The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 20: The Unworthy, Part 5

 Carala was brimming with questions when they stepped out from the cool comfort of the Madrenite hospice back into the streets of Vilais, some regarding Ammas's tactics in revealing themselves; some about his mercy for the witch-finder; some about her own behavior. She was not used to speaking so magisterially; was not used to tossing about proclamations about the power of the Malachite Throne when she knew perfectly well she would never take her place on it, and she wondered if it were the she-wolf within her setting a paw out into the world before her time. But most of all she wanted to talk about Sarai; to beg for his assurance if she had to that he would help her.

Yet Ammas had no time for any of it. Rapidly he led her through Vilais's streets, cursing his lack of knowledge of the city, stopping at stalls and guardsmen alike to ask how close they were to Barrow Street. The sun shone down on them cheerfully, morning slowly waning into noontime, and she thought she understood his urgency. Moonrise would come sooner than either of them would like.

Abruptly Ammas stopped dead in his tracks, laying a hand on Carala's shoulder and leaning in close to whisper in her ear. A pleasurable thrill ran up and down her spine: she had never realized before quite how appealing Ammas's scent was. "Look," he murmured, pointing down the street. Amid the tavern signs and business shingles dangling from hooks and posts, far down on the left side of the street hung an oval plaque bearing a symbol she knew well: winged feet. Slowly she nodded. "Can you smell them, Carala? Are they close?"

Lightly she stepped away from Ammas, out of the radius of his enticing scent, and sniffed at the air, her nostrils flaring. Ammas watched her closely, amazed to see the wolf lurking in her movements. Of all his traveling companions, only Vos rivaled her for physical grace -- he would not have been surprised to learn how fair a dancer she was -- but now, with the brightness of the white moon so near, there was something almost preternatural about the way her limbs and body moved in harmony with each other. Almost it made him think of that absurd tiger-dancer at the Four Winds; the one who had snarled and hurled a chair at him when he laughingly (drunkenly, if he were to be perfectly honest) told her that if she were a chieftainess-in-exile then he was the Most Holy and Eternal Sultan.

Then the vision of perfect physical grace broke apart: Carala's eyes widened in horror and she clapped a hand to her mouth. Turning aside she fell to her knees, gagging, nearly retching. Ammas rushed to her side, placing a soothing hand on the back of her neck. "Carala. Speak to me, what is it? Have you scented them?"

Slowly she wiped her mouth on the back of one hand. "They were here," she said in a low, rasping voice quite unlike her usual lilt. The amber in her eyes had almost wholly consumed her irises, and that clean woodland scent drifted in Ammas's nostrils like a maddeningly compelling perfume. "I do not know how many. That boy's story, three, I could believe that. They are not here now. But Ammas," she turned those wolf eyes toward him, and in them he saw not hunger but terror. "There is death here, Ammas -- meat, rotting meat -- "

Ammas gazed down the street, his jaw clenched. One hand went to the hilt of his dagger. "All right, then," he muttered. "Stay close to me."

The Swiftfoot building was tall and narrow, stretching far away from the edge of the street, looking more like a warehouse than an office. The closer they got to it the more Carala blanched, holding a sleeve to her nose. Tradesmen and merchants, travelers and local folk hurried by in the street, blithely unaware of whatever it was Carala could scent lurking within. The windows were small and flyspecked, secretive and brooding. That wasn't unusual for a carting company -- it would do no good to invite thieves in the night with welcoming picture windows -- but Ammas found it foreboding nonetheless. 

Casually he tried the main office door, but found it securely locked. "Follow," he murmured to Carala. Under other circumstances he might have let her wait outside, if the odor was so troubling to her, but he feared both ambush and her own succumbing to the wolf inside should things somehow go awry.

A narrow alley ran the length of the Swiftfoot building, and they passed into it unremarked by passersby. Here they found a set of double doors, perhaps meant to give access to the alley in the event the warehouse was overflowing. With his twinhooks Ammas sprung the padlock easily. Drawing his dagger, he kicked the door in, though he suspected no one would meet this challenge.

"Merciful gods," he murmured. The offices were an abbatoir. Blood was splashed everywhere in crazed patterns. A series of writing desks were arranged in a rough circle under a crude iron chandelier; past those desks and immediately to Ammas's left the office gave way to the warehouse. It stood mostly empty, a few dozen crates of various sizes littering the floor here and there. But it was the bodies he noticed first. Carala uttered a low moan, under which Ammas was quite sure he heard a rough, anxious growling sound. One hand clutched his shoulder. "Stay close," he whispered again. His own voice was not entirely steady.

They found the witch-finders easily enough. Booted feet jutted from one of the crates, four of them, all at sickening angles to each other. Their robes, drenched in blood though they might have been, were still recognizable as the lighter-hued forgeries of cursewright robes they were. Ammas supposed Kupper must have been the one with the black rank-cord wrapped around one shoulder. Certainly there was nothing recognizable in their faces.

But theirs were not the only bodies. Half a dozen more were strewn across the office portion of the building, all savagely ripped apart. Throats had been torn out. Torsos had been clawed open. One headless body lolled yards away from a mutilated head with a slack, shocked expression on its face. In the center of the circle of desks an especially stout figure had been arranged as if being put on display. One arm had been torn from its socket and sprawled across its thighs. The face, perhaps ruddy when blood had flowed to it rather than from it, scowled thunderously, some trace of fury lingering in its glazed and dead eyes. On its naked chest was scrawled bloody writing.

The smell, though overpowering to Carala, was somewhat fainter and not so fetid in Ammas's own nose, and he guessed this massacre could not have happened more than two days before. Perhaps the wolves who had done this had shown up at the door in the middle of the night with Myrdin's companions slung across their shoulders, then set to work killing these others. "Keep back if you must," Ammas murmured to Carala, slowly approaching the sprawled figure, his dagger arrayed against his forearm.

Carala nodded, turning her eyes from the awful sight of these murdered men. The wolf inside her paced restlessly, not seeming to know how to react to this -- excitement? Disgust at the waste of fresh meat? Envy? None of it was pleasant. Her eyes rested on one of the desks that was free of blood, and on the stack of folio-bound books that rested there. Curiously, she turned back the cover. To her surprise, the title was a familiar one.

Ammas, meanwhile, had crouched by the body, looking for some clue to its identity. The bloody writing on its pallid chest was difficult to make out, and so he left that for the moment. The man carried no token, no distinctive weapon, no bundles of coin or receipts -- but as his eyes roamed the dead flesh, they widened in shock.