In twelve years as an investigator, Jheraal had seen her share of horror.
The Hellknight had witnessed the worst that arsonists’ flames and spurned lovers’ knives could do to flesh and bone. She’d seen the ruin of children beaten beyond recognition by drunk fathers’ fists. She had uncovered the remains of innocents subjected to the occult rites of Urgathoan cultists, and stood expressionless beside the gallows as the executioners of House Thrune tortured criminals to death in showy displays for the crowd’s jeers.
She had thought there was nothing left that could frighten her. And then she had seen what the rundottari had found in that stinking, mud-floored hovel among the ruins of Rego Cader.
The dead man bothered her the least of the four bodies in that shack. The fast-spreading fungus that had consumed his flesh was troubling, but more for what it might signify than for its own sake. Jheraal had seen decomposed corpses before, and while she was concerned about the implications of the mold that fuzzed the dead man’s bones, the sight itself didn’t disturb her. Not compared to the others in that place.
Slumped behind a tattered curtain were three hellspawn, each with a fist-sized, cauterized wound burned into the center of his or her chest. Two, presumably the missing servants Chiella and Nodero, wore the colors of House Celverian. The third was a more obviously devil-descended woman dressed like a fishmonger from one of the poorer districts.
All three were missing their hearts—Jheraal had held a light to each of those gaping wounds and looked closely to be sure—and yet they lived. Their mutilated chests rose and fell in steady breaths. A ghostly pulse beat in their wrists. When the Hellknight brought her light to their eyes and held open their eyelids, their pupils contracted under its glare, and then dilated when she put the light away.
They seemed to be comatose. Jheraal pricked each hellspawn’s fingertips with the tip of her dagger, prodding them hard enough to draw beads of blood from the pads of their thumbs, but none of them flinched. She clapped her hands sharply next to their heads and shouted into their ears, but none stirred. Their faces remained slack, their breathing slow.
“What do you want to do with them?” one of the rundottari asked. Two ruin wardens armed with swords and crossbows had accompanied her out of the Obrigan Gate to meet the one waiting to show them the bodies. As formidable as the Hellknight was, even she wasn’t expected to venture into Rego Cader without protection.
“They need a healer’s attention,” Jheraal said. “These servants may be innocent victims.”
The rundottari spat on the muddy floor, displeased by her answer. “Or they may not. No offense meant to you, but they’re hellspawn. And whatever killed that moldy fellow might be contagious. This whole thing might be a trap.”
Jheraal gave him a flat stare. She was taller than the rundottari, and she used that to her advantage, looming over him in the scarred steel of her Hellknight plate. “If Durotas Tuornos believed that, he wouldn’t have sent for me. Those servants are wearing House Celverian’s colors. You will, of course, have heard what happened at their vaneo last night. These two might have seen something, or might have other leads to offer. If we can’t get them healed, we’ll never know. And if I lose valuable information about the Celverian murders because you were afraid of a little mold, well, I can’t imagine your durotas will be pleased. Nor will his superiors. What you should be wondering is not whether this is a trap, but where you might be able to keep these people.”
Licking his lips, the rundottari looked away. “There are cells in Keep Dotar that might serve, and a few under the Obrigan Gate.”
“I’ll take the ones under the gate.” Keep Dotar, where the rundottari were based, was located in the northeastern part of the Dead Sector, far from the rest of the city, and was too remote to be useful. Jheraal didn’t want secrecy. She wanted a full investigation that would force the killer to light. But she also didn’t want to keep them at Taranik House, where rivals in the Order of the Rack might try to interfere with or claim credit for her work. The Obrigan Gate was neutral, but accessible.
She unslung her pack and took out a large, flat box. It was much heavier than it looked. Although only plain wood showed on the outside, the interior was lined with a half-inch of lead and a thin coating of silver over the base metal.
Perhaps the precaution was unnecessary, but she didn’t want to risk bringing some Urgathoan contagion into the city. Holding her breath and working quickly, Jheraal stacked the moldering bones into the lead-lined box. When the last of them had been tucked inside, leaving only a fuzzy shadow of white powder on the floor, she took out a long cylinder of soft white wax and held it over the rundottari’s lantern.
It took only a few seconds for the cylinder’s end to sag and start dripping. Quickly, while it was pliable, Jheraal scrubbed the wax against the box’s seam. The molten wax flowed into the crevices and hardened in place.
