Ravencaller

by David Dalglish

  “Do anything stupid and you die,” she told him. “No one’s coming to help you, and no one will hear you if you scream. If you do as I say without blustering or lying, then I will let you live. Do you understand?”

  She lifted her heel a fraction of an inch.

  “Yes,” Wolter said.

  “Good.”

  Jacaranda withdrew her leg and stepped back to ensure she could watch him carefully. Wolter was an older man well into his fifties, his graying hair marked by an enormous bald spot atop his head. He’d be no threat in a fight so long as he didn’t surprise her. To Wolter’s credit, he did not panic or scramble for a means to defend himself. Instead he calmly sat up in his bed, rubbed his sore throat, and met her careful gaze.

  “I have few enemies,” Wolter said. “But those I work for have many. If you’re hoping to hurt them through me, you waste your time. I always plan for this eventuality. You will find nothing incriminating on my clients.”

  “I’m not looking for evidence to present to the Mayor,” Jacaranda said. “I know well of Gerag’s crimes.”

  Wolter was an accountant who fixed Gerag’s various business records to hide the income he earned from his illegal soulless trade. Generally that meant increasing the amount of trees cut and worked by his many camps and then selling those imaginary trees to imaginary buyers in the east. If anyone might know where Gerag had gone into hiding, it’d be the man still in charge of his money.

  At the mention of Gerag, he visibly paled.

  “I see,” he said. “Am I a loose end you’ve come to clean up now that Gerag’s in your custody?”

  “In custody?” she asked. “So you know he wasn’t killed in the fire at his mansion?”

  Wolter swung his legs out from underneath his thick blankets. Jacaranda lifted a sword at him in warning.

  “I seek only a drink,” Wolter said. He pointed to a metal pitcher atop his nightstand. “It’s not poisoned, I promise. I have no desire to end my own life tonight.”

  She nodded to show she’d allow it. Wolter limped on a bad knee to the stand, opened its small drawer, and pulled out a tin cup. Once the cup was full of a red liquid from the pitcher, he downed it all in a long series of gulps.

  “Much better,” he said, shaking his head. “And of course Gerag didn’t die in that fire. No one who knows him believes that. Burned to death in a fire that barely blackened one floor? Sloppy work, if you ask me. If someone wanted him dead, especially in this chaotic day and age, they’d have just slit his throat and been done with. The only reason for the fire was to disguise the identity of whatever body they used.”

  “But you said in custody, not in hiding,” Jacaranda said. “Why?”

  Wolter smiled at her with far too much pride.

  “I’m his bookkeeper,” he said. “He’d need my help to transfer and liquidate his investments and accounts, help that he has not requested. You and I both know Gerag would be incapable of leaving a single copper penny behind when fleeing this cesspit of a city. His greed overrides even his most basic survival instincts, the dumb bastard.”

  Jacaranda’s heart plummeted into her stomach. She thought she’d kept her disgust with Wolter hidden, and kept her face sufficiently disguised. Apparently not.

  “Why would I know of Gerag’s greed?” she asked, hoping she hadn’t revealed her identity somehow.

  He tilted his head slightly.

  “You need not keep up your ruse with me, soulless,” he said. “I find this fascinating. Did Gerag train you to find him should he ever go missing? I assumed you’d have killed yourself to erase any lingering evidence.”

  It seemed her violet eyes had indeed given her away. She almost pretended to still be soulless, but the thought of doing so sickened her already upset stomach. Fuck that. She kicked Wolter in the chest, her heel stealing the breath from his lungs and smacking him against the wall. His head bounced off it with a loud crack. Wolter’s legs went weak, and he slid down to his rump while clutching his ribs.

  “Damn it, Jac, have you gone insane without your master? Do not hurt me again, do you understand? That is an order.”

  Jacaranda knelt before him and placed the tip of a short sword underneath his jaw.

  “I don’t take orders anymore,” she said. “I give them. If you think someone took Gerag, then give me a name. Who’s your best guess?”

