The Mysterious Affair at Gremble Arms

      “You made your choice, and you sacrificed Tyra to make it,” said Dalton. He was still crouched down in front of the other Shoyru, elbows on his knees and hands clasped in front of him, using his tail to keep his perfect balance and looking infuriatingly casual about the whole thing. “If you had turned the ghost in at any point tonight, it would have cleared all suspicion from Tyra. But now? Now that there’s no one else to blame? Even if they can’t prove she did it, no one in this guild will ever trust Tyra Magena again. All you had to do to save her was tell the truth. Even now it wouldn’t be too late. But you still can’t do it, can you?”

      “It wouldn’t have been any better if I had turned them against Cecilia instead,” Kiyoshi retorted. “Even if everyone believed me, what would that even accomplish? Just give them someone different to hate and villainize? Cecilia’s had thirty-eight years of that already. Probably more. She deserves to rest. Tyra would understand that.”

      Dalton shook his head, standing upright. “I don’t trust that trust you have in her, Kiyoshi. I think it’s just another lie you tell yourself.”

      He walked over to where his mask still sat on the bench and picked it up, dusting it off with the back of his hand. He hummed with disapproval, then slipped the mask inside his suit jacket. “I guess it really is safest to keep these things close to the chest.” Wandering back, he paused in front of Kiyoshi, who was still a little slow to get up. “Well, I still hope I was able to pass on something useful to you tonight. If only a little reminder of what this guild’s all about, since you’ve been out of the exploring business for a while.”

      “Yeah, thanks,” Kiyoshi said. He winced as he propped himself against the wall. “I’m pretty much reformed. You can leave me to die of my wounds with a clear conscience now.”

      Dalton shrugged. “Whatever makes you happy, Ghostchaser. I was just about to head back in anyway.” He stepped up to the cracked window next to Kiyoshi and ran a finger along the fracture lines, tapping the glass thoughtfully. “After all, I need to make sure justice catches up with everyone tonight.”

      Kiyoshi was still for a moment, an unspeakable feeling of dread slowly freezing the air in his lungs. “What are you playing at?”

      The Island Shoyru brushed past Kiyoshi, heading for the double doors that led directly to the ballroom. “I wonder if they kept these unlocked.”

      “Listen. I’ve been around ghosts my whole life. Whatever you’re planning, it won’t—“

      “It won’t?” Dalton said, spinning back to face Kiyoshi. “It won’t what? It won’t hurt your little ghost friend? Really? Is that what you’re going to try and tell me now? You don’t think I’ve already figured out what I have to do to stop her? Seriously, Kiyoshi, come back to reality. How about this: look me in the eye, and tell me I can’t hurt her.”

      Kiyoshi tried, fumbled the words. Tried again. “Don’t hurt her.”

      Dalton looked at him with a mixture of pity and disgust, like the other Shoyru was a bug he’d accidentally stepped on. “All those lies, and you can’t even lie well when it matters.”

      “How can any of this be your idea of justice?” Kiyoshi demanded as Dalton walked away, hating how desperate he sounded. “This all started because the old manager of this hotel stole something precious from a girl who’d done nothing wrong!”

      “And she’s stolen how many things in the forty years since then?”

      “It’s not the same.”

      “It’s exactly the same. The only difference is which one of the thieves was around to tug on your heartstrings.” Dalton tried one of the door handles and nodded with satisfaction when there was a click. “Stay out of my way, Kiyoshi. I won’t be as gentlemanly next time.”

      “Dalton!”

      The Island Shoyru threw open both doors of the ballroom with an almighty slam, striding in while they were still bouncing on their hinges. A small, jabbering crowd had clustered in front of the doors (and in front of the bewildered old brown Zafara in servants’ attire who appeared to have been doing his best to hold them all back), but all parted automatically to let Dalton through, even as they gaped openly at him.

      “Mr. Oritz!”

      “We thought we heard something, is—is everything quite alright?“

      “Now just a moment!” interjected Mr. Blom, loud enough to drown out the others. “What the blazes were you doing out there, Oritz? How did you—“ The Tuskaninny’s eyes fell on the open doors, where Kiyoshi was still standing frozen in place. “Hagan’s crown! It’s Magena’s hateful little henchman! And not only that, but I dare say Oritz, you have the air of a man who’s just about ready for a grand reveal! Is this our culprit after all?”

      “No,” said Dalton, pulling a handkerchief from his breast pocket as he ignored all of them, making his way with purpose to the opposite side of the ballroom.

