he seemed to recognize her. After taking in the three bodies he turned to her and nodded. “My Lady Warden, I am sorry to meet you again like this. Are you hurt?”
“No … no …” she paused unsure how to address him. Captain of the watch, wasn’t he? She had a vague feeling she had met him when investigating a neodemon of forbidden erotic love who had taken to inducing amnesia in certain young woman and men before others took advantage of them. A truly disgusting business. Leandra hadn’t been at all sorry when she had caught the neodemon and dispelled him into a thousand agonizing pieces.
But now she needed to remember the captain’s name. Something that started with a K? Damn. She put a hand to her chest as if steadying herself. “No, Captain. I’m not hurt.”
The silver-bearded watchman turned to Dhrun. “That your changeling wrestler?”
“He is.”
“Oh yeah?” The younger man looked at Dhrun with a sudden smile. “Been going to the arena since I was a little fry, with my dad of course. He’d always have us pray for the wrestler that he’d put money on, so I guess that made me a devotee of you back when you was a neodemon, hey?”
Dhrun pressed his palms together; the upper pair he brought to his forehead, the lower pair he brought to his heart. The most formal of greetings. