What Lurks Beneath (Prihine's Story)

[Content warning: descriptions of blood]

Chapter One

Chapter Two

The guards wouldn’t have let them in, Blade thought, if not for the plain fact that none of their own officers could stomach all the blood.

He—and Trouble, and Chase—watched indifferently as a green-faced recruit reeled past them, stumbling down the hall with his hand clapped over his mouth while a frantic butler cried out instructions to the water closet behind him. The middle-aged captain guarding Cordelia Trask’s bedroom door—a City Guard, for in Courtshore they did not call them Vice Guards—gave the newly-arrived Shepherds a sullen glance, then shrugged wordlessly and stepped away from the threshold, calling out an order for his own team to evacuate the room.

Blade and Trouble shouldered their way inside, Chase stepping lightly behind them, his gaze bright and interested all the while.

It was a young noblewoman’s bedroom, all right, just like any other—light and airy as sea spray, all gauzy curtains, high windows, and scalloped white ceiling moldings—save for the copious amounts of bright red blood that painted the walls, the pink-sheeted canopy bed, and the plush white rugs. Morbidly, the air felt damp and humid with the stuff, a thick coppery scent seeming to hang in the air like a fog. Trouble took one long, appraising look at the grisly tableau and remarked, his voice unreadable: “This much blood, I doubt she’s alive.”

“No,” Blade said in dissent, moving to examine the windowsill while Chase arrowed for Cordelia Trask’s wardrobe. He knew as well as anyone that the drama of bloodshed did not indicate the survivability of the wound that had caused it. “I doubt a murderer would bother killing her, only to drag her corpse out the window. Far easier to transport her alive, even if they did mean to kill her elsewhere. She was likely alive when she was taken from this room.” Judging by the viscosity of the bloodstains, however, he judged that to have been several hours ago, perhaps sometime after midnight. Given that it was nearly eight in the morning now, there was no telling if the victim was still currently alive. Probably not, he decided.

“How do you know they went out the window?” 

“The door was broken down when the servants forced their way into the room,” Chase answered absently, riffling through the half-finished letters on Cordelia’s small escritoire as Trouble turned to examine the splintered mantle, attention piqued by his comment. “That means the door was locked from inside by the time morning came. So Cordelia and her attacker didn’t leave through that way, and there’s no other egress except the window. Hence, they went out the window.” He stood for a moment, his look calculating. “But we’re three stories up, so—that’s Endarkened work, isn’t it, Spike? No mortal man could bundle a bleeding girl—unconscious, dead, or struggling—out and make that climb down without the use of some… demon-mischief. Especially without anyone seeing him.”

“He could with magic or arma,” Blade returned in a clipped voice, “or perhaps even with more than one person.” He paused for a moment, sorting through his thoughts and observations methodically, the way he had been trained. “But yes, I think you’re right. This kind of theatre reeks of the Endarkened. And why would a Ket or Mage want to make the girl bleed if they intended to take her alive?”

Trouble crouched and felt along the corner of a torn blanket draped over Cordelia’s bed, probing with a delicate hand. “Maybe they didn’t intend to make her bleed,” he suggested. “Maybe that happened in the ensuing struggle.”

“Someone would have heard that, surely,” Chase said. “No, I think they crept on her while she was still asleep. Bled her then, then took her. Which reinforces the point that this is a demon. It has that special tinge of nefarious insanity to it. Some kind of dark ritual, I bet.”

This conversation was in full earshot of the City Guards in the hallway as well as the lurking servants who had been tasked with ensuring the Diminished brutes didn’t manhandle Cordelia’s things—a point which they were failing dismally, judging by the way Chase was now poking and prodding the baseboards for any hidden caches. But their overhearing things couldn’t be helped, Blade thought irritably. After hearing the gory details, the prince of Courtshore had asked the Shepherds to look into this case as a special favor—the victim’s father was an old friend of his—but he hadn’t said anything about keeping their findings a secret. Besides, it was probably better for Cordelia’s reputation if she was painted to be the unfortunate target of an Endarkened plot. A noblewoman inviting a mundane murderer into her life—or her bedroom—by some other circumstance was probably the worse prospect, for all involved.

He stepped out into the hallway and said, “Which one of you was the last to see Cordelia Trask?”

