bone in your body.”
Caius tipped his hat, “You aren’t going to convince me of anything, Cordia – not after the stunt you pulled at the sanatorium. If you want an example of shoddy work, then there it is.”
I stepped closer while keeping her weapon in mind, “I’d like to make you an offer. You tell me everything you know about the monarchist’s plot, and I let you walk without a scratch.”
I expected her to laugh me off as someone filled with hot air, but she took the threat seriously. Her eyes narrowed, “There is nothing that I can tell you that you don’t already know, Maria Walston-Carter.”
“So you do recognise me.”
“How could I not? Clemens Walston-Carter is one of our key targets.”
“You sound disconnected from the idea. I thought you were a true-blue monarchist like the rest of them.”
Her left hand edged closer to her coat pocket; “I believe in our goal, but I don’t agree with how our other members have been going about things.”
Too slow, too obvious. I stepped out of the way as her knife flew through the air and struck the brickwork behind me. Cordia did not want to face me in a direct fight. She turned around and climbed up onto the wall, looking down at the next building with nerves frayed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Caius called out, “You’re going to break your legs if you jump from there!”
She scowled, “I’m not staying up here with her. You can take your chances by making a deal with the devil, and I’ll take mine by getting as far away from her as possible!”
Everything happened in an instant. Cordia tried to make the jump, but she lost her footing at the worst possible moment. Her figure tumbled over the edge and disappeared out of sight, a loud, meaty thump overpowering the sounds of the city.
Caius winced.
I ran over and looked over the edge. She was lying on the pavement, with one leg facing the wrong way and a puddle of blood leaking from her head. There was no way she survived that fall from four stories up.
“I think she broke her own neck,” I grimaced. What an utterly ridiculous way to go.
Caius was in no hurry to see the grisly sight himself, he turned his nose up into the air and refused to look.
“What is wrong with her? She thought that jumping from there was safer than being around us?”
Around me – more likely.
“She’s dead.”
“I figured that much!” Caius groaned.
We retraced our steps until we found another fire escape and descended back onto street level, returning to the alleyway where her body had fallen. Caius stayed by the entrance while I stepped inside to investigate. I donned my gloves, which I never left the dorm without, and checked her pulse.
Nothing. She was already gone.
The impact on the back of her head was brutal. It must have cracked her skull and potentially contorted her neck. Her leg was also broken. She must have hit something on the way down. She didn’t have the chance to protect herself from the fall. Humans were both durable and fragile. They could survive falls much higher than this one or die from the impact on landing. I never presumed that any one action was a guarantee of my safety.
I checked her pockets. There was nothing of note until I reached the last one, where something hard and circular was tucked away. I pulled it free and held it up to the light.
It was the watch.
Why did Cordia have this? I hustled my way back to Caius and held it out to him.
“She had the watch. I thought you said that this was a powerful magical item. I can barely feel a trace from it.”
Caius placed his hand just above the surface and entered a trance, “Hm. It’s absorbing our magical energy right now. The battery is drained, she must have used it recently. The trace I felt when I stole it was much stronger.”
“Is that so? It’s a shame we can’t take it and find the answers. We should leave it with her and tell the police that we found her body here. They’ll return it to Adrian once the investigation wraps up.”
Caius sighed, “That is the safest way of handling this – but now we can’t get answers out of her. I thought we had her cornered there.”
“She clearly didn’t want us asking questions if she was willing to take a risk like this.”
I stepped away and returned the watch to where I found it. With any luck, the police would connect the dots and launch an investigation. A valuable item stolen from the Royal Academy, in the hands of a stranger found dead at a tennis tournament.
It was an anti-climatic ending for one of my quarries, but that was life. Death came quickly and without remorse – and no amount of confidence could defend you from it. There was only one case where it was justified to feel like the main character, and that was being reincarnated into the body of someone like Maria.
“Well, I’m not certain if you agree – but this was a harrowing affair. I find the sight of a dead body repulsive. You have a very strong stomach.”
“I don’t like it either.”
I tolerated them.
I could tell that Caius was affected by seeing an associate die. He shivered and turned away.
“Let’s find a police box and get Cordia some attention.”
Caius did so and told the officer on duty that he’d spotted someone in a bad way in one of the alleys as he passed by. The officer quickly attended to the scene while another headed off to inform someone higher up so that they could investigate. Given her position and injuries – it was likely to be ruled a suicide.
I was filled with questions that would not be answered. Cordia was more willing to risk falling to her death than explain what was going on. What struck me as strange was how familiar she acted around me. Aside from the time I entered her apartment, we’d never spoken or seen each other.
The watch was the only thing on her body. Answers were not going to be forthcoming now that she was dead. I stuck around for a minute and watched the police bag up her body and haul it away from the scene. There was nothing to find down there. Cordia made her own bed, for better or worse.
With that apparent assassination attempt foiled, I returned to the courts for the rest of the tournament. Lance would get suspicious if I stayed away for too long.
