Ghost Rage, Episode 2 – Vote Now!

You put on a gray dress that smells of bleach and lye, and tie back your hair with a worn kerchief. Checking yourself in the mirror, you look like any of the washerwomen working in the Imperial capital; harmless, timid, and no threat to anyone.

Though you do strap some throwing knives to your forearms, beneath your sleeves, and conceal a pair of daggers in your boots. You haven’t gone anywhere without a weapon for years.

Then you leave the Imperial Citadel via one of the many secret passages honeycombing the place and set out on foot.

A short time later you pass through the bustling booths and tents of the Grand Market and arrive at the Rose Inn. The place is huge; six stories tall, with two wings, sheathed in the pale red granite that gave the building its name. Men in the mail and red cloaks of the Civic Legion in the Inn’s courtyard, questioning anyone who comes and goes. They do not, however, bother to question the group of washerwomen standing at the servants’ entrance.

Idiots.

You add yourself to the washerwomen by the servants’ door and listen to them gossip in Caerish. (Caerish is the common language of the Empire, while the nobles and the courts use High Nighmarian.) Someone was murdered in the Inn, they heard. A high nobleman, killed by his mistress. No, one of the magi, murdered by a demon he conjured up. No, a wealthy merchant, butchered by those he cheated.

Then the servants’ door opens, and a fat woman leans out, glaring.

“Come on, you sluggards!” she barks. “The washing shan’t do itself, you know.”

You follow the rest of the women into the Inn. They get to work on the piles of sheets and blankets by the washtubs. You help yourself to a pile of blankets and start through the Inn’s hallways. No one bothers to question a woman carrying laundry, after all.

You find Cenorix in the Inn’s common room, barking orders to his militiamen. A tall man in his late forties, he has a gut like a wine cask, but his arms are thick and heavy with muscle, and he looks as if he could still wield his centurion’s baton of rank with vigor.

“Sir,” you say in Caerish, taking care not to meet his eyes, “I think I saw something. About the dead man.”

“Aye?” says Cenorix. “Well, lass, if you saw something, out with it.”

“I’m afraid the murderer might hear me,” you say, letting your voice tremble a bit.

Cenorix grunts, but takes you by the shoulder and steers you into the corner. “Well? What did you see?”

You meet his eye. “Let the wicked beware the shadows,” you say in High Nighmarian.

Cenorix goes pale, but responds with the countersign. “For in the shadows wait the Ghosts,” he answers in the same language. “The Countess sent you?”

You nod, and tell him to take you to the body at once. Cenorix looks dubious, but he’s been a militiaman long enough to follow orders. He leads you up the stairs, to the suites on the Inn’s top floor.

“I should warn you, lass,” he says, “that it’s…pretty bad. I’ve been in the Civic Militia thirty years, man and boy, and I’ve seen a lot of men die hard. But never like this.” He shakes his head. “We haven’t even been able to identify the corpse.”

Then he stops before a door, takes a deep breath, and opens it.

The smell of drying blood hits your nose at once.

The room is sumptuous, with a thick carpet, and enormous, silk-curtained bed, and polished wooden furniture. A dead man lies in the bed.

Or, at least, what’s left of a dead man. He’s missing his arms, his head, and most of his viscera.

The washerwomen, needless to say, will have their work cut out for them.

A symbol has been painted in blood on the wall, over the corpse. You don’t recognize it.

Cenorix looks a little green, but you walk over, taking care to avoid the half-dried blood puddles, and examine the corpse. You’ve seen a lot of men die in a lot of ways, and you are almost certain that this man was ripped apart by a wild animal. The silken bedcurtains had been shredded, and you can see the claw marks on his skin.

But…the dead man was strong and fit, and an animal capable of ripping a man limb from limb would be huge. The size of a grizzly bear, at least, or an Anshani grass lion. But neither a bear or a lion could have fit through the room’s narrow door, or have climbed up the side of the Inn.

You step around the bed, find the dead man’s head, and examine it.

You recognize the features at once. Lord Julian of House Trimogena, thirty-four years old, a Nighmarian noble of high lineage.

And the Emperor had appointed him Lord Commander of the Eighteenth Legion not seven days past.

This just entered the murky realm of Imperial politics.

But could this have been a political murder? You need more information.

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