It was a blot. A tear into the world, through which death in vapor and sound, and congealing liquid oxidized, poured.

Edges fuzzy and obscured, blackened by rot, shadow and dust.

Heos froze, as if struck by the perfume, as if struck by a stick, and unable to, any further, move.

All suffused by the buzzing, burning summer scent, a hint of iron as the leaving aftertaste, dissolute in one’s tongue as breath.

So vicious was the scent, all grew wary of even the light, fearful the carrion had even clung to its rays, reaching one’s skin… threatening to turn all witnesses to carrion as well, a curse, more than a cadaver, they feared.

The grey-clad men hurled, or paced, little more, uninterested. That contorted grimace they all shared was clear in its indifference, only marred by the repugnance, little else.

“God… Does no one use this alley?”

Incensed, one complained.

“Any earlier, we would have been saved the smell… Bah!”

He punctuated his comment, as his collar rose in tandem with the ending words, to clasp tightly round his features. A mask which, he hoped, would ward off the black airs.

“What I wonder…” Another spoke, his words cut apart by a bout of heaving. “Is… Is, what’s a man got to do to blow off a head all clean-like…” Looking away, he pointed. The tip of his finger, as a compass needle, to the empty copper grey canyon of sputtered, dry blood crowning the headless man.

“’Tis a fellow with an open mi— Ugh…! Ha!!" Another grey clad man wished to clear the airs with laughter, little good it did him, as those beginning cackles forced the scent by mouthfuls into him. He fought —tears pearling like dew on the closed petals of his eyelids—, so as to not empty his body onto the alley.

Nobody followed in his manner, even if they found the comment amusing.

One would wonder why they still crowded round the cadaver. Surely, if they wished to guard it, standing as sentries by the alley’s openings would be work enough…?

Did some masochistic, morbid curiosity push them into this configuration?

Heos was reminded of the gambling men, crowding round the dice, the ecú, the pieces… It all seemed oddly similar, yet the true semblance eluded him.

“How much for the Sûreté to get ‘ere?” One asked, his voice muffled by his forearm.

The prince, dazed, looked onward still. The scent of the stone-dust death all too powerful a spell. It captivated him, strangely so, and, moment by moment blended with some else… as if pulling from his memories a string of forest-earth scent… Why, if so dissimilar —one so rotten, inauspicious —a windy chasm into black abyss— and the other so life-giving, fresh and vernal—, did they blend in this manner? his churning memories twirling a whirlpool as it mixed them…

Some seeping, some bloating, a bubble of black tar on the verge of bursting…

The carrion’s rotting acid had, somehow, lifted a veil from his eyes… as if burning away his unseen cataracts with the cold-fire blaze of its decomposition…

In some way —eluding even his own recognition— the prince had come to understand why one could make a flower bloom by telling it to die.

A subcutaneous truth of magic, before dormant, hidden placidly in the words of the old mage, now, gently, unobtrusively thrown in way of his sight, revealed its unblemished body, by accident. And, the words of the old sage rearranged themselves, only partially… perhaps he spoke great-a-less nonsense that Heos would admit.

His eyes, even, faltered —or perhaps saw beyond what one could, when polluted by all the tones in the world.

A fragrant plum-blossom, a belle, dressed in pastels, dusted by perfume —as sugar—, the rice-lily, with petals toned as livid, blood-swamped flesh, the carcass… they all, for an instant too little, for shorter a time than his mind could take notice of, had become the same. Was this an essence of magic? A minor epiphany? Of those the old mage spoke of?

Surrendered back onto solid ground, this state of his mind dispersed. The repugnant reek scrunching his expression, now unbearable, for all his senses had descended, once again.

Before he could even arch, to tempt his body to vomit, a collar of white feathers coiled over him and masked the two lower thirds of his face. Swan spared him the pain.

“Thank you…” He mumbled, as he patted the feathers.

Perhaps afflicted with the same ordinary fever as these grey-men, Heos walked close to the cadaver, intrigued of what had become of the man that had attempted to take his life; only to be dragged into death by hand —or beak— of Swan’s. He did not falter at the scabbed, dried, rotten blood filling the cobble’s cracks, as it feathered his steps.

He placed himself in between two of the men, observing.

For some reason, a thin happiness overtook him.

Why did he feel like dancing? There, standing in such dreary air. Clad in feathers and golden, living and joyous, he felt possessed to dance.

Was he mocking the dead man? Rejoicing in life? Who knew, really, even Heos himself knew not why.

