False Covenant

creature who was now his master must have shrugged. “But delicious.”

Squirrel's whimpers masked the worst of the lapping, squishing, and dry crackling to follow.

But what followed those, oddly enough, were a series of crashes and thumps, as though the thing inside was ransacking the shop. And accompanying the not-so-musical tones of a careless search, a cheerful, jaunty whistling.

Eventually, the clattering and the whistling both ended with a satisfied, “Aha! Here we are! Some of those and some of these, some for you's and some for me's…”

Wood thumped against stone, and one of the shuttered windows flew open. The floppy hat emerged, followed by the rest of Squirrel's master. He crawled across the wall with only a single hand; in the other, he clutched what appeared to be a bedsheet, tied into a makeshift sack and stained with fresh blood. Where the bricks ended, he dropped to his feet and progressed directly to the tree in which his reluctant servant was concealed.

“Come down, come down! I have surprises for all my good little boys and girls!”

It took every ounce of will for Squirrel to pry his hands free from the bark and force himself to descend.

“Uh, master?”

That mostly human head cocked to one side. “A question, a question! I think I have an answer or two just lying around. Shall we see if they match?”

“Well…I was just…”

“Oh, no. Never be just.” A long finger wagged in Squirrel's face. “Never, ever, ever. Understand?”

“Um…Yes?”

“Goody!”

“I was ju-that is, I was wondering…Was the shopkeep enough for tonight? For, uh, for you? I mean, that wasn't, well, it wasn't exactly quiet, and the Guard-”

“Enough? Enough? Silly, stupid child, there is no enough, oh, no. Never. The loud old man was stale and dry and not very sweet at all. We didn't come to him for supper.”

“No? Then why…?”

The creature's grin widened enough to split his face clear across the middle. With a dramatic flourish, he flung the bedsheet upon the earth, yanking it so that it rolled open as it landed. Within rested an entire array of glazed pastries; brightly colored hard candies; and rich, sticky toffees.

“I told you already, forgetful thief. Surprises for all my good little boys and girls! Just as soon as you show me where to find them….”

Squirrel stared in horror at the tempting treats spread out before him, and softly began to cry.

CHAPTER NINE

He'd known it had to be bad.

From the moment Constable Sorelle had appeared in the doorway to his office, scarcely capable of stringing two words together in any coherent fashion, his face fish-belly pale and his eyes wide as carriage wheels, Julien had known that his day was about to become very, very unpleasant. Throughout the journey, as Paschal led him through the afternoon crowds, carving a path through Davillon's bustling streets, he'd contemplated and considered, imagining a dozen and one scenarios, each worse than the last. He'd questioned the constable time and again, but the normally unflappable Guardsman was so distraught that Julien couldn't find it in him to berate the man for his unprofessional demeanor.

He'd known it had to be bad. But not even in the darkest of his imaginings could Julien Bouniard-who had been a member of the Davillon Guard all his adult life, who had been present a few years back at the discovery of the worst massacre in the city's modern history-have anticipated how bad.

A crowd had gathered in their path, facing a small courtyard formed by the corners of several modest houses. An angry grumbling pawed at his ears, punctuated by sobs and the occasional gasp. Scattered throughout that assembly were several men and women in the black and silver of the Guard; men and women who should have been dispersing the crowd, or otherwise securing the scene, and yet instead were only staring alongside their fellow citizens.

Major Bouniard began to shove and elbow his way through, barking orders and scowling at every constable failing in his or her duty…. And then stopped as something crunched beneath his boot. He looked down to study the broken slice of candied fruit, cracked and smeared on the roadway, and initially assumed it was simple litter, unimportant and readily dismissed.

Or so it seemed, until he saw a second sliver of the same confection, as well as an uneven wedge of chocolate, a peppermint stick, a gooey handful of pastry stuck to the brick of a nearby wall…

A trail. It was a trail of sugary leavings, just as one might find in the wake of a passel of schoolchildren or unsupervised urchins. It led…Why, it led toward that same courtyard to which Paschal had been guiding him!

A courtyard whose entranceway Julien could now see. An entryway in which lay a little toy pony, its stitches torn, its stuffing scattered. And beside that, just the faintest scrap of what, beneath the drying blood, might have been the hem of a brightly dyed floral print dress.

“Oh, gods…”

Julien didn't have to push his way through anymore. The crowd melted aside, allowing him to pass-now that he desperately didn't want to.

They were all so small. It was hard to imagine that they'd ever been anything more than heaps of clothes and flesh, hair and bone; that they'd ever laughed and cried, run and skipped.

That they'd ever squealed with delight over the sweet promises of the scattered candies.

Half a dozen of them. Half a dozen voices that would never laugh again, half a dozen lives that would never be lived, half a dozen families that would never be whole.

Julien literally, physically reeled beneath the enormity of it. He might well have fallen, had he not been near enough to slap a palm against one of the neighboring walls and hold himself upright. Beyond that, however, there was nothing. He did not cry, as many of the crowd, and even several of his constables, were doing now. His gut didn't churn, though several wet and rancid stains on the cobbles outside the courtyard suggested that more than a few of the witnesses had emptied their stomachs over what they saw.

It wasn't that Julien had grown suddenly hard, that he didn't care. It was that, for the nonce, he'd simply been numbed by it all. Later, he knew, it would hit him. He would shake, and he would sob, and he would beg Demas or Vercoule or any other god for an explanation that he knew he'd never receive. But for now, it remained at some small remove, outside him rather than a part of him. He couldn't take it in, not all of it.

And that was good. It meant, for the moment, that he could do his job. Julien allowed himself one second to think I wish old Sergeant Chapelle were here, and then forced himself to take in the entire scene.

It took some time to notice, because it required examining the tiny bodies directly, and neither Julien nor any of the others had any desire to do so, but eventually he recognized a peculiar inconsistency. Whatever it was that Iruoch did to most of his victims-draining? drinking? desiccating? Whatever process led to the cracking, parchment skin, the shriveled flesh, the relative paucity of blood…it wasn't universal here. Three of the poor children were, indeed, nothing more than bones and dusty leather. But a fourth was, for lack of a better word, floppy, as though the process had only been about halfway completed; and the other two were merely murdered (as if that wasn't bad enough), their pale skin showing wounds of the foulest sort, but their bodies otherwise left intact.

Had the creature's appetite finally been sated? If so, had he only slaughtered the remaining victims to indulge some sadistic pleasure?

Or had something happened, something to distract Iruoch from his ghastly repast? Something of sufficient import to draw him away? Julien had no evidence to that effect, but every instinct he'd developed as a City Guardsman screamed at him that this latter possibility was indeed the case.