Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
“He kills Eliarde?” Gort frowned.
Dame Eliarde was Arvel’s second cousin. She hadn’t inherited the Enduring Flame of the main family, but she got the lesser version of the talent called the Amber Coal, which made her both stronger and more durable than an ordinary knight. She was deadly.
“Did he ambush her?” Lute asked.
“No. He fought her,” I told him. “She lost.”
The table went silent. Even if the Magnars all banded together, Eliarde would go through them like Shana’s cleaver through a fish.
“How does Hreban find him?” Reynald asked into the silence.
“The killer has a lair on the coast. That’s where he tortures and slices up his targets. When he takes Eliarde there, she can hear the surf. Hreban was buying a warehouse, didn’t like the condition of it, and wanted to see what else was available. Supposedly he ended up walking into the wrong building with his guards as the killer was cleaning up the gore.”
Except that if he and the Butcher were in on it together, he would know exactly where to find his pet serial killer.
“Do we know what area of the coast?” Gort asked.
I shook my head. “Somewhere remote where nobody could hear the screams.”
Kair Toren was founded because of its safe harbor and access to the West Ocean. It had literally miles of docks and warehouses. We could search for months and not find anything.
“How does he transport his victims?” Will asked. “He can’t just walk around dragging people and bodies back and forth.”
“In a cart,” Clover told him. “That’s how I would do it. I’d load them into a delivery cart, stack some goods on top, and wear some cheap clothes and beat-up shoes. I could make circles through Kair Toren all day, and nobody would pay me any mind.”
The brothers gave her an odd look.
“And you said he vanished into thin air after killing the Sun Margrave,” Reynald said.
“Yes.”
“Morr beads?” Gort wondered.
“Most likely,” Reynald said.
“What are more beads?” Kaiden asked.
“M-O-R-R. Battlemages carry them,” Will told him. “It’s illegal to use them but they do anyway. They break one, and magic shoves them to a safe spot half a mile away.”
“You’ll be in camp, sharpening your sword, and they pop up out of nowhere, and then you cut yourself,” Lute said.
A very specific example there.
Morr beads came up a couple of times in the books. They were small black beads with red cracks strung onto a bracelet or a necklace. When the user crushed a bead, they would be teleported to a predetermined location, but the beads weren’t exactly foolproof. One of the mages using them exploded upon arrival at the Mage Tower, and then Archmage Damaes got pissed off because the potion laboratory stank like rotting human fluids for days.
“Morr beads cost a lot of money,” Gort mused.
“Not if Hreban is paying your way,” Shana told him.
“So how do we find him, if we don’t know who the next victim is?” Clover asked. “Or do we have to wait for Eliarde?”
“Eliarde is a member of the Silver Eagles,” I told her. “They are an elite knight unit. There are only fifty of them and they are very proud of making that cut. She is . . . difficult.”
Sometimes overtly arrogant people hid severe insecurities, but in Eliarde’s case, her arrogance hid more arrogance. Her entire family thought their relation to the Arvels placed them above the rest. She was born into a life of privilege, with everyone constantly reassuring her that she was special and entitled to everything she ever wanted. She was beautiful, talented, celebrated, and cherished, and she was very aware that everyone else was less-than.
“She has an inflated sense of her self-worth,” Reynald said. “She won’t listen to a warning from us and attempting to follow her around until the Butcher strikes will be impossible.”
How could we find him . . . If he had been targeting regular fighters, it would be one thing, but he was targeting knights. They spent half of their time in their HQs and when they did go into the city, it was usually on horseback.
Knights . . . on horses . . .
Ah!
“I don’t know who he kills next, but I do know where he will leave the body,” I said. “He’ll tie it to the statue of the Knight Vanquisher.”
Gort’s eyes narrowed. “That’s six blocks from here.”
Reynald pivoted to me. “Is there a chance he’ll change the location?”
“I don’t think so. He spent months planning the order of his victims and the dump sites. He made drawings. He won’t want to deviate from his plan. It’s a compulsion. He must carry it out exactly as he envisioned it.”
Reynald bared his teeth in a sharp smile, like a wolf who has sighted his prey. “Gort and Kaiden, with me. Will, Lute, stay here. Nobody comes through the front door until we’re back.”