  For the first time since waking, Wolter looked legitimately frightened.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Gerag trusted me with the nature of his business but never the names of his buyers. I’d wager everything I owned on the abductor being one of them. If Gerag ever went down, he could bring a lot of wealthy, powerful names down with him. Perhaps someone decided to be proactive about the whole situation.”

  Damn it, why didn’t I think of that?

  Gerag had always been a weaselly survivor, and she’d assumed he faked his death to avoid the arrest that had been on its way. But Wolter was right. Gerag knew the identity of many wealthy buyers, and with Jacaranda and Devin killing guards and breaking Marigold free before her auction, all of those potential buyers would have known Gerag was compromised.

  “Who has him?” she asked, feeling her rage rising. “Who is keeping him from me?”

  Gerag’s death was hers to inflict. No one else had suffered at his hands like she had. No one had been used, tortured, and humiliated like she’d been. Her anger seethed and grew, a fire that shocked her with its fury. It made thinking difficult. It made her limbs tremble against her will, and it clouded her every thought with an overwhelming desire to inflict pain.

  “I don’t know,” Wolter said. He shrank before her, his eyes widening at the sight of her rage. “What the void are you? No soulless behaves in such a way.”

  “I’m not soulless anymore,” she said.

  “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. Ask the Sisters when you see them.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, and she promptly shoved her short sword up to the hilt inside it. The back of his skull cracked at the force, and she felt her blade travel through the thin wallpaper and hit the outer wall. Wolter’s body convulsed as he bled out. Jacaranda watched without pity as he died. How many criminal enterprises had this one man allowed to flourish? How much blood had he washed off silver and gold coins so they might be spent without fear?

  The last whisper of a dying breath escaped Wolter’s lips. Jacaranda ripped her short sword free. Her rage was unquenched. Wolter’s death was a wad of spit on a campfire. She needed the real thing. She needed Gerag gone from this world. She needed, she needed…

  “Get a grip, Jac,” she whispered to herself. Goddesses help her, she was almost afraid of how overwhelming her hatred and lust for killing had become. Gerag was a monster, of that, she held no doubt. But she did not wish to become a monster when hunting him.

  Several long, deep breaths later she sheathed her short swords and walked out the front door.

  While Windswept District wasn’t as wealthy as Quiet District, it was still home to a slice of society’s upper crust. Mainly this consisted of shop owners, guild leaders, and those with the education to work with paper and numbers instead of their bare hands. Its streetlamps were well lit despite the threat of owls and gargoyles. At least two groups of city guards patrolled the area when she’d sneaked in, as well as a duo of Soulkeepers. Hiding from them was still relatively easy for her, given the trees and bushes that dotted the tiny little rectangle of land each plot possessed. Easy, but time consuming, especially when she dared not traverse the rooftops. Doing so seemed to be tempting fate to end her life as a snack for a gargantuan bird.

  This time, though, she need not hide from the patrols. She heard bells sounding in the distance. The first patrol she spotted rushed along as if the city were under siege and they moved toward a breach in its walls. Twice she heard distant screams.

  “What is going on?” she whispered while peering out from behind the thick trunk of an oak tree dominating
its small yard. The duo of Soulkeepers sprinted past with their swords and pistols drawn.

  The sudden sound of a fist pounding of glass behind her nearly caused her feet to leave the ground. She spun, her hands already on the hilts of her short swords. Small fists were striking the pane of glass positioned near the end of the home. Jacaranda didn’t hesitate. Something was wrong, horribly wrong, she knew it in her gut. She crossed the lawn and peered inside the house.

  A frightened girl, maybe ten to eleven years old, stared back at her with huge saucers for eyes. Blood was on her shift, but it didn’t appear to be hers.

  “Let me out!” the girl screamed. “Mom is… Mom is… please, let me out!”

  A low candle burned atop a dresser inside the girl’s room. The door to her room was closed and locked, and it shook from heavy blows on the opposite side.

  “Step back,” Jacaranda ordered. “I said, step back!”

