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torch held high, the light exposing both victims. Both guards stared at the
woman.
Blood had stopped spilling from between her fingers clamped about her throat.
It pooled about her head, slowly running along crevices between the
cobblestones. Her brown eyes were still open.
"Get Lord Geyren now!" the first soldier yelled.
The second guard dropped the torch beside his companion and ran back the way
he'd come. Shouts and confusion followed.
Chane knew he should slip away, but a strange fascination kept him there. He
watched longer than he should have.
Armed men and gasping townspeople began to collect at the alley's mouth.
Chane heard an anguished shout.
A young man in polished boots pushed through the gawkers to stand over the
young woman's corpse. He wore a royal-blue tunic and an open indigo cloak.
When he crumpled to his knees, he took no notice of blood soaking into his
fine breeches.
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"Marianne?" he asked, reaching out for her red-stained fingers. He pulled
them away, exposing her throat. "Marianne!"
The second soldier had returned with the young nobleman and began pushing the
crowd back. The first soldier turned on his knee toward the manservant,
checking for life. In front of the guards and everyone else the young nobleman
sobbed like a child. He lifted her body and pulled it to his chest. Her blood
smeared across the side of his face. He looked around wildly.
"Help me! Someone get help."
Chane watched in puzzlement as the young man rocked the woman in his arms,
back and forth.
It wasn't fair. He should still have the joy of the hunt and the kill, but it
had come and gone in an instant. Euphoria eluded him, no matter how much warm
flesh he bit into since&
That night in the Apudalsat forest, Wynn, bleeding from a shoulder wound,
threw herself in front of Magiere. Chane hesitated. Magiere took his head.And
then nothing but waking in terror from that last instant, and thrashing free
of the corpses thrown over him.
Watching the young nobleman, Chane felt no pity or regret, but there was an
image in his thoughts, as he imagined&
Wynn collapsed across his own headless body. She sobbed upon his chest, her
small face streaked with dirt and tears and his own black fluids.
Chane couldn't watch any longer. He slipped along the wall, deeper into the
alley. No one noticed his departure. He kept seeing Wynn's face marred by his
own second death.
The first long, eerie wail rang out through the night air, close enough that
Chane froze. He stood in an open street, completely unprotected from the
shield of Welstiel's ring.
Chap was hunting him.
Magiere walked toward an inn, and as they drew near Leesil's torch lit up the
yellow-painted letters of its sign THE BRONZE BELL. Hunger rumbled in her
stomach, and the barest burn of it rose in her throat. She hadn't bothered to
eat anything before they stepped out on the hunt. Her jaw muscles twinged,
probably from all the tension she'd suffered in the last few days. She reached
for the door handle to enter the inn.
"Magiere& " Leesil whispered from behind.
She turned and saw his face strangely lit up inside his deep cowl, but the
clomping of heavy boots pulled her attention away. Two men in leather armor,
shortswords unsheathed, ran by through the intersection they'd just crossed.
Chap snarled and broke into a full-throated wail.
Hunger sharpened in Magiere's stomach in response to Chap's cry.
"Damned dead deities& we're right on top of him!" Leesil said.
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He pulled the crossbow off his back, a quarrel already fitted under its
holding clamp as he cocked it. Magiere saw why his face was lit up within the
cowl.
The topaz amulet glowed upon his chest.
"Chap, go!" she ordered.
The dog bolted down the street, wailing as he turned the corner after the
running soldiers. Magiere followed as fast as she could with Leesil close at
her side. Chap outdistanced them to the next cross street, but there he pulled
up short.
Two soldiers held back a small cluster of people before the mouth of an
alley. Chap paced behind the townsfolk, trying to look through their legs into
the alley. When Magiere caught up, she and Leesil stopped as well. She pushed
halfway through the crowd before she saw the spectacle that had drawn them
here.
A torch on the alley floor illuminated a man in an indigo cloak rocking the
body of a small woman his face smeared with her blood and his tunic soaked
from her torn throat.
Magiere's hunger burned her from the inside. She was too late.
Chap wormed out of the crowd and past the two soldiers. Leesil pushed forward
to follow, torch and crossbow held up in one hand. One soldier stepped in his
way.
Leesil planted his foot behind the soldier's without breaking stride and
struck the man with his hip and shoulder as he walked on. The soldier's
footing slipped, and he flopped to the cobblestones.
"Leesil, easy!"Magiere snapped as she followed.
Chap scurried deeper into the alley, head low and swinging with his nose just
above the cobblestones. He stopped, shook himself, and looked back to Magiere
and Leesil with a high-pitched howl.
The crowd's murmurs softened, and two armed men behind the noble turned at
the sound.
Leesil trotted ahead. He was halfway to Chap as Magiere drew her falchion to
follow. The second soldier turned his back to the crowd. Short-sword drawn, he
tried to cut Magiere off before she got into the alley.
Magiere lowered her sword but kept it in front of herself. She held up her
empty hand.
"We were hired by your ruler to deal with whatever did this."
The soldier hesitated. She stepped along the alley's far wall, keeping well
away from the kneeling noble. When she'd cleared the grieving man the soldier
appeared satisfied and turned back to holding off the townsfolk.
Armed men surrounded the noble and tried to take the woman's body from him,
but he wouldn't let go of her, and clutched her tightly to his chest. There
was nothing Magiere could say or do for him, and she ran after Chap and Leesil
heading out the alley's far end.
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