Page 79 of Junk Magic

It was human, or a Were who had shifted back after death, which sometimes happens. But it was hard to tell much more than that. It had a melting quality, as if the skin was dripping off the bones. It looked like a Halloween mask with no head inside it, probably because the skull had been pulverized by the vicious blow it had taken to one side.

Said blow had splattered blood all over the face, further obscuring the features, but Sebastian seemed to think it proved something.

“Cloud Leaper, of the Windward clan. You put in a request for information about him earlier today. I would like to know why.”

I stared into the glazed eyes of the Were I’d spoken to briefly at the grow farm, before he changed and attacked me. And still had trouble recognizing him. But the signs were all there, now that I knew to look for them.

He still had the same sandy blond hair, which Sebastian was currently holding him up by, the same thin face and stubbly beard, and the same slightly gray teeth that said he hadn’t visited a dentist in a while. But while the face was largely untouched, the body was missing. Only a few inches of spine dangled out of the severed neck, along with some ropy muscle that indicated that this head hadn’t been severed so much as ripped off.

I swallowed some more.

“The heads were all pulverized like this, we don’t know why,” Sebastian added. “But there isn’t an intact one in the bunch.”

And no, there wasn’t. The bleeding mountain behind him, which appeared to be where all the heads had been brought for identification, would have been gory enough, but someone had turned the skulls into mush. But not as if they had been trying to obscure the features. Cloud Leapers’ face was bloody, but intact, as were many of the others.

They appeared to have been pulverized at random, in a rage-fueled frenzy.

“This is him, isn’t it?” Sebastian asked impatiently, when I took my time assessing things. Usually so good at appearing human, he turned the grisly body part he was holding toward him and scowled at it. And then used a sandaled toe to search around the pile at his feet, disturbing some flies.

They rose up in a thin black cloud, with some taking off from the opened, dead eyes of the victims, where they’d been feasting. And I swallowed my lunch back down for what had to be the fifth time. “It’s him,” I said, my voice thick.

“Good. And?” His remained calm, but that probably wouldn’t last long if I didn’t get my shit together.

I gave myself a mental slap.

“Bokors.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s another word for necromancers. The Corps has mages who can sometimes peer inside a dead brain and retrieve information. It's often inconclusive, especially after any time has passed. But it looks like whoever did this didn’t want to take chances.”

The blue eyes narrowed. “Someone didn’t want these people talking, even after death.”

“No.” And they wouldn’t be. Whatever brain matter they’d had, had been turned into sludge. I looked away. “How did you know he attacked me?”

“You told the archivist. Don’t you remember?”

It was smooth, without so much as a minute hesitation. It was also a lie. I’d been shell shocked all day, but not giving people more information than they needed had been ingrained into my psyche through years of training and natural reserve. I hadn’t just decided to spill my guts to a librarian I didn’t even know.

Which meant that Sebastian had a spy at HQ who’d sussed out the truth, probably after my little display this morning.

Great.

This was why it was hard having a foot in both camps. I ought to tell Hargroves that he had somebody on the take, or somebody with loose lips, or somebody sleeping with one of the Were guards who didn’t understand the meaning of discretion. But if I did, and the suborner of war mages was found, he’d just be replaced by another. And it would damage the tentative alliance that we needed so badly.

So, it wouldn’t go into my report. And neither would this, but for a different reason. Sebastian was bardric, which meant that the buck stopped with him—on everything, but especially when it came to keeping his people safe. And having a whole tribe butchered, and then left to rot in the middle of the Wolf’s Head, the local symbol of his power?

Somebody was making a statement, and if he didn’t figure out who and go medieval on their ass, it wasn’t going to look good. Especially not with Conclave bringing the leaders of the Were world here to witness his failure. The Corps couldn’t be involved in this; it had to be his fight.

I looked up, and saw the weight of it on his shoulders.

He knew.

“I need to talk to you privately,” I said, and got a jerky nod in return.

“This way.”

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