The man on the ground was killed with what looks like one singular wound to the throat. Although animals have scattered parts of his remains, making it harder to discern the extent of his injuries, I’ve seen enough dead bodies to confidently state, “Single killing blow. Powerful one.”
“By man or beast?”
“Beast.” I don’t need to hesitate. The gash on the dead man’s throat is wide and deep, edges clean and angled. “No man is strong enough to do this with one strike, and this is not from multiple cuts.”
Again I prod the wound, pointing out that there are no start and stop marks. One singular cut ended his life.
“Nothing that’s allowed on this side of the barrier can do that,” Father mutters.
That is, of course, the problem before us. Some faery beasts come here, and they really aren’t worth the headache of hunting. Minor things that tumble through, chasing berries or frolicking. We don’t need to capture or kill them as long as they aren’t causing problems. The only ones we hunt are the dangerous ones.
The killer is one wemusthunt.
“Whatever did this isn’t meant to be over here.” I sigh. The list of possible creatures banned from our world is long, and I have faith in our ability—Father’sability mostly, as he is theactualHunter, augmented by magic.
“Does he have any identification?” Father’s tone isn’t hopeful. Few people carry identifying papers. He knows soldiers and nobility. He knows residents in the village on our property, but this man is unfamiliar.
“Only whatever they know at the Goose. One of us can go talk to Girard later,” I suggest, hoping my father chooses to go. My relationship with Girard is fraught of late.
Father and I catalog any other details that might prove useful later. The dead man has no jewelry, identifying birthmarks or scars, or papers on him. There are no marks on the nearby ground indicating he was on horseback, although the rain might have washed them away. The rain might also have washed away other evidence, as the ground shows only a small pool of blood and the body itself is void of it. The wounds, the area around them that gravity would’ve pulled blood toward—it’s all clean.
That is, perhaps, the most unusual thing.
I poke at the skin of his belly. Plenty of beasts like to eat the soft meat of organs, but the man’s stomach skin is intact. “He’s not been mauled by anything, but he has no blood.”
I gently roll the remains, and aside from a small puddling, there’s none there either. “Perhaps he was killed elsewhere?”
Father frowns. “That or something drank most of the blood.”
“Nothing in the journals drinks the full of a man’s blood.” I watch a fly crawl into the dead man’s nostril as I picture the lists in the journals, beast after beast I have studied. “A few sips perhaps ... but he’s missing at least agallon.”
“Could there be something new? Recently come to our world?” Father asks.
“There ought not be. Anything that bloodthirsty isn’t welcome on this side of the veil.” I shiver as a trickle of terror creeps up my spine at the thought of something none of our ancestors have faced, or perhaps that shiver is the dampness my dress continues to suck up from the ground. At least it’s not blood drawing up my legs. I’m not missish, but I am aware of my limitations.
“Perhaps ... a depraved man.” Father offers the idea in a sort of comforting lie, although I cannot tell which of us he’s trying to comfort.
I continue my study of the body, prodding the corpse’s pockets with the steel rod. If the killerisa faery, as we both suspect, the steel will help protect me from contaminants. The rod hits a thick bump in one pocket, and I lever it out where it falls on the wet ground.
No choice but to touch it, I lift and unwrap the thick wad of banknotes that are enclosed in a length of leather and tucked into a pouch. The money is still dry. “This was not a robbery.”
I rewrap it in the folded piece of leather and hold it out.
Father takes the bundle. “Beasts use no coins. A man would’ve taken it.”
I nod because there’s no doubt now—not that the wound traits leftmuchroom for doubt. We are dealing with a faery, one we cannoteasily identify, one that ought not be in our world. “Do we tell Queen Morag first or ...?”
My father makes a face I can’t read and pulls out a bag of finely crushed salt. We both carry salt bags at all times. I suspect a lot of citizens do, but wemust. Some creatures have toxins that will infect or poison a person, sometimes fatally.
I hold out my hands. Often, we don’t sanitize until after we are through investigating, but if this beast is unknown, the risks are equally unknown. What we think of as “curses” these days are often simply faery contamination. The risk is rare, but I’m not interested in falling to something so mundane.
Father pours salt over my hands to decontaminate them. I suspect we’ll repeat that process a few times today because he keeps the salt bag in hand as I reach into a skirt pocket and pull out a set of glass vials and droppers. He says nothing as I collect some of the meager lingering blood from the wound, a fluid sample from the eye, and a generous sample from each blood pool.
Father’s gaze darts around us as if the beast might linger, as if he expects attack.
I shiver again, wondering whether he has the strength to fight something that nearly beheaded a man with one blow, but wandering thoughts serve no purpose in the moment. He will, or he will die—and the duty will fall to me.
Silently, I finish gathering the samples and put them in a steel box my father holds out.
