Page 6 of Paladin's Hope

“A gnole smells it.”

“There’s a smell?” Piper found that interesting. The smooth men had left a very distinctive odor on their victims, and the Temple of the White Rat had found a perfumer to mix up a facsimile to guide the slewhounds. From what he’d heard, it had actually helped to track down two in Anuket City and another headed to the Dowager’s lands.

“Ah. No.” Earstripe waved his hands. “Not a real smell. A gnole senses it, but a gnole cannot…” He trailed off.

“A metaphorical smell,” said Galen.

“Humans can’t smell,” said Earstripe, sounding philosophical.

“So you’ve got a hunch they’re connected,” said Piper.

“Hunch. Yes. A gnole has a hunch.”

“And what is your role in all this?” Piper asked, looking over at Galen.

Galen shrugged. “Earstripe felt having a human around would make things go more smoothly. He came to the temple and found me. I agreed to do what I could.”

“A human is good at talking to other humans,” said Earstripe. He gave an exaggerated human-style shrug, palms up. “A human doesn’t always listen to a gnole. And a gnole did not know where to find a bone-doctor, so a sword-human helped.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you more,” said Piper. “Unfortunately we just don’t have the morgue space to keep bodies cold for long.” Down here, in the cool stone rooms under the tower, he could get three or four days, sometimes more in winter, as long as they were brought in promptly. A body that had been pulled out of a river nine days ago…no, there was nothing he could have done, except tell them what the person’s last sensations had been, and Piper could guess that had been a sudden, surprising pain in the neck. Well, now, don’t assume. He could have been beheaded post-mortem. You don’t know.

And how exactly are you going to explain that? The gnole might not care, but paladins are traditionally somewhat suspicious of wonderworkers, even such marginal talents as mine.

At least Galen was from the Saint of Steel’s order. The Hanged Mother’s priests would have tied Piper to a stake and set him alight just on general principle. Still, it was best to stay out of these things as much as possible. The profession of the lich-doctors was only a few decades old in Archenhold, and while their word was law within the courts, religious orders were traditionally skeptical of people who carved up the dead for a living.

He nevertheless heard himself saying, “If there’s another body, call me as soon as you can, and I might be able to help.”

Four

The call came more quickly than he expected. It was a bare two days later when there was a knock on the door and Piper stumbled out of bed and found himself face-to-face with Galen, yet again.

No shirt. Slightly hungover. At least I’m not carrying a bonesaw this time. That’s got to be worth something.

“Ah,” said the paladin, his eyes flicking down Piper’s torso and back up again. “Did I wake you?”

If the man’s eyes had registered approval or interest or even acknowledgment, Piper might have considered it a worthwhile way to answer the door, but Galen’s face was carefully blank. Well, I can hardly blame him. The last time he saw skin this pale, it was probably on a dead fish.

Pain throbbed against Piper’s temples. He should not have gotten drunk. He should have stopped after the first few shots, or at least he should have drunk a lot more water. Still, given the circumstances…

“Yes, but don’t worry about it.” He turned away from the door. “Another corpse?”

The paladin followed him inside his apartments. “Yes. Earstripe says it’s another one of the set.”

“What does Mallory say?”

“He hasn’t told Mallory. I quote, ‘A gnole doesn’t feel like twisting his own whiskers.’”

Piper grunted. “Sensible.” The shirt draped across the back of the chair was clean, insomuch as it hadn’t been worn to chop up a corpse. He dragged it on. “Give me a minute.”

“I don’t think our friend is going to get any deader.” The paladin’s eyes lingered on the bottle and the single glass next to the chair, but he didn’t say anything.

In fact, he so obviously wasn’t saying anything that Piper found himself annoyed. “I don’t make a habit of it,” he growled. “But they brought in a baby last night with a broken neck. The father says she fell; the mother says he shook her. You’d drink too.”

“I would,” said Galen. There was a bleak sympathy in his eyes, not the shallow kind, but the kind that had been there and remembered. “Which was it?”

The last memory, looking up, her eyes going through that strange lock-and-stare stage that babies went through and so unable to look away from the face looming over hers, everything so much bigger, the mouth open, loudness in her ears and motion she didn’t understand and then a popping feeling and…nothing.

His own despair annoyed him. It did the child no good now. “If she’d fallen, I wouldn’t be drinking,” said Piper. He went to the basin, dumped out tepid water, and splashed it on his face. Galen winced.

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