The corpse also attended a kind of dance. A dance which would soon bring him bubbling, bloated and livid into… where?

While the prince’s dance… was it not a kind of life-affirming act?

His eyes still rested on the seeped clothes and distended belly of the enemy —a category he instinctively recognized—, when such thoughts were cut short by the turning of the grey-men, looking down the end of the alley.

There appeared, unbothered by the smell —at least as he showed— a neatly dressed man. Not thin, nor fat, not of perfect mane nor balding, nor young or too old, not handsome, not unpleasant, but with an undeniable intelligence to his gaze. A thin overcoat covering him, even in summer.

Trailed behind him was a youth of perhaps… twenty years of age. Shining eyes and impeccable dress, golden hairs as innumerable threads, with just a slight blush of beauty on his factions, and sharp sculpture to his athletic body. Soon, he had covered his mouth and nose with an adorned handkerchief, elegant, yet not extraordinary. His stance and walk, his dress and air revealed him as well-off, yet not affluent.

“Terrible…” he mumbled, a whisper’s whisper under the cloth of his mouchoir.

“Gentlemen.” The leading man greeted, as he pulled from the inner lining of his light-coat a small, leatherbound shield of gold and blue, showing it to the crowded grey uniforms, palmwards. “I’m inspector Mons-Vido, this is my partner, officer Dúrkind.” The youth by his side looked around, settling his sight, disapprovingly, on the gathered men.

The unassuming inspector took on a stern tone, reprimanding, yet not without levity. “Is this crowding necessary? or shall, whomever of you has a report, stay?”

A shuffling of feet, a few apologetical mumbles as the crowd of grey-men dispersed. The power the cadaver held over them fizzled out. A few peered around, their eyes focusing on this or that, before they disappeared among the alley’s turns. Heos moved to a side, spectating still the new arrivals.

Only one, the most involved among the grey-men, remained; stood before the Inspector and his partner.

“Inspector, Officer.” He removed his cap and half-bowed. “I’m gendarme Vasse.”

“Very well, Mr. Vasse…” Mons-Vido returned his badge to his coat, to then pull, with a thin rod of graphite and all, a small —leatherbound too— ledger from its depths. “When were you informed of this cadaver?”

“Inspector sir… see, we were not told about this ‘ere body. ‘Twas a mason who complained… thought a mutt, a stray, had gone and died ‘ere… the smell bothered ‘im from his shop.” He scratched the back of his head.

“How long ago was the complaint lodged?” His eyes scanned the alley, tensing and relaxing at every small jitter and turn.

“A day’s or twos ago? I was told to come and uh… see the place. The complaints, the quartier overseer manages ‘em is all sir… I don’t how much.”

“Hmm…” He jotted something down, the graphite staining his fingers. “Are you assigned to Rue Coupeur’s patrol, or, its near-street’s patrol…?” He settled his gaze on the cadaver. A transparent stare, indeterminate.

“Yes, Inspector sir. Coupeur patrol.”

“Scuffles, disputes, quarrels… leading up to the complaint?”

“’Tis the southside sir… lads roughing each other up, drunks and all… is common. But folks, well, they don’ do alls’ this…” He glanced at the corpse, as if to point to it’s wrongness. “Not even gangs.” A mutter.

“Suspicious individuals —more so than the usual— strange happenings, or sightings of some sort…?” He scanned the gendarme.

The officer, still covering himself in his handkerchief, looked somewhat confusedly at his partner, unsure of his question.

“Ah, sir…” The gendarme was somewhat puzzled, unsure if to speak what his mind held. “Alls things… some say they sees this or thats… it’s hearsay, but…”

“What?” Some annoyance laced the inspector’s tone, bothered by the gendarme’s hesitance, for denying him the bloom of his curiosity.

“Folks say the saw a… a fairy, an elve, something, held by hand of a man, running, and into this ‘ere alley sir.” His tone was apologetic.

The officer scoffed.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Folks ‘ere are superstitious inspector sir… say they see alls kinds of things. Best pay them no mind.”

Mons-Vido seemed unmoved by the words, scribbling on and on in his ledger, allowing a pool of silence, a moment, to cover them all.

“And this fairy, and the man who led it by its hand, do they say what these two looked like? where they saw them first, why they ran…?” His hands gesticulated. Nothing in his expression would betray if he found this line of questioning absurd, or if he believed, from the bottom of his heart, in the existence of apparitions, elves and the like. “Did anyone recognize the man?”

