Khellor turned a corner past a row of plank houses, with Lidia following close behind.
They pushed past a knot of about a dozen people forming around the front of one house to find three other members of the Guard in front of a scarred wooden door.
Off to the side, one of them, a short, slight elvish woman, was bracing one of her compatriots, holding back his long hair as he retched into some tucked-away corner near one of the storm drains.
The last one, a half-orc looked much paler than he ought to have been, even through the greenish tint of his skin, and he had a sickened expression on the deep folds of his face.
Nonetheless, he pulled himself to his feet, all six foot six of him, and saluted Khellor with a gnarled hand across his chest.
"Captain Strax, what's going on?" Khellor asked.
"It's ugly in there," the other said, gesturing to the house. "I've seen a lot, but naught like this. Not sure you want to see it either."
"What'd you find?"
"Some noble family was butchered, their guards and servants, everyone. The washer lit out screaming as soon as she opened the door, so we couldn't get who was living there or whether she saw anything happen."
"Very well," Khellor said. "Has anyone been in or out since you arrived?"
"Naught but ourselves, Sergeant," Strax said. "I'd suggest leaving this one to the Order. First thing you see when you walk in is their sign."
Everyone fell silent for a moment until Lidia realized Khellor was looking to her for an answer.
"This is the first time I've been here," Lidia said. "Captain Strax, do you know anything about this place?"
"Just that we all thought it was abandoned," he said. "It's hardly fit for man or beast."
Lidia took a closer look at the place. This house was two stories tall and constructed from the same stucco and wood frames as many other houses in the River District.
Unlike many of the other nearby buildings, however, which were patched or torn down as soon as they started to show some wear, this place was much more ill-used: broken windows, flaking plaster revealing the brick exterior wall, loose clay shingles from the roof, and burn marks on the wood frame. Even where the speckled stucco was intact, it was corroded by the salt of the sea and discolored from white to a hazy grey.
She turned to Khellor. "I want to see what happened here."
"All right," the sergeant replied. "Strax, make sure no one gets past here, as best you can — see if you can clear everyone out before someone from the Order gets here."
Lidia approached the door and tried turning the metal handle several times. Finally, after several futile attempts, the latch finally turned, and the door swung open.
Immediately, carnage revealed itself inside the house.
"Gods," Khellor said. He pulled out a handkerchief and held it to his nose.
Lidia said nothing. Her stomach turned, but she kept her composure as she slowly made her way forward through a puddle of blood.
Ten bodies lay on the floor. All were slit at the throat, the blood pooling about their heads, their faces white and drawn with the sheer terror of their last moments.
They all were contained in a plain, well-kept room that belied the sorry state of the house outside. Here, the walls were intact and covered with a coat of lime-white paint. The floorboards were lined up perfectly and covered with a twenty-foot-long, intricately knotted rug that easily cost more than a year's salary.
But now everything was stained with blood: kicked up, splattered against the wall, slick and coagulating against the floor, soaking the rug through. The room was heavy with its metallic smell, weighed further down with the smell of unhoused bodies already returning to dust.
Lidia looked at the faces of those who had died here. As Captain Strax had said, five of those bodies had belonged to a wealthy family: an older man and woman next to each other, a thirtyish man who resembled them, with a woman the same age nearby. A small boy, no more than seven, curled into a small ball on the floor, his legs and arms stiff as they turtled around him.
Lidia's stomach turned again.
Further back were the bodies of two old women and an old man, their plainer dress suggesting that they might have been servants. Two more bodies, helmeted and armored, bore the crossed heart of the Order on their tabards.
Not far from where the soldiers and servants had fallen was the stained and drying outline of an eleventh, now nothing more than a shadow on the ground.
Khellor briefly removed the cloth from his nose and mouth and leaned over to examine the spot. "There was someone lying there, and here" — he pointed to a spot that had dried to a red-brown smear — "they must have dragged him off. Too bad, or we'd have someplace to start for who did it."
Lidia stared for a moment towards where the smear trailed off towards a corner of the wall. "Any ideas?"
Khellor's voice was muffled again by the white cloth, which faintly smelled of peppermint and alcohol.
"Someone who could probably use a magical getaway," he said. "No footprints anywhere except for ours. But there was only so much sorcery they could do."
"Would the Cowled Wizards track that?" she asked.
