The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)(69)

After hours traipsing through trash and garnering unfriendly glares, Royce stopped. “I suppose it’s possible he didn’t have any family or friends.”

“Someone took his body away,” Hadrian said.

“Maybe the guards or neighborhood elders? Can’t have the children playing with dead bodies, might give them sicknesses and a true understanding of their genuine worth to society. Maybe we should head down to the harbor. That’s where they probably dump bodies. This city looks like the sort to have a cadaver-sluice. Our Calian conspirator is likely halfway to the Goblin Sea by now.”

“He had to have somebody who cared about him,” Hadrian said.

“Why?”

“Everyone has someone.”

“No, they don’t.” Royce focused on a scraggly little pug-nosed dog that was rummaging through a pile of rotting fish bones and tangled netting. “Think about all the stray dogs out there, the ones like that, the mangy wretches no one wants, the sort that people throw rocks at to drive away. They don’t have anyone, and people like dogs, right? Man’s best friend, isn’t that what they say? There are a lot of stray humans, too.” Royce continued to watch the dog with sympathetic eyes. There was something odd about the mutt. The dog wasn’t a stray. It had a collar. A blue collar that—

“You’re not a stray anymore, Royce.”

“What?” Royce turned with a puzzled look.

“I’m just saying that if you died, I’d bury you. And if not me, Gwen would.” He laughed. “By Mar, Gwen would build a tomb for you and paint it blue.”

“I wasn’t talking about me.”

“Sure. I was just saying.”

“Perhaps you should try not saying anything.”

When Royce looked back, the dog was gone.

The light of another day began to fade as they returned once more to Little Gur Em’s merchant square; the bells of Grom Galimus chimed.

“I don’t know.” Royce sighed. “Maybe we should look for the dwarf. He might not have relocated. If I put a knife to his throat, or better yet his wife’s, he might . . .” Royce paused. Looking around at the crowd, his expression became puzzled.

“What is it, boy? What do you smell?”

Royce glared.

“Sorry.” Hadrian grinned.

Royce nodded toward the people moving around them.

There were three young girls carrying cloth-covered baskets of baked goods. A man with a saw looped over one shoulder walked past and tipped his hat. An elderly couple strolled hand in hand, shuffling along as slowly as a pair of lazy snails, looking both romantic and cute. Most were Calian, a few were dwarves, and several were mir.

At first Hadrian saw nothing odd, then as he watched he saw it. Where earlier, people were going, coming, and milling about, now everyone—every single person, right down to the children—was heading east.

“They weren’t doing that a minute ago?” Hadrian asked.

“The bells.” Royce nodded in the direction of the cathedral. “They just rang.”

“Hurry up or we’ll be late,” a Calian woman said as she ushered children out of her home. She caught sight of them, offered a cautious smile, then looked away and shooed her boys along.

One by one, the shopkeepers and cart vendors closed their doors and covered their wares. After locking their treasures away, they, too, headed away from the setting sun.

“Where do you think they’re going?”

The two stood in the square and watched as it emptied of people, draining like a leaking bucket until only a few stragglers remained. As the light faded and night crept into the city once more, Royce and Hadrian followed.





Pursuing the parade east, Hadrian noticed they were leaving Little Gur Em and entering a decidedly less inviting part of town. In all his wanderings and late-night chases, Hadrian hadn’t been here. Based on the way Royce was looking about, he hadn’t, either.

Like the fringe of an old coat, the eastern edge of the city frayed. Rochelle had been bigger once; now the forest worked to reclaim stolen land. Grand homes and shops abandoned to decay had been uprooted by trees bursting through foundations, popping roofs, and throwing branches through windows so that the forest appeared to wear the houses. Streets had lost stones; the gaping holes reminded Hadrian of missing molars in an ancient mouth, while the tufts of yellowed grass that spurted in doorways were the unwanted hair of the aging. Wind blew shredded curtains, tattered awnings, and loose boards, which made a hollow, lonesome sound that echoed down the cavity-plagued road.

The procession took several routes, but all of them concluded at a stone ruin that might have once been a warehouse. Large enough to have been used to construct sailing ships, the building had four intact walls and half a wooden roof. None of the windows retained any evidence of glass, and the stone exterior showed only a speckled stain of paint where a mural had once decorated a wall. Conversations had been few, but as the many groups and individuals transformed into one tight crowd, soft murmurs rose. Royce and Hadrian drew their hoods up as they slipped inside. The sun was gone, the land dark. A single bonfire shimmered brightly at the front of the building, casting giant shadows on chalk walls.

Hadrian had no idea what he was seeing or was about to see. In many ways, the confluence of people reminded him of a church service, but he couldn’t understand why a religious meeting would be held at night in such a fearful place. Something seasonal like a Wintertide or Summersrule observance, he guessed, as a cold wind shook the branches of a tree, clacking a branch against the broken roof. This was winter’s last night, and the season thrashed with a spiteful anger.