It was midday, the sun suspended betwixt dawn and dusk, and he had risen later than the supposed time for they had, the night prior, drunk deeply of the liquor that had bedevilled him to the deepest slumber. Erik stirred awake to the stink of the thatched billet, which offered little warmth from the evening past. Though much ruckus rose beneath the first-story floorboards of the inn, the timbers quivering with the babbles below, it was indeed the most fortuitous moment to rouse to reality. No sooner had Erik settled himself upon his buttocks than he heard a most curdling scream, akin to the dread song of a dying robin struck by an abrupt hunter's arrow. It did not come from the tavernry downstairs but from nearby his latched door, within his insufficient rented lodgings. Thereupon, as a response to the pooling clamour of footsteps ascending the stairs, Erik stood up despite the aftereffects of the ferments still clouding both his motion and thought; when he flew out of that room, he looked as though he had never halted from imbibing and had, consequently, been terribly awake all the time from the moment he had entered his inn-room to present.
"What in the blazes happened here?" murmured Erik upon witnessing the maiden, which bore the air of a woman of a red district, standing in abject terror in front of an open room. The other bystanders have all, in themselves the interest, the attribute of to act upon fickleness towards honesty, peeked beyond the form of the lady. Soon, the other persons of Romie's Heretics came out their rooms and looked towards the same spot that Erik had been staring, all except the two angry men from the night before: Francois-Marie Vert and Charle the Portender. Only then it made perfect sense that Francois-Marie Vert have not left his room, for it was his dwelling's door that the woman had paused, her fingers bore upon his own cheeks as though she wanted to deprive herself of the greater senses than her own horror upon the scene—a scene that Erik himself wanted to witness, because if it is anything else, Francois-Marie Vert must've made such a mess of others in his room, a mess that even an experience harlot found extreme fright.
Though when Erik had moved through the curious crowds then he only realised that his prior conclusion was immediately thrown out of the window and burned; and he only found himself a few words to spare for the scene inside Francois-Marie Vert's room: "Oh… gods."
Thereupon he understood with much clarity the reason why Francois-Marie Vert had not left his room. It was not that the lady barred his way, nor that he had caused trouble of the vilest kind which made the harlot cry out so. It was no farce that the woman had performed, but a most appropriate response for there in the room lay a figure undressed of armour, of green and blue, tainted with her own gore, and whose viscera had freed themselves from mortal flesh, tearing a bloody aperture through her stomach and leaving but a husk. Upon the wall, beyond the promiscuous pose in which the lady's body had been left by her, possibly, murderers and defilers, were writ the words To Err Is Mortal painted in her own blood.
But where was Francois-Marie Vert?
He was not the artiste of this morbid art; rather, she was its subject. The body lying awry upon the thatched bed was Francois-Marie Vert herself, bare. In her nakedness it was impossible to mistake what she was: a woman, and dead.
And though it was not his reason's first instinct, Erik took the terrified maiden into his arms, pressing her into a comforting hush while she wept upon his shoulder. The others tried to peer into the room, but before they could, El Perro drew his blade and brandished it at them, driving them away from the floor; he had seen that Erik, usually stoic and hard-faced, now acted unlike himself, and that boded a terrible tale in the pit of de Quixada's stomach. Erik met El Perro's eye and nodded heavily in gratitude. Then he gently removed the harlot's head from his shoulder and smiled with false warmth, as though consoling a wife he would never have. "You forget this happened," he murmured. "We'll take care of it; and if this be any omen of your future in such an occupation, you'd best divert from it, darling."
The harlot only replied with a teary smile before turning away from the horrid sight; only then did the rest of Romie's Heretics come, except for the absent Charle the Portender, whose door was still shut tightly. Najib, an astounding thief but a boy nonetheless, saw the sight inside and started to retch before running to his own room. The only ones standing by the half-closed door of the dead F. Vert were El Perro and Erik.
"What is inside?" prodded Rodrigo de Quixada.
"It's the bastard. He—she was a woman in a man's clothing. She's dead," Erik replied dryly.
"I knew this was going to happen. We best quit this heretical folly and rid ourselves of the gods' ire. If not, we'll be like the madame. Come with, lad; we have not yet crossed the threshold."
"We already did, old man; it passed when we took that job in the village, which led us to this. Do you remember Romualdez's threat? If we fail this job, all of us will be dead. The only way we can ensure that some of us will even live is if we do so—do not be a fool," Erik reasoned, and he did it so well that soon El Perro had calmed his nerves; but the question of the perpetrator never left his mind, and he had a sinking suspicion that such a man was Charle the Portender, who now walked out of his room and yawned with a smile as if he had dreamt of the most beautiful vistas he could only know. In such baseless conclusion, only their anger and the resentment of last night remained as concrete evidence, and Erik rushed to Charle and pinioned him against the wall, choking him with his right hand. "You did it, didn't you, you damned rodent?!"
El Perro took Erik by the shoulders, halting most of his strength to prevent him from breaking Charle's neck, as Charle struggled from the Gambler's grip. "Peace, man! I have neither a clue nor knowledge of what you speak of."
Erik continued to lash out while he was forced against the wall by El Perro, ridding him from Charle the Portender posthaste before death might claim another in the tavern. After a while, Erik cooled his hothead and looked at Rodrigo de Quixada, who still had misgivings about the events that were to transpire in this job. "I still do not trust you, rat," Erik said to Charle, removing El Perro's hand from his chest before speaking to him. "We can't leave the Bastard's body behind."
"And what do you suggest, hmm? Lug that heavy form around?" antagonised the Portender, which earned him a pointed finger of malice from Erik and a hush from Rodrigo de Quixada. Then the gaunt and spent-looking Najib, whose eyes were veined in red and lips arid like the desert from which he came, a result of vomiting when he saw Francois-Marie's defiled cadaver, came out of his room and said, "We can burn it outside, sadiqi—the only thing we can do. Burials are not for bandits."
And so they did, wrapping the body of their deceased member with respect, except for the Portender, who seemed to act only as if to ease the suspicions of Erik toward him. They left through the backdoor of the Three-Headed Dog; they headed toward a clearing to burn the body of Madame Vert, toward that ruinous church where the cadaver of Saint Verena waits with dusts—
—toward a deeper hell.