Three Parts Dead

3

The towers of Alt Coulumb dwarfed the gargantuan supply ships moored at the docks below, even as the ships themselves dwarfed the ferries that plied the Edgemont River back home.

Tara stared at those buildings, stunned. They were monuments to power. Every arch, every spire, every massy pillar proclaimed the city’s might. Even the Hidden Schools in their airy and metallic splendor hadn’t seemed so aware of their own grandiosity, or so proud of it.

It had taken armies to tear rock and metal from the earth to build Alt Coulumb, hosts of priests to beg fire from their god and twist that ore into skeleton frames. Legions broke their backs and arms and fingers piling stone on stone, melted skin and burned hair fusing steel with steel. These buildings remembered the taste of blood sacrifice, and hungered for more.

“Ah,” Ms. Kevarian said, joining Tara at the guardrail. “I missed this place. It has such … attitude.”

“You’ve worked here before, Boss?”

“Soon after the God Wars. It was less welcoming then. The Church hired us to fix a problem beyond the range of the priests’ Applied Theology.” She said that term with controlled scorn. “The whole affair was quite secret at the time, as I’m sure you can imagine. Alt Coulumb never entered the war, and Kos remained neutral, but there would have been public outcry had our involvement become known. It was hard to get office attendants, because everyone we interviewed was afraid we’d steal their souls.” One corner of her mouth crept up.

“What was the job? If it’s not a secret.”

“Oh, no. That’s been public for a while.” People swarmed the docks, dockhands loading and unloading, locals greeting passengers and haggling for the small luxuries that sailors smuggled to pad their meager wages: charms of pear wood, dyed silks, intricately woven rugs, pirate editions of the latest Iskari serial novels. Ms. Kevarian pointed to the crowd’s edge, where stood a line of figures dressed in black. No. Not dressed. Enclosed in black. Annihilated by it. Featured like unfinished statues: suggestions of eyes, a swell of nose, a hint of mouth. Hands clasped behind their backs. Mostly men, but a few women, too, each one pierced through head and heart and groin with a strand of lightning Tara doubted anyone here but Ms. Kevarian and herself could see.

“What are those?”

“Justice. They used to be the City Guard, anointed of Seril Green-Eyed, Seril Undying, the goddess upon whom Kos’s priesthood relied to keep order in the city.”

“But Seril was killed in the fifties, in the God Wars.”

“I’m glad to see you know your history. Yes. Seril and her warrior-priests rode off to battle, not caring whether Alt Coulumb followed them. She died at the hands of the King in Red, and left the city without protectors.” Ms. Kevarian took another sip of coffee. “Kos’s Church hired me, and a senior partner from the firm, to do what we could. The Blacksuits were part of the result. I met Captain Pelham on that first trip. He was still human then. As, I suppose, was I.”

They started down the ramp, followed by a pair of deckhands who carried their belongings. Tara looked about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Raz, but he had ensconced himself belowdecks. The sun was far above the horizon, and he needed his rest. Two captains, two crews, one for the night watch, one for the day—no wonder the Kell’s Bounty flourished in such a cutthroat business, despite being one of the smaller ships currently moored at Alt Coulumb’s docks.

How cutthroat was their business, after all? Tara had asked some of the sailors about Captain Pelham’s “spot of trouble,” but they evaded her questions, and when pressed they paled and drew away. Captain Davis had been no more communicative.

A driverless carriage waited at the bottom of the ramp, drawn by a black monster of a horse so huge that Tara could not imagine anyone daring to fit it to harness. It pawed the ground and fixed her with an intelligent and malicious eye.

She quickened her step and followed Ms. Kevarian into the darkness of the carriage, where they sat amid black leather and velvet curtains as their few pieces of luggage were loaded after them. When Tara closed the door, the coach rolled forward as though the crowd were vapor.

Ms. Kevarian set her mug down, steepled her fingers, and said nothing for some time.

“I’m sorry I called you a witch,” Tara said.

