9th Summer 518 AV
"Speech"
"Speech"
The street was no longer an option to remain upon, and she was untethered in a way she hadn't been for a while. The season's start, meeting Kynier and the fallout of that meeting, had done enough to withdraw the mental anchor that had been pinning her to that one place. She wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing that she wasn't on that street any longer. She could still picture it clearly and perfectly, each doorway, each broken windowpane. She remembered the muddy fug in her mind too, and how close she had got to giving up and fading from existence forever. That was the danger of allowing herself to to wallow. Despite her personal faults, of which she had many, Meriann wasn't ready to give up just yet. Call it stubbornness, or simple stupidity, but she didn't want to give in to death.
Now that her mind was clarified, it was a little easier to remember that she had a purpose. Kynier had helped her to discover what it was that kept her behind, though he might not have known his own helpfulness. It all hinged on Kelski, who Meriann feared with a dreadful, gut-wrenching agony, but if she could understand her killer and in a smaller way why Sunberth was the way it was, she thought she might finally be at rest.
What drove a person to take another person's life? In life it had seemed a simple, easy question to answer. Meriann would've killed anyone to protect herself. She thought she might kill to protect her family too. In death, it was not so easy. There were things she didn't know about the woman and about the night she had died, and those things were essential. Meriann hadn't been a threat in the purely physical kind of way in that she had been drugged out of her skull, so what had driven her to kill so mercilessly? She had some fleeting ideas, but they were without any foundation, and so she didn't entertain them.
Kelski was one lead, but Meriann was still too cowardly to find the Kelvic woman and face the primal anger and disdain in her silver gaze. There was one other though, the drug-dealer named Darvin. The memory of that night was still too painful to fully confront, but she could picture his face and with that in mind she drifted across the streets, searching for him.
The first place she thought to look was Tall Johnny's, but Meriann couldn't yet face the gritty darkness of the place, and so she searched around Baroque Bay to no avail. From there she went north, skirting her burial place and veering west-ish into new territory she had yet to visit. There were many faces on the street, most of them wary and closed off. Children raced across the wacky and lopsided streets, picking pockets and playing survival, the only game they knew.
Meriann leached into homes and resided in the walls, listening to people in the hope of hearing Darvin's particular name. She heard very little apart from inane gossip, but there was something that soon began to catch her ear. A phrase, mentioned in passing, seemed unnervingly common on the people's lips. No-one seemed to know what it was, or at least no-one spoke of what was to happen, but Meriann couldn't help but become intrigued.
She was jaded, of course. The city used to a fascinating place when compared to the clean emptiness of the open sea, but now it was her unbeloved home and it was hard to find anything to be fascinated about within its filthy embrace. Yet the phrase did intrigue her.
"The Night of Masks."
Whatever that was, it would be happening soon. They had said so, though that second piece of information was less readily available. Meriann still listened out for Darvin's name, but time was ticking down until she would confront someone about the Night of Masks, for better or for worse.
