“I didn’t ask for a diabolist,” Jheraal muttered, annoyed. “This is a murder investigation. I wanted a wizard who could help me with that. Not a devil-binder.”
Havarel shrugged philosophically. The gnome tended to view all wizards as much the same, Jheraal knew. To him, they were all foolish, meddling in powers they couldn’t possibly understand or control when right in front of them the perfectly sensible paths of alchemy lay waiting to be explored. “At least she’s a good one. Could be worse. Could be some stripling apprentice fumbling around with cantrips. And the Thrune name, that might open some doors for you. Anyway, no use worrying about it. You can’t get rid of her. Might as well make the best use you can.”
“Thank you, Havarel. You’re a great help.”
The gnome seemed oblivious to her sarcasm. He flashed an absent-minded smile, pushed his rose-tinted spectacles a little higher on his bulbous nose, and stooped to rummage through the drawers under one of his chemical cabinets. “Welcome, welcome. Always welcome. Now where was that thing I wanted to show—Ah! Here we are.”
He straightened and smoothed the front of his stained leather apron with one hand, holding out a moldy chunk of bone in the other. “Take a look.”
It looked like the bottom half of someone’s jaw. A row of small, shrunken teeth poked loosely out of the grayish bone. Jheraal frowned, making no move to touch the thing. “What is it?”
“Jawbone from that skeleton you brought me. Human male. The one from Rego Cader, with the mold that only consumed human flesh? I was so impressed with the mold, I didn’t bother looking at the bones that closely until now, but the other day I was going through my drawers and I examined them and—and—” Havarel was so excited that the bone bounced in his palm. He reached back into the drawer and pulled forth the rest of the skull. “Here’s the top half. Look at the teeth!”
She did, taking the two pieces of the skull carefully from the gnome and carrying them back to his work table, where the light was better. The enamel of the front top teeth was chipped and almost lacy at the edges, having been worn through to translucence and then broken unevenly. The bottom teeth were flattened stubs, smoothed down to the gumline. Wide, uneven gaps separated all the teeth where their sides had been eroded inward.
There was one obvious conclusion to be drawn from that, and it wasn’t one Jheraal wanted to make. “That isn’t mold damage, is it.” She couldn’t make herself phrase it as a question.
Havarel shook his head, looking positively gleeful. “Acid.”
“You could be a little less happy about it.” The Hellknight sighed. “What are the chances it’s coincidental?”
“Minute. Infinitesimal. Impossible!” The gnome plucked the skull’s top section from her grasp and ran a stubby finger over its fringe of glassy-edged broken teeth. “Look how this has been worn down over time. You don’t get this kind of damage from sudden trauma. If a black dragon spit in your face, you’d look entirely different.”
“No doubt,” Jheraal said dryly.
“Your teeth would, I mean. No, no. Either this fellow had the world’s most delicate stomach and spent every morning regurgitating his breakfast into his chamber pot, or—”
“—or he was a Hellknight. Yes. Thank you, Havarel. You are, again, a great help.”
The little alchemist beamed. He took his glasses off and buffed their pink lenses against a sleeve. “No question which is likelier in Westcrown.”
“No, there isn’t.” Jheraal sighed a second time, placing the lower jawbone back on the table.
Acid-worn teeth meant that the skeleton had almost certainly belonged to a member of the Order of the Rack, and not a very good one. Each Hellknight order had its own reckoning, a ritual method of purging sins by which members could atone for acts of weakness or defiance. Jheraal’s order imposed its reckoning by lash or scourge. Those who strayed from its strict code were subject to a half-hour of purification by whipping. The Order of the Rack had a different ritual: those who swallowed ideas not in accordance with the order’s tenets were forced to drink solutions of acid or boiling water to scald the impurities away.
