I squat down, wishing yet again my sister weren’t watching this examination. Casually, I take a deep inhalation. No musky or salty scents. No flowers. No perfumes. Nothing but the slightly gamy smell of death.
The awkward crouching position makes me fear falling onto the body, but I need to examine the dead man. Bending isn’t an option between stays and layers and my heavy dress. One of these days, I’llbe already dressed for death when the summons comes. Today is not such a day.
A brief thought passes that the last bodybeforeFather was one where he was at my side. I push that and all other thoughts of him away. “Meat torn. Skin bruised, but he’s bloodless now. He was still alive when this happened. That’s new. The bruising indicates—”
“That poor man!” Rylan claps her hand to her mouth.
Not Father,I remind myself. I have grown used to speaking to him about the dead, and I forgot briefly that others may find the topic more emotional.
“The head was completely severed. No blood on the surrounding ground.” I nudge the body slightly, rolling him to his side to see the ground under him. “The traveler wasn’t killed here.”
Rylan scratches out a note, not looking at the dead man.
I straighten to stand between her and the body. I can hear horses breaking through the wood. “TheWächterare nearly here.”
“Do we want them to handle ... the body?”
“No.” I can’t focus on them, even though the sound of their approach seems louder than reality says it is. “I need to finish the examination.”
I peer around, trying to see if there are swarms of flies or carrion birds overhead, indicating a ground that’s soaked in blood or littered in bits of meat. The blood is what I need to find. There was none with the first two bodies, and with Father’s ... My mind starts to bring up the memory of that too-recent moment as I walk in a widening circle away from the corpse.
Find the blood, find the crime scene.That rule was impressed upon me so often that I feel like I can hear the echo of my father’s voice.What are the signs, child?
“No birds in the sky,” I mutter. “No paw prints suggesting the meat was carried off in chunks. Why is it drained?”
I have to think of the body without detail, elsewise I’ll be as stricken as the first time we came across a kill by a pack of coin shìth. Thedogs had been mostly gone, but one cù sìth had been there guarding the remains. The monstrous dog—a writhing current of black fur and gore-stained teeth—was almost as tall as Clatterbuck, but much wider.
“What kind of animal does this?” Rylan asks, jerking me out of my memory.
The silence of the birds and squirrels creates the illusion that nature is awaiting the answer to the same question. But I still have no answer. The bloodless body and decapitation match nothing in the Hunter journals. I can eliminate a few things. It’s not a cù sìth. The massive doglike beasts are messy eaters. When they eat, the ground is covered with shards of the bones of the dead. White splinters that look like uneven birch branches spot the loam and leaf as if beckoning attention, as if they mark the land as theirs by way of teeth.
“An angry one?” I suggest. That’s all I know. “Not a cù sìth. Not the cat either. No musk lingers at any of the sites. No water faeries.” I make a small sound of frustration. “The truth is that I fear I cannot tell you what it is.”
I almost wish it were a cù sìth kill. I know how to kill them. This? I feel a flicker of terror writhing in my heart.
TheWächtersoldiers arrive. Anders is the one leading this patrol. She stops, takes in the corpse, and then nods. “Lady Fleuriste. Hunter.”
Rylan flushes slightly. “Ma’am.”
Ma’am?I shoot my sister a curious look she ignores before I turn back to the soldier. “Have the troops spread out, look for any clues,touch nothing.”
“Contaminants?”
“Not sure.” I look around. “I can collect anything they find safely enough, so just have them mark it and call me to them. I won’t risk their health.”
The soldiers, all women, begin to search the underbrush for anything atypical: a bit of fur, a tooth, a shard of bone, a bit of blood. Each and every item I gather into one of my vials.
Afterward, I supervise to be sure every hand is salted as a precautionary measure, and I send the soldiers away. I don’t feel comfortable having an audience for the burning.
I step up to the body. Silently, I carve a furrow in the earth.
“Do you need me to ... go?” Rylan asks in her softest voice.
“No.” I wipe my hand on my hip. I’ve only done this once, and that was my father’s body. The memory of doing it is soaked in grief and fire, so though I know the word, know the gestures, a small, frightened voice inside of me says this will not work.
I reach my hand out to the dead man and whisper “fire” in the language spoken only by Hunters. My palm heats as if the fire is building inside my skin, and in the next moment, I feel flames pour from my skin to his. I mean to be quiet, but the words slip out. “It worked ...”
Rylan waits until I step away before hugging me tightly. “Well, of course it did. You’re theHunter.”
