“Another one? Are you the last of them?”
“I believe so.”
“Go back around with the others.” His eyes lingered on Erich a moment, which made a prickle run down his spine.
Erich went around the back as instructed, past a pile of rotting castoffs. There was a cellar door propped open, and Erich could hear Fritz, Ludwig, and Luzie talking in low tones. He walked down the bloodstained steps into the cellar. A half-carved pig was laid out on the block, and a cleaver stabbed into the wood.
The butcher joined them, wiping his hands on his stained apron as he closed the cellar door, leaving them in the dim gloom of candlelight. Erich hated being in enclosed spaces in general, and the stench of meat, blood, and fear clung to the place and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Leonhard didn’t say he’d be sending four of you. I was expecting two.” He looked them up and down.
Then Leonhard had found out that Erich wasn’t working alone. The thought unsettled him, but he pushed it aside for the time being.
“They’re working with me,” Erich said. “And you’re paying off your debt. Does it really matter?” Erich was taking a stab in the dark. He had no idea if the man had a debt or not, but knowing Leonhard, he probably did.
The man shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him one way or another. “Either I pay off my lost winnings, or die. Not sure it’s worth dying at the hands of the Midnight Guard if one of you squeals, though.”
Luzie yelped when the butcher’s eyes narrowed on her.
“None of us is going to reveal your secrets,” Fritz assured him.
The butcher shook his head and gestured for them to follow as he stomped over to a cabinet at the back of the room. When he threw open the doors, another set of stairs going down was revealed. He headed down, without glancing back to see if they were following. Ludwig went after him. Then Fritz. Luzie lingered a moment, eyeing the stairs dubiously.
“I’ll take up the rear,” Erich assured her.
She nodded and followed Fritz and Ludwig down. Erich held his breath before joining them. It was colder down in the tunnel, and he felt the faint echoes of faded magic. Another vein that had dried up, he’d guess. The stairs ended in a tunnel filled with large blocks of ice that dripped from the baskets that held them.
“This is where we keep the bodies until the church retrieves them,” the man said.
Erich walked over to one of the said bodies. It was what appeared to be an elk, but disfigured and transformed, with scaled protrusions along its body and a serpentine tail along its back.
Erich recoiled at the sight of its lolling tongue.
“You’re delivering chimeras to the church?” Erich asked.
“That’s how they make it. Stardust, or something very like it, is extracted from the chimeras caught in and around the capital,” Ludwig said. “They give stardust to the Midnight Guard and priests to awaken their powers.”
Erich felt a chill run down his spine. “How did you learn this?”
Ludwig nodded toward Fritz. “He helped me put it together. I told the guards that I had been a user once and recovered. They tested me, and I was found worthy.” There was a wry twist to his mouth. “I thought the Midnight Guard and the church were meant to protect the people. But for every person who can withstand the magic, another three wither away. It’s unspeakably cruel.”
Erich looked at the chimera on the table. This was why Leonhard was allowed to continue his coliseum and operate in the city. If it gave the church the means to keep producing stardust, they could continue to control the flow of magic—who had it and who didn’t…
Erich turned to the butcher. “And what can you reveal about Leonhard’s grand plan?”
“I’m your transport, so to speak.” He gestured to a cart, piled with corpses, along a track that disappeared into a dark tunnel.
Erich already felt sick to his stomach at the thought. “You want me to pretend to be a body?”
“For a short time. There’s only room for two, though. You’ll have to draw straws, I suspect.” He rubbed his nose and sniffled.
Delightful. As horrid as the prospect was, Erich knew he’d have to go through with it.
“I can meet you on the inside,” Ludwig suggested.
“And I’ll wait at the rendezvous point with a carriage,” Luzie said.
Which left Fritz, who was staring at the pile of bodies, his face the color of fresh milk.
