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"It's weird – as if Death is hemming us in. First he'll take the people we touch, and then, when there's no-one left, he'll come for us again. He's never forgiven us for trying to cheat him."

- E. Elric in a letter to W. Rockbell dated 23rd December 1918, State Archives, Central.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Ed found himself standing in Winter's infirmary. He still felt the strange calmness that had come over him in the alley, but below it he was seething with shock and anger, like the sea under a crust of ice. A defenceless girl was dead. Someone had dragged her into an alley and strangled her in cold blood. What possible reason was there to attack her? he thought. Then he recalled her dishevelled dress, and shuddered in revulsion.

Sienna Roy lay pale and still on a table, her body draped in white. Ed's view of her was obscured as Winter collected his instruments, but behind the doctor he knew that her eyes were staring in his direction. For a moment he wanted to reach over and close them. He forced himself to remain still. That gaze could nevert be anything but empty now.

Winter finished his tidying, and sighed. "It's what it looks like," he confirmed, turning to face Ed, "She died strangled. Not by any cord, though."

"You mean-"

Winter nodded, "Someone did this with their hands. A big man, probably, seeing as she seems to have struggled. The substance on her skirt was blood, and there was blood under her nails as well."

"Couldn't you test it to find the killer?"

"I could probably determine blood type, but that wouldn't do much good without a suspect. Even then it wouldn't be enough to prove his guilt absolutely."

"But who would want to kill a teenage girl, anyway? She was innocent." Ed's voice was grim, and he clenched his metal fist hard in his pocket.

"She was pretty." Winter replied bleakly. As to whether he said it in mourning or because he had the same suspicions as his superior he left no clue. Ed didn't ask. He thought he knew anyway.

But Winter hadn't finished his analysis. He reached into a tray and picked up a small object in a clear plastic bag. "Listen, Major. I did find . . . something on the body. It might help you, but. . . if you wanted to ignore it. . ."

For the first time, Ed felt real frustration with the doctor. "I don't care what it is! She's dead, dammit, and if you think I'm going to stand here and-" But then he stopped short.

Winter had tipped the object out into his palm and held it out for Ed to see. It was small and shining, with a few wisps of blue cloth attached where it had been ripped off. Stamped into the rectangular piece of metal was a familiar symbol, a griffin with a tail. The crest of the state military. The same crest every soldier wore on the collar of his or her uniform.

"She probably tore it off in the struggle." Winter continued.

Ed's eyes were wide in astonishment "But that means. . ." He swore, "That means a one of the garrison killed her!"

"It's not conclusive. But it'll be enough for the locals."

Ed swung round violently, slamming his fist into the blank wall behind him. He swore again. This was how it started. A murder here, a beating there, and before anyone could blink all the countryside would be rising. Blood was going to flow in torrents.

"Major?" a quiet voice interrupted. Kai stood a few feet away, but, absorbed in Winter's terrible findings, neither the Ed nor the doctor had heard him come in. Ed turned round, suddenly guilty. He hadn't thought about what the young sergeant must be feeling. Kai wasn't crying any longer. Indeed, his raw sorrow seemed to have turned into a kind of dignity – the dignity of someone who was used to loss. It struck Ed suddenly that he didn't actually know anything about Kai or his background, except that he was an Ishbalan.

"Please," Kai said, that strange dignity shining in his red eyes, "I'd like to see her."

"I don't think-" Winter began, but Ed held up a hand to halt him.

"Let him." he said. Let this girl be mourned genuinely, he thought, before she became a figurehead. She deserved that at least.

Ed and Winter left the room as quietly as they could, leaving the young sergeant alone. As he turned to go through the door, he saw Kai reach out to clasp the hand of the pale form that had once been his girlfriend.

There was so much to be done now. Al was still supervising the clean-up of the alley, and would have to be notified. Then they would have to go through the belongings of everyone in the garrison, looking for the uniform jacket from which that insignia had been ripped, or any other clue. Including each others belongings? Yes, Ed decided. He and his brother would also be under suspicion. And then?

