“And this means he’s dead?” Wren forced himself to ask.
“Yes,” said Shrike. Not a trace of impatience entered his tone, though Wren thought he well deserved it.
Wren, meanwhile, tried to contend with the mortality of Felix Knoll. “How did he die?”
Shrike shrugged.
Wren withheld a sigh. “Where is his body?”
Another toss of the bones—falling this time in an entirely different configuration, much to Wren’s relief.
Less soothing was Shrike’s interpretation of their pattern. “It no longer exists.”
“What the Devil does that—?”
“It has returned to nature,” Shrike explained as Wren bit off his frustrated exclamation. “It has been devoured by wolves, or picked apart by ravens, or decayed into soil beneath tree-roots, or in some other way transformed from death to life.”
Wren didn’t think wolves particularly likely in England. Ravens, perhaps. But that would require a body lay undiscovered for some time. And Wren, who’d seen Felix depart Mr Grigsby’s office not quite a month past, didn’t think that sufficient time for Felix’s corpse to disintegrate naturally. Not even if Felix had dropped dead the moment he stepped out the door into Staple Inn.
Shrike scooped up the bones and dropped them back into their pouch. “Shall we tell your master?”
“Is there no way to know what killed him?” Wren asked, parrying Shrike’s question with his own. “Or where? Or when?”
Shrike pulled an uncertain face.
Wren began to pace as he wracked his brain for a solution. “A natural death, considering his age and means and general good health, is not, I think, particularly likely in his case. Even if he’d fallen ill, someone at the university would have contacted either his uncle or his guardian. No one has contacted either, so he must have left university before he perished. Likely withdrew on Mr Grigsby’s advice—which would be the first sensible thing he’d done in all his days—and so no one thought anything of his absence. Perhaps he encountered some accident whilst traveling. An over-turned carriage or drowning at a water crossing. But I don’t think his body would vanish before it could be discovered, and once discovered, enquiries would be made which ought to have led, again, either to Tolhurst or Mr Grigsby.”
Shrike nodded.
Wren continued. “If his cause of death is unnatural, then it must be super-natural—or criminal, I suppose. As he dresses better than he could ever afford, an enterprising mugger might take it upon himself to relieve him of his supposed fortune. Though I daresay Felix was prime enough to fend off an attack, and a mugger would give up when he realized his prey would not prove easy. I can’t imagine who would want Felix dead. Enough to act upon it, I mean,” Wren added, knowing all too well how such a motive applied to himself. “His creditors wouldn’t murder him—he can’t very well pay them back if he’s dead. A suicide?”
Shrike looked no more comfortable with the idea than Wren felt. “You knew him better than I did.”
The notion incensed Wren more than he’d expected. For Felix, with all his privileges and promise, to take the coward’s way out of a perfectly surmountable difficulty, when Wren had not yet conceived of a plan that would allow both himself and his lover to survive past the Summer Solstice—but no. “Felix loved himself too well for that.”
“Not suicide, then,” Shrike concluded.
“I think not. Perhaps the super-natural. Are you absolutely certain the huldra wouldn’t seek him out?”
“They are not foolish enough to break their vow before Midsummer,” Shrike repeated.
“Then if Felix’s death be not natural, super-natural, or criminal, I know not where to turn except to those who knew him best.”
Shrike raised an eyebrow. “Mr Grigsby?”
Wren shook his head. “Knows nothing of Felix’s disappearance, much less his death. Tolhurst and Miss Flora, however, might yet tell some hint of what became of him, if given an appropriate prompt. Smith no doubt asked the very same questions of the very same people, but they likely lied to protect Felix. As Mr Grigsby has Felix’s best interests at heart, and as I am Mr Grigsby’s creature, they need not tell such lies to me.”
“And what shall you tell Mr Grigsby?”
“I cannot tell him the truth without revealing how I learnt it. And so I must find some proof of it beyond the bones. All the more reason for me to go to Tolhurst and Miss Flora and demand answers.”
“Then,” said Shrike, “we are off to Rochester.”
~
The journey to Rochester through the stable-yard well proved far easier for Shrike than the first. He took on his bird form before they left the fae realms. Wren glimpsed him flitting about ahead and behind and alongside him as he strode down the quiet streets to Mrs Bailiwick’s Academy.
The girl-of-all-work appeared slightly less surprised to see Wren a second time.