It took a moment for Ms. Kevarian to notice she had spoken. Even then, she did not respond.

“Boss?”

“Ms. Abernathy. I’ve wrestled with gods and demons. My ego is hardly so fragile as to be bruised by an associate’s poor choice of words. I’m thinking.”

Associate. Pride bloomed inside Tara. “Just thinking?”

“There’s never any ‘just’ about thinking, Ms. Abernathy.”

The bloom shriveled. No matter. Pride was dangerous, anyway. “What are you thinking about?”

“Strategy. We have a daunting case before us, and it has grown more complex in the last two hours.”

“You’re talking about our crash.”

“My Craft does not fail without reason. Something struck us in the air, overpowering as a god’s flight interdict, and swift enough to shred my Craft without warning. Had either of us been slow to respond, we might never have made it to shore. We were meant to die, I think, and our deaths to look like an accident. Pilot error.”

“What do we do?” Tara summoned a fragment of lightning and set it dancing between her fingertips. “Find the person who’s gunning for us?”

“Unfortunately, no. Pleasant as it would be to hunt our assailant down, I have business to attend to. And,” she said as their carriage took a sharp turn onto a side thoroughfare, “so do you.”

*

Thirty minutes later Tara stood on a cobblestone sidewalk before the double doors of a huge building. She didn’t have much experience with skyscrapers, but this one was rich by any standard, decorated with marble and gold leaf. Gargoyles glowered from its ornately adorned façade.

Deep, old grooves marred the stonework in angular patterns, like rune writing but unfamiliar to Tara. They didn’t fit the skyscraper’s stark, elegant decor, and she wondered why they had not been patched or repaired.

The brass-flashed double doors swung open when she approached, as Ms. Kevarian had told her they would. The doors were simple constructs. They checked for power, and yielded to it. Before the end of the God Wars, it was rare for a citizen of Alt Coulumb to possess much Craft. This building hadn’t changed its locks since. Quaint.

Tara advanced over the floor’s marble tiles, her gaze fixed upon the lifts at the far end of the hallway. The walls were lined with mirrors, the building’s second line of defense. If she caught her own eye in the glass, she would stand entranced by her reflection until security arrived. If she looked into the mirrors but not at herself, she might simply wander through their surface and never be seen again in the real world, unless the building sent someone to fetch her back.

She reached the lift without incident, stepped inside, turned the dial to the forty-seventh floor, and pressed the GO button. The doors rolled closed, leaving her trapped in a shining brass box. With a lurch, the entire assembly began to rise.

She schooled herself for her encounter with Judge Cabot. This would be her first professional meeting as a full-fledged Craftswoman, and her chance to make a good impression in Alt Coulumb. She ignored the nervous tremor in her chest. “Your Honor,” she said to the walls of the empty lift. Good. Lead off strong and with respect. “Elayne Kevarian of the firm Kelethras, Albrecht, and—” No. Not quite. Don’t be too arrogant, Ms. Kevarian had said. Step in, pay your respects. Be direct and businesslike. “Elayne Kevarian sent me to tell you she has agreed to represent the Clergy of Kos Everburning, and wishes to speak with you at your convenience.”

She wondered who this Judge was, and how well Ms. Kevarian knew him. A city the size of Alt Coulumb had many lesser Judges, the better to help Craftsmen coordinate the reanimation of people, animals, and great Concerns, but this case … This case was beyond any Craft Tara had ever expected to touch.

The thought made her heart race with excitement.

The engine driving this lift ran on steam pressure, steam produced from water by heat. Alt Coulumb’s generators derived that heat not from felled trees or the black magic oils of the ancient dead, but from the grace of a god who, ages ago, took the people of this twist of coastline as his own.

If Ms. Kevarian was to be believed, that god was dead. His gifts of fire and heat would persist until the dark of the moon, when debts resolve and prices fall due. Then, they would fade. Tara stood in a metal box dangling by a thin cord over a thirty-story drop, and the other end of that cord was held by the promise of a ghost.

