CHAPTER TEN

“And who are you?” the unknown man asked, the irritation that crowded around him belying his genial tone.

“Kassannan,” the captain replied, leaving out his rank. “We were just leaving.” He took a firm grasp of Shironne’s sleeve and hauled her close to him. Shironne didn’t argue. She wanted to get away from any man who spoke of her father by his given name.

“You are not to discuss this with anyone else, Miss Anjir,” the unknown man barked.

“With whom would I discuss it, sir?” Shironne asked, trying to sound small and intimidated.

The man flared with annoyance, but his attention quickly turned from her to Officer Harinen. “I want this room sealed until I’ve decided how to handle this. No word of this to anyone. If it gets out, people will panic.”

Shironne wondered why the man believed that. She couldn’t take the thought from him at a distance, though, and she never intended to let that man touch her bare skin again.

“And you,” the man went on. “You’re one of Cerradine’s lackeys, aren’t you? Tell your keeper that this is police business. The army can stay out of it. If word of this gets out, I’ll know who to blame.”

Shironne expected the captain to fight back, but he didn’t. He was intent instead on getting her out of the room. She went willingly. She wouldn’t say that Kassannan was spooked. It was more like he was uncomfortable at having been caught in that place. Or causing her to be caught there. She followed him along the hallway, back down the steps of the building, and onto the cobbles.

She breathed in the dank breeze, relieved to be out of that place. Even the rankness of the river seemed preferable to the fetid air in that morgue. She could hear and smell the horses now, so the carriage stood close by, and she waited until the captain helped her up onto the bench before tugging her glove out of her pocket.

Shironne wished she could wash her hand thoroughly. Kassannan was usually more aware of her needs, so he must be perturbed indeed to drag her out here so abruptly. Shivering, she pulled her glove back on, sensing tiny bits of dead flesh digging into the leather. She would never be able to clean the glove well enough to be comfortable wearing it again. The distance back to the house—that long she could bear having her hand so contaminated.

The carriage moved as Kassannan settled next to her, and then Messine. The lieutenant’s mind swarmed with angry bees, all wanting to know the reason for their precipitous departure from the building. He waited until the carriage got under way, though. “What happened in there? You came out like you were being chased by fire imps.”

Imps were creatures of Family legend, although Shironne suspected that was simply another name for demons.

“Faralis showed up,” Kassannan said, “and demanded that we keep our mouths shut.”

She recognized that name. Faralis was one of her father’s cronies, and currently the commissioner of the police of Noikinos. Her own surprise was overshadowed by Messine’s, though. “I thought the man never got out of his bed until half past three,” Messine said. “What in Hel’s name was he doing there? At this hour?”

Kassannan tamped down his frustration. “The dead man was a policeman.”

“So it’s their jurisdiction. I can’t imagine that the commissioner actually cares.”

“There’s something else,” Kassannan said. “Let me run this by the colonel first, Lieutenant. It’s the manner of death that’s problematic.”

“Any manner of death is problematic,” Shironne said dryly. “Do you mean the letters?”

Kassannan had laughed at her observation, but answered, concern welling around him again. “Yes, that inscription worries me.”

“Was it blood magic?” Messine asked before Shironne could.

“Yes,” the captain said softly. “I need you to tell me everything about this second dream of yours, Shironne.”

Something was bothering him, but he was holding it close. She could touch him and see what wandered through his mind, but he clearly didn’t want to share whatever it was yet. She didn’t want to abuse the captain’s trust, either, so she spent the remainder of the journey recounting every tiny detail that she recalled. Once she’d spun out everything she could, her jaw ached and she stopped to rub it.

“What happened to you?” Messine asked, apparently just then noticing her cheek.

“She was trying to get away from Faralis and tripped,” Kassannan said. “I wasn’t fast enough to catch her, and she hit the wall face-first.” Anguish wrapped around him as he admitted that.

“You were on the wrong side of me to do anything, Captain,” Shironne pointed out. Now that they were both worrying over her sore cheek, it hurt more than it had before. She set her hand in her lap, though, not wanting them to worry.

“I’m most concerned,” Kassannan said, “that he recognized Shironne.”

“Faralis recognized her?” Messine asked. “That can’t be good.”

“No,” Kassannan agreed. “Has he ever been inside your house, Shironne? Would he have met you before there?”

