Open Black and Blue

[Adelaide Sitai]

14th Winter 513 Just after midnight - From Lantern Square to the West Bank Adelaide was worried, much more so than she would dare to say out loud. She had agreed to meet with Oscar as they had done the night before, at lantern square but, an hour later, he had still not arrived. Of course, it was possible that he had simply been waylaid and then assumed that she would have left before he could arrive. Not being of the paranoid or suspicious type, this was a theory that Adelaide would readily have adopted if it had not been for one of the peddlars who had been selling wine to passer-by's. As Adelaide had gone up to buy some and bring it back to her seat, the vendor had looked at her nervously and asked her how Oscar was. Adelaide, completely forgetting why she left the comfort of her seat in the first place, immediately confronted the young woman, "What did she mean by that?". It was said snappily but perhaps because the vendor had sense a tremor behind Adelaide's usually confident voice, or perhaps her face, usually either very expressive or completely lacking in expression, betrayed her. For this reason, the vendor did not seem at all worried to be speaking in a way that, to some more boisterous dynasty members, might seem insolent, and promptly revealed that she had heard that Oscar was in a bad way. Now, walking towards his home, a couple of rooms over a shop on the West Bank, Adelaide was free to wonder what had happened to Oscar. Maybe it had something to do with the Rujaro, not that there was any reason for them to attack a penniless lawyer. What could have happened? An accident in the midnight market? Had he tripped, fallen into the river and been dragged downstream by the tide? Adelaide had seen that happen to someone once and it had not been a pretty sight, the person bruised black and blue all over with a cut lip and dried blood all the way down the back of their neck. Surely that had not happened to Oscar - it would have made sense that he had learnt to swim in his home city of Zeltiva which was, after all, a port. The moon was high in the sky and groups of people and stray individuals were starting to disappear into the shadows, probably heading back home whichever way they went. If only she could do that. Luckily she had the carriage waiting back near Lantern Square and could sleep in it for the two and a half bells home but just the thought of returning home to her bed, a fire made up by the maids all sparked out, the heat still locked into the room, a nice, cosy room, gave an added energy to her pace.