Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(57)

Valyn sucked in an angry breath, clenched his hand into a fist, and turned away. Outside the narrow window, the night was calm and cool. Across the harbor he could see the lights of the Black Boat and the other alehouses, as well as the dark gaping hole where Manker’s had been. People were walking on the streets of Hook, laughing and arguing, going on about their lives, heedless of the girl who had been tied up, murdered, and left to rot in an abandoned attic.

“Sons of bitches,” Lin breathed behind him. She was angry, Valyn could hear that clearly enough, but there was a faint current of something else behind the anger—fear, and confusion.

He turned back to the room, trying to find something concrete, some particular detail upon which he could focus his training. There wasn’t much to look at. A thin tick mattress stuffed with reeds lay heaped in the corner, evidently kicked out of the way during the assault. A three-legged stool squatted beneath the window, and a wooden shelf along one wall supported a few candles that had burned down to the nubs, splattering the warped floor with tallow. He considered those for a while. Candles were relatively expensive—fat had to be cut, rendered, then cast around the wick. They were a necessity, of course, for those who worked by night, but the poor and thrifty would never waste the excess drippings. Rianne’s lantern, like most of the lanterns on Hook, was fed by cheap fish oil, and gave off an inconstant light that was as smoky as it was rank. He wondered if the candles had belonged to Amie, if she had intended to scrape the tallow off the floor later, or if her murderer had brought them, planning ahead to ensure he had plenty of light by which to perform his grisly work.

Relucantly, Valyn turned back to the corpse. Her ankles were tied, no doubt to keep her from kicking. His eyes settled on the knot: a peculiar double bowline with a couple of extra loops. He started to study it, then tore himself away. You’re looking at the knot to avoid looking at the girl, he realized, forcing himself to shift his gaze from her wrists to her face.

“All right,” he said brusquely, turning to the training he had spent so many years perfecting. “How did she die?”

Ha Lin didn’t respond. She stood in the center of the room, arms slack at her sides, head shaking silently, slowly as she considered the revolving corpse.

“Lin,” Valyn said, edging his voice with what he hoped was something of Adaman Fane’s characteristic growl. “What killed this girl? How long has she been dead?”

Ha Lin turned to him blankly. For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to respond at all, but after a long pause her eyes focused, and she shook herself, as though awakening from a deep sleep. Her lips hardened into a thin line and she nodded abruptly before crossing to the dangling corpse. She leaned in to sniff the wounds, then ran a finger along the major lacerations, probing the flesh.

“No scent of poison. No major arteries severed.” She bit her lip. “It looks like blood loss, pure and simple.”

“Painful,” Valyn added grimly. “And slow.” He reached above the girl’s head and cut the rope holding her up before easing her body to the floor. “Take a look at this,” he said, holding out the severed rope.

Lin squinted in the darkness. “The rope is from Li,” she said, the surprise clear in her voice. Li was on the other side of the world, months distant by sail. They made the best rope and steel in the world there, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that found itself into the hands of the sailors on Hook. The Kettral, on the other hand … the Kettral used Liran cord sometimes. It was too slick for the taste of most soldiers, but it was light and strong, and there were those who swore by it.

Valyn and Lin exchanged a bleak stare.

“When did she die?” he asked finally, breaking the silence.

Lin hunched over the body, sniffing the wounds once more.

“Hard to say. The rot looks almost two weeks advanced, but that could swing a few days in either direction, depending.”

“Must get pretty hot up here during the day,” Valyn agreed. “Body would decay faster.”

Lin nodded, then drove her fingers into one of the gashes, searched around for a minute before pulling out something white and glistening. “The skin might lie, but the bugs won’t.” She held up the writhing creatures for Valyn to inspect.

“Blood worms, still larval.”

Valyn took the worm, a sickening sluglike thing, and held it up to the fading light from the window. “It’s got its eyes just in.”

“But no segmentation yet. Which means less than eleven days.”