The pavement in front of the diner was a lake of congealing blood. It gleamed hideously in the watchcar strobes, red on ghastly red, and seeped in bright runnels along the cracks between the paving slabs. Even before I got out of the cruiser, I could smell the thick coppery reek through my wound-down window. I had never seen so much of it pooled together, in an otherwise peaceful and empty street.
Lokh had a torch in his hand and was shining it methodically over the pavement, lighting up crimson splatters and sprays for Geisden to record with a little reflex camera. They had put down a pair of flourescent yellow evidence markers at two shadowed spots near the diner’s darkened doorway, spaced a few yards apart. I walked around the side of the car, Jandra following me in stunned silence, to get a better look. This time, I was the one who gasped.
The markers were spaced a few yards apart because the victim had been, too. He had been bisected from shoulder to groin, sliced through as neatly as a ham on a butcher’s countertop. A tangled mess of innards spilled from each half into the puddled blood between them. Bone gleamed reddish-white when it caught the strobes. The smell in the warm night air was appalling.
“He Above,” Jandra whispered. I saw nausea pass across her face like a wave. It was probably just as well she hadn’t eaten in so long.
“Mind your shoes,” Lokh said drily, beckoning us to approach. He was around my age, tall and milky-pale, a ghost in the red strobelight. Hannevara were said to scar their flesh as part of their religion, but if he carried any such marks, they were well-hidden. “It’s still wet.”
“When did you find him?” I asked, trying not to breathe through my nose.
“Half an hour ago. He was killed an hour before that, as best we can tell. We’ll need the Icebox chaps to take a look, when they get here.”
I paced closer to one of the gruesome halves. Mercifully, the man’s face was mostly hidden in shadow. He was scrawny and bald, looked about forty or forty-five, and had a faded tattoo of the Martyrs’ Wreath on his left forearm. I glanced at Jandra, who was covering her nose and mouth with one hand. “Jand, could you get on the line to Erkasri, and check if the forensics van is on the way? Give him some details of the scene.”
She gave me a look of stone-cold resentment. I wondered whether our argument in the car had taken us over some bridge that could not be uncrossed. But we were watchmen, and our training still counted for something. She leaned back inside our cruiser and reached for the radio mic.
I walked around the body, studying the exsanguinated halves, trying not to step in the blood. The man’s clothes, a short-sleeved wool sweater and corded slacks, had been sliced as smoothly as his flesh. A length of intestine glistened disgustingly where it had unspooled out of his abdomen.
“Must have been quite some chopper, to do this in one cut,” Geisden remarked. He was a big, bull-necked fellow in his thirties, a former King’s Marine who’d served in Mar-Ilhande. His face was impassive as he snapped photo after photo. I guessed he’d seen worse.
“Are you sure it was one cut?” I asked.
“The edges of the wound are too neat for multiple blows,” Lokh replied. “No sign of tearing. A single upward slash, very powerful, very precise. You couldn’t have gotten a neater cut with an industrial band saw.” He shone his torch at the diner’s blood-spotted front door. “Look at that spray pattern. It all came out in one big gush.”
“Do you think he might have been killed elsewhere, then brought here to be cut up?”
“Hard to say. Doesn’t look like it, but we’ll need the Icebox to confirm.”
I studied the corpse’s arms. “I don’t see any defensive injuries. I suppose he was taken by surprise.”
“I’d be surprised too, if someone chopped me clean in half,” Geisden said, with a grim chuckle.
And what kind of weapon could to that? I thought. I had a deeply unpleasant suspicion that I already knew the answer. I was sweating under my uniform jacket, and not from the heat of the night.
Jandra raised her head out of the cruiser’s open door. “The Icebox van will be forty minutes, Erkasri says. He asked if we have any witnesses awaiting interview.”
Lokh gestured towards the dark windows of the surrounding terraces. “No such luck. We’d need to go door-to-door to find out if anyone saw it from above. I’m not getting my hopes up. Whoever did this timed it well. Most of the neighbourhood’s in bed.”
“But they still did it wide out in the open.” I peered through the bloodied windows of the diner, trying to see into the dark interior. The strobes of Lokh’s cruiser illuminated the empty booths in eerie flashes of red. There was nobody there, but the shifting shadows kept tricking my eyes. An effect worsened by the stay-awake jitters. “This was meant to send a message.”
