Say a Prayer

Author's Note: This will get violent again, but the violence will not be sexual. Also, I recently submitted a story in which I noted that I was still working on this one, but I don't know when or if it will be approved of and published. So, if you read that one, and get confused when you see that this last chapter here is already done, then at least you'll know why.

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Some time ago, while giving a motherly lecture to her sons, Danetta had said, "If you were to wander in the wilderness, and you found a delicate little music box that worked exactly as one should, you'd know the music box was created by an intelligent designer because it's so complex. Therefore, one should look around at this beautiful world and assume that because it's so complex it must have had an intelligent designer. Don't ever be so arrogant as to assume there are no gods. The evidence is right here."

Erdgar had overheard this, but he didn't say anything. At the time, he didn't have his thoughts completely sewed together. He had been a bit high too. Besides, he didn't want to weaken the words of his children's mother. It wouldn't do at all to have his boys rebel against her.

Over time, though, Erdgar believed he had created an adequate thought or two concerning his beloved wife's statements.

On a morning covered with melting snow, as Erdgar and Andreo were slowly driving their horses through the woods and towards the castle, the master of the estate decided to place his thoughts before the eldest child.

"Little Button?"

A pause. Then the boy nodded down at his hands.

"Are you listening to me?"

Another pause. Then the boy gave a soft, "Mmm hmmm."

Erdgar sighed and looked back a moment, noting the sloppy prints the horses were leaving behind in the sloshing snow. Blobs were splattering and dragging along. Then he looked ahead. "I love your mother, and so should you. She's a good woman, and she'd do anything for you."

"Mmm hmmm."

"But, don't go tattling to her about what I'm about to say. Do you understand, Son?"

He heard Andreo's gentle little sigh as he slowly absorbed the words. He almost sounded like a girl, but he was becoming a man. Soon, his voice would flitter and bounce and every word would have at least two inappropriate pitches to them. "I know, Papa. I won't tattle to Mama."

Erdgar took a breath, tasting the cold air and earth. "Your mother's a pious woman, and that's fine, but some people act as if when you have a religion there's no need to think for yourself. I believe your mother has started to blindly follow her religion, and I'm worried that you might become the same. Take this example, the old argument with the music box. If you were to find a music box in the wilderness, the reason why you'd assume it was made by someone isn't because it's complex. It's because it's different from what you'd find in nature, completely different. Otherwise, you wouldn't have even noticed the blasted thing."

Erdgar cleared his throat. He wanted to seem wise. "There's no reason to assume that natural things and unnatural things were both made in the same way since they are so different. Not only that, but we humans have knowledge of humans creating music boxes. We have no experiences of anyone or anything creating nature itself, especially not a god. We don't even have an experience of a god creating a music box."

There was a moment where nobody said anything. It was uncomfortable. Erdgar filled the space with humble words. "Ah ... Son ... I hope you don't think any less of your poor father. I suppose ... I'm always holding hope in you and your brothers. I want you all to be fine men, and I don't believe a fine man, or any man at all, should have a perspective standing on a foundation of loose bricks. Mortar is vital, Boy."

And suddenly, his face was warm and his legs tingled. He hurried to tell Andreo, "Listen, now! Don't assume your mother is an idiot! She's not! She has her reasons for thinking this way, and I'm not cross with her. Nobody should be. It's only ... well ... it's a knotted issue. Most adults don't know how to bear such a thing." Erdgar used a single hand to adjust a thick scarf around his head. Then he said, "A husband doesn't need to agree with his wife on every issue there is. You'll have to marry one day. You'll have to have legally recognized children to continue the line. I don't want you to carry on without an excellent foundation. Your children will suffer if you do."

It took perhaps two full minutes for Andreo to respond with a very docile statement. "I understand, Papa."

"Do you?"

Thirty seconds later, Andreo said, "I said I understand. That means I understand."

Well, that was fine. Andreo was the sort of boy who said exactly what he meant, after all.

***

Tomek realized something was wrong when he saw a shadow creeping down the alley between his townhouse and another.