Had Tara not known better, she would have been unnerved.

The lift rocked to a halt, and its doors rolled open.

Three Blacksuits stood in the ornate lobby on the gold-thread Skeldic rug: two male, one female. Light shone through the crystal ceiling off their molten obsidian skin. Tara checked an indrawn breath when she saw them. Justice’s minions. That was what Ms. Kevarian had called them, back at the dock.

She told herself to relax. She had done nothing wrong.

Of course, in her experience, this rarely meant one had nothing to fear from the authorities. Forcing a fog of bad memories aside, she stepped into the lobby, chin high and hands clasped primly before her. She had changed on the Kell’s Bounty from her bedraggled sea-soaked clothes into her second, and far more formal suit, an executioner’s black against her nut-brown skin. She was glad of the suit’s severity as three blank reflective faces confronted her. She returned their stare.

“I want to speak with Judge Cabot.”

Judge Cabot is not available. The figures’ lips did not move, but Tara heard three voices nevertheless, or the nightmare echoes of three voices, not-quite-sounds on the edge of hearing. What business did you have with him?

“I…” Dammit, she would not be quelled by a trio of professional security nightmares. Steel yourself, woman, and get on with it. You’re not a farm girl come to beg for favors. You have a purpose here. “I’m a Craftswoman from the firm Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, here to speak with Judge Cabot. Do you know when he will return?”

Yes. They raised their faces toward the skylight with a unity even more unsettling than their voices. He will return when the moon is broken and the land fades, when the waters rise and burn to steam, when the stars fall and the Everburning Lord rises.

“Ah.” She paused, thinking. “He’s dead.”

As of this morning.

She heard a high-pitched and prolonged scream behind the double doors that led into Cabot’s apartment. “Who’s that?”

The butler.

She waited.

He discovered the body, and thus is likely to be involved. We are ascertaining the details of the event.

Discovered the body? Involved? “You think Cabot was murdered.”

It is likely. Considering the condition of the body.

Another scream. This one broke into deep, powerful sobs.

“Sounds like it hurts, this ‘ascertaining.’”

Most do not find it pleasant, but Justice must be served. After we are done, we will ease his memory of the pain.

“Tidy.”

Economical. Pain is a valuable resource, and should be used sparingly.

Tara crossed her arms and looked from one to the next to the last. Murder. Because Judge Cabot was involved in a perfectly routine, if large-scale, Craft proceeding?

If she returned to Ms. Kevarian with this scrap of information, she’d be sent right back to learn more. Besides, she was on the scent.

“Listen. My boss wants me to see Judge Cabot. How do I know he’s not still alive and telling you to lie to keep me out?”

What purpose would that serve?

“How should I know? I can’t go back to my boss empty-handed. She’d use my skin for shadow puppets, and if I was lucky she’d let me die first, and then she’d come looking for whoever stood in my way.”

That is unfortunate for you.

“My point is, it will take a lot more than some screams to convince me you’ve really got a murder scene here.”

You believe we would lie?

“I’m new in town. I see a trio of moving statues and I don’t know what to expect.”

We are Justice. We have rules.

This wasn’t working. Change tactic. They like rules, do they? “What are your rules, then?”

The just heart is lighter than a feather. They raised their faces heavenward again. We weigh hearts.

“Ah.”

The Blacksuits seemed comfortable with silence. The repeated cries from the Judge’s apartment did not appear to perturb them, either.

“There are other rules, right?”

The Book of Regulations is twenty pages long.

“Not so bad.”

Appendix A is three thousand one hundred twelve. Pause. We will not repeat them aloud. Copies are on public display at the Temple of Justice as a service to the City.

She tried to press past them as they spoke, but they moved, more like flowing lava than people, to block her way.

We are not permitted to let you pass. Our examination of the scene is incomplete.