A white-faced maid approaching her middle years stepped forward, tow-headed and wide-eyed, practically petrified with fear. For a split second, Blade had to take a second look at her meek, nondescript face, for she bore a heavy resemblance to the maid they’d seen accompanying Prihine Naveen the night before… but no, this was not the same woman. She was a handful of years older, a bit thicker in build… but she was a relation, perhaps.

“Aida, sir,” the maid said through stiff lips. Blade jerked his head in acknowledgement and indicated that she should step inside the bedroom to speak with them. She followed, though one of the other maids clutched at her elbow as she went, as if to forestall her from making the descent into some shadowy underworld.

Aida followed him into the bedroom—though she stayed planted stubbornly by the door—and, at Blade’s silent look, she proffered: “I was the person who undressed L-Lady Cordelia before she went to bed… O-Officer.”

Blade didn’t bother to correct her about his title. “Do you remember if she locked the door behind you?”

Aida frowned, ducking her head a little—not in thought, but in confusion. “She never did, sir,” she said in her quiet voice. “She never locks the door. She has—had—night terrors, so she always kept her door unlocked in case she needed one of us to see to her.”

Trouble’s eyebrows rose, and Chase gave a soft whistle that tended to mean, Interesting. Blade continued, straight-faced, “Did she seem agitated in any way when you put her to bed? Anything out of the usual?”

The maid bit her lips. “Not… in any way that seems suspicious, Officer.”

Which was a pretty way of avoiding the question. Damn the aristocracy: he always hated how they and their servants tiptoed around thoroughly uninteresting and domestic secrets when all he was interested in was ending a public threat. But the other two would nag at him if he bullied a servant—again—so Blade simply said, “Describe your mistress’s evening. Who she saw, what she did, and when.”

The maid’s eyes widened as if he had threatened to strike her, but in a tremulous voice, she did as he bid. “She… she went to meet Augur Konstantin at the church. She has been interested in helping more with a charity drive for the poorhouse…”

“She met with him alone?” That would have been highly unusual for a young noblewoman.

His implication made the maidservant’s cheeks color slightly. “N-no. The mistress of the poorhouse was there, as well, as she always is.” Everything was good and proper, was her implication. Then she glanced away. “She was there for about an hour, and then our driver took her home. She said that all had gone very well. She often attends those kinds of meetings.”

 Someone from the hallway cleared their throat pointedly, and the woman flushed further. Blade stared at her, expectant, until she admitted, “But while she was there, at the church, erm… one of her gentleman friends paid us a call. He waited here—in the drawing room—until she returned home. They talked for a bit before he left. His expression was… stormy.”

 She chanced a glance at his face, as if to gauge his change in expression, but when Blade remained impassive, she looked away again. Trouble said, “What’s the guy’s name?”

 “Lord Robbhan Vallinari.”

 “Lover?” Chase asked then.

 Aida didn’t look at him, though her shoulders went tight with affront. “Wh… what?”

 “Was Lord Vallinari a lover of your mistress’s?” Chase prompted patiently, his expression bland and shameless. Then his lips quirked. “And remember that we’re trying to save her life, so trying to hide anything to protect her reputation ought not to be your priority right now.” He glanced around the bloodied room. “Has Vallinari ever been in this room? Or was there any reason to believe that Cordelia would admit him into it secretly?”

 The maid’s gaze was now hard with a kind of indignation, but she answered steadily enough: “No. My lady would never have allowed such a thing. She is a pious and graceful woman, and while I can’t speak to Lord Vallinari’s feelings, I believe she never… felt anything about him other than friendship.”

 “Ah,” Chase said. “But does he feel the same way?”

 Aida opened her mouth, as if to say something biting—You’ll have to ask him that yourself, Blade guessed—but then she seemed to think better of it. She closed her mouth, thought on it, and said finally, “I believe Lord Vallinari has always hoped to marry her, sir. He has courted her in a roundabout way for… some years.”

 Blade’s estimation of the maid rose marginally: her honesty was somewhat refreshing. She must love her mistress dearly. “Was there anything else?”

 Aida shook her head slowly. “No, sir. Lady Cordelia looked in to bid her father good night, took supper in her room, took a bath, and went to bed. I was the last person to see her. When she didn’t ring for breakfast, I tried to come in to draw the curtains and help wake her. When I found the door locked, and when she didn’t rouse or answer our knocks… the footmen had to break the door down, and we found… this.” She had lowered her eyes to the floor, as if she couldn’t bear to take in the deadly scene her mistress’s bedroom had transformed into.

