A Sobering Blow
The Last Penny Hotel remained a wreck of broken furniture, unconscious patrons, and spilled ale. Bustomi Mithrilham had opened another keg, and Aywin Qinfina was making the most of it.
Fern explained that they had come to secure rooms for the party. Nys and Fable were visiting Taurion and would join them afterward.
Bustomi wanted to know why they had chosen the Last Penny.
It was the sort of hotel people entered when they wanted to get themselves killed.
Fern was still too drunk to appreciate the distinction. Bustomi held him by the shoulder, wrapped his fist around his holy symbol, and delivered a blow that sent him straight to the floor.
The room stopped spinning.
Bustomi’s particular method of sobering a man up was effective, if painful.
He then demanded to know why Fern had brought the Prophet into a dangerous bar, allowed him to get drunk, and discussed rebellion in one of the most heavily armed cities in Rosenhall.
Fern pointed out that he had been dead until yesterday. He had barely entered the Cove alive.
Bustomi loved Aywin like family. That was precisely why he understood the danger.
“You’re lucky he was drunk and amused.”
Had Aywin been in a different mood, the bar fight might have left very few people breathing.
Fern suggested sobering him up as well.
Bustomi declined. Punching the Prophet was an excellent way to get atomized.
Instead, he struck the keg again, leaving Aywin happily occupied beneath a waterfall of beer.
Outside, bells rang through the city.
Fern named the Honest Hem. Bustomi recognized the shop immediately; he had his vestments tailored there.
The two ran toward the alarm.
Only One Survivor
Commander Neptune Ironbreaker arrived at the Honest Hem with a detachment of guards. The water genasi wore a red officer’s coat trimmed in gold, with jeweled rings floating around her hands.
She ordered the patrols to cut off the Mincer’s escape and close the Merchant District gates.
Nys remained in Taurion’s arms, shaking and struggling to speak.
Fable had closed her wounds. Neptune wanted to know whether she was truly healed or merely held together.
From inside the apartment, Elaris began shouting about her damaged wood and spilled stew.
Taurion agreed that taking Nys somewhere else was probably a good idea.
Neptune splashed water over Nys’s face and pressed her for details. She knew from her own years in the guard how quickly a witness’s recollection could fade.
The Mincer stood roughly six feet tall. He was lean, with little of Taurion’s strength or breadth. Beneath his hood, Nys had seen only darkness.
Fable remembered a deep, threatening voice that sounded deliberately performed.
Neptune relayed the description through a sending stone mounted in one of her rings. She suspected a Hat of Disguise and instructed patrols to approach in groups of at least three.
Bustomi arrived, pointed at Fable, and briefly announced that he had found the Mincer.
Neptune was unimpressed.
So was Fable.
While the dwarf argued with the commander, Fable used magic to clean the blood from Nys. Neptune warned her that even a helpful spell could obscure the magical evidence left by the attack.
Fable turned to the broken window instead.
The glass still held the Mincer’s blood.
Neptune called for the Spell Guard.
Nys asked how he could have opened the apartment door without waking anyone. Neptune reminded her that a simple lock offered little protection against a magic user. Knock was already a familiar problem for the city guard.
Bustomi tried Calm Emotions. Glitter settled over Nys, but her panic remained.
Then she reached for her waist.
The velvet scabbard was gone.
Neptune took its description and ordered the Spell Guard to attempt Locate Object. She would bring Nys to the High Lantern for questioning; Fable and Fern could remain behind to speak with the investigators.
Taurion went with his wife.
The Other Side of the Desk
The High Lantern rose above the harbor, its beacon sweeping over the sea and city. Cannons surrounded its base. Guards in full plate stood beneath the Cove’s banners.
Nys followed Neptune up the familiar spiral staircase.
She expected an interrogation room.
Instead, they climbed to the captain’s office beneath the beacon.
Hreda looked considerably older than she remembered. His hair had gone white, his beard had grown, and the desk once occupied by invitations and ordinary business was covered with crime reports, newspaper clippings, and a map of the murders.
He silenced the sending stone carrying the patrols’ frantic chatter.
Neptune presented Nys as the surviving witness who might finally illuminate the case.
Hreda thanked her and dismissed her.
As she left, Nys heard her mutter “drama queen.”
Nys asked Hreda not to judge Neptune too harshly. She felt she had already caused enough trouble.
“You haven’t caused any problems,” he told her. “The Mincer has caused problems.”
He offered tea, coffee, and the opportunity to give her account another day. Nys chose to speak while she could still remember the attack.
An enchanted quill, similar to the one that took Behzad’s order in Devilish Silk began taking notes.
Hreda hoped this interview would go better than their last.
After her resurrection, Nys had blamed him for never promoting her, announced her resignation, and told him to go fuck himself.
Taurion remembered how quickly they had lost the house afterward.
Nys did not remember saying any of it.
