The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Royce didn’t buy either statue. This didn’t surprise Hadrian. There was no way Royce would walk around with a one-foot figurine under his arm. Nor could he see him riding back to Melengar with it strapped to the back of his saddle. Thus, Hadrian didn’t find it odd when Royce joined him at the Erbonese Teahouse without either gift for the missus, but he was surprised when Royce’s only question was, “What do they serve here?”

  Partially in the street and on the edge of the traffic flow, the café provided a grand view of the city’s human parade. The two sat at one of a dozen wobbly tables, which were nestled under an outdoor thatch-covered pavilion. The structure did little to block the wind or sun. The proprietor was a native Alburnian, but all he did was greet the customers. The ones doing the work were Calian immigrants.

  “If it’s authentic fare,” Hadrian replied, “rice and tea. Although if you’re adventurous, you could try Hohura. That’s a Calian liquor. If you’re absolutely insane, you could get a mug of Gurlin Bog, goblin liquor that hisses and tastes like something a campfire vomited.”

  “I think I’ll avoid intoxicants for the time being.”

  “Then you’ll want to steer clear of anything with grenesta in it, and they tend to put the herb in everything. I once had a fabulous stew; ten minutes later I passed out.”

  Royce peered at him with a grimace. “You’re making me long for the Meat House.”

  “But this place has chairs and a better view.”

  Few areas of the city had thus far matched Little Gur Em for activity and interest, and Hadrian revised his assumption that the name was derogatory. Perhaps it began that way, as the real Gur Em was as universally cherished as Black Fever—which was often contracted in the selfsame jungle. Still, the Gur Em was wild, colorful, fragrant, and bursting with life. In this way, it was mirrored by the Calian district of Rochelle. Hadrian remembered Calis as overwhelming to the senses, grand bazaars and vast markets set in old cities on the ocean coast, or vibrant villages in the dense brush, but here the experience was jammed into a tiny urban neighborhood of stone buildings and cobbled walkways. It was indeed a jungle of sorts.

  Without a word, a barefoot man in a long, unadorned tunic delivered a communal bowl of rice and vegetables, which was accompanied by a plate of piled flatbread and dark tea. The food was so hot it steamed. Hadrian knew the dish as fried kenase. Royce sniffed it dubiously then waited until Hadrian took a bite before joining in.

  “How come you didn’t ask me about Mandalin?”

  “You mean all that stuff the guy said about the queen and a tiger and arena fights?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The truth?” Royce asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Really?” Hadrian set down his tea, surprised. “A man tells you this fantastic story about bloody battles and a notorious queen of Calis, and you aren’t even mildly curious?”

  “If our pasts aren’t our present, there’s likely a reason.”

  “So you won’t ask me, and I shouldn’t ask you?”

  “Something like that. Besides, I’m sure in a contest of bygone horrors, I’ve got you beat.”

  Hadrian peered across the lip of his steaming cup. “You think so?”

  “You don’t?” Royce appeared genuinely surprised. “A whole city still has nightmares about me.”

  Hadrian nodded, then hooked a thumb back in the direction of the merchant. “You weren’t paying attention. An entire country knows about my murderous past.”

  “Maybe. But they like you. No one is making carvings of me.”

  “In Calis, they also craft the likenesses of Death and Pestilence. They’re an odd people.”

  “He didn’t talk about you like you were a scourge.”

  “Because all he knows is the myth. Have you ever wondered how a soldier of fortune could be so . . .” Hadrian paused to take a sip of his tea.

  “Naïve?” Royce offered.

  Hadrian swallowed. “I was going to say optimistic.”

  “Really? I suppose it could be described like that. Yeah, I’ve puzzled over that one for some time. Most mercenaries are a bit more—”

  “Jaded and cynical?” Hadrian offered.

  “I was going to say realistic and practical.”

  “Really? I suppose it could be described like that. But what you might not be considering is that maybe I’m on the return trip.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you have nightmares of people you killed?”

  “No.”

  “There you go.”

