Warehouse
Gregor is silent as he leads Berend and Isabel through the dim, grimy streets of the Shell District. It’s been more than a full day since the last rain, but the gutters are still wet, the runoff blackened with the city’s filth. A faint, putrid miasma hangs above the street, held in by the overhanging buildings. Gregor’s lantern does little to push the shadows away.
They’re heading for the West Gate, where the highway enters Mondirra. It receives all the overland traffic, and the city divides its industry between it and the River District. Isabel has been there exactly twice: once to enter, and once to leave, when she was here last. She had been an apprentice, then, young and wide-eyed at the marvels of the largest city she had ever seen, following at the heels of her teacher.
Mondirra isn’t as fascinating and glamorous as she remembers. Now, she mostly sees the dirt.
As they come to the edge of the Shell District, the cramped houses give way to sprawling warehouses and wide cart-roads. They’re not all paved, and the earth is still soft, the wheel ruts flattening under Gregor’s large boots.
He stops before a tall structure, rather like a barn. The double doors are secured with a heavy chain and a padlock, and an unlit lantern hangs from a peg on the right-hand post. On the left side, the silhouette of the roof is curved inward.
“Here we are,” says Gregor.
He approaches the door, walking between two deep ruts in the mud, producing a key from the pocket of his waistcoat. The chain scrapes through the metal handles, and the sound sets Isabel’s teeth on edge.
That done, Gregor takes a match from another pocket and transfers a tiny flame from his light to the one by the door. He comes back and hands the chain and the lock to Berend. “Lock up when you leave,” he says.
“Thank you kindly,” Berend replies flatly. He winds the chain around one hand and holds the lock open with his fingers. Gregor did not give him the key.
Isabel wraps her coat around her. The night has not gotten warmer, but it’s an ordinary, natural chill. She does not sense the same tension in the air that she felt in the lighthouse or the Shell District plaza, despite being forewarned that something equally terrible has taken place here. It’s late; maybe her senses are dulled from tiredness. She’s slept well for only one of the three previous nights, and she’s not an apprentice anymore.
The lantern’s metal handle feels like ice. She lifts it from the peg and holds it up to the door handles. They’re a little rusted, but otherwise clean.
“That’s odd,” says Berend from behind her.
She turns, lifting the lantern. “What is it?”
He gestures to the parallel ruts leading up to the door. They’re almost exactly as far apart as the frame is wide. “This is from a two-horse carriage,” he says. “It’s too big for an ox cart, and the wheels are too thin.”
This means nothing to Isabel.
She must be giving him a bewildered look, because he continues, “You never see something that fine in a place like this. And it’s for traveling, not for hauling goods.”
“You’re certain?” Isabel asks.
He shrugs. “As much as I’m sure of anything these days. I’ve escorted enough nobles’ carriages to know their tracks—though I couldn’t begin to tell you what one was doing here.”
Maybe we’ll find out. Isabel hopes for answers here, though she isn’t optimistic. Both the lighthouse and the plaza have only given her more questions.
She pulls one door by its cold metal handle. The hinges groan in protest; they’re badly in need of oil. Whoever owns this building isn’t maintaining it regularly.
A dark spot on the edge of the other door catches her eye. She brings the light closer, squinting as her eyes adjust to the brightness. The spot shimmers, reflecting the flame as she moves the lantern from the edge of the door to the inside. It’s a scrape of paint or varnish, glossy black, just below shoulder height.
“I think you’re right,” Isabel says. “About the carriage.”
Berend comes closer and studies the mark with a frown. He rubs at the outside edge of his eyepatch with his free hand. “It looks that way. The door must have been open when it happened. Why would someone bring a fancy carriage this close?”
Isabel holds the lantern up and looks inside the warehouse. From here, it looks empty except for a few wooden crates piled in one back corner. The floor is set down a couple of feet from the doorway, dug down and flattened. Perhaps there was a ramp at one point, to ease the moving of large objects in and out, but there’s no sign of it now.