Tara was about to give up and storm off, cursing cities and law enforcement and Elayne Kevarian for good measure. She turned around and raised her foot. Had she set it down, the momentum of that step would have carried her to the street and on with the rest of her life.

She turned back to the sentinels.

“You’re examining the body?”

Yes.

“You know how to do that?”

We are waiting for experts.

“I’m an expert.”

They said nothing.

“I’m a Craftswoman. A graduate of the Hidden Schools. I’m as competent to judge the state of a corpse as anyone in the City.”

You are not approved by the Council of Justice, nor certified as an examiner.

“The examiner isn’t here, though, is she? I am. Every minute you spend waiting in the foyer, you lose valuable information. Evidence decays faster than the corpse, and your killer is racing to cover her tracks.”

The information of which you speak will be gathered by the proper authorities.

Tara smirked. “What proper authorities?” She extended one arm, palm up, and pulled back her sleeve with the other hand. At first, there was no way to tell if the Blacksuits were looking, their pupils invisible beneath their ebon shells, but they turned toward her when the sunlight began to die. Tara’s forearm had been brown and unmarked when she pulled up her sleeve, but as shadows deepened and the world went gray, traces of silver light appeared on her skin.

Her glyphs resembled spiderwebs laid by machine. Precise lines wove around her arm, spirals devouring spirals, hermetic diagrams inscribed with the script of half a dozen languages, most of them dead. A repeated symbol interrupted this pattern along the course of her radial artery: circle, nested within triangle, within circle, the mark of the Hidden Schools. The glyphs’ light was strong enough to cast shadows.

The Blacksuits retreated a fraction of a step.

“I’ve come a long way,” Tara said. “I can help. Now, please, let me inside.”

*

She nearly threw up when she saw the body, but she wasn’t about to give her Blacksuit escort the satisfaction. Blasted thing would probably lock her up for vomiting all over a crime scene.

Judge Cabot had been what an older century would have called a portly man, the kind who hit his second chin at the age of twenty-nine and decided there was no point going back. His figure was—had been—toroidal, narrow shoulders broadening to a wide chest and a wider belly before tapering to inverse—cone thighs, thin, strong calves, and eight-inch feet. Birthmarks dotted his shoulders and arms, and he had a nasty scar on his right hip from some accident or botched attempt at medicine. His body was pallid, and not particularly hairy.

Tara saw all this because Judge Cabot’s robe and dressing gown had been torn away, along with much of his flesh. He lay in pieces on the garden floor, in a pool of his own blood. The part of her that was her father’s daughter quailed and hid in a far corner of her mind. What remained was a consummate professional. At least, that’s what she told herself.

“What do you see?” she asked the Blacksuit.

It is immaterial. We are interested in your observations.

The initial trio of Blacksuits had divided, one to watch the foyer, and two to escort her. The second split off, presumably to help interrogate the butler, as they crossed the oak-paneled sitting room. The third brought Tara through a glass door into a rooftop garden of fluorescent flowers and miniature date palms. Elaborate Craft focused sunlight and trapped humidity to transform the roof into a private rainforest. The effect was not perfect—the air had the proper sticky weight, but there weren’t enough flies. In a true jungle, that congealing red puddle would be writhing with vampiric vermin.

Here there was only the blood. And the limbs. And the face.

The Blacksuit stood ten feet back, near the door, watching. It was a woman, when it wasn’t working.

What can you tell us?

Tara stepped gingerly around the blood pool. At its edge she saw ceramic fragments, and a discoloration in the deep red tide. He had been drinking tea. And now he was dead. No. Focus on the details, not the horror. This was just another cadaver, like any of the others she had studied back at the Hidden Schools.

Ms. Kevarian had intended Tara’s visit to the Judge as a test, a chance to demonstrate her ability to work alone. It could still fulfill that purpose.

The smaller shards of clay were covered with dried or drying blood; Cabot’s head rested atop one piece. This much the Blacksuits almost certainly knew: he had been surprised, dropped the cup, and fallen.