 Blade nodded once. “You are dismissed,” he said, as if she were one of his soldiers being released from duty, and the maid turned and fled. Trouble shook his head as she passed beyond the door and said in a low voice, “Night terrors. That’s never good.”

 “No,” Blade said, this time in agreement. Endarkened fed chiefly on fear and pain, though the most powerful among them could glut on other things, like greed or insanity, as the Faceless Lords had. It was entirely possible that Cordelia had been targeted by her attacker for some time before the creature abruptly decided to change its diet to blood.

 They interviewed a few more servants, and between the three of them put together a composite picture of what had happened in the night. After Cordelia had gone to bed, her attacker had crept into her bedroom, very likely through the window, which had been left open slightly to admit the night breeze. Although making a three-story sheer climb up the side of the manor without being spotted was unlikely, it seemed unlikelier still that they had entered through some other door—not without alerting the two hired guards, Cordelia’s father, or the army of servants that patrolled all the halls and stories between this room and the front or back doors.

 (Unless, Trouble pointed out, the intruder had either been smuggled into the house by a member of the staff—though that would require a mass coordinated conspiracy between multiple servants—or he had lain in wait somewhere in the house, close to Cordelia’s bedroom. A closet or an unused wash closet, that sort of thing. But the only visitors to the house had been this Robbhan Vallinari, two friends of Lord Trask, and a deliveryman with the week’s groceries for the cook, and all had been seen exiting the house by multiple witnesses.)

 From there, the culprit had crept into Cordelia’s room while she slept. Injured her in some way to cause the copious amounts of blood on her sheets. But how had it been done, and why? Here, the three of them disagreed. A knife would have woken her and created a struggle, which surely should have been heard, and the visual evidence of which would be apparent now. A gun would have alerted everyone in the house. The best answer seemed to merely be some sort of Endarkened magic or mischief or ritual. But Blade, to the others’ consternation, also put forward the possibility that Cordelia had committed the injury to herself.

 Trouble’s eyes flicked towards the still-open door at that. “You think she might have summoned the thing herself?”

Blade lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not discounting the possibility.” They encountered plenty of people who invited demons into their homes and bodies through bloody rituals. Forgetting the fact that Cordelia Trask was no Mage, her status as a noble did not preclude her from joining the ranks of willing Thralls that they had hunted down before.

 Chase gave a humorless kind of laugh. “Well, good luck convincing anyone of that,” he said under his breath. “What else?”

 However Cordelia had been injured, it seemed that she or her attacker had bound up her wounds and staunched the blood with strips of torn blanket, which spoke to the fact that they’d wanted her alive. Then—either with Cordelia conscious or unconscious—they had absconded through the window, descended back down to the ground floor, and vanished. The blood on the windowsill and down the side of the house confirmed that.

 Trouble whistled through his teeth. “Well, I’d say it meets the threshold for us to take over from the City Guard,” he said in a resigned voice.

Blade grunted in reply. It was true, but he couldn’t exactly feel happy about it: already this case was making him twitchy. They had initially been called to Courtshore to evaluate whether the Endarkened invasion was now also coming up out of the sea: a thoroughly alarming prospect that had summoned them in a rush all the way from Haven. Ships had been attacked by unknown creatures in the deep, it was claimed, and strange behemoths and eldritch shapes had been seen through banks of thick fog—fog that had often seen ships passing through it before a missing sailor or two was discovered on the other side.

Such things had happened before, during the Dawn Wars, Halek had told them gravely: his own people told legends of a famous battle between the Hunter army and a demonic leviathan monster large enough to strangle ships. But the stories in Courtshore, as far as Blade’s team could tell, had simply been stories, the kind of superstitious tall tales that sailors liked to swap when they were a few hours’ deep into the grog. The mission had then changed to a review of Courtshore’s naval and military defenses from a Shepherd’s perspective, and a report on the city’s preparation against general Endarkened attacks for the prince, and some internal discussion of when and where they would finally open another Shepherd branch… but all in all, it had somewhat been a waste of Blade’s time. And now they were pulled into a case he already thoroughly disliked. Finicky noble sensibilities, the frippery and silliness of the Southern Crescent, and the unraveling of a young woman’s social life to discern where and when she had come into contact with the Endarkened captor they had yet to rescue her from? Navigating a foreign city with a three-man team to find a missing victim, when he had none of the resources or numbers normally allotted to him? No, he couldn’t be happy about any of this. Lavinet would have been perfectly suited for this mission, he thought, or Riel, or anyone who was willing to chase down and interview the myriad connections crisscrossing Cordelia Trask’s life… But this was not an area in which Blade’s own particular skillset excelled.

