Depredations, Blame

[Rance]

This was the difference between them: that Noura, for all of her darkness, for all of the shadows in her eyes and under her skin, was intrigued, and Gloria's fingers were splayed like a series of bars in front of her mouth, desperately crushing against her lips to keep more than breath and words from coming out of them. Her stomach reviled, filling her throat and mouth and the roots of her nostrils with burning acid -- the salt and brine of undigested broth, the powdery yeast of day-old bread.

It's not a man. It was never a man, just a statue, just a piece of sick art.

But even this did not keep her from what must be done, and with nearly drunken steps, she scraped closer toward the body, jabbing the webbing between her thumb and forefinger against the edge of her nose.

"An appropriate choice?" she asked. "The family? For -- for preserving him? This?"

Noura prodded without fear; Gloria, however, dared a shaking touch against the coolness of the bruised cheek, and she hissed and drew back as if the death would crawl onto her skin, stain her, seize her heart in her chest and cease it from beating.

A cold lump of butcher-meat. A foul sack of skin. That's all -- that's all it is anymore.

"Part of it looks deliberate. Like -- like it were a man who cut the pieces away. A purposeful wielding of -- of a tool." That, at least, was what little she could gather with how violently her head began to spin with the stench of the opened body just beneath her chin. "But if it were deliberate, if parts of him were taken for--" food, to be eaten "--sustenance, then why the core of him?"

The heart. The pulpy, beating mass that gave life and essence; the organ that was missing here before them, leaving little more than a pinkish husk of inner ribs and coagulated soup where the plate of bone within had been broken and the heart, like some coveted gem, had been torn apart, removed--

"The skin, the meat, is -- is one matter. But the organs? Beasts consume organs. Stonebears and voorbears, they care nothing for the muscle and the flesh."

The girl was breathing quickly, shallowly, all too often diverting her eyes from the mass in front of them.

"I would sing a -- a song for him," she bleated, conscious of how peculiar it may have sounded. "A moment of peace for -- for someone lost in violence. A song to comfort him. A hymn."

Noura jerked up a thumb, wielded it like a blade, then drew it across her own throat. For a second's span, Gloria thought

red, red wax

might start pouring out of the other girl's neck as though she were some melting, bleeding candle; but it was just a finger, just a motion, just a little jest. Gloria ground together her own teeth, hoping to crunch down in little bits of glass and sand, but there was nothing there. Her eyes were distant. For a moment, she was lost. Thousands of leagues away.

"Would you," she asked Noura suddenly, "if you were hungry enough, eat the flesh of a man?"

A song to comfort me.

[Guppy]

The wildling did not seem to even notice that Gloria remained, aghast, at the door to the small outbuilding. Death did not faze her, gore did not disgust her. Noura, for all her shy smiles and soft heart, reveled in darkness. Her friends, those she loved, seemed separate entities entirely. Emotion and attachment had allowed those few souls to transcend the fascination she held. This boy, this stranger was not lucky enough to earn her sorrow.

Already startled from her eager examination by the sound of Gloria's strained voice, she gifted the other with amusement that she did not recall the topic of their conversation. "What? No. No, they - the Inquisitors - chose well with granting you employment. I would have been poor at following orders," she mentioned, voice gentle. Finally, she took note of the pale color of Gloria's skin and tilted her head to the side, curious. Another glance was spared for the corpse upon the chairs, realization dawning.

"Do you want to wait outside? I can continue alone. You know, maybe someone should keep watch just in case," she suggested, her voice low and soothing. Her arguments made no sense, but she was offering her a kindness. They would be better to work together, but Noura did not wish the other to be uncomfortable. She did not understand it, herself, but she had enough empathy to recognize that the seamstress was nearly hysterical. The excuse readily given was flimsy, but it would serve her well enough, if she desired to use it.