      “Well… then was it Magena herself? Where did she get to—“

      “No.”

      “Then who—“

      Dalton slammed his handkerchief-wrapped fist into one of the tall mirrors lining the ballroom. The entire surface exploded at once into a cascade of silver shards that slid to the floor before shattering into a million more pieces. Someone screamed. There was something horrifically striking about the Shoyru standing there with his back to the crowd as the last few shards in the dark, empty frame dropped with a tinkle, looking for all the world like the very sky had fallen down around him. He turned, the crunch of glass under his shoes so stark against the mortified silence it was almost painful.

      “The culprit is someone who’s escaped justice for far longer than one night,” Dalton said calmly, shaking slivers of glass from his still-wrapped fist. “More like forty years.”

      “Fyora above,” Mr. Blom breathed. “You don’t mean…”

      “What on Neopia do you think you’re doing?” roared Jake, bursting from the lounge with both Minerva and Tyra in tow. He took in the sight of Dalton surrounded by broken glass and his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “Dalton, really? I might have expected this kind of recklessness from Mr. Blom, but—“

      “Those mirrors are older than any of us here!” snapped Minerva, striding past Jake. The mild-mannered Draik was so angry she was visibly shaking. “They’re priceless! How dare you—“

      “How dare I?” Dalton cut her off. “How dare you, Minverva Moss? You and all your precious employees have been lying to your guests, lying to everyone, for decades, and you still want to play the victim in all of this?” He gestured sharply to the closest intact mirror on the wall. “You wanna tell everyone why you really don’t want me to break these? You wanna tell them who you’ve really been protecting all night long? Or should I?”

      Minerva’s mouth stretched into a thin line as she caught Sabina’s eye in the crowd. The Poogle looked like she might be sick, her hands mindlessly wringing her apron as her pallid expression conveyed a desperate, wordless plea to the older Neopet. Somehow, something in the exchange seemed enough to convince the Draik to stand down, which she did only with extreme reluctance and a final disgusted shake of her head. “I’ll see that you pay for every single cracked pane, Mr. Oritz.”

      “Wait a second,” Baxter spoke up suddenly. “Older than any of us? That ghost story Cherry was telling us….”

      Cherry perked up. “Oh, you’re finally seeing it, huh?”

      “You said they built this hotel on the skeleton of the old one.”

      “Yup.”

      “Did they, uh. Use any of the original materials?”

      Cherry tilted her head towards Dalton, raising both eyebrows above her mask. The answer seemed too obvious for anyone to speak aloud—but that didn’t stop Mr. Blom, who couldn’t resist the chance to flex his knowledge of local history once again.

      “Yes, ah.” The Tuskaninny cleared his throat. “The glass. They were able to salvage some of the glass.”

      “Then I’d say it’s the civic duty of this generation to make sure neither the glass nor anything hitching a ride inside it can be salvaged again,” said Dalton, turning towards the next mirror, but he’d barely begun to raise his fist before three bodies launched themselves at him simultaneously.

      Kiyoshi had gone for his arm, his most immediate concern being stopping Dalton’s fist by any means necessary, but it was a move that proved futile as the stronger Shoyru was able to leverage his full range of motion and throw him off easily. The midsection tackle from a Bori with easily twice Dalton’s weight and the uppercut from a Zafara who’d proudly grown up in the slums of Krawk Island, on the other hand, were much harder to shrug off.

      Dalton grunted as Jeri’s tackle drove him into the back of a nearby chair and Aidne’s punch knocked him backwards over the top. Aidne was on him again before he had even managed to get all the way back to his feet, and there was a brief scuffle as she tried to wrestle the Shoyru’s arms behind his back—until suddenly she lurched away with her own arms up.

      “Back off,” Dalton said, his tone dangerous. As Aidne slowly stepped away, Dalton spun around to face Jake and Kiyoshi, who had been coming in again from the other side. Gasps and small cries of alarm followed the motion, as everyone in the crowd could now see just as well as Aidne what was in Dalton’s hand.

      “You…” Jake started, and it looked like it was taking all his willpower not to throw himself at Dalton. The Kougra shook his head slowly, raising his paws in a show of supplication that didn’t match his expression. “You can’t have that.”

      “What, erm. What, exactly…” Mr. Blom fidgeted, visibly uncomfortable. ”…Is that?”

