Chapter Two

The pale, winter-bare trees of the Bone Forest sailed by beyond the windows as Konrad’s carriage made its way, at inadvisable speed, due north. He’d told his coachman to hurry, and the man had taken the order seriously. Wheels spun and slid on the snowy road and the three occupants endured the journey with white-knuckled grip upon their seats.

Konrad sat in grim silence. He knew he was disturbing Nanda and alarming Alexander, but he could find nothing to say to reassure them. A knot of steel had his stomach in a vice, and breathing had become challenge enough. If his fears were correct, nothing he could say could prepare Nanda for what lay ahead.

The moment the coach slowed, Konrad flung the door open and jumped out. He sank up to his ankles in powdery snow, and spared a moment’s futile wish that he had thought to change his attire before barrelling out of the city. Nothing for it but to ignore the slow seep of melting snow inside his city shoes—

He stopped dead, eight or nine paces into the trees. A clearing opened up ahead, a wide space hosting one of the most elaborate and exquisite snow structures Konrad had ever beheld. The sheer grace of its turrets stole his breath; the glitter of wan sunlight on icy, perfect windows mesmerised him.

When recognition hit, it hit hard.

‘That’s the…’ he began as Nanda came up next to him. ‘The— the house at Divoro.’ It was; he did not imagine it. The house was a perfect replica in every feature of the near-palatial mansion he and Nanda had recently attended as guests, only this version was far smaller.

‘Gods,’ whispered Nanda.

Konrad ran. His long legs devoured the distance between the road and the pair of great, ice-carved doors which graced the front of the house. They stood half-open; Konrad darted inside and came to a skidding stop in the centre of the great hall.

Suspended before him, halfway up the opposing wall, hung the frozen shape of a slender man, arms outspread. Two figures flanked him on either side: to his left was a bear of a man with broad shoulders and a mane of ice-crusted hair, a young woman with wide, snowy skirts his next neighbour. On the other wall hung a second woman and another man. Few identifying characteristics marked these snowbound sculptures; identical in posture, each with out-flung arms and raised chins, they stared sightlessly at the domed ceiling of their ice prison.

Konrad turned in a slow circle, and then again, his mind blank with horror. Despite their uniform presentation, despite the featureless, pristine snow which blanketed their faces, their limbs and their clothes, he knew who they were. He knew who all of them were.

He did not realise Nanda had caught up with him until he heard her choke. ‘Eino,’ she gasped in a terrible, hoarse voice. ‘Lilli? Marko? It… this cannot be.’

‘Eino Holt,’ said Konrad bleakly. ‘Alina Holt. Marko Bekk. Lilli Lahti. And— and Denis Druganin.’ Their host at last week’s house party at Divoro; his mother; their fellow guests.

Nanda stood like a statue, barely breathing. Alexander came up on Konrad’s other side and stood in a like silence, and for some moments no one spoke.

‘I thought they were safe,’ Nanda finally said, and her voice broke on the final word. ‘We put them on the stage — they should have reached home days ago.’

They had gone to some trouble to ensure that the house was empty before they’d departed themselves, and so it had seemed. Except for the body of Denis Druganin. Konrad had killed the man himself, and left his misshapen remains splendidly alone in his own chamber of horrors. He’d thought the Order would have cleaned it up.

Apparently not.

Konrad took a slow breath, mentally kicking himself. Time enough for self-reproach later; he had to focus. If only the fist of steel in his belly would let up, let him breathe—

‘Savast,’ said Alexander, gripping his arm. ‘Steady.’

Konrad did not want to imagine what the good inspector had seen in his face just then. He swallowed down his horror and regret, thrust away fear, retained only the slow, simmering burn of anger that warmed his chilled limbs and fired his heart. Fury: that he would keep.

‘I am well,’ he said, his words ringing with a strength he was yet only halfway to feeling. He went to Nanda, steadied her with a light touch to her hair and a reassuring grip of her fingers. She barely seemed to feel it. Her pale eyes turned up to his with an expression of heart-breaking sadness — and a rage to match his own. ‘That damned coven,’ she hissed. ‘We should have stayed, Konrad, until we’d found them. Until we’d wiped them out.’

‘I know.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘This time, we will.’

He moved a few paces away, seeking a moment’s quiet reflection. There were messages here, and he needed to read them clearly. The coven of Divoro must be behind this grisly display, but Konrad struggled to guess at their motivation. Yes, he had deprived them of Druganin; by the man’s own account, he had been their tool, one who arranged for them to receive a regular supply of dead (or, still worse, living) organs for their twisted purposes. The inclusion of Druganin’s corpse in this little pageant might be best taken as a declaration of war; simple enough there.

But Eino Holt? Alina, his mother? She was a Vasilescu by birth, one of their own, and that made a blood relative of Eino, too — even if the pair had been disowned years before. What’s more, Eino had only recently received the benefit of their questionable assistance: the substitution of a healthy heart for his own, faulty one had saved his life. Why had they taken that trouble, only to slay him anyway?

And what of Lilli and Marko? They had, to Konrad’s knowledge, no connection with the Vasilescu family or the house at Divoro at all. They had been invited as Eino’s friends. That was all.

‘Why this, then?’ Konrad said aloud. ‘What is this for?’ In truth, he knew, and that knowledge sickened him too much to say it aloud.

‘Revenge,’ said Alexander quietly. ‘For Druganin.’ He pointed at the still forms of Lilli Lahti and Marko Bekk. Pointing next at Eino and his mother, he added, ‘And revenge for their betrayal.’

‘That is half of it,’ Konrad agreed.

Alexander shot him a questioning look, but before Konrad could elaborate, Nanda spoke.

‘It’s a challenge,’ she whispered.

‘A challenge,’ Konrad agreed. ‘And a trap.’