  “There I go, what?”

  Hadrian took the clay pot left on their table and poured tea into his cup until it overflowed. “Every cup is different, but each can only hold so much. Eventually you either stop pouring or make an awful mess. Make a big enough mess and you have to clean up; you have to change.” Hadrian looked at the pool of tea dripping through the slats of the wobbly table. “I made a really big mess, and it wasn’t tea I spilled.”

  They were both looking at the puddle of tea when the screaming started.

  Chapter Twelve

  Unicorns and Polka Dots

  Up the street where an alley divided a makeshift livestock shelter from an old stone building, a crowd began to form.

  The animal pen was nothing more than rope strung between driven stakes hemming in a score of sheep. Out front, alongside a hastily assembled stage, was a hand-painted sign that read: SUNSET AUCTION. With its white marble blocks and pillars, the three-story stone building opposite the alley gave the impression of having once been a place of importance—a counting house or a court. Now the upper windows were laden with drying clothes, and the balconies brimmed with spinning wheels, jugs, baskets, and pots. A number of families roosted in the vacuum of cracked-marble neglect. Most of them had rushed to balconies and peered down; several pointed at the alley below.

  Hadrian swallowed the last of his kenase and stood up. His height allowed him to see over the crowd but granted him no further insight.

  “What’s going on?” Royce asked, not bothering to stand.

  “Dunno. Something happening in the alley.”

  “Nothing good, by the sound of it.”

  The screams had stopped but were replaced by a chorus of wailing.

  “Where are you going?” Royce asked as Hadrian pushed forward.

  “To see what happened.”

  “Whatever it is, they have plenty of people to deal with it. And screams and cries are never portents of good fortune. I’d stay away.”

  “Of course you would.”

  What ability Hadrian lacked in deftly dodging his way through a shifting populace, he more than made up for in cutting through a dense crowd. People moved clear for a man of his size. Those who didn’t, he could move. Any resistance to a gentle push was instantly stifled when they spotted his swords. The city’s residents didn’t carry steel. Most couldn’t afford it, and few had the need. Farmers, merchants, and tradesmen rarely faced violence beyond the occasional drunken fistfight. Theirs was a life of endless repetition, where if they stayed in their place and hoed their given row, nothing of great note ever happened. Men of steel were different. A man with a trowel and hod sought to lay bricks; a man with a sword sought to lay men low; a man with three swords—you quickly avoided. It was in this manner that Hadrian worked his way forward until he was at the mouth of the alley. That was where the crowd stopped. While everyone was eager to see what the noise was about, few cared to get close. Content to view from a distance, the mob hung back, leaving a corridor open.

  In a city as congested as Rochelle, the refuse needed to go somewhere. In the finer districts, waste was deposited into the Roche River, which carried it out to the bay and then the Goblin Sea. Poor neighborhoods like Little Gur Em made do by jamming their rubbish behind the buildings in alleys. So, finding a vast mound of garbage at the end of the alley wasn’t a surprise. Broken crates, torn cloth, rotting food, animal waste, and bones were all piled high, b
ut in this case, a handful of kneeling women wailed before the heap. A smaller number of men stood nearby looking aghast and bewildered as they stared down at what appeared to be trash being dragged from the pile.

  For the most part, it was. A little cascade of rubbish had been formed where someone had been digging. People did that. Hadrian knew that even men and women of means went treasure hunting in trash piles for a lark. Stories always circulated about someone finding gold earrings or an overlooked sack of silver, but the best prize Hadrian personally knew to have been found was a torn leather belt long enough to be repurposed for a thinner man. This time, someone had apparently found more than they bargained for. No one likes to pick up a discarded shoe and find a foot inside.

  The women wailed over the body of a child. A little girl, no older than six or seven, was dead. Hadrian knew dead bodies. He’d walked the aftermath of too many battlefields not to know the child had died only hours ago, certainly less than a day. But there was more than just death involved with this body.

