The upper floor was the same. The bedrooms were ruined. Floorboards had been torn up, every drawer had been pulled out, the furniture shattered. Garún tried to identify which room belonged to Katrín, but her parents clearly had only had daughters, as the three bedrooms aside from the master bedroom all obviously belonged to girls. The master bedroom was covered in down and feathers. The mattress and bedding were shredded. The feathers almost covered a large coagulated pool of blood in the middle of the floor. A sticky set of footprints was at the edge of the blood.
The audioskull’s music changed with a jolt; the bass dropped and a panicked rhythm started playing. Garún slid behind the open bedroom door. She looked through the crack between the door and the frame. Two police officers moved slowly up the stairs. Of course the house was still being monitored. She silently cursed herself – how had she missed them? There was too much background threat in the music.
They were young, both of them. Probably inexperienced. One was trying to grow a respectable moustache, which was still nothing but feeble down on his upper lip. They’d find her. The huliðshjálmur wasn’t strong enough for this. The one with the moustache nodded towards the other and headed towards the master bedroom. They were armed with heavy skorrifles with bayonets attached.
Slowly, silently, she pulled out the can of delýsíð. The officer moved into the bedroom with his rifle readied. They knew she was there. They had probably been waiting for her. When he’d entered and was just about to turn back, she leaped out and sprayed him right in his face.
Abstract delýsíð painting was something that had fascinated Garún a lot. She’d worked with delýsíð for a long time in her artwork, but she’d always relied on forms and certain colours to shape the effects of the delýsíð in a clearer way. She’d never used both clear and formless delýsíð, never tried to get the psychosomatic effects she wanted without using any kind of art as the framework. Now she focused with all her power to shape an illusion out of nothing but her raw will. To paint a picture in the man’s mind of his fellow officer as a monster, so that he would see his partner as Garún did. As a danger and a threat. She tried to connect all of this to the fear of the terrorist and traitor he’d come here to capture, but it was too much for a hack job like this one and she felt control slip from her hands.
He screamed and tried to rub the spray out of his eyes. Immediately his partner came running down the hallway and aimed his skorrifle. Garún dodged from the doorway, pointed to the hall and screamed at the officer.
“There she is! There she is!’
The delýsíð-blinded officer stopped rubbing his eyes and looked towards his partner. Garún flinched when she saw what she’d done to the man. His eyelids had been burned away, shrivelled to nothing, and dark purple fluids streamed from the corners of his eyes. His eyes were rigid and bloodshot, the dilated pupils like bottomless pits. In their centres were burning white dots. A quivering smile appeared on his lips. He aimed his weapon towards his friend.
“Þorgeir, don’t—”
The gunshot silenced him. Garún waited until she heard the body hit the floor. Before the blinded police officer could rid himself of the hastily made seiður, Garún pulled up her knife and stuck it in deep under his chin. The blade disappeared into the soft flesh and she felt the point crack through cartilage. The officer gurgled and his body became rigid. She saw the glint of steel behind his teeth, where the dagger came up through his tongue and into the roof of his mouth. Blood came gushing over her hands, a waterfall streaming from his mouth and the wound, and she pulled the knife out. He collapsed, shaking, choking on his own blood. Then he stopped moving.
Garún searched the bodies before she got out. She took two more knives in addition to the one she had, and a token of protection one of them carried around his neck. The necklace was a small skull moulded into some kind of metal, decorated with runes and symbols. Yellow rat’s teeth jutted out of the awkwardly shaped lump of metal. On the skull’s forehead was the seal of the king, meaning that this artefact was consecrated by a royal seiðskratti. Could this have blocked the noisefiend? Garún was unsure what the item’s purpose was, so she crushed it under her heel. She felt as if she heard a scream in the distance, but it had to be her imagination.
* * *
She managed to get out unseen, as far as she knew. Were they monitoring the house to capture Katrín, or her accomplices? If she’d betrayed them, why had the house been turned upside down? What were they searching for? The pool of blood on the floor. Footprints smudged with blood. Feathers everywhere. The feathers had been spread after the blood had been spilled. They had been lying on top of it, white and untouched like ships on a red sea. Someone had been injured before they tore through the place. If Katrín had betrayed them, the Crown was already in the Forgotten Downtown. If not, Katrín would eventually break and tell them about the emergency portals.
If Katrín was in hiding, she needed Garún’s help. Why hadn’t they discussed this? Garún didn’t know where she should be searching.
She tried to place herself in Katrín’s footsteps. How likely was it that Katrín had gone to her friends? Most likely all of them were of similar class and background as she was.