Now that she knew who he was, she could put together her sense of him with his name. Her mother despised the man, a man whom she blamed for encouraging her husband in his criminal activities. “My mother wouldn’t let my father’s friends into the house,” she said. “Especially not him.”

There was a complicated secret behind that, one that Shironne always tried not to look at in her mother’s mind.

“He did recognize you, though,” Kassannan said.

Shironne shook her head. “My father took me around to a lot of doctors when I first went blind. Perhaps Faralis saw me there. That’s the only time I’ve been out of my mother’s or the army’s control. Otherwise my father never bothered with me.”

She’d always been glad of that. Her father had never favored her, preferring Perrin in everything. Perrin was normal. When Shironne had shown signs of being a sensitive like her mother, his ambivalence toward her had turned to active dislike, as if he could no longer trust her. She hadn’t done anything to earn his reaction, other than to be different from him. At least not anything she’d ever known. That made it hard for her to like her own father.

“It’s definitely something the colonel needs to know,” Messine said.

Shironne didn’t know enough about Faralis to know why Messine felt so strongly about that. She raised her hand to rub her cheek again, but jerked it back down.

“I will tell him,” Kassannan said in an angry tone, “have no doubt.”

Messine seemed satisfied with that promise, so he let the matter drop. Fortunately, they’d reached the familiar back court of her house, distinguishable by its rustling trees and the smell of the kitchen. After the carriage stopped, Messine helped her down and, after a quick farewell to Captain Kassannan, led her back to the house’s kitchen door.

Shironne walked into the kitchen and sat down at the servants’ table. Cook came into the room a moment later, a smell of flour and garlic floating with her. She caught sight of Shironne’s swollen cheek, and Shironne had to sit through the flurry of Cook’s exclamations and summons. Her mother hastened down the stairs, a combination of the drifting scent of vanilla and concern. She brushed Shironne’s cheek with gentle fingers, shocked by the bruise blossoming there. Her hand lifted Shironne’s chin to inspect her face. “What happened?”

“A man came in while we were in the morgue. He touched my face, so I tried to get away from him. I tripped and I hit the wall, of all things. Captain Kassannan tried to catch me, but he wasn’t close enough.”

Her mother’s mind flared with irritation.

Cook brought her a cup of honeyed tea and a towel-wrapped chunk of ice chipped from the block in the cellar to hold to her swelling cheek.

Her sisters dashed into the kitchen a moment later, eager to find the cause of the disturbance. Perrin said that Shironne shouldn’t be so clumsy, but Melanna’s anger flared through Shironne’s senses. She wanted to blame someone for hurting her sister. Shironne dropped her clean hand atop Melanna’s coarse hair and ruffled it, uncertain whether to applaud her hot temper or reprove her for it. In the end, she chose to accept it as her sister’s love, and said nothing, but the attention made her cheek hurt worse and set her eyes tearing.

Her mother, of course, asked for all the details, and Shironne decided it would be best to admit that the police commissioner was the one who’d caught them in the morgue. As she’d expected, her mother’s mind went guarded at the news that Faralis had recognized her. But her mother said nothing more about the matter, packing her worry away carefully in a corner of her mind.

•   •   •

Mikael woke when a fist pounded on the door of the small room. His head ached, his lungs weren’t much better, and he’d managed to spill his bottle onto the bed. He smelled like a vendor’s stall, a combination of last night’s curry and whiskey. “Oh Hel,” he croaked.

This time is worse.

He coughed wetly. He raised a hand to his face as the pounding on the door went on, and touched his mouth. Then he held up the hand and squinted at it. It was splattered red from a torn lip. The victim had put up a fight before dying.

“Move whatever you have in front of the damned door,” Kai yelled at him through the wood.

Mikael turned his head, seeing for the first time the chair propped under the door latch. He didn’t remember doing that. He must have been pretty drunk by then. He forced himself into a sitting position, head still spinning, then hooked the chair away from the door with one foot.

The door pushed inward, Kai predictably following. He shoved the door hard enough to force the chair into a corner and then came and loomed over Mikael where he sat on the edge of the bed. “What is wrong with you?”

Mikael closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look at Kai’s accusing face. His head was still spinning, although he couldn’t be sure that wasn’t just the alcohol. His pulse pounded behind his ears, but he still heard the sound of footsteps as Elisabet entered the room, Kai moving aside. “This is ridiculous,” Kai muttered under his breath. “He’s trying to get out of work.”