  As Hadrian approached, as he reached the scene and took his place beside the other befuddled men, he understood the problem. The little girl hadn’t been murdered, she’d been torn apart. Her face was fine, her mouth partially open, her eyes thankfully closed. He had killed more men than he could remember and been in battles where women and children had died. He’d lost his squeamishness to gore long ago but never grew accustomed to the sight of open-eyed dead children. The girl’s rib cage had been broken into, its contents rifled through. Without needing to get closer, Hadrian could tell something was missing: The child’s heart was gone.

  “We should go,” Royce whispered. The thief was behind him, motioning with a hand for them to retreat. “Soldiers coming.”

  His warning came too late.

  “You really need to listen to me more often,” Royce told Hadrian as the two sat in the guard post.

  This was a different station house than where they had chatted with Roland, but the interiors were identical. Same one-room shack with a desk, weapons, stacks of wood, and a small fire. An identical horseshoe held down similar parchments. The military was nothing if not consistent. At least the shackles remained on the wall rather than on their wrists. The guardsmen had confiscated Hadrian’s swords, missed Royce’s dagger on the pat-down, and after some preliminary questions, ordered them to wait.

  “We’re not in trouble,” Hadrian said. “The truth is, we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Royce closed his eyes and shook his head. “By Mar, the way you think. It’s . . . it’s . . . I honestly don’t know if there’s a word for it. You realize the truth is rarely important, right?”

  “Soldiers are people, too,” Hadrian replied. “I know. I was one.”

  “I wasn’t limiting the observation to soldiers. Most people don’t care about the truth.”

  “Look, they have no reason to do anything to us. We’re innocent. They just picked us up because we’re strangers and didn’t belong in that alley. They’re just double-checking.”

  “Reason, truth, innocence”—Royce sat back against the wall and folded his arms—“unicorns, pixies, and dragons; you’re not that young to believe in such things. How is it that you fancy yourself a resident of a make-believe world.”

  “I told you. At this point, it’s a choice.”

  “It’s not. It’s fooling yourself. I can decide between eating fish or pork, but I can only pretend to eat unicorn meat. I can’t actually eat a unicorn. The world is the world, and you live in it with open eyes or choose to be blind. It’s all the same to me, but don’t stand there pretending you’re right.”

  Hadrian grimaced. “There are so many things wrong with that statement.” Only Royce could think of a unicorn-eating metaphor. Where do thoughts like that bubble up from? Why a unicorn? Who thinks of eating a symbol of purity and grace? Maybe that was his point. Perhaps Royce was making an argument within an argument, but Hadrian wasn’t about to be sucked down some obscure sewer where only Royce knew the way. Hadrian had a point of his own. “You always wear black and gray. That’s a choice, too, and it says a lot about you.”

  “It says I don’t like to be seen at night.”

  “It says you like to hide, and people who like to hide are usually up to no good. That’s a message you declare to everyone you meet, and people receive it as you might expect. Then when others don’t trust you, when they avoid you, hurt or arrest you for doing nothing, your worldview is justified. So, you’re right; you can’t eat unicorns in your world because they don’t exist, but they do in mine—probably because in my world we don’t eat them.”

  Royce furrowed his brow, his mouth partially open as if he was hearing a sound he couldn’t understand.

  “Honestly, I think you should try wearing purple and yellow,” Hadrian said. “Something bright and happy—polka dots maybe. And you should smile more. People would treat you differently. You might find the world a brighter place.”

  “Tell me you aren’t serious.”

  Hadrian chuckled. “About the yellow polka dots? Of course not. You’d look ridiculous, and you might attract children, which would be a mistake on an epic level.”

  “And the unicorn stuff?”

  “You brought unicorns into this. I have no idea where that came from. It’s like you have a demented recipe book or something. Which if you do, please don’t tell me.”

  “Are you two always like this?” The guard behind the desk had stopped his scribbling and was staring at them with an expression of utter bewilderment.

  “He is,” they both said in unison.

  “You’re hilarious.” The guard smiled. “I sure hope you’re not guilty. I’d hate to have to hang the two of you.”

