Shadowguard

In all the years she tended the bar, Everna had never made as many blunders as she had in the past two days.

The bottle of whiskey slipped from her hands. Amber liquid spilled across the countertop, dousing the front of her dress. Now half empty, the bottle struck the mug, which she'd only just filled, and sent it skidding over the edge of the bar. The bottle struck the floor at her feet and burst into a shower of glass shards.

"Son of a bitch!" She snatched a handful of rags from the wicker basket beneath the counter and tossed them onto the puddle seeping across the bar. With another rag draped over her open hand, she knelt to pluck the glass shards from the floor.

That was the second bottle she dropped since her shift started and the fifth since she'd returned home.

"Gods help you, girl," Banor said from the other side of the bar. She glanced up to see him lean over the counter, shaking his head. "That wasn't my drink you dropped, was it? That's alcohol abuse, you know!"

Everna rolled her eyes. "Banor, it's noon. You're the only one drinking right now."

Banor scrunched his nose, though she could hardly see it beneath the tangled braids of his beard. "Bah! You humans and your 'drinking times'! Best time for a drink's whenever you feel like having one. No wonder you lot are always so stiff."

"Some of us have jobs we don't neglect," Everna pointed out. She dropped the last glass shard in her hand and dumped the mess in the waste bin before pulling another bottle of whiskey from the shelf. "And some of us can't drink half a tavern and still function."

"'Cause I'm not a twig like you.” He snatched the bottle from her hand, popped the cork, and downed half of it in one go. "Put some meat on them bones, lass, and you won't be stumbling around like a newborn fawn after a few sips."

"Mom can drink you under the table, so I don't think that has anything to do with it," she countered.

"Your mother isn't normal," Banor called over his shoulder as he stumbled back to his spot near the door.

She shook her head, though more out of habit than anything. A drink wasn't a terrible idea. It may be just what she needed.

Everna threw a quick glance about the tavern and pulled an open bottle from beneath the counter. Her parents, who returned home a day before she had, wouldn't approve, but they weren't there. Sir Swiftbrook enlisted her father's help in dealing with a bandit issue south of town, and her mother was upstairs in the kitchen.

A half a mug, just to take the edge off, wouldn't hurt.

No sooner than she pulled the mug from beneath the counter and pulled the cork from the bottle, Melenda climbed onto the stool in front of her, disappointment twisting her features.

"Drinking on the job, are we? Maybe you should take your parents' advice and take a few days off. You're not right, and it's obvious."

Everna bit back a groan. In the last two days, she'd faced an endless stream of concerned complaints and unwarranted advice from both the staff and the patrons. She knew they meant well, but their concern only stressed her further. She'd run out of excuses for why she couldn't lock herself upstairs for a few days.

"It's just an off day," she said with a dismissive wave. "We all have them."

Melenda frowned, the lines of her face highlighted by the shadows cast by the torched chandeliers. "There's off days, and there's off days."

"This hasn't exactly been my week," Everna reminded her as she took a generous sip from the bottle.

Gods, how she wished she could say more. If she could talk to even one person about her circumstances, it may help unravel the tangled ball of nerves bouncing about her stomach. But the Inquisitor demanded secrecy. Their plan wouldn't work if the whole town knew.

It was frustrating. She'd made no progress at all. Mayor Ashburn's room was empty when she returned, everything tossed out for the sweepers and the floor scrubbed clean of blood. She had nothing — not a single shred of evidence to point her in the right direction.

The one potential suspect she had, she couldn't investigate. Windmore wouldn't cooperate. Even if, by some miracle, he did, she didn't have the authority to deal with him. Sir Swiftbrook would have to do it, but he hadn't seemed all that convinced Windmore played an intentional role in her framing.

Perhaps he hadn't, and she merely hoped he had, for it was the only possibility she had to work with.

The hypothetical scenarios she studied during her classes, as well as the real ones she encountered while shadowing the Inquisitors, were far easier. Those cases had plenty of evidence — witnesses, reports, speculations, and conjecture already put forth by the professionals. Her teachers had the answers. The Inquisitors had access to information and tools beyond the reach of the public.

She had nothing but blank slates and few resources. There would be no speaking with the witnesses, interrogating suspects, or reviewing the Guard's records. Everything had to be done off the books and from within the shadows — two things she had no experience with. The Courts, so she once believed, placed great importance on procedure, as evidence gathered through other means would not hold in court. Without the verification processes, they had no way to tell whether the evidence submitted was legitimate or fabricated.

She wondered then if the Courts would accept any evidence she put forth.

"Everna! Gods above, you're spilling it!"

Melenda's words yanked her from her thoughts. Startled, she jerked her hand back and nearly sent both the bottle and the overflowing mug to the floor. Again.

"Shit."

"All right, that's enough!" Melenda snatched her rag from the waistline of her apron and threw it onto the new puddle spreading across the bar. "You're done for the day."

"Melenda—"

"I won't hear any protest from you!" she scolded, wagging her finger at her. "Go upstairs and rest. Bree can manage the bar for one day."

"I'm in charge of—"

Melenda crossed her arms over her chest and raised a brow. "Your parents are in charge, and you know as well as I do they'd take my side."

Everna scowled. Her parents wanted her to remain upstairs for the week, but she'd hoped a day or two of normalcy would offset the anxiety gnawing at her gut. Distraction had never failed her. She just needed another hour or two to get back into her usual rhythm.