      “Like it?” Dalton said, flicking the oddly-patterned greenish pistol in Kiyoshi’s direction until he too backed into the crowd. “I don’t blame you if you can’t tell what you’re looking at. It’s one of a kind. Had it custom-made after the last time I was in Geraptiku. Maybe some of you’ve heard of something the museums and weapons dealers have been calling ‘The Bowling Ball of Lost Cities’? An ancient artifact of such cataclysmic power that it was said to have wiped out entire civilizations? Well, we found hundreds of them.”

      Dalton pulled back a lever on the pistol and several pets jumped, but nothing more dramatic happened than a compartment near the back of the weapon popping open and depositing a small object into Dalton’s waiting hand. He held it up for the crowd to see: a small, irregular chunk of something not much bigger than Kiyoshi’s own slingshot pebbles and apparently composed of the same greenish blend of ceramic and oxidized metal that formed Dalton’s pistol, with two strands of copper wire running from it and back into the pistol. Even at a distance the raised metallic emblem of a skull was unmistakeable above the patina. “I took one and a tinkerer in Moltara smashed it to pieces just so he could make this.” He clicked the fragment back into place. “It doesn’t take ammunition. More of an energy cannon kinda thing—the original pieces are all wired in. Now, I’ve never used it on myself, obviously, but I’m told getting hit by it is like getting caught in a typhoon, except the typhoon is inside your body and your organs are the loose objects that got caught in it.”

      “Use that on anyone here, and losing your membership to this guild will be the least of your worries,” Jake said darkly.

      “I’m not planing to use it on anybody,” said Dalton. “But I guess that depends on whether anybody tries getting in my way again, doesn’t it?”

      This time, only silence answered him.

      Tyra, who had been standing numbly off to one side through the physical struggle, now shook herself out of it and whirled to face her fellow guild members. “So, what now? We’re just going to let him do this?” Throughout the crowd, eyes lowered to avoid hers. “I’m supposed to believe no one else here broke one tiny little rule and snuck in a weapon of their own? Really? Or is it that you’re all too scared to fight back?”

      “Tyra, stop it,” Dalton said. The good humour he’d treated her with previously was gone. “You’re too smart to be this stupid. Do you really think anyone else here wants to let this ghost get away with everything she’s done?” He addressed the other side of the crowd, who recoiled when the pistol swung their way. “Don’t you want your things back? Soffleberg? Blom, your ‘valuable’ pocket watch?” The Bruce was indulging herself with a small folding fan and pointedly ignoring Dalton, while Mr. Blom just stammered out an incoherent mumble of “well, ah”s and “that is to say”s before going mum.

      Dalton’s mouth twisted. “And you?” he demanded, turning on Sabina and making her take a frightened step backwards. Minerva immediately put herself between them, her expression a grim departure from the gentle smile that had welcomed them all to the gala earlier that evening.

      “It was your ring, wasn’t it? It must have been important to you. Truly, what reason do any of you have to keep protecting this ghost, when she’s taken so much?”

      “Sometimes things are meant to disappear,” Minerva said.

      Dalton stared at her, then scoffed. “Well, you’re right about that.” He took a step in front of the next mirror on the wall, his polished shoes still crunching through the remains of the first. With his pistol still trained on the crowd, his gaze flicked back to Kiyoshi. “You at least should be able to accept this, Kiyoshi. You said you wanted closure. Burke’s dead, but nothing’s really over until she’s moved on too.”

      “This isn’t closure,” Kiyoshi said angrily. “This is just more of the same cruelty that ripped a girl’s soul out thirty-eight years ago.”

      “It’s a sequel no one asked for,” said Tyra. “This isn’t the right way.”

      Dalton glanced between the two of them, his expression caught between curiosity and annoyance. “Huh.” He quirked a sardonic smile. “So you really do see eye-to-eye after all. Isn’t that cute.”

      He used his teeth to adjust the handkerchief wrap on the hand that wasn’t currently occupied with a pistol, then shrugged. “Too bad you’re both wrong.”

      Crash.

      The second mirror’s destruction was even harder to watch than the first, made all the more harrowing by the gut-wrenching sob that escaped a shuddering Sabina’s lips.

      Mr. Blom was sweating behind his unflattering mask. “Maybe we should, ah. Wait for the authorities….”

      “We are the authorities,” Dalton said shortly. “Feel free to report me to the watchman after I’ve gotten all your oh-so-precious baubles back. And, incidentally, if any of the rest of you wanted to get your hands dirty for once instead of sitting around yearning for some mythical golden age of adventure, I wouldn’t say no to the help.” He waited, but when no one stepped forward, he just shook his head in disappointment. “Guess it’s just me doing the work no one else has the guts to do as usual, huh?”

