23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

“ W as there this much blood found with any other bodies?” Cyril asked, her blouse tugged up over her nose.

They arrived in Brynnhold, finally, after riding hard for over an hour in the late afternoon heat. The same humid, stifling heat that the merchant’s shop had baked in all afternoon.

With blood and viscera splattered across every visible surface.

And a disemboweled body.

And not a single open window or door.

Cyril had a pretty iron-clad stomach, but this… She’d smelled nothing like it.

Metallic and sour, and nauseating in a unique way, Cyril was thankful she never made it to lunch.

Dion helped her open a couple of windows to pull in a breeze from the docks, but the air was brutally stagnant. How convenient that he was needed elsewhere and left before she’d even looked around.

“No, miss. Nothing like this,” said the city guardsman, Soren, who’d stayed behind with her. He, too, had his uniform pulled up over his nose. “Just like the one in the palace, we assumed the first three were killed elsewhere and then dumped. This is…new.”

There was no question that the man lying on the floor, split and pulled apart from neck to groin, met his end in that very room.

Spray and spatter coated the walls and ceiling of the shop’s main room, and puddles of blood sat in coagulated spots across the floorboards. A veritable lake of it had pooled around the merchant’s body too.

It must have been such a lively, fragrant place before death saturated it through and through. Cyril was disappointed she hadn’t had the chance to see it before.

Almost every display rack or table was knocked over or splintered into pieces, and tapestries hung half-torn from the walls. Broken jars of spices and dried flowers were strewn about, stuck in the splatters of blood. Bolts of vibrant and exotic-looking fabrics were shredded and burned too.

Such shameful destruction, but it wasn’t the time to dwell.

The runes written in the merchant’s blood on the wall above his body were the entire reason Cyril was there, and she didn’t have to look long to know they were the same as the others. A different arrangement of the elements, but all the usual suspects were there from her cursory glance.

Cyril set her bag down on the front counter—the least blood-splattered surface—and regretted every minute she had to uncover her nose to pilfer out a couple of supplies and take careful steps back across the room. Her stomach was creeping up her throat, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep it at bay.

“They said you can speak the old language. Is that true?” Soren asked, quiet marvel in his voice, and Cyril balked.

“No, no. Gods, no. I—” She took a slow breath. That was putrefying flesh that just squelched beneath her boot. “I can read it…sort of. Enough to understand this.” She gestured at the runes on the wall.

“Oh.” His disappointment was palpable.

“Sorry.” Cyril smiled empathetically. “One of the rogues told you that, or…?”

Leave it up to one of her uncles to speak with too much enthusiasm.

“No, actually, it—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, someone may have overheard Commander Kallan say you do.”

Cyril blinked.

“Well, Commander Kallan was mistaken,” she said, a bit more curtly than intended.

An amused smile crept onto the guard’s lips, and he nodded.

“Noted. I’ll leave you to this”—Soren waved a hand at the wall and tugged his uniform back up over his nose—“and I’ll keep the door open for you.”

“Thanks. I’ll be quick.” Cyril swallowed down the sickly feeling creeping back up her throat. “You’ll have to scrape me off the floor too if I’m here much longer.”

“You could always crack open some of the lockmead and sniff that,” he chuckled, but Cyril blinked at him in confusion.

“The what ?”

The guard pointed to a small rack of glass bottles beneath a window—one of the few things in the room not left in ruins

“Lockmead?” He paused, and Cyril shook her head. “It’s spirits distilled with a bit of faelock, and it packs a fucking punch. They make that one right here in Brynnhold.”

Cyril took a slow look at the destruction around the shop. Despite the stagnant heat, goosebumps rippled up her arms and legs. She turned back to the guard and said, “Was everything here made in Brynnhold? Or Reykr at least?”

Soren’s brow furrowed for a moment. “I doubt it. He maintained some pretty robust trade deals with the south and the mortal lands. I’m sure very little is actually from here.”

A wave of sickly unease swept through Cyril, and it wasn’t just the smell of festering death that was getting to her.

“Do you want to go outside? You don’t look well,” he continued.

She waved him off.

“It’s fine. Just give me a minute and I’ll be out.”

“Remember what we talked about , ” Runa had said to her hours ago, but Cyril wasn’t sure she wanted to acknowledge the connections her mind was forging.