Mikael swallowed down a dry laugh.

“Let me look at your face, Mikael,” Deborah ordered.

Oh no. It hadn’t been Elisabet he’d heard. He opened his eyes to find Deborah standing before him instead.

Her fingers tilted his chin so she could peer at his face. “Open your mouth.”

There was no point in fighting this. It had been inevitable for months now. He opened his mouth and let her peer at his teeth.

“Where’s the blood coming from?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Now he could taste the blood. He wanted to rinse out his mouth.

“Did someone hit you?”

No, he had no memory of anything like that, not in his waking life, anyway. “In the dream, I think.”

He closed his eyes again, not wanting to look at her face. His life as he knew it was over.

“There’s too much blood on your shirt to be from your mouth. Can you take off your vest?” she asked.

No jacket, he recalled. He’d taken off his uniform jacket and laid it over the bed’s footboard, not wanting to get it bloody like the last time. But the vest’s neckline dipped down to reveal a vee of white shirt, and he would have bled there.

“Do I need to do it for you?” Deborah asked.

That was not a complaint about his slow response, he could tell. Just concern. Mikael started to unbutton his vest, fumbling with the hidden placket since his fingers were still numb. After a moment, he’d gotten all the buttons and slipped the vest off his shoulders.

“What in Hel’s name happened to you?” Kai asked.

Mikael couldn’t see directly under his chin, but the front of his shirt was discolored from one side to the other, drying to brown about the outer edges of the stain.

“And the shirt,” Deborah said.

Mikael unbuttoned his cuffs and collar before pulling the shirt over his head. Gooseflesh prickled along his arms as the cold hit his bare skin. Better than heat, at least, which might have turned his stomach. He held the shirt in his lap, strangely unwilling to let it go, even if it was ruined.

Deborah’s eyes went bleak. “Kai, go down to the kitchen and ask the owner for a pitcher of water and a basin.”

“What is wrong with him?” Kai asked instead.

“Now, Kai,” Deborah said more firmly, a tone she rarely took with her nephew. “Take Elisabet with you.”

Kai shifted, and Mikael saw Elisabet waiting outside the door. No expression crossed her features, but she looked paler than usual. He wouldn’t have thought her one to shrink from injuries.

Elisabet was responsible for Deborah’s presence, he realized dully. She’d told Deborah something after his previous dream, and that had brought Deborah down here this morning.

For a moment, Mikael thought Kai might refuse Deborah’s order, but he turned away abruptly and gestured for Elisabet to precede him down the hallway.

Deborah retrieved the displaced chair and sat down in front of Mikael. “How long has this been going on?”

She didn’t ask what was happening. She didn’t ask why he had letters carved in weeping bruises across his chest. She already knew where it was coming from—his dreams.

Mikael sighed, sensing the end of his freedom. “About two years ago I started seeing the bruises. It’s been getting worse, especially when I was away in Jannsen Province. It was terrible there. I don’t know why. Although it has always happened when I dream about my father’s death.”

“You bleed like this when you dream about your father?”

“No, just one spot on the chest, but I also cough up blood.” He knew exactly how his father had died: a single gunshot to the chest. Valerion hadn’t died immediately, though. His lungs had filled with blood, echoed by the blood Mikael coughed up every time he repeated that dream.

Deborah sat back, her lips pressed into a thin line. Footsteps along the mezzanine warned them of Kai’s return. He bore a white basin and pink pitcher, and had a towel over one arm, like one of the waiters at the restaurant. Kai serving me. Mikael would have laughed at the idea if he wasn’t so exhausted.

No, Kai was doing this for Deborah, not for him. “What’s wrong with him?” Kai asked again

Deborah reached up for the basin and set it carefully next to Mikael on the bed. Then she took the pitcher, poured a small amount of water into the basin, and set the pitcher on the floor. Lastly, she took the towel from Kai. “Demonstrating that he’s still a sensitive, even if only in his sleep,” she said. “He’s sharing the victim’s wounds. Kai, get my pad out of my satchel and copy down that mess across his chest.”

As Kai complied, she dampened the towel in the water and began to gently pat Mikael’s chest clean. He said a quick prayer of thanks that the water was warm, a sign that Father Winter—or Synen—was looking after him. “They’re not cuts,” Deborah observed. “Just bruises. Where does the blood come from?”

