Reaper

Chapter 6: Butchers' Walk

If perspective was needed on the night's first fatality, the flooded lane Fox led her to did the trick. Rain hissed, hitting hot grills under wooden awnings and dripping canvas. Wood smoke plumed, hazing the damp air, mixing with the scents of herbs and charred offal. Music, charmed out of warped wood and strung gut, threaded through rough laughter and conversation.

Butchers' Walk. A nightly carnival of macabre treats, the day's leavings fried, seared, or stewed up and served to workers coming in from fields, woods, and waterways.

Shaking the evening's rain from her coat's hood and sleeves, Ava stopped at a skewer stall, its grisly offerings a suitable cure for what gnawed at her: something beyond hunger. The curse that lived in her blood might have fed, taking whatever life crawled too close to her remains, but every time it dragged her screaming back through the Veil, it remade her hollow ... cold.

A little charred meat and gristle steadied the tremor in her hands, but did nothing to warm the brittleness of her bones.

Fox strolled over, tossing the remains of her evening snack to a wet, indignant cat hunched under a cart. "His lordship's arrived." The nymph nodded to the end of the street, where market stalls and the steaming, milling crowd gave way to saturated gloom. A single, fitful lantern sulked in the dark, lighting rain and a tall figure in black.

Ava wiped her mouth and sent the last of her meal the way of the cat. Fingers sliding to the dagger at the top of her boot, she followed Fox into the rain and ankle-deep flooding. The elf's arrival flipped nerves, but where he stood, under a derelict city gate, unsettled the food she'd eaten. If trade was the Crux's lifeblood, its inns, taverns, and markets were its organs, pumping out deals and shifting goods. But not all were healthy. 'The Gank', the northern quarter of the Trade District was one of those parts. Few nights passed without a body turning up somewhere in its flooded lanes or the swamp crawling about its boarder.

"Longbane. I trust you are refreshed." Tythorn stepped from the shadows, his cloak heavy with rain, his stride long and easy. Instead of his usual silk, he wore leather, but of the finest sort, intricately carved with leaves, flowers, and druid knots. He looked no worse for his run in with two witches. All limbs seemed intact. The lean lines of his face, framed by his cloak's dripping hood, appeared unmarred by teeth or talons.

Ava gave him a brief onceover. "And I trust you're not blood bound and hex addled." Appearing whole and healthy meant nothing when it came to curses. She knew that well enough.

Warmth flared in what had been a sober gaze as the inquisitor stopped before her. "As I said when we last parted, warden, your concern touches the heart. However, your doubts savage the ego."

The reminder of their last encounter tripped her pulse, but she wasn't about to be distracted. "Elf or not, only a fool gives a witch their blood." He had to already know this. How many rogue spellbinders had he dealt with in his work? While new to the Crux, he'd already built himself a reputation, one not based on being lax or stupid.

With another elf, her rebuke might have earned her a slap of Whym fire across the cheek. Tythorn, true to his individual nature, merely arched a brow. "Do not mistake justice for mental delinquency." He turned to his nymph lackey. "The witch still breathes?"

Fox wrinkled her nose. "Last I saw, the hag was throwing up everything but her rotted lungs. If she's able to stomach food again within the next week, she may survive. More's the pity."

Ava glanced to Tythorn, unease sliding through her belly. She had no love for Milrag; the crone used and misled the foolish and the desperate—Kasama Longbane among them. The witch had taken advantage of a weak, dying woman afraid for, then of, her cursed child. But Milrag was like an ancient, twisted oak blackened by lightning, too stubborn to fall, a seemingly eternal presence. The possibility of her death felt like an offense against nature. "What did you do to her?"