  The girl finally backed away from the window and clutched her elbows, her head on a swivel to watch the rattling door. Jacaranda smashed the glass with the hilt of her sword, then knocked loose several more jagged pieces along the bottom.

  “Come on,” she said after sheathing her sword. The girl ran to the window and began crawling out. Jacaranda caught her by her armpits to keep her balanced as she exited. The girl was mostly through by the time the door to her room banged open, and Jacaranda saw the threat.

  She’d assumed thieves or rapists had targeted the home, but to her shock, a woman in her thirties barged in. She wore a night robe that hung loosely open. Blood coated her face and bare chest. Her eyes had the wild stare of one who had consumed some of the harsher mushrooms grown in the mountains near Watne.

  “Little ditty,” the woman said. “Where’d you go?”

  Jacaranda never saw the woman move. Instead she flickered. One moment, she was standing in the doorway. The next, she was at the window, her hand latched on to her daughter’s foot. The girl shrieked and kicked. Jacaranda braced one leg against the wall and pulled. For one agonizing second it seemed the woman would not relent, but then the foot slipped free of her blood-soaked hand. Together, Jacaranda and the girl toppled to the grass.

  “Don’t run, ditty,” the woman said. “I won’t hurt you. Mother’s hungry, that’s all.”

  She began climbing through the window, showing not a care to the remaining shards of glass that cut into the skin of her back. Jacaranda rolled to her feet and drew her swords. Panic threatened to overwhelm her control. Had to fight it. Countless hours of training had formed her combat instincts, and she relied on them above all else. These emotions of fear, panic, horror… if she dwelled on them, she’d be helpless. They were too new. Too powerful.

  Even prepared for the woman’s charge, she still nearly failed to react in time. The bloodied woman was halfway out the window, her body flickered, and then she was on her feet a mere foot away. Jacaranda fell back to gain what little space she could and thrust her swords deep into the woman’s belly. Together they fell, the crazed mother atop her, flailing wildly. But the woman could not close the space, and her teeth snapped futilely at the air.

  Within moments she’d lost too much blood. Her strength left her, and she slumped in Jacaranda’s arms.

  “My… my…” the woman gasped, struggling to breathe. Her pupils widened. “Is my… little ditty all right?”

  She died without receiving an answer.

  Jacaranda pushed her body off and rose to her feet. The daughter sobbed on her knees beside the body, her little shoulders trembling with each cry.

  “Is there anyone else in the house?” Jacaranda asked.

  “My father,” she said. “But he’s—he’s dead. My mom ate him.” Tears streamed down the girl’s face despite the surreal calm in her voice. “She ate him. She ate him. Oh Goddesses, I’m going to—”

  She turned and vomited upon the grass. Jacaranda could hardly blame her. Everything about this was beyond insane. Was this happening all across Londheim? Oh shit, what of Devin? He was on out patrol during this mess.

  “I need to get you somewhere safe,” she said, doing her best to focus on the task at hand. “Come with me. I’ll find you a guard who can escort you to one of their stations.”

  The girl wiped her mouth and then nodded. Jacaranda led the way, the girl trailing a few steps behind her. There’d be no stealth to their travel now, so Jacaranda kept her swords at the ready at all times.

  “What’s your name?” she asked as they hurried down the street.

  “Abigail,” she said.

  “All right, Abigail, I want you to keep an eye on the sky. If you see anything that looks like a bird, even just a shadow, you let me know.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Jacaranda could tell it frightened the girl to imagine owls attacking them, but it also gave her a task to focus her mind upon. Keeping calm was of the utmost importance. A mother going insane was a freak occurrence, but the alarm bells ringing from towers throughout Londheim filled her with dread that the incident was not isolated. If this was widespread…

  There was no need to wonder at that horror, because she was living it. Smoke rose from a fire in a nearby district, and she doubted anyone would come to put it out. She spotted a man in the distance beating at a door in an attempt to break in, but he fled long before Jacaranda was near enough to make him out.

  “Soon,” she said, for the girl’s comfort or her own, she wasn’t sure. “We’ll find some guards soon.”

