The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter Read online

  “Probably selling them on the black market,” Roland said with enough callousness to make Hadrian wonder what had happened to the young man he once knew. “Some of these Calians use them to make youth potions or healing balms. Spreading a little powdered baby heart on your face will keep you looking young, or so people have been told. Rich merchants’ wives are their market. We try to stop it, but there’s not much we can do. Usually, they use calf or lamb hearts, but someone is obviously making an extra effort. If people think they’re getting the real thing, the price goes up. When news of a death spreads, the demand is higher.”

  Dealing with frequent loss of children’s hearts and the indifference of bystanders has driven the unicorns out of Roland’s world, as well, Hadrian realized. Such beliefs made sense and were difficult to debate. After all, horrors had a way of grabbing the limelight and diminishing everything else. How can anyone believe that people are basically good when faced with such blatant evidence to the contrary? What Hadrian couldn’t make Roland, Drake the guard, or least of all Royce understand was that a life barren of unicorns was existence without purpose. Hadrian had visited that dark land once. He’d lived as a glutton of selfishness, reclining on the luxury of visible truths. He’d drowned himself in wine and blood, but the more he consumed, the emptier he felt. What was the point if, as Drake so eloquently put it: living is anguish and then you die? Hearing those words convinced Hadrian of the importance of unicorns. Even if there weren’t any, it was absolutely necessary to believe they existed. What’s more, he needed to try to find them. It wasn’t much. Chasing fantasies was a thin thread to justify a life, and yet how many wonders had been wrought by people who did exactly that—those who believed in crazy dreams.

  “Sorry for the mistake,” Roland said. “I’d buy you both a drink, but I have the night shift the rest of this week, and the duke frowns on drunk officers.”

  “Ah, yes, the life of an honest soldier,” Hadrian mused, feigning envy.

  “How about you two? Still looking for the duchess? Heard you stopped by the carriage shop. Find anything?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “Let me know if you do. I’m pretty sure she’s dead, but if she isn’t . . .”

  “What?”

  Roland hesitated, and his face changed. The tough façade, the soldier’s stare, dimmed, and for a moment, Hadrian once more saw the lad he had once known. “Everyone calls her the Whiskey Wench. No one showed her a lick of respect. I didn’t, either. Guards are supposed to bow when she goes by. None of us did. We all said how she wasn’t a real noble. That she was fake because she wasn’t born one, and wasn’t even from Alburn. I guess the feeling came from a kind of envy, as if she was getting away with something and didn’t deserve respect. Then, well, she gave me a new pair of boots. My old ones had holes in them. My feet used to get soaked, and I nearly got frostbitten more than once. I hardly ever saw the woman. It’s not like I was her bodyguard, but she must have noticed. Why she bothered, I don’t know. Told myself she didn’t like seeing a guard captain in a shoddy uniform, except . . . city guards are required to wear black boots, thin leather that looks nice, but doesn’t do anything when you’re out patrolling in the cold.” He lifted his foot to show Hadrian his pair of brown, fur-lined footwear. “Nicest boots I’ve ever owned. Real warm. Hardly noticed the snows the rest of the winter.” He put his foot down. “If she’s alive, I want to know. And if she’s not and you discover who did it, I want to know that, too.”

  Hadrian nodded and, checking his weapons, pushed the short sword down on his hip and lifted the bastard sword higher and back a tad. “Well, thanks for helping us out.” Hadrian took two steps toward the door, but stopped when he realized Royce wasn’t following.

  Across the roadway stood a busy countinghouse. Like many of the important buildings, it was constructed of stone that had grown dingy.

  Seeing it, Royce turned back and caught Roland’s attention. “Can you answer a question for me?” He pointed at one of the sculpted decorative faces on the building across the street. “Why are these things everywhere? They crouch under steps, frame windows, perch on ledges, and hold up everything from bridges to balconies. Even some of the cobblestones have tiny grotesque faces carved into them. Why is that?”

  Roland dipped his head to see beyond the doorframe. “You mean the gargoyles?”