“No, no Inspector sir… noone recognized the man. Some said twas a bearded old man, other a young’un, a working lad…” He shrugged. “An apparition, even, some say… The fairy…” His tone leavened, his unsteady eyes shone like those of child, talking of fantasy. “Sir, all agree on the appearance of the fairy… all we gendarmes ‘ve asked, and hearsay. Blond, blonder than the blondest! Eyes blue and wearing a white dress, barefoot too! The size of a child, and pretty like a doll sir.”

“This isn’t a dress…” Heos could only pout.

The disapproval in the officer’s gaze turned evident, unmistakable. The gendarme seemed not to notice, or mind, if he did take account of it.

Mons-Vido showed no change in expression. The graphite swung as a drumstick, its end bleeding onto the journal’s page.

“Has anybody claimed to have seen either the man or the “fairy” leave this alley?”

“No Inspector sir, noone have, like they disappeared! Or went invisible most like.”

‘Most like? This imbecile really believes it so?’ Dúrkind’s veins popped, like ridges on his furrowed brow. He held his tongue, nonetheless.

“Any other sightings of the fairy, and, or, the man?”

“None sir… that we gendarmes ‘ve ‘erd of, none.” He choked muffled words, then, talked on, making up his mind to continue. “If I may say so inspector sir, ‘twas not a fairy sir, ‘twas an elve, true as rain.” He nodded, humming, pleased with the assertion.

Mons-Vido’s eyebrow rose, in genuine interest, curious as to why the gendarme had come to this conclusion. “How so?” His graphite hung, anxious to write.

“Well, sir, fairies ‘ve wings no? None say it ‘ad wings, so an elve is most likely.”

“Hummm…” The inspector raised his sights into the air, near transparent, as unending panes of clear blue glass, buzzing with summer’s sun lodged among their cracks. “Yes, that would make sense.”

The gendarme nodded, a smile hidden by his bow.

Dúrkind looked incredulously at his superior. He justified, in his mind, this absurd line of questioning to be a sort of interrogative strategy, or, something…

“Then, Mr. Vasse, that is all…” He closed his ledger, burying it again into his overcoat along with the graphite. “All of you assigned to this case by the quartier’s station will work under my jurisdiction. For now, collect testimony on this man and the… elve, three streets round in every direction. As well as any other relevant sighting, fights, quarrels, illicit activity, figures leaving this alley…” His hand rolled in the air, as if to say, and so on. “Communicate this to the others.” From another unseen pocket of his overcoat, the inspector took a pair of dark leather gloves, putting them on, summarily. “We will now inspect the corpse. You may leave.”

“Yes inspector sir.” Vasse nodded, turned as a toy soldier, and left from whence he came.

As soon as the winding alley had swallowed him, Mons-Vido squatted near the cadaver, clicking his tongue.

“No good, Dúrkind.” His head shook.

“…?” What was it his superior hand found? It was rare for something to upset him.

“Even if you are talking to a madman, follow the conversation’s thread. Dismissing information, even nonsense, before due diligence is a grave mistake.”

“Tsk.” Now it was the officer’s tongue which clicked. “Was that why you nodded your head and went along with that idiot’s fairy tales?”

“Yes.” Mons-Vido lightly scoured the corpse, his gloved hands caressed it as one would a lover. Even as his head tilted forward, and he was forced to speak while inhaling mouthfuls of its rancid air, his visage maintained a neutral temperance. “What if I had acted as my partner, officer Dúrkind?” His tone grew jokingly enraged. “You dare speak this idiocy to an officer of Sûreté?! Are you attempting to derail this investigation?! Must I have you dispelled from you post, gendarme?!”

The young officer creased his brows, not speaking out, however, against his superior’s words.

“What would he have told us then? “No one saw anything” most likely.” The inspector added.

Dúrkind looked away, still sporting an incensed expression.

“It was not that which enraged me, him talking about whatever hearsay runs round this place, but rather that, as a gendarme, he would believe in children’s tales… superstitions! and prattle on so assuredly for these as valid evidence in front of an inspector.” His words echoed as half-sighs, indignant.

“He nearly did not tell us of this hearsay, did you notice his reluctance? He himself knows it to be improper, for him to give it as fieldwork to an inspector… Even if twisted by hearsay and superstition, we were awarded a lead, one we would have missed on if I did not allow him to spout his tall tales.” He poked, measuredly, at the victim’s exposed, melting, rotting trachea, like the shaft of a black sand mine. “Also, ditch the handkerchief. You must grow accustomed to miasma.”