Geisden nodded. “A propaganda kill. The insurgents used to do it in Mar-Ilhande. Leave collaborators strung up where we could see them, throats slit and dicks cut off. They had the locals too scared to even speak to us.”
Jandra stayed near the cruiser, unwilling or unable to come closer to the corpse. “They must have chosen him for a reason,” she said. She had one hand on the butt of her holstered pistol, tapping it restlessly with her fingers. Her eyes roved nervously across the scene, peering up and down the gloomy street. Looking everywhere but at me. “You wouldn’t just butcher some blameless pedestrian.”
Lokh scratched his bony chin. “You might, if the goal is simple terrorism. Random killings are a pretty effective way of getting people spooked.”
I remembered those country boys at the tavern in Colhain’s Landing, who’d seen Zegiri terrorists in every shadow. “If it’s terrorism, the black-bands will want to know about it.” And we won’t want to be around when they get here.
“They’ll hear, sooner or later. Orczin can make that call.” Lokh aimed his torch beam at the corpse’s sprawled legs, so precisely orphaned from their upper half. Geisden dutifully took some more photos.
A small pale fleck on the victim’s lower half caught my eye. Frowning, I crouched down close to the corpse. There was a corner of creased paper sticking out of the victim’s trouser pocket, barely visible against the broadcloth lining. “Something here. In his pocket.”
Lokh’s torch swung over the gory remnant. “Ident papers?”
“Maybe.” Steeling myself against the stench of blood and spilled guts, I crept closer, reaching for the papers. I glanced up cautiously at Lokh and Geisden. “It’s your case, boys. I don’t want to disturb anything before the Icebox techs arrive.’
Geisden shrugged. “Can’t hurt to get a positive ident on him. Just wear gloves.”
I went back to the cruiser, carefully avoiding eye contact with Jandra, and hunted through the trunk until I found a pair of old rubber working gloves. It had been a while since I’d done any real forensic work. All watchmen got a basic grounding in it, but most cases that came to us in Seventh Watch were open-and-shut.
I fished the square of paper out of the dead man’s pocket in one slow, careful motion, mindful of ripping it. I unfolded it in my gloved hands, finding it unmarked by blood. It looked like a standard civilian ident document, except there was no photo portrait, and it listed a string of unfamiliar codes instead of a name and date of birth.
“This is a weird one,” I told Lokh. “No name, no picture. It’s all alphanumerics.”
The Hannevara came to look over my shoulder. A hard scowl formed on his pale features.
“Ah, fuck. That’s an informant’s writ,” he said. “He’s an Inspectorate songbird.”
“There’s your motive, then,” Geisden grunted. I held out the writ so he could photograph it. “And I was almost feeling sorry for him. On the bright side, now the black-bands will take this mess off our hands. They can get their nice clean uniforms mucky for a change.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Who’d be mad enough to target an Inspectorate informant?” Jandra asked. “They’ve signed their own death warrant, whoever they are.”
Geisden gave her a lopsided grin. “Have you been in Indeleon long, sweetheart? This city has mad people to spare.”
Lokh gave the bloody wreckage of the informant a troubled look. “I’ve never heard of a madman who could slice someone in half in a single cut.”
I’ve seen one, I thought. Except it wasn’t a man. It wasn’t human at all.
I almost told them. I might have sounded crazy, but I was sure Jandra would back me up, even if she hated me right now. She’d seen the silver creature in the ruins too, seen its knifelike limbs and its terrifying speed. For all I knew, the hellspawned thing was lurking in the shadows just yards away, waiting to spring out and chop us all into mincemeat.
Except, if that was its plan, it’d already had every opportunity to strike. We were not the target tonight, merely the messengers. It, or its masters, wanted us to witness its handiwork. To see that the stars were coming down.
I remembered Orczin’s warning. I did what every good subject of the king was supposed to do. I kept silent.
“Call it in to dispatch, would you, Jandra?” Lokh said, rubbing his eyes wearily. “Geis, bag up your film for the black-bands. Not much point us doing any more evidence-gathering now.”
“Done half the bloody job for them already,” Geisden grumbled. “We won’t get a word of thanks for it.”
“I don’t think gratitude is in the Inspectorate service rubric. They probably need written authorisation to smile.”
