Chapter Three

The Scarlet Apron

As always, horror lay in the span between panted breaths.

Enk grimaced and slackened his pace, watching light dapple across the pristine and serene greenery of his front lawns. And when the horror that clawed at his lungs had become more fiery still, he slinked beneath a mighty oak, curled against its familiar shade, ran fingertips along his and Merka’s name, bound by a heart, carved into the bark. He turned back to gauge how far he had came, the way he so often did while pausing to recover his strength.

His home loomed, its sunlit beauty contradicted by the memory of its hidden decay. He squinted against the glare of its most modern addition—its glass-roofed arcade. The mansion was a different place when glimpsed from outside, one that shimmered with grandeur. He could not stare at it without some kind of pang in his throat.

“Thirty-three,” he said, continuing his journey.

Thirty-three, the number of steps from the oak to the gate. The gate was a tall tangle of blackened iron, hemmed in on either side by a white-bricked wall, overrun with a snarl of vines and leaves. On the cobbled street, a black carriage waited.

Suddenly, the morning trek struck Enk as pathetic. It would be a simple thing to have the carriage meet him at his door. Like so much in his life, it had seemed nobler the day before, a way to push back against his affliction. Yet after years of practice, the daily odyssey never got any easier. He still paused in the same place, still wheezed after the same number of steps, his pride a goad around his neck.

In another life, I. . . .

Enk banished the thought and pressed onward. More than anything else, he was stubborn. He would not quit now, and he would not ask Ilima to meet him at his door. To do that would be to admit defeat to his most hated enemy—his ailment. No amount of comfort was worth such a betrayal.

When he staggered into the carriage, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open as he gulped air into his constricted airways. Bent double, he clutched at the pommel of his sword to keep from clawing at his throat.

“I have news,” Ilima said, handing him a towel. His dark eyes, opposites to his sister’s blue, seemed hooded with unspoken dread. He wore a green coat whose finery screamed nobility without being too ostentatious.

Enk’s reply was all heavy breathing.

If bothered by such a response, Ilima did not show it. “There was another one.” Heartache and disgust pitched his voice higher than normal.

Enk lurched upright. “What? When?”

“Last night. My father only just came home. He said the Censors mean to keep it from the newspapers, but I doubt that will do any good.”

Enk studied his friend’s profile. Ilima was an image of what he might have looked like in another life: broad-shouldered, dark, vibrant curls chopped short, caring eyes, and a perfectly curved smile to melt the heart of any maid. Fire knotted Enk’s chest. He hated this, hated the way his own inadequacies stood manifest while perched in his friend’s presence. Ilima was everything he was not. Everything he wanted to be.

“Look,” Ilima continued, motioning at the window. “There’s an edge to them that wasn’t there before. Do you see it?”

Enk glanced out his window, the unused towel still balled in his hand. The citizens of Dilgan seemed entangled with shadow, clustered beneath the sprawling architecture of magnificent tenements, shops, and gleaming, cube-shaped churches, voices pitched low in early morning chatter, deaf to the thunderous chorus of the city. Women traveled in groups of no less than three, huddled against each other, shivering as the wind fumbled at their dresses, faces haunted with unspoken horror.

“I see it,” Enk said, his voice quiet with astonishment. Why didn’t I notice this before?

“Some among the Third Estate have begun to call him the Scarlet Apron.” Ilima sighed, as if injustice of any kind was a weight upon his soul. “Mark me, if he isn’t caught soon, there will be riots. There’s only so long the men will allow their women to be preyed upon.”

“The Scarlet Apron? An apt name.” Enk sponged the sweat from his brow. “Much better than the Dilgan Murderer.”

Ilima clicked his tongue with an exasperated twitch. “Could you at least pretend to care? Women are being butchered like cattle, strung up in grisly scenes. You should have seen my father’s face this morning. This case wears on him. It’s in the cast of his eyes, the way he stares off into space for minutes on end.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Think, Enk.” His voice was tight, hooked by a thread of luminous dread. “How many years has my father worked for the Black Agency? How many thousands did he watch die in the Second Crusade? For this case to affect him as it has, it must be . . . it must be—”

Enk clasped Ilima’s arm. “Peace, Ilima. There’s nothing you can do.”

“I know that but. . . .” Ilima hesitated, and, for a moment, he appeared broken, a vase shattered against the stone of a jagged shore. Then the look receded, replaced by iron-webbed determination. “But I can’t help thinking that together we could bring the killer to justice.”

“You and me?” Enk tried to laugh, but the sound lodged in his throat, caught on a sudden sense of pity for his friend. “Two sixteen-year-old youths doing what every thrasher, Blackcloak, and secret informant cannot?”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” Enk spat. “Sometimes, Ilima, I think if I only had your confidence, I would already be a Lord-Marshal of the Empire. Other times, I’m certain that I would be dead.”

Stricken mute by the rebuke, Ilima leaned back in his seat, his cheeks flushed. Enk returned to his eastward vigil, peering up at the tip of the Cobalt Gate and the orb of burnished gold, rising up above it, causing the illusory mountains to ripple oddly. More than some mere trick of light, this exposed the falseness of the view that concealed the near Ancient East.

“Inanna left something for you,” Ilima said, breaking the silence. “She told me to give it to you the day after she left.”

Enk stiffened, then jerked his gaze away from the Great Gate as Ilima pressed a letter into his hand. He traced the flowing script inked into the ivory-white paper. There was no mistaking Inanna’s hand. The gloom of the carriage became enveloping, transformed darkness into fanged manacles, tightening across the base of his skull and spine. His finger trembled.

“Are you going to open it?” Ilima asked.

“Later.” Enk stuffed the envelope into an inner coat pocket. Ilima said nothing, but he could feel his friend’s concern. “How many victims have there been now?”

Ilima blinked, eyes glowing with the specter of hope.

“I’m not agreeing to anything, understand?” Enk continued in a rush before his friend could respond.

“Of course not,” Ilima said, smiling.

“I’m not.”

Ilima’s smile widened. “Officially, the count is up to four.”

“And unofficially?”

“My father thinks there was a fifth victim, a Devotee of the Holy Harlots that was murdered four weeks before all this mayhem started. He thinks that case and these ones are connected, but he wouldn’t say why.”

“Interesting.” Enk rubbed his nose.

“How so?”

“Why don’t others agree with his theory?”

“The way the Devotee was murdered was different than the other victims. Less gruesome, or so he said.” Ilima scowled. “But why do you think it’s interesting?”

Enk leaned back into his seat. “Don’t you see? Up to now everyone has assumed that the Scarlet Apron only hunts lowborn women, but Devotees of the Holy Harlots are members of the First Estate.”

“And how does this help us get closer to discovering the killer?” Ilima asked, hunching forward.

“By itself, it doesn’t, but if your father’s theory is correct. . . .” Enk clapped Ilima on the shoulder. “Relax. Have faith in your father. If anyone can, he will solve this.”

He watched Ilima turn downcast eyes to the outside world. He opened his mouth, ready to lend comfort, but the words lay dead on his tongue.

Ilima had a thousand faces, spanning the gambit from joy to despair, and Enk had seen them all, but few wounded as deeply as his friend’s look of disappointment.