"Maybe," he said. "Depends on if they've got an 'understanding' with whoever did this."
"Does it help narrow it down?"
"Maybe, to a business or political rival of some kind," he said. "Someone with money, most likely. Let's try to find more elsewhere."
Not wanting to track blood to the rest of the house, they left their shoes in the anteroom and continued through the rest of the house, stepping carefully to avoid splinters.
The rest of the house was much like the anteroom had been: well-kept, simple, and stripped down, with hints that whoever had lived here had been well-heeled and that this had been a temporary dwelling of theirs. And the place was small, with only a kitchen, a dining room, a sitting room, and the anteroom on the ground floor, and six small bedrooms upstairs.
Nothing in any of these places pointed to any further identifier, either for the family, the servants, the soldiers, or the attackers.
The bedrooms were divided much in the way you'd expect, with the servants' quarters in two rooms, the master bedroom, another bedroom for the younger couple, and a smaller bedroom for the little boy. But one was a mystery: a bed canopied in red velvet and covered with a thick damasked blanket.
They finally came to one last locked door on the second floor, at the end of a short hallway.
"Let me get your boots," Lidia said, thinking Khellor would kick in the door.
"No need," he said, removing a small toolkit from a hidden pocket and withdrawing a small brass hook. Immediately he knelt in front of the door, gently working the lock with the hook.
"Any door worth forcing open is going to be too thick to break," he said, "unless you've got your shoes and you're built like an ox."
Within a few moments, the latch clicked, then retreated, and the door swung open.
Instead of another bedroom, this room was a small office, with a sturdy mahogany desk and chair, a few shelves containing parchments on one side, and a small closet closed shut and locked.
No windows permitted any of the afternoon light inside, but a sconce on the wall enclosed a small lamp immediately to the right of the door, which they lit.
It wasn't nearly enough to light the room, especially since the small oil lamp on the desk had fallen to the floor and spilled, in one of the only signs of a struggle.
So they were left to decipher the documents by the little light they had. While Khellor was learning Thorass in hopes of a promotion, it wasn't enough to decipher the legal documents, and Lidia could barely make heads or tails of any of it.
They had a little more luck with a folder of correspondence they found. Before long, Khellor could put a name to one of the victims, most likely belonging to the older man who had died downstairs.
"Lord Porteus Morningale," Khellor said. "He'd been a prosecutor for the Council for over thirty years. Talking to him was like talking to a brick wall, but no one could buy or sell him for any price. And he hated the slave trade, hated it. Made no secret of it, either, and spent most of his time going after rings running it here, while his wife supposedly had an underground network of folks getting them out of the city."
He sighed. "Likely that's what killed them."
"Do you know anything about what it's saying?"
Khellor furrowed his dark brows as he pored over a letter in his hand. "He was sitting on this one. It's dated yesterday and it's for Prelate Wessalen, but he hasn't sent it. As for the letter itself, — well, the way he writes makes those little half-commas do more than their share of the labor, that's for sure."
"It seems like he brought his family here. What were they doing?" Lidia asked.
"You could probably answer that better than I could, or more easily find someone who knows," he replied. "If I had to guess, they were probably hoping to lay low here, hoping they could escape notice. Didn't work."
Suddenly, from the other side of the closet door came a rustle against the wood, then a whimper.
Lidia got to the door first, trying the small handle. It wasn't even locked, and she easily swung it open.
The source of the noise was immediately obvious: a dark-haired young woman, a girl really, no older than fourteen. She was curled upon the floor, half-buried in a thickly layered silk dress.
As soon as she laid eyes on Lidia, she screamed, lunging forward in an effort to push past and escape.
She didn't get far, tripping over her own skirts and stumbling forward, letting out a cry of pain as she fell.
Lidia recovered in time to catch her, lowering her gently to the floor. The girl fought her all the way down in a desperate attempt to get away, screaming the whole time.
Khellor ran over to assist and gently tried holding the girl in place. "We're City Guard. Calm down —"
Finally, the girl screamed something coherent: "Get away from me!" She lunged forward, trying to push past both of them.
That effort ended as soon as she tried to rise to her feet, falling again to the floor. Though she looked as though she were tripping over her own skirt again, Lidia noticed the girl was heavily favoring one leg.