It was almost spring. He had been considering going off to the capital to enjoy the Social Season. Heidi would have to dye her hair and draw a few false moles on her face, and they'd have to keep a low profile while in the capital, but it could be done safely. But, maybe they should wait a year or more to even try it? To give people more time to forget the famous fighter and his wife?

He wasn't quite certain.

He did know, however, that there was danger crawling about, and that needed to be dealt with first.

He happened to notice the trespasser as he entered the house on a rainy night. That shadow .. it didn't move as a poor beggar would. It moved with confident purpose.

He reminded his roommate and his wife to put their sliding locks on their doors in place. Then he reminded them to lock their windows. Then he carefully, quietly warned them that someone might be lurking about the house. Olga nodded with narrowed eyes and well trained fingers flexing at her belly. Heidi ... well ... she leaned into him, gazed up at him with frightened, wide eyes, and whispered, "Could it be ... could it be your past returning to you?"

Tomek doubted that it was The Colony. They were too weakened, screaming in their death throes. There was the small chance, however, that the government was after them. However, it was still fairly unlikely. Even if the authorities had the lists of the assassins' names, they probably didn't have the information concerning the identifying burn scars. Even if they did, the scars were all in private locations, and the government wasn't about to line up every single person in the nation to examine their bodies.

There was still the idea that some creep was planning a robbery or something.

But Tomek didn't want to be careless. There was a pregnant woman in the house!

Now, assuming that the shadow was targeting someone, who was being targeted?

One of the two women, or even the servants, could be likely, if this shadow was the average sort of criminal. Now if Tomek was the target, then there would be a few signs.

Nothing happened that night, but he knew that person was there, walking around the place, trying to remain hidden from everyone's eyes. Poor Heidi was so upset that she wouldn't even play the violin, which was a shame. She could play beautifully.

Tomek decided to test the trespasser.

On the night after that one, Tomek told Olga to watch over Heidi. Then he dressed himself as if he was planning on having a happy nightly stroll. He even took a very fashionable cane with a golden handle. As he stepped down the stoop of the house, he very rapidly let his eyes touch a few areas around. He noticed the figure just barely peeking out from across the street. He knew it was the same person. It had the same size, same gait, and even the same behavior. It was quietly trying to not be noticed.

Besides those two people, Tomek and the shadow, there didn't seem to be many people around. The streets were practically empty.

The snow had melted away. All that remained was chilly air and the undeterred hope for spring. Tomek lifted the hood of his cloak and turned right. His heels echoed on the pavement.

A moment later, he heard daintier footsteps a good distance behind. His head remained high and straight. He felt the white ribbon in his hair brush against his nape. The weight of his cane was unusually great in his hand. He let the end of the cane tap against the pavement as if every step he took required leverage.

So ... he was the target, huh?

The shadow wasn't an assassin. It was too clumsy, too obviously inexperienced with stalking prey. If this was an officer of the law, why wasn't he being arrested right now?

His free hand sunk into one of his coat's pockets.

He walked on, and on, and on ... waiting ...

Once a good while was wasted, Tomek halted at a very large building of plain but hefty bricks. It wasn't a beautiful place, on a cotton spinning mill. It was barren of any comforts other than a lobby and a few offices. Everything else was reserved for complex machinery.

Tomek walked under the street lights, his form tinted in a faint yellow orange. He hung his cane on a button on his waistcoat. Then he pulled a little tinderbox and a ring of keys from a pocket. He lit an outdoor sconce near a side entrance. He unlocked the door.

Still there, waiting, watching, pursuing.

He entered the building. He didn't lock the door. He didn't completely close the door. He left a crack there as he put his keys back into his pocket.

As he walked, he paused at times to light a sconce or a lamp. In this choppy, slow manner, he moved up a narrow set of stairs and into a hallway on the second floor. His office was a room in the middle of one side of the hallway. He chose the door to that office. The hinges there were a bit squeaky. He left that door subtly ajar as he entered.

He placed a lit candle on a side table near a window. Then he turned a tall, leather office chair, a sort with wheels on the bottom, towards that window, as if he wanted to lazily admire the urban scenery.

