amphibiaan - Tumblr blog

amphibiaan · 8 months

Text

Critter Genfic Bingo: Mystery

VETH.

The woman in question jumps, the disembodied yet familiar voice in her head startling her so badly she drops the wine glass she's holding.

THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. I THINK FJORD IS BEING MIND-CONTROLLED. WE NEED TO INVESTIGATE IMMEDIATELY. HOW FAST CAN YOU GET HERE?

There's silence, but Veth waits.

Tell Yeza hi!

There it is.

Veth has just finished her return message—I'll be there in fifteen. Assemble all your evidence; we're gonna crack the case!—when Yeza pops his head into the kitchen. "Are you okay? It sounds like something broke in here."

She looks down at the shattered wine glass. "Jester," she offers as an explanation, before quickly conjuring an unseen servant to clean up the mess. Once that's taken care of, she darts around the Brenatto house, packing her bag with whatever accoutrements might be needed for freeing Fjord of the alleged mind control he's under.

Yeza, patient, understanding Yeza, merely leans against the door frame and says, "Well, I guess I'll get Luc from school."

"You don't mind?"

"I mean, this seems like an emergency."

Veth pauses. "Well, this is Jester we're talking about, so there's a...sixty-two percent chance it's not."

"Better not take the risk." Yeza snags her by the waist as she tries to dart past and kisses her. "Go solve the mystery, detective."

Veth grins. "She says hi, by the way."

"Tell her I want you back in one piece."

"The only one who gets to split me in two is you." She slaps his ass, and then she's off and out the door toward Jester and Fjord's.

Jester has chewed all of her fingernails to the quick by the time Veth arrives. "Finally!" She doesn't wait for pleasantries, just drags her friend by the arm to the back of the tiny house that she and Fjord have claimed as their home when they're not on the high seas. There's a window overlooking the postage stamp of a back garden, where Fjord is trimming a hedge—or rather, he's opening and closing a pair of hedge clippers in the same spot, over and and over and over, even though there are no longer any branches to cut.

"See?" She gestures emphatically toward the window. "He's being weird!"

Veth frowns. "He's always weird, Jester. Remember that time he ate a fucking ball?"

"This is different. He's been…distracted all week. Erratic. Two days ago, he put all the clean towels in the icebox. And he keeps muttering under his breath." She takes a deep breath. "What if it's Uk'otoa?"

"Uk'otoa," Veth whispers obligatorily, before shrugging. "I doubt it, because we killed him. Listen, you've had a good run. But so much time on the sea is enough to drive anyone crazy, and he's long gone." Veth pats her arm in sympathy.

Jester frowns. Veth isn't taking her seriously. "I am telling you, I know him, something is—"

She's cut off by a strangled shout from outside, and they both whip their heads to stare outside. Jester's stomach sinks as she watches two figures in head-to-toe black and masked, one tall and broad and one shorter and slimmer, wrap their arms around Fjord from both sides. The smaller one claps a hand over his mouth as the larger one pins his arms together, and the two start to drag him away, not deterred by his thrashing.

"FJORD!" Jester spins around and bolts for the front door. She feels so foolish; Fjord told her that this place was a fire hazard, with only the one exit, and now it might mean she doesn't get the chance to tell him he was right.

"Holy shit!" Veth is on her heels, but Jester is taller, faster; she whips open the door and runs along the side of the house. She stumbles into the back garden, but it's empty, the clippers half-sticking out of the hedge.

"Oh no, FJORD!" Jester's heart is pounding in her ears. She whips her head around, but there's no sign of him or his attackers anywhere.

Behind her, Veth pants, "Where are they? We can take 'em!"

Jester can barely think. Someone took Fjord. And because he's been so cagey these past few days, she doesn't know who or why. She drops to her knees, the panic setting in.

"Hey, Jes, we'll find him." Veth squeezes her shoulder. "No mystery that you and I can't…hang on."