A man who had to endure that reckoning often enough to have damaged his teeth that badly must have been an uncommonly incompetent Hellknight—or one who was beset with a crushingly heavy burden of guilt. The latter, she guessed, was more likely. No one who suffered that many punishments for failure of duty would have been allowed to remain a Hellknight. His commanders would have drummed him out of the order long before his teeth reached that state.
But no one stopped Hellknights from flagellating themselves out of self-condemnation. Unless he crippled himself to the point where it interfered with his other duties—and that was difficult to achieve with the Rack’s reckonings—no one would have said a word.
“So my mystery corpse is, or was, a Rack Hellknight with a troubled conscience,” Jheraal said. “That’s wonderful. The Order of the Rack is going to be thrilled.” Rivalry between the orders was prickly at the best of times, and this was not looking like the best of times.
“Maybe they already know,” Havarel suggested.
“Even worse. How do you manage to find ways to crush my spirits so consistently?”
“Must be a gift. I have quite a few.” He coughed into a hand. “Speaking of gifts, I’m meeting with a new buyer tonight. Seems like a decent enough sort, but you never know with the new ones, and he’s asking after some awfully expensive trinkets. So I thought, if you wouldn’t mind standing on the docks and looking grim and scary for half an hour, that might go a fair way toward keeping everything peaceful.”
“Fine.” Even after years of trading favors with Havarel, Jheraal had to remind herself every time that she wasn’t really acting as the man’s enforcer. Deterring crime with her visible public presence was exactly what a Hellknight was supposed to do. If her presence happened to coincide with where Havarel wanted crime deterred, and if the specific crime he was worried about was being robbed by an unscrupulous buyer, that didn’t actually change anything. She was still acting within the proper ambit of her duty.
But it always made her uncomfortable, even so. “When and where?”
Havarel replaced his spectacles and smiled broadly. “Sunset. Regicona. I’ll write down the address.”
“Half an hour. No more.”
“I’m in your debt.” Havarel scribbled an address on a scrap of paper, harrumphed happily to himself, and handed it to her. “So, what’s next for you? Planning to go knock on the Rack’s doors and ask which of their members might have been involved in murdering a bunch of hellspawn?”
“I’ll save that for tomorrow. Today I have to meet with my diabolist. She’s the only wizard I’m likely to get for this assignment, at least until she gets bored with it.” Jheraal shook her head in deep resignation. “I hope she’s worth the trouble.”
Velenne of House Thrune was a slight, attractive woman in her mid-thirties with an elegant, self-possessed bearing. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes. Her skin was lightly bronzed by the late summer sun, but fair enough to make it clear that she was no laborer who toiled in the heat. Everything about her radiated wealth and privilege, so deeply ingrained that she didn’t bother to flaunt it. She looked like any other idle noblewoman, but Jheraal approached her with a measure of caution nevertheless.
She knew the diabolist by reputation, although she had never met the woman. Velenne had spent much of her career as a liaison to Nidal, and anyone who got along so smoothly with those pain-worshiping lunatics deserved a certain degree of wariness in Jheraal’s mind. On top of that, she’d had some involvement with a paralictor in the Order of the Gate, whose career had advanced rapidly while the diabolist was in northern Cheliax and stalled as soon as she’d left. Several of her apprentices were rumored to have had similar trajectories. The prospect of having her professional fortunes tied to the whims of a politically connected devil-binder did not fill Jheraal’s heart with joy.
But she couldn’t refuse the assistance without insulting House Thrune or crippling her own investigation, and Havarel had been right about one thing: the Thrune name carried a great deal of weight in Cheliax.
Jheraal cleared her throat as she approached the table where Velenne sat alone, overlooking one of Westcrown’s grand market squares. The diabolist had the balcony of a celebrated teahouse entirely to herself. While she hadn’t formally requisitioned the place, the waitstaff had discreetly but firmly declined to allow Jheraal onto the balcony until she explained that she was expected and her entire purpose was to meet with their guest.
It was an insult, but one that Jheraal refused to let prick her. She would not begin this meeting at a disadvantage.