  Royce nodded. “I’ve seen them before. They’re used to channel rainwater off big churches, like the cathedral in Medford. But here, they’re all over. Most don’t even serve any real function, only a few are being used to divert runoff.”

  Roland pushed up his lower lip. “Just decorations, I suppose.”

  “There’s no story behind them?”

  Roland rolled his shoulders. “Sure. There’s multiple stories, but they’re all nonsense.”

  “Humor me.”

  “The most popular one has a priest who slays a dragon with the help of a condemned man. They burn the beast afterward, but the head isn’t affected. You know, on account of it being able to breathe fire and all. So, the local bishop decides to mount the thing on his cathedral to scare off evil spirits. Seemed like a good idea, so stonemasons were asked to add them from that time on.”

  “Ah-huh,” Royce said, dissatisfied.

  “Well, there’s another one about the town’s founding. A crazy architect by the name of Bradford Crumin was commissioned to lay out the city. He chose the place for the Estate, Grom Galimus, and most of the old buildings. He was brilliant but also insane. He claimed to hear voices—ghosts, he called them—and the only way he could shut them up was to scare the spirits away. Apparently, they were terrified by scary faces, so he put all these grotesque creatures around.”

  Royce didn’t say anything, just folded his arms.

  “Okay, so there’s another one. Seems they never used to be here. The city went up and all the buildings were plain, but functional. Then one day this swarm of creatures swooped down and overran the place. The town was swamped, and everyone was afraid to go outside. Didn’t know where they came from, but a few days after the invasion, an old wizard comes hobbling along. He agreed to rid the town of the creatures for a price. The city agreed, and he turned them into stone, but—”

  “But the town didn’t pay,” Royce said.

  “You’ve heard this?”

  Royce shook his head. “No, but stories are all the same, aren’t they?”

  Roland thought a second, then shrugged. “Anyway, you were right; they refused to pay. Since the creatures were all dead, their problem was solved.”

  “Let me guess: The wizard does something nasty.”

  Roland nodded. “He cursed the town. Now every night, usually in the dark of a new moon, the stone creatures come alive and exact revenge.”

  Royce frowned. “Never mind, I was expecting something awful, but also believable.”

  “We’re talking monstrous faces, here. What would be believable?”

  “How about, the stone carvers charged by the hour?”

  “Why the sudden interest in architecture?” Hadrian asked as he once more followed Royce back into Little Gur Em.

  “Didn’t you notice?” Royce was once more moving quickly, nearly trotting, retracing their earlier trip back to the scene of the crime.

  “Notice what?”

  They came upon the same square where they’d spilled the tea, and Royce pointed up at the building near where the girl’s body was found.

  “What about it?”

  “See the gargoyles lining the ledge up there?”

  The old building was adorned with regularly spaced creepy monkey-like statuettes along the third-floor exterior. They weren’t really gargoyles, not in the traditional sense. These didn’t funnel rainwater; they were merely decorations.

  “So?”

  Royce frowned. “See the gap?”

  The row of hunched, fanged monkeys leaned forward, holding up the top balcony with their shoulders, but Royce was right, one was missing. The rogue
stone-monkey monster second from the left had abandoned his post, leaving the other little monsters to do all the work.

  Such a massive weight hitting the ground from that height would have produced a lot of damage, not to mention debris, but the street below didn’t show any signs of an impact. Hadrian’s next thought was that it had been removed, perhaps in need of repair. But doing so would have required scaffolding and a hoist, neither of which was present. And the empty place showed no evidence of excavation, just a space for a carving that wasn’t there. The statue looked to have simply flown away. The most sensible answer, and the one he concluded with, was that the gargoyle had never been installed in the first place. Maybe the builders had been short a figure. Likely, there was some story that went along with it. The kind of tale that people shared to show off their knowledge of local lore. Oh, yeah, Grimbold the Carver dropped over dead when working on it, and out of tribute to him no replacement was ever made. Or maybe something like, Someone miscalculated the number of statues for that wall, and ol’ Pete started installing from the right and Bradford from the left. It wasn’t until they were done that they realized they were short by one. Funds were low, so the missing gargoyle wasn’t made.

