Eva stood in the conservatory of her home on Glour's prestigious Fifth Circle, carefully dripping nara-fruit juice onto a bed of parchment strips. From beneath a neat nest of twigs emerged a questing nose, tiny, black and twitching with eager interest. She opened her thoughts to the creature, showing it images of food, and juice, and warmth. Parchment rustled as the mouse emerged, promptly sinking its small, sharp teeth into her finger. She allowed it to draw her blood along with the juice, smiling at its enthusiasm. This one would make a fine culinary assistant to an artisan chef.
She nudged the mouse back into its parchment nest and withdrew her hand. It had built itself a home in the corner of her conservatory, settling close to the glass where the silver moonlight came through particularly strongly. The mouse seemed happy, but it would be time to move it soon.
First, though, she had a bird ready to depart the nest. Just now it was hanging upside down from the roof of the conservatory; a curious posture for a bird, but then, it was called a bird only because nobody knew how else to categorise it. She coaxed it down, drawing it to her with a mixture of command and entreaty. She took the role of its mother in the bird's mind, a being to be both trusted and obeyed. The bird soared gracefully downwards, settling on Eva's shoulder, gripping her with talons that clenched and unclenched restlessly. Eva winced as those surprisingly sharp claws pierced her skin. She objected still more when it began to peck at her ear, insistent and wholly oblivious to her pain.
'I suppose that is a mark of affection, is it?' She stroked the bird's soft feathers, careful to avoid the webby membrane of its wings. She slipped her hand into a thick leather glove and held up her hand. The bird walked obligingly onto the glove, smoothing its indigo feathers nonchalantly.
She'd taken to calling the little dringle-bird Skritch, a charitable interpretation of the effect its pacing had on the flesh of her shoulders. She was rather glad he was now ready to be delivered to his new companion-master, a herbalist living a few circles away.
She had spent the day inspecting the vast kennels the summoners kept outside the city. It was a ritual she observed every moon, even though it was years since she'd found anything to object to in the kennel masters' handling of the animals. Breeding season was approaching, and this year there was a good chance of a few new shortig pups. The species was notoriously hard to breed, and almost equally hard to track down in their native habitats in the Lower Realms. Their impressive tracking abilities made them in high demand with Vale's men, however, and he'd begged her to up the numbers available this year. Tricky, but she was certainly up to the challenge.
She was still attired in her kennel clothes, plain cottons layered against the chill in the air. She wrapped a heavy wool cloak around herself, allowing Rikbeek, her gwaystrel, to tuck himself into the folds. He availed himself of an opportunity to bite her en route, which she ignored. It was an old custom. She left the house, keeping her thoughts bent on the dringle-bird pacing up and down her glove.
It maintained its station obediently as she made her way through the streets beyond her house. Glour City was built in a series of rings, widening steadily from the nucleus of the city out to the broadest streets on the outermost edges. The innermost circles were the most prestigious: the first through to the fourth were reserved for city government offices and the manor homes - palaces, really - of its richest and most prominent inhabitants. Eva's position on the Fifth placed her among the second rank of citizens. She could have moved into the third or fourth circle years ago, taking her place among the other peers and government officials of the realm, but she liked the house she'd inherited. It made her feel a little bit closer to the father she'd lost, and the mother she'd barely known at all.
Her destination was the house of her friend Meesa's husband, Numinar Wrobsley. A prominent and skilled herbalist, he lived on Circle Twelve in the heart of the trades quarter. Instead of situating his dwelling on the edges of the forest, as any reasonable potion maker might do, he had brought the forest to his home. The building was stacked atop tall stilts, which wasn't that unusual in Glour; many citizens liked to raise their houses a little closer to the firmament. Wrobsley's house was easily twice the height of even the tallest of the residential buildings elsewhere in the city. He had a garden spread atop the roof and he spent hours and hours up there, carefully tending the rare plants he'd had imported from the Lower Realms. He swore that the proximity to the pale moonlight kept his plants stronger and healthier than their sicklier cousins elsewhere in the city. It was as reasonable an explanation as any for his particularly potent concoctions.
Eva found him in his rooftop garden as usual, bent over pots of seedlings. He was cursing their lack of progress with an enviable fluidity, impatiently pushing his escaping strands of hair back behind his ears as they repeatedly fell forward. She noticed he was wearing mismatched colours.
'Lackadaisical monsters! Destined to grace the most delicious and marvellously effective potions in Glour and you fail to produce more than a SINGLE miserable leaf?'
