Yue had no illusions about what she would find. Zhanu’s neighbor had been too afraid to describe what he saw, but it was not the first such grisly murder she had investigated in the last few weeks. Zhanu’s home looked just as she expected it to. The window beside the door had been broken open by something attacking from outside the house. The front door was still closed and locked; Zhanu’s neighbor had not been able to open it, and had looked in through the smashed window. The constables forced the door open, and inside they found a scene all too similar to others they had seen recently. Zhanu’s corpse lay in the corner, her head propped up against the wall, her eyes staring sightlessly at them. Her sunburnt skin was unusually pale. There was blood on the floor and on the wall, but not nearly as much as one would have expected, considering how the woman’s throat had been torn open.
“Again,” said Sinshi, averting his eyes. “Sergeant, is it the—”
“The creature,” said Yue. “Yes.”
She winced at her own unwillingness to name the thing. It was a foolish superstition. But then, Yue had been born and raised in Lan Shui. She had no illusions that she was anything other than the simple child of a small town, and among such folk, superstition died hard. It was her opinion that such traditions had been started for a reason, and she would not change them unless she, too, had a reason.
“Should we send another messenger, Sergeant?” said Ashta.
Yue looked at her. “Would you go, if I asked you to?”
Ashta and Sinshi both grew visibly paler, and Sinshi swallowed hard. But Ashta lifted her chin. “I would.”
“As would I,” said Sinshi, his voice shaking.
“Then the two of you are idiotic, if brave,” said Yue. “I would not send you even if you begged me to, because you would die—just like the last two. And if I do not send one of you because I do not think you would survive, I have no right to ask another of the townsfolk to go.”
“What do we do, then?” said Sinshi, voice thick with despair.
“I wish my answer were otherwise,” said Yue. “But we have to keep waiting. I have not sent a report to Bertram for three weeks now—nor the Mystics, for that matter. The king’s collectors have received no taxes. That cannot go on forever without prompting an investigation. We may not be able to leave the town, but that does not mean others cannot come here.”
“That could take weeks,” said Ashta. “And the attacks are coming more—”
“Do you think I do not know that?” snapped Yue. “We have warned the townsfolk, and we have warned the farmers. Many have retreated inside the walls, but others are more foolish—like poor Zhanu here, may she rest in the dark. When you have been a constable for a while longer, you, too, may learn that you cannot protect everyone from themselves.”
Sinshi stared at his feet now, chagrined. But Ashta still held her sergeant’s gaze. “I have been thinking—”
“When did this start?” said Yue, raising an eyebrow.
Ashta heard the joke in her tone and pressed on. “I have been thinking. No one has tried riding east. A messenger could reach the Greatrocks in less than a day. Before nightfall.”
“And where do you think the creature is coming from?” said Yue. “It is far more likely to have its home in the mountains than in the western spur. And even if I am wrong, and a messenger made it deep into the mountains, they would never survive. Satyrs are plentiful there, and harpies, and other, worse things that humans have never named. I have thought of all of this, constable.”
At last Ashta averted her eyes, joining Sinshi in his awkward discomfort. “As you say, Sergeant,” she muttered. “We will remove the body, and burn her.”
“I will write a letter to her eldest son, so that we may send it when the road is safe again,” said Sinshi. “He is in Bertram.”
“Good. Do it quickly, and return to the station when you are through. And do not despair.” Yue looked through the shattered window at the world beyond—too bright for such a solemn day. Too sunny.
“Someone will come. Eventually.”
And she was right, though she would not know it for some days yet.
Of course, we in Northwood knew nothing of all these dark events, and so our lives went on quite uninterrupted.
I had thought that Loren and Xain would be eager to leave the city and make their way east. But for some reason I did not know, they remained in Northwood for some time. Loren spent long hours walking in the woods with Chet, the children helped Mag around the inn, and Xain skulked about the place as he recovered from his illness.
Others have asked me, and I have often wondered, why we all did not feel a greater urgency. We had defeated a great evil in the mountains, but we had not wiped it out. I have been called foolish for being so lax about our situation. And indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, I was foolish. But what I said earlier, about stories, and believing them, is never more true than when speaking of the story we live day to day. And we are always prone to believe that which we think will make our lives easier. I thought, as I am sure Loren did, that having defeated our enemy, we would be free from them for a time. After all, they had been hidden in the shadows for so long—why would they reveal themselves now?
That was our notion, anyway. And so, for my part, I spent much time revisiting