Jester watches her scurry over to where Fjord had been standing and crouch down to rifle in the dirt. "Look at this!"

A sharp spike of hope pierces Jester's chest. She scrambles over. "What is it?"

Veth's holding up a small, shiny piece of sea glass, foam green and about the size of Veth's fingernail. It glints in the sunlight. Jester frowns. "It's sea glass, Veth. We're by the ocean. The garden must be full of it."

"No look!” Veth turns it, and Jester can see now that the piece of glass is perfectly smooth, each of its edges even and carefully beveled. “This sea glass was cut by a jeweler.”

Jester frowns. She’s right, but she hardly sees how that’s relevant. “How does that help us find who kidnapped my boyfriend?”

“One of the campers at Wilde Out! has a parent who does this kind of work with sea glass. They’re right here in Nicodranas!”

Jester’s starting to pick up what Veth’s putting down. “Maybe one of the attackers dropped it! Maybe the jeweler knows who it belongs to!”

Veth grins from ear to ear. “Brenatto and Lavorre are on the case!”

“Yeah!” Jester is now also grinning, until she remembers that Fjord was violently kidnapped not two minutes ago. She schools her expression into something more somber. “Let’s go get my fucking boyfriend.”

The jeweler is a little hole-in-the-wall place on the first floor of an apartment block. Jester presses her face up against the glass of the door, right over the Heflin Fine Jewelry written in gilded script. The store is dark inside, which makes asking the proprietor for help difficult.

“Maybe they live upstairs?” Jester offers hopefully, stepping back from the door.

Veth takes the opportunity to whip her lockpicking kit out of her bag. “I’ve got this.” After about a minute of grunting and low cursing, the door to the jeweler’s swings wide open. Jester looks up and down the street, but there are no Zhelezo around, and no one seems to notice the tiefling and the halfing breaking into a shop in broad daylight.

They slip inside and close the door. “Okay, what are we supposed to do now?” Jester whispers. “There’s no one here!”

“Then why are you whispering?”

Oh. Right. In her normal voice, Jester says, “Maybe there are papers in the office? Some kind of purchase records?”

“Right.” Veth leads the way toward the door that they presume to be the office, and after picking that lock, they’re inside. There are rows and rows of filing cabinets, and Jester groans. “This is going to take forever.”

They each take a filing cabinet and start digging. Jester learns quickly that the easy solution she’d been hoping for, a picture of the piece of sea glass right next to the name of its purchaser, was a pipe dream. Apparently this jeweler does a lot of work with sea glass, and there’s no telling which of the hundreds of rings, bracelets, necklaces, or watches the piece they found could have come from. After about half an hour, Jester throws herself into the office chair with a frustrated groan. “This is useless! We need to try something else.”

Veth slams shut the drawer she’d been rifling through, and the movement causes a gust of wind to shuffle the papers on the desk. One such scrap drifts off the desk and onto Jester’s lap. She picks it up and reads out loud, “Fifty gold to glass pirates at wharf. Stone’s Throw won’t deliver under threats.” She gasps and leaps up out of the chair. “Stone’s Throw! That’s Fjord’s company!”

“Let me see!” Veth snatches the paper from Jester and reads it again. “So…Fjord worked with the jeweler?”

“Or the company did! Glass pirates…” Jester begins to pace. “Maybe this sea glass is valuable. Maybe Stone’s Throw has been shipping it for the jeweler, and maybe these pirates want a cut of the action. Maybe that’s why they took Fjord!”

Veth snaps her fingers. “We’re cracking the case!”

“We’re cracking the case!”

“To the wharf!”

The Restless Wharf is restless indeed. There are dozens, hundreds of people, sailors and dock workers and entertainers and Zhelezo and customs agents, all intermingling in a dance that, frankly, smells really, really bad. Jester has a hard time imagining pirates getting away with much with this many eyes and ears around, but then, she knows well enough by now how sneaky pirates can be.

Veth seems to be on her same wavelength. “We could be looking for anyone. Everyone looks suspicious here.”