Yet she knew it was a pointless endeavor, arguing with Melenda. She had that look in her eyes, and Everna knew if she didn't give in, Melenda would have her mother downstairs in no time at all. Once her mother stepped in, there would be no more discussion.

She wasn't fond of the idea of being hauled up the stairs by her ear or, worse, if her mother brought the wooden spoon with her. She repressed a shudder at the thought.

There wasn't a person raised in Pendel who didn't fear the dreaded wooden spoon.

With a reluctant sigh, Everna set the bottle on the counter. "I hate you sometimes."

"You only hate me when I'm right," Melenda snorted. "Honestly, child. Do you have any idea how worried we all were?"

"To tell you the truth, I expected to be greeted by an angry mob. I'm shocked that most people don't seem to care."

Beyond a couple of backhanded remarks and snide comments from the more skeptical townsfolk, she faced very little backlash in response to the Courts' decision. Most people, it seemed, were more concerned with speculating about what was to come now that Mayor Ashburn was gone. For the first time in thirty years, his name would not be on the ballot for the upcoming election.

"That is because most don't believe you're responsible."

Everna glanced up as Andryll dropped onto the stool beside Melenda. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and the vibrant emerald green of his irises seemed far duller than she remembered. Though a hint of a smile tugged at his lips, he leaned heavily against the bar. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days; it was a strange sight to behold.

Elves didn't sleep.

"I still find that hard to believe," she said. "With how the town rioted when Windmore arrested me, I would've thought they'd be at the gate with torches in their hands."

"Well, believe it or not, it's true," Melenda said. "Not for your character, mind you. Most people don't believe someone like you could kill Arden."

"How comforting to know people think so highly of my character."

Andryll snorted, though it sounded more of a sigh, and leaned forward, his chin resting on his hands. "Humans are notoriously emotional creatures. They rarely think before they react, and it's often not until afterwards do they stop to consider things with more clarity."

"You have a point," Everna said.

"Though it is worth mentioning that in smaller, close-knit communities such as this, people are hesitant to believe one of their own is capable of such things," he continued. "Humans are fickle creatures. Both cynical and naïve. Fiercely loyal, yet distrustful. And you all wonder why us elves find you more amusing than anything."

That made far more sense. Her courses required some measure of understanding of both human and non-human behaviorism. Though individuals in their own right, most races exhibited a predisposition towards specific tendencies, which resulted from both their inherent behaviors and their culture. Those tendencies were necessary to understand how to deal with the emotional and psychological aspects of their job.

What Andryll spoke of was what her instructors referred to as willful ignorance — denial. It was a phenomenon commonly observed in murder cases, one often displayed by family members or close relations of the accused. Even when faced with irrevocable truth or a direct confession, they denied what was so clearly before their eyes.

She spent many a class debating the matter. Scholars widely agreed that it stemmed less from logic and more from a misplaced perception of morality; they believed that because they themselves would never commit such a crime, they couldn't comprehend that someone else could. Some, however, argued that it resulted from selfishness, that most races (humans and elves especially) did not like to admit to wrong. They treated truth as a subjective entity based solely on personal perception rather than as an objective reality, as it conflicted with their personal beliefs.

As one of her instructors often said, there was no such thing as 'an individual's truth.’ There was truth and perception. Whether they aligned was irrelevant in both the eyes of the law and reality.

Everna believed it was a combination of the two, but one born of a more selfish desire to protect their own conscious. The guilt of association pushed them towards denial, and from there, to refusing the irrefutable. Their desire to remain correct for the sake of their own sanity prevented them from seeing past their own self-interests.

Perhaps Andryll was right; now that the initial shock had passed, and they looked at the matter with a more rational mind, they saw the discrepancies that weren't so obvious at the start.

Perhaps they simply refused to accept Mayor Ashburn's death.

Melenda's snort pulled her from her musings once more. "Amused? Most of your kind want nothing more than to see an arrow in our heads. Elves hate humans. Everyone knows that."

Andryll rolled his eyes. "It's not a matter of hatred. It's merely that your lives are so terribly short it's pointless to have any longstanding relationship with your kind. You change leaders and ideals every twenty years, it seems."

"Yet you married a human," Melenda pointed out. "And that's somehow acceptable."

Andryll pursed his lips. "It's tolerated."

Only because it wasn't a woman, Everna thought.

"Yes, well, you still contradicted yourself. Our spans aren't that short."

To that, Andryll snorted once more. "I'm young by elven standards, and I still remember when your capital city was nothing but a collection of huts in a field."

"Inversa?" Melenda asked, dubious. "They built Inversa as a city from the start."

"I was referring to Everna," Andryll corrected. "Inversa became the capital city only recently."

"Two hundred years is not recent."

"One hundred and fifty-seven. But when your life expectancy is barely a century, I suppose not."

"Well, not all of us are ancient enough to have met Queen Everna in person," Melenda scoffed. "We get it, Andryll. You're older than the kingdom itself."

A small smile touched Everna's lips as the conversation moved further into the realm of petty arguments. This was the distraction she needed; mindless banter simply for the sake of it. Her shifts used to be full of it, and where Melenda's penchant for prattling, especially while on the clock, grated on her nerves, it was now a welcome reprieve from the chaos within her mind.

Their voices became a comforting drone as she cleaned up the last of the glass and whiskey from the floor. She dumped the soiled rags into the wicker laundry basket and hefted it into her arms. With one final look at them over her shoulder, and a stern reminder to tell Bree to take over the bar, Everna started up the stairs.