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Since Rook had met Neve, she’d consistently painted a picture of the city as a hotbed of intrigue, skullduggery, and dark magic, the poor and the weak ground under the velvet boot of the upper class. In spite of all that, Rook was not prepared to find a murder victim right out in the middle of the street, with the bustle of normal life flowing obliviously all around them.
The body was posed kneeling, slumped forward. A long blade pierced her from back to front, point braced against the ground. It was right in front of them as they rounded a bend in the street.
They all stopped in their tracks. Harding gasped at the sight. Rook said, “What the…”
Then the demons attacked.
What followed was an ugly little fight. There wasn’t much positive to say about darkspawn, but at least they stayed put and didn’t pop in and out of the Fade while you were trying to hit them. They also didn’t douse the area in magical darkness, a most unwelcome surprise.
Neve’s voice came out of the darkness: “Can anyone see anything?”
Rook could see precious little. Couldn’t tell at all where Neve and Harding were, couldn’t tell if there might be an innocent Minrathous citizen passing by in range of his strike. He braced, shield up, and waited, spinning when a flash of movement caught the corner of his eye.
There was the demon, ethereal glow just barely visible, bobbing around right where sight transitioned into blackness. Rook leaped toward it, dodging globes of ice, connected on the downswing, followed up with two more swift strikes.
The demon vanished. The noise and light of the Dock Town street materialized around him, bright and glaring.
One last demon flared to the left, a clump of black rags and green ether. Harding squawked and shot it, and it burst, remnants scattering into the air.
The spirit that emerged beside the victim when they were all done was another surprise.
“Spirits never used to pop up and ask for help with their problems,” Rook observed after the spirit of Compassion had made its request and vanished.
“Is this just another thing about Minrathous?” Harding asked.
“This is a little unusual even for Minrathous.” Neve frowned, considering. “Actually, it might be the dagger.”
Rook glanced down at the lyrium dagger, safely sheathed at his hip. “You think?”
Neve opened a hand. “It has a powerful aura. Spirits might be drawn to it. And demons, too.”
“Well, that’s… concerning.” He knelt and gently looked at the victim’s face. A woman, human, middle-aged, her face slack and wiped clean of all expression. He hadn’t attended any form of worship in a long time, but he said a tiny prayer for her as he stood.
Neve was looking at him with her brows lowered, tapping her metal foot against the ground in an uneasy staccato. “I know this really isn’t our sort of problem…”
By our she meant his, he thought. He was fairly certain that if Neve had run into this scene on her own, nothing would have stopped her from tracking down the source of the problem, and any surviving family the deceased had. As far as he could tell, Neve took on Dock Town’s problems as easy as breathing. “Nonsense,” he said briskly. “Can’t have demons roaming the streets murdering people, can we?”
She relaxed and gave him a half-smile. “I suppose not.”
They followed the trail of blood. A trail of… maybe something else as well, Rook thought, because the dagger vibrated subtly in its sheath, almost tugging in the direction of the crimson splashes. Whatever they were following, it led them to a low shack someone had built on the side of the street. Scented herbs and flowers made a little bright spot along the roughness of the pavement. Inside the shack, they found a journal with a torn binding, describing dreams of fog and burnt cinnamon.
“She was a gardener,” Harding said softly.
“She chose to make things grow, instead of listening to the demon,” Rook said, leafing through the pages.
Lying on the late Hortensia’s table were a few blossoms left to dry into seed. Harding wrapped them in a bit of paper and tucked them in a pouch.
There seemed nothing else to do here, no other clue likely to be found in Hortensia’s scant belongings. Neve sighed. “Two more, the spirit said.”
Rook looked around, putting one hand on the dagger. It still vibrated softly, seeming to pull his attention up the next street. “Let’s try that way.”
Sure enough, following the dagger’s tug along the winding street led to the second victim, a slim qunari man with elegant, upright horns.
The demons weren’t any more pleasant the second time around. Particularly when they pulled their darkness trick with everyone on a platform, surrounded by sharp drops to the streets below.
“I wonder what happened to Sybil,” Harding mused, once they’d defeated the demons and followed the trail of blood and ether to the late Marcus’s little study. He’d been a scholar, it seemed, desperately chasing after a missing partner, poised on the same knife-edge between despair and hope.
“Can’t be anything good,” Neve said grimly. “Let’s find that last one.”
They found the last victim posed the same way, in a marked circle near the scaffolding of a construction site. They same explosion of demons followed, and the same demonic tricks with darkness. The third time felt easier. There was something to be said for practice.
This victim had been an artist. Rook didn’t know much about art, but he thought the sketches were good, rough but lively: they captured the vitality of the streets, of people chatting with the paper-sellers, someone laughing at another’s joke, a young couple looking at each other with adoration, street cats lounging in patches of sunshine. Like the other victims, the artist’s work turned toward possibility and the future. These were all poor people, who’d lived in tents and shacks tucked into corners of the Dock Town streets. They’d looked for ways to brighten their days anyway.
The Spirit of Compassion seemed pleased enough when they met it for the last time, but Neve’s mouth was tight and her eyes distant when they left it. Rook fell into step beside her as they made their way back to the Shadow Dragons’ hideout. “You all right?” he asked quietly.
She let out a long sigh. “Something’s loose in Dock Town and I don’t like it. All those people, they heard the demon and turned away, and what good did it do them? Demons killed them anyway.”
“It’s not much of a victory,” Rook admitted.
“Some days there’s no winning.” She shook her head, lips compressed into a firm line.
“Maybe Compassion can stop it from happening again,” he suggested.
“Maybe.” Neve glanced sideways at him. “You don’t have to try to cheer me up.”
He shrugged. Probably he didn’t have to, but he wanted to, all the same. Maybe he felt overly responsible for the team’s morale, or maybe it was just something about her. “We got the demons, at least,” he offered. A poor enough victory, but it was something.
“There is that.”
He offered her one of the charcoal drawings. The last one, of a person turning toward the sunrise. Neve’s face softened as she took it. “Wasted talent,” she murmured, and shook her head. “I’ll be all right, Rook. There are bigger problems now, anyway. It just… wears you down.”
“You’ve been at this a while,” he observed. She took all the problems of Dock Town on her shoulders, as far as he could tell, and blamed herself for struggling under the weight.
“I have.” She took a breath and tucked the drawing away. “It’s how it goes. Avoid one danger, fall into another. Nobody gets a fair shake.”
Rook thought about that for a second, listening to the click-thump of Neve’s steps beside him. “These people didn’t have much, but they did the best they could,” he said at last. “I’ll remember their example. Maybe Compassion will help. At least now we know there’s something to look for.”
“Hmm. That’s true.” She managed a lopsided smile. “Thanks for trying to help, anyway. Minrathous’ problems aren’t really yours.”
“Minrathous grows on you,” he said, solemnly.
She shot him a skeptical look. “What, like a fungus?”
He feigned innocence. “You said it, not me.”
She chuckled, bumping him with an elbow. “I said it because I saw that one coming.”
“Note to self: your jokes are getting predictable, come up with something new…”
Neve laughed again. “I might have heard that particular one before.”
They’d reached the shop. Rook held the door open and waved her in with a flourish. Neve smiled at him as she went in. Harding followed her, giving him a weighted look. Rook chose to ignore that. He’d made Neve laugh and lifted her mood a little, another small victory for the day. He’d take the win.