There was no bruising, and no foreign blood or dirt or hair beneath Cabot’s nails, though his fingers were mangled and broken. He hadn’t put up a fight. Whatever happened to him happened fast.

The body had a sharp, hot silver smell beneath the stench of spoiling meat.

“How were you contacted?”

Cabot had special wards to notify Justice in the event of his death, and give us an image of his body. Pause. Also, the butler summoned us.

“Does your image show who did this?”

We have suspects.

Tara laced her fingers together. “Someone pulled Cabot’s spine out of his back, through the skin. Death should have been instantaneous, but whatever did this wanted him alive.” She pointed to the discs of bone arranged in a rough circle around the body, like poker chips strewn on a table. “The corpse has been ritualistically encircled by its spinal vertebrae. Necromancers use a more advanced version of the same technique to bind spirits. Doctors use it, too, to keep the patient alive on the operating table. Bone is a powerful focus, especially if it’s your own. With the Judge’s own spine, even an amateur Craftsman could have kept him alive and sane for … I’d guess a minute. If they only wanted to keep his soul bound to his body, and didn’t care about his sanity, it could have lasted longer. Much longer.” It would have felt longer still to Cabot. The heart kept time in the human body. Without its beat thoughts elongated, stretched, changed. She had stopped her own heart as an experiment back at school, under close observation, keeping her brain alive the entire time. For Cabot, seconds of agony would have felt like hours.

Stay professional. Keep your breakfast where it should be, and your voice level.

The Blacksuit cocked her head to one side. Is there any way to call him back?

Tara continued her slow revolution around the corpse. “The body’s a complicated system. Bringing someone back requires the corpse have enough order to build upon, and there’s hardly any of Cabot left. Even if we had the proper equipment to sift his memories, we’d need the organs that bear the imprints of sense experience. The eyes have burst. The tongue, here, well. The brain, missing out the back of the skull. The spine you see, and the heart is gone entirely.” She looked up at the Blacksuit. “Did you really think it was possible he died of natural causes?”

These are strange days. We have had to widen the definition of the word “natural” six times in the last decade.

“Well, whoever did this was a poor student of the Craft, otherwise she wouldn’t have needed the bones—only beginners use such a strong physical focus for something this simple—but she knows enough to keep the dead from talking. Which brings me to another oddity. The body is pristine, or at least no more rotten than it ought to be based on time of death. The Craft used to bind his soul should have accelerated decay.” There was that scent again, the urgent tang of hot silver. She breathed it in, and turned from the body to the thick vegetation. “Do you mind if I look around the garden? The murderer could have hidden the missing organs nearby. Keeping them out of our hands for an hour would spoil them. Our killer needn’t have run through the city in broad daylight with a bleeding heart clenched in her fist.”

I will remain to guard the corpse.

Tara walked off between the looming sunflowers. The garden growth was thick, but not thick enough to dampen all sound. With a shout, she could call the Blacksuit to her.

It was indeed possible that the murderer, whoever, whatever she was, hid Cabot’s heart somewhere nearby. She could also have burned the heart to ash and mixed it with the blood as an additional focus for her ritual. But searching for the heart gave Tara a plausible excuse to investigate without supervision.

The burnt silver smell haunted the garden. She traced it to a point near the terrace’s corner, between a trellis of ivy and a carefully cultivated orchid. Approaching the edge, Tara reached to her heart and drew her knife.

The odor’s source was not hidden behind the trellis, and the orchid provided no cover. Elsewhere in the rooftop garden, vines had been strung overhead to blot out the sky, but here she looked up and saw nothing but clouds. No ambush would come from above.

She leaned over the roof’s edge. Far below ran the street, full of tiny people and tiny carriages. Gargoyles leered at the passersby. At ground level, the carvings were common monsters, sharp-nosed and snaggle-toothed, but as the building rose, their complexity grew. The sharp gouges Tara had seen from below marred the intricate artwork.

