Nelum persisted, 'Still, if it saves lives-'
'At the moment it's not saving anything,' Brynd interrupted. 'It's taking soldiers from the street, valuable men we need in combat.'
'But the real question is, why?' Nelum observed.
'Indeed,' Jeryd added. 'Could do with more of your sort in the Inquisition. So, why is this abnormally large creature specifically hunting down soldiers? Do you think it might have anything to do with the aliens that are invading?'
'I've no idea.' Brynd found he was dealing with too much that he knew too little about these days. 'They could be indeed, because we're not really that certain of our enemy. But it's not just soldiers that have gone missing. Civilians, too.'
'A fact we must remember,' Jeryd confirmed. 'This isn't specifically an attack on the military. And you have soldiers out on street patrol regularly, yet they've not seen anything like this before, right?'
None of his men patrolling the city had reported anything. Perhaps they feared they would be considered insane. Brynd shook his head in frustration.
'Then it looks like we got ourselves one bastard-cunning killer on the loose,' Jeryd grumbled.
People began moving through the streets as the community gradually woke up, carts rumbling towards the iren, fiacres carrying passengers across the city. Those passers-by wearing masks turned to face the small group with fake and comical expressions.
The rumel investigator set off along the nearby streets a little, pacing back and forth.
Five minutes later Brynd heard Jeryd shouting his rank.
The Night Guard contingent ran to see what the matter was. Jeryd was crouching by a pile of waste, gesturing at the base of the nearby wall.
A mutilated man lay crumpled in cold blood. Rats and trilobites had been picking at his corpse, but what was still evident was that something had cleaved him open with ferocious force. The Dragoon's uniform, ripped to shreds, was all Brynd needed to see.
*
Jeryd liked Doctor Machaon a great deal more than Doctor Tarr, who still resided back in a dark corner of Villjamur. He'd only met the latter a few times, but had become more than depressed at listening to his ruminations about death. Doctor Machaon, on the other hand, seemed positively joyous at the case now lying before him. Around forty years old, with rubicund cheeks and a belly that made even Jeryd feel trim, the investigator took to him instantly.
'Such exotic wounds!' Machaon crowed. 'Quite a savage end for this poor fellow.'
Machaon's workroom was to be found in the Ancient Quarter, not too near the bistros for temptation to disturb his work. The Onyx Wings were in full view from the west-facing window. An array of coloured lanterns and flambeaus lit up the room even further. Charts sprawled across the walls, bottles were ready to burst off all the shelves. There was a tray full of chisels and enterotomes and saws and cutters, and in the centre of the room was a table on which the body of the victim had been placed. A lamp hung above it.
Machaon had already flexed the corpse's joints and searched for abrasions or bruising on the skin. He explained that he was now looking for lividity, and jotted something down in a notebook lying open to one side.
'I'm convinced this one's a murder,' Jeryd told him, pressing the doctor for an opinion rather than waxing lyrical about the nature of the wounds.
Machaon opened a small jar and sprinkled some blue powder onto a white plate. Then he took a sample of blood from a major vein and squirted it on the powder, still humming to himself. 'And you are most correct in that, Investigator Jeryd. Most correct. But in all my years as a physician, I cannot recall seeing a wound such as this.'
Jeryd waited for Machaon to continue with the post-mortem, soon oblivious to his presence in the room.
'Doctor, do you know what caused it?' Jeryd pressed again.
Go on, say it.
A spider.
'I would suggest… judging by the way the torso has been severed, the width of the initial bite, exposing his organs thusly… and accounting for what rodents and trilobites have done to it overnight… this was nothing human. Nothing rumel either. Nothing caused by a weapon such as a sword or axe.'
'Don't tell me, some kind of monster?' Jeryd offered sarcastically.
'That is my best guess, indeed!' Machaon exclaimed.
Shit, Jeryd thought. He seemed to be having the worst of luck in trying to hunt down killers these days. 'Do you have anything I can work with? Any possible descriptions of the perpetrator?'
Machaon sauntered around the body, leaning to and fro to examine some further detail, while his observations emerged only as a mumbled incantation on his lips. Jeryd was growing impatient.
'It was caused by a species of animal, that much is certain. This was not created with teeth, at least I don't believe – nothing was mauled here. The line of severance seems to run from top to bottom, which, judging by the distribution of the incision, indicates a large beast striking downwards. At a guess I'd say it stood much taller than a human. Or a rumel.' He gestured to the huge ripping gash above the ribcage, and the collapsed bones underneath. 'Yet it's far too messy for a hand-held weapon – at a guess, we cannot be certain. That scarring is not indicative of a cultist relic, although some of them are incredibly complex, so it's tough to say. All in all I would wager that these wounds were caused by some creature unknown to us. I hear rumours of a new race having attacked our neighbouring islands. Do you think it might signify something along those lines, investigator?'
Jeryd had heard the commander discuss the Okun, yet they were only slightly taller than the average man. And two witnesses had mentioned something else.
A spider?
Jeryd knew it. Didn't want to believe it, but he knew it. He was not at all delighted about this avenue he would have to explore. Just the thought of it brought a surge of fear rushing to his head, started his heart racing. How could it be that he ended up chasing the kind of creature that terrified him more than any other?
'Investigator… are you all right?' Machaon interrupted his thoughts. 'You seem a bit unsteady.'
'I'm fine,' Jeryd grunted. 'It's been another early start for me, that's all.'
THIRTY
One of the hybrids had died in his absence, leaving Voland dismayed. He hunched over the corpse, a cat-like thing with a massive spiralling shell on its back, studying it carefully under the light of the lantern. It would only have managed to waddle, unable to cope with the bony weight of the exoskeleton. Two little brown paws now lay perfectly still, though even when it was still alive these were ineffective. With a pencil, he prodded it. There was no sign of wounding, no emission of blood. It was probably due to heart failure, he surmised – the stress of being alive had been far too much for it. Hybrids didn't always work out, didn't always live for very long.
Leaning back with a sigh, he vowed to bury it soon. He covered it with a cloth, gripped the lantern, and rose to his feet.
Upstairs now, old boy.
His chair was one of those battered old leather things, the kind that you didn't care if you spilt something on, intended solely for the business of relaxing. Which is what he wanted to do now. He'd had a hard day working and he just wanted to relax.
Cressets provided a warm light in his makeshift study. There were a few books here and there, scattered rugs and artwork on the green-painted walls. The room was rather pleasant, despite the odour that rose from below whenever the weather was bad.
He tossed his top hat on a side table, alongside a cup of whisky, then reclined into his chair with a sigh. He slid off his shoes and socks, and began to massage his sore feet.
'Oh not again,' he muttered aloud: the outer layer of epidermis was peeling heavily. Only one of his appendages was a human foot – the other had been claimed from a mega-magnus beetle he'd bought off a cultist
