Digging

With the demands the production of The Good Citizen put on my time, I have been finding it difficult to conduct a proper investigation into the events that happened outside the Kal-da Cafe several hands ago. Now, of course, with the event having passed and been judged a success, the accounting completed and the work to remove what little prop work and costuming existed nearly done, my mind is slowly turning toward the resolution of this case. I cannot let something so foul as an innocent fellow with a caste scarcely higher than my own be beaten and subsequently killed in the very district in which I conduct business. I know. 'It is the Anbar. People die everyday. It is the way things are.' Yes, that is all well and true, but it does not remove the fact that I am no longer a mere business owner in the Anbar, but a Magistrate charged with the advocacy of citizens of low caste. Citizens such as Micah. Good fellow, that Micah. The fumes of his kal-da were certain to render a man with temporary blindness and the sting was guaranteed to burn several layers of skin from the interior of one's throat, but why would anyone be silly enough to hold that against him? That is precisely what good kal-da is intended to do. People became sick, however. Temporarily paralyzed. 'Induced with a paralytic muscle relaxant,' the Physician of the Sertorii told me. They'd assumed it was a foul poison of some sort, those struck and those who had noticed the people stumbling out of the doors of the tavern into the alley, tripping over their own sandals. They'd assumed Micah bore the responsibility. I do not believe that for several reasons. One merely follows the money. Who benefited in the end? That is the question one asks. And from there, one can often deduce motive. At this point, I have motive. I have, too, evidence of opportunity. I need only a witness. In the meantime, I will simply have to dig deeper to establish character. That, fortunately, is proving a rather shallow hole.