      “I can’t just watch this—“ Tyra started towards Dalton as he took another step along the wall, but before either any of her friends could stop her, it was the flipper of Mr. Blom that caught her wrist.

      “Don’t be a fool, Magena,” the Tuskaninny murmured to Tyra, pulling her back into the crowd. “Just let him have what he wants. It’s not worth putting yourself in danger.”

      Tyra almost shot something back, but then she bit her lip, scanning the faces around her. She froze. “Wait. Where’s Kiyoshi?”

      A few of the guests had evidently begun to recognize the name and now turned around in search of the Shoyru themselves. A few whispered to one another, frowning. Jeri caught Tyra’s eye and shrugged.

      Dalton, for his part, was unconcerned. “Probably ran off to warn his little ghost friend,” he said. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t stop until every last reflection in this building is destroyed for good. She’ll have no hiding places left.”

      And the Shoyru shattered a third mirror.

      By this point Sabina was huddled on the floor, shoulders wracked with silent sobs as Minerva did her best to comfort the Poogle maid even through her own distress. Jake, moving slowly and keeping a wary eye on Dalton’s pistol, moved over to crouch beside the pair.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “This never should have happened.”

      Crash.

      Minerva took a moment to wipe her eyes on the back of her hand. “It’s not your fault, Mr. Kugar.”

      Jake didn’t answer for a moment.

      Crash.

      “I think it might be.”

      Crash.

      The Kougra continued to watch Dalton with a deeply furrowed brow as the mirrors were destroyed, one by one. “This is the guild I’ve spent most of my life helping to build. I may not have set out hoping to become the face of exploration in Neopia, but that’s what happened, way before I had any idea what that actually meant. I didn’t even know what being an explorer meant. And now that I’m here, after everything I’ve seen tonight—I can’t help but think that somehow, without ever meaning to, I ended up telling the world that exploration is the same thing as conquest.”

      This earned a bitter laugh from Dalton, whose next mirror-obliterating punch was so forceful it left a dent in the backing behind the glass. “Exploration is always about conquest,” Dalton hissed without turning around, wiping a fleck of blood off his lip.

      “I don’t believe that,” Jake said. “I think exploration is about connections. The threads between people and places and times. And the footprints you leave for others to follow.” He shook his head, looking down at Sabina, whose face was still buried against Minerva’s shoulder. Quietly, he said, “I’m beginning to worry I’ve made some missteps.”

      There were forty-eight mirrors in the ballroom, a number that most of the gathered Neopets inevitably found themselves counting up to, for lack of any other pastime to distract them from the unbearable spectacle they had been forced to bear witness to. When Dalton was done with the mirrors and reached the windows, however, even some of the quieter guests protested.

      “Aw come on,” Baxter blurted out. “You’re not plannin’ on taking out the stained glass too?”

      “Have some respect!” huffed an elderly Lupe with a long white mustache, while his companion, a younger faerie Kougra, crossed his arms and nodded in agreement.

      “Are you saying that because they’re pretty, or because you really don’t think the ghost could be in them?” Dalton asked harshly, mere inches away from the first window.

      “They are pretty…” Cherry mused, tilting her head as she considered them. The Cybunny alone seemed relatively unfazed by the destruction. “Pretty shiny. Yeah. Defs could be a ghost in that.”

      Dalton gave an exaggerated bow in her direction, addressing his next statement to the crowd as a whole. “As my perceptive colleague said.” He raised his fist once more. “And don’t believe for a moment that I won’t knock this whole place to the ground a second time if I have to.”

      The windows took more work than the mirrors, but it was work that Dalton seemed more than prepared to see through to its bitter end. After a scarce handful of minutes that nonetheless seemed to drag for an eternity, only the faintest jagged edges of glass remained in the window frames. From these unsightly gaps in the exterior wall, the freezing night air now rushed in unimpeded to further numb a crowd that had finally run out of objections. Any remaining fight in the gathered pets had quickly died in their throats as they watched the last glass in the ballroom join the dust and debris already piled along the edges of the dance floor. Now, it was just them, and the ruined ballroom.

      “…Is that… it?” Mr. Blom’s small voice seemed almost obscene in the silence. “How, erm. How will we know if it’s worked?”

