“Exactly!” Noria planted her hands on her hips. “You can’t trust anything they say.”
“Well, that’s definitely possible.” I paused to consider that, thankful that my thick hair hid the tips of my reddening ears. Was it possible that I was succumbing to the brainwashing effects of the mages’ propaganda? “Still, I can’t completely discount what I heard until I know more.”
“Hmph.” Noria wrinkled her nose. “I think you’ve been doing a little too much listening, and not enough looking.” She returned to her post behind the counter. “I’m going to go do something productive. You should too.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly as Comenius shot me an apologetic look. “I guess you’re right.” It was time to do more looking, that was for sure, and not just on my part. I was going to get the Chief Mage involved with this even if it killed me. It was about time someone other than me did something about this whole mess.
On my way back to Solantha Palace, I stopped by the Shiftertown Cemetery to visit Roanas’s grave. It was located outside the Twenty-First Street Temple, a tall, grey stone building where shifters went to pay their respects to Magorah. I bypassed the temple itself, avoiding the reproachful gazes of the carved animals perched on the corners of the building, and headed to the cemetery in the back.
The cemetery was a wide plot of land that stretched for several acres from the back of the temple. Rows of headstones marked the places where the deceased lay, and I trod lightly over the grass, careful not to step on any flowers or other offerings left for the dead. It didn’t take me long to find Roanas’s grave – it was heaped with offerings from his many Shiftertown admirers, and beneath them lay freshly-turned dirt upon which grass had not yet grown.
I clenched my fist around my own meager offering, a bouquet of dandelions, which I thought a fitting tribute since Roanas had been a lion shifter. I should have been there at the funeral, to say a proper goodbye, to ensure the clerics laid him to rest respectfully and placed a gold coin atop each of his eyelids to pay the Ferryman who would lead him to the afterlife. I should have been there to grieve with his sister, who must have taken a dirigible all the way out from the southwest to see her brother buried. I should have been there to glare holes into my aunt Mafiela and demand that she and the rest of the Council fill Roanas’s shoes with a competent Inspector immediately, one who would pick up where Roanas left off and catch the bastard who was doing all this.
But I hadn’t, because I’d been imprisoned in Solantha Palace due to my own stupidity.
I squeezed my eyelids shut as I dropped to my knees, pressing my forehead to the gravestone. Cool granite rasped against my skin, a stark contrast to the hot tears running down my cheeks. For a long moment I could do nothing except kneel there, my tears dripping on the freshly-tilled earth, a salty offering lost on the body buried six feet beneath. After all, Roanas was no longer in that body to receive them – the tears were more for me, an opportunity to unleash the grief I’d shoved deep into the recesses of my mind since this whole ordeal had started. Tears that I’d not dared show while in the palace, not only because no one would care, but because in enemy territory grief was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Roanas, I thought silently, praying my thoughts would reach him in the afterlife. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you while you were investigating in the first place. Maybe if I had been, I could have helped you solve these murders before the killer caught on to you. Maybe if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my own problems, you wouldn’t be dead now.
A soft breeze stirred the hair on the nape of my neck and whispered gently in my ear. There is little point in wishing upon what could have been. Your time is far better spent focusing on what could be, or better yet, what will be.
I chuckled through my tears at the oft-quoted line. I couldn’t say whether or not Roanas had actually spoken to me from beyond the grave, but the words soothed me nonetheless.
“Come to pay your respects?”
My head snapped up at the sound of an unfamiliar male voice. To my right stood a tall man dressed in a long brown leather coat, tight-fitting pants and a pair of boots that looked as though they’d seen a few hundred miles. The breeze tousled his short blond hair, drawing my attention to his raw-boned face. His hawk nose and slightly too-wide mouth pushed him out of the classically handsome category, but he was pleasant enough to look at. There was a certain charm to the way the left corner of his mouth turned up, and his sharp, reddish-yellow shifter eyes commanded attention.