“You think that because they work on boats.”

“Never trust a sailor!”

Jester frowns. “Well, my sailor was taken, and someone here knows something about it.”

They start to skirt around the edges of the chaos, catching what scraps of conversation they can. It’s so loud, and the talk Jester hears is mostly of shipping dates and locations. It’s all becoming overwhelming, until Veth tugs hard on her sleeve. “Jessie! Look!”

Jester follows her pointing finger until she sees a pair of dock workers half-hidden beneath an awning. They’re shrouded in shadow, but Jester can just tell that they’re up to no good. Still, she has no idea if they know anything.

“They’re ne’er-do-wells,” Veth whispers dramatically. “I can feel it.”

She’s getting desperate, so Jester casts a furtive glance around to make sure she’s not being watched before going invisible. She scurries over to the dock workers, and she just manages to make out their low conversation—“damned green menace wouldn’t stop fighting, heard his tusks pack a nasty punch”—before the invisibility ends and she’s grabbing one of the dock workers, one with shaggy, dirty red hair, by the shirtfront and slamming him against the wall. “TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!”

“Holy shit, Jester!” Veth scurries over, snapping, “Mind your business!” to the gawkers around.

The other dock worker, with dark skin and pale eyes, barks, “Hey, crazy lady, what do you think you’re—”

“Shut it!” She slams the guy she’s holding against the wall again. “The green menace! Where is he?”

The redheaded dock worker’s eyes are wide. “Fucking hell, where did you come from?”

Jester hovers her face an inch away from his. He smells like fish and sweat and, weirdly, ink? “From your worst nightmare. Tell me where he is, now.”

The other one reaches for something behind his back, but Veth yanks a dagger from her bag and aims it straight for his balls. “Stay still or shore leave is gonna be a lot less fun going forward.”

“Fuck, they don’t pay me enough for this.” The redhead looks around briefly before muttering, “They took him to a cave along the eastern shore. Something about gold and glass, I don’t know, I was just keepin’ an eye out for the Zhelezo. Contract work, am I right?”

Jester releases him and steps back. “A cave along the eastern shore?”

He shrugs. “They use it to house people they want to smuggle out of Nicodranas. It’s still light out, so he should still be there.”

“See, was that hard?” She points a finger at one, then the other. “Don’t follow us!” Then she spins around and marches off to the east.

“Jester, wait!” Jester knows that’s she’s going too fast for Veth to keep up for long, but she’s so close to getting Fjord back she can taste it like salt in the air. “We should get back-up!”

“Back-up?” Jester frowns down at her. “Why? We know where he is, and they won’t be smuggling him until later.”

“Yeah, according to those two dumbasses. What if they’re wrong? What if it’s a trap?”

“A trap for me?” Jester thinks about it for a moment. “But this has nothing to do with me. Fjord didn’t even tell me there were pirates after him.”

“A trap for someone. Jester, it’s a cave. By the ocean. Anything can happen in there!”

They’re almost at the end of the docks now, the rocky beaches stretching out ahead. Jester comes to a stop, puts her hands on her hips. “If you want to go get help, go get help. I’m going to get Fjord.” And then she starts running.

As she goes, she doesn’t hear any footsteps behind her over the crashing of waves, so she assumes that Veth did in fact go get help. That’s fine. She’ll save Fjord on her own. She runs along the beach, slipping and tripping through the sand and rocks, until she catches it around the curve of the shoreline: the slim opening of a cave, maybe only a head or two taller than she is. She slows, trying to catch her breath, and peeks inside. It’s dark and narrow and very scary. She grips the symbol around her neck and whispers, “Traveler, guide me,” before stepping inside.

The cave is damp and cold. Soon, she’s out of the range of the sunlight from the cave entrance, so she digs around in her pocket until she finds a paintbrush she doesn’t remember putting in there. She casts daylight on it, illuminating the cave with warm, bright light. She blinks rapidly, her eyes slow to adjust to the light, but a muffled sound reaches her ears from deeper in the cave.

