2012-07-Misery's Mirror Read Free Page B

angrier—and more afraid, Isiem thought—than the broken man’s story warranted. “That idiot was worthless.”
    “Of course he was,” Isiem said. “The Morbidium took everything of worth in him.” He sighed, casting a glance up at the dull gray sky. The storm showed no signs of dissipating. “Do you want to try the other doors, or shall we pursue another lead?”
    “There’s no use talking to any of these lackwits. The ones that have tongues don’t have eyes, and the ones that have eyes don’t have brains.” With one last snarl at the patched-up dwellings around the burned site, Ascaros turned back the way they’d come. This time he did not step over the legless woman in the mud; he jabbed his staff into her empty skirts and kicked her savagely in the side. The woman spluttered in the filth, struggling feebly.
    “Control yourself,” Isiem cautioned him quietly. “Voraic may see. Or some other Nisrochi. It would not do to damage our dignity.”
    Ascaros stiffened, breathing heavily, but after a moment he nodded and stepped over the sobbing, still-drunk cripple. He brushed a fleck of mud from his robes. “Yes.”
    “Do we have another lead?”
    “The apprentice. He might owe her everything, but when has that stopped treachery? And my aunt’s remains. They are being kept at the cathedral.”
    “We have to collect them anyway,” Isiem said. “Let’s begin there. No need to let Voraic know we suspect him until we must—and if we glean anything from Misanthe’s remains, it will let us question him more carefully.”
    “To the cathedral, then,” Ascaros said.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    Misanthe’s corpse was laid on a table alongside several others in a small room under the Cathedral of Bones. Isiem had seen similar rooms, and similar tables, beneath the Dusk Hall. They served alternately as torture beds, dissection tables, and biers—sometimes all three in quick succession.
    Copper pieces rested atop each of Misanthe’s eyes, signifying that a spell had been used to delay the decomposition of her body. Not that there was much to preserve. The flames had not been gentle; Ascaros’s aunt was barely recognizable as human. She had suffered from the same family curse as her nephew, and the peculiar decay it inflicted left her corpse even harder to study. Much of her body had been dead and withered even while she was living, and the curse-desiccated flesh had burned like kindling in the fire.
    But there was enough left to look at. Isiem pushed up his sleeves and began his examination. Ascaros hovered by his shoulder, following his work.
    Most of the injuries were straightforward, but one…
    “Do you see this?” Isiem asked, pointing to a dark ring that encircled Misanthe’s throat. Burns obscured some of it, but nevertheless it was clear that the mark made a perfect circle around her neck. It looked like a bruise, almost, but the evenness of the color and its peculiar grayish hue spoke to an unnatural origin. No human hand could produce such perfect uniformity.
    “Yes.” Ascaros looked paler than usual. The tension that had been in him since their conversation with the dented man in the Hovels seemed to have snapped, as if the sight of the corpse confirmed some suspicion he’d been nursing since then.
    “What is it?”
    “The mark of a spell. She called it the shadow garrote.” Ascaros paused, fiddling with the wrappings on his bad arm. His mouth twisted slightly. “That was one of her most powerful spells, and the most secret. She wouldn’t have taught it to anyone. She refused to teach it to me—and I wouldn’t have had the strength to cast it if she had. Not many people even know it exists.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “That Misanthe was the only one in the world who had that spell. Unless she used it for a suicide, that means someone else reflected her own magic against her. And that means…”
    “…that she wasn’t killed by an apprentice,” Isiem finished for him. Turning a spell against