She looked as though she were only a hundred pounds, counting her dress. Khellor easily lifted her up in a bridal carry and knelt down, letting her struggle for a while a short way from the floor.
Seeing she wasn't going anywhere, the girl finally stopped fighting and broke down crying. Only then did Khellor set her down; her hand closed with as much force as it could muster around his.
Lidia gently brushed aside the skirt — it was at least four or five layers of gauzy, pearl-pink silk — and immediately saw the problem: the girl had an angry, purple-blue bruise on her bare right shin; she wore no shoes or stockings.
"What's your name?" she asked the girl.
"Tyri…Tyrianna," she replied, still crying.
"As Sergeant Ahmson said, we're from the City Guard. Are you hurt?"
"I…I think my leg's broken," the girl said, in between sobs.
"I'll take a look," Lidia said. "This might hurt."
As soon as Lidia's fingers probed the bruise, Tyrianna gave a yelp before starting to cry again.
Lidia waited for the girl to calm down before speaking with her again. "Looks like you just gave it a good knock. I'm going to see if I can make it easier for you to walk, but you might feel tired once I'm done. Is that all right?"
Tyrianna nodded wordlessly.
As Lidia worked, Tyrianna asked Khellor, "What happened to everyone else?"
He replied, "You're the only one left. I'm sorry."
She started sobbing, but this time, she sounded more subdued, defeated.
Finally, Lidia was done. She sat back, slowly and painfully getting to her feet. It hurt, but she found she could stand.
Immediately, Tyrianna also rose to her feet, seemingly undaunted by the hard work her own body had put in. In between tears, she pulled herself up, and said in a commanding tone, her voice only quavering slightly, "I want to see them."
"Kid, you really don't," Khellor said.
"I didn't ask. I told you, I want to see them," the girl repeated, folding her arms.
"All right. Lidia, if you could stay with her, then I'm going outside to see if anyone from the Order is here."
Tyrianna gathered up her skirts with a well-practiced flick of her wrist, then half-walked, half-ran to the foot of the stairs, with Lidia following some way behind.
Suddenly, the girl stopped in the middle of the stairwell, giving a small, strangled cry. Then, she said, in a small voice, "Oh gods, oh gods…"
She practically flew down the stairs and went straight for her little brother, cradling his broken body in her arms and sobbing again.
"All for mother's stupid causes," she said to the boy as she was crying. "You shouldn't have had to…you shouldn't have had to…
She looked up towards Lidia, her dark eyes rimmed with red. "Those murderers. They said to us, 'no one crosses the Shadow Thieves and wins'."
Lidia said nothing. As Tyrianna remained, she stood at a respectful distance and quietly offered her own prayers, hoping that whoever this family's own gods were, they had taken them well into hand by now and sent their souls safely on their way.
Finally, Tyrianna rose to her feet again, her face pale and tear-stained but hardened. Even though the girl was clearly used to getting her way, Lidia was impressed by her fortitude.
Then came a knock at the door.
"That's your escort, I think. We'll need to get you out of here," Lidia said.
"Fine," Tyrianna said, folding her arms. "Sit. Stay. Good doggie."
Maybe in another time, the girl might have been more defiant, but now she seemed almost relieved not to have to remain here anymore. She gathered up her skirts again — they were soaked with blood through and through — and left, a small knot of guards bearing the Order's crossed heart immediately surrounding her as soon as the door opened.
Lidia followed shortly after, closing the door to the house behind her. The noise of the latch clicking and the door shutting had a weighty, final feeling to it; maybe being part of the end of this family's story had something to do with it.
The guards' leader remained behind, introducing himself to Lidia as Sir Franco Coprith. "Good to have you here," he said to her. "We should have gotten here first, but there's no harm done, and if the City Guard has a hand in seeing this horrific matter resolved, so much the better."
Lidia leaned in, saying quietly to him, "The girl thinks the Shadow Thieves did it."
Immediately Sir Franco looked troubled. "How? They shouldn't have known where this safehouse was, nor where the Morningales were staying," he said in a low voice.
He was silent for a long moment. "I'll add it to my report. In the meantime, we'll make sure Tyrianna gets somewhere safe and contact her relatives. Hopefully, the next day will be a bit quieter."
Lidia nodded. She was still thinking about what Lord Morningale's unsent letter to the Prelate might have said.