Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Ten: Crypt

Aside from interrogating a disgraced Orthanian baron, the biggest waste of Nova's time these days was the body Faellian Harkenn kept in the crypt. Though the...thing had been dead for weeks, so that even salt was having trouble holding it together, Harkenn insisted she examine it regularly in case she'd missed something the first hundred times.

When she'd first been brought down to the crypt, back before Harkenn had built her a cell below his chambers, she'd hated it. She hadn't been back since she'd been moved, and it hadn't improved in the intervening time. A cavernous, musty series of chambers, crawling with shadelings and the kind of many-legged horrors that enjoyed dark corners, the crypt snaked underneath the entire castle floor plan and contained the remains of every Harkenn to set foot in Nictaven. She'd seen plaques for the reigning Harkenn's father all the way back to ancestors that had lived before the Isolation, and there was plenty of space for more.

The crypt was also cold and dry, however, so it was the only feasible place for storing a body for any length of time.

Her breath fogged in front of her as she scanned the body again. She had had an encounter with a creature like this while it was alive, and recalled in detail the total lack of aura, the chilling nothingness of it. But when it was half-decayed and missing a crucial puzzle piece – the curved sword it used to overpower Unspoken and kill them – it was little more than a corpse, albeit one of the most disturbing she'd ever seen.

When Harkenn had first explained what he expected her to do, she hadn't known what she might find when the body was revealed. Under the cloak, so mockingly similar to that of the Unspoken they killed, was what appeared to be a human – a human with no eyes and a mouth that had been stitched shut. The body was also marked with several inked symbols that looked like marred runes, though Yddris had been unable to interpret them when he had examined the body.

Most confusing of all, the body was missing several major internal organs.

How the creature – person, thing – had functioned was a mystery. If it hadn't needed its organs to live, how had it succumbed to a mortal wound? Without eyes, how had it found its way around with such accuracy? There were no answers, just as Ethred showed no signs of giving any further answers, yet here she was, again, 'just in case'.

She breathed a sigh of relief when footsteps sounded on the stairs; her shift was over. She covered the mutilated thing over with its linen sheet, trying not to touch its face. She'd seen wounds before, even bad ones, but the deliberate nature of these disturbed her. Even if Harkenn hadn't expressly forbidden her from telling a single other person what she was doing down here, she didn't think she would have been capable of describing it. Not that it stopped Grace Haverford from pestering her about it, but there was very little that stopped Grace Haverford when she wanted something.

The guard stopped at the bottom of the steps. She stepped forward and allowed him to hook a chain to her metal collar. There was no point trying to escape further into the crypt; her time living in it, trying every alcove and chamber for weak points, had convinced her that it was one of the most impregnable parts of the entire castle. One way in, one way out, and many, many ways of getting lost.

The guard led her to Harkenn's study in silence. Though she had expected not to find anything, she always left feeling disappointed. It would feel good to help the Unspoken Guild come a little closer to answers, to give something back to Yddris who had been the only friendly face in the castle for most of her decade living in it. It would have eased some of her frustration at being forced to spend so much time down there, because as far as motivation went, Harkenn could eat shit and die.

When they reached the study door, Nova sensed the presence of Unspoken inside. Yddris and Jordan – or Thorne, as he went by now – sat opposite Harkenn at the large desk, all pausing as she entered.