And yet here they were, and they were the only ones in this damnable city who could help the girl, so he would just have to make do.

Chase took one glance at Blade’s face and said to Trouble, “Gods above, he’s already brooding. And now, after biting that poor young woman’s head off, he’s got to go tell the lord-father what’s toward.”

Blade repressed an annoyed exhalation. “Trouble will do the talking,” he said, not without a slight hint of sadistic satisfaction. “He’s more… accessible.” People tended to find the working-class sniper friendly, honest, and easy to talk to, less of an outward threat than his Ket commander. “It’s part of the reason why I made him Vice-Commander.”

 At Trouble’s bleak, unimpressed look, Chase grinned and said, “Why not me, then? I’m more charming than either of you by at least half.”

 “I don’t trust you not to say something offensive,” Blade returned.

 The thief nodded sagely. “Yeah. That’s fair enough.”  

 They went together back down the hall, passing the surly, loitering City Guards and the servants barely containing their worry and outrage, making their way to where they were told the lord of the manor was waiting. It was Trouble who knocked on Lord Trask’s study door, Trouble who walked in first without saluting. Lord Aurum Trask—iron-haired, small and compact in stature, mustachioed and somewhere in his sixties—whirled from his place by the darkened hearth and cried, “It took you long enough! I don’t understand what the delay has been. The City Guard—”

 “Let’s get one thing straight,” Trouble said easily, overriding him. “We’re not the City Guard. If you’d prefer to have them, write to your prince and let him know, and we’ll take our merry selves back to Haven. But whatever’s going on here doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction: it falls under ours. And we do things differently than they do. Accept that, and you won’t have to comment on the differences constantly and waste time.” He stared at Trask, straight-faced and complacent despite Chase’s amused smirk. “And your daughter’s still out there, sir, so there isn’t much time to waste.”

 That shut the old man up, though his eyes bugged unpleasantly for a moment. He pivoted without hardly missing a beat, though, and said in a tight, controlled voice, “Do you really think she still lives?”

 “She might,” Trouble replied. “She was alive when she left this place, we think. But what’s happened in the intervening hours, we don’t know.”

 The lord-governor nodded slowly; Blade watched his face closely for any signs of guile, or of deception. “I see,” he said after a moment, regathering his dignity around himself like it was a cloak. “And what are you doing to secure her?”

 “We’ll work with the City Guard to dispatch some patrols to begin a manual search, if they’ll take orders from us,” Trouble said, glancing at Blade, who inclined his head slightly in agreement. “And we’re going to interview all of the people who are likeliest to have been involved in her disappearance.”

 “People?” Trask echoed, slightly incredulously. “I thought you said some—some Endarkened monster did this!”

 “I said nothing of the like,” Trouble returned placidly. Trask was momentarily distracted from the conversation as Chase dawdled near one of his bookshelves, peering at a small hand-globe with unadulterated interest. “But not all Endarkened come in the form of Revenants or Imps, sir. A lot of them possess people to do their bidding, concealing themselves within their minds, peering out through their eyes without anyone else ever knowing the wiser. Sometimes the Thrall themselves don’t even know they’re possessed, and they have no idea or awareness as the demon uses their body to maim or kill for its own purposes.”

 Trask stared at them all for a moment, as if wondering if Trouble was joking and waiting for Blade and Chase to laugh. When they didn’t, he could only manage, white beneath his tanned face: “What a perfectly ghastly idea.”

 “It is,” Chase agreed then, leaning one shoulder against the wall with his hands shoved in his pockets. “And your honest answers will help us find out if that’s what’s been happening, or not. So, Lord Trask, has anything strange been going on with your daughter lately?”

 Trask frowned, then made a weary, puzzled gesture. “Not in the least. In fact, she rarely leaves the house, except to pay visits to her friends—all proper, noble young people with families of good standing—or to visit the church.”

 “No strange visitors or creepy encounters?” Chase pressed. “Anyone stalking her?”

 “Of course not.”

