"Moria?"
Tyrus had bent beside her, and she was about to say she was fine. Then she noticed he was lifting the blanket on the pallet. At first she saw nothing. Then she bent to peer underneath and . . .
There was an arm. Yet not an arm. A twisted thing, muscles and tendons bulging and contorted, fingers elongated and wizened, the nails thickened to claws. The same claws that had gouged tracks in the dead woman. She'd seen that arm before . . . or one like it. On her father, on the twisted thing that he'd become.
"Shadow stalker," she whispered. "That is . . . My father . . ." She swallowed. "I have seen such a thing."
Daigo bumped her arm, ignoring the pool of blood now as he rubbed against her. She put her arm around him. Tyrus squeezed her shoulder.
"You should step out," he said.
She shook her head. "You're right. It needs to be documented. We ought to . . . take the thing. If we can. When we're ready to leave the town. Take it so the court physician can examine it."
Tyrus nodded. "That's a good idea. I'm not sure I'd have thought of it."
He would have. Making plans, though, steadied her better than any deep breathing. Tyrus took hold of the thing under the blanket, tugging it by its clothing while Daigo and Moria stood at the ready, in case it was not truly an empty shell. It was. She knew it as soon as she saw that terrible, twisted face. The demented spirit within had fled.
Moria looked at the dead woman. She had fought. Fought hard, even without a weapon. The body the shadow stalker had inhabited wore a tunic cut of the same coarse hemp cloth as this woman's dress. Her husband. What had that been like? Seeing your husband turn into that thing, having it drag you through the house, attacking you, breaking you, biting you? Worse than it had been with her father? Perhaps. But the woman had fought hard enough to send the thing crawling under that blanket, injured, the spirit within fleeing. And then the woman . . .
That was the worst of it. Moria looked at the woman and swallowed. The bites and gouges oozed yellow pus--the flesh had been rotting while the woman still lived. She'd survived the attack, only to be trapped here by her broken body, the infection spreading as the days passed and no one came . . .
Why did no one come?
Moria knew the answer to that even if she dared not speak it.
"We need to check the village," she said. "Look into more homes. The children--"
She stopped herself. That was what she'd come for. The children. Yet now she hoped they were not here, because if they were, she'd find them like this woman--
"They are not here," Tyrus said, as if reading her mind. "Alvar Kitsune had them brought all the way from Edgewood. He's using them as hostages. He'd not do all that only to unleash this upon them."
"I hope not."
He walked over and squeezed her shoulder again, leaning in to whisper, "I am certain of it, Moria. He's keeping them alive. We'll find them."
As they headed into the sitting room, the orange blur zoomed past again, as if the cat had just realized the front door was open. Daigo growled.
"We have more things to worry about than a house cat," she murmured, and Daigo grunted, as if acknowledging that.
They moved to the next house, then to the next and the next, and within every house they found the dead. Another wife. An elderly couple. A wife and a girl. The girl was no more than fourteen summers. She'd barricaded herself in her parents' room. Red smears covered the door, as if the creature--her father?--had beaten himself bloody trying to get inside. Finally, he had, breaking a hole in the door, the splintered edges red with blood as he'd reached through. And the girl within? She'd taken his shaving blade and slit her wrists.
Moria stared down at the girl, her body rotting in a pool of blood so deep it was still tacky. Moria looked at the thin blade, fallen at the girl's side.
"Why did she not use it to protect herself?" she said.
"Perhaps she never thought of it," Tyrus said. "She looks like a merchant's daughter. It may not have occurred to her."
Moria shook her head. "I cannot believe that. If any girl saw that thing reaching through the door, and she had a shaving blade, she would use it, even if she'd never been trained to defend herself."
A moment's pause. Then his voice lowered. "Perhaps she did not see the point. She could hear what was happening elsewhere in the village. She'd seen what had happened to her mother. Perhaps she thought there would be no sense fighting. That she would not--could not--escape."
And perhaps she was right. No. She was right. The girl could have fought off this one shadow stalker, but there were more beyond the door. All the men of the town had turned to monsters, hunting and slaughtering.
There'd been no escape except this: a quick death where she did not need to look into her father's eyes and see the horror he'd become.
Moria spun on Tyrus. "Why was the emperor not quicker? If he'd been quicker--"
"The bodies are rotted, Moria," he said, his voice still soft. "These people did not pass yesterday or even a few nights ago. I believe this happened almost as soon as you left."