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Chapter 19: The griefer kills again
The griefer stood under a streetlight and peered at the hand-drawn map on the back of the business card he’d picked up earlier today from in front of City Hall. “Plague Alley.”
He was on East Upping Street, so far east he was almost at the city walls, across the street from the Simond Fine Art Gallery. Plague Alley was one long block to the north, if anything in the city could be called a block. More like an irregular quadrilateral or an acute trapezoid.
He coughed and spit some phlegm on the ground. Krim’s residents probably enjoyed the smell of wood smoke from all the fires that everyone lit as soon as it got dark and chilly. But he knew what was in it–benzene, formaldehyde, and other carcinogens. Soot. Tar. Dioxins.
His worst fear was that he’d come down with something while out and about in the city and be taken to the hospital, where amateur fans of medieval medicine would practice their treatments on him. He wouldn’t let that happen, of course. It was just a nightmare he had once in a while.
Why did Krim even have medieval diseases? He didn’t know of a single other medieval role-playing game that did. If he was in charge he’d upgrade the basic-bio open source simulation engine they probably got free from the academic community and install a real game engine.
He set off walking north along a barely-lit side street, trying and failing to avoid piles of horse manure and other filth. If he was in charge, the streets would clean themselves, the air would always be fresh, and he’d put in some decent lighting. Magic orbs and whatnot.
According to the map, the first turn should be Plague Alley. He couldn’t see any signs, but he turned right, anyway. There was no traffic here at night, so he walked down the center of the narrow street. It would be ironic if some miscreant jumped out at him right now and killed him. Or maybe ironic was the wrong word. Maybe it would be…
He saw a faint glow coming from a window up ahead, barely illuminating a “studios for rent” sign.
This was one of those cheap boarding houses where starving artists rented space to live and work in. Why an artist would want to come to Krim was beyond him. They probably weren’t real artists, he thought, but wanna-bes who didn’t have enough talent to do anything worthwhile in real life.
One of these so-called artists must have been a woodworker, because there were hand-carved name plates on the door, Thomasin’s name near the bottom.
The hall was dark and empty. There was a faint sound of drunken revelry and off-tune lute playing coming from above. That was good. It would cover up any noise he’d make.
Thomasin’s door was slightly ajar, and the artist herself hummed softly as she squinted at a canvas in the flickering glow of what must have been a hundred candles. Not to mention the fire burning in the stove. The whole place was just begging to go up in flames.
She stepped back from her painting, then must have heard something or seen him out of the corner of her eye because she turned to look at him and smiled.
“Hi!” She paused, cleared her throat, and started over. “Good even! ‘Tis a beauteous night…”
“Shut up,” he said, holding up his knife so that the sharp edge reflected the light of the candles. “Give me all your…”
His plan was to pretend to be a thief, so that nobody would connect her murder back to the griefing, but she didn’t wait for him to finish his question. Instead, she threw her head back and screamed, then started throwing jars of dirty water at him. He raised one arm to protect his face and rushed her, knocking her and an easel to the ground. He had been aiming for her throat with the knife, but hit her collarbone instead. She pushed at him and drew in a breath to scream again but he stabbed her once more with the knife, this time hitting her neck.
Now, instead of screaming, she just gurgled. He stabbed her again, then she stopped struggling and he finally sliced across her throat, as he’d meant to do from the start.
In the struggle, he’d knocked over one of the candles. When he stood up, he picked it up before anything caught on fire and looked around.
There were piles of sketches everywhere. The ones farthest back were covered with dust, so he could ignore them, but there were a lot still left to look through. Had she already delivered the ones he was looking for? He wished she was still alive so he could ask.
Instead, he started pawing through the stacks. He found one drawing of himself halfway down a pile on her desk. Then another. Then a third. He looked around for a container, saw a canvas satchel, dumped out its contents, then quickly scanned through to them to make sure his face wasn’t in them. Then he started stuffing the bag with drawings of himself.
The party upstairs continued uninterrupted, but he could feel the seconds ticking away, so he took one last look around. There was another recent pile on top of a chair behind him. As he swung around, his assassin cloak got too close to a candle. The candle fell into some loose papers and this time the fire spread before he could react. He tore off his cloak, grabbed the satchel and left the room. In the hallway, he took a moment to close the satchel’s top flap. The flowers painted on it were particularly hideous.
“What’s going on?” Another artist had stuck his head out the door.
The griefer stopped automatically and looked back, then panicked for a second, thinking that the artist had seen his face. Then he remembered he was in a default avatar, and relaxed.
“Hey, what are you doing?” the artist said, and the griefer turned and ran for the exit.
“Stop, thief!” the artist yelled. Then the man must have seen the flames. “Help, fire!”
The griefer didn’t look back. He hadn’t planned to set the fire, but now he was grateful for the diversion.
He couldn’t afford to get caught. He had more people to kill before he was done for the night.