Sweetblade

by Carol A Park

  She moved closer to it, inspecting the frame and sill. No bloody footprints, no bloody handprints—not a spot of blood at all, in fact—on the frame, window, floor in front, any or all of which she would have expected had he left through the window.

  Unless the killer was exceptionally fastidious, of course.

  She pushed the window farther open, poked her head outside, and looked down. There was nothing of note that she could see on the walls or ground, either, though she ought to take a closer look at the ground once she was back outside. So where had he exited?

  She frowned down at the bloodstain on the floor and imagined that this man had been a target. The killer had entered, perhaps, through the window, finding the man at his desk. But the window wasn’t far enough from the desk for the killer to be able to surprise him. The man would have seen the killer, risen from his chair in shock and faced him…

  Closer in to the window?

  That didn’t make sense. Why would the man have risen from his chair on the side closer to where the killer would have entered—unless, perhaps, he thought to attack him?

  She turned and walked to the door. The location of the bloodstain made more sense if the killer had come in through the study door. He had made some noise, or something else had caught the victim’s attention at the wrong moment, and the man had turned, and, seeing the stranger, rose and put the chair between himself and the killer, perhaps even contemplated jumping through the window. Then the killer had drawn his weapon and stabbed him, just like that?

  There was no sign of struggle. It had been quick. No bloody footprints where the victim had trampled in his own blood, nothing knocked over or broken—only the smear of his blood where the killer had dragged the body into the bedroom the room over.

  Had the victim known the killer or otherwise been expecting him?

  None of this fit the profile. Was this even related? And yet, the body had still been arranged on the bed, which was such a strange thing to do, and it was exactly a week after the previous murder.

  She spun in a slow circle, scanning the rest of the room. A ball of yarn with knitting needles still stuck in it sat on a work table on the other side of the room. The table was laid over with embroidered linen, and a vase arranged with wild flowers had been set in the middle.

  A book lay open, and Ivana walked over to peer at its contents.

  A silt novel.

  Nice.

  She flipped absently through the pages of the novel. This was a modest rowhouse with a family, not a boarding house or sleazy inn.

  This man was someone’s husband, perhaps someone’s father.

  Her hand stilled.

  If the killer were going to deviate, that was a curious choice.

  She took one last look around the room and then followed the trail of blood, still hoping to find where the killer had exited.

  She was so focused on that trail that when she reached the door, she nearly ran into Xathal, who was leaning against the doorjamb, watching her.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  She tossed him a glance. “Excuse me,” she said, and he moved out of her way.

  She retraced the blood back down the short hall and into the bedroom. A double bed, she noted anew. Married?

  The trail ended at the body on the bed. Other than that, there was no blood anywhere. The window to the bedroom was closed. She opened it, repeated her actions from earlier, and then closed it again.

  Still no hints as to where the killer had made his exit.

  “Where was his wife?” she asked without turning, guessing that Xathal had followed her back to the room.

  She was right. “Out,” he said.

  “Children?”

  “Two adolescent daughters. Both were in their bedroom, next room down. It was the younger who found him.”

  Right again. And not merely someone’s father, but the father of two daughters.

  Her hand went to the pendant at her throat.

  Two sisters.

  Was it too much of a coincidence that after he had killed six young Fereharian women, six women much like herself, the killer had then chosen to kill someone that reflected a piece of her own past? Right after she had been put on the job?

  Was his little comment this morning about not letting the Watch find out more about her supposed to be some sort of a hint that the murders would start being about her in a more specific way?

  Was she jumping to conclusions?

  Her instincts were screaming at her that she knew the answer, but her brain needed more. It wasn’t enough.

  She dropped her hand, walked back to the doorway, and walked the trail of blood toward the bed as though it were a path. She noted this time that the boards creaked several times along the way. She retreated, and then tried walking the path again twice, slightly to either side each time. Still creaked. The trajectory of the blood smear suggested the killer would have had to walk right over the creaky boards.

  The killer had snuck in, killed the man without a fight, drug him to his bedroom, and snuck out, all without alerting the girls in the next room over? Hadn’t he even cared that there were people in the house who might catch him? Or perhaps one of the girls had been the real target, and the father had caught him sneaking in, so the killer had panicked, killed him, and fled?

  But this was not the scene of a panicked killer. There was no trace of blood suggesting his place of exit. It was as though he had killed without treading in the not-insignificant amount of blood spilled, nor without touching it.

  Even she would have had trouble being so meticulous.

  She pressed her lips together. Elidor could have done it.

  “Well? Thoughts?” Xathal said, breaking into her concentration.

  “Where did the killer exit?” she asked.

  “I haven’t been able to determine that.”

  “What about at the other crime scenes?” Now that she was thinking along these lines, she didn’t recall reading anything in the reports about this issue.

  “No determination there either. Very tidy, just like this one.”