  The problem with these neat and sensible explanations was the bare spot—bright and pristine. Like a sun-bleached carpet with a square of vivid color where a cabinet had once stood, the wall bore a clean silhouette where a statue should have been. Something had been there, but now it wasn’t.

  Royce looked at Hadrian and asked. “Why is one missing?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Grom Galimus

  Villar Orphe waited where he usually did, on top of a roof. He had several favorites, but that evening he sat on the peak of the Trio Vestments Building, where a tailor, a haberdasher, and a cobbler came up with the idea of a one-stop shop for men’s clothing. Villar had never seen the inside of the Trio V, but he was quite familiar with the roof, which hid his home. Tucked in a hidden niche formed by hips and gables, his abode was less a house and more a tented nest built of canvas and discarded wood that he had dragged up at night like a giant owl. His tiny shelter was filled with the few things he valued: a salifan plant that he kept alive in a wooden cup, a torn bit of tapestry, and a sword left to him by his grandfather. That last item he mounted under the eave, so even if someone found his nest, they might not see it. He also had some food reserves—roots, nuts, and berries that he’d gathered on the outskirts of town. The berries were just starting to appear on the warm, sunny hillsides, and he’d found some mushrooms, as well. He had also hauled in a few treasures uncovered in the trash on Governor’s Isle. Someone down there didn’t like salted fish.

  The sun was still up, which kept Villar’s head down. He didn’t like moving about in the daylight. He was blessed with the distinctly beautiful features of his people and refused to cover his ears or hide his eyes from the world. He was proud of his heritage; the rest of the world should be ashamed. Villar’s list of shoulds was long. He should be able to walk into Trio V’s and buy a new suit of clothes. He should be able to wear his grandfather’s sword on his hip in public. He should be able to live in a house with four walls and have an honest-to-Ferrol pot for his salifan plant. What should be and what was, however, remained widely divergent, and this kept him hunkered down with his back against the cupola where the pointing-well-dressed-man weather vane proclaimed an easterly wind.

  He often mused on what would happen if he dared wear the sword. It wasn’t illegal. He’d heard that some rulers disallowed blades and bows inside city limits, except for those worn by knights, nobles, and city guards. Rochelle didn’t have a weapons law, but then there was no edict against a mir walking into the Trio V, either. Some rules didn’t need to be written down or enforced by the guard. If he was seen with the sword brazenly clapping his thigh, he’d draw looks. Then a crowd would form, and unless he was willing to use the weapon, they would beat him and rip it away. If he used it—if he acted like any other self-respecting person—the city guard would come. While wearing a sword wasn’t illegal, wounding and killing people most certainly was. Villar knew from experience that the guards didn’t like dwarves, barely tolerated Calians, but absolutely hated mir. Villar had no illusions of being able to fight off a squad of trained soldiers. He had no training with a blade, and he’d never been in a fight. He didn’t consider being beaten the same as being in a fight. So, while being a mir was reason enough for a beating, being a mir with a sword was guaranteed suicide.

  Looking down between his feet, he could see the river and the setting sun as it turned gold. Carriages rolled across the distant bridges. Smoke rose from countless chimneys. Crowds crawled along the canyon-streets, flowing like some viscous slime that oiled the workings of the city. He was literally above it all, but soon he’d add a more figurative aspect to that idea.

  The bells of Grom Galimus began to play their lonesome melody, marking the end of the day. He should be going. The bishop wouldn’t appreciate him being late. He started to rise, then paused. He heard the scraping again. Tiny claws on wood.

  The rat is back.

  Villar looked to his pile of possessions in time to see the black-and-white spotted rodent scurry into a crack in the roofing. The thief was at it again. This time he had gotten the box open.

