Notes on Monster Hunting Read online

  “He’ll be gone after the demonstration. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Should we really be teaching people how to make explosives?”

  Skrale combed his fingers through his beard. “I hadn’t really thought about that.” He leaned slightly to the side to look past my head at the alchemist sitting still beside Palon. “I’ll let the governor know. I need to speak with him tomorrow about the contract. You’re welcome to come along if you’d like.”

  “No, thanks. You’d be better with someone who went on the hunt. Maybe bring Lekk or Heff with you.”

  Skrale nodded. He kept his eyes on the alchemist.

  “What did you carry in just now?” I asked.

  He looked back at me. “What?”

  “Those bags you carried in and put in the corner. What’s in them?”

  Skrale’s cheeks flushed. “I didn’t want anyone to notice that.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You always do.” Skrale looked at the bags and idly cracked his knuckles. “I bought some sweets for everyone. That’s not something we usually see.”

  “Two big bags of sweets?”

  Skrale laughed. “No, obviously not. I also grabbed some cloaks and blankets for traveling.”

  “So we’re getting ready to leave?”

  “I think so. I want to see how everyone is doing before I go to the governor’s tomorrow. Then I can let him know our plan.”

  I smiled. “Great.”

  “Now let’s go make sure Groose doesn’t burn down the place.”

  I turned around and saw Groose and Carner both carrying more than they could handle while trying to navigate the stairs. We ran over and grabbed half of what each of them carried. Kully and Ralet stood to make room at the table across from the alchemist. Carner and Groose carefully set each box down in a specific spot. Skrale and I held the rest cradled in our arms and let them grab things from us.

  “Is that everything?” I asked.

  Groose nodded, sat down, and started opening the boxes. Carner sat beside him and stretched his arms.

  “You need to stretch to make bombs?” asked Palon.

  Carner glared at him, which made Palon laugh.

  “Here’s what you need to know,” said Groose while sitting straight up as he stared into the alchemist’s eyes. “Torol puts out fires.”

  “I know what the powders can do,” interrupted the alchemist.

  “Do you want a demonstration or not?” asked Carner. He spoke loudly and harshly.

  “Yes. I apologize. Please continue.”

  “Torol puts out fires. Yax burns for a long time. Heetan starts fires. Oiled explodes. Get all that?”

  “Heetan doesn’t start fires,” said the alchemist.

  Groose and Carner just stared at him for a moment. Skrale and I exchanged glances.

  “When heetan is mixed with other chemicals, it will start fires. Like I said. Heetan starts fires.” Groose was speaking in a slightly deeper voice than normal. He was trying to seem tough to the alchemist. Or the title of expert really got to his head.

  I leaned in close to Skrale. “I’m going to go for a walk,” I whispered.

  “Need some company?”

  “Yeah. That would be great.”

  Skrale waved until Teke noticed him. He gestured around at the alchemist and the two of us. It was very confusing, but Teke nodded as if he understood it all perfectly. Skrale jogged over and grabbed his cloak off the bags in the corner. He grabbed some other things from the bag and came back over to me.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  “Great. Take this, it’s raining a bit.” He handed me a cloak.

  “Thanks.”

  The sun was still peeking over the edge of the western wall when we left the Coconut Inn. Most of the sky was covered in dark rain clouds, but there was a gap between the wall and the clouds where the sun painted the sky.

  “Where’d you want to go?”

  “Let’s just walk around.” I looked back west. “Not up the hill. So, this way.”

  The rain was only a small drizzle. Hardly enough to be a problem, but I still appreciated the cloak from Skrale. We walked silently, alone on the street toward the pier. Shops were closed and people were avoiding the weather, so it was quiet outside. Only the patter of raindrops on roofs and our footsteps in puddles made any noise. We reached the edge of the pier, neither of us wanting to walk all the way out to the edge. We stopped at the stone wall over the beach and watched the lightning farther out in the sea.

