II.

Howls filled the city like death screams as werewolves tore across rooftops. Birds without wings, they would soon swoop down on their cornered prey. A crime had been committed, and the wolves would soon have the suspect in custody. The citizens of Breeze Tower drew something akin to comfort from the once blood-curdling howls. It was like living in a house filled with traps. You could never forget they were there lest they seize you in their steel jaws, but that vigilance earned you a sense of safety.

Moss looked out to the street where a squad of human watchmen raced past, desperately trying to keep up with the lycanthropes. They knew they would fail. Still, the competitiveness bred by the lycanthropes’ inclusion in the city’s peace-keeping forces meant all worked harder to keep the citizens safe.

With great reluctance, she turned back to the modest shop and the crime scene therein. Her eyes needed time to adjust from the early-morning rays climbing the city outside to the softer wisplights illuminating the shop. A table littered with scraps of cloth and a seamstress’ accouterments occupied most of the space. Bolts of fabric leaned against all the available wall space, many ruined by sprays of blood. In the back was a small hearth for preparing meals, and a single doorway led to a bedroom.

Little remained of the seamstress, Freyn. Moss examined the notes on her slate board, comparing them once more to the body at her feet. Freyn’s face was criss-crossed with claw marks. Flesh almost completely torn from the torso. Arm and leg bones shattered by powerful jaws. Long black hair matted with blood, a single untouched eye staring an accusation at those gathered. Bits of her shredded dress littered the floor.

To one side, Moss wrote the word “Familiar?” and circled it with heavy loops of chalk.

“Did you notice the ring?” she asked.

Chains turned to face her, his youthful passion dripping from wide eyes and open mouth. He hadn’t had time to examine the ring. Chains knew it, and she knew it. Moss needed to know whether he was learning his lessons or not, whether he could take her guidance without excuses.

An empty breath hung in the air for a moment, and he swallowed it.

Chains stoppered a glass vial. It contained a bit of flesh, an island floating in blood. Despite the embarrassment he had suffered during their meeting with Gailinn, or because of it, the pup had thrown himself into their detective work like a half-starved mongrel happening upon a fresh carcass. He added the vial to his hip pouch and withdrew another.

Careful of where he placed his hands, Chains dropped to all fours over the body.

Investigator Grus lowered his wisplight and bent closer, sending glimmers through the white whiskers of his long curly mustache. The seasoned investigator offered invaluable insights into the criminal mind and the city’s workings. Grus had learned on their first case together how useless his own senses were compared to his new colleagues’. They might not trust each other or be happy about the others’ presence, but they shared a mutual respect for the quality of work on both sides.

“She fought back,” Chains said.

The ring looked as bloody as all else, but even in the room’s dim wisplight, Moss saw where the silver had burned her attacker’s skin, charred flesh still seared to the top. The ring’s markings, a needle and thread, were a sign of her guild.

“Whatever killed her wasn’t human,” Moss said. “Or, not entirely human.”

“By the tower,” Grus whispered. To Moss’ ears, it was a shout. An accusation. “What are we looking for?”

“Chains?” she asked.

“Not gonna say what I think.” He didn’t look up, eyes focused on the ring as he scraped bits of ash into a fresh vial.

Grus looked to Moss, his face an unasked question. She squatted down beside her partner and pointed to the ring with her chalk.

“Silver burned her killer. Blooded, lashtails, shadow creepers, gravelings, and lycanthropes are highly sensitive to silver.” She spread her fingers, and traced them along the claw marks on Freyn’s face. Whatever had made them, three of her fingers could fit within a single furrow. “Too big for much beyond a graveling or a lycanthrope, and it would have to be one beast of a graveling.”

“Will the ring’s mark fade from her killer’s flesh?” Grus asked. He rose with a slight groan and took a measured step back from the body.

“Not right away, no,” Moss said. For the first time that day, she smiled.

“It’s strange,” Chains said. “Why can’t we smell it?”

“I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s not the only strange thing.”

The other sign of Freyn’s struggle against her killer was less obvious. A half-cut burgundy cloth still lay upon her table--pins, thread, and needles nearby but no scissors. Chains should have noticed, but the hot-headed youth hadn’t taken to Grus’ lessons. He still harbored too much resentment for the older investigator’s role as spy.