 “What about her night terrors?” Blade cut in then. Trask flinched when he spoke, as if his voice was the rasp of an executioner’s axe against the grindstone.

 “What about them?” the lord demanded, looking at Trouble instead. “They have no bearing on her—on any of this.”

 “Demons often like to toy with their victims before they take them,” Trouble said, making Lord Trask flinch again: the word “demon” was never used in polite conversation, and especially not with nobles. “They like to feed on people’s fear, planting delusions and false visions to torment them before they go in for the… ah, for the final encounter. To them, it’s like savoring a fine meal bite-by-bite.”

Trask was looking a little green, somewhat like the City Guard youth they’d seen earlier—but Blade continued to watch him carefully. It was always easy to fake distress. “I do not think that was the case here,” the lord-governor said stiffly. “Cordelia has had her terrors ever since she was a young girl, perhaps eight or nine. She dreams she’s being buried alive. The physickers said it had to do with missing her mother, nothing more than that.”

 “What happened to her mother, sir?” At Trask’s long look, Trouble added, “We need to know all the details if we’re going to find her. Even the ones you don’t think are important.”

 Lord Trask threw him a look of loathing. But he said, evenly enough, “Her mother divorced me when Cordelia was six and married another man in Ylor. She broke her neck when her horse threw her a few years after.”

 Probably nothing to do with their case, then, Blade decided dispassionately. “But your relationship with Cordelia is good? She would have told you if something was bothering her, or if she had encountered anyone who unnerved her?”

 Lord Trask still wouldn’t look at him. “Of course she would. I’m her father.”

 Hmm. “What did you speak about before she went to bed? Did she mention the man who waited here all night for her—Vallinari?”

 At this, Trask looked up sharply. “Robbhan Vallinari is an upstanding young man, and not to be besmirched,” he said, his tone one of warning. “I would like for him to be my son-in-law someday. We spoke about that, and then my daughter went to bed.”

 Upset, Blade deduced. Father and daughter had not agreed on that important matter, it seemed.

 They went over a few more details with the lord-governor, sticking to practicalities and logistics, as it seemed he was rapidly reaching the limit of his patience when it came to questioning him on personal matters—and then they went back outside to discuss things with the City Guard. The guards were sullen, unused to taking orders from an outside agency—but they were, at least, less high-handed and hostile than the Vice Guard and Inquisitors in Haven, who viewed the Shepherds as outright threats and competition for the Autarch’s favor. The decadent South, Chase remarked, had its boons: it was a more diverse and free-spirited place than the austere urgency of their capital, at least.

 But the patrols quickly brought back bad news: it had rained a little before dawn, it seemed, though the air now was balmy and clear, only a little more humid than the day before. Any cloud cover was rapidly burning off beneath the cheerful Courtshore sun. But it did mean the blood trail in the surrounding streets—if it had existed at all—had been washed away; only what little had been left on the windowsill and side of the house remained.

 “Shit,” Trouble said under his breath. “So what do we do now?”

 “Now, we chase down suspects,” Blade said firmly. “Barring a circumstance where an Endarkened or a Thrall randomly saw Cordelia and followed her home—which means it will be almost impossible to find her now—it’s far more likely that the demon is influencing someone close to her. In that case, we treat this like any other murder. Who had the means, motive, and opportunity to attack or kill Cordelia Trask?”

 This, at least, was where the young woman’s noble status came in handy: her social circle would have been tightly controlled and limited by the bounds of respectability and reputation. She was no factory worker or tavern maid, who came into contact with dozens or hundreds of strangers a day. Every movement of hers would have been closely observed, witnessed, and tracked, whether by her own servants or by her social peers. And somewhere among that carefully-cultivated group, they might find her attacker.

 “But would their motives matter?” Chase murmured. “It’s like Trubs said: if they’re possessed by a demon, they might not even know it themselves. In that case, their own personal feelings towards Cordelia wouldn’t matter.”

 Blade shook his head. “Demons find it easier to fuel already-existent feelings and grudges when driving their vessels to kill,” he reminded them. “Far easier to push a Thrall into violence towards someone they already hate than to try to prod them into hurting a dearly beloved. We should be looking at the people with vendettas against Cordelia—with reasons to hurt her that the demon would feed on and inflame—before the ones who always meant her well.”

