“Something followed you home.”
“Honora ...” He tries to block the sight of the corpse with his body, stepping in front of Mother, but she steps around him and walks over to stand near the dead man. The wind is biting, as if knives’ edges are trying to take shape in the air, but she is never easily daunted.
“Like something a cat brought in,” Mother murmurs. “Is it an offering to the household or a warning?”
“Either way, I will find the beast, Honora.” He looks back at me and orders, “When I go out on the morrow, you will keep them safe.”
“Always,” I swear.
He does not add “until I return.” Once, when I was a child, he added those words, but he is older now, nearing fifty-eight years. With so many healed bones and repaired organs, he is unlikely to survive a truly vicious creature. A human body—even the Hunter’s body—wears down with time.
And we can see already that this is a vicious enemy.
Silently, he lends his support to Mother’s weaker side and leads her back inside. Tears glisten at the edges of Mother’s eyes, but she only cries in private. I have stood in the dark listening to those tears for as long as I can recall.
It is a burden to love a Hunter.
I try not to think of Isabeau yet again, but her father has just died, and I want to go to her and comfort her. Now. Before she learns what I am. Now. When I ought to be trying to stop the beast so she doesn’t have to begin her tenure as the Duke of Maudite with murders plaguing her territory.
I take hold of the dead man’s ankles and tug him through the light dusting of snow toward a pair of metal doors in the ground. “Please don’t let his head come off.”
Typically we would examine him outside, but my father must be exhausted if he’s ordered me to do it myself.
At the edge of the laboratory, I let the corpse’s legs drop with a small thump. I unlock the door and grab the handles; the metal is cold enough to burn my hands as I jerk the doors open. On one side is a chute. On the other is weathered stairs.
I drag the dead man toward the chute and watch him slide down to a slump on a wheeled table below. I can’t send him for a burial unless I want to risk contagion from whatever killed him. I can’t leave him here, unprocessed, in case there’s something lying in wait within the corpse. A few creatures can burrow inside, and there’s no way to know if a corpse holds such surprises. Not without an examination.
It’s the same that killed Hugh,logic insists.
I take the lantern from the top step, light it, and walk down the stairs. At the bottom, I flip the lever that pulls the doors closed with a loud slam. I no longer flinch at the sound. I used to, but that was several years ago.
Silently, I don a thick leather apron with sleeves. There’s no help for the smell of death, but here, I can keep the mess from my clothing. I slip on muck boots with a solid heel. Ladies’ slippers or boots with a nice curve aren’t made for wading in death.
I open the creaking steel door of what looks like a barrel. Father can summon fire, but I cannot. I need the firebox—a metal barrel bigger than two full-grown men—that keeps the flames contained. It has a long brick and metal pipe that carries the smoke far away. In the edge of the wood, there is a place where smoke pours from the ground into the night.
No magic words here. I strike my flint to create a spark, light a small oil-soaked length of rope, and toss it into the firebox with a mix of herbs to aid in turning the body to ashes and bones when I finish the examination. The herbs and rope start to spark on the tinder that’s stacked there in preparation for such times.
Unlike in the forest, here I have time. So I undress the dead man and steadily catalog his items, along with the date, weather, and phase of the moon, in a notepad we keep for this purpose.
Shirt.
Trousers.
Boots.
Pocket watch.
Ring.
With no small measure of discomfort, I remove his undershirt and drawers. Again, each item is notated, and each flammable item is then shoved into the thick metal belly of the firebox. The jewelry will go into another steel box, to be salted and heated against magic or possession.
As in Hugh’s case, I collect samples. Skin near the wound to check for saliva. Blood from the wound and several injuries. Saliva from the mouth. Fluid from the eye. Mucus from the nose.
I scrape purple goop from his face and put it in a bottle.
Tending the corpse is always a slow, unsettling process, and when I first had to do it, I thought overmuch about the family who would never know the fate of the deceased. Now, I realize that this is better than the risk of sending contagion to an unsuspecting family.
I annotate a basic human drawing with the wound types and depths. I feel bile rise in my stomach at having to manipulate his bits to check for injury, scarring, or tattoos—not that peering in his mouth or opening his eyes is much better.
