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be learned from both the murder scene and the victim’s body.”
    â€œYou misunderstand, Mr. Pendragon,” the monk clarified, his tone grim. “This was not a sacrifice but an order.”
    He swept the door open and led us into a small, windowless room about half the width of the building and no more than a dozen feet deep. A single rectangular table stood in the center of the room that appeared to be an old dining table that had been mounted on outsized legs to bring it to a more comfortable height for working on whatever was placed upon it. In this instance it was clearly the body of their abbot; the telltale protrusions of the forehead, nose, chin, shoulders, belly, knees, and feet unmistakable beneath the covering sheet. There was a patchwork of deep umber streaks littered across the front from the neck to the midsection with only the lowest part of the abdomen and legs appearing to be thusly unadorned. Yet it was the area around the lower part of the face that had clearly borne the most severe damage, a great swath of dried blood having saturated the thin fabric there.
    â€œBe careful,” Brother Silsbury muttered from his position at the door. “His body is resting on ice and, as you can see, it is melting faster than I can get more fetched. All manner of fluids have drained to the floor and made quite a disagreeable slurry.”
    â€œWe shall make quick work here,” Colin reassured again, and I knew quick work was all that either of us could tolerate given the sharp air.
    â€œThank you,” Brother Silsbury murmured. “Then I will leave you to it. Call me if you require anything.” He took an unsteady step backward and pulled the door shut, making me only too aware that the only fresh air leaking into the room had now been shuttered out.
    â€œShall we?” Colin spoke low and taut, his face appearing every bit as dour as Brother Silsbury’s had been.
    I did not bother to answer as I watched him move toward the body with a determination I simply could not match. There was little more I could even convince myself to do beyond continuing to stare at the covered form while desperately trying to conceive of any way to delay the inevitable. Yet such is the very definition of the word inevitable that I finally forced myself forward even as I considered why this aspect of an investigation never got easier.
    Colin slowly peeled the sheet back from the abbot’s face and did not stop until the body lay fully revealed. Abbot Tufton had been a plump man of late middle years, with a full head of silvery hair. His eyes, thankfully, had been drawn closed and his skin was pallid and chalky. But where normally I would have expected to see a demarcation of bruising along the lowest portion of his body lying against the table—a product of his blood pooling as his heart ceased to function—there was almost no sign of it.
    â€œWhat a sight this must have been for Brother Hollings,” Colin said under his breath. “The abbot clearly lost an immense amount of blood during the attack given how little is left to accumulate along the back of his body. No wonder that young monk remains so aggrieved.” He leaned in over the abbot’s face, peering closely, and then quite suddenly reached forward and pried open the man’s jaw. “Oh . . .” He drew the word out even as he pulled back with a slight jerk.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHis mouth . . .” he started to say as he gestured toward the abbot’s mouth. “I cannot recollect what I expected it might look like to have his tongue removed, but I must admit it is rather worse than I imagined. . . .”
    While I did not relish seeing the sight, neither could I stop myself from leaning over and glimpsing inside. The mouth was caked with blackened blood and it was obvious at once that something was dreadfully wrong. Still, it took a moment to realize that the tongue was not nestled against the bottom