 “Right,” Trouble said slowly. “Well, Robbhan Vallinari’s obviously the first suspect. Jilted suitor, left last night in a huff. I’m not sure about the father, either. If they’d argued last night after Vallinari left… Plus, he’s the master of the house. If he did something to Cordelia, he could have the power to keep the servants quiet, and he’d have the means to come into the bedroom through the door, as well as get rid of the body somewhere. It would explain a lot.”

 Blade wasn’t sure if a marriage dispute was enough to drive a father to commit filicide, but the matter bore looking into. Perhaps Cordelia’s mother had divorced him on account of violence… “And we’ll need to know more about the priest,” he began.

 At that exact moment, there was a minor commotion at the front door of the Trask manor. Blade, Trouble, and Chase had been standing under the nearby awning of a closed shop, conversing out of earshot of either the milling City Guards or servants; but when Blade glanced over, he made eye contact with a familiar ash-blonde and her plain-faced maid. Prihine Naveen’s back went ramrod-straight at his glance—she was clutching a slim parasol in her hand as if it were a weapon—and after waving her servant through the Trask door, she marched over to them like a general conducting an inspection.

 “I should have known you’d be on the case already,” she said without greeting, her voice tart as ever, despite the fact that she was also a little breathless. She had clearly dressed in a hurry. “What have you discovered?”

 At this, Trouble and Chase glanced at each other, and Blade’s attention narrowed more closely on Prihine. Running into her yesterday evening had been mere coincidence, but her appearance here today made little sense. As far as he knew, she was a stranger to Courtshore, just as they were.  

 At their silent looks, Prihine instantly became defensive, her shoulders going rigid as she said in a sharp tone, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous! My maid is cousin to Lady Cordelia’s maid; she was here this morning, visiting her relation, when they discovered Cordelia missing. She came to tell me the news—I met Lady Cordelia yesterday, and we were to have dinner with her friends tonight—and then we came back over so Eleret can comfort her cousin. She’s very upset, you know.”

 “I’m sure,” Chase murmured. But when they said nothing more—for Prihine surely expected to have some kind of “in” with them, by dint of their past mission together and her connection to Lavinet—the Naveen cousin huffed exasperatedly, rolled her eyes, and said, “I hope they told you about the priest, anyway. Did they tell you she’s madly in love with him?”

 The way their gazes sharpened on her was almost palpable, like three hawks suddenly becoming aware of a sparrow in their midst. “I think,” Trouble said slowly, “you’d better tell us everything you know.”

 Prihine smirked tightly, though the look was a little forced. “I thought so,” she said, with just a slight note of triumph.

#

 Trouble went to interview Augur Konstantin Teleus, Chase to hunt down Robbhan Vallinari, and Blade to the City Guard garrison for their archives: if this was an Endarkened, he said, there might be evidence of its other doings in this city, which might make things easier when it came to tracking it down.

Prihine, before they all split up—and left the City Guard to manage the lower-level footwork of searching the streets block-by-block—said cogently, “You might have some trouble getting straight answers out of Vallinari. I don’t know if he has anything to do with—the disappearance—but he has his reputation to protect, and the very idea of him being left to cool his heels while Cordelia was off gallivanting with the augur will be embarrassing for him to acknowledge. For his pride alone, he might not admit everything to you.” She paused thoughtfully. “If that happens, come to me. There’ll be a dinner tonight, at Lady Rovaque’s place. I think Robbhan will come there. You can come in with me and… observe, or question people, if you want. Their crowd claims to admire the Shepherds. I don’t think they’ll turn you out.”

 “Surely they wouldn’t still carry on with dinner when their friend is missing,” Trouble said in a startled tone.

 “Oh, but some diplomat is sailing in, and he’ll have come all that way,” Prihine answered, her own tone dismissive. “I doubt they’ll cancel it. Besides, it’s the way of the nobility to carry on as if everything is fine and under control until it really isn’t. They’ll think they’re being ever so brave and resilient. It’s what Cordelia would want them to do, they’ll say.”

 “And Vallinari?” Blade asked keenly. “He won’t think it suspicious if he shows up to eat and drink fine wine while his supposed beloved is missing?”

 Prihine tossed her hair with a slight hmph. “You still don’t understand the aristocracy,” she said, though she seemed pleased by the realization. “He’d look guilty if he shut himself away now, don’t you see? He’s got to show up and show us all how broken up about it he is. If he doesn’t, all of our gossip and speculation might turn against him, and that would be very bad for him indeed.”