  But it was another of the bizarre cannibals that found them first. A woman approached in the center of the street, everything about her movements and appearance crying warning in Jacaranda’s mind.

  “Stay behind me,” she told Abigail. “I’ll keep you safe.”

  The woman approached with an unsteady gait. Her movements were rapid, too rapid, but only in little bursts. She was naked from the waist up, as if she’d woken up in the middle of the night and given no thought to her appearance before exiting to roam the street. What in all the darkness of the void had happened to these people? Jacaranda hoped someone smarter figured it out, because this was beyond nightmarish. She’d thought the woman held something to her mouth to eat, but as she neared, Jacaranda realized the woman was gnawing at the skin of her own thumb.

  “More?” she said when she removed her thumb, revealing it stripped to the bone from the knuckle up. “So hungry. Could you give more?”

  Jacaranda braced herself for any sudden movements.

  “Walk away,” she warned.

  Instead the woman took another uneasy step. Blood soaked the thin sleeve of her shift from her gnawed thumb. Instead of showing fear, she smiled.

  “You,” she said. “You’ll help.”

  The woman’s body flickered closer, but this time Jacaranda was ready. The moment it happened, she dashed closer, determined to be the one on the offensive. The woman raised her arms in defense, and Jacaranda was shocked at the speed of her reaction. Trained fighters would be envious. Jacaranda’s swipes struck the bones of the woman’s forearms, halted from scoring lethal damage. The woman snap-kicked with the force of a man twice her weight, and when Jacaranda doubled over in pain, she leaned in with teeth wide.

  Her teeth nipped but a small cut before Jacaranda slipped away. This time she gave every bit of respect to her foe’s speed. She cut once, twice, expecting them to be blocked by her gashed forearms, and then hesitated. The woman flickered again, and suddenly her arms were already wrapped around Jacaranda’s waist. Her hungry mouth closed in for a bite on Jacaranda’s vulnerable neck.

  Jacaranda gave her the steel of her short sword to bite instead. Teeth cracked with a sound that sent shivers down her spine. Still the madwoman refused to relent. Had to act fast, she thought. Jacaranda’s left arm was trapped against her side due to the woman’s grasp, but her right was free. She slid the blade downward, scraping and chipping teeth on its way out. The moment the sword was free, the woman bit again. Jacaranda didn’t bother defending. This time sh
e slammed the tip of her sword straight into her trachea, enduring another bite on her shoulder that drew blood.

  Two sawing motions and the woman collapsed at Jacaranda’s feet, her throat gushing blood upon the street. Jacaranda stared at her dying body. Horror crept at the corners of her consciousness. This wasn’t real. This was all a cruel, sadistic delusion of her mind. It had to be.

  But the wind on her skin was cold, and the pain in her shoulder sharp and real. She took in a long breath and then let it out. The act returned some semblance of calm to her mind.

  “It’s done,” she said, turning to Abigail. “Let’s go.”

  Her heart froze. A glass-eyed man clutched Abigail’s neck with both hands, his mouth open and a long strand of drool dripping down his chin.

  “It’s just meat,” he said. “And any meat’ll do.”

  Abigail flailed and kicked, but he ignored every blow. She couldn’t make a noise. She couldn’t breathe.

  “Let her go!”

  Jacaranda lunged across the distance, her short swords leading. She buried the first into his forehead, the second into that drooling mouth of his. He collapsed, yet still he would not let go. Jacaranda pried at his fingers, and when that did not work, she sliced several off with her sword. Finally the grip relented, and Abigail rolled free and onto her back.

  “I’m sorry,” Jacaranda said. “I should have paid more attention. I should have… Abigail?”

  The girl clutched her throat. Huge welts were already growing from the man’s grip. Her mouth opened and closed, simulating breathing, but Jacaranda could only hear the faintest wheeze to show for it. Her mind blanked. The girl was staring at her, begging for help with her eyes. Help she couldn’t offer.

  Her throat. Her tiny little throat. The man had permanently crushed it in his grasp.