Her attention was drawn to the body again and vision strayed down. Her eyes roved, considering the seamstress' observations. "The heart can be a delicacy," she mentioned, finally, her voice low with apology. "It is thick muscle, just like the flank. It can be delicious if prepared correctly." The words were pulled from her as if by force. "Animals will not waste such a bounty, but neither will man, if he is hungry enough."

Eyes widened suddenly, pupils going black with the question the other posed. She shifted, squirming with disquiet. Guilty eyes slid from Gloria's as if unable to meet them. Still, they were friends, and she deserved honesty. "I... might. If I was hungry enough." Her words came quickly now, scrambling to find the exact ones to ease the disgust that Gloria had to be feeling in the wake of her confession. "If they were already dead, of course. It is survival, Gloria. It does not make sense for two to die when life has already fled the other."

She swallowed, nervous. "Unless it was a friend. Or," a sudden thought occurred, "if their ghost was watching me." She made a face and attempted to change the subject, her voice going much higher in timbre. Almost shouting to overcome the effect of her admission. "Gloria, you must promise me something. If this is the fault of one we care for, we must walk away." Clearly, she had someone in mind.

She barreled through any protests by taking several steps back from the corpse and casting her gaze around. "Are you here? Come out, now. We want to help you," she offered, voice low and soothing. The recently-deceased were often caught mourning themselves. Being forced to stare at a body that no longer felt pain, no longer drew breath, could sometimes make them insane. Her runes glowed only slightly, the sickly red light throwing color upon the already-crimson body.

[catch]

There are many in the Crant family who would proudly say that Josin Crant would not linger on in spirit. He simply wasn't that kind of man; besides, they had observed the rites, done their duty to the dead, and such stolid folk could not imagine a ghost, only an animate cobbling of flesh, if such a curse still existed in Myrken. And even then, they liked to tell themselves that their dead would not be so weak as to work on suggestion of some wizard or beast.

Josin did not linger. But something shifted in the candle-lit shed. It twisted, thrashed, a mindless and animal extoplasm. His mind, his soul, was in the Havens, but some part of him rose up, at the call, a dim and shadowy shape in Noura's sight. Though black, it did not fall against the. LIke a sleepwalker, it toddled forward, a vague man-shape, sweeping past Noura - through Gloria, leaving wet and cold and sticky beading of moisture behind - out the door.

A moment later, were they to linger, it would happen again. Again.

[Rance]

Do you want to wait outside? I can continue alone. You know, maybe someone should keep watch just in case.

"No," the girl whispered, her head jerking to the left, then to the right in swift denial. "No, Noura. I'm fine. I'm -- I'm just fine. The world is vile; if I hide behind the skirts of -- of my greaters for too long, then what do I become?"

It was a question she never answered, nor sought an answer for.

"I'd rather know of this, rather see it, than be blind. I just wish I knew how -- how to help."

She tried, with every effort, to smile. But even that seemed wrong, inconsiderate; there was a corpse here, a once-boy, and mirth should not have been indigenous amidst broken bodies and blood. The wildling's kindness was certainly not lost upon her, but she'd rather be here than anywhere else. Where were the Constables? Where was Glenn Burnie, the Marshall? Elsewhere -- they were elsewhere. Fighting against her want to turn away was a visible struggle; she tightened every muscle in her body and clamped her hands onto the thighs of her dress as if to pin herself to that very spot.

The heart can be a delicacy...delicious if prepared correctly.

"I read a book when I began at the Inquisitory," she reasoned. "Picked through the words. Stumbled my way through the chapters. It discussed -- discussed agents of dark work. Sacrifices." Her bandaged hand reached forward, a dirty finger hovering over the canyon torn into the chest of the suspended corpse. "Sects of men who -- who revel in fell arts, who harvest organs for any number of purposes. Cults. Bleak acts that -- that I thought would seem foreign here.