  The waves were far away, not yet reaching the wall. Skrale leaned forward and looked down the ten foot drop.

  “The tide will come in soon.” He looked at me and smiled. “Let’s walk on the beach.”

  I squinted at him while I tried to move the overly large hood out of my face. “It isn’t really beach weather.”

  “Isn’t it?” He jumped, landed in the sand, and put his arms out. “Need me to catch you?”

  I sighed. “Get out of my way.”

  He stepped aside and I jumped down. The landing wasn’t neat with sand spewing around and the shock hurting my knees, but I stayed on my feet. A jolt of pain shot through my side.

  “Everything good?”

  I nodded. “Lead on, sir,” I said, rather sarcastically.

  Skrale rubbed his eye. “You know, there’s only one direction to go. I don’t think we need any leading.”

  “Yeah, okay.” The sand was wet, but still loose. We walked almost to the bend in the beach that stretched to the eastern end of town. It was a couple minutes of walking. “Why did you want to come with?”

  Skrale pulled his hood down and ran both his hands through his hair. “I don’t need to watch Groose’s demonstration. I figured it would be a nice little adventure.”

  It was. “I agree.”

  We just turned the bend when Skrale placed his hand on my arm.

  “What is that?” Skrale carefully jogged up to a dark shape in the sand. “It’s a body.”

  I ran up and stopped beside him. “Without a head. Again.”

  “You stay here. I’ll go find a guard.”

  I nodded. He rushed off, so I knelt in the sand beside the body. Only a stump of the neck remained, but a little bit of the skin and bone in the front and back center reached higher, like it had been pinched from either side when removed. Blood still leaked out of the neck, so it had to be recent. The water soaked into my trousers from the wet sand and I didn’t want to touch the body at all, so I stood to walk a bit.

  Small patches of darker sand trailed away towards the eastern wall. I stepped over the body and scooped a handful of darkened sand. The blood collected in the clump drained from the sand onto my skin. I quickly dropped the bloodied sand and followed the trail until it ended nearby just before the raised stone wall.

  Skrale returned with a guard, who carried a torch.

  The guard swore and looked us over. “What happened?”

  We both stared at him silently. Raindrops sizzled in the torch’s fire.

  “You know we didn’t do this,” I finally said.

  The guard stepped close to the body and looked at the neck. “What am I supposed to report?”

  “It’s the second body. This one is recent. Something carried the head away.”

  “Carried?” asked the guard.

  I pointed at the trail of blood.

  “How do you know that’s blood?”

  I stuck out my hand, which still hand some spots of blood on it. “I picked up some of the sand.”

  The guard looked disgusted.

  “What are you thinking, Beatrice?”

  I walked back to the body and knelt beside the neck, away from the pooling blood. “Look at the cut.” I pointed at the raised bits. “It was pinched off. Or something like that. Not cut. A sharp blade wouldn’t leave anything like this.”

  “Something else removed the head,” said Skrale.

  I nodded.

  “Like what?” asked the
guard.

  “We’ll keep looking. You follow procedure. I’m already meeting the governor in the morning, so I’ll talk it over more with him.”

  “I’ll come with for that,” I said.

  Skrale nodded and pointed at the trail. “Does that lead anywhere?”

  “No. Just over there. It stops abruptly.”

  “Guard,” said Skrale. “Make sure the governor hears about this right away. If you discover who it is, we’d like to know.”

  Skrale and I continued to look around without any luck. A few other people showed up from the guard a short time later to do their own investigation. By that time, we were basically done and the rain had washed away the clues. We went back to the inn and made it just in time to see the alchemist on his way out.

  “Calling that man an expert is an injustice to those of us who have spent our lives studying alchemy.”

  Skrale scratched at his beard, shrugged and nudged me with his elbow. “You take this one.”

  I cleared my throat. “You’re a disgrace to my eyes.”

  Skrale leaned over and whispered, “That’s the best you have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, a little defensive. “What else was I supposed to say?”

