The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One (38 page)

She ran a gentle hand between the woman’s thighs, tracing the same path as a dozen customers, a dozen lovers. But this time
there was no response, no passion real or feigned. Only stiffening muscles and cold flesh.

No wounds, no bruises. No sign of rape. No violation but that of the blade.

“What am I—” She paused. On the inside of the left leg, near the crease of the groin, she touched a narrow ridge of scar tissue.
More than one. She pressed against stiff flesh to get a better look. Old marks, healed and scarred long ago. Teeth marks.
She found the same scars on the other leg, some more recent.

Very sharp teeth. Isyllt shivered; she knew what such bites felt like.

“Do you think this had anything to do with her death?” She kept looking but found no fresh wounds.

“Maybe.” Khelséa reached into an inside pocket of her coat and pulled out a folded piece of silk. “But this is why I called
you.”

Isyllt stretched across the dead woman and took the cloth; something small and hard was hidden in its folds. She recognized
the shape of a ring before she finished unwrapping it.

A heavy band of gold, skillfully wrought, set with a sapphire the size of a woman’s thumbnail. A rampant griffin etched the
stone, tiny but detailed. A master’s work. A royal work.

“Where was this?” A knot colder than the room drew tight in her stomach.

“Sewn inside her camisole, clumsy new stitches. Her purse was missing.”

A royal signet in a dead whore’s clothes. Isyllt blew a sharp breath through her nose. “How many know?”

“Only me and my autopsist.” Khelséa snorted. “You think I’d wave something like this in front of the constables?”

Isyllt stared at the ring. A woman’s ring, but no woman alive had the right to wear it. She looked down at the body. A sliver
of blue iris showed beneath half-closed lids, already milky. “What was her name?”

“Forsythia.”

Not a real name—at least she hoped it wasn’t. Not many mothers branded their daughters with a prostitute’s name at birth.

Isyllt dipped a finger into the gaping wound, licked off coagulated blood and fluids. Khelséa grimaced theatrically, but the
captain’s nerves and stomach were hard to upset.

Cold jellied blood, bittersweet and thin with rainwater. No trace of illness or taint, nothing deadly save for the quantity
spilled. The taste coated Isyllt’s tongue.

“Forsythia. Are you there?”

No answer, not even a shiver. Isyllt listened till her ears rang, but heard nothing. Her power could raise the corpse off
its cold table and dance it around the room, but no ghost lingered to answer her questions. She sighed. “A clean crossing.
They never stay when you need them to. She might be wherever she was killed, though.” She nibbled the last speck of blood
from under her fingernail.

Gently she pushed back Forsythia’s kohl-smeared eyelids.
Rain
, she wondered briefly, looking at the ashen streaks,
or did you have time for tears?
Her reflection stared back from death-pearled eyes. She rested her fingers on the woman’s temples, thumbs on her cheekbones;
the black leather glove on her left hand was stark against pale skin. The woman’s soul was gone, lost on the other side of
the mirror, but memories still lingered in her eyes.

Isyllt hoped for the killer’s face, but instead she saw a sunset. Clouds glowed pink and orange as the sun sank behind the
ragged skyline of Oldtown, the colors burned into Forsythia’s mind. The last thing she saw was that jeweled sky fading into
dusk, then a sudden pressure of hands and blackness. Much too quick for death, even as quick a death as this must have been.

Isyllt sighed and looked away, the colors of memory fading into the white and green of the mortuary. “She was grabbed off
the street, somewhere in Oldtown. Maybe the Garden.” Death must have come not long afterward; she hoped the woman hadn’t suffered
much. “What else do you know?”

“Nothing. There was nothing but rain in the alley, and no one saw anything.” Khelséa rolled her eyes. “No one ever sees anything.”
She pushed away from the wall, shaking back her long black braids. “Do you have any magic tricks for me?”

“Nothing entertaining.” Isyllt turned toward the back of the room, where tables and benches were set up for students and investigators.
“Will you bring me gloves and surgical spirits? And a dissection plate.”

The captain opened a cabinet against the wall and removed thin cotton examiner’s gloves, a bottle, and a well-scrubbed tin
tray. “What are you doing?”

“Testing for contagion. Someone touched this before she did.” She sat down, stripping off her left glove. Her scarred and
claw-curled hand, bandaged or gloved for nearly two years, was corpse-white beneath. She tried to ignore it as she scrubbed
her hands with cold spirits; she was mostly comfortable with only seven working fingers by now. She wiped down the tray as
well, then tugged on the white gloves and set the ring on the tin. Already contaminated, of course, but every little bit helped.
It was much easier to test for transference—be it of skin, hair, blood, or energy—with a suspect at hand, but she could also
tune the ring to react to the presence of anyone who had handled it recently, and even seek the person out, at close enough
range.

Closing her eyes against the bitter-sharp alcohol fumes, she touched the ring lightly. She could have managed a more sterile
space in her own workroom, but this would serve. Tendrils of magic wrapped around the gold, resonated through the stone. Mages
used sapphires and other such gems to hold energy—the cut and clarity of this one made it ideal for storing spells.

The taste of the spirits crept over her tongue, stinging her palate as it sharpened the spell. Alcohol, like her magic, was
clean of living things, anathema even to disease and crawling necrophages. Against its stark sterility, any contagion should
shine clear.

Isyllt opened her eyes and leaned back, wrinkling her nose at the mingled stink of spirits and roses and death. Witchlight
glimmered in the sapphire’s crystalline depths, then faded into blue. “There. Let’s test it.” She stripped off the cotton
gloves and touched the ring with her bare hand. The light flared again briefly at the familiar skin, and the spell shivered
in her head. She let the essence of the alcohol erase the contamination, and it stilled again.

“Now you,” she said, holding the ring out to Khelséa. Another shiver and flare at the captain’s touch, and again she let the
memory of it vanish. Now the stone should react only to whoever had held it before Forsythia. She found a spare silver chain
in the exorcist’s kit in her pocket, and slid the ring under her shirt. It settled cold between her breasts, warming slowly
between cloth and skin.

“Do you need anything else?” Khelséa asked.

Isyllt ran a hand over her face. “A night’s sleep. Other than that, no. I’ll tread lightly. More vigils hanging around would
only attract attention.”

Khelséa snorted and tugged her orange coat straight. At least her dark skin let her wear the Vigiles’ distinctive shade well.
“What’s one more death in Oldtown, after all?”

“Eight for an obol.” Their boots echoed in unison as they started for the stairs, leaving the dead woman on her slab.

Outside, the night smelled of autumn rain, and wet stone and cobbles glistened under the streetlamps. Inkstone was a quiet
neighborhood after midnight, scribes and bureaucrats long safe in bed. Shadows draped the columned facade of the Sepulcher,
hiding the faces of the owl-winged gargoyles who crouched on the roof. Isyllt felt their unblinking granite stares as she
descended the broad steps. Sentinels of the Otherworld. A carriage waited in the street, the driver half dozing, horses snorting
restlessly. Isyllt breathed deep, letting the night wash away the smell of blood and roses.

“I saw your minstrel friend in the Garden tonight,” Khelséa said with a grin. “Maybe I should take him in for questioning.”

Isyllt snorted. “Is that the only way you can start a conversation with a man?”

“Better than calling them from their tombs.” The captain unlatched the carriage door and held it open. “Let me know what you
find. I’m sure it will be interesting.”

Isyllt smiled. “This job always is.” She pulled herself into the carriage and Khelséa shut the door. The horses’ hooves clattered
against the cobbles as they carried her across the city.