The Reluctant Queen (The Queens of Renthia #2)(104)

"Did you find any such clues?" Ven asked.

"Unfortunately no. And in the process of looking at these recent deaths, I discovered something unsettling."

Ven thought that everything about examining dead bodies was unsettling. There were six total. Most had been ripped open-a rib cage exposed, a leg that looked as if it had been savaged, flesh peeled back . . . "These weren't killed by poison. They were killed by spirits." He'd seen this kind of damage far too often to doubt it.

"Yes, I know. Except . . . not." Hamon moved between the bodies. "This one, she died of blunt trauma to the head. And this, her throat was slit. Here, three wounds beneath her rib cage. Another, the back." He beckoned to Ven to come closer to one, one of the freshest.

Ven glanced at her face and then wished he hadn't-he knew this one, the redheaded girl he'd considered at the academy, the one whom Piriandra had chosen. Beilena. He swore and then looked at the other faces. He recognized another-Esiella, Havtru's candidate.

"Are they all candidates?" Ven asked.

"Forget what you're thinking, who they were, what could have or should have happened. Just look here, at this wound. Look at the precision of it, the cleanness of the slice . . . And if you look inside"-pulling on gloves, Hamon spread open Beilena's wound, to show the sliced muscles and bone-"see how it's cut, with a twist? And the depth of it? It nicked the bone. See that?" 

Ven was not a doctor. He had seen-and caused-his share of violence. But Hamon casually peeling back the skin of dead girls . . . "So if I were to be sick . . . ?"

"Bucket is under the table. Don't think of them as people. Think of them as puzzles. And tell me: ignoring the circumstances in which they were found, ignoring what you know of who they were and what they were doing, what made this cut?"

"Knife," he said instantly.

"How are you sure?"

He pointed. "The slice on the bone."

"Could have been a claw. Or a tooth."

"It's not a bite," Ven said. "It's only one slice."

"Single claw? Single talon?" Hamon was watching him intently. Ven felt as if he were taking an exam. He bent over the body, trying to focus only on the wound, not on the girl's face, not on the thought of how young she was or how scared she must have been. I know wounds like this, Ven thought. I've made wounds like this.

"Every spirit I have ever seen attacks to rip apart, not stab-that's their instinct, to destroy," Ven said. "They use claws and teeth. There should be multiple wounds, not a single slice. There's no question this was a knife." And the spirits don't use knives. Ven looked up at Hamon. "You think . . ."

"This is the wound that killed her. All the other wounds, including the icicles that supposedly stabbed her throat, were inflicted after death."

"She was stabbed and then . . ." Left for the spirits? Given to them? Mutilated to look as if it were spirits? He straightened and looked at the other bodies. "What about the others?"

"Some were clearly killed by spirits. But not all." He led Ven around the morgue, pointing out the injuries. In the worst, the candidate had her extremities frozen-an ice spirit-but it was again a knife thrust that had killed her. It was hard to see, Hamon explained, but once he'd known what to look for . . . He showed Ven her wounds, as well as the wounds on three other girls. Finishing, they left the morgue and stripped off their face masks.

Ven sucked in the sweet outside air. He walked away from the morgue toward the treasure pavilion, not looking back.

"Am I right?" Hamon asked.

"Yes," Ven said. "Someone is murdering candidates." And I have left Naelin alone. He broke into a run. His feet pounded over the paths, crushing the delicate flowers that grew between them. He vaulted over one of the tree roots and scrambled up another, running along it, leaping over the decorative statues and vines.

He reached the garden-

The wolf rose and trotted over to him. He was wagging his tail. Naelin was standing on top of her new fountain, and the water spirits were swirling around her, casting rain on all the flower beds but nowhere else. Naelin's eyes were closed, and she was smiling, just slightly, only the corners of her lips turned up.

"You guard her," Ven told Bayn. "Every second that I'm not near her, you are." Kneeling down, he looked the wolf directly in the eyes. "Can you understand me?"

The wolf regarded him evenly and then-clearly, deliberately-nodded.

"Thank you," Ven said gravely. Someday he would need to ask Daleina what she knew of the wolf-where he'd come from, why he was so intelligent-but later, once she was well. For now, it was enough that Bayn would do as he asked.