Danica slammed her fist down angrily upon the desk, rattling the cup she had been drinking from. They’d just found another victim outside the market district, a known prostitute probably trying to ply her trade despite the warnings and curfews. A note had been nailed into the woman’s forehead, still legible despite the blood staining it.
“My dearest friend. Soon we shall dance again and it will be glorious.”
She held that bloodied paper in front of her staring at the words, knowing he’d meant it for her. “How many more people need to die before it’s enough?” She looked at Landon, her blue eyes showing the hints of rage behind them. “Every one of them I feel responsible for because I didn’t stop him that night.”
He shook his head and took the note from her. “I believe he’s counting on that to get under your skin. As for how many more? I don’t really know. Gods above, we’ve done everything we could to find this man but he’s too calculating and too random to figure out.”
“There’s really nothing more we can do at the moment?” she asked, almost pleading with him to figure something out.
Landon shook his head. “Rowan left the Judicial Council in charge and those fools refused to help when I asked them to use military intervention. They considered the matter not nearly important enough to warrant such extreme measures, even though the people are already so on edge now.”
“It’s no wonder you hate bureaucracy so much,” she said, rubbing the soreness from her hand. “So we just keep trying the same thing and hope for the best?”
He nodded solemnly. “That is what we’ll do. I’ll remind you that if you find him, you can pursue and call for assistance. There are enough guardsmen out there to give you backup no matter where you end up.”
She bid him farewell and headed out into the sleeping city, careful to avoid detection from anyone who might have been awake so late into the night. It was cooling down with the end of summer now, and the temperatures were beginning to cool off after sunset, bringing a welcome relief to the northern regions. Soon, the farmers in the region would be bringing in their crops and preparing for the icy grip of winter to take hold of the land.
She hurried to the market district, heading towards the area where he had committed the last of his atrocities. She knew he wouldn’t be there, or even anywhere in the area, but perhaps there’d be some clue as to a pattern. One that they’d overlooked before perhaps, or something unique that she’d notice. It was a stretch to imagine, but they were growing ever more desperate with each victim added to the list.
Along the way Danica neared a burned out section of the city, a scent of charred wood and debris still clinging lightly in the air. She inspected the ruined husk, a stark black skeleton of its former self against the night sky. It’d been picked clean of anything valuable that had survived the blaze, and now simply stood as a grim reminder of how the populace were currently feeling. The people were growing more agitated every day for any number of reasons and they’d apparently be willing to tear themselves apart over it.
She shook her head and made her way to the spot they’d found the body at earlier. A small green space in the middle of the bustling markets all around it, this luxurious little field stood in stark contrast to the surrounding area. So many times she’d stopped by here on a warm night and lay upon the soft grass, staring up into the night sky and counting the stars above. It was once a place where she could feel some amount of peace and serenity, but now it was tainted with a foul deed committed upon the soil. She’d never be able to enjoy the moment there again without it creeping into her thoughts.
Danica sat on a nearby stone bench and looked around the area, trying to discern something from it. She thought about the woman, desperate enough to be out past the curfew for whatever reason. What was the purpose for being here? Was she going somewhere else and simply passing by, or had she arranged to meet someone here?
The first two victims were drunk and passed out in alleyways, the second of which she could personally vouch for herself. The third had been a recently unemployed dock worker a few witnesses had seen drinking in a bar, the first of the note carriers. The fourth was a late night traveler from out of town heading to an inn. The fifth was a house servant retrieving a package of smuggled goods from the docks. Finally the woman found here in the field makes the sixth and hopefully the final victim of the killer.
Was there a pattern in there somewhere?
“They weren’t wealthy and influential,” she whispered quietly. She looked towards the direction of Rowan’s palatial mansion and thought of the well off citizens in that area tucked soundly into their beds, guarded by their own private security forces. “They were just unimportant people, lost in a big city.”
A moment later, her eyes went wide with realization.
They weren’t unimportant to everyone. All of them had friends or family within the city and they mattered to someone. The man she’d seen in the alley that night was a wayward husband and father who had sought to relieve his depression within a strong bottle of cheap rotgut alcohol. The woman they’d found only a few feet from where she was now sitting had her body claimed by a grieving sister. The others also had local friends and family who had grieved for their slain.
However, the most unimportant and unwanted people in this city lived a wretched existence in the slums. The beggars and cripples that relied upon the charity of others made the easiest targets and yet not a single one of them had ever been reported a victim of his. They’d had regular deaths and murders, normal for the high crime areas, but none bore the mark of a missing heart and pieces of taken flesh. It was a theory at the moment and one she was interested in following up.
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She hurried out of the market square, dodging the oncoming patrols and made her way to the southern gates. There on either side, a pair of guards stood at attention. Attached to a post hanging above their heads, an oil filled lantern blazed brightly, beating back the darkness of the night. It was good to see them finally taking their jobs more seriously now, though it should never have gotten as bad as it did.
She approached to the edge of the light and called out to them. “Guardsman!”
“Who goes there?” he answered back, adjusting his crossbow to the ready.