 She was fairly clever, that Prihine, Trouble mused now, pacing the empty pews of the church uneasily. He had a hankering for some charch, but even he knew that would be blasphemous, so he contented himself with prowling restlessly while he waited for Augur Teleus to show himself. And it seemed like she had mellowed out, since her late husband’s ball. She was still no silver-tongued politician or sweet-voiced charmer, but she didn’t shriek or stamp her foot as much. Maybe she’d be an asset to this case, after all, as reluctant as they were to involve an outsider. She still didn’t seem to respect them, but at least she didn’t fear the Shepherds the way so many of these other civilians did. He thought she could be trusted, especially given her connections (and debts) to Lavinet, Caine, and their very own Hero of Haven. She was pretty much as much of an insider as one could get without physically signing up. Like that foolish clown, Chandry, the one who’d gone romping along with Riel and them on that trip to the past.

 God, she would not be that flattered by that comparison.

 A nun in the corner eyed him fearfully as Trouble blew out a loud breath and sat down on a pew, tipping his head back to gaze up at the stained-glass murals ornamenting the bright, angelic cathedral. A far cry from the heavy, austere gaudiness back home, he thought to himself. Though it wasn’t as if he spent much time in churches to begin with, so what did he know? Of the three of them, he was probably the one most amenable to religion—Blade had no truck with gods, and Chase seemed outright offended by the idea of them—but he still didn’t spend a lick of time preying or bowing his head, or even really thinking of them in the least. But his mother had been a follower, he remembered guiltily; he had fuzzy memories of a statuette of the One-God adorning their little two-room hut. And he’d always had the dim idea of getting married in a church, though where that thought came from now, he couldn’t say…

 A door on the far side of the room—near the front altar—opened, and both Trouble and the nun rose to their feet. A blonde man of middle height with strong, handsome features, striking blue eyes, and a short golden beard entered, dressed in flowing blue and white robes. From the nun’s instant blush when he looked her way, giving her a kind-voiced dismissal, Trouble saw that Prihine’s conclusions were not as esoteric as he’d first assumed. He could easily see a sheltered young woman like Cordelia Trask falling in love with a man like this.

 But does that mean he has a demon in him? Trouble came forward to shake the man’s hand, feeling the comforting press of his pistol against his hip all while he looked into the priest’s warm blue eyes. Endarkened could make their vessels seem attractive and charismatic, imbuing them with some of their beguiling powers, and it wouldn’t be the first time a demon took refuge in a man of the Church…

 “Good morning,” Konstantin Teleus said with a pleasant smile. “It’s not every day we’re visited by a Shepherd officer, though I’d heard you were in the city at the behest of our prince. How can I help you?”

 He’s acting like he doesn’t know, Trouble thought. Well, I suppose he wouldn’t, if he’s innocent—the word hasn’t spread that far yet.

 “I’m afraid I’ve come with some bad news,” he returned, keeping his tone neutral. “I think you met with a young woman last night: Cordelia Trask. It was discovered this morning that she’s gone missing.”

 He watched as the routine emotions played across Teleus’s face: first surprise, then shock, then consternation. Then, as he put the pieces together, sickening realization.

 “What?” the priest began, his voice faint. He made a gesture that Trouble wasn’t familiar with, some sort of supplication to the One-God. “But… no! I saw her just last… but her driver was to take her straight home! I handed her into the carriage myself!”

 I bet you did, Trouble thought dryly. Out loud, he said, “It seems she was taken from her bedroom by an intruder. We’re still putting the details together.”

 The augur looked into his face; lines on his own had suddenly appeared, bracketing his mouth. “But… if you’re a Shepherd…” He shook his head slowly, then put his hand on Trouble’s forearm. “Please. If there’s anything I can do—anything you need from me—please, tell me.”

 Trouble took a step back, letting the priest’s hand slide off of him while quelling a surge of dislike. It seemed as if Teleus was being sincere, but there was still something about the man that he mistrusted. “Honest answers will do,” he answered, more bluntly than he’d intended. “Walk me through your meeting with Cordelia.”