“A crime scene’s like a good bard’s tale,” Grus had recently taught them. “It’s not all true love or fighting. Any commoner off the street can make a meal from so much meat. The details make the story. Immerse yourself in a victim’s life, their plights, and routines. Those senses of yours should help. What’d they eat for breakfast? Where’d they get the ingredients? What’d they use to cook? Anything missing? Anything where it shouldn’t be?”

“Where are her scissors?” Moss asked, rising to take scope of the small room once more. She caught Grus’ eye.

Did you notice, she questioned through a cock of her left eyebrow.

Yes, he answered by way of a wink. A slight smile suggested he had seen more. Moss raised the other eyebrow, both reaching toward her hairline like petals for the sun.

“She was interrupted at work,” Grus said. Striding to the table, he lifted the burgundy cloth then set it back down.

“So late at night?” Chains smelled the air, his fingers twitching as they always did when he sorted through smells. They froze when he found the one he wanted. “This body’s been here since well past dusk. It’s possible grocklins took the scissors.”

“After the rats are taken care of, I suspect the cats will turn their attention to the poor blighters,” Grus said. A quick search of all the space around the table also failed to produce the scissors. They could recheck the bedroom, but it had been sparse with only a few places to hide anything.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“You’d be surprised,” Moss said. “The cats adore grocklins. Say they share a love of mischief and light fingers. Forget about grocklins. There aren’t any prints, and we would smell some trace of the pests. Maybe our victim had an important commission, was waiting for a lover, made a habit of working late…” Moss listed possibilities, only half paying attention to what she said. She inhaled deeply and turned a half circle, surveying the scene once more.

“I think her killer was surprised to find her still awake,” Grus said. “She was interrupted at the end of her work. She picked up the nearest weapon, a hefty set of shears, and stabbed her killer.”

“Which might explain the brutality. An enraged graveling or lycanthrope…,” the word passed Chain’s lips like an intruder forcing its way out, “...wouldn’t have calmed even after she lay dead at its feet.”

“But where’s the killer’s blood? Where’s the trail of destruction leading through half the city?” Moss asked.

No one had an answer.

III.

They questioned shop owners and gutter rats, following scents from the murder scene through the city. Not the killer’s scent, which troubled Moss. An experienced lycanthrope would know how to conceal its scent, but a graveling--they were mindless killers, driven by instinct. Only magic could have delivered such a creature to Freyn’s shop and hidden traces of its presence there, but why go to that much effort? Magic would have killed her more easily and left less of a trace.

The most obvious answer: it was done that way to send a message.

Chains led them further from the shop, fingers twitching as he followed the lingering aroma of Freyn’s rose-scented soap. The killer’s trail stuck to busy streets, never detouring through an alley or side street. Moss walked a step behind Chains and to the side, her brow filled with enough furrows for a rich harvest. She absentmindedly stepped to the side of oncoming foot traffic and almost stumbled into the path of a carriage.

One look at the bloody red question mark on Moss’ cloak stayed the driver’s whip, and the grommel pulled up short on its own with a huff. Each of its six feet was split into halves of two toes. Instead of bending like other beasts’ feet, they remained rigid, plopping to the ground with each step, driven forward by short powerful legs. Grommel were squat creatures with coarse shaggy coats like stacks of hay that rose nearly to Moss’ chin. Long flat tails dragged across the ground, stirring up dust, and their wide mouths always seemed to be smiling.

The trail vanished in Liar’s Square. Markets gave way to touches of nature--well-kept flowerbeds, short trees, and plots of grass with wooden benches--then led to the spirit district. If a graveling had been used for the murder, one might be found in the catacombs beneath the city. The werecats had reported a few during their cleanup efforts beneath the city. For a trail to disappear as if cut by scissors though--Moss couldn’t reconcile the disparate clues of the case.

A familiar scent drew her attention across the square. A squad of lycanthrope soldiers marched through pockets of activity which flowed widely around them as if pushed by an invisible force. They dressed in red livery with the city’s tower emblem on the back of their cloaks. Leather breastplates stretched across werebears’ massive chests at the squad’s rear, their fur shifting through browns to blacks like wavering forest shadows. The werewolves glistened in the late morning sun like metal, gray and silver broken by white and black markings, especially around their faces. At the front, the cats’ light steps seemed to barely touch the pavement, their coats as varied as fall leaves.