Tomek didn't sit in that chair. He kept his steps light as he stood right next to a thick filing cabinet, which was beside the door, the only door in the room. He removed his cane from his waistcoat.

He heard the door's hinges creak.

Someone with dark skin and black cropped hair, wearing a plain cloak, a coat, and breeches, carefully approached the office's desk. The hands and feet seemed fairly small ... and ... there was a delicate air about the person's face. Was that a woman? Hmmm ... Tomek believed so. In fact, she seemed familiar.

She reached under her coat ... and she pulled out a ...

A pistol?!

She pointed it at the office chair and made wide steps, walking around the desk. Her eyes were pinned to that chair.

Tomek's body remembered the past well. In barely a flash of motion, he was there. He had turned and pulled the cane's handle, revealing a long and thin blade. He had brandished the cane-like sheath as if it too could be a weapon.

The blade pierced through the layers of clothing and into the flesh of her back. He knew because of how much the blade sunk. The trespasser's body jerked. There was a gasping, grunting sort of noise. Her pistol fell and banged onto the wooden floor.

Tomek pulled the blade back. Blood oozed. He put the length of his cane over the woman's throat, pulling her from behind. He wanted to throw her against a wall and ask her some serious questions. In his mind, she obviously wasn't an on duty police officer, likely wasn't even from the government, because she was committing a serious crime, and she didn't even have the nerve to pretend that she had a search warrant or even an arrest warrant.

Not only that, but death warrants weren't a thing. She had no business trying to kill anyone here.

She let herself fall back. That was risky, but she did it, and as she did it she managed to roll and twist her body similar to how a cat would. Tomek tried to stab downwards, but he actually missed the woman by a few centimeters.

The woman was rather respectable, actually. If he had the time, he would have politely applauded her.

Still on the floor, the woman kicked herself forward, reaching out for the pistol with her left arm. Tomek stabbed her left shoulder, earning another cry from her. He jammed the flat end of his cane into the back of her hand. He heard some of the bones crack just before she cried out again.

Tomek put the heel of his foot over her injured shoulder. Then he kicked her so hard that she screamed and slid back from the force of it. He quickly bent down and tossed his cane/sheath aside, making sure that the woman couldn't reach it.

His left hand claimed the pistol.

He stepped away as the woman struggled to get up to a crouching position. She was so amazingly angry.

Assuming it was loaded, Tomek pointed the pistol at the woman's face, and he pulled the trigger.

And it exploded in his hand.

***

When Tomek didn't return the morning after his walk, Heidi thought she would die from concern. She imagined him dead with signs of torture, his teeth broken, his nails ripped out of his fingers, his skull bashed in.

Either her worry or her pregnancy had her vomiting. She didn't know which. She reached a point where she was chewing mint leaves as if she was addicted to them. She wanted to call the police, but she didn't know if that was the best idea. After all, Tomek was a former assassin who didn't want any attention from the government.

Olga told her to wait for a month. If Tomek didn't show up by then, he was likely dead, and she'd better marry someone else. At least those were Olga's words. Heidi's response was to vomit again. She hoped her teeth wouldn't be damaged from it all.

She didn't have to wait for a month because someone knocked on the door in the afternoon. Heidi didn't let any of the servants answer the door. She sprinted there and opened the door so eagerly that she slammed the wall.

There was a man wearing a plain coat that had a shiny badge in plain sight. A weapon was attached to his waist. He said down to her in a solemn, concerned tone, "Excuse me, does Mrs. Heidi Maly live here?"

Heat faded out of all her skin. Even her nose felt cold. She sniffed and said, "I ... yes. I'm Heidi Maly. What can I do for you, Sir?"

The man, who seemed to be a police officer, nodded and said, "Ma'am, I have upsetting news."

A rush of footsteps!

"Officer! You need to be more specific! Now let me through!"

Tomek nudged the officer away and sauntered into his house with the most triumphant grin in the world. The left half of his face had a few new scars as if sharp bits of metal had scattered onto him. His left hand was wrapped in a bundle of bandages. He was wearing an ill-fitting outfit that was different from what he had on the night before. Had someone loaned it to him?