“You must be Hellknight Jheraal.” Velenne beckoned the Hellknight toward the empty chair on the other side of the wrought-iron table. Her smile was warm and apparently unfeigned. “Please, join me. There is tea, if you would like some. Green jasmine and honey. Cakes, too. This place has the most wonderful little cakes.”
“Thank you.” Jheraal sat and poured herself a cup of tea, taking a sip to be polite. It was much too sweet for her taste. She set the cup aside. “I understand you’ve come to assist our investigation.”
“To the best of my ability, yes.”
“May I ask why? This matter hardly seems to warrant the attention of House Thrune.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure. Your description of the hellspawn’s condition was most intriguing. Living and breathing without hearts! How extraordinary.” Velenne laughed softly. She broke apart a frosted lemon cake, neatly tearing out its center with her nails. “But, yes, I have some personal interest as well. Not my house. Only me.”
“Ederras Celverian.”
“An old flame.” The diabolist’s smile took on a self-deprecating twist, but her dark eyes gleamed with something far more predatory. “One I can’t quite seem to let go.”
“Will that interfere with my investigation?”
“Hopefully not very much. My spells are entirely at your disposal, I assure you, and I’ll follow your lead in this investigation. Whatever you ask, I will do as best I can.”
Jheraal nodded. That answer wasn’t altogether what she had hoped for, but it was better than she’d expected. She felt a brief flicker of pity for Ederras, but a greater sense of satisfaction that she’d gotten the diabolist’s cooperation so easily. “When would you like to begin?”
“Now, if that’s convenient.”
“It is.”
“Marvelous.” Velenne dropped a stack of silver and gold coins on the table, then finished her lemon cake and stood. Jheraal, taking the cue, rose as well and led the way down from the teashop’s balcony to the streets of Parego Spera.
Two blocks from the teahouse, a large gray dog shouldered through the crowds to fall in beside the diabolist. At first glance, Jheraal took the creature for a wolf, but she soon realized that was wrong. Its body was too long, the head too heavy-boned, the eyes dark brown instead of lupine gold. A moment later, she realized that it wasn’t a dog, either. The intelligence in its gaze was too keen, and the sense of controlled malice that emanated from it too strong.
“A pet?” the Hellknight hazarded.
“A friend,” Velenne replied, resting a hand on the animal’s shoulders. She buried her fingers affectionately in his coarse gray fur. “A loyal guardian given for good service. His name is Vhaeros.”
“He’s a devil?”
“We’ll call him a dog. It simplifies matters.”
The dog, who clearly was no more a dog than Jheraal herself was, swished his tail once and cast an openly amused glance at the Hellknight.
“Of course,” Jheraal said. Masking any expression, she started toward the avenue that would bring them to Havarel’s workshop. “Well, since I have you, I may as well show you what I learned today. The skeleton that was found in that shack in Rego Cader, along with the hellspawn, most likely belonged to a Hellknight from the Order of the Rack. Male human, but we don’t have a name yet.”
“Ah. That might answer one question I’d had.”
“What was that?” Jheraal turned down a footbridge that spanned one of the smaller canals. Spiraling pillars supported a wooden lattice overhead. Flowering wisteria had been trained along those supports to cover the bridge with fragrant lavender blooms. In winter, the vines could look a bit barren, but in summer, the wisteria bridge was one of the thousand secret beauties of Westcrown. She hoped it would keep the lady in a good mood.
“How the killer got three captive hellspawn into Rego Cader without anyone sounding an alarm.” The diabolist trailed her fingers along a low-hanging cluster of blossoms. She paused to indulge in their fragrance, then went on. “Teleportation seemed unlikely. If you had the capability to teleport your victims anywhere, why not take them out of Westcrown entirely? Then no one would recognize them, connect them to the murder at Vaneo Celverian, or care. But, instead, they remained within the city, which led me to believe that they traveled on foot. And then I wondered: how did they pass the Obrigan Gate without drawing attention? Surely the rundottari would have told you if they’d seen anything.”