After a few more rounds of softening and scrubbing, the seal was complete. Not a breath of air would get out of that box until she’d taken it safely back for inspection.
The Hellknight took a card out of her pocket and handed it to one of the rundottari. “Deliver this to Havarel Needlethumbs in Parego Spera. The card has the address. He’s expecting the package.”
The rundottari lifted the box, holding it as far away from himself as the length of his arms allowed. “I’ll wait for you. Safer if we all go back together.”
“Fine.” It was cowardice, but she couldn’t fault him. No one wanted to walk through Rego Cader alone. Jheraal hoisted the unconscious hellspawn man and slung him over her shoulder, motioning for the two remaining rundottari to grab the other hellspawn. It wasn’t the gentlest way to carry them, but it was the fastest, and dusk was rapidly approaching. “Let’s go.”
They made their way back to the Obrigan Gate in silence but for occasional grunts and curses when one of the rundottari stumbled over a gap in the rutted streets while carrying the senseless devilspawn. Around them, the crumbling shells of Westcrown’s former grandeur cast ever-longer shadows, while the red sun sank down between their broken towers.
For eight hundred years, the city of Westcrown had been the capital of Cheliax and one of the wonders of the world. Clad in shining white marble and gold, its beauty had been renowned from sea to sea. Beyond its architectural splendors, the city had been famed as a place of art, learning, and the high glories of religious faith.
Then Aroden, patron god of humanity and the nation of Cheliax, had died and cast his people into turmoil. Civil war tore the country apart, and when the fighting ended a generation later, the devil-binding House Thrune was ascendant. Queen Abrogail the First, new ruler of the empire, moved her capital north to Egorian, and Westcrown entered a long decline.
Its population shrunken, its splendors diminished, its streets and historic buildings scarred by years of civil war, Westcrown pulled back to its central districts and abandoned the poorer neighborhoods along the north shore to ruin.
Today, the sculpted fountains that had once flowed with fresh water for Westcrown’s downtrodden were filled with weeds and cobwebs. Nothing remained of the sculpted angels that had once ringed the basins except empty plinths bearing mottled crowns of bird droppings. The angels themselves were gone, having been stolen and sold to art collectors who wanted the masterworks for themselves. It was, Jheraal supposed, a fitting symbol of the city’s decline that the marvelous public works that had once served its most vulnerable had been scavenged and hoarded away by a wealthy few.
The other signs of Westcrown’s deterioration were less poetic but more dangerous. The wooden bones of taverns, inns, and dilapidated stables lined the pocked streets around their little party. No law-abiding citizens lived among them, but some of those ruins were the lairs of squatters and bandits. Others were infested with all manner of bloodthirsty beasts. On their way out, Jheraal and the rundottari had seen nothing more dangerous than a pack of starved dogs, but not all visits to the Dead Sector were so peaceful.
The Obrigan Gate marked the point at which civilization began again in Westcrown. Until they passed through its portcullises and put Rego Cader safely on the far side of its wall, they remained vulnerable.
She hefted the senseless hellspawn on her shoulders and trudged along a little faster. The man’s weight compressed her armor, and the edge of her chestplate was digging into her flesh, but Jheraal forced the pain out of her mind. She’d chosen to carry the male servant for a reason. As long as she carried a heavier weight than the rundottari, and did so without complaint, they wouldn’t dare shirk their own burdens.
A Hellknight she might be, and devil-blooded to boot, but she was also a woman. None of the three men behind her would let themselves fall behind. It might be pure chauvinism that drove them, but if it drove them, Jheraal would use it. She hadn’t survived fourteen years in Citadel Demain, and then in the wider world, by being blind to the levers that moved people’s souls. And she wanted to get out of Rego Cader before dark.
Smoke drifted through the weeds that fringed the mouth of an alley to her left. Jheraal’s skin prickled. There were relatively harmless transients living in the ruins, and the smoke might be from something as simple as a squatter’s cookfire. But there were arsonists, too, and madmen, and creatures of shadow that crept out with the night.
And something that stole the hearts of its victims and consigned them to a living death.
She hurried her pace. The thirty-foot-high wall surrounding the Obrigan Gate was visible now, rising above the skeletal rafters and chimney stumps that made up the crumbling skyline of the Dead Sector. Torches and lanterns lined its parapets in golden ribbons of fire.