  She blew a few stray strands of hair up on her forehead. No evidence of entry or exit. No sound. No mess, other than the blood spilled by the victim. Damn it all. There was no way around it. “This crime scene has the fingerprints of a professional.”

  “Obviously, the man is a serial murderer—”

  “I didn’t say someone who had killed before. I said a professional.” She ticked off her fingers. “He moved in and out without a trace or sound, not even alerting the girls in the next room over, despite”—she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, causing the boards to creak again—“the difficulties associated with such a feat. On top of that, he killed without tracking a spot of blood anywhere else.” She waved her hand. “Any moron can kill someone. It takes quite a bit more skill to do so without leaving any evidence other than the body.”

  The veteran Watchman was attentive and still. “Are you suggesting this was a paid kill?”

  Unlikely. A brute hired to bash someone’s head in wouldn’t have cared about finesse, and she and Elidor were the only government-sponsored assassins in Carradon. But she could hardly say that. “A professional would not have taken the risk of sneaking into an occupied house without good cause,” she said, “so I doubt it.”

  Still, though she didn’t know of any in Carradon, there were freelancers, and it was theoretically possible that one had traveled to the city for a single job. However, it was then odd that they would have imitated this killer by way of moving the body to a bed, unless that was part of the terms of the job.

  She was reaching.

  “All the same,” she said, “it might not hurt to look into his connections to see if anyone might have had a legitimate reason to want him dead.”

  Xathal raised an eyebrow. “Is there a legitimate reason to have someone killed?”

  “I said a legitimate reason to want someone dead,” Ivana said, giving him a side eye.
“I could think of a few without trying.”

  He inclined his head. “Point taken.”

  “But assuming this is connected to our other murders, I think that the person we’re looking for obviously knows what he’s doing. In other words, you’re not looking for a drunken bum off the street. You’re looking for someone who could look like you or me, even be working a respectable job.”

  Xathal passed a hand over his face, looking unsettled. “I see.”

  “What did the victim do for a living?”

  “He was an assistant professor at the university,” Xathal answered.

  Ivana’s breath caught in her throat.

  A married man with two adolescent daughters—perhaps that could be considered coincidental.

  But also a scholar?

  It was one too many “coincidences.”

  She spun on her heel and walked back to the study. She didn’t know what she was looking for, other than something, anything to corroborate what every part of her—other than the tiny bit of her brain that wanted proof—already knew.

  She rummaged through the victim’s desk drawers. Flipped through a file folder. Looked beneath the work table.

  It was there, tucked underneath the table, that she spied a wooden crate. The words University Property were stenciled on the side.

  Curious.

  She pulled the crate out, lifted the top off…

  And closed her eyes. There was no longer any room for doubt. It had to be Elidor.

  Inside the crate, nestled in a pile of soft cloths, was a microscope.

  “What is it?” Xathal’s voice said from behind her.

  She opened her eyes, remembering she wasn’t alone.

  Xathal appeared at her side and peered inside the crate himself. “Is that—?”

  “Yes. A microscope.”

  Xathal scratched his chin. “Huh. Heard of them, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before.”

  Had Elidor put it there?

  A piece of paper was attached to the lid. She ran her eyes over it; it was a form indicating that the professor had checked the microscope out for the foreseeable future.

  So that meant Elidor hadn’t planted it himself—only found someone who fit her father in as much detail as he could manage.

  Xathal was staring at her, no doubt waiting for some sort of conclusion.

  She had none she could give him; to expose Elidor in this moment she would have to reveal that she had a connection to him—and that she could not do.

  She set the lid back on the crate, straightened up, and shook her head. “It’s perplexing. A respectable, settled man, with a family—the only connections being the timing, the region he’s from, and the curious habit of depositing the body on the bed. What do you think? Is it the same person?”

  “In my experience, the nature of victims and the”—he grimaced—“methodology were the two most common factors. Up until now, we’ve at least had the gender of the victim to tie them together. Now…” He removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Your thoughts?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. It could be someone else, I suppose, copying some vague details they’d heard to try to send us down the wrong path.” She shrugged. “I think we’re going to need more evidence.” And more time to think.

  “But there isn’t anything more.”

  “By that I mean, more bodies.”

  He gave a little awkward half-chuckle, as if he weren’t sure if she were trying to make a morbid joke. “Forgive me, Da, but there aren’t supposed to be—”

  “Do you have an idea yet of where to find the killer or how to catch him?”

  Xathal hemmed a bit.

  “I didn’t think so,” Ivana said. “Have a copy of the updated file made for me and I’ll stop by to pick it up in a few days.” She turned away. “In the meantime, send a message the next time someone ends up dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When she returned to Elidor’s house, Ivana didn’t immediately go inside. Instead, she came at it from a back way and now crouched in the shadows of the alley across from the house, her eyes trained on the front door.

  She was thinking.