The gargoyles one floor beneath Cabot’s penthouse seemed almost alive. To her right loomed a giant with three eyes and a massive tusked maw, each of his six arms clutching a different weapon. To her left stood a similar statue, and clinging to the ledge beside that another, in a different style. The first two were built from planes and angles, while this last gargoyle’s sculptor had carved the curves of its hunched back and powerful torso with an anatomist’s devotion. It was limbed as a man, save for two folded leathery wings and a long tail. A snarl contorted its gruesome, hook-beaked face. The creature was bent like a drawn bow, ready to fly.

Statues. The smell was strongest here, burning in her nostrils. Tara tightened her grip on her knife, and pondered.

This building had been built to a careful pattern, architects and artists weighing each decoration against every other. Nothing was accidental or asymmetrical save for the strange rune carvings, which did not seem part of the original design. Yet to her right there was a single gargoyle, and to her left—

As she turned to look, something long and sharp pressed against her throat, the point dimpling her skin. She swallowed, involuntarily, and her skin almost gave.

“Scream,” said a low voice like crushed rock, “and you die.”

It was amazing, she thought for the second time that day, how imminent death focused the mind.

She remained still and quiet with the gargoyle’s claw at her throat, to show she would not call for help. When he didn’t say anything further, she whispered, “There’s no need to kill me.”

“There is if you scream.”

“What would my death accomplish if I did? As soon as they know you’re here, they’ll be after you, and they move fast.”

“So do I.”

She had to admit that. He was fast, and quiet. She hadn’t heard him climb onto the roof and approach her, for all his bulk. “Killing me will convince them you killed Judge Cabot. No evidence will stand against your murder of an innocent while fleeing the scene of the crime. The Blacksuits will track you to the ends of the earth. They’re tireless.” His claw twitched against her throat. “And you’re tired already.”

“Quiet.”

“How long have you been hanging off this building? Hiding from them? Hoping they couldn’t smell you the way I can?”

“Stop.”

“What’s your name?”

“I am a Guardian.”

She heard the capital letter. “I’m not interested in your title,” she said, as conversationally as she could manage. “I asked you to tell me your name. Because if I’m going to help you get out of this alive, we should get to know each other.”

His breath should have been hot on the back of her neck, but he did not breathe. One cannot breathe with lungs of stone. She fought to control her pounding heart.

“You need my help,” she said. “You’re obviously innocent.”

“What?”

Keep him talking, Tara thought. If you’re wrong, and you’re seldom wrong, then you want him to think you’re on his side. If you’re right, he wants to believe you. Recite the facts. Her throat was dry. Her breath came short. Dammit, be calm. Cool as crystal, as ice. Cool as Ms. Kevarian. “Whoever killed Cabot planned the murder well. Knew how to do it without leaving traces someone like me could follow. The murderer kept Cabot alive, more or less, until you came. You broke that pretty little bone circle, Cabot’s spirit left his body, and bam, his wards went off and the Blacksuits had a nice picture of you looming over his corpse, talons out. It won’t even matter if they were bloody.”

The pressure against her throat eased.

Ms. Abernathy?

The Blacksuits were coming. She had to work fast.

Tara turned around. The claw did not leave her neck. The gargoyle stood before her, seven and a half feet of silver-gray stone bowed forward until his face was level with her own. Furled wings rose like twin mountains from his back. His open eyes were emerald green and large—at least three times as big as hers, eyes the size of billiard balls. She focused on the eyes because otherwise she would focus on his hooked, toothed beak.

“Listen. Is there any way you can make yourself less threatening? More human?”

“They might recognize me. I looked human earlier, when I ran from them.”

“Did they see you up close?”

“No.”

“Fine. I’ll deal with that. Just try to be a little less with the huge and monstrous, please?”

There came a horrid twisting, and an inrush of air. The creature collapsed into himself, passing through a stomach-churning stage where he was emphatically not gargoyle, but not human either. Strands of muscle showed through the broken stone, which melted into yielding, warm flesh.