  The alchemist stood with his arms crossed and eyebrows raised, silently judging us with his superiority.

  “Did you learn anything from them?” asked Skrale.

  “In a way, but their manners and presentation were crude at best.”

  “Nobody ever said experts had to be polite,” I said.

  “And Groose is an expert in blowing shit up,” said Skrale.

  I nodded.

  “He’s making a mockery of alchemy.”

  “You can keep repeating yourself all day. We still don’t care.”

  Skrale laughed at my comment and stuck his hand out to the alchemist. “Please, have a good evening. I hope to see you again.”

  The alchemist glared at Skrale and walked off. With the night’s slight chill, the cobblestones became slick with dew that reflected the lanterns and starlight. The alchemist apparently didn’t notice and slipped just down the street. Skrale and I hadn’t yet moved, so when he looked back up he saw us staring at him. His embarrassment was visible, even a good distance away.

  Inside, the bodies and fire made it really warm like it was still daytime. Groose and Carner weren’t in the main room, probably went to put the explosives somewhere safe. Everyone else was sitting around with beer.

  “Sergeants,” said Skrale as he waved us over.

  We went and sat at a booth on the other side of the room, as far away as we could get from the rest of the company. Heff, Teke, and Lekk joined us. I sat across from Skrale and Teke sat beside him. Lekk and Heff both decided to sit on my side, which was great because it was a small booth and I was pressed against the wall.

  “Couldn’t you just grab a chair and pull it up?” I asked Heff, who sat on the end.

  “It seemed urgent. I thought I should just sit and then we would figure out what was happening.”

  “You’re all fine. It won’t take long,” said Skrale. He looked at me and smirked.

  I sighed and leaned my head against the wall that I was already being shoved against.

  “A few days ago, Teke and Beatrice found a headless body outside the city. During that little demonstration, Beatrice and I went on a walk down by the pier and the part of the beach that’s in the city and found another body. In the morning, I have a meeting with the governor where we’ll be talking about the body situation. There may be more work for us here if Beatrice’s hunch is right.”

  “What’s your hunch?” asked Teke.

  “It doesn’t look like the head was cut off and it was nowhere around. Would a murderer really take the head of a victim anyway? Isn’t that just asking for someone to find it as evidence?”

  “But what is the hunch?” asked Lekk.

  “Maybe a creature,” I said with a shrug.

  Teke slightly nodded his head and looked out to the room, probably deep in thought.

  “We’ll also be negotiating the price of the sewer job. So any of you are welcome to join me and Beatrice at the meeting. We won’t know our plan until after the meeting tomorrow.”

  Lekk and Heff quietly talked to each other as they tried to decide who should go to the meeting even though they were both invited.

  “I’ll go,” said Lekk. “I’d like to make sure we get paid more for walking in actual shit.”

  Teke grinned. “You did volunteer for that job.”

  “You volunteered to be an ass,” said Heff.

  I laughed and was apparently the only one to do so.

  “Well,” said Skrale, “you’re dismissed. Breakfast will be normal time then we’ll head up to the governor’s.”

  Everyone mumbled, stood up, and walked back to their squads. Fourth made room for me in the middle of a bench between Palon and Kully. Ralet sat by himself on the other side, but Groose would return shortly.

  “How was the demonstration?” I asked.

  “Impressively boring,” said Ralet.

  Palon nodded his agreement.

  “I found it fascinating,” said Kully.

  “But we’ve all seen Groose do that a hundred times,” I said.

  “Yes, but we’ve never seen him try to explain it to someone he doesn’t know. He made that alchemist really angry.”

  I nodded. “I saw him when he was leaving. He said that Groose and Carner are disgraces or something like that.”

  “I can’t really disagree,” said Palon.

  I leaned forward and looked in the mug at Groose’s spot. There was about a half glass of beer left in it, so I grabbed it and started drinking. Groose returned and sat down. He looked around for his glass until his eyes locked onto it.

