Chapter 84: Another ghost?
"Bonn isn't the first," the messenger replied, his voice low. "After it happened, we sent someone to talk to the Gold Cloaks at the scene. They told us there have been countless incidents just like this in Flea Bottom these past few days."
"Gold Cloaks?" Ian asked, surprised. "They're patrolling Flea Bottom?" The City Watch usually gave the squalid labyrinth a wide berth.
"We were surprised too when we first arrived, Sir. But we learned the Royal Council deployed a whole company of them to Flea Bottom to make sure there were no incidents during Lord Jon Arryn's funeral."
"Lord Arryn's funeral is over, isn't it?"
"That's what the Gold Cloaks were complaining about. As soon as the funeral ended, the king took half the council north with him. Lord Renly, the Master of Laws, never bothers with this sort of thing. So, their company was just… forgotten. Left in Flea Bottom, waiting for new orders that never came."
Ian grunted. No wonder Robert was so desperate to ride north and find his old friend, Eddard Stark. In a city as large as King's Landing, the court was filled with schemers and sycophants. With Lord Arryn dead, there was no one left who actually got things done.
"Ahem," Ian cleared his throat, steering the conversation back. "Did you find out what these 'incidents' the Gold Cloaks mentioned were?"
"They're all murders, Sir. And the victims…" The messenger glanced nervously at Ian. "The victims all fit the same profile as the men you wanted us to hunt. Hedge knights, mercenaries, other loners."
So, it is other players, Ian thought. Someone had cast a wide net over Flea Bottom. The player count had started to drop again these past two days; it seemed those eliminations were happening right here in King's Landing.
"The most terrifying thing," the messenger continued, seeing Ian wasn't going to elaborate, "is that there were no signs of a fight at any of the death scenes. And even in a place as crowded as Flea Bottom, not a single witness saw anyone suspicious entering or leaving the locations of the murders."
"You mentioned a term earlier, the 'Stranger's Curse.' Where did that come from?" Ian pressed. It seemed odd. Shouldn't such strange killings be blamed on ghosts or demons first? Why attribute them to one of the Seven?
"That…" The messenger faltered. "I don't know, Sir. It's just what everyone is calling it. I don't know why."
"Find out. I want to know why by the next time you report," Ian ordered. His intuition told him this detail was important. "Now, let's talk specifics. Were you one of the men guarding that dead-end alley?"
"I was in charge of the watch from the hut inside the alley. That's why the captain sent me. There are things only I can explain clearly."
Impressive, Ian thought. The 'Naughty Jokes' were more thorough than he'd given them credit for. "Tell me everything that happened, from the moment…" He stopped himself. He had been about to say 'the bait,' but realized how crude it sounded when speaking of a man who had died in his service. He corrected himself, "…from the moment Bonn returned to the alley."
"Yes, Sir. Bonn finished his patrol on the main street and returned to his rented room alone. After he entered the alley, we watched him from the window. No one was following him. Absolutely no one else entered the courtyard where he was staying."
"Then how did you find out he was dead?" Ian asked.
"It wasn't us who found him. It was his landlady, a very fat old woman."
"He was living with the landlady?"
"Of course not. The end of the alley opens into a small courtyard with three or four rooms. The old woman owns all of them. Bonn only rented one."
"So the courtyard itself was your blind spot?"
"Blind… spot, Sir?" The messenger had clearly never heard the term.
"The courtyard was outside your line of sight?"
"Yes. The old woman's prices are very high, so her rooms are almost never rented. That's common knowledge nearby. Renting a room there made Bonn seem less suspicious, and we thought it would make a target feel safe to attack… after all, no one else was supposed to be there."
"And that's why you didn't have anyone else posted inside that yard?"
"Yes, Sir."
"So besides Bonn and the old landlady, no one else lived in that courtyard?"
"No one, Sir."
"What was the landlady's reaction when she found Bonn dead? Did she scream? Did you rush in then?"
"No," the messenger shook his head. "She didn't react at all. She just walked out of the yard silently. We saw her leave. She was moving quickly, but we didn't think much of it at the time. It wasn't until she returned with a squad of Gold Cloaks that we realized something was wrong."
"How did she convince the Gold Cloaks to come?" Ian found that hard to believe. The thugs of the City Watch rarely cared about murders in Flea Bottom.
"Maybe because so many similar things have happened lately, their captain is feeling the pressure?" the messenger guessed.
Ian nodded, thinking the messenger was probably right. A string of murders like this, even in a place like Flea Bottom, would eventually draw attention. The local Gold Cloak captain would have to act, lest his commander—or worse, the Master of Laws—hear of it and brand him as incompetent.
"Let's be clear," Ian said, pressing the point. "No one entered the courtyard where Bonn died except for Bonn himself, the old landlady, and later, the Gold Cloaks. Is that correct?"
"Yes, Sir."
"But you could only watch the gate. What about the walls? Could the killer have climbed over?"
"The yard is walled on both sides by the houses themselves. The only standalone walls are the one with the front gate, and the back wall facing another street. We were watching the gate, and another one of our groups was watching the back wall. It's a short wall, easy enough to climb, but not without us seeing them."
So, is the killer another ghost? "How did Bonn die?" Ian asked.
"The man we sent to talk to the Gold Cloaks got a quick look at the body. He said there were wounds from an axe. The killer struck him from the front, right through his mail armor, and left a massive wound in his chest."
"Where is the body now?"
"Taken by the Gold Cloaks," the messenger explained immediately. "Our man was just pretending to be a curious onlooker. He couldn't exactly ask them to leave the body behind."
"Is there anything else? Any other strange details you can add?"
"No more, Sir."
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