"In Jernoah, the Brothers and Sisters gave the addled, the depraved, and the sinful to the Nameless. They gave of them. But only the blood; only ever the blood. I -- I never did, but I witnessed it. I watched. I was a choirgirl. Choirgirls always watched." Her fingers hovered above the gaping wound, splayed like the legs of a spider, quivering. Wanting to touch, as if contact might help her understand. But she hadn't the talent to read flesh as though it bore the ink of an old story. "They would drain the body," she whispered, the admission a glut of words that poured out of her as if, in keeping them in, she might burst, she might scream.

"The other choirgirls and I, we'd -- we'd drag the clothes from the bodies before the limbs got too stiff. We'd wash the urine and feces from them. And the fabric was always so torn because -- because people never wanted to be given; they never wanted to die.

"So I fixed them. I fixed the clothes."

Her hand jerked back against her chest, cradled there in the clasp of her gloved palm.

Would you, if you were hungry enough, eat the flesh of a man?

I... might. If I was hungry enough.

"Then may we never be so desperate," Gloria Wynsee said, her voice suddenly here, aware again, present; dislodging the memories gave her room to breathe and reason, chiseled out compartments in her conscience to hide her feelings. "For -- for I too would do what I could to survive. Like you. Even if it meant that."

Noura called out to the dead boy as though he were a shadow skulking against the walls. The runes and marks on the other girl's flesh blazed with light; this is what the seamstress, whose understanding was wholly, regrettably mundane, attributed the cool wetness of her flesh to -- a dampness trickled down the back of her neck, slick and oily. Not tarsweat, but moisture, a condensation as clear as crystal. A droplet of it dangled off her nose. She wiped it away with a thumb, though the stitching around her sleeves was newly soggy with water.

Her heartbeat pounded, pounded against her ribs. A dart of ice pierced through her, harmless and inexplicable.

In her mouth, hibernating in the hollow of a broken molar, the black oil thrashed.

"Do they hear you," Gloria asked, watching her friend. "Does he?"

And amid it all, the promise -- perhaps forgotten, perhaps ignored -- was never returned.

[Guppy]

The seamstress refused to step outside, despite the bile rising in the back of her throat. Gloria was nothing if not brave, the wildling noted with a smile. "You become sheltered and unable to stand against the dark things," she responded, despite the fact that it was more rhetorical than anything else. Myrkeners, whether native or no, learned that lesson quickly. Noura noted the smile that she attempted, but it came off more pained than anything else. Noura's smile was true, ignorant of the gravity of the situation, and she reached out to attempt to catch Gloria's hand within her own. It was a small gesture of support and soon removed.

Her shoulders lifted at mention of the dark rituals. "Maybe. We will have to see the spot where he was killed." She assumed that such people would have ceremony surrounding the corpse itself and there was no stink of magic. There was no runes etched into his torn flesh. Her gaze lifted as Gloria spoke of Jernoah, a brow lofted at the strange tales she told. "Jernoah sounds like it would be a very harsh place to live. Someday, I would like to see it with my own eyes." Her words didn't exactly paint a sunny picture of the place, but Noura was curious. She seemed to get the idea that further questions might upset the seamstress, so she said nothing further on the matter.

When Gloria relented and admitted that she, too, would survive, Noura gifted her with a smile. She almost seemed proud.

The wildling called to the boy's spirit and something stirred. Something, but not his ghost. Her eyes narrowed and she stepped aside to allow it to pass through Gloria. She made a face at the connection, but Gloria did not seem to notice. "Step just a little to your right," she requested, sounding apologetic. The promise was forgotten, momentarily.

She remained where she was, silent and barely breathing, until it happened again.

This time, she made a move to follow its path.

[catch]

I'll spare a boy along when you want him, show you the place.

Missus Crant had said that. But this was no boy, and she did not know - she had gone back to making meat-pies, something compact and flavorful to gnaw on, something numerous that dwindling supplies could be stretched into. She did not even look out the wax-papered windows, covered to keep the heat inside.