Without protest, the officer bared his features to the perfume of days-old death. Cringing when exposed to the airs.

As Mons-Vido inserted his fingers into the body’s windpipe, he continued his lesson.

“It is in conversation, not in interrogation, that men reveal, by dust and breadcrumbs, their truths and beliefs. You, as a future inspector, must make them think of you as a friend, not a hostile. Then, they will bare themselves, dripping proof and evidence, leads and information from their lips —like honey!— willingly, unconsciously, whatever it may be.” His fingers left the cadaver’s body with a sickening squelch.

Rising again, to his feet, the Inspector ordered, lazily pointing.

“Check the knuckles, what do you see?”

As the young officer paced to look, closer, clearer, to the victim’s hands, he asked.

“I suppose… it would… if I were an officer of the southern quartiers, but… what are we even doing this far south? I do not see myself ever being assigned slum-cases.” Dismissal, made a tone of voice.

“We’re here on Hiéron business.” Deadpanned and nonchalant, Mons-Vido spoke.

Dúrkind froze, boring the inspector’s pupils with his own.

“What…? You’re Hiéron?” An expectant tint lingered where his words echoed. Even, a glimmer of admiration.

“No. “Strange” cases, however, are being delegated to the bureau’s main office, by Hiéron order.”

“Strange…?” The young officer did not seem to understand.

“A headless corpse found in an untreaded alley of the south side; rumors of a “fairy” sighting… strange.”

Even with his partner’s explanation, the threads of this conundrum’s weave did not unravel themselves to his eyes. The aims of the Hiéron… only the king and Minister de la Rosa knew, he supposed.

He also considered… had the inspector admitted to knowing of the “sightings”? Why had he interviewed the gendarme then?

“Why?”

“Perhaps it has to do with the Vendémiaire Furieux… the crown is easily unsettled.”

“The riots were five years ago… Are they still so concerned?” He scratched his chin, meditative.

“The knuckles…” He reminded, with a point. “All is downstream from his majesty.” His outstretched finger now pointed skywards “Unless one makes it to Affairs, the crown’s intentions are only determinable in hindsight… The Hiéron has been rather meddlesome these few years… terrible augury, deathly omen…”

It was Dúrkind who squatted now. Not without retching first, and turning his sight sideways… fighting another retch, in chorus with the prior… holding his lips with his sweating palm.

He sighed, so as to compose himself. The victim’s bloated, seeping form did not help.

“I did not take you for a fýrian, Inspector… to believe in auguries and omens.” The playful jab distracted him from the cadaverine.

“Hah! Half the city believes them… Even millennia cannot drown them, these urges for the evidently divine… it may help you understand why so many are willing, with the lightest drop of “evidence”, to believe in elves and fairies, and gnomes, trolls and such…”

“Mhm…” Composed enough, the young officer glanced at the dead man’s hands, his knuckles… the skin greying, pale, marked by rotting blotches, as spilled ponds of ink… immense pupils looking outward… savoring the last glances of sky and earth before silent death overcame them… an inverted constellation; dying masses of darkness dotting a white sky. “Huh?”

One of its fingers… ramrod straight up, a soldier in attendance.

He grew closer, suppressing the heaves.

Even masked in lathered mascara, rough superficial abrasions… cuts, peaked each knuckle, as the piercing stone of a mountain parting away its snow.

His eyes wandered to the opposite hand, there, the same, although missing the cracked back middle finger.

“A fight. A fist fight.”

“Yes… there’s also a sole’s imprint on his undershirt… masked somewhat by the bile… still there.” He motioned to it with his closed fist. “I cannot presume to say it was caused by the same encounter… or that it was this fight’s loss that which led to his death… However…”

“There is enough correlation to assume, I would say…” Dúrkind assured, convinced.

With a shrug, the inspector took to silence.

“I doubt a… fairy, the size of a child, would have bested this… gangling gentleman.” He would have scoffed… if not for it forcing him to inhale.

“An elve, Dúrkind…” His foot tapped, a metronome for his thoughts. “This is a teen, seventeen or less.”

Patting his brow, the young officer digressed.

“This tall…? From the slums…? If so, he’s on his way to measure as high as a royal guard.”

“Hm… The youth rots differently from us adults…” That was all he considered for an argument.