“Well. They won’t be smiling when they see what’s become of their snitch here.” Geisden didn’t sound too sorry about it.
I was walking back to the cruiser to pack my gloves away when I saw movement in one of the dark upper windows of the terrace across the street. The brief twitch of a curtain, faintly illuminated by the streetlamps below. I frowned, stepping halfway into the street to get a better look, but whoever it was had already disappeared.
Sensible, I thought. The Inspectorate would be here soon. Anyone on Martyr Ostande Street with half a brain would pretend they were fast asleep at the time of the killing. Ignorance wasn’t a guarantee of safety when dealing with the black-bands, but it was a hell of a lot safer than knowledge.
I glanced once more at the bisected man, the songbird who would sing no more. He’d probably thought he was safe. That writ must have made him feel invulnerable. I wondered if he’d had the time to feel surprised, when that silver blade came flashing out of the night.
*
Orczin moved swiftly when he heard the news. He may not have enjoyed liaising with the black-bands, but he was good at it. I suppose that was why he was the chief-of-watch.
He recalled the forensics team before they could even reach the scene, then made the necessary calls to Queen Haara Square. A convoy of Inspectorate rigs was dispatched to secure the remains of their unfortunate songbird. We only had to stick around to hand the site over to them, surrender Geisden’s film roll, and answer a few brusque questions. I’d been expecting (and dreading) a more serious debrief. Whether due to Orczin’s influence, or the Inspectorate’s impatience, we were spared that.
“Return to the precinct immediately,” Orczin told us over the override band. “And keep this one out of your reports. The case is under Inspectorate investigation now. As far as we’re concerned, it was from the start.”
The short drive from Martyr Ostande Street to the Seventh Watch precinct was one of the most uncomfortable of my life. Jandra refused to say a word or look in my direction. She kept her hands bunched into tight fists; whether out of anger or to suppress her trembling, I couldn’t tell.
I wanted to apologise. I wanted to plead with her. I wanted to shout at her, slap her, shake some sense into her. I wanted to ask her if she’d seen the messages on the walls. I wanted to tell her that there was something wrong with Indeleon, something strange and malignant spreading through the city like a purposeful cancer.
I wanted to tell her that I was afraid. As if she didn’t already know.
The rest of our graveyard shift passed quietly. No other murders took place that night, at least none that reached the attention of Seventh Watch. Just after midnight, having finished his latest stack of casework, Lokh invited us to join him and Geisden for drinks in the messroom. I accepted gratefully, glad of the chance for some conversation after an hour of being studiously ignored by my partner. Jandra declined the invitation.
The Hannevara had some funny religious rules about alcohol — no beer, no spirits, only wine from some very specific consecrated vineyards. Lokh kept a small bottle of holy red in his locker, and apologetically told us that he wasn’t allowed to offer any to nonbelievers. Fortunately, Geisden’s tastes were more in line with my own. He brought out a bottle of Cosserey whiskey.
I fetched the deck of cards and dealt us in for a round of harrier. I’d always found that an easier game to play on amphetamines. King’s-ransom took too much concentration.
Games of chance were another thing frowned upon by Lokh’s people, but he wasn’t so orthodox as to miss out on a friendly round. I got the sense he needed the distraction, after having his case rudely snatched out from under him. Inevitably, our conversation strayed to that very topic.
“I remember when the black-bands stayed in their own bloody lane,” Geisden groused, knocking back his tumbler of rye. “Time was, we were the law in this city, not those jumped-up cocksuckers. Now you can’t even piss in an alley without one of their bastard drones seeing it.”
I nodded agreement. I had weak cards this round, a belltower and two crowns, in a game where the swords were king. “Our lane gets narrower every day. Theirs is a fucking eight-lane highway.”
“They do good work,” Lokh said archly. “You can be sure anyone they haul in will never re-offend.”
Geisden snorted. “We’ve got more offenders coming out of the woodwork every day. You hear the shit Twelfth and Ninth are dealing with? It’s like all of Indeleon’s going mad. What are the Inspectorate gonna do, put the whole city in their black cells?”
“I have a feeling they would if they could,” Lokh replied. He fanned his cards neatly in one hand.
