time I sat back and assessed the work. Plummet was much too limited. Its marks were faint and its line unvarying. Ink was far more versatile, flowing from brushes or pens of every possible dimension. Yet indeed the man looking back from the page was the man before me. A touch released a bit of magic to plump his lips and reveal the tip of that horrid tongue between them. Another gave a fullness to his cheeks and saggingjowls. Yet another brightened the death-dulled eyes, narrowed the lids, and installed a few fine creases at their corners. He had a habit of squinting. A bit more flare to the sinner’s nose. Dissipated.
As I used my bent to ensure the drawing matched the true image in my mind, Bastien knelt watching, hands stilled, attention unwavering. When the work was as complete as I could make it without ink or brush, I passed him the page.
He studied it intently.
Sat back on his heels.
Said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the scrap a very long time.
“Plummet is convenient, but much too limiting,” I said, unable to wait longer. “I can render it more accurately with pen and ink. A thin wash of color works even better. It
is
a likeness. But I can’t make it speak, if that’s what you want.”
His moment’s glance near stripped me bare. But he turned away to Constance. “Fetch a runner, girl. I want him to show this to whatever whores ply that alley of a midnight or have a crib nearby, even if they work different streets. Find especially any known for hard play. And send Pleury to fetch the barber. The fellow’s mostly thawed. We need to take a look inside before he warms up too much more.”
Whores? The barber . . . the
sargery
. . . Great Deunor, a barber-surgeon was going to cut into the dead man’s body? My mouth worked in speechless protest.
“Should I bind his eyes back now?” Constance waggled the bandage.
“I’d say yes,” said Bastien softly, shaking his head and staring at the portrait, “but I doubt there’s need. I think his soul has already been snatched out of him.”
CHAPTER 4
H is name was Valdo de Seti. We knew it before the midday bells rang. Bastien’s runners identified him using the portrait I’d made—and whatever had sparked Bastien’s whim to seek out low women.
De Seti was the chief steward of the draymen’s guild and, indeed, his favored harlot had a den off Doane’s Alley. He himself lived in the Wainwrights’ District with a wife and one of three sons—a boy of eleven years. The two elder were off fighting for Prince Perryn.
Chortling in glee as his runners delivered their reports, Bastien issued a summons to both wife and whore, as well as the son, the constable, the stonemason who had discovered the body, four other neighbors, and Valdo’s two fellow stewards in the guild. They were to attend him in his judgment chamber no later than fourth hour past midday. The
’quest
Constance had mentioned was an inquest—the coroner’s official inquiry into the circumstances of a suspicious death.
As we awaited the witnesses, Constance stripped and washed de Seti in one of the troughs in the courtyard. Then two of Garibald’s workmen laid him in a chamber just inside the prometheum doors. It was a barren little cell, its four walls thick with layers of limewash. Easy to see why. The bier, the floor, the small wheeled table, and the pile of wadded linens in the corner were splattered with a disgusting panoply of morbid stains. This was where they cut them.
I pressed my back to the wall beside the door, as far as I could get from the bier.
“You’re a putrid shade of green, servant,” said Bastien. “You
do
know purebloods shit and die and stink like the rest of us?”
“You can’t just slice into a man’s body,” I said. “The Elder Gods forbid it. How do you know—?”
If the soul could escape through uncovered eyes, how could it not find its way out through an incision? My fist pressed on the tail of my breastbone, where my magic
As I used my bent to ensure the drawing matched the true image in my mind, Bastien knelt watching, hands stilled, attention unwavering. When the work was as complete as I could make it without ink or brush, I passed him the page.
He studied it intently.
Sat back on his heels.
Said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the scrap a very long time.
“Plummet is convenient, but much too limiting,” I said, unable to wait longer. “I can render it more accurately with pen and ink. A thin wash of color works even better. It
is
a likeness. But I can’t make it speak, if that’s what you want.”
His moment’s glance near stripped me bare. But he turned away to Constance. “Fetch a runner, girl. I want him to show this to whatever whores ply that alley of a midnight or have a crib nearby, even if they work different streets. Find especially any known for hard play. And send Pleury to fetch the barber. The fellow’s mostly thawed. We need to take a look inside before he warms up too much more.”
Whores? The barber . . . the
sargery
. . . Great Deunor, a barber-surgeon was going to cut into the dead man’s body? My mouth worked in speechless protest.
“Should I bind his eyes back now?” Constance waggled the bandage.
“I’d say yes,” said Bastien softly, shaking his head and staring at the portrait, “but I doubt there’s need. I think his soul has already been snatched out of him.”
CHAPTER 4
H is name was Valdo de Seti. We knew it before the midday bells rang. Bastien’s runners identified him using the portrait I’d made—and whatever had sparked Bastien’s whim to seek out low women.
De Seti was the chief steward of the draymen’s guild and, indeed, his favored harlot had a den off Doane’s Alley. He himself lived in the Wainwrights’ District with a wife and one of three sons—a boy of eleven years. The two elder were off fighting for Prince Perryn.
Chortling in glee as his runners delivered their reports, Bastien issued a summons to both wife and whore, as well as the son, the constable, the stonemason who had discovered the body, four other neighbors, and Valdo’s two fellow stewards in the guild. They were to attend him in his judgment chamber no later than fourth hour past midday. The
’quest
Constance had mentioned was an inquest—the coroner’s official inquiry into the circumstances of a suspicious death.
As we awaited the witnesses, Constance stripped and washed de Seti in one of the troughs in the courtyard. Then two of Garibald’s workmen laid him in a chamber just inside the prometheum doors. It was a barren little cell, its four walls thick with layers of limewash. Easy to see why. The bier, the floor, the small wheeled table, and the pile of wadded linens in the corner were splattered with a disgusting panoply of morbid stains. This was where they cut them.
I pressed my back to the wall beside the door, as far as I could get from the bier.
“You’re a putrid shade of green, servant,” said Bastien. “You
do
know purebloods shit and die and stink like the rest of us?”
“You can’t just slice into a man’s body,” I said. “The Elder Gods forbid it. How do you know—?”
If the soul could escape through uncovered eyes, how could it not find its way out through an incision? My fist pressed on the tail of my breastbone, where my magic
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