  “Is that mine?”

  “This? No. I got this when I came back.”

  Groose squinted and rubbed at his greasy hair. “I don’t remember finishing mine.”

  “Your memory must really be getting bad,” said Kully.

  “Fine, I’ll go order another. Anyone else need one?” asked Groose.

  “I could use another,” I said. “This is almost gone.”

  Day 147

  I met Teke, Skrale, and Lekk early for breakfast. Since I let Ralet take the bed last night, I was really loud getting dressed so he wouldn’t get to sleep peacefully. He probably didn’t even notice.

  We had oatmeal and coconut pastries with tea. I had never tried fresh coconut before. It was delicious. After we all finished, we left for the governor’s. Plump clouds floated in the sky while the sun continued to rise. It was still early, and the sun wasn’t high enough to fully warm the air. A small breeze blew in from the ocean and made me shiver.

  Hiking up the hill to the governor’s took a while. We stopped at the gates to catch our breath and complain about the walk. Teke called the hill some inappropriate names and kicked a rock down the road.

  We knocked and looked around when we got to the door, but we couldn’t see anyone around or inside and nothing came from within. After a long time of sitting and waiting, we just opened the door and showed ourselves in.

  The governor sat in a chair in the same room as before and held a steaming mug in both hands.

  “I’m glad you’ve arrived. Although, you are late.”

  “We didn’t want to be rude and come in ourselves. I assumed you would have someone like last time,” said Skrale.

  The governor set the mug down on the table and gestured for us to sit, but there were only three chairs.

  Skrale pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit. “I’ll stand,” he said.

  The governor nodded. “Which matter should we discuss first? Your payment or the bodies showing up in the city?”

  “The money can wait. When we found the second body last night I asked the guard to give any information they found to you.” Skrale leaned his elbow on the back of my chair.

  “The woman’s name
is,” he cleared his throat, “was Gelda. A mother of four, ran the biggest fresh fish shop in town. Nobody would want to kill her.”

  “You’re right. We don’t think it’s a person.” I sat up in my chair and placed my elbows on the table. “We can discuss money now because there’s a second hunt that we need to write up a contract for.”

  The governor scowled and looked at Skrale. “What is she talking about?”

  “I think she articulated herself perfectly well.” Skrale pulled a sheet of paper out of his bag. “While we discuss any further details that the guards told you, Beatrice and Teke will write up the contract. Since we’ve discovered the problem, which requires extra investigation, we will be dictating the price. Nothing absurd, I assure you. Just enough to compensate for our efforts.”

  The governor nodded and sighed. “Yes, yes. Of course.”

  I wrote with the best handwriting I could manage while Teke told me what needed to be included. Contracts were usually mostly written by the time we came to take care of them. Sometimes the price was haggled with, but it stuck close to the original amount. I had never written one before and I hadn’t seen tons of the ones we’d done before, so Teke was my guide. I couldn’t listen to him and the other conversation at the same time, so I would have to rely on Skrale and Lekk later on.

  50 for the gaulmites and 200 for the unknown creature(s). If it’s not a creature, we’ve agreed to bring a criminal to the guards and reduce the pay by 100. The governor seemed hesitant and uncomfortable until he read the document. Then his face lit up and his energy seemed to double.

  “Brilliant. That’s a very fair deal you’ve written.” He signed the bottom of it and slid the paper back over to us.

  Skrale rolled it up and carefully put it back into his bag. “We’ll send any updates to you when we find out what’s going on.”

  “I’ll keep a messenger posted at the inn throughout the day, if you don’t mind.”

  “That would actually be really helpful,” said Teke.

  “Great. I’ll have your equipment brought to the inn immediately. You can see yourselves out.”

  We went back to the inn to gather the rest of the company. All we had to work with was: The first victim, Gregard, had been missing for several days and the second victim, Gelda, had stepped outside to go for a short walk, according to her oldest child.