As Noura followed, the thing still repeated itself. But it was a memory. One part of it stuttered back to the shed, while the other parts moved on, shuddering, shuffling in front of her like a flickering bird, a long and unbroken line of remnants. It led itself, it led them, into the snow, passing past Caliir, dragging it's feet in the mess the beast had made, but leaving not a mark of it behind.

It looked as if they would need no boy.

[Rance]

Who, of those they called friend, would be capable of something so base--

Her mind was blank, its few results wholly inconclusive; I would like to see it with my own eyes, Noura admitted, and while Gloria's response was a looser, gentler smile, a quiet vision of appreciation, there was little else to say before:

Step just a little to your right.

"Oh," the seamstress breathed, letting out a gasp and quickly readjusting. Her skirt hissed against the frozen earth of the shack's unadorned floor as, one step, two steps, she found a new spot to stand. She asked like a listless child, "Do -- do you see him?" But meanwhile, as she followed Noura's movement with her eyes, she wondered--

No, it was likely more than sight. A greater coalition of senses. Perhaps an empathy, an untranslatable language based on any multiple collections of feelings; maybe Noura did not see the essence--

(was she seeing anything at all?

was there a boy there, a presence, a dead thing to speak to?

was there something else?)

--as much as deduce it, understand it, commune with it; but all of those attempts to explain unexplaned inexplickables within her own mind was only a matter of the seamstress' concrete sensibilities clashing with her acceptance of the abstract. Dumbly, she stood near the eviscerated corpse and let the whelp lead the way, as though on the trail of some overzealous bloodhound.

Before she followed, she was left alone with Josin Crant's husk, and took that moment to say under her breath, "It's not right that -- that this happened. No one deserves this end."

She put trembling lips against the bruised brow, just beneath the scab-riddled hairline. Then, she turned, dashing out into the snow behind Noura, glad for the blind direction and the new distraction. The taste of a dead boy's skin was a plague on her lips, but she never wiped it away--

Could I? If it was necessary, if there was nothing left to eat, could I?

She scrambled through the snow, trying to match Noura's determined stride -- and it was a blessing, the bite of the cold wind, the snarl of the snow, the whiteness of it all.

[Guppy]

The runes quieted, hidden again under her heavy winter clothing. Gloria asked if she could see the boy's spirit and Noura's brows furrowed. Uncertainty darted across her face. "No. Not really. It's something, but not him. It's like a shadow. It might be his echo, but it is difficult to say," she admitted. Her focus was entirely on the shade as it passed by again and she gave chase.

She pushed through the door and left it ajar for Gloria, but paused when it shattered into pieces. A glance was cast back towards the shed, where the seamstress emerged, and another towards the portion that continued on. Her own boots left a path across the snow. A hand reached out to smooth over Caliir's flank, warning him of her presence as the ghost passed him by. If he were not made of sterner stuff, he might have spooked as it passed.

Noura squinted at the sunlight, pale as it was, that bounced off the snow as if the surface were mirrored. There were no trees to shelter them from the driving wind and she pulled her hood over her head so that it would not steal breath from her lungs.

They followed.

[catch]

Over snow-covered fields that held the promise of wheat, of corn, it led them. Into the trees it went, and even Gloria could see, then, in the play of light and shadow that filtered from skeletal branch-fingers, the flicker of something odd, something moving. Wind across the swept snow, perhaps. Or something more. It moved quickly. But even were Noura to lose sight of the phantom, it would pace up beside her again, serene and unrelenting, truly mindless. It paced the path, skittering and stuttering.

Even the snow could not, quite, cover the signs of multitude-tracks, the evidence of dozens of stampeding boots. Even if Noura did not have the phantom to follow, she, woodswoman as she was, could pick out the trail the Phantom - must - pace along.