Fjord.

"I'm coming!" She stumbles her way forward, and finally, when she can see without squinting, a shape emerges on the cave floor: Fjord, hands and feet bound, a gag in his mouth, a bruise blooming spectacularly over one eye. "FJORD!"

Jester crashes to her knees beside him, paintbrush scattering aside, heart pounding as she yanks the gag from his mouth. "Thanks, Jessie," he pants. "I knew I could could on you."

And yes, her hands may be shaking as she works at the knot tying his hands and feet together, but she still preens, just a little. "I saw them take you! It was really scary, but it's okay! We'll get out of here." The rope falls to the rocky floor. "Come on!" She grabs Fjord's hand and tugs him up to his feet.

"Jessie, wait." Fjord tugs his hand from her grasp.

"Fjord, they could come back at any minute! We have to go!"

"They took something from me." He starts to root around in his pocket.

"What is it?"

"My last name. Can I have yours?"

Jester blinks at him in confusion, and before she can have a single coherent thought, Fjord is on his knees, a small, velvet box in his hand. He opens it, his bruised face blushing furiously, and it isn't until she sees the ring, a silver band worked around gorgeous, glinting shards of sea glass, that it hits her.

Her scream echoes, magnified by a thousand, and Fjord winces. "I'm gonna take that as a sign to continue." He clears his throat. "I've been a bastard and a sailor and a hero and a pirate and a god's soldier, but the most important thing I've ever been is someone who gets to love the most lovable person in the world. And if it's alright with you, I'd like to keep doing that...well, forever. Jester Lavorre, will you marry me?"

In all of her years of chaos and trickery, Jester has never been so taken aback by someone else's scheming. All of this, the kidnapping and searching and panicking and running—this was a proposal? Part of her wants to dash his head against the cave wall for letting her think that he was taken by pirates who wanted to kill him.

But...he's looking up at her, his big eyes shining and so very sweet, and the ring really is so beautiful, and how well he knows her to know that her favorite thing is a good mystery to solve. Oh, she's defenseless against him, the most charismatic captain on the high seas. "Okay," she squeaks out, wiping at her eyes, which are obviously wet from the ocean. "Yeah, that sounds good."

Fjord grins like he's just been set loose in the biggest candy shop on the continent. "Really?"

She nods vigorously, and then launches herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck. "I can't believe it!" she sobs. "I can't believe how mad I am at you, and I can't believe we're getting married!"

Fjord laughs. From the direction of the mouth of the cave, hoots and hollers and applause draw Jester's attention away from Fjord. All of a sudden, four globules of light dance along the path, and all of their friends are there, waving and cheering. "What..."

Fjord stands them both up and steers her toward them. "You don't think I did this alone, did you?"

"I got to punch him in the face!" Beau announces, clearly ecstatic.

Caduceus grips his staff. "And I healed him up a bit when she went way too far."

Yasha and Kingsley are wearing all-black clothes, and the latter dangles a black mask in the air. "Tip your local kidnappers."

Jester looks to Caleb and Essek, who, she now notices, are wearing the exact same clothing as the dock workers she'd interrogating not ten minutes ago. Her jaw drops. "Even you, Essek?"

He shrugs. "Subterfuge is my specialty."

Veth rubs her hands together conspiratorially. "I love it when a plan comes together. Congratulations, Fjord: this one's almost as good as Fluffernutter."

Fjord ducks his head in a bow. Jester squeezes his arm. "I can't believe you did all of this for me."

"An over-the-top woman deserves an over-the-top proposal. Which reminds me..." He takes the ring out of the box, which goes back into his pocket. "May I?"

She holds her hand out, and the ring slips perfectly onto her finger. She extends her arm so it catches the sunlight peaking into the cave. "It's beautiful," she breathes.

"Just like you." And Fjord kisses her, and Jester has never been happier in her entire life.

42 notes · View notes