FOUR #2
“A burgess has been murdered.” Graham looked Calum in the eye. “We don’t often get such high-profile cases at Station House Eight. This is a good opportunity. I suggest you don’t cock it up.”
“Ihear the boss wasn’t very happy with you this morning.” Clare tossed her long dark plait over her shoulder.
Calum sucked his teeth. “Aye, well.”
Clare jabbed an elbow into Calum’s ribs.
“You take everything so seriously.” She rolled her eyes.
“Don’t worry, he yells at everyone sooner or later.
And you know he’s stressed right now, with that bug ripping through Station House Seven and half our staff sent there to cover.
Honestly, with the way you managed to upset all the other constables just by existing, I’m surprised it wasn’t sooner. ”
Calum slid a glance at her. She was grinning, and he couldn’t help the smile that rose to his lips in return. For everything that he loathed about Station House Eight, everything he wished could be different, he had found a friend there, something he’d never had at Station House Six.
“He’ll get over it,” Clare went on. “You’re good at your job, and he knows it.”
Calum gave a half shrug. “I think that might be the problem, actually.” He told her about his investigation into the missing people, and his fury at Morrison’s dismissal of the latest disappearance.
His throat constricted as he spoke, the fear that Clare would react like Lewis and ask why he cared so much making it hard to force the words out.
“Yeah, that would upset him. You’re ruining our station house’s fine reputation.”
Calum stifled his laughter as they turned a corner and the crime scene came into view.
There were already several constables trying to keep the nosing crowds at bay.
A rope had been strung up around the perimeter, but the corpse was still visible in the flickering shadows and dim golden light of the torches that lined the street.
“Is it safe to touch the body yet?” Calum asked the pathologist as they approached the rope.
“Aye,” she said, her green eyes bright. “I’m just finishing up.”
“What have you got so far?” Calum asked.
“Poor beggar had his throat slit from behind,” she said. “I’ll know more when I’ve examined him in the morgue, but whoever did this was strong enough to lay him down on his back after attacking him.”
Calum thanked her and reached for the rope.
He dipped underneath it, his kilt skimming the cobblestones, and summoned a globe of light in the palm of his hand as he crouched next to the body where it lay sprawled across the narrow alley.
The throat was slashed open, a vicious dark line that went through to the bone.
A shuddering breath sounded behind Calum.
Clare was shaking, her face stark white against her dark hair.
His heart twinged. Her lip was quivering as she gaped at the blood threading through the gaps between the cobblestones, spreading out in a web of black that shone even in the gloomy light.
This was likely Clare’s first dead body, certainly her first murder investigation.
He closed his fist around the light in his hand to snuff it and turned to Clare, squeezing her shoulder. “You okay?”
Clare’s throat bobbed. “I—I just—” She broke off, her eyelashes fluttering as her gaze dropped to the corpse again.
“I know,” Calum said quietly. He wrenched his mind away from the memory of the first time he’d seen a dead body, of ruby blood splattering on white snow, of the laughter that rang in his ears like ice scraping against stone. “Take a deep breath. It’s okay.”
Clare clenched her jaw together, giving a sharp nod. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” Her voice was high-pitched and thready. “Being scared of blood.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Calum said firmly.
“I should have warned you.” He knew Clare was squeamish—the entire station house did, after that time a local stray cat pranced in with a dead mouse proudly clutched in its mouth—and he had been so caught up in his own concerns he hadn’t even thought to prepare her for the sight of a dead body.
Calum summoned a light again, lifting it above his palm this time with a whisper of will so that it floated above the dead body as he squatted next to it, digging in the pockets and turning up nothing more than a ferry ticket stub.
The cause of death was obvious, and the lack of cash in the victim’s pockets gave a likely motive.
The ball of light slid smoothly through the air as Calum continued his examination, moving steadily down the body.
There were no injuries to the victim’s hands or wrists, suggesting he’d been caught by surprise and hadn’t been restrained or tried to fight back.