  “Good,” Hadrian said. “At least, we can agree on something.”

  “Sounds like unicorn-believer talk to me.” The guard grinned. “Personally, I’m with dark-clothes guy. Living is anguish and then you die.”

  “Wow, that’s uplifting,” Hadrian said. “You should start your own church.”

  He shook his head. “Not the religious type.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “The problem with the world,” the guard went on, “is that too many people don’t see it like it is. They want it to be something it just isn’t. I think everything would be better if folks stopped believing in fantasies and dealt with the way things are. We might actually improve things then. I mean, there aren’t any unicorns, or fairies, and there certainly isn’t an Heir of Novron who’s going to appear and save us all. That’s just stupid.”

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” Royce pointed at the guard. “I really hope you don’t try to hang me. I’d hate to have to kill you.”

  The guard looked confused again, then, assuming Royce was making a joke, he laughed.

  Royce laughed, too.

  Hadrian didn’t, and this served to remind him he didn’t have his swords. They were by the door. He could see them, and that made him feel better because the truth was that Royce and the guard had a point. Sometimes things didn’t work out the way they should. They certainly hadn’t for that little girl in the alley.

  The door to the guard post opened, and a familiar face entered.

  “Blackwater?” Roland asked, puzzled. “My, aren’t you making the rounds.” He looked to the desk guard. “Drake, what are they doing here?”

  “We picked them up in the alley where the mir was killed,” the soldier said with a salute. “The big one had those three swords, and the other looked, well . . . suspicious.”

  “It’s the color of his clothes,” Hadrian offered. “Makes him look sinister.”

  “You know them, sir?”

  “Yes. This is Hadrian Blackwater, an old friend. Not the sort to murder children, believe me.” Roland turned his gaze on Royce but hesitated to add any clarification.

  “Apparently, I need to wear polka dots,” Royce said.

  “What were you two doing in Little Gur Em?”

&
nbsp; “Having our midday meal,” Hadrian said. “I was introducing Royce here to Calian cuisine. We were at an outdoor café when we heard the shouts and went over to investigate.”

  “Still the soldier, eh?” Roland chuckled. He turned to the guard. “Is that really all you have on them, Drake? They were there and looked suspicious?”

  The guard nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Give them back their belongings, then.”

  The guard moved to the door and gathered Hadrian’s swords.

  “Sorry for the inconvenience,” Roland told them. He glanced down at the desk, pivoted the top page so he could read it. “Looks like we’ll have to add this one to the pile.”

  “What’s that mean?” Hadrian asked, taking the spadone first and slinging it over his shoulder.

  Roland, who didn’t appear to have had time to shave in a week, scrubbed his growing beard and sighed. “I told you about the murders we’ve been having. Mir tend to be the targets, and we can be thankful for that. If it had been the child of a citizen—a guild merchant or tradesman or, Novron forbid, a noble—I’d have the constable crawling all over me.”

  “But because it was a mir, you’ll ignore it?” Royce asked.

  “No, not ignore. There’s really nothing I can do in any case. But there would be more pressure.” Roland looked to the guard, who handed Hadrian’s other two swords over. “No witnesses, right?”

  The soldier shook his head. “As usual, no one knows anything.”

  “It’s always the same,” Roland said. “No one sees them. No one knows a thing. Then the next victim turns up in the river, or pit, or an alley—each one ripped open, heart missing.”

  Roland checked on the contents of the pot near the fire and grunted when he found it empty.

  “Don’t you think that’s a little odd?” Royce asked.

  “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But no, not anymore. I may have mentioned that life is cheap down here on the east side. Even cheaper next door in the Rookery, which is where most of the killings have occurred.”

  “But to rip out the hearts of children?” Hadrian asked. This made him think of Royce roasting unicorns, only this was the real-world form of that idea. Could there be a purer example of evil? Why would anyone do such a thing? And how? How does a person kill and crack open a rib cage without anyone seeing or hearing it?