Prologue
He’d miscalculated. The impulse to run sent a rippling shiver through his muscles, and he took a few steps back, bowing his head low under the hood of his tattered, rain-soaked cloak, hands going up in apology. It was too late. The two watchmen who’d escorted him in crowded him, one clamping a set of iron cuffs around his wrists, the other pulling his hood off.
He squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders.
“No, please.”
“Bring him closer,” the sergeant ordered from behind his desk. “Here, in the candlelight.”
The men pushed him, and his feet shuffled on the muddied floor. He could’ve easily overpowered them and made a run for it, but he didn’t. Outside, it was raining. Thundering. It wasn’t what stopped him. The vastness of the city, the open sky – those were things he couldn’t deal with. They had cells here, somewhere in this building, and all he’d ever wanted was a small, cramped space where he could rest his tired bones. He hadn’t expected them to want so much information before they locked him up.
He felt the heat of a burning candle held close to his face.
“Look at me, lump. What are you?”
He opened his eyes and was met with the sergeant’s widened gaze. Disgust flickered in the man’s dark irises.
“He did it,” one of the watchmen said.
They both tightened their grip on his shoulders, though he could feel their hands trembling.
“He murdered that woman,” the other one said. “Eviscerated her. Someone who looks like him? He did it.”
The sergeant’s jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything. After a minute, he shook his head and set the candle down. He dipped his quill in the ink pot.
“Name.”
That was the question that had tripped him the first time. He’d hoped this would be easy: walk up to a watchman, say he had a confession to make, that he killed someone. They took him to the watch house, where he described the murder scene, and the clerk wrote it all down at his desk in the far corner. But then the sergeant asked him the impossible question.
He couldn’t say he didn’t know. Because who didn’t know their own name?
“Ru…” The sound came from deep in his throat.
“Tell me your name, lump.” The man avoided looking at him. “You made your confession, I’ve sent men to find the body. I want nothing more than to get you out of my sight.” He unbuttoned his dark blue coat at the collar. “Throw you in a cell, finish this blasted paperwork, and go home to a nice, hot dinner.”
Even with the iron stove glowing red against one of the lime-washed walls, the cave-like room was cold and damp. The air smelled of wet wool, old pipe smoke, and the sharp tang of cheap beer. Water dripped from the cloaks hanging on pegs by the entrance, forming small pools on the stone floor.
“Ru… ru… in…” he tried again.
He racked his brain, pushed as hard as he could, but his memories were shattered fragments, sharp at the edges and refusing to fit into any sort of coherence.
“Rune, you say?”
“What kind of name is that?” the clerk scoffed.
The sergeant shrugged and wrote it down. “Rune. Where are you from?”
“He-here.”
“Ingolstadt, then.”
The sergeant scribbled in the ledger before him, and the clerk did the same in his own ledger.
“Age?”
Rune stayed silent.
The sergeant threw a quick glance at him and dismissively declared, “Twenty.” He wrote it down.