  Villar fished the old wooden container out of his pile and, in a panic, he searched the contents while guarding against any mischief that the demon wind might be plotting. Everything that had been there appeared safe. He drew out his most cherished possession: a small portion torn from a tapestry that was at least a thousand years old. According to the story his grandfather told, the tapestry had belonged to the Orphe family and had once been the size of a three-story wall. This two-foot scrap was all that remained. The rest had been confiscated and burned by the church—for obvious reasons. Even Villar’s little scrap showed the detailed image of pointed-eared heroes in armor, riding horses and holding swords aloft. This, his grandfather had told him, was a depiction of the Fall of Merredydd. The image commemorated the battles against barbarians that eventually brought low the ancient and magnificent imperial province. A place that had once been ruled by mir for mir.

  Villar spread the bit of tapestry across his thighs and lovingly caressed the fine needlework.

  A mir had ruled a province.

  He stared into the thread-woven eyes of the faces and made them a promise. “If Ferrol is willing, another one will yet rule a kingdom.”

  Seeing the sun touch the distant mountains, Villar lifted the cloth to his lips and kissed the image, then folded it and put the torn corner back.

  Time was growing short, and he had much to do.

  Villar took his usual rooftop highway route to the cathedral, dropping down in the shadow of the alley. With the workday over, the mass migration of weary people slogged home. Shoulders slumped, heads bowed, few looked up. Even if they had, even if they saw him, no one would have noticed, or cared about, another mir on the street.

  The sun was dipping behind the Estate, most of its face gone, its power fading. A host of shadows crept out of the low places and claimed dominion over the world. The coin of chance was flipping. At last tails was coming up.

  His kind couldn’t safely enter most shops, but a few proprietors were sympathetic and looked the other way when a mir slipped in. Those rare merchants would only sell to mir if no one else was in the store. Common practice was to wait and watch for a lull in traffic then slip in, buy what was needed, and hurry back out before anyone saw. If someone did see, the mir would be turned away. The Crow Tavern on the east side went a step further. Each night, they threw bones and unwanted leftovers on the street for the mir from the nearby Rookery to grab. A crowd gathered religiously and fell to their knees, gathering what they could carry in arms or the folds of skirts. Villar had witnessed the event only once; that was all he could stomach. He had felt nauseated and decided that the Crow would be the first building to burn. Its operator, Brandon Hingus,
would be the first executed. Maybe he meant well, but the result was the public humiliation of his people. Such a blight would need to be erased with extreme prejudice to expunge the ugly memory.

  Despite the common-knowledge ban on most commercial venues, there were a few places mir were tolerated so long as they didn’t make trouble. Public squares were generally safe, as were bridges—beneath which many lived. They were allowed to draw water from common wells even though the law clearly prohibited it. The mir were also allowed to enter Grom Galimus. They couldn’t go past the Teshlor windows, the first pair of stained glass panes that illuminated the nave and depicted the ancient imperial order with images of grim armored warriors who appeared to watch so that not a toe crossed the line.

  Still, mir were allowed to stand inside the doors, observe the services, listen to the choir, and then wait on the steps, hoping for handouts. So long as they were respectful and didn’t block access, they were granted the privilege of silent begging. As such, it wasn’t odd for a mir to trot up the marble steps and enter the giant doors of Grom Galimus.

  Once more, no one looked, no one noticed, no one cared when Villar slipped inside for his first meeting of the night.

  Villar had been a fraction late, but the bishop was more so, leaving Villar to stand between the two stained-glass Teshlors. No service was under way, and the vast interior was mainly empty. The only ones there were a few boys cleaning up and a few devoted faithful kneeling on the stone floor, praying to the statues of Novron and his doting father, Maribor. Despite his covert mission, Villar refused to dip his head or avert his eyes. He would not worship these gods, nor even pretend to. They were the gods of men. From either side, the Teshlors stared at him. Villar felt uncomfortable under their watchful, sunlit gaze—a gaze that suggested they saw more than a stubborn mir—but even as he waited, Villar noticed the light failing and their images fading with it.