I have a full view of his face as he attempts to crawl away from me through the wet sand. He wears a short beard, and his skin is oddly pale for a villager who must spend much of his time working in the sun. A patch of blotchy, darker skin, maybe some kind of birthmark, extends from his jaw down the left side of his neck, the uppermost portion partially concealed by his beard.
As soon as his focus flies to the little girl, he stops scooting backward, taking panicked glances from me to her.
She cranes toward him, her arms outstretched. “Dada!”
I tighten my hold on her, repeating my question. “Who did you kill?”
“Please,” he rasps, his beseeching face raised to mine. “Spare my daughter.”
“Answer my questions, and I’ll consider it.”
I have no intention of killing this child. Again, cruelty has no purpose here, but fear certainly does.
He pushes himself back into a kneeling position, facing me. I’m sure he intends to throw himself at my feet, but the movement brings another sound.
Metalclinksagainst metal.
I’d recognize the sound of coins clattering against each other anywhere. One of my first memories was of my father sifting coins through his fingers,beaming over the exorbitant tithes he demanded from our people in exchange for protection from the Iron Fae’s former tyrannical king.
Shaking off the memory, I consider the weight of coin that could make such a rattle and the man’s desperation to wash the blood from his hands.
He was begging the sea to take his sin.
This was not a crime of passion. It was planned.
My voice is no longer a whisper, becoming a roar that makes my wolf snarl. “Who did you murder?”
The man flinches. “A carpenter in the village.”
“Why?”
When hell is breaking loose around him, why would this lowborn leave his family, his woman, to be slaughtered and his daughter to scream with fear, while he went to murder a carpenter?
“For the coin.”
My lips curl. “Obviously. Why the carpenter?”
“I don’t…know.” His focus flickers to the little girl, his speech hurried, and again, I detect the oddly unfamiliar lilting accent in it. “I found a note on my pillow this morning. It came with a pouch filled with more coin than I’ve ever seen. The note said an even greater payment was waiting for me if I did what was asked.” His focus rises to the sky, to the smoke, and then lowers to the burning trees and the explosions of ice now shattering across rooftops. “I wanted more than this life.”
If I could feel emotion, it would be disgust.
I narrow my eyes at him. “How were you to collect this second payment?”
He points toward the mainland. “I was to go to the pass where the Iron Army fell. The coin would be brought to me there.”
No doubt by an assassin ready to slit this man’s throat.
How simple must this lowborn’s mind be, how great hisambition, that he wouldn’t suspect himself to be mere fodder in someone else’s game?
But whose game?
Who is playing with fate on this day of all days, when the three kings have been drawn to this village?
And why kill a simple carpenter?
“Give me the note,” I command.
The man’s hands tremble as he pulls a slip of parchment from his pocket.