It was a long walk. A long following. And, at the end, there was what would be a fallow meadow in spring, and a dark spot against the snow, where both the phantom and the boot-tracks all lead. The carcass of a doe, stretched out in the snow, frost forming at the lips of her torn and empty skin and rugged, shattered bones, got not even the mercy of candles or chairs.

[Rance]

Noura chased a shadow, an illusion, a secret, and Gloria chased her until the breath in her lungs came shallowly, too quickly; a stitch burned in her side like a rock jammed between her throbbing intercostasl. She was a steaming totem of hot breath, sluggishly stumbling to a halt behind Noura as the boot-crushed path led into a halo packed down in the snow.

Another corpse, half-emptied. A crimson halo strewn in the snow by eager boots; a putrid stink, unallayed by even the cold and the frost, a carcass that looked like a sack of burlap laying in patterns of blood in the pink, dirty powder--

Maybe it was all the running.

Maybe it was Josin Crant flayed like a grotesque experiment, lofted between chairs as though he was nothing more than an overdrunk boy on a makeshift bed.

Or maybe it was this: the piercing stench of the doe whose skin was peeled back like the flesh of a fruit, the image of corral-colored foam frozen on the black lips, the bleak, ever-staring eyes open and cold as stone, with flecks of snow resting wthin, refusing to dissolve. The cloven hooves had left imprints where they'd scraped and clamored, gouged and furrowed in the dirt, trying to find purchase, to defend, to resist--

Gloria Wynsee clamped her hands on her knees, emitted an apologetic noise from both nostrils, then threw forward her head and finally, finally retched in the snow just beyond the deer's corpse.

"Can't, for once, there be something that hasn't been torn to pieces," she asked, fingers crunching into the snow as she squatted, marshaling her breath and her composure in case another bout of nausea should overcome her. "Is it done the same way?

"Is it just like the -- the boy, Noura?"

[Guppy]

There were a few instances where the shadow was lost to Noura's keen vision. It moved quickly, unfettered by the drifting snow. Unhindered by the hidden pitfalls lurking under the snow banks they scaled in their path. It always appeared, faithfully leading them. Gloria was an awkward, strident behemoth at her back by comparison to the sleek, silent wildling.

When they arrived, her breath came slow to her lungs, her heart beating steadily. She stooped briefly to peer over the scattered tracks stamped down in the snow. A glance was cast over a shoulder at the heaving seamstress, vision quickly turning to the body lying prone. She lifted from her haunches to pace closer to the fallen deer, dutifully pretending not to have seen her vulnerable friend empty her guts, strewn across the ground in colors as vivid as the scene before them.

The delicate woman stooped again at the doe's side and her features softened with sympathy. One knee rested within the snow, the other leg bent and boot placed beside the slaughtered. A hand reached forward to attempt to close her eyelids, but too much time had passed and they remained fixed and continued staring accusingly. Her gaze was cast over the fallen frame, ghosting along the missing organs and torn flesh. Gloria's exasperated complaint at the state of the deer made a smile quirk upon her lips. Affection warmed her features.

"Ah, but then it would not be Myrken," she quipped, pivoting slightly upon her boot to peer closer. Her head bobbed in affirmative. "Yes, it is the same as the boy."

She left its side and rose to skirt the perimeter, where the snow was not beaten into submission. "See here," she offered, beckoning as she fell to her knees beside the twin tracks of wolf and man leading from the scene. Should Gloria venture closer, the wildling would seek to suddenly grasp her booted foot in gloved hands. They would tug impatiently, seeking to place her foot near the one that fled the grisly display. She made a comparison of the two sizes.

Her face lifted, eyes solemn, to silently meet Gloria's gaze.

[catch]

Where man had been neatly butchered, so did sections of the deer, though whether it had been by the boy himself - before he was interrupted - or by the agent that had flayed him so neatly, it was impossible to say. The phantom settled into the place with an almost audible sigh, a release of some great pressure as the shadow sunk in. The relief was temporary, as, only a few moments later, it would repeat again and again, for as long as the girls stood there.