“Indeed.”
“But they didn’t. Therefore I concluded that either the rundottari didn’t see anything, or they didn’t recognize whatever they did see as relevant. The former is possible—the hellspawn might have been hidden under a spell of invisibility—but struck me as less likely than some form of disguise. Because that would explain why they were in Rego Cader.”
“A Hellknight releasing convicts into the ruins.” Of course. Jheraal felt stupid for not realizing it earlier. It was so common for Westcrown’s dottari and Hellknights to effectively execute criminals by forcing them through the Obrigan Gate into Rego Cader that no one paid much attention to the daily exodus. Without the correct documents, even a Hellknight wouldn’t have been able to force unauthorized prisoners through the gate itself, but smugglers and scavengers were always digging secret holes through the wall, and perhaps the hellspawn’s captor had known where to find one. Once out in the ruins, the killer would have had all the time in the world to torture his or her victims without drawing the notice of authorities.
“Precisely. I’m only surprised to learn it was a real Hellknight who led them out.” Velenne seemed sorry to leave the wisteria bridge, but she followed with one last glance at the flowers.
Past the bridge, they were soon engulfed by the city again. Yet although the streets bustled with scribes, barristers, and merchants, and every corner held a vendor hawking spit-roasted sausages, fresh apples, or fish pies to the prosperous denizens of Parego Spera, an empty space opened immediately around the Hellknight and the diabolist. It was as if an invisible bubble pushed the ordinary citizenry away.
Jheraal didn’t mind. Intimidation had its advantages. For one, it allowed them to talk freely. “We’re not sure it was a Hellknight,” she cautioned. “He might have been a captive himself. Someone might have stolen his armor—we didn’t find it with the skeleton. He could have been traveling incognito, or he could have been robbed. We don’t know yet. But I think I’ve learned all I can from his bones, so maybe it’s time to find out.”
They had come to Havarel’s workshop. Jheraal knocked at the door, waving to the golem when it slid open the slotted window. “You might want to leave your dog outside.”
Velenne made a tiny gesture of one finger, not nearly enough to cue a dog, but sufficient to instruct an attentive servant to acquiesce to the suggestion. Vhaeros flattened his ears in vexation but took up a sentinel’s position outside the door, watching the street with a mixture of boredom and resignation. Occasionally, if a child looked at him, the fiendish creature wagged his tail.
“He likes children?” Jheraal asked, mystified.
“He likes baiting them into trying to pet him. Vhaeros is not permitted to harm any citizen of Cheliax except at my instruction, or if one lays a hand on him first. It’s an obvious loophole, I realize, but it does keep him entertained.”
“Ah.” It was a good thing there weren’t many children on the smithies’ street, and that they already knew to stay far from the alchemist’s door. Otherwise, Jheraal would have had to invent some excuse to cancel the visit altogether, rather than leave that devil unattended. As it was, she made a note to keep it brief.
With a deep metallic rumble, Havarel’s horned brass golem opened the door. It turned in place and trudged back toward the gnome’s dual workshops. “The master awaits.”
“That’s an impressive piece of work,” Velenne murmured, folding her arms as she followed Jheraal and the golem inside. She looked up at the whirling magical lights that lined Havarel’s foyer, smiling faintly in recognition when the golem lifted its palm to negate the spell wards that the alchemist had set into the hallway. “And a paranoid set of mind.”
“Everyone who’s any good has enemies.” Jheraal strode to the end of the hall and into the gnome’s workroom, then stopped short as she ran into a blinding haze of smoke. The room was entirely choked in acrid gray. It smelled horribly of burning chemicals. “Havarel! I’m back. I brought a visitor.”