The short swords on the cats’ hips looked more like children’s toys than weapons of war, but the spears they carried, tapping a steady rhythm across the stone, would punch a hole through a man or charging horse. The ursine soldiers wore long-handled axes, the blades nearly as large as the cats marching ahead of them. Though they wouldn’t be able to use them in bear form, a battle could end in minutes or stretch for hours, and a lycanthropic form couldn’t be maintained indefinitely, especially as wounds accumulated. Not without risking a blood rage.

Moss shivered at the thought despite the day’s increasing warmth.

Still, it heartened her to see lycanthropic soldiers. Even in their human forms, they would be formidable warriors. Wounds deadly to others might only slow down the bears and wolves while the cats were as slippery as greased eels.

As the soldiers marched out of sight, her attention scanned the rest of the square. Several wodenlang sat barefoot in the grass, backs to the square’s largest tree, seeming to blend into the bark with their deep brown skin. The trick was helped by patches of callus-like skin nearly indistinguishable from a tree’s bark. They were out of place in the city, rarely venturing from their homes in the forests. All their features were a little longer, slightly more angular than a human’s. They smelled of ancient trees, sticky fruits, and joy.

In contrast, a menog at the square’s opposite end reeked of coin and dry paper, a frown plastered to his face as he scanned what could only be guild reports. Like all his kind, he looked like a prepubescent human, albeit one with a coarse beard.

He spoke to a clerk of the market guild, a shifty-eyed young woman with golden hair pinned up in elaborate curls, and a sion of the temple district, swept white hair and thin white robe giving him the appearance of frosted cake. Both of the humans looked nervous, the sion sweating profusely while the clerk wrung her hands, realized she was doing so, then dropped them. When you dealt with the long-whiskered, short-statured menog, you counted your coins before the encounter, after, and a week later.

In the center of the square, a young man stood atop a low wall, gesturing toward the recently-departed lycanthropes. Covered neck to toe in a black cloak, his pale skin bore no sweat trails, and instead of reflecting the sun’s light, his silver hair seemed to absorb the light around it.

“Look how they mock us, marching through the city in their cursed forms,” he said. “The smallest scratch from one of them, a single bite, and any of us would bear that same curse. Our minds would be filled with a hunger for blood, our nights invaded by dreams of consuming flesh.”

Despite his youth, the young man spoke with strength and conviction, as if he were used to command. He continued:

“They train as soldiers, but against what enemy? They investigate crimes. How do we know those crimes, including murder, aren’t committed by those set to investigate? What better way to conceal their insatiable appetites for the flesh of men? My flesh! Your flesh! The flesh of your children!”

“Bugger off!” a burrower yelled. One of a trio, he appeared to be discussing the restoration of some part or other of the square--a crumbling stone wall there, a loose torch sconce there. Burrowers could always find work fighting decay’s untiring influence. “Moon’s touch don’t spread like that.”

“Spoken by one immune to the curse,” the youth retorted, but his face glowed pink. The burrower’s words seemed to have had an effect, and the young man paused for a moment to gather his thoughts before he spoke again. “Don’t listen to the propaganda spread by other races. The curse is a human problem, requiring human solutions.”

He spoke to a small crowd, but his words pulled in a steady stream of ears eager to hear any condemnation of the beasts outside their doors. The man repulsed Moss. Not his words. She had heard worse. Ever the realist, she understood that no matter how the public’s overall feelings toward them shifted to the positive, there would always be those against them. Out of fear. Out of jealousy. Mostly, out of ignorance. Moss didn’t feel her skin crawling because of his words.

The orator stank. Worse than the fish market or any of the dozen crime scenes Moss had examined. Like rotten earth rich with decay. Fetid water. Raging sickness. Sewers thick with excrement, not fit for even rats.

Moss scrubbed at her nose, and when she did, the orator locked eyes with her. He looked at her the way Gailinn had, seeing more than he should, as if he knew exactly what she was. Then he scanned his congregation, spreading his attention evenly amongst them. He wrapped them in a blanket of lies and hollow promises, confusing their minds until the line between religion and lunacy blurred.

“I smell it too,” Chains said at her side.

“Your skills are deepening.”

“What is it?”

“Madness,” Moss said. “By the moon, I hope you never smell an entire village or mob gripped by it. Religious fervor, pure insanity, or scalding hatred-- it’s a scent you’ll never forget.”