      Dalton turned, shoving the odd pistol in his pocket and beginning to unwrap his hand. His face and neck were pockmarked with an alarming number of small nicks from errant glass but his eyes sparked with exhilaration, his whole expression radiating quiet yet savage triumph. “We’ll know it worked if no one ever loses another stupid piece of jewellery in this rotten hotel ever again.”

      “Right! Yes, of course. Very good.” Mr. Blom still had a nervous trill in his voice, but it was with some visible relief that he rummaged around in his pockets until he could brandish a flashy silver object that turned out to be a second, hitherto-unseen pocket watch. “I wouldn’t want to lose my backup watch, after all. I always knew it was a good idea to carry two!” He hurriedly shoved it back in his pocket. “‘Second time’s the charm,’ I always like to say—”

      “Now just a minute, Oritz.”

      Dalton looked around for the source of the voice, frowning when he couldn’t locate it.

      “Down here,” came the sigh, and the crowd parted to reveal a very short striped Meerca, who was glaring critically up at the Shoyru, tapping her foot on the floor. “If you bust all the mirrors with the ghost still in ‘em, how are these people gonna get their things back?”

      Dalton didn’t move, and his expression didn’t change. But his silence was answer enough for the gathered Neopets.

      “Well, ah,” Mr. Blom started, but even he seemed to be having trouble spinning an excuse for Dalton this time. “The important thing is that we’re safe now. And, well, that’s all thanks to you, isn’t it now, Oritz my boy? With all the mirrors broken, the ghost certainly can’t phantom away anything else in this room, at the very least. I for one shall rest easy, knowing that the wicked maid will never get her hands on my watch.” The Tuskaninny patted his pocket. His smile turned rigid, then fell abruptly as he crammed his flippers into the pockets on both sides of his pants, flapping them around as he searched his person frantically. “MY WATCH!”

      Slowly, every face in the room turned to face Dalton, and this time, the sudden souring of the atmosphere was enough to make even him twitch.

      “You idiot,” said Tyra.

      “I think he’s stopped,” Kiyoshi said quietly, hopping down from the washstand to press his ear to the door. “Maybe we won’t need to worry about smuggling you out on a serving tray after all.”

      “Would that even have worked?” Cecilia asked, drifting as close as she could to him within the frame of the lavatory mirror.

      “I have no idea. But you were able to survive a whole building burning down just by hiding in a little piece of stained glass—well. Survived in a manner of speaking. Sorry.”

      Cecilia didn’t seem bothered by his faux pas. “Why would he stop?”

      Kiyoshi straightened, balancing the oversized silver platter on the side of the washstand thoughtfully. “I think it was Tyra.”

      “Your friend?”

      “She's good at people. She would’ve figured something out.”

      “How do you know?”

      “I trust her.”

      Cecilia hummed. “That’s nice. I like that.”

      Kiyoshi hesitated. “Cecilia… I don’t know what’s going to happen out there, but I think the ending to this story is coming for us whether we like it or not. Will you stick around? Until the very end?”

      “Yes,” she said. “I’ve decided I want to give a bit of an apology of my own. Not”—she added firmly—“because I have to. But because I want to. I’ll need a little help, though.”

      In one fluid motion, the Pteri in the mirror produced two large handfuls of gleaming jewellery, Madame Soffleberg’s diamonds sparkling front and centre. Most of the remaining treasure was decidedly unfamiliar.

      “Wait—” Kiyoshi gawked. “Are you saying you still have all of it? How?!”

      “This dress has pockets,” Cecilia said with a small smile. “Mabel was big on that.”

      By the time the lavatory door opened, a small mob had already pressed into the hallway, its weary but intrepid constituents having yet to reach an agreement about whether or not there was due cause to force their way into the men’s room and demand an explanation from the slippery Shoyru who had excused himself from the ballroom at such a critical moment.

      But then Kiyoshi opened the door of his own volition, and as surprised as he was to see the crowd gathered there, the crowd was certainly even more stunned by the sight of the Blue Shoyru in the doorway—or more specifically, of the heavy armful of gold and jewels being held by the Blue Shoyru in the doorway.

      “…Ah.”

      A golden pocket watch slipped out of his arms and bounced on the floor, snapping open right next to the tailfin of a Tuskaninny whose expression was so far past astonishment it seemed to be rapidly transmuting into a sort of indignant wonder.

      “Let me guess,” Mr. Blom said. “There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”

      “There really isn’t,” said Kiyoshi.

     To be continued…