And then to weather the storm that would undoubtedly be coming. If they could. If that was even possible.

Silently, Ed thought of Sienna's dead eyes staring into his, and made a private vow. He would find the person who had done this, this person who had brutally murdered an innocent girl and in the process plunged everyone into danger. He would make sure justice was carried out.

With his own hands, if necessary.

--

Al was dead tired, and although he and Ed had retreated to the small room they shared in order to discuss events, he couldn't rest yet. Clearing up the alley had taken all night and well into the next morning, made more difficult by the crowd of townspeople who had appeared after sunrise. They hadn't actually said, or done, anything. They had just stood there, staring in hostile silence. Al wasn't fooled, though. He knew there would be open violence soon. This was merely a space while everyone drew breath.

Al examined the battered metal rectangle his brother handed him. He recognised it immediately.

"I don't understand," he began hesitantly, "That means-"

"I know what it means, Al." Ed's voice was cold and grim.

"But… Brother, nobody here is capable of murder."

"How can we know, Al? We don't know them." replied Ed.

That was the real problem. Al couldn't think of a single member of the garrison who struck him as a murderer – if it was really possible to spot one – but neither of them knew anyone in the garrison well enough to tell, not even Kai or Winter. What was worse, if they were expecting any co-operation from the junior officers, they weren't going to get it. Nobody in this town trusted outsiders, not even the soldiers.

"Listen, Al," said Ed slowly, "You know how things are going to go here. This is your last chance. If you can get away, go-" he gave a grim chuckle, "go to Mustang. Maybe he'll send help."

"I'm not going anywhere. I mean that, Brother," said Al, with an edge to his voice. He took a few steps across the room and halted at the window, staring out. The light seeping in was cold and grey. "You need me here."

"I need you alive, Al."

"What good is that if you're facing danger by yourself? I'm staying."

"You know what it'll come to in the end, don't you? Even if we find this killer."

A rush of unfamiliar images rose unbidden in Al's mind. A little girl with her hair in plaits… A dark bloodstain on an alley wall… A man with a gaping wound in his skull… A woman who moved like a snake. And then one inexplicable, sickening feeling – Blood sliding down the inside of him…

"We always knew, Brother," Al turned his face back to the window and the blank wall beyond it. "We always knew."

--

The morning post hit the doormat with a faint rustling sound. Pinako Rockbell looked up from the kettle she was boiling, alerted by the sound of the letterbox. True to form, it had arrived late, but better late than never. She strolled over and picked up the little pile of envelopes.

One by one she dropped them on the table. A bill, A letter from a customer containing (she hoped) payment, this month's copy of "Practical Mechanics" magazine, another bill . . . She stopped short as she caught sight of the last letter in the pile. The uneven handwriting was unmistakable.

She had realised what had happened between Ed and her granddaughter immediately, of course. It had been written in the sheepish and hurried way he had left the house that morning, still more so in the way Winry had shut herself up in her room most of that day, crying.

Sure enough, the letter was addressed to Miss W. R. Rockbell.

If Pinako had been a younger and less well-mannered woman, she would have allowed herself to swear. The boy really couldn't be that stupid, could he?

I've been in the world a long time, she thought, and I know it takes more than paper and ink to make things right again. But surely even half-grown children knew that, let alone a boy who'd seen more of the real world in a decade than most people did in a lifetime! Yet still he was consumed by the childish desire to keep things forever as they were.

Pinako thought for a moment, then turned to go upstairs. In one of the drawers of her dressing table lay a small rosewood box she'd been given as a teenager. In it, she had always kept important things – everything from the documents for the automail business to a brittle fragment of the bouquet she'd carried to her wedding, more than fifty years ago. Winry knew it was private. She would never look there without permission. Pinako lifted the papers at the very bottom of the box and shoved the envelope there. Then, carefully, she replaced the lid and put the box back in its drawer.

Someday, she thought, when everything was right again, she would take that letter out again and they would be able to laugh at how silly it had all been. But not now. Now it could only hurt her granddaughter. There was no way back through a barrier like that.