She cleared her throat. He shot upright, turned and stared at her.
'Damned laziness,' he muttered darkly.
'I can assure you, I have never trained a dringle-bird faster.'
'Not you,' he said impatiently. He never did have much of a sense of humour, she reflected. He was far too intense for that. His wife, on the other hand...
'It's these absurd milkleaf sprouts. Couldn't ask for a better environment, could they? Pampered like children. Food, water, moonglow, never so much as a hint of strong daylight...' He stepped forward suddenly, his face brightening as he observed the glove and the pacing bird. 'Dringle-bird, you said? Is this him? It's about time. I lost an entire crop of darsury grass to the mites not two days ago.'
She drew off her glove and passed it to him. 'He'll respond to the whistle, every time.'
'Perfect, perfect.' Wrobsley eyed the bird. Skritch paced, fluffed his wings and clucked. Eva gave him the hunt signal, and Skritch took to the wing. Eva and Wrobsley watched as the dringle systematically combed the tubs of plants, snaring insects and mites with deft, quick snaps of his tiny beak. Wrobsley began to walk after it, selecting pots at random and inspecting the leaves. Eva knew there wouldn't be an insect left in sight.
He returned to her at length and nodded approvingly. 'Thank you. I know you don't train much anymore. Meesa will appreciate it.'
She smiled. 'Only for friends, yes. Glour Council seems to have other things for the High Summoner to do, for some reason. Where is Meesa?'
He turned back to his plants. 'Downstairs somewhere.'
'One more thing, Numinar, if you've a moment.' He straightened up again, eyeing her impatiently. 'I've run out of the prophylactic and I need some more, fairly quickly.'
Numinar frowned. 'I don't have much. One bottle. The rylur shortage is killing me.'
'There's a shortage?'
He led the way back down to his workroom and fell to rummaging through cupboards. 'You haven't heard? I can't get any at all at the moment.'
This was curious news. Rylur was one of the trickier plants, impossible to rear properly outside of the Lowers. That meant supply was always a problem - it had to be carefully gathered by herbalists trained in Lowers survival and excursions down there were always brief and tightly controlled. But she knew that Numinar didn't always rely on the fully legal sources.
Numinar was throwing bottles around with a carelessness that made her wince, but nothing broke. 'All sources have dried up lately. I can't get a straight answer out of anybody as to why. Something about increased dangers.'
That dovetailed with a few odd reports she'd received recently from summoners. A few of them felt that the Lowers were growing more unstable, more difficult to navigate. She hadn't taken them too seriously; it was the sort of conclusion newer summoners often reached when they found themselves out of their depth down there. But perhaps there was something in it after all.
'Here,' said Numinar at last, shoving a bottle into her hands. 'Next batch I make is yours, okay?' He was already heading back up the stairs, anxious to return to his plants.
'Thanks,' she said, belatedly. She didn't bother to say goodbye; she knew he wouldn't hear her. She made her way back down the cramped staircase to the lower floors.
There were no lights anywhere in the Wrobsley home. This was not unusual; the Night Cloak had been in place for generations across the whole of Glour and the surrounding irignol forests, and the eyes of Darklanders were accustomed to the gloom. However, silvery light-spheres mimicking moonlight were popular for indoors. Eva kept some lit in her own home, and she knew that Meesa did likewise. Perhaps she was in the garden.
Eva let herself out of the house, stepping carefully through the gardens. Meesa and Numinar both would be incensed if she crushed any of their plants. She kept to the pathways between the neatly tended rows, watching for bobbing light-globes in the darkness.
She rounded the north corner of the building. There - a silver gleam announced a sphere at low ebb, bobbing hazily a few feet from the ground. She followed the little drifting beacon, calling her friend's name.
No answer greeted her, nor sign of movement. She caught up with the globe, dousing its light by tucking it inside her cloak. She stood still, searching the darkness.
'Rikbeek,' she murmured, opening her cloak. 'Search for me.' She pictured Meesa for him, offering an image made up of movement and sound. The gwaystrel sneezed in protest, but stretched out his webby wings and took flight.
Within a few minutes she caught the faint sound of Rikbeek's signal. She walked in the direction of his call, puzzled. He was using his warning sound. How could that be?
'Stop pranking me, you little beast,' she grumbled. 'Just because you didn't want to be disturbed-'
She stopped speaking. Her nose was registering a new scent: sharp, wrong. She tensed, her heart suddenly thudding.
An inert, dark shape lay on the darker ground. She released the light-globe, its feeble glow lightening the gloom by a few shades.