That corroborated the pathologist’s assertion that the attack had come from behind.
Calum looked up at the sound of footsteps on stone next to him. One of the constables was staring at him, a young woman with blonde hair plaited in a crown around her head. Her eyes widened as the ball of light moved, seemingly of its own accord.
“How do you do that?” she asked. She was young, perhaps seventeen or eighteen, but she showed little concern for the corpse that lay on the ground between them.
Calum shrugged. “It took a lot of practice.” It was a rare skill in Mossburgh, where magic was viewed with a combination of pragmatism and fear.
As an island burgh, the city relied on magic for even the most basic sustenance.
Fruit and vegetables were grown in tall, vertical greenhouses, with magic generating the sunlight needed for them to flourish.
All fuel was imported, so many trades relied on magic instead of flames, particularly when the heat didn’t need to be sustained, such as when dairy workers heated milk to help preserve it.
But the city’s geography also made it uniquely susceptible to disaster.
Evacuating the densely packed houses and tenements was nigh-impossible, and in The Calamity, after a burst of energy from a failed attempt at alchemy had knocked over a candelabra in a house that had escaped the initial destruction, many had fled their homes only to find the smouldering remains of the gondolas they’d thought would take them to safety.
And so Mossburgh had developed an uneasy relationship with magic, relying on it to compensate for the challenges of island life, but always aware of the harm it could cause.
Summoning light from nothing and keeping it aloft and burning, all while paying it only the merest sliver of attention as one’s mind was fixed on something else, was a complex skill, far beyond what was essential to generate illumination.
It hewed closely enough to the everyday magic that he could do it in public without causing unease—it was, after all, far less complicated than the lamps imported from Vaedhoun—but it was still uncommon enough to garner attention.
The fae, though, treated magic as an art form.
It wasn’t merely something to fill the gaps where a non-magical method was unavailable or inadequate or simply too labour-intensive; it was a pursuit in and of itself, one to be perfected for its own sake.
For Caoimhe, Calum’s inability to maintain something as simple as a globe of light when faced with distraction was an outright embarrassment, a failing in her human pet.
She’d trained him to do better.
Calum ignored the prickling above his left ear at the memory. His hair was dark, nearly black, save for the white stripe where she’d held the freezing cold branding iron until his hair had fallen out, forcing him to keep the spell going until he’d blacked out from the pain.
Calum clenched his jaw, hauling his attention back to the body.
His examination arrived at the corpse’s knees and he frowned, sliding his gaze and the ball of light to the body’s throat.
There was the thud of leather on stone as Clare took an involuntary step back when the gaping wound was illuminated again.
Calum shifted the light back towards the victim’s knees.
He’d seen enough to confirm his train of thought, anyway.
“He’s wearing a kilt, but no kilt pin,” he said, rising to his feet and turning to look at Clare.
Clare furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t make sense, unless . . .”
“Unless someone took it. Exactly.” A kilt pin wasn’t a decorative item; it was what stopped the front of the kilt flying up and exposing oneself to the world.
It wasn’t something that someone would simply forget or choose not to wear.
He moved to gesture to the man’s ruined throat, then decided to save Clare the sight of it and just described it.
“He’s wearing a gold cravat pin. It’s not ostentatious, but it’s not cheap either.
” You’d be an idiot to wear an ostentatious cravat pin in this part of town.
“Everything else he’s wearing fits the same pattern—plain, but good quality.
Like he knew he was going to be in a dodgy part of town. ”
“If he’s wearing the plainest clothes he has, though, won’t his kilt pin probably be plain as well?” Clare asked. “It’s not likely to be identifiable.”
“Except it’s missing.” He turned to one of the constables on the scene, the blonde woman who had watched his light with interest. “As soon as I get a description of the kilt pin, I’ll need it circulated to all the pawnshops, okay?
” It could be that Clare was right, and it was just one of many pewter kilt pins sitting in the windows of pawnshops, but perhaps, just perhaps, it would lead them to the killer.