The brothers gave her an odd look.
“And you said he vanished into thin air after killing the Sun Margrave,” Reynald said.
“Yes.”
“Morr beads?” Gort wondered.
“Most likely,” Reynald said.
“What are more beads?” Kaiden asked.
“M-O-R-R. Battlemages carry them,” Will told him. “It’s illegal to use them but they do anyway. They break one, and magic shoves them to a safe spot half a mile away.”
“You’ll be in camp, sharpening your sword, and they pop up out of nowhere, and then you cut yourself,” Lute said.
A very specific example there.
Morr beads came up a couple of times in the books. They were small black beads with red cracks strung onto a bracelet or a necklace. When the user crushed a bead, they would be teleported to a predetermined location, but the beads weren’t exactly foolproof. One of the mages using them exploded upon arrival at the Mage Tower, and then Archmage Damaes got pissed off because the potion laboratory stank like rotting human fluids for days.
“Morr beads cost a lot of money,” Gort mused.
“Not if Hreban is paying your way,” Shana told him.
“So how do we find him, if we don’t know who the next victim is?” Clover asked. “Or do we have to wait for Eliarde?”
“Eliarde is a member of the Silver Eagles,” I told her. “They are an elite knight unit. There are only fifty of them and they are very proud of making that cut. She is . . . difficult.”
Sometimes overtly arrogant people hid severe insecurities, but in Eliarde’s case, her arrogance hid more arrogance. Her entire family thought their relation to the Arvels placed them above the rest. She was born into a life of privilege, with everyone constantly reassuring her that she was special and entitled to everything she ever wanted. She was beautiful, talented, celebrated, and cherished, and she was very aware that everyone else was less-than.
“She has an inflated sense of her self-worth,” Reynald said. “She won’t listen to a warning from us and attempting to follow her around until the Butcher strikes will be impossible.”
How could we find him . . . If he had been targeting regular fighters, it would be one thing, but he was targeting knights. They spent half of their time in their HQs and when they did go into the city, it was usually on horseback.
Knights . . . on horses . . .
Ah!
“I don’t know who he kills next, but I do know where he will leave the body,” I said. “He’ll tie it to the statue of the Knight Vanquisher.”
Gort’s eyes narrowed. “That’s six blocks from here.”
Reynald pivoted to me. “Is there a chance he’ll change the location?”
“I don’t think so. He spent months planning the order of his victims and the dump sites. He made drawings. He won’t want to deviate from his plan. It’s a compulsion. He must carry it out exactly as he envisioned it.”
Reynald bared his teeth in a sharp smile, like a wolf who has sighted his prey. “Gort and Kaiden, with me. Will, Lute, stay here. Nobody comes through the front door until we’re back.”
CHAPTER19
Iclimbed the stairs to my rooms. I needed to write down everything I could remember about the Butcher. Any detail could make a difference.
Why had Reynald taken Kaiden with him? I’d have to ask him when he got back.
Twenty minutes later I stared at six sheets of paper. I had reproduced the Eliarde torture scene exactly. Word for word. Every gruesome detail.
How? I didn’t have a photographic memory. If I had, my college days would’ve been much easier.
What about something else from the books? Something random.