She steps over the threshold carefully, one foot at a time. It’s not a great distance down, but it is far too much for anything on wheels, even a sturdy ox cart. Berend jumps down behind her, landing on both feet with a soft thump.
There are no ritual circles, either scratched into the dust or painted in blood on the walls, and Isabel still can’t sense a residual hum of magic even from inside the building. The crates in the far corner are stamped with the peeling remnants of the marks of various shipping companies. A rusted crowbar, a dirty shovel, and a few fragments of rotted rope lie strewn across the boxes. Rain has come in through the buckled roof, leaving a damp spot on the packed earth.
Holding the lantern above the level of her eyes, Isabel takes a few more steps in and turns around. The light falls on the corner beside the door. There, the dirt floor is blackened, and dark stains mar the walls close to the ground.
Sterry had said his men found a lot of blood. Here it is, spilled all in one place. Isabel had expected something different—a display like the diagram in the Shell District, perhaps.
The smell in the corner is faint, and the earth is mostly dry. It’s been at least several days since the blood has been spilled. She sets the lantern down well outside the stained area and bends down, pulling her skirts above the tops of her boots.
“Do you think this is where…” Berend begins, but he doesn’t finish the thought.
Isabel looks up. He’s standing beside her, one hand over his pistol. The ease of his stance belies an anxious readiness; it’s a fighter’s pose, prepared for an attack. He’s left the lock and chain beside the door.
If there had been a threat here—and there was, at one point, judging by the bloodstains—it has long past. There is no place for a human being to hide, and Isabel would be willing to assume that there are no ghosts in this warehouse, as much as a ghost can be said to be anywhere.
She turns back to the ground and moves the lantern closer. The light catches some other shapes in the gruesome mix of blood and earth: drips of thick wax, sticky rope fibers, and the semicircular ridge of some kind of small container.
A sudden thought compels her to look up. Hanging from the ceiling is a pulley attached to a length of rope. The contraption ends in a curved metal hook, sturdy enough to support some weight.
Isabel picks up the lantern and straightens up. “Look,” she says.
Berend turns first to her and then raises his head. “Gods.”
“I don’t see any sign of a fight,” Isabel says. “It looks like the blood was drained and collected.”
“Were they still alive when this happened?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
It was something that had been repeated to her again and again during her training: being drained alive, among a number of other grisly deaths, would disturb a soul enough to create a ghost. That had been how her teacher had located the mountain lair of the vampire that had been devouring the hill-folk to the south—following the trail of angry, fearful spirits. Isabel had summoned each of them up and sent them on their way, over and over, until she could perform the ritual in her sleep. By the end, the countryside had been eerily quiet, with neither the living nor the dead to disturb it.
So, the victims here had not died hanging from the ceiling. That was a small blessing. It also meant that they were brought here less than a half hour after death, so their blood would flow freely.
“They were killed somewhere nearby, not here,” she tells Berend. “But not more than twenty or thirty minutes away.”
“Thirty minutes by a horse-drawn carriage?” Berend says. “That’s easily five miles or more.”
“You said it would be noticeable. There might be witnesses.”
Berend gives a defeated grunt. “There might have been witnesses to someone painting the Shell District in blood, but apparently no one saw anything.” He shakes his head, sighs. “It must be some kind of sorcery. It’s impossible, but I don’t have any other ideas.”
It isn’t impossible. Isabel knows magic. It’s just highly improbable that anyone could manage something as complex as invisibility or instant transportation, and without any noticeable side effects. She’s not as attuned to that kind of craft as she is to necromancy, but she thinks she would be able to sense it.
Now, a minor illusion—to turn the eyes of witnesses away, and make them think of the caster as unmemorable—that is something even the common practitioner of parlor tricks can perform without much issue. And it would not fool everyone.
“We should keep looking,” Isabel says. “Even with magic, there might be someone who saw something.”
“If you say so.” Berend relaxes, lowering his hand from his gun with deliberate effort. “Are we done here?”