“It just seeps through the skin,” Mikael admitted. “There’s never an actual break unless I bump one of the bruises.”

Deborah set the towel on the edge of the basin. “I’m not certain bruise is the right word for this.” She gently touched one of the lines on his right shoulder. “It’s raised just a bit.”

“That’ll go down in a couple of hours.”

“What about these scabs?” she said, pointing to the cluster where Kai had shoved his boots into his chest two mornings before.

“I got hit before they faded,” Mikael said, not glancing Kai’s way. “They break and then scab over.”

“What am I not seeing?” Deborah asked. “What other symptoms?”

“I’ll be short of breath for a few hours; this victim couldn’t breathe. I’m tired. And my head hurts.”

“The aching head is called a hangover, Mikael. That part you did to yourself.”

“I know,” he said wearily, shaking his head and then flinching from the stab of pain in his neck. “And my neck hurts. Right here.” He laid a hand on the sore spot.

“Did you have this last time?” She rose and leaned over him to inspect his neck.

“Yes.”

“I don’t see any wound there,” she said, fingers cool on his neck.

“It feels like a stab wound. Small and deep.”

Deborah sat again, nodded. “Kai, do you have that sketch done?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kai handed her the notebook, then busied himself closing up the ink and returning her supplies to her satchel.

The marks on the paper resembled the drawing Mikael had made himself a few days before. There wasn’t much more detail. It certainly wasn’t legible, although he could still swear it was Pedraisi. “Is this like the last dream?” Deborah asked, gesturing toward Kai’s work with her chin.

“It’s the same,” he said. “It has to have been blood magic.”

She rose from the chair and pushed it back against the wall. “I suppose you’ll have to put that shirt back on,” she said. “It’s chilly out.”

No point in arguing. Mikael shook out the ruined shirt and drew it back on over his head, grimacing when it slipped across the tender spot on his neck. The front of the shirt was cold and sticky against his clean skin. He didn’t bother to button it, just drew the vest on over it. He retrieved his uniform jacket and put that on over everything else. Once he buttoned up the jacket and hooked the collar, no one would see it anyway. Then he cast about for his boots.

“Here,” Kai said, holding them out with one hand.

Mumbling his thanks, Mikael took the boots and worked them onto his feet, then laced them with shaking fingers. It was slow, but he did them himself, feeling Kai’s eyes on him the whole time. He pushed himself up off the bed and managed not to sway.

“Let’s get you back home,” Deborah said, one hand on his arm.

Mikael wasn’t sure how much longer it would be his home. Deborah would insist on keeping him in the fortress the next time he dreamed, and the sensitives would be the ones hurt. The elders would have ample cause to send him away to one of the enclaves once that happened. That they’d let him stay so long when he was an irritant to the sensitives was a testament to Deborah’s interference. She was determined to find a way to fix him.

But the next time he dreamed would likely be the breaking point, and he very much feared he would find himself without a home.

•   •   •

Cerradine stared at the sketch Kassannan presented him, a series of letters in the Pedraisi language. An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. “I think I recognize this.”

Kassannan had returned from his foray to the city’s morgue brimming with news about the police commissioner’s actions, and guilt that he’d allowed Shironne to be hurt. He was still dressed in civilian clothes since he hadn’t had time yet to don his uniform. “Yes, it’s clearly blood magic,” he said, “although what this particular inscription is meant to do, I’ve no idea.”

Cerradine shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I think I’ve seen this specific inscription before.” He sat down on the edge of his desk. Surely the Daujom would have a record of the inscription. “I’ll need to take this up to the palace. I need to be sure.”

“What does it remind you of?”

“I was out in Andersen Province in the cleanup after the Farunas massacres.”

Kassannan’s mouth pursed. “No. The victims are wrong. This can’t be the same thing.”

“No, it’s not,” Cerradine agreed. The Farunas massacres had seen entire families butchered, sacrificed in blood magic. Plucking a single police officer off the street wasn’t the same at all. “I want to check the writing anyway. It looks very close to what I remember.”

Few people this far away from the border with Pedrossa would have much familiarity with a series of deaths fourteen years past. Kassannan would have been young then, probably still at the medical college, and most of the workers in the office were even younger. Shironne wouldn’t recognize the killings, nor would Mikael Lee, Cerradine suspected. He would.