“I see that. I’d come to say hello, but I’m a bit busy.” The gnome, barely visible through the pall of smoke, was clad head to toe in a visored garment of oiled leather that distorted his voice into a nasal echo. It resembled a beekeeper’s suit, although the resemblance stopped at the pincered metal claws that poked from either sleeve. Soot blackened the front of his garment and drew an ebon lace across the glass of his visor. “Might be some explosions here shortly. Or possibly now. Can you come back later?”
“We don’t need to trouble you. I just want to take another look at the bones you showed me this morning.”
“Other workshop. Lead-lined box in the quarantine cabinet. Take them if you want. Close the door on your way out, and make sure it’s locked. It’s important that it’s locked.”
“All right.” Jheraal retreated back into the hallway. She pulled the door shut behind them, giving it a few extra tugs to ensure that it was completely sealed, and then coughed until her lungs were clear of the caustic smoke.
Velenne, who had stayed in the hall behind her, waved away a stray curl of smoke and wrinkled her nose delicately. “An odd friend.”
Jheraal heaved open the opposite door while the fire-bellied brass golem looked on incuriously. “He’s the best at what he does. I’ll forgive a lot for that.”
The workshop was dark when Jheraal opened the door, but magical lights glimmered into life on its ceiling when she stepped inside. The light glinted off a spotless glass cabinet, framed in mirror-bright silver, which stood against the far wall. More cabinets of wood and metal lined the other walls, but the shining glass drew the eye instantly.
Specimen boxes and enormous jars filled the glass cabinet’s shelves. Among them was the lead-lined box that Jheraal had brought back from Rego Cader. Retreating from the room, she pointed it out to the golem. “Can you get that one for me?”
Crimson light flared in the golem’s hollow eyes. It made a sound like the intake of a forge bellows as it inhaled. “Yes.” Stepping past the two women, it entered the workshop alone.
The door closed behind the squat, dog-headed construct. A short while later, the golem exited, a sheen of moisture glistening on its brassy surfaces. The lead-lined box was lying on one of the tables, unopened. “It is done.”
Jheraal went into the workshop, motioning for Velenne to follow. A medicinal odor of crushed marigold and spearmint lingered in the air. “The quarantine cabinet is best not opened by the living. Our box should be safe enough, probably, but I can’t say the same for everything in there.”
“Duly noted.” The diabolist kept her arms crossed and stayed well away from the cabinets on the walls as she entered. “I’ll let you arrange the skeleton. Is it mostly intact?”
“Mostly.” Pulling on a pair of thin leather gloves, Jheraal raised the box’s lid and began arranging the bones in a rough approximation of a skeleton. Most of the pieces were there: the skull with its eroded teeth, chunks of spine, a pelvis, the long bones of arm and leg. Some of the smaller bones from the fingers and feet were missing, either because she’d missed them on the scene in Rego Cader or because Havarel had used them in his mold-growing experiments. But the general shape of the skeleton soon built beneath her hands.
“Is that adequate?” the Hellknight asked, moving aside so Velenne could examine her work.
“Yes, thank you.” The diabolist took a sleek black scroll case from a hidden pocket at her hip and twisted it open. From the papers furled tightly inside, she chose a rippled sheet covered in bronze script. She held it over the dead man’s bones and read its incantation aloud, and as she recited each line on the page, its lettering flared up into sparks and smoke. A shower of copper and bronze motes fell around the bare bones, forming the spectral outlines of muscles, tendons, veins, and skin.
By the time she finished the scroll, the dead Hellknight had been restored. A greenish pallor lingered under his skin; a slight puffiness distended his abdomen. He looked, and smelled, like a corpse that had been three days dead.
Velenne lowered her hands and gazed down at the rebuilt corpse. “He should be intact enough for a cleric to commune with his spirit, if you wish.” She glanced at Jheraal, raising an eyebrow at the Hellknight’s expression. “Did you know him?”
“Yes,” Jheraal said, staring at the dead knight’s face. “Yes, I did.”