“They think they’re untouchable,” I said. It came out as a bit of a snarl. Between the whiskey and the dwindling buzz of stay-awake, it was difficult to keep the anger out of my voice. I was thinking of Jandra’s ashen expression when she saw the raids in South Welynte, and the Forester’s wife cowering away from Aikerl’s gun. “They treat Indeleon like their fucking playground.”
Geisden smiled over his whiskey. It was an ugly, bitter smile. You might say he looked how I felt. “You know the joke. Twenty years ago, this city was a radioactive crater-”
“-it’s all been downhill since then,” I finished. Everyone in the City Watch knew that old saw, so well-worn that it was more likely to elicit a groan than a chortle.
“Downhill’s a fucking understatement.” Geisden poured himself a generous new measure of whiskey. “There’s days when you wonder if maybe Nilen should have finished the job.”
That was probably just the whiskey talking, but I still winced. Geisden belatedly realised he’d overstepped, hastily adding: “I mean, not really, ‘course. Just seems like it never ends. Something new every day.”
Lokh showed no sign of offence. He took a slow sip of his sacred wine, then spread out his cards face-up. He had five swords, all unique — the textbook winning hand. “The harrier strikes,” he said.
The Salv had tried to wipe the Hannevara off the face of Aede. Another demonspawn race unworthy of life, according to Nilen’s sermons. There’d been millions of Hannevara in Greater Kauln before the war; rumour had it there were only a few hundred thousand left now.
Lokh had been lucky enough to be overseas in Hayn-Ralka when the Salv took power. I remembered him telling me the story, years ago, with the same tightly-controlled calm that he was now displaying. He was the sole survivor of his immediate family. His parents, his brothers and sisters, they’d all disappeared into the liquidation camps. Gone without a trace, as if they had never lived at all.
Just like my father.
“Good game, Lokh,” I said, keen to change the subject. I showed my hand. “I forfeit.”
Geisden spread out his cards. His hand was even worse than mine. “Yeah, I’m out. Well played, mate.”
Lokh shrugged. “It’s just luck. Like most things.” He looked up at me. “By the way, Morre, is Beikar alright? She seemed a little broken up at the scene.”
It took me a second to realise he was referring to Jandra. Almost nobody called her by her surname. She was one of only two women in Seventh Watch, and she could hardly be confused for Walda Falcieni, who was twenty years her senior.
I did my best to keep my face impassive. I still had no idea if anyone knew about our arrangement, though I felt the rumours would have reached me by now if they did. I had already failed to protect Jandra from so many things. I could only try not to fail her again.
“She’s had a rough month. Family stuff,” I told them. “And she hadn’t seen somebody messed up as bad as that songbird before. You know how it is, when you’re still getting settled into the precinct. Some shit stays with you.”
“She got her first kill a few weeks back, didn’t she?” Geisden asked. There might have been a hint of suspicion in his voice. It was hard to tell with a man like him. “That’ll leave a mark, too. I still remember mine, clear as day.”
The death throes of Danry ir-Kobha flashed into my mind’s eye. “Yeah. That wasn’t easy on her.”
“I don’t think I’ll forget the songbird, either. That cut, clean through him like a razor…” Lokh swirled the wine in his glass. “Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. It shouldn’t be possible, not without some kind of heavy machinery.”
Or something otherworldly, I thought. Contraband tech beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
“Like I said. Something new every day,” Geisden pronounced. “It’s the black-bands’ problem now. If we’re lucky, a few more of them will get sliced up while they’re figuring it out.”
“Let’s not wish death on them, Geis,” Lokh chided him. “We’re all on the same side, in the end. All trying our best to uphold the king’s peace.”
Geisden gave a contemptuous snort, and drained his whiskey in one go.
“Another round?” I asked, shuffling the scattered cards back together. It was cowardice, yes, but I didn’t want to go back out to the bullpen. I didn’t know if Jandra was still there. I didn’t know if I could bear to look her in the eye tonight.
“One more. I need to make it home,” Geisden replied. He gave a martyred sigh. “Promised Lileja I’d get back to her by midnight.”
“Midnight was an hour ago, Geis,” Lokh said, with a thin smile of amusement.
“Then I’ll need to be a lot more drunk to face her.” Geisden refilled his tumbler, then offered me the bottle.
I took it. I’d already resigned myself to driving home drunk. Drunk and alone.