Hreda had seen resurrection sickness before. People sometimes returned angry, confused, or violent. He had not taken her words personally.
Nys insisted that something more was wrong.
She remembered being killed. Her next clear memory was being hired by Vulmer, a year later.
She could remember none of the time between.
The Mincer’s weapon was also far beyond an ordinary enchanted blade.
He carried an artifact.
Hreda expected the Spell Guard would be very interested in that.
When he asked for her help, Taurion objected. The investigation had already cost Nys her life once.
Nys kept returning to the Mincer’s restraint. He had held Taurion at his mercy and spared him. He had refused to kill Fable as well.
There were rules behind the violence.
She wanted to understand them.
Blood That Would Not Dry
At the Honest Hem, Fable lifted a bloodstained piece of glass and caught the Mincer’s scent.
They could follow him, but the trail would not wait.
Fern urged caution. A professional killer might have prepared a dangerous hiding place. They could identify where he had gone and return on their own terms.
Fable agreed to follow without immediately engaging him.
Bustomi offered his hammer.
Fable climbed onto the roof where the Mincer had escaped. Small drops of blood marked his route. Using charcoal produced by magic, she left arrows for the guards to follow.
The trail led into a city park.
Blood had pooled on a bench, suggesting that the Mincer had stopped to rest. Beyond it, the droplets became smaller.
Fern touched the blood.
As he lifted his fingers, it began to bubble, spread, and multiply.
The Mincer had not needed to dress his wounds. His body was repairing itself.
Fable helped Fern examine the strange substance while Bustomi caught up, winded from taking the long way around, as he lacked a climbing speed.
He blessed Fable with Owl’s Wisdom.
The diminishing trail continued into an alley near the Pearl Baths. A wall blocked one route; a guarded checkpoint closed another.
Fable examined the wall for magic and found none.
They marked the location and decided to return in the morning.
Somewhere near the bathhouse, the Mincer had vanished.
The Names on the Board
In Hreda’s office, Nys studied the victims pinned across the city map.
Her own name was third.
All of the attacks had occurred at night.
The murders had begun with Mara Pell, the owner of a millinery, and Hadrik Stonewake, a dock foreman. Their deaths had initially been investigated as isolated crimes.
Nys’s murder made the recurring wound impossible to ignore.
Her body had been found in a remote dockside alley after she failed to return and change posts around two in the morning. The guard sent to relieve her discovered her instead.
By the time Detective Anderson brought Taurion and the family to identify her, she sat up.
She had been dead for only an hour or two.
Neptune’s report offered few useful details. The death of a guardswoman had drawn public outrage, pressure from the Dissonant Whispers, and the Duke’s anger. Losing the city’s most tenured officer had cost Neptune her command.
Hreda also noted that assigning Nys to the docks had been controversial. Neptune’s last assessment of her made their strained relationship clear.
Nys remembered repeatedly declining advancement into the Spell Guard. She had preferred helping people directly to becoming entangled in the politics of promotion.
Those politics had found her anyway.
After her death, the Mincer stopped killing for approximately three months.
Then came Oren Bellweather and Vesryn Ithil.
Oren bottled wine for the Château. His body had been moved into the Counting House and placed in the speaker’s chair.
Vesryn tended the grounds. He was found in the vineyard, mounted where a scarecrow should have stood.
The two deaths came only a week apart. Both bodies appeared to have been arranged to communicate something.
The later victims complicated the pattern.
Corvin Ash was a criminal fence operating out of the Last Penny. Tamsin Reed was a gigolo already known to the guard.
Lorin Merrow attended the College of Ioun. His body was discovered in a bathroom inside the Alumni Tower’s private restaurant. Hreda could identify neither a clear motive nor how the killer had entered a place that should have been protected against magical intrusion.
Ilyra Sen repaired instruments and was suspected of operating a speakeasy. Otherwise, she had been an upstanding citizen. Hreda reminded Nys that running a speakeasy was not itself a crime.
The most recent victim was Councilman Timber Westmere.
Westmere had won the Dock District on a promise to close the Dunedrift loophole. Warehouse owners hired workers from Dunedrift for short contracts, sent them home, and hired them again later. An endless supply of temporary employees allowed the businesses to avoid paying out benefits.
After his election, Westmere decided that tighter regulations would burden the employers. He settled instead for allowing temporary workers more festival time off.
Then his body appeared near the docks.
Even that death remained uncertain. The wound resembled the Mincer’s work, but the guard could not rule out an angry worker imitating the killer.
Across the map, the murders clustered in the city’s heart. They largely avoided both its richest districts and its poorest streets.
Nys wondered whether the killer’s purpose had changed. The earliest victims seemed ordinary. The arranged bodies suggested a message. Several later targets carried reputations for criminality or corruption.
Perhaps he had found a cause.
She recalled his claim to be the hand of the Raven, delivering justice to the Cove.
