34. That's all i can promise for now

Chapter 34: That's all I can promise for now.

The cell was smaller than he expected, stone on three sides and iron on the fourth, a narrow slit of a window too high to reach letting in a thin blade of morning light that crawled slow across the floor as the hours passed. Eto sat against the back wall, knees drawn up, hands loose in his lap where the chains had been swapped for something lighter once they'd shoved him through the guardhouse doors.

He wasn't worried. Not the way a man was supposed to be worried, sitting in a cell for two murders he hadn't committed, in a city where he barely spoke the language and had exactly one person who could speak for him. Something about the rooftop kept turning over in his mind instead, Kaplan standing there in the morning light like he belonged there, like watching a man get dragged off in chains was just another errand before breakfast, and the shape beside him that the sun didn't seem to touch right.

He closed his eyes. Waited. He was good at waiting. The forest had taught him that, if nothing else.

Out front, in the guardhouse's main room, Mikaela was not good at waiting, and it showed in the way she paced a groove into the floor in front of the captain's desk while Freya stood beside her, arms crossed, doing the talking because Mikaela had already proven twice in five minutes she couldn't be trusted not to shout.

"He was with me," Mikaela said, for the third time, in Rostalian this time, not bothering to route it through Freya at all. "The entire night. I know because I was holding him, because he was hurt, because I spent half the night cleaning blood off him after whatever that thing did to him at the home. He didn't leave that room. He couldn't have left that room, he could barely stand."

Captain Alaric didn't look up from the parchment in front of him, quill scratching steady across it. "I understand you feel strongly about this."

"I don't feel strongly, I was there."

"With respect," Alaric said, setting the quill down finally, "I've got a witness who places him at the scene with both victims sometime after midnight. That's not a feeling. That's testimony."

Mikaela's mouth opened, closed. "What witness."

Alaric hesitated a beat, the kind of hesitation that meant he knew he probably shouldn't say, and then said it anyway, maybe because Freya's rank sat heavier in the room than his own patience for secrecy. "Man goes by Kaplan. Works the slums mostly, mercenary work, odd jobs. Says he saw a big man, foreign build, matching Eto's description near enough, in the alley behind the children's home well past midnight, arguing with a young woman fitting Lyra's description and a guard fitting Kael's. Says the argument got heated."

The room went very quiet.

Mikaela felt something cold drop straight through her stomach.

"Kaplan," she said again, slower this time, like saying it twice might change what it meant.

"You know him?" Alaric asked.

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"I know him." Her hands had curled into fists at her sides without her noticing. "He's the one who told us to look into the damn orphanage. He came to us weeks ago saying something was wrong at that home, said kids kept going quiet, said the city wouldn't look into it because nobody with coin cared, and could we look into it instead since Eto's, since he's strong, since he could handle whatever was doing it. He's the reason we were even at that home in the first place."

Alaric's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes sharpened. "That's an interesting detail."

"It's not a detail, it's the whole thing." Mikaela's voice had started shaking, not with fear now, with something closer to fury. "He sends us there. He watches us get attacked at the inn two nights back, everyone in that common room went quiet the second it happened like they all knew exactly what it was and weren't saying. Then last night we follow Kael, the shed explodes, Kael's just gone, no body, nothing, and this morning Kaplan's standing on a rooftop watching Eto get dragged out in chains with some, some thing standing next to him that didn't look right in the daylight, and now you're telling me he's your witness. He's the only reason you think Eto did any of this."

Freya's arms had uncrossed slowly through the whole of that, her weight shifting forward onto the balls of her feet, old instinct from a decade of hearing testimony that didn't sit right. "You think this is all a ruse," she said. "I mean this all sounds mighty suspicious. Also that thing you mentioned you saw on the roof earlier this morning. You said Eto saw it too?"

"Something," Mikaela said. "I don't know what. It didn't look, it didn't look like a person exactly, not in the light. Eto saw it too, I know he did, he smiled at it, like he'd been expecting it."

Alaric's quill had gone still in his hand. "You're suggesting your witness fabricated his testimony."

"I'm suggesting you find yourself a better witness than a mercenary who profits either way this plays out," Freya said, and something in her voice had gone hard enough that even Alaric straightened at his desk. "Captain, I vouch for this man personally. He saved my life and the life of every person who resides in Ronta Vro by saving me. That's not nothing. That's a Royal Knight's word standing behind him."

"With respect, my lady, a knight's word doesn't undo an eyewitness account."

"Then find me a second one. Find anyone else in that district who saw what your witness claims to have seen, and I'll stand down." She held his gaze, unblinking. "Until then he stays my responsibility as much as yours, and I expect to be informed of every step taken in this investigation."

Alaric held her stare a long moment, weighing rank against procedure, and finally exhaled through his nose and gave the smallest nod. "I'll see what I can do about a second interview. That's all I can promise for now."

It wasn't much. Mikaela knew it wasn't much, could feel the shape of the next several hours already, waiting rooms and closed doors and Eto sitting in a cell not knowing why any of it was happening to him, and the unfairness of that sat in her chest like a stone she couldn't swallow past.

Freya turned to her once Alaric had gone back to his parchment, voice dropped low enough that only Mikaela would catch it.

"Kaplan," she said. "Tell me everything you know about him. Where he lives, who he runs with, what he actually does for coin besides odd jobs. If he's lying, I want to know why, and I want to know before Alaric's second witness turns up conveniently agreeing with the first."

Mikaela wiped at her eyes, hard, angry with herself for how close the tears had come, and nodded. "He's got a place near the slumps district. Classic mercenary idiot. Runs with a crew, mostly muscle work, debt collection, that sort of thing. Never struck me as the type to lie for free. Somebody's paying him."

"Then that's where we start." Freya's jaw had set into something Mikaela hadn't seen on her before, something colder, sharper, a knight's face instead of a woman worried for a friend. "We find out who."

Behind them, deep in the stone belly of the guardhouse, Eto sat in his cell with his eyes closed, listening to footsteps he couldn't place and voices he couldn't understand, and waited, patient as stone himself, for whatever came next.