Regardless of how much they all might wish for it.

--

Alphonse surveyed the confused tangle of belongings and equipment spread over the small room shared by the company lieutenants. None of the three men owned much, but spare uniforms, civilian clothes and personal effects still littered just about every available surface.

Nothing. Two days searching, and there was still no sign of the jacket from which the insignia found with Sienna's body had been ripped. It was probably long gone by now, anyway. The killer would almost certainly have tried to get rid of it. Burned it or buried it, probably. And with it had disappeared the only real chance of finding him, whoever he was.

"Sir?"

Alphonse turned around, shaking himself from his depressing thoughts. Behind him stood Sergeant Kai, looking grim and tired but not significantly grief stricken. He was holding up well, Al thought, considering what he was being put through. It probably wasn't fair to make Kai take a role in the investigation, but he was the only clerk in the outfit. It couldn't be avoided.

"I'm afraid there's nothing here, Sergeant." said Al, trying to be kind. "This is the last room to be searched, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, but-"

Al tried hard to be reassuring, "We'll have to look somewhere else, but I'm sure-"

"But sir, look!"

Al looked up to see Kai pointing towards the ceiling in one corner of the room. For a moment he was confused, but when he looked closely. . .

There.

Although most of the buildings were built of local stone, the barracks blocks at Isen had been built hurriedly from pre-fabricated kits, and as such they hadn't been built with proper plastered ceilings. Instead, the ceilings were constructed from plasterboard tiles, which were held by, though not fixed to, a metal frame like a grid. This meant that if one of the tiles was pushed upwards it would lift free, giving access to the space between the ceiling and the roof. Not that anybody ever wanted it. Nothing could be stored up there, because the tiles couldn't take much weight, and in any case, nothing could be taken up there that was larger than the area of the tiles.

But judging by the tiny gap Kai was indicating, one of the tiles had been removed from the frame and then replaced.

Al climbed onto the bunk that was immediately below that section of ceiling and pushed upwards on the tile. It took more effort than he had expected to lift it, but eventually it came free. He put one gloved had on either side of the metal frame and pulled his head and shoulders into the space above.

And, sure enough, there it was. A small bundle of blue cloth lay a metre or so from the gap. Al grabbed it in one hand and let himself drop back down into the room below.

Kai's eyes fixed frantically on the bundle. "Is that it?" he asked excitedly.

Al unfolded the blue cloth. As he had expected, it was a uniform jacket. Rather more surprisingly, it was sized to fit someone relatively small, and was stained with blood on the right hand side. Nevertheless, where the insignia of the State military should have adorned the collar, there was nothing but a threadbare patch of fabric.

He checked the inside of the collar. Generally speaking you marked anything that was yours very clearly in the army, or it wouldn't be yours very long, but surely the murderer wouldn't have been stupid enough to leave his name on the evidence condemning him-

But he had.

"Whose is it?" asked Kai, his voice an insistent whisper.

Al shook his head, dumbly. Suddenly he became aware that this was not being done the way it should be. Ed needed to see this before anyone in the garrison knew. "I need to take this to the Major." he said. "You can deal with cleaning things up here, can't you Sergeant?

"Yes, sir"

Al turned to leave, walking as quickly as he could. This was a real lead, at last.

He never thought to ask Kai how he had known where to look.

Later, in the relative privacy of the CO's office, the two brothers met to talk over the newfound evidence. They spoke quietly. Gossip spread quickly in any form of enclosed community, and even alone in a room with the door shut there was no knowing what someone might overhear. They couldn't afford that now. The entire garrison was like a wire held at tension.

Ed scrutinised the jacket carefully. "Where did you find it?"

"In the company lieutenants' quarters. Someone had tried to hide it in the roof space." Al replied, loitering over by the window.

"You think it was one of them?"

"I know it was, Brother." Al came away from the window and sat down, his face deadly serious. "He left his name marked on the jacket."