‘They know that one of us killed Druganin,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps not which. But have they guessed why?’

In other words, had the coven at Divoro realised that the Malykant had been a guest at Eino Holt’s party? That The Malykt’s foremost servant had delivered the brutal justice Druganin had received? Perhaps. Konrad had dispatched Druganin according to his custom: a sharp, sturdy bone from each of his slain victims, delivered through the heart. But — he blanched to recall — he had not been finished with Druganin’s corpse with that alone. He had… gone further. Done worse.

Well, the man had shown up with the body of a six-year-old child in his hands. He’d shown not the smallest flicker of remorse for stealing her life. Konrad had been forced to open the torso of a dead little girl and mutilate her small, delicate bones; her infant blood still stained the cuffs of the shirt he’d worn that day.

Her rib bone had gone through Druganin’s eye.

His mind shied away from a clear recollection of the state he’d left the body in at last, but he could not think that the presence of three extra rib bones in strategic places had been particularly obvious anymore.

He drifted nearer to the inert form of Druganin, straining to discern detail through the thick layer of snow that packed his corpse. Were the weapons he’d made of Kati and Alen and the little girl’s bones still there? He could not tell.

Druganin’s eyes snapped open.

Konrad stumbled back, colliding with the inspector.

Dark, frozen eyes regarded Konrad with icy indifference. Then, slowly, the snow-crusted lids lowered again.

There had been not a trace of recognition in those dead eyes, but Konrad’s heart had taken off at a gallop and would not be soothed. He was alive. ‘How can he be alive?’ Konrad gasped.

‘Is he, though?’ said Nanda, and it was her turn to steady Konrad. He felt her hand at the small of his back and took a breath, grateful for the comforting touch. ‘He has more animation than is typical for a corpse, but that is not necessarily the same thing.’

Serpents, Konrad called, and flung the thought far and wide. He had not heard from them for some days; were they near?

He waited.

At length, the thin, ear-splitting tones of Ootapi answered him. Master.

I need you. Immediately.

We are at a party, Ootapi informed him. There is fresh meat, blood—

Konrad hastened to cut off any further enumeration of the party’s delights. His mind shied away from envisioning what kind of a “party” might impress a pair of bloodthirsty ghost snakes. This is better, he informed the serpent.

It cannot be. Pure disbelief rang through every word.

Come and see. Bring Eetapi.

They arrived moments later, invisible to all but Konrad, a pair of chill presences drifting silently at ceiling height.

Eetapi spoke first. You forgot both of our deathdays, she hissed. Again. But… now we forgive you.

This is ten deathdays all at once, Ootapi agreed.

These are not gifts, Konrad said sternly. These are victims and we are here to help them.

Oh. The serpents spoke together, equally disappointed.

Tell me. Are these people dead?

Oh, yes! Eetapi all but sang the words. Stone dead.

But?

But what?

That one— Konrad pointed —retains some muscle function.

He watched as his serpents sailed towards Druganin and conducted a thorough — he hoped — investigation of the circumstances. Nanda and Alexander waited, watchful; they could not see the snakes as he could, but they knew by now how he worked.

His spirit remains, Ootapi at length announced.

‘No.’ Konrad, forgetting himself, spoke the word aloud. ‘It cannot be.’ He’d dispatched Druganin himself, by the most final, irreversible means at his disposal. Nobody came back from that.

Ootapi’s response radiated irritation. I say that it is.

He is right, Master, said Eetapi. They are all still here.

What?

All their spirits linger, she repeated, patiently. But, they are… asleep.

Asleep?

I do not know how else to call it. They are here, but they are not alert.

That, too, was bizarre. Ghosts did not really sleep. Why would they need to?

What were these five doing lingering over their corpses? What held them here, if they were not conscious enough to make that decision for themselves? Serpents, he said. How are they here?

They are bound to their bodies. As we are, Master.

Konrad let out a slow breath, his heart sinking. He’d been afraid to hear that answer.

A week ago, or a little more, he had encountered the long-dead body of a man called Jakub Vasilescu. Despite the many, many years which must have passed since his death, the man had been, to some degree, aware. His ghost had never passed on; somehow, it had retained residence of its own body, but not to the extent of being either fully alive or fully undead. He was, in effect, haunting his own corpse.

Not, Konrad knew, without considerable help from the coven — his own descendants.

The effect was not unfamiliar to Konrad. It was much the same thing he achieved himself, with his serpents’ assistance, whenever he encountered a freshly-slain corpse. For a limited time after the unfortunate victim’s expiration, the serpents could bind up what remained of his or her soul and force it back into the body, permitting the corpse to speak of what had happened. Konrad had solved many a murder that way. It was simple, direct, efficient — and difficult to achieve. Even the serpents could not hold a spirit that way for long.

How, then, had the coven kept Vasilescu in an essentially similar state, and for so long?

Was that what they were now doing to the Holts, and Marko Bekk, and Lilli Lahti?

Was that what afflicted Druganin?

‘We need to find out more about this coven,’ he said grimly. ‘But carefully. I fear they’re more dangerous than we imagine.’

Alexander nodded. He had his pipe in one hand; the other fumbled for a match. Both were shaking. ‘Shall I send my men to fetch down these poor souls, or shall your Order handle it?’

‘Neither.’

Alexander glanced, questioningly, Konrad’s way.

‘Leave them there.’

‘Konrad—’ Nanda began.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But something is badly wrong here, and until we find out what’s afoot, they stay up there.’ It cost him to utter such words, and when the look Nanda turned on him proved to be both pleading and disgusted he almost gave in.

But he could not. Not yet.

Alexander lit his pipe, and puffed in silence.

‘We cannot leave them here alone,’ Nanda said at last.

‘They won’t be alone. I am sending Diana out here.’