They might as well search the entire warehouse. Isabel walks around the perimeter, moving the light from the floor to the wall above her head. The crates by the back wall are empty, and dust coats them inside and out. The tools haven’t seen use in some time.
She crosses back through the center of the room, heading toward the door, where Berend is waiting. Halfway through, her boots sink into a soft patch of earth.
Isabel raises the lantern and looks up. The hole in the roof is far to her left, and the dirt under her feet is dry. It is, however, unmistakably loose. A shiver runs from the back of her head down to her shoulders.
She goes back for the shovel.
“What is it?” Berend asks.
“The dirt is disturbed here,” she says. “Do you want to dig, or shall I?”
Berend walks up to her and hands her his hat, taking the shovel. “I suppose we already know what’s buried here. It won’t be the first time this week I’ve had to dig up a shallow grave.” He rolls his sleeves to the elbow and sets to it, making quick work of the loose soil.
Isabel shivers again. Something is wrong. Now she’s getting a sense of magic, and of death. It’s faint—it’s not here, but it’s close; inside the city, at the very least, and not as far away as the eastern gate. There’s a coldness to it that sets it apart from the ambient presence of death in such a populated area, distinguishing it from what she felt in the great temple or on the blue field.
A sickening crunch interrupts her thoughts.
Berend lifts up the shovel, surprised. With the edge, he moves the dust aside, scraping against something hard.
He has broken through a ribcage—one of two, buried side by side, overlapping slightly. A little desiccated flesh and cloth clings to the bones. They’ve been dead for some time. Isabel guesses at least six months, well before the blood was spilled.
“Well,” Berend says. He climbs back up onto solid ground and sticks the shovel in the hole. With a look of resigned disgust, he begins brushing off his clothes.
“That makes six,” says Isabel.
“What?”
“Six victims. Two here, two that Brother Risoven buried, your friend, and the lighthouse keeper.”
Berend frowns. “You think it’s all the same person?”
“Who else?”
“Can’t you just…” he waves a hand in a vague circle. “Ask the ghosts?”
“I could try, but I don’t know their names. It would be difficult to call them up,” Isabel says. “In any case, this isn’t where they died. We need to find that place.”
That magic sense is tugging at the back of her skull. The more she thinks about it, the less she can ignore it. Could she have missed it, earlier? Maybe disturbing the graves had set something into motion.
“All right.” Berend sighs. “It’s late. We’ll have to look for witnesses again in the morning. Are we done here?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Berend holds out his hand, and she returns his hat. He places it carefully back on his head.
“We should tell Constable Mulhy about this place,” he says as they leave, winding the chain between the door’s handles and closing the lock. Isabel barely hears him. Her attention is being drawn eastward, toward the city center and the Temple District.
She almost says something to Berend. What could she tell him? It’s impossible to put into words, the way necromancy thickens the air and how the combination of magic and death hums a note below hearing. Another Sentinel would understand. As accustomed as Isabel is to working alone, she misses her teacher, and wishes that her order was large enough to allow its members to travel together.
What she senses isn’t more than an echo, but it’s an echo of something terrible, something like the vampire in the mountains, thought to be the last of its kind. She knows she is several steps behind the murderer. It’s a distance that has kept her and Berend out of harm’s way, for the time being, but it will not last. Either they will find him, or he will find them.
It will not be tonight. It’s better to wait for morning, for the light of the sun, that keeps dark things at bay and allows for a little more safety.
As accomplished a warrior as Berend certainly is, Isabel wishes again that she had another Sentinel, or perhaps a high-ranking cleric, instead. Steel and lead are little good against necromancy. Still, she lets him escort her back through the Shell District and out to Brother Risoven’s chapel, where the echo is far enough away that she can no longer sense it.
“Be careful,” she says, as he turns to go.
He smiles and tips his hat. “I always am.”
Thank you for reading.
Space Whales Press 
2 thoughts on “The Book of the New Moon Door: Chapter Thirteen”