Jheraal led her companions into the swath of clear space that covered the last hundred feet around the wall. They were within crossbow range of the Obrigan Gate’s defenders. Behind them, dusk blurred the ruins and filled every empty doorway with black menace, but it didn’t matter anymore. They were safe.
One of the small portcullises in the gate’s base opened. A rundottari waved them hastily through, peering into the twilight with his lantern raised high. As Jheraal ushered her escort into the Obrigan Gate, then followed them inside, worry slid off her shoulders like a blanket of lead. The thud of the portcullis closing behind them was the most welcome sound she’d heard in days.
“See anything dangerous out there?” the gate guard asked.
“Not as such.” Jheraal lowered the comatose hellspawn to the ground. Her shoulders ached, but she refused to stretch them or adjust her chafing armor where the rundottari might see. Hellknights admitted no weakness. “Do you have a spare cell big enough to hold all three?”
The guard hesitated, but after a glance at the rundottari, he nodded. “This way. The cells under the Gate have held worse than hellspawn.”
Another small insult. Accidental, probably. Ignoring the rudeness, Jheraal picked up her living burden once more and followed the guard down a set of winding stairs to a niter-streaked dungeon. Twice she bumped against the cramped walls, jolting her armor into bruised flesh, but she refused to wince. You do not feel pain. There is no pain. “Send a messenger to the Qatada Nessudidia.” The Asmodean cathedral was the largest temple in Westcrown, and would have the most powerful clerics to be found in the city. “Durotas Tuornos was correct: there is some unholy magic in this. I require a wizard and a cleric, the best that they have, to examine these poor souls. Immediately.”
“We shall send the request at once,” the rundottari assured her, opening an iron-barred cell door. Damp and littered with moldy straw, it was far from welcoming, but Jheraal had stayed in worse. She didn’t think her insensible charges were likely to complain.
She laid the hellspawn on the straw, cradling the man’s head against her gauntleted forearm. Removing a roll of bandages from her pack, she spread the gauzy cotton over the wound that disfigured his chest. It would do nothing for his missing heart, but she felt the man deserved that much dignity. “Good. Send word to Taranik House when they arrive.”
After ensuring that the heart-stripped hellspawn had been settled safely into their barred beds at the Obrigan Gate, Jheraal returned to Taranik House alone.
Night had drawn its cloak over the city, and in Westcrown that meant that the main streets were lined with pyrahjes, enormous torches as high as men, that filled the avenues with fiery heat. Smaller lanterns hung from the doors of respectable private homes, and lines of torches or enchanted spell-lights drew cordons of radiance around the viras and vaneos of the wealthy. Anything to keep the dark at bay.
Fire was a perpetual hazard in the city, and walking between the pyrahjes on a summer evening could be uncomfortably warm, but the Wiscrani had deemed these costs worth bearing in exchange for safety from Westcrown’s nightly curse.
From dusk till dawn, throughout the city, shadows hunted the unwary. Those who broke the nocturnal curfew and ventured beyond the streets protected by torch and lantern took their lives into their hands.
The way to Taranik House was well lit, however, and Jheraal walked the streets without fear. She was deadlier than any hunter in shadow, and she knew it.
So did they. No challenges came from the night.
Back in the garrison, the Hellknight returned to her quarters, locked the door, and finally allowed herself a sigh of relief as she took off her heavy plate. The padding underneath was soaked with sweat, and the fine, soft white scales on her skin had been dented and deformed where the armor pressed into her. Some had chafed off entirely. They floated to the floor like snowflakes when she pulled the padded jerkin over her head, leaving angry pink lines behind.
Jheraal daubed a soothing ointment onto the raw spots along her shoulders and under her right arm, where the armor had bitten in, then tied a soft sleeping robe around herself. In the morning, when she had to put on her public face again, she would be as stoic as the honor of the Hellknights required. For now, she could allow herself a small measure of comfort without shame.
At her desk, she sprinkled a few drops of water on the block of compressed ink she carried with her. While waiting for the ink to soften, Jheraal sharpened a new quill and took out three sheets of good paper: one for the nightly report she sent back to her superiors in Citadel Demain, and two for a letter to her daughter.
The report took little time to write. In quick, broad strokes, Jheraal summarized her visit to Rego Cader and her interactions with Durotas Tuorno’s rundottari. She detailed the condition of the heartless hellspawn as carefully as she could, keeping her opinions out of the factual descriptions.