Danica called back her given passphrase. “A hungry cat on the prowl, nothing more.”
He lowered the crossbow and called to the men above to open the gates. She lowered her hood and quickly ran through to the other side, careful to not let them see her face. It had been a cautionary measure in case she needed it, and Landon had made sure the guardsmen understood that passphrase allowed his “special operative” no questions asked access. She figured if they hadn’t caught on to who that operative was by now, they would soon. Desperate times had called for desperate measures unfortunately.
She made her way along the filthy dirt streets, trying to avoid the garbage or piles of waste scattered about. The further from the wall she got, the worse the conditions seemed to become. Wooden shacks with barely any semblance of design soon gave way to collections of patchy tents pitched in chaotic groups. It was a stinking mess so bad that travelers from the south would go out of their way to the main gate to avoid this area. Any guardsmen who patrolled here along the outskirts of the city proper were usually being punished for some transgression.
It was exactly how she had figured it would be. Here and there, a person could be found tending to a small fire or cooking something, usually a rat or whatever else they’d managed to catch. Not a single one seemed concerned about any issues happening that didn’t affect them personally right then.
She carefully picked her way around, sticking closely to the shadows, observing the people in silence. A man with no legs pulled deeply from a thick bottle while a sickly looking man beside him stirred a banged up pot over a low flame. Someone cloaked fully in rags lay motionless in the dirt, their lungs sickly wheezing as they slept. Off to the side though, all alone beside some smoldering coals, a man sat leaning against a rather large rock.
She got closer to him and saw his eyes covered with a blindfold, wrapping completely around his head. A blind beggar, dressed in filthy threadbare clothing hanging off his skeletal frame. His patchy hair and beard, long and unwashed, hung in matted clumps all over his head. It was a pitiful sight to behold and she felt slight pains of guilt that she lived so well when others like this lived in such squalor, just barely alive. He quietly and weakly coughed, showing that there was still some life left in this shambling form.
Danica walked over and knelt down close to him, barely able to contain herself from retching at the smell. “Are you aware of the curfew?”
He looked over in her direction and sneered. “You think I give a damn?”
“There’s a killer loose in the city,” she said. “Seems like alot of people around here should give a damn, but they don’t. Why?”
“You ain’t from around here.” He held a gnarled hand towards her. “You want answers? They cost.”
“I don’t carry money at night,” she said flatly. “Not much point in it.”
He pulled his hand back and waved her off dismissively.
“A trade. Will you take a knife?” Danica said, pulling the small blade from her boot and handing it to him.
He took the knife and tested the sharpness against his thumb. “A good one.” He started to cut away the matted mess of his beard, tossing the locks of hair to the side. “Reason we ain’t scared is he ain’t after us. Maybe we’re too easy to kill or maybe we’d all taste like shit to him.”
Danica shook her head. “Eating human flesh is disgusting. Why does he do that?”
He gave a quick smirk. “You get desperate enough, you’ll eat anything. I reckon he just enjoys it more than most though.”
She couldn’t ever imagine ever being that desperate, even after the hunger pains she’d endured as a child. “Is there anything else you can tell me about him? Where does he stay?”
“I’m blind, I ain’t stupid. Word gets ‘round I ratted him out, he’s liable to make an example.” He pulled down the blindfold off his scalp, cutting away at some of the thin and stringy hair on his head.
She fell back a step, shocked at what she was seeing. There was a very visible and jagged scar coming from underneath the blindfold and onto his forehead. Could it be him? Her hand reached up to the hilt of her sword as bouts of anger began to flare within her.
“How’d you lose your sight?” she asked quietly.
He stopped and waved the blade around mockingly, “I got drunk and tried to take a dragon to bed. You start poking around in my history, you can just piss off. No refunds..”
Danica gritted her teeth. “I think a young woman ran a sharp piece of wood into your good eye, and got away from you.”
He stopped grooming himself and gripped the handle of the knife tightly in his fist, realizing now who he was talking to. “You gods damned whore,” he said, the rage evident in his voice. “You feel good about what you done?” He spit in her direction, the foul glob of saliva hitting her cheek and running down her face.
She pulled her sword out and with one quick slash, ran the blade hard against his throat. Air bubbled from the wound and warm blood sprayed across her, filling the night air with that sweet metallic stench. She watched him bleed out, struggling for a few seconds until his body lay still. It reminded her of the pig at the slaughterhouse on that day so long ago, except she could be assured this time that the victim had hated her for what she’d done to them.
It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now, she realized looking down upon his corpse.
Danica grabbed the knife from his lifeless hand and placed it back in her boot before sheathing her sword. She looked around, and felt confident that no one had heard anything out of the ordinary. They’d find the corpse sometime in the morning and it’d be just another murder in the slums.
She started to make her way home, her mind heavy with thoughts. She’d clean herself off and get some rest, then give her report to Landon in the morning. She wouldn’t tell him about the killing, as that was nothing more than tying up loose ends as far as she was concerned about it. It was a personal matter after all, and she promised herself that she’d never feel any guilt for those actions.