There was a difference. Desperate carnivores, turned scavenger, had been at the deer's carcass, but not even their depredations could hide the original shattering of bone, the gnaw of powerful teeth. Many of the smaller bones were missing, outright, the sharp edges of ribs gnawed down to furrows, and the great leg-bones were cracked, the body hollowed out. There was little of the actual doe left, besides a smear of gore and a frail supporting of shattered bone over a dull hide.

Fresh footprints showed where a wolf had come. And the Junior-Inquisitor, the Trapper, could see the neatness of such a paw next to the broad, giant tracks of the original set.

[Rance]

"It wasn't nearly as appetizing the second time," the girl muttered, brushing her sleeve against the underside of her chin and spitting the remnants of the vile taste from her mouth. Vomiting had centered her -- there were no longer fires burning in her chest or a swollen throb pounding inside her skull. When she turned her head toward the deer carcass, she saw it with clearer, more forgiving eyes. A few swipes of her boot through the snow, and the scattered bile was an afterthought.

Noura comported herself like an expert. She watched as the wildling examined the earth and crept about, readings pacts and creeds in the frozen powder. For a fleeting moment -- and Gloria knew it was an illogical jealousy -- she was envious of the girl's cool demeanor, her direction, her poise in the face of violence and depravity.

See here, Noura chirped. And wandering closer, clutching closed her tattered cloak, the seamstress went to her friend's side. The whelp's fingers gripped to her ankle, readjusted her, drove her heel down beside one of the hard, ice-planted prints.

Feet. Beside them, paws.

She crouched down and covered the prints with her broad shadow. Shivering fingers withdrew a fold of parchment and a shard of charcoal from her hip-pouch. She crinkled the paper against her knee, then placed her palms down in some likeness of measurement beside the echo of the errant bootheel. "Eleven finger-widths long," she dictated, scraping characters onto brittle paper.

"Boot," she read aloud as she marked. Then, she measured the paw's print the same way and wearily noted, announcing aloud:

"Paw. Like -- like a dog, or a--" wolf, or some other like beast. "Five finger-widths long. Maybe a fellow with -- with a hound. Yes?"

But while she looked at Noura, it was clear by the lines written into the corners of the girl's eyes that she knew the explanation was only a matter of false comfort. There were no other prints as strongly visible, and the appearance of one should offer no cause as to the disappearance of the other. A thousand excuses sprang to mind -- the dog had been lifted, carried away; no, the owner had been riding the hound; no, a wolf had come by to pick what remained of the tendons from the hunter's prey; no, the doe had already been mauled, and the hunters had become scavengers, picking the bones clean of what they could--

No.

Not enough prints in the snow to tell a clear story. Some swept away by dunes, others rounded and dulled by the warmth of sun and blood.

She balled a fist and gently drove the fronts of her knuckles into her forehead, willing away pressure.

"You asked me earlier to make a promise," Gloria finally said, tugging on the chin-ribbon of her bonnet, the cheeks beneath still levied with pallor. "What can I do, Noura, but walk away from this, no matter who's accountable for it? I control nothing; I prevent nothing. It could have been me in that shed, or you, or Cherny. Anyone. So I -- I measure boots and paws to keep my hands busy, to trick myself into believing I'm jotting down something worthwhile. What will I do," she asked, holding high the little slip of paper, "with this?

"I'll go back to the tavern. I'll put my head under blankets and grind my thumbs into my eyes until I'm seeing blurs so -- so I don't have to keep seeing this. Maybe I'll cry," she said. "I don't want to sleep because -- because that boy's face will hover around and around in my mind, or I'll see his guts over and over again, smell the burning wicks and wax in my nostrils. Or I'll hit a wall with my hand until my knuckles break because at least that, I can understand. That, I can apply value or reason to. But this? That boy in the shed?

"I don't understand. I don't understand."