The Larossan army had been called in only afterward, to deal with the bodies and restore security along that section of the Larossa-Pedrossa border. The army had counted seventy-two dead from twelve different households along a thirty-mile stretch of border, all sacrificed over about a month. That was, however, only the ones they’d actually accounted for. Homesteads along that border were spread out, and very often a family’s nearest neighbor wouldn’t see them for months. Added to that, many of the bodies had been dumped in the Sorianas River, which grew more turbulent as it flowed south toward Kithria. It was impossible to know exactly how many lives had been lost in that incident.

It had ended without their interference. The Andersens, the Family associated with that border province, claimed that vigilantes shot and killed several of the priests involved, and the remaining perpetrators had fled back across the river into Pedrossa. The territory into which they’d fled housed many of the most violent clans in the country, those most determined to cling to the old ways.

The Pedraisi government hadn’t been willing to help, and neither the Andersens nor the army had been able to do much more than gather information about the killers. They’d never learned much, though, merely that they had to have come from one of a handful of clans that followed the ancient god Farunas. Only those clans knew what Farunas promised his followers. And since they had no treaty with Larossa that guaranteed extradition, the pursuit of justice for all those families murdered in the name of a foreign god had simply died out. Fourteen years had passed, but that time was still vivid in Cerradine’s memory.

“Faralis may have made the connection,” he said. “He may not have. But if a second body turns up with the same markings, his reaction will probably be even worse.” Having one of their own officers fall victim to practitioners of blood magic made the Larossan authorities here look weak. That was likely the reason why Faralis had reacted the way he had, calling for the body to be sequestered and demanding secrecy. “Go talk to Officer Harinen again after he gets off his duty shift,” he told Kassannan. “I’m willing to take him on if Faralis fires him over this.”

Kassannan nodded. “I’ll need to write a letter of apology to Madam Anjir first, but after that, I’ll go find him.”

“Good.” Cerradine pushed himself to his feet. “And I will talk to Aldassa.”

He found David Aldassa in the front of the office. After carefully laying out every detail about the second dream that Shironne had shared, he charged the lieutenant with locating that second body before the police did. If these murders did have something to do with the Farunas massacres, he was far more likely to recognize it than the police were. And far more likely to do something about it instead of pretending it hadn’t happened. He only hoped that the second body hadn’t been dumped in the river after death as the first had. When it came to evidence, water played havoc with timing and details.

Aldassa sent an ensign off to retrieve a map of the river’s course along the edge of the city and turned his attention back to the colonel. “The first body was pulled out of the river south of the sewage outlet, is that right? So it could have gone in anywhere north of there.”

Cerradine nodded. “I don’t know how much it would help to have the site where he died, so the priority has to be on finding that second body.”

Aldassa peered down at the list Kassannan had written of all the small details Shironne had gleaned from the previous night’s dream. “Eliminate any heavily populated area. That takes us to the edge of the city. Not too far out, because a coach would need roads. Don’t want to be dragging a victim very far. We can eliminate some of the farms we’ve already searched as well.”

The ensign returned with a large map, and Aldassa hung it carefully on the chalkboard that he kept near his desk. Then he fetched a straightedge and, after peering at the map a moment longer, drew a line that roughly followed the river before it turned in the middle of the city, creating a grid of parallel and perpendicular lines that followed along the edge of the river. “Ideally, sir, I’d like a squad to search each square I’ve drawn here. And I think it would be easier to run a search from the tavern up on Lana’s Road. Shorter distance to report in before going back out.”

“I’ll talk to the general before I leave for the palace,” Cerradine told him. “I’ll get you as many squads as you need.”

“If I can have eight, sir, I think that would work. I’ll pair them with some of our people.” He went on to list off most of the office’s workers.

“Isn’t Pamini working on the Endiren case?”

Aldassa shook his head. “She can step away for a while. And there is a slim possibility they’re related.”

Cerradine had put forward that possibility himself. Asking Shironne to query her mother about it had mainly been a formality, though, and also an excuse to communicate with her. Endiren had gone to the border to pursue news of children being sold into Pedrossa, not religious fanatics. Cerradine rose and picked up his hat. “Then I’ll go get you your eight squads.”