Half an hour later, I was at the scene of the crime. It was on the opposite end of the Warren, in a far seedier part of the neighborhood. The sun seemed to shine a bit dimmer here, making the already small alleys even darker.

A group of police officers had cordoned off the alley, but a crowd of spectators had already gathered. I pushed my way through the crowd and showed my Guild ID to an officer near the front. Char was right behind me, looking official and threatening.

He took a long time looking it over, taking great joy in my impatience. It reminded me how much I hated cops. Char pushed me aside and showed her ID, which was a lot more impressive than mine, and the cop let us through. I gave my best shit-eating grin as I pushed past him.

We turned a corner, and I stopped dead in my tracks and glanced at Char, whose face was draining of blood. I heard her mutter a prayer under her breath. Funny, I never took her to be religious.

The scene could best be described as gore and viscera. I’d seen worse, but I couldn’t remember when. Body parts were scattered and destroyed so thoroughly I wasn’t actually sure how many people had been killed. I saw at least two heads, one hanging from a street lamp and the other on the floor in a pool of blood. Blood was splattered nearly everywhere in the alley. There was so much of it that it couldn’t have come from just two people; there had to be more victims. But I couldn’t see much evidence of them besides the blood they’d left behind. That thought made my stomach churn just a bit.

A detective in a long brown coat came up to us and nodded politely. He was shivering but it wasn’t particularly cold out.

“You must be the Hunters we called for,” he said. He looked at the crime scene and shook his head, “Frankly, we’re at a loss. We’re hoping you might know something.”

Char said, “We’ll take a look.” She turned to me and said, “You have more field experience. What do you see?”

“Well,” I said, scratching my chin, “I’m gonna guess either the perpetrators really hated these guys, or they were a bunch of sickos who just enjoyed this kinda stuff...”

“Perpetrators,” Char said, “plural. What makes you say that?”

“A few things,” I said, kneeling and looking over the scene. “First, a hunch. I see two heads and…” I counted appendages for a few seconds, “…seven arms. That’s at least four dead. One person to kill four people like this? That’s hard.”

“And that’s hardly conclusive,” Char said, averting her eyes from the scene just slightly.

“True,” I said, scratching my chin. “But I do know this wasn’t just a robbery gone wrong, or some hungry animals. These people were massacred.”

“Look at that,” I said, pointing to the severed head hanging from the lamp. It was cut off around the collarbone, with bone and organs hanging down from it. A blood-soaked rope around the neck strung the head to the lamp. Slowly, I walked over, careful not to step on anything, and pointed to the base of the neck. “That’s a Hunter’s Mark.”

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Char walked over and glanced at the brand before turning away.

“You’re right. I’ll tell the Guild to get me a list of any Hunters in the Capital that haven’t checked in recently.”

I leaned in closer to the head, ignoring the stench of death that hung thick in the air. The face was bruised and cut, disfigured beyond recognition. The hair was dyed with blood, but I saw flecks of gray. I scratched my chin and shook my head.

“No, that won’t work. He probably wasn’t on active duty. He’s too old. I’m the exception, not the rule. Likely, he was retired and working as a bodyguard.”

I knelt down by what I figured was a torso and shredded cloak.

“Do you have a pencil?” I asked Char. She handed me one.

Using the pencil, I looked in the pockets of the cloak. I reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a wallet.

“Whoever’s torso this is, he was probably either the guy who hired him or a representative of the client. He or his boss definitely had money. Probably nobility, if not a junker or burgher.”

I thumbed through the wallet. Inside were a few banknotes and a work pass under the name Gerry Teralt. That name seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it, so I just filed it away for later.

I leaned over to the remains of the legs and belt and pulled the coin purse off the corpse.

“Thankfully, this scene was too intimidating for any cop to steal this before we got to it,” I said under my breath. Char raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

She cleared her throat and asked, “What makes you say he was rich?”

I looked at her and smiled grimly.

“How many people in the Warren carry around banknotes?” I reached for my own coin purse and jingled it, the coins ringing. “Gerry here had a bunch of them. Banknotes are for really big purchases, not day to day stuff.” I pulled out one of the banknotes and looked at it. It had a few flecks of blood on it but was otherwise clean. “This would pay the weekly wages of a worker in this area. These guys definitely weren’t locals.” I pulled the ID out and said, “Looks like he was employed at a bank uptown, Trieste-Vellan.”

I put the banknotes back and tossed the wallet and coin purse to Char. She caught both and put them in a canvas bag she’d gotten from a cop.

I turned back to the scene and walked over to something shiny, nudging it with my foot. “There’s a pistol here. Looks like military issue.”

“Could these be soldiers, then? Civilians aren’t allowed to have guns.” Char asked.

I leaned down and looked at the gun. It was in a severed hand, which was curled around the trigger. Carefully peeling the gun free, I picked it up and checked the chambers. All full. The handle was coated in dried blood, but it was otherwise clean. It was a service revolver, a Kavinsky Mk II, a newer model of what I’d used in the Last War.

I turned the gun over and said, “Maybe, but these victims don’t strike me as military. And this was definitely their gun.” I turned the gun over and looked at the barrel. “This has its serial number scratched out. It’s a Kavinsky Mk II. Military issue. It was most likely obtained illegally. We could try to track it down, but…”

“The army ‘loses’ equipment frequently,” Char said, sighing.

“Hey, they haven’t fought anyone for over a decade,” I said, “maybe weapons trafficking is just their hobby.”

“Like knitting?” Char said flatly.

“Exactly,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. I groaned and stretched out my back. The crowd had grown louder and a bit rowdier. The cops were looking around a bit nervous, trying not to look at us.

“I think we better get going,” Char said, glancing toward the cops and crowd. I nodded, taking one last look at the crime scene. Nothing jumped out at me, so I turned around and followed Char as she left.