Would-be killer

From FiranMUX

Mateo made the following judgment at Firan time: 09:43:46 AM on Sat Jun 14, in the year 41 A.U.:
In the case of Mer Raef the accused is found guilty of kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and attempted murder. By his own admission, he accepted a contract for one million stenis, of which a certain amount was paid up front, to abduct Mes Kalissa and deliver her to a specific location. In the course of attempting such he was encountered by Republic military forces. He attempted to elude capture by setting dogs upon the forces and taking Mes Kalissa as a hostage with the threat to kill her unless released: these were unsuccessful. Having later confessed to these actions after being captured, Mer Raef attempted to fight his way out of the jails and was struck dead in the course of being subdued.
For these crimes the Republic sentences Mer Raef to death. Since he is already dead, this simplifies things greatly. His surviving estate, which I understand to consist of one Mes Geloe Firona and child, is fined the one million stenis of the contract plus an additional one million stenis for taking the illegal contract, for a total of two million stenis. One might think this is an unrealistic amount to be fining someone from the old city, but since Mer Raef was found with not quite /ten/ million stenis on his person, clearly money is no object for this family despite their outwardly reduced circumstances. That said, since Mes Geloe is herself a fugitive wanted for questioning on this and other issues, you'd have to be more than a little stupid to expect her to come in and pay off a fine like that voluntarily in the alloted month even if she does sleep on a big pile of money every night. As such, the Republic authorizes the immediate seizure of Mer Raef's accounts and assets to be liquidated in order to pay off his debts.
Finally, the Republic authorizes the payout of successful charge bonuses for all four counts to the guards involved, and awards Mes Kalissa the funds necessary to repair doors and anything else broken during her capture.

Message to Alastor:

    >> Alastor, I need some help. I need to find a body in the     
    >> Temple of Unot. I need to see the face of the man who tried 
    >> to kill my sister. Can you help me, please? I...I can't go  
    >> in there on my own.                                         

Alastor is only limping slightly as he comes into the messenger shop, and he doesn't really need the cane, he's just gotten used to carrying it around. And, instead of being here to send a message, he's here to respond to one. "Hey Zutriana, the messenger said you were here."

Stavros looks up at the man who just walked in, and then to the woman. Glancing back to Alastor he asks, " were you hunting?"

Zutriana turns her head and looks at Alastor. "Oh goodness," she says eyeing the cane and the bandages. "Yes," she says, "yes I'm here. I was waiting a bit to see if you replied. I didn't know who else to a-" she pauses and looks over at the boy then back at Alastor," ask."

Alastor doesn't miss the opportunity to boast, even if it's just to a child. It's sort of an excuse to boast in earshot of Zutriana without appearing to. "Yeah. Took down a moose, all by myself," he says, oh so casually. But then he's just focused on Zutriana. "I heard about that guy, and your sister. He's at Unot's in the resting chambers still?"

Stavros seems really interested in hearing about the moose, but then they start talking about dead guys. Time to listen, and not be heard. The boy inches every so quietly closer to the conversation at hand.

Zutriana shrugs her shoulder, "I don't know if he is there, but he's not in one of our temples so it seems logical." She closes the short distance between her and Alastor, "I'm glad you're all right, taking down a moose like that. They're ever so big."

"Huge," Alastor agrees. He's noticed Stavros here, of course, but pays no attention to the little eavesdropper, so long as he keeps his mouth shut. That way he's not particularly noticeable. "I can take you down there. How's she doing, Mes Kalissa? It sounded pretty close. Did she get hurt?"

Stavros hasn't been told to leave, so he doesn't. Big moose, dead guys, hurt women... all the elements of a fantastic story!

Zutriana frowns a little and it draws her brows together. "She was hurt rather badly, he nearly succeeded in killing her. She's got these awful bandages around her neck where it was broken a bit. We're thankful she is alive and I plan on thanking the guards who helped, I just haven't thought of a way yet. The Lord Viceroy didn't say who the awful person was who hired that man to kill her, but I pray they know. It worries me that someone wants her dead."

Now politics and guard type stuff are being discussed. This is where Stavros loses interest and out he goes.

Alastor nods, sympathetically. "It's worry me too. I mean, at war the Shamis want you dead, but that's different. I'm sure the guards are tracking it down, though." He offers his hand to Zutriana. That's a bit forward, perhaps, for a Hydran, though if nothing else there's a guard there to chaperone them. "You ready to go and see, then?"

Zutriana nods as she places her hand on his arm for the sake of propriety. "I need to see him. I need to know his face. I need to see what evil looks like."

"If you're sure," Alastor says. He doesn't caution her further on it; Zutriana sounds like she knows what's she wants, after all. So he leads her through to the temples.

Anarinuell: Palace District -- Temple of Unot

Zutriana walks with him, her feet moving even if her heart is heavy. They are followed by her chaperone and ever present guard Mer Sanik. Both of them hesitate briefly when entering the pagan temple, but Zutriana has been here before and so ventures in with Alastor.

