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

“Sorry for the mistake,” Roland said. “I’d buy you both a drink, but I have the night shift the rest of this week, and the duke frowns on drunk officers.”

“Ah, yes, the life of an honest soldier,” Hadrian mused, feigning envy.

“How about you two? Still looking for the duchess? Heard you stopped by the carriage shop. Find anything?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Let me know if you do. I’m pretty sure she’s dead, but if she isn’t . . .”

“What?”

Roland hesitated, and his face changed. The tough fa?ade, the soldier’s stare, dimmed, and for a moment, Hadrian once more saw the lad he had once known. “Everyone calls her the Whiskey Wench. No one showed her a lick of respect. I didn’t, either. Guards are supposed to bow when she goes by. None of us did. We all said how she wasn’t a real noble. That she was fake because she wasn’t born one, and wasn’t even from Alburn. I guess the feeling came from a kind of envy, as if she was getting away with something and didn’t deserve respect. Then, well, she gave me a new pair of boots. My old ones had holes in them. My feet used to get soaked, and I nearly got frostbitten more than once. I hardly ever saw the woman. It’s not like I was her bodyguard, but she must have noticed. Why she bothered, I don’t know. Told myself she didn’t like seeing a guard captain in a shoddy uniform, except . . . city guards are required to wear black boots, thin leather that looks nice, but doesn’t do anything when you’re out patrolling in the cold.” He lifted his foot to show Hadrian his pair of brown, fur-lined footwear. “Nicest boots I’ve ever owned. Real warm. Hardly noticed the snows the rest of the winter.” He put his foot down. “If she’s alive, I want to know. And if she’s not and you discover who did it, I want to know that, too.”

Hadrian nodded and, checking his weapons, pushed the short sword down on his hip and lifted the bastard sword higher and back a tad. “Well, thanks for helping us out.” Hadrian took two steps toward the door, but stopped when he realized Royce wasn’t following.

Across the roadway stood a busy countinghouse. Like many of the important buildings, it was constructed of stone that had grown dingy.

Seeing it, Royce turned back and caught Roland’s attention. “Can you answer a question for me?” He pointed at one of the sculpted decorative faces on the building across the street. “Why are these things everywhere? They crouch under steps, frame windows, perch on ledges, and hold up everything from bridges to balconies. Even some of the cobblestones have tiny grotesque faces carved into them. Why is that?”

Roland dipped his head to see beyond the doorframe. “You mean the gargoyles?”

Royce nodded. “I’ve seen them before. They’re used to channel rainwater off big churches, like the cathedral in Medford. But here, they’re all over. Most don’t even serve any real function, only a few are being used to divert runoff.”

Roland pushed up his lower lip. “Just decorations, I suppose.”

“There’s no story behind them?”

Roland rolled his shoulders. “Sure. There’s multiple stories, but they’re all nonsense.”

“Humor me.”

“The most popular one has a priest who slays a dragon with the help of a condemned man. They burn the beast afterward, but the head isn’t affected. You know, on account of it being able to breathe fire and all. So, the local bishop decides to mount the thing on his cathedral to scare off evil spirits. Seemed like a good idea, so stonemasons were asked to add them from that time on.”

“Ah-huh,” Royce said, dissatisfied.

“Well, there’s another one about the town’s founding. A crazy architect by the name of Bradford Crumin was commissioned to lay out the city. He chose the place for the Estate, Grom Galimus, and most of the old buildings. He was brilliant but also insane. He claimed to hear voices—ghosts, he called them—and the only way he could shut them up was to scare the spirits away. Apparently, they were terrified by scary faces, so he put all these grotesque creatures around.”

Royce didn’t say anything, just folded his arms.

“Okay, so there’s another one. Seems they never used to be here. The city went up and all the buildings were plain, but functional. Then one day this swarm of creatures swooped down and overran the place. The town was swamped, and everyone was afraid to go outside. Didn’t know where they came from, but a few days after the invasion, an old wizard comes hobbling along. He agreed to rid the town of the creatures for a price. The city agreed, and he turned them into stone, but—”

“But the town didn’t pay,” Royce said.

“You’ve heard this?”

Royce shook his head. “No, but stories are all the same, aren’t they?”

Roland thought a second, then shrugged. “Anyway, you were right; they refused to pay. Since the creatures were all dead, their problem was solved.”

“Let me guess: The wizard does something nasty.”

Roland nodded. “He cursed the town. Now every night, usually in the dark of a new moon, the stone creatures come alive and exact revenge.”

Royce frowned. “Never mind, I was expecting something awful, but also believable.”

“We’re talking monstrous faces, here. What would be believable?”

“How about, the stone carvers charged by the hour?”





“Why the sudden interest in architecture?” Hadrian asked as he once more followed Royce back into Little Gur Em.

“Didn’t you notice?” Royce was once more moving quickly, nearly trotting, retracing their earlier trip back to the scene of the crime.

“Notice what?”

They came upon the same square where they’d spilled the tea, and Royce pointed up at the building near where the girl’s body was found.

“What about it?”

“See the gargoyles lining the ledge up there?”

The old building was adorned with regularly spaced creepy monkey-like statuettes along the third-floor exterior. They weren’t really gargoyles, not in the traditional sense. These didn’t funnel rainwater; they were merely decorations.

“So?”

Royce frowned. “See the gap?”

The row of hunched, fanged monkeys leaned forward, holding up the top balcony with their shoulders, but Royce was right, one was missing. The rogue stone-monkey monster second from the left had abandoned his post, leaving the other little monsters to do all the work.

Such a massive weight hitting the ground from that height would have produced a lot of damage, not to mention debris, but the street below didn’t show any signs of an impact. Hadrian’s next thought was that it had been removed, perhaps in need of repair. But doing so would have required scaffolding and a hoist, neither of which was present. And the empty place showed no evidence of excavation, just a space for a carving that wasn’t there. The statue looked to have simply flown away. The most sensible answer, and the one he concluded with, was that the gargoyle had never been installed in the first place. Maybe the builders had been short a figure. Likely, there was some story that went along with it. The kind of tale that people shared to show off their knowledge of local lore. Oh, yeah, Grimbold the Carver dropped over dead when working on it, and out of tribute to him no replacement was ever made. Or maybe something like, Someone miscalculated the number of statues for that wall, and ol’ Pete started installing from the right and Bradford from the left. It wasn’t until they were done that they realized they were short by one. Funds were low, so the missing gargoyle wasn’t made.

The problem with these neat and sensible explanations was the bare spot—bright and pristine. Like a sun-bleached carpet with a square of vivid color where a cabinet had once stood, the wall bore a clean silhouette where a statue should have been. Something had been there, but now it wasn’t.

Royce looked at Hadrian and asked. “Why is one missing?”





Chapter Thirteen

Grom Galimus