Meesa lay among the crushed remains of blooming milkleaf plants. She was barely recognisable, her upturned face displaying long gashes running from her temple to her chin. Deep wounds latticed the flesh, blood still glistening wet and red in the low light. Her flesh was cleaved through, glimpses of pale bone visible beneath the shredded meat.
Eva clenched her jaw against a desire to retch. She knelt resolutely, searching for signs of life. Nothing.
It occurred to her that the fresh wounds indicated a very recent demise. Was Meesa's attacker still nearby? She leapt to her feet and tried to listen, both with her ears and her summoner senses. Her heart thumped wildly, rushing blood drowning other sounds, but she felt the imprint of an alien beast's mind not far away. Too close.
As Rikbeek crowed and dived, Eva caught a glimpse of movement near the ground to her right. Pale eyes gleamed coldly in the darkness. She backed away, horrified, unable to look away from those icy orbs. Seconds passed. Then the blue-lit eyes winked out, and the presence vanished. She breathed, then turned, stumbling in her haste to reach the house.
Numinar's reaction was swift. He didn't wait to ask questions; he merely tore outside, leaving Eva to follow at a slower pace. She stepped into the street and accosted the first person she met, a young man who she sent hurtling away to fetch help. Returning to the garden, she found Numinar on his knees in the mud and spilled blood. He didn't move as she approached, didn't make a single sound. She took up a station nearby, trying not to look at Meesa's poor ruined body, unwilling to disturb Numinar.
Lord Vale was quick to arrive, with his boys in tow. He marched through the garden, heedless of the plants he was crushing underfoot. Reaching Eva, he wrapped her in a brief embrace.
'Take Wrobsley inside,' he murmured. He bent to speak to Numinar, though she didn't hear what he said. Numinar blinked and stood up dazedly. He allowed himself to be led indoors. She had to guide him carefully to prevent him from falling over anything. Behind her she heard Vale barking orders to his men.
A little later, Eva sat tucked into a corner in the Wrobsley's front parlour, slumped rather inelegantly into a wing-backed chair with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was still shivering with shock, and no amount of blankets could warm her chilled frame.
Numinar Wrobsley sat nearby. He hadn't spoken a word in the last half hour. Eva glanced at him from time to time, alarmed at the pasty hue of his face, the way his pale eyes stared without seeing. She could do nothing for him. They waited, together yet separated by immeasurable distance, as Vale's team conducted their investigations.
Eva finally roused herself as Meesa's body was brought in. Her stomach turned over anew at the sight of her friend's poor stricken body, her blood drying in crusted patches of rust-red. There was so much of it, staining her face, her neck, her torso. All her clothes were soaked through with it. She was laid gently on the table, her limbs arranged in as much a semblance of repose as possible. Vale drew a sheet over her ruined face, casting Eva a quick glance of sympathy.
Wrobsley's reverie was broken, too. He watched fixedly as his wife's body was laid out. Eva expected some reaction from him: tears, rage, despair. Instead he observed the proceedings almost expressionlessly, as if his ability to feel anything was temporarily suspended. It was far more terrible to watch than any explosion of grief. Eva looked away.
One of Meesa's arms had slipped from beneath the sheet. Her right hand was blood-soaked but undamaged. Eva felt tears prickling at the backs of her eyes at last, looking at that lifeless hand, those clever fingers forever stilled. She stood up, letting the blanket drop onto her chair, and gently lifted Meesa's hand. She was going to restore it to the scant dignity of the sheet covering, but she stopped, her eyes narrowing.
Last time she had seen her friend, her pretty white hands had been adorned with rings. The most prized of these, her beautiful new istore piece, had occupied the third finger of her right hand. The bloodied fingers Eva now held were bare.
She gently tucked Meesa's arm beneath the sheet, then moved around the table. Meesa's left hand was bare of jewellery as well.
Meesa's voice echoed in her thoughts. I shan't take it off my finger. She'd grinned as she said it, full of her usual good humour, but Eva felt sure she'd meant it. Where was the ring?
'Numinar.'
He twisted his head towards her, but he didn't seem to be seeing her. She sat beside him, picking up his hands in her own, and looked full into his face.
'Numinar, this is important. Did Meesa take off her ring?'
'What?' His lips moved soundlessly; she divined the word from the shape his mouth made.
'The istore ring, the one you bought for her. Did she remove it? Did she store it somewhere?'
'She says she won't ever take it off.'