Alastor gestures toward the resting chambers. "He'll be in there," he says, pausing a moment to make sure that Zutriana is certain. "You ready, then?"

Zutriana breathes out heavily and looks at Alastor, "I'm ready. If I try to spit on him stop me, I don't want to anger Lord Zutiv by defiling a body - even one of a man who'd kill for stenis."

Alastor says, grimly, "I'm not sure Zutiv would mind a little spit." He leads the way in.

Anarinuell: Palace District -- Temple of Unot -- Resting Chamber

"Perhaps not, but I doubt I'd stop there. I'm just as libel to take your cane and place it somewhere unkind," says Zutriana dryly as she follows Alastor into the resting chamber. "Strange," she says in a softer tone adopted out of reverence for the dead, "that they would have a dead bird here. I thought it was the facet Uf who was for the birds."

Alastor is a little confused by the bird too, but then he notices the baby, and sighs. "Poor kid." There's a number of dead laid out respectfully, and then amongst them he spots a man, Raef. He gestures to Zutriana. "I think that's him, over there. That one. I remember hearing what he looked like when I was a guard, and that's the sort of thing you wear in jail, just the tunic."

Zutriana looks at the other bodies wondering who the people are, but she doesn't recognise them. The baby and Alastor's comment make her sigh quietly but then he gestures towards the tunic covered battered body and she moves that way. "Do you think that is him?"

Alastor nods. "It is," he says, sounding fairly certain. He was a guard once. Raef was fairly well-known amongst the guard, after all, always looking to find that bit of proof they needed against him. And now, well, now they have. "He's dead for sure, too."

Zutriana moves away from Alastor and stops near Raef's body. She gets down close, not caring about the smell. After all this is a woman who spent years of her childhood as a near endentured servant eating rats on a ship. There are smells and then there are smells. "In the judgemental it said he had a wife and a child. People who obviously cared about him." She reaches out and trails a lightly calloused fingertip down Raef's nose. "He doesn't look like what I expected. He doesn't look evil. He just looks," she sighs heavily and sits back on her heels, "like a man."

Alastor says, "Well, evil doesn't always look evil, Zutriana. People are what they make of themselves." He's more of a neutral party here -- not to say that he's not very much sympathetic to Zutriana, or that he harbors any sort of positive thoughts toward Raef, but he's neutral in his tone. Analytic. "It'd be too easy, I guess. His wife and kid might be just as messed up as he is. They say he had a fe-- uh, a lot of money on him, he was probably paid for other things, too. Bad things." He folds his arms in front of his chest, resting most of his weight on his uninjured foot and watching Zutriana, now, for a moment.

Her brow knits together as Zutriana stares down at Raef's body. "I saw my mother murdered, you know. I was young but I understood what they did when they stuck their swords into her and beat her. They had this look, this...hatred in their eyes. Then nothing, it was as if killing were a sport. Like tennis in the Olympics. I grew up and forgot their faces but I can still remember those eyes. They killed out of hate and to get power. This man killed for stenis. I will never understand that and I will never understand or forgive the person who paid him for it. His son will have to grow up knowing his father was a hired killer, a man who..." she stops and goes quiet as the words don't come so easily. "A man who cared so little for life he'd steal away a sickly woman with two small children and kill her for less stenis than a silk tunic costs."

"And it's not like he didn't already have enough," Alastor says, shaking his head. "What do you even do with that many stenis. I wouldn't know what to do with a million, and he had lots more than that, he said." He goes back to studying Raef, who looks deader than dead. Whatever happened to him, it was thorough. "It's okay to hate him for that, Zutriana. Some people just deserve hate."

"Can we hate? If we hate don't we, become monsters too?" Zutriana reaches out to touch Raef's bruised finger. "This finger was put on my sister with the intent to frighten her and then kill her." Without realisng it she digs her nails into the cold lifeless hand. "For stenis he didn't need. For greed. A life for a man's greed." With disgust she forces herself to her feet and stands over the corpse. "We live in awful times. Times when our souls are in jeopardy not just because the Shamibelians all want to enslave us, but because we have men like this out there. Men who care nothing for another's soul. Men who's own souls have turned black and rotted away." Zutriana turns towards Alastor, "I don't want to see him anymore. I've seen enough. Let's go and drink to the living and leave this thing here to rot as he'd have left Kalissa."

Alastor puts a hand on her Zutriana's shoulder, to turn her gently away from the body. "I know what people can do, Firans can do, the depths to which people can sink," he says, and earnestly at that. Once Zutriana is turned away from the corpse, he offers his arm to her, to lead her out. "And it's okay to hate. Some people pretend not to, because it's associated with-- well, polytheists say it's associated with Drik, I never really found out what monotheists believe. And it's true, it is, but what people forget is that it's not hate that's bad. It's actions that are bad. You shouldn't feel bad for hating someone who's an awful person."

End of log, back to Zutriana.