 Konstantin Teleus shook his head again, as if he was having trouble thinking. “I… she came at eight nightbell. We are preparing for a charity drive for the local poorhouse, and Cordeli—Lady Trask wanted to be involved in the efforts to invite her noble friends and add more wealthy patrons to the fundraising venture. She came here to meet with me and the mistress of the poorhouse, Mrs. Berenise Vear, to discuss the details. We talked for about an hour. Mrs. Vear left first, and then Cordelia got into her carriage and drove home.”

 “You didn’t discuss anything else?” Trouble asked casually.

 “Oh, the usual small talk, but there wasn’t much to say. She’d come to church just yesterday morning. We see each other quite often.” Abruptly, the augur’s mouth shut, his teeth clicking as if he’d physically bit into something he knew he wasn’t supposed to swallow.

 “Uh-huh,” Trouble said. “And why were you meeting so late at night? Seems an odd time to be discussing charity. Why not meet somewhere during the day?”

 “That was Mrs. Vear,” Konstantin protested, his voice rushed now. “She’s busy managing the poorhouse, getting them fed and seen to during the day, poor woman. I think the work has been quite tough on her, trying to do it all alone. She’s a widow, and she’s a bit sickly, to boot. Lady Trask and I realized the strain she’s been under and volunteered to help. You can verify this all with Mrs. Vear, I promise you.”

 “Of course,” Trouble said in silky tones. “And I will, along with anyone else who was here last night while you were meeting.” He paused. “Do you and Lady Trask often work together to help the underprivileged?”

 Augur Teleus’s eyes widened. “I… I’m not sure if I care for your meaning!”

 “Tough luck. Answer the question, if you would.”

 Konstantin smoothed the front of his robes with absent hands, over and over, as if he were a child stroking a stuffed toy for comfort. “Lady Cordelia Trask is a woman of unimpeachable integrity,” he said finally, his tone stiff and cold now, though his mood was strange: he seemed both self-possessed and distracted, his eyes were worried. “She loves the One-God with all her heart, and does everything she can to serve Xem and Xer overlooked children.”

 “Right. And how long has she been doing that?”

 “Two or three years now, I should think. Two and a half.”

 “And when did you first meet her?”

 Teleus gave him an indignant look, already seeing where his thoughts were trending. “…Two and a half years ago.”

 “Uh-huh.”

 Privately Trouble wondered if Augur Konstantin Teleus returned Cordelia’s feelings sincerely—some priests were allowed to marry, though where and what the distinction was, Trouble couldn’t say—or if he’d simply been exploiting her attraction to him in order to further his own causes and funnel her coin into the church. Seduction for sainthood, Chase might have called it. But none of this seemed to be helpful when it came to tracking the noblewoman down now, so he tried a different tact. “You’ve spent a lot of time together, Augur. Did you ever notice anything unusual about Cordelia? Did she ever come to you troubled about something, or say there was anyone in her life who was bothering or frightening her?”

 This, at least, seemed to be a safer track in the priest’s mind, because Teleus said with more eagerness: “Not that I can recall. We prayed together over some matters, of course, but they were usually mundane worries, or sometimes her nightmares—One-God forgive me if I shouldn’t speak of them, but I feel I must. But she never said anything to make me believe there was a… a presence in her life that she was concerned about.”

 “What about her father? Or Robbhan Vallinari?”

 Father Konstantin gave him a blank look. “What about them?”

 Well, perhaps her father discovered she’s in love with you and killed her in a rage, unable to stomach the fact that his precious only daughter wants to run off with a lowly priest, Trouble thought. And if not him, maybe her hopeful suitor did. But if Konstantin himself had any reasons or motives to hurt Cordelia, Trouble couldn’t see them; he’d check with this Mrs. Vear to see if there had been anything unusual in their meeting last night, but from what Prihine had said, the relationship between the noblewoman and the priest had been perfectly amicable—even outright cozy—just yesterday morning. “One last thing,” he said, riffling through the mountain of information that had been dropped into their laps as soon as they’d been roused from their beds at dawn. “These nightmares—those are the night terrors she’s been having since she was a girl? About being buried alive?”

 Interestingly, the look on Augur Konstantin’s face dropped; correspondingly, so too did some instinct in Trouble’s gut. “What?” he breathed. “No… no, I never heard about any of that.”

 Something in the back of Trouble’s brain fired, like the whine of a fire-rod before it discharged. “What dreams did she tell you about, then?”

 “Blood,” Augur Konstantin whispered, looking sick. “She would have dreams about drowning in blood.”