It didn't matter. Heidi wanted her arms around him.

Later that night, as they embraced each other on the edge of Heidi's bed, Tomek whispered the events into her ear.

"The gun blew up in your hand?" Heidi murmured as her fingernails tightened into his shoulder.

His bandaged hand patted her thigh. "I believe the madwoman had tampered with it beforehand. She knew I'd be able to take it from her. She knew I was waiting for her to attack me."

"What did you do then?"

"I dropped the thing, of course, but the woman sprung up and tried to wrestle with me. She was even able to twist my cane's blade out of my grasp. But it didn't matter how much she fought with me. I was stronger than her, and I believe I was more accustomed to pain then she was. Her body was weakened and slower. I was able to overpower her. I put her to the floor and broke her neck with my foot."

Heidi blinked and took a deep breath. "She's dead?"

"She's very dead. The local morgue has her now. Nobody seems to quite know who she is. She didn't have any identifying documents or badges on her person. The courthouse will put a notice in a newspaper and wait a few days for someone to claim the body. If nobody does, they'll cremate her and put her ashes in a jar." Tomek smothered a laugh with his good hand. "They have to save the graves for more important people."

Two months passed on. Even though the mystery woman's body had been turned to ashes, someone eventually asked about her. It was the king himself. It seemed that the head of the Invests, of all people, had gone missing. Since he just happened to see the notice in the newspaper one day, the king had wondered if the body belonged to that particular woman.

Unfortunately ... the king happened to read that newspaper two months or so after the cremation date. It probably wasn't his fault. A king must read several newspapers from several cities every day in order to be a well-informed monarch. It would be entirely sensible to skip one particular newspaper one day and leave it for later, and perhaps even forget about that newspaper entirely. It would even be sensible to forget to read sections of a newspaper, or merely glance over an article without thinking much of it.

Esther Urvine ... the head agent of the Royal Investigators ... holy damn!!

Heidi wondered about the details. She didn't have to wonder too long. Tomek was the sort of man who knew exactly who to bribe and how to do it so indirectly that he could never be accused of it. He paid one man to pay another, and then another, to bribe an officer to listen in on the conversations of detectives. According to the Royal Investigators' records, during the time of Esther Urvine's disappearance, she was not on any assignments. She was not on duty. She hadn't been working at all. Whatever she had been up to, it had not been sanctioned by the government in any way.

There was no way to genuinely prove that the woman Tomek killed in legally recognized self defense was Esther Urvine. The king had apparently been distressed to learn that. However, he didn't pry into the matter.

Assuming the now cremated woman had been Esther Urvine, that would mean she would be accused of trespassing and attempted murder ... in a sort of postmortem way ... but yes, she would be accused, and she wouldn't even be able to defend herself. Even if the accusations were false, rumors were much tastier than evidence. Her ethics as an investigator would be questioned. All of her previously solved cases would be re-opened and examined with fine toothed combs and exhausted eyes, just to make sure there weren't any spots of corruption there.

This was terrible, regretful, and plain wrong, but it was more trouble than it was worth. The best option was for Esther Urvine to simply be known as missing instead of dead.

"I don't know why she wanted to kill me," Tomek told Heidi one night. "I don't care. I don't want to think about it. I only want to return to a normal life with my pregnant bride and my new career in cotton spinning."

Heidi nodded and asked, "Do you believe everything will be normal from now on?"

"If not, I'll find a way to force everything back to normalcy."

***

Enio and Ermo were a year old. Their overall weight was three times as much as when they were born. They understood the concept of standing up and taking a few steps before falling flat on their bottoms. Other than that, they weren't walking yet. They did their best to help adults dress them. They knew how to sloppily feed themselves, their bare hands squishing into or enclosing whatever edible thing was before their pink faces. Honey was a favorite of theirs. They could also say the words Mama, Papa, no, yeah, and yummy.

Andreo liked to sit down on piles of crinkling autumn leaves with one of the youngest baby brothers sitting in his lap. He'd entertain the brother with a toy and pat his silky soft head. During these moments, Erdgar, Danetta, or the nanny would often play with the other baby.