As an afterthought, Jheraal included a request for a consultation with the most skilled wizard that the Order of the Scourge might be able to offer. Udeno of Abadar, the cleric who had examined the late Othando Celverian’s body, hadn’t impressed her, and she wasn’t sure any Wiscrani wizard would be better. Durotas Tuornos had thought it best to request a wizard from the capital, and perhaps he’d been right. Even if she could find someone uninvolved in the local nobles’ scheming, indifference and fatalism seemed to rule the day in Westcrown. Anyone with real ambition would have sought a post in Egorian, so her odds of finding a wizard capable of unraveling this mystery were likely better there.
She sealed the letter and set it aside. Then, more slowly, Jheraal dribbled another trickle of water across the eroded slope of her ink block and smoothed a new sheet between her white-scaled hands.
Dear Indrath, she began, I hope this letter finds you well, and that the summer is not too hot in Egorian.
Then she stopped, at a loss for what to add. The flame of her lantern crackled in the silence. A bead of ink grew bulbous on the tip of her quill. She caught it and moved it back to the block just before it would have spattered on the near-empty page.
What could she write to a daughter who didn’t even know who she was?
The truth, a small, plaintive voice whispered, as it had since the day Jheraal had brought her infant daughter to Citadel Demain, claiming the girl was a foundling.
And just as she had then, and as she’d done every day for the fourteen years since, the Hellknight pushed that voice aside. The truth would do her daughter no good.
Indrath had been born with the blessing of a fully human appearance. No hint of her mother’s infernal heritage showed in her face, her speech, or her soul. She was a strong, gifted, good child, a child who could live her life free of the prejudices that had hobbled Jheraal’s own life—as long as the truth remained unknown.
Jheraal would have given anything for that blessing herself. She would not deny it to her daughter.
She scratched her quill against the block’s softening ink. I saw this book in a shop window, she continued, agonizing over every word, and thought you might be entertained to read it. A collection of tall tales and outright lies, I don’t doubt, but perhaps someday you’ll get to see for yourself, and tell me if there was any truth to such fancies.
She stopped again, her mind as blank as the rest of the page. What could she write next? Was that enough? Jheraal had barely begun, yet she couldn’t think of a single thing to add. Her current investigation was nothing that needed to trouble an innocent child’s thoughts, and she’d done little else in Westcrown. She had no amusing anecdotes, no profound insights, nothing that she imagined other people wrote in their clever letters. The Hellknight felt like a hammer, all bluntness and force, when she wanted to be deft as a scalpel in dissecting the world into bites that could fit a child’s mouth.
Even her gift suddenly felt too clumsy. It was a collection of the adventures of Durvin Gest, infamous Pathfinder, and his recovery of the legendary Scepter of Ages. Jheraal had seen many versions of Gest’s adventures over the years, but this volume, unique among them, included numerous detailed descriptions of his travels into the ruins of lost Ninshabur. The accompanying illustrations were lavishly colored and easily tripled the cost of the book. She’d spent half a month’s wages to buy it, and then she’d paid an extra silver for the shopkeeper to wrap the book in paper pressed with tiny, exotic dried flowers.
Since she could first read, Indrath had loved stories about Durvin Gest. She’d been particularly fascinated with the far-off continent of Casmaron, where the fallen empire of Ninshabur was said to be located. Once, she had delighted in telling Jheraal about how someday she was going to travel to Casmaron and chart its territories as an envoy for Imperial Cheliax. One of her most prized possessions was a small ivory elephant, supposedly carved by an artisan in those far-flung lands, which Jheraal had purchased for her in the markets of Kaer Maga.
But that had been three or four years ago, and Indrath was fourteen now. Almost fifteen. Maybe a storybook was too childish for her.
Jheraal didn’t know. Her own daughter, and she didn’t know. It had been months since she’d last seen Indrath.
I hope you’ll like it, she finished, and signed: Your friend, Jheraal.
“Your friend.” She stared at those words, so small and inadequate to carry the burden she wanted to put on them.
There was so much more she wanted to say, and nothing else she could.
Sighing, she sealed the letter with a daub of wax and tucked it under the string that the shopkeeper had tied around the paper-wrapped book. She stacked the parcel next to the report she was sending back to her order. It, too, would go out in the morning.
Then Jheraal leaned back in her chair, folded her hands into her lap, and closed her eyes, trying to imagine who would tear the hearts out of hellspawn, and why, and what might be gained by leaving those maimed unfortunates alive.