'I know, but-' Eva shook her head. She wasn't getting through to him. It was clear enough, though, that he knew nothing about the disappearance of Meesa's ring.
Vale poked his head around the door frame. 'I'd like a few words, Mr. Wrobsley, if I may.'
Eva crossed to him, shaking her head warningly. She pulled him out into the hallway, pulling the door to behind her.
'He's in deep shock,' she said. 'He's barely hearing anything I say to him. Eyde, listen.' She told him the story of Meesa's istore ring, sparing no details.
'I don't think she would have taken it off, especially not so soon,' she finished. 'I think your men should search the house, see if they can find the ring. If not, then - then it's possible her death had something to do with it.' She took a breath. 'Nobody ever found out who stole my ring, did they?'
'No. We found nothing.'
She nodded. 'Also, I - I saw something, when I found Meesa's body.'
'I was coming to ask you about that, actually. Did you see the attacker?'
'I think so. Parts of it. Thin frame, black hide, pale eyes. Not a native of the Seven - definitely a Lowers beast.'
'It's hard to be sure of that, Eva. What of Orlind?'
Eva sighed. Unlike the other six realms, Orlind was almost completely closed to outsiders. It was difficult to determine whether it was even inhabited, and Glour's libraries could offer nothing but theories and speculation about what lay behind the wall of mountains that separated it from Irbel. 'I can't answer that question. Maybe it came out of Orlind - somehow - but my belief is that it's not of the Seven.'
Vale nodded. 'I trust your instincts. Do you know what it was?'
She hesitated. 'I have... a theory. Maybe. I need to look into it.'
Vale nodded. 'All right. Let me know what you find out.'
There came a violent knocking at the door, a hammering repeated with frantic urgency. Eva exchanged a look with Vale.
'Probably family,' said Vale. 'We need to keep everyone out of here for now. My boys aren't finished yet.'
'Moment. I'll get it.' Eva stepped resolutely to the door, suffering a stab of trepidation. To whom was she to break the news?
But when she opened the door, a young man in the uniform of the Investigative Office stood there, breathing hard.
'Looking for the Chief,' he gasped.
Vale strode forward. 'Bensley. What is it?'
'Another death reported, sir, on Circle Eleven. Saudran Iritan. Some kind of beast attack.'
'Right.' Vale turned to Eva, looking grim. He kissed her perfunctorily on the forehead, squeezing her arms gently. 'Go home,' he said. 'Please.'
She shook her head. 'I am staying with Numinar. He shouldn't be left alone.'
He nodded. 'Just be careful when you leave.'
'Eyde. Find out if Iritan had any taste for jewellery.' Vale gave her a quick nod of understanding, collecting up several of his men with swift orders. They left in a knot of uniforms. Eva sighed as the door shut behind them. Only two remained, charged with the removal of Meesa's body. Eva watched sadly as the silent form of her friend was taken out of the house.
She returned to Numinar. He sat where she had left him, still silent and unresponsive. She sat down beside him, took one of his hands gently in hers, and prepared to wait.
***
The reports reached her the next day. She had remained with Numinar throughout the moonlit hours and on, as the moon disappeared and the Night Cloak shrouded Glour. She had at last persuaded him to rest; he'd responded like a man half asleep, and needed all of her help even to find his way to bed. Her own rest must wait until she reached home.
She travelled home via public carriage, half hoping to find Vale waiting for her. Instead she found a note, addressed to her in Vale's handwriting. She could barely focus on it to read the words.
Eva,
Three deaths overnight. Iritan had an istore necklace. Alen Marstry, the third victim, had an istore circlet. Both pieces missing. Both attacked by some kind of beast. Also found three recent reports of jewellery thefts beside yours, all istore. Looking into it. See you at moonset.
Eva shivered, suddenly feeling fervently glad that her ring had merely been stolen. Her mind obligingly showed her Meesa's poor ruined face once again, reminding her of the hideous quantity of blood that stained her shredded clothing. Eva had no trouble picturing herself in that position, her own istore ring conspicuously absent from her blood-covered hand.
Stop that, she told herself sharply. She folded the note, tucking it into her sash. Firmly banishing all thought of tiredness, she left the house again, this time heading for the Bulletin Office.
Within half an hour of her arrival, a new announcement was spreading throughout the bulletin boards across the city.
All examples of the substance known as "istore" are to be turned in at the Investigative Offices immediately. Continued possession of these items is known to place the owner in EXTREME peril. Act at once.
An hour later, five dark-winged birds took to the sky, bearing urgent messages across the realms.