A young man stood before her, strong, good chin, ripped clothes, ripped chest. His eyes remained green as gems.

Tara’s eyebrows floated upward of their own accord.

“What?” the gargoyle said.

“You’re…”

“A monster?”

“I was going to go for cute.”

Ms. Abernathy? Are you well? Again the shout scraped across her soul.

“Thanks?”

“Don’t thank me. That makes it harder.”

He opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but before he could speak, before he could react with all that mind-numbing speed and strength, she drove her knife deep into his stomach. It entered with a sizzling of seared flesh. His mouth opened in a silent gasp.

As she pulled the knife up and out, his body was already healing. With a swipe of her mind she took that power from him. He started to turn himself to stone, but the glyphs on her left arm sparked silver as she stopped him. The plan relied on him looking human: no swift healing, no claws, no rocky skin. His blood would have stained her clothes, but a wave of heat surrounded her and turned that blood to vapor.

She’d chosen her target well, and her depth. Missed the intestines and vital organs but nicked a few arteries going in, not so bad that he’d bleed out in minutes, but bad enough. He went slack, and fell free of her blade.

She knelt beside him and passed the knife to her left hand. The glyph-rings on her fingers, the spider on her palm, sparked silver as the blade faded into them. Next came the hard part. She framed his face with her fingertips and tightened her grip. Her nails pressed into flesh, and her Craft pressed deeper.

She twisted her wrist and peeled his face away. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Behind, she left a smooth, unbroken pane of skin.

Why do this? Why get involved? Save that someone had tried to kill her before breakfast, and someone else apparently succeeded at killing Judge Cabot. Two attacks in one morning, both on people connected with the case. Tara needed to know more, and she had little confidence in these Blacksuits and their Justice.

Holding the face in her left hand, she reached into her purse with her right and produced a black, leather-bound book, cover scrawled with silver. She stuck the face, carefully folded, between pages 110 and 111. Click went the latch, then back in her shoulder bag.

She had little power left. Enough to make a pass over the bleeding, faceless body and wipe away the miniscule traces of her Craft. Add to that a light ward against discovery, strong enough to block normal sight, but weak enough that it would never fool a Craftswoman.

Ms. Abernathy?

She stood, stepped back from the body, brushed a stray lock of hair into place, and squeezed her fists tight. Her nails bit into her palms, and she screamed.

*

The Blacksuits weren’t the individuals Tara would have chosen to comfort a person who had discovered a faceless body. If she had been telling the truth, and indeed stumbled upon a wounded, comatose man while wandering through the garden, their precise questions would have driven her to hysterics. As it was, after she staunched the gargoyle’s bleeding and bound his wound Tara felt compelled to hyperventilate, sit down in Cabot’s parlor, and ask for a strong cup of tea.

What might have happened to this young man?

“I almost tripped over him, by all the gods. Couldn’t have seen him if not for the Craft. I mean … Shit. I think … Maybe he was here. Talking to Cabot? Maybe whoever killed Cabot didn’t notice him at first?”

Why not kill him in the same way?

“Not enough time. Oh. Thank you. Tea. Maybe not enough power. We’re dealing with an amateur here—little skill, less soulstuff to work with than a full Craftswoman. Easier this way. Stab him, take his face, run.”

What can we do?

“Not much. Steal the face, steal the mind. The wound will recover, but you won’t get any testimony from him. On the plus side, once stolen, the face is almost impossible to destroy. Neither half can live without the other, but they can’t die, either. Keep his body safe, and you might find the face if you look hard enough.

“Of course I’ll be available to answer questions. I don’t know where we’ll be staying. You can reach my boss or me through the Sanctum of Kos Everburning. I assume you know the—

“Yes. Absolutely.”

Heart pounding, she reached the street, hand in the air and a gargoyle’s face in her shoulder bag. It had been an odd couple of hours, and she had a feeling that, before the week was out, her life would grow stranger still.

But she could deal with strange. She was starting to like the big city.

“Taxi!”