The Disappearance of Winter's Daughter (Riyria Chronicles #4)

“There I go, what?”

Hadrian took the clay pot left on their table and poured tea into his cup until it overflowed. “Every cup is different, but each can only hold so much. Eventually you either stop pouring or make an awful mess. Make a big enough mess and you have to clean up; you have to change.” Hadrian looked at the pool of tea dripping through the slats of the wobbly table. “I made a really big mess, and it wasn’t tea I spilled.”

They were both looking at the puddle of tea when the screaming started.





Chapter Twelve

Unicorns and Polka Dots





Up the street where an alley divided a makeshift livestock shelter from an old stone building, a crowd began to form.

The animal pen was nothing more than rope strung between driven stakes hemming in a score of sheep. Out front, alongside a hastily assembled stage, was a hand-painted sign that read: SUNSET AUCTION. With its white marble blocks and pillars, the three-story stone building opposite the alley gave the impression of having once been a place of importance—a counting house or a court. Now the upper windows were laden with drying clothes, and the balconies brimmed with spinning wheels, jugs, baskets, and pots. A number of families roosted in the vacuum of cracked-marble neglect. Most of them had rushed to balconies and peered down; several pointed at the alley below.

Hadrian swallowed the last of his kenase and stood up. His height allowed him to see over the crowd but granted him no further insight.

“What’s going on?” Royce asked, not bothering to stand.

“Dunno. Something happening in the alley.”

“Nothing good, by the sound of it.”

The screams had stopped but were replaced by a chorus of wailing.

“Where are you going?” Royce asked as Hadrian pushed forward.

“To see what happened.”

“Whatever it is, they have plenty of people to deal with it. And screams and cries are never portents of good fortune. I’d stay away.”

“Of course you would.”

What ability Hadrian lacked in deftly dodging his way through a shifting populace, he more than made up for in cutting through a dense crowd. People moved clear for a man of his size. Those who didn’t, he could move. Any resistance to a gentle push was instantly stifled when they spotted his swords. The city’s residents didn’t carry steel. Most couldn’t afford it, and few had the need. Farmers, merchants, and tradesmen rarely faced violence beyond the occasional drunken fistfight. Theirs was a life of endless repetition, where if they stayed in their place and hoed their given row, nothing of great note ever happened. Men of steel were different. A man with a trowel and hod sought to lay bricks; a man with a sword sought to lay men low; a man with three swords—you quickly avoided. It was in this manner that Hadrian worked his way forward until he was at the mouth of the alley. That was where the crowd stopped. While everyone was eager to see what the noise was about, few cared to get close. Content to view from a distance, the mob hung back, leaving a corridor open.

In a city as congested as Rochelle, the refuse needed to go somewhere. In the finer districts, waste was deposited into the Roche River, which carried it out to the bay and then the Goblin Sea. Poor neighborhoods like Little Gur Em made do by jamming their rubbish behind the buildings in alleys. So, finding a vast mound of garbage at the end of the alley wasn’t a surprise. Broken crates, torn cloth, rotting food, animal waste, and bones were all piled high, but in this case, a handful of kneeling women wailed before the heap. A smaller number of men stood nearby looking aghast and bewildered as they stared down at what appeared to be trash being dragged from the pile.

For the most part, it was. A little cascade of rubbish had been formed where someone had been digging. People did that. Hadrian knew that even men and women of means went treasure hunting in trash piles for a lark. Stories always circulated about someone finding gold earrings or an overlooked sack of silver, but the best prize Hadrian personally knew to have been found was a torn leather belt long enough to be repurposed for a thinner man. This time, someone had apparently found more than they bargained for. No one likes to pick up a discarded shoe and find a foot inside.

The women wailed over the body of a child. A little girl, no older than six or seven, was dead. Hadrian knew dead bodies. He’d walked the aftermath of too many battlefields not to know the child had died only hours ago, certainly less than a day. But there was more than just death involved with this body.

As Hadrian approached, as he reached the scene and took his place beside the other befuddled men, he understood the problem. The little girl hadn’t been murdered, she’d been torn apart. Her face was fine, her mouth partially open, her eyes thankfully closed. He had killed more men than he could remember and been in battles where women and children had died. He’d lost his squeamishness to gore long ago but never grew accustomed to the sight of open-eyed dead children. The girl’s rib cage had been broken into, its contents rifled through. Without needing to get closer, Hadrian could tell something was missing: The child’s heart was gone.

“We should go,” Royce whispered. The thief was behind him, motioning with a hand for them to retreat. “Soldiers coming.”

His warning came too late.





“You really need to listen to me more often,” Royce told Hadrian as the two sat in the guard post.

This was a different station house than where they had chatted with Roland, but the interiors were identical. Same one-room shack with a desk, weapons, stacks of wood, and a small fire. An identical horseshoe held down similar parchments. The military was nothing if not consistent. At least the shackles remained on the wall rather than on their wrists. The guardsmen had confiscated Hadrian’s swords, missed Royce’s dagger on the pat-down, and after some preliminary questions, ordered them to wait.

“We’re not in trouble,” Hadrian said. “The truth is, we’ve done nothing wrong.”

Royce closed his eyes and shook his head. “By Mar, the way you think. It’s . . . it’s . . . I honestly don’t know if there’s a word for it. You realize the truth is rarely important, right?”

“Soldiers are people, too,” Hadrian replied. “I know. I was one.”

“I wasn’t limiting the observation to soldiers. Most people don’t care about the truth.”

“Look, they have no reason to do anything to us. We’re innocent. They just picked us up because we’re strangers and didn’t belong in that alley. They’re just double-checking.”

“Reason, truth, innocence”—Royce sat back against the wall and folded his arms—“unicorns, pixies, and dragons; you’re not that young to believe in such things. How is it that you fancy yourself a resident of a make-believe world.”

“I told you. At this point, it’s a choice.”

“It’s not. It’s fooling yourself. I can decide between eating fish or pork, but I can only pretend to eat unicorn meat. I can’t actually eat a unicorn. The world is the world, and you live in it with open eyes or choose to be blind. It’s all the same to me, but don’t stand there pretending you’re right.”

Hadrian grimaced. “There are so many things wrong with that statement.” Only Royce could think of a unicorn-eating metaphor. Where do thoughts like that bubble up from? Why a unicorn? Who thinks of eating a symbol of purity and grace? Maybe that was his point. Perhaps Royce was making an argument within an argument, but Hadrian wasn’t about to be sucked down some obscure sewer where only Royce knew the way. Hadrian had a point of his own. “You always wear black and gray. That’s a choice, too, and it says a lot about you.”