‘Really now?’ Even if incredulous, the officer voiced his doubt inwards.

“Although difficult to believe, this is a slum-dweller, one can tell by the rags and shoes…” Unless he had disguised himself, he thought. “How he managed to grow to this height…?” Close-eyed, Mons-Vido cradled his chin in his hand’s clasp —a glove let loose, to avoid marking his face with carrion—, his tongue clicking, in chorus with his foot. “The miracles of parentage… we should look for tall slum dwelling men and women late twenties and upwards, if we get lucky, we’ll find the corpse’s parents, even if missing a head… Nothing guaranteed, however…” His expression soured, barely in the threshold of the noticeable. “Search for other tall slum youths; we’ll get siblings, cousins… maybe.”

‘Yes...’ A nice deduction, Dúrkind thought. ‘As for the head…’

“The man who accompanied the fairy —pardon, elve, brawled… got into a fist fight with our cadaver, then… this one here lost, and, with some sort of blunt implement, —or even his own fists— the murderer crushed his head until…” Standing up, dizzied by the scent, he outstretched his arms, as if presenting a masterpiece to the gallery. “Two reasons, I say, come to mind if this is so… Our elve’s companion did not want the gendarmerie to identify the victim.” He pointed. “Or… blinding rage…?”

Mons-Vido smiled. “I can think of others, yet…” His tone sounded amused, a shadow of ridicule for his partner. “Do you think they fought over the elve…?”

“Ha—! Ugh…” He inhaled by means of laughter… another retch reared its head up, blasting past the officer’s diaphragm.

“I enjoy your deduction… however, come look at his head, or, er— it’s missing head.”

Dúrkind walked to the inspector’s side.

“Notice it?”

‘Huh…”

“The dark… the shadow masks it, but… there’s no residue… there’s no hanging flesh, or meat bludgeoned into the cobble… like it was…”

“Correct… like it was blasted clean off.” He flicked the young officer’s forehead. “Pay attention, look closely… if you weren’t arguing about elves and fairies, you would have noticed… did you not see me play around with his windpipe…? Where’s the missing skull? Think the elve guardian took it for sport? Look around.” He mimed his own orders.

“The bone is scattered.” Now, with a humbled tone, the officer half muttered.

“Mhm… Most flesh liquified under the heat. The bones and teeth remain, nonetheless, and they are far and away from the neck. Once again, you would have noticed, if you had not focused on the odor and the gendarmes as we arrived.” Another flick.

Dúrkind just grunted.

“Which leads one to conclude that…?”

“The head was burst apart in a single… act, while the victim still stood… The blood, although obscured now, corroborates it… a blooming, where it splattered across the alley, and then a gentle flow, from the decapitation.”

“Mhm…” Mons-Vido gloved himself once more.

“How…? No man has that strength… even with… a hammer, or a weapon of some sort bursting apart a head —as this…” He shook his head. The strangeness —which he now did recognize— caused a shake of his head, involuntary, as if wishing to expel from his sight this logicless scene.

“I have seen, once before, a weapon wound men in this manner.” The officer assured.

“Did you? What was it?” Nude curiosity.

Mons-Vido smiled. Eyes cleaving the already mangled body.

“A cannon.”

‘A cannon?’

“The head ripped from the neck, yanked, the skull burst apart… the mechanics of this… are really obtuse.”

“Indeed…” The inspector paced forward, positioning himself where Heos once stood. “This need not have been carved into stone the day of this young man’s death… it still is quite peculiar…” His eyes poised on the cobble below.

Dúrkind followed him, mimed him, and looked where his partner looked. His gaze widened, the surprise, then muffled, for such an evident thing he had before overlooked.

Lines in angular script were cut into the stone, made all the clearer by the rust-blood, scabbed in its crevices.

“The gendarmes noticed it not, somehow. I presume.” Mons-Vido read:

“Is it not your heart’s command?

Shape the light!

Shroud yourself with its brilliant arms!”

“It could well be the work of a mason, no… or… hm… If it is connected to the cadaver… What sense to make of it?” Truly a “strange” case.

“We have ourselves a poet? Do you think, Dúrkind?” An amusing thought.

All the while, the culprit, graceful, giggled, twirling by their sides, mocking, joyous in his laugh as he watched their troubled musings… fighting to uncover that which shadowed them. Walking placidly by their sides

“This is fun, Swan.”

The phantasm agreed.

He too looked to laugh, a soundless laugh.