  Going over everything she knew, everything she had learned. There was one glaring omission in her knowledge.

  Why? What was his goal? What was his motive?

  He had permission to kill. It made no sense that he was doing it to satisfy mere bloodlust.

  No, it had to do with her—but what? After all, if he had the desire to kill or hurt her, he had had ample opportunity. Not merely over the past few years she had lived with him, but even in the past few weeks since the murders had begun.

  Her original, almost flippant theory that he had snapped and gone on a murderous rampage didn’t make sense. The kills were evenly timed. The crime scene she had just investigated had been remarkably tidy. And the detailed attention to her own past was too meticulously planned.

  There was no evidence that he had lost control of himself in any way other than committing murders unrelated to a sanctioned job.

  She clenched and unclenched a fist. Did she go to Llyr? Would he think she was crazy?

  Or did she confront Elidor? Was that what he wanted? Was that why he’d left such an obvious trail? And to what end?

  He could have taken the job himself and sent the Watch on a wild goose chase while he laid plans for escape. Instead, he’d given it to her.

  He had to have had a reason for that. She didn’t know what it was. That was perhaps the most chilling realization of all.

  Confronting him was dangerous—doubly so when she didn’t understand his motivations. And she still wasn’t sure she could best him in a face-to-face conflict. But she was certain that if she ran, he would come after her.

  No, if all of this was going to lead to him coming after her anyway, she’d rather it be on her terms than his. The best option was probably to go inside, play innocent, and see what happened.

  She drew her dagger under her cloak, just in case, and crossed the street.

  The house was dark and silent. Ivana stood on the threshold after she had closed the door, straining her senses for any hint of another presence in the house.

  Nothing.

  She removed her boots.

  Still nothing.

  She padded down the hall and stopped in front of his study door. No light shone from underneath, but she knocked anyway. “Elidor?”

  No response, and a thorough search of his study and then the rest of the house confirmed that he wasn’t there.

  The possibility that he might not even be home hadn’t crossed her mind.

  That meant he knew exactly where she was likely to be, and that any move would be on his terms.

  She rolled her shoulders to release the tension she could feel building there. Well. At least she could use the time to make some plans.

  And to make plans, it wouldn’t hurt to do some research.

  Seven days later, Elidor was still mysteriously absent. Ivana was beginning to wonder if he was planning on coming home at all.

  Even so, she had made herself scarce during the day. At night, she locked her bedroom door, the hinges of which she had stripped clean of any oil. It now shrieked every time it opened. Never had she been so glad that her room did not have a window.

  She also kept her dagger on her at all times.

  Today, seven days since the last murder, she was expecting a message from Xathal, so she stayed in. She sat at the dining room table, which was covered in reports, books, illustrations—anything she could get her hands on to try to make sense of the pattern, or lack thereof.

  She sat in Elidor’s chair, her back to the wall, where she could see both doors and the window.

  She glanced up at the hall door, certain she would see Elidor’s profile appear in it at any moment.

  It remained empty.

  She sighed and went back to her books.

  The whole string of murders had started normally. The Butc
her of Arlana, for instance…

  She pushed aside one stack of papers to an open book and turned it to look at the facing pages again.

  Fourteen women dead before they caught him. All young—between sixteen and twenty years old or thereabouts, though the region didn’t seem to matter. In that case, they had thought at first they’d been dealing with a kidnapper, because the women had disappeared—no bodies. It hadn’t been until the last brave and enterprising woman had left behind clues on the way to her death that the authorities had found him—and the slaughterhouse he had kept the bodies strung up in like meat ready to go to the market, earning him his name.

  Ivana flipped a few pages to her next bookmark. And then there was The Painter, the killer Xathal had apparently caught, though the book didn’t use his name. Women, again, but all Fuilynian. Their pale white skin made a gruesome canvas for his impressive paintings, all done with his victims’ own blood. He had been caught when a woman involved with the investigation had volunteered to be bait. Fortunately, they had caught him. Unfortunately, she hadn’t survived.

  Ivana wrinkled her nose and pushed aside the book.

  She had lost track of the number of people she had assassinated by this point. Some deaths had been bloodless. Some hadn’t. But they had all been efficient. She was a tool in the hands of her Conclave masters. A sword, as Elidor had once put it.

  But this was different. She was thankful, at least, that Elidor had thus far been a bit more conventional in his methods. No butchering or painting here. Even she, who had seen and caused so much death, couldn’t help but feel a bit disturbed at such brutal and twisted carnage.

  She supposed that meant that despite everything, she had still retained some semblance of her humanity.

  But none of this helped her. It might not matter in the end, but then again, it might. She wanted to know why he was doing what he was doing, and none of these killers’ apparent motives fit.

  The dining room door creaked.

  She had cleaned that one, too.

  She didn’t look up right away. She wanted to play this carefully. Project as unconcerned of an air, as possible, until she knew where he stood.