She draped her wrists over her knees and rocked forward, leaning her head down against her forearms. Her voice muffled in her skirts, she pleaded of her friend, "Tell me. Explain it to me. Because in my brain, it's all just unnecessary blood."

[Guppy]

The shadow was noted, watched with silent, heavy gaze as it continued on its endless path. "Rest now," she suggested, though the young woman understood the possibility that the entity would be doomed to repeat its path forever.

An amused glance was thrown over her shoulder at Gloria's quip about seeing her breakfast for the second time. "It does not look as appetizing, either," she returned, stooped in the snow. "I had been disappointed that I skipped my morning meal, but now I am not so troubled about that." Her lips quirked upwards, teasing, unknowing of the other girl's jealousy.

The two sets of footprints were observed, the seamstress' foot planted at their side. Useful for a measurement, Noura thought. Gloria made her own, using her hand. "I would guess it to be a wolf. But was it a scavenger or did it hunt alongside the man?," she asked, rocking back to settle upon her backside with long legs crossed before her. Elbows settled on her knees and palms cradled her head. Childlike.

Gloria's helpless confusion, her raw desperation, made her straighten and climb to her feet. Hands reached out to grasp her shoulders, to give her something to focus on. "Stop. You are doing the best you can," she offered, her voice soothing and gentle. "We just need more information, that's all." A hand rose, seeking to run down Gloria's bonnet-covered head. "Maybe - Maybe we just need a moment. To gather ourselves." To gather their courage.

One hand ghosted down Gloria's arm and sought her own to grant her strength. "I may only have the skills of a tracker, but I will not leave you to this alone. We will discover who is behind this." She could not help the worried frown that darted across her face. They each had their suspicions, but neither shared them.

[Rance]

There was a moment, when Noura touched her hand to the rumpled fabric of the bonnet, that the awkward tilt of the world seemed to be righted. She wanted to lean back, bury her cheek against the other girl's stomach, turn her face away from the mangled doe-corpse and clench shut her eyes until the images dissolved.

But she didn't.

The wildling's hand traced a line down her arm, then gathered up her aching fingers. The seamstress' skin was a rough, stone-hard series of ruts and calluses, the bandage darkened at its corners by black stains of sweat. The flesh around her knuckles tightened as she squeezed warmth into Noura's digits, clenching, refusing to let go--

Her dark-skinned face was shadowed beneath the rim of her bonnet. Her lips twitched, trying a smile.

"You've got -- got tracking skills. I've got needle skills. Maybe that is enough."

She locked her elbow and pulled herself up to her feet, using Noura's arm for leverage. Clumps of snow stuck obtusely to the seat of her dress. She could have let go of the wildling's hand, but maybe -- and she reflected these thoughts without knowing, without seeing too far outside of herself -- the other girl needed a statue, too, something to lean against, to be her bastion. Her damp eyes squinted against the occasional burst of winter wind.

"A man," the seamstress told her friend. "A man with a knife to cut away the skin. A beast that finished the work, that performed other, more inhuman brutalities. That is what we know. And whether or not it is correct, it is--"

A dead boy missing a heart. A mangled doe with eyes frozen wide by tundra winds.

"--a start."

It eased the sickness in her stomach to hold Noura's hand. It soothed her mind; the words, encouragement and confidence alike, gave her knees a strength. There wasn't use in huddling in the snow, in being confused or unsure. Unyielding principles. She tried, with a meager tug of her arm, to turn the other young woman away from the massacre so that all they could see were the black trees lined in white snow and the footprints they'd left like a telltale chronology in the dusty snow.

"There are files at the Inquisitory on -- on any number of things. Past attacks, unexplained peculiarities, strangeness with no resolution. It might do us well to get out of the cold and see if any other circumstances are like this. And while they're strictly forbidden for any other eyes except those of Inquisitors--"

It was easier to grin when they weren't looking at carnage.

"I see nothing wrong in letting a Deputy Inquisitor peruse them with me."