She also recalled being told that she should not have been there.
Was her first death an interruption of someone else’s intended murder?
Hreda had no answer.
He wanted Nys and her companions to investigate. The Gala was approaching, and he feared the Mincer intended to make his mark there.
Breakfast and a Bargain
By morning, the party had reunited at the Honest Hem.
Taurion was repairing the wall Fable had kicked through. She offered Mending.
He had always feared that “Big Mending” would take his job.
Nys kissed him while Elaris served Fern salmon and corn stew. Unlike Taurion, Fern enjoyed it. Elaris considered this proof of a proper elven palate.
Over breakfast, the party exchanged what they had learned.
Fable described the blood trail and its destination. Fern explained the regeneration. Nys considered the many creatures capable of healing that way, but the discovery alone could not identify the Mincer.
Elaris dismissed vampires as a fiction invented to increase church tithes.
Fable looked on.
The scythe had once belonged to a cache of artifacts. Sindatari had told Nys that Ondor Sev’s children sold them for almost nothing. Somehow, this one had reached the Cove.
Nys wondered whether the Mincer had sensed the scabbard. They had barely entered the city before he found her.
They could pursue a Locate Object scroll. They could also visit the Raven Queen’s shrine beneath the lighthouse.
Nys remembered the terms of her bargain: the Lady would not claim her until she obtained justice.
Fern suggested that the Mincer might be acting independently. If the Raven Queen truly wanted Nys dead, he doubted she would be sitting there discussing it.
Nys remained unconvinced.
The Lady had a list. The Mincer spoke as though he knew whose names were written on it. He had also specifically demanded the knowledge held within the scabbard.
They began with the baths.
Breakfast and a Bath
The Pearl Baths stood behind white walls softened by climbing plants and flowing water.
A finely dressed tiefling welcomed the party, took one look at the three of them, and assumed they had come together for the morning special.
Breakfast could be served in a floating basket. A bathing companion could even feed them while they relaxed.
Fern needed several explanations before understanding what sort of companions were being offered.
Nys redirected the conversation.
The baths remained open all night despite curfew. Dockworkers needed somewhere to wash after their shifts, and the establishment had an understanding with the guard. Guards needed relaxation, too.
The proprietor was confident that the Mincer would not attack a crowded room full of witnesses.
Questions about armored visitors and injured customers produced little useful information. Plenty of people wore armor now, and one regular customer always arrived limping.
A question about another entrance proved more useful.
The baths drained into the sewers.
Fern asked whether they could look below.
Did he have legal authority?
“No. But I have monetary.”
Two gold pieces secured permission for a sanitation inspection.
The proprietor led them into a massage room and opened a concealed staircase. He would close the door behind them, but they could knock when they wanted to return.
Fern attempted to arrange a bath afterward.
The proprietor once again understood him to be requesting more.
Beneath the Cove
The stairs descended into a flooded chamber.
Fine black leather straps floated in the water. A blade had cut them, and Fable recognized the Mincer’s blood on the material.
The straps carried real silver studs.
Nys’s attack had damaged his armor. The remains confirmed that he had passed this way and suggested that he could afford expensive equipment.
An iron grate appeared to bar the route into the main sewer system.
When they pulled it, it swung open.
The bars had been cut to turn the barrier into a door.
Beyond lay an extensive network of channels and passages beneath the city. One route led toward the East Gate, where Nys’s father worked. Another turned toward Château Nightfeather and Taurion’s workplace.
The party chose the Château.
Fable examined a door at the end of the channel, found no magic, and opened it.
A waterfall fed the chamber beyond.
A five-headed serpent woke beneath it.
Fern gathered lightning around his fists and plunged through the falling water. He emerged beside the creature, drawing its attention.
Four of its heads bit him in quick succession.
Fable answered by sending her own blood across the chamber and into his wounds. Her sacrifice restored enough of his strength to keep him standing.
Fern struck with lightning.
Nys sent an arrow through one head and called upon Wails from the Grave to bring down another.
Both fallen heads split.
Four rose in their place.
Fable covered the creature in acid while Fern tried attacking the body. The lightning still killed a head, leaving them with the same problem.
Every apparent victory gave the serpent another mouth.
Nys suggested testing fire.
Fern proposed another approach: knock the heads unconscious without killing them, then finish the creature with a single burst.
Nys’s next arrow ricocheted through the chamber, striking two heads hard enough to leave them hanging senseless.
They stayed down.
Fern changed the lightning around his fists to flame. The next head burned away and failed to return.
Now they had two ways to control the creature.
Nys kept its heads falling. Fable’s acid continued to burn, and a Wilting Smite cut through two newly grown necks.
One head remained.
Fern drew the fire from his hands into a ball and released it.
Flames consumed the serpent. This time, nothing grew back.
The party stood amid the water and drifting embers.
Their search for the Mincer had brought them beneath the Cove.