Ed frowned. "But why didn't he try and erase it? Come to think of it, why didn't he destroy the evidence? It doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe someone hid it for him." That was a possibility. Perhaps the killer – the suspect, Al reminded himself - had managed to convince someone else he was innocent, that the evidence against him was circumstantial…

"Or maybe this place turns everyone into fruit loops," said Ed in a grim attempt at humour. "Either way, Al, its you I'll have to dump this on. I can't trust the other two lieutenants and Winter's got enough to do. I'm sorry."

Al nodded mutely. There was nothing to say. A small, bitter voice inside him was complaining at this of all moments being the one Ed learned to delegate, but he silenced it. It wasn't his brother's fault.

Ed stood up, his movements slow and weary. "You know, the more I look at this situation, the more I think we're being set up." He sighed, then straightened and moved towards the door.

He'd made the only decision he could make.

Behind the door, Sergeant Kai sat at his meticulously tidy desk. He held a pile of papers in his hands, but something in his manner suggested to Ed that he hadn't really been paying attention to them.

"Sergeant, I want you to supervise clearing out one of the storerooms." Ed ordered, feeling ridiculous. He was bad at giving orders at the best of times.

"May I ask why, sir?" inquired Kai, but his eyes, brighter than usual, belied his unassuming words. They stared at Ed fixedly, almost as if he knew what his superior was about to say.

Ed let his own tawny gaze meet Kai's, but the boy's eyes did not falter.

"Because my brother is going to lock Lieutenant Dalligan in there until we can determine why he murdered your girlfriend."

--

Lieutenant Keyes shivered, though, with his thick military-issue overcoat insulating him from the night air, it was not the cold weather than bothered him.

The street was deafeningly quiet. No one was about, not even an errant child or stray dog. Every one of the houses they past had curtains drawn or shutters locked, but behind them he knew there were people watching. The small knot of men he led tensed as one, hands on rifles. Their unease was palpable.

The people of Isen didn't riot. They didn't need to.

Keyes was a simple man, and he relied on the world to be simple as well. It made little sense to him why there was all this tension without anyone acting on it. But what made even less sense to him was why Dalligan had strangled a girl he had never met or spoken to. He knew Dalligan. He was cunning and conceited, certainly, but at the bottom of it no more evil than most men. And most men didn't go out at night to murder strange girls. Especially when they knew how much danger it would put them in.

Nevertheless, he had, and they were all in that danger now.

The patrol came into the end of the street, up to where it opened into the main square of the town. Keyes held up a hand to halt the men behind him. There were no lamps in the square, meaning that at night there were deep unlit recesses either side of him into which no one observing from the opening into the place could see. It was a good place for an ambush.

He moved forward cautiously, motioning for the man next to him, a Corporal, to follow. The man did as he was instructed, but kept a tight grip on his rifle none the less. Slowly, Keyes put one foot in front of the other, trying to look at ease, while attempting to fumble his revolver from its holster. Don't show alarm, he told himself, don't let them know you know they're there, just quietly and carefull-

He stopped abruptly, standing as still as he could, though his blood was pounding in his ears. He had heard a sound – the tiniest whisper of something scraping against stone. . .

One foot in front of the other. Don't let them know you're aware of them. . .

Another sound, this one terrifying. A smooth, oiled click.

And then he knew.

Time, so sluggish a moment before, suddenly sped up with a vengeance. Keyes tried to bring his revolver to bear, but he had nothing to aim at. He felt the Corporal beside him trying to do the same, but they were too slow, he could feel it-

CRACK!

The gunshot shattered the silence of the square. The men Keyes had left in the alley started forward, rifles raised, but he already knew they were too late. The ambush team, if team it was – it could have been one man alone – had melted away.

On the ground lay the young corporal, his life's-blood pumping from the wound in his throat.

It had begun.

--

Miles away, another man heard that shot, and knew what it portended.

Fair is fair, he found himself thinking, a death on either side.

He saw the lights in the town begin to flicker on. Time for him to be going. He hauled himself up from his stony perch and began picking his way down the hillside.

It has begun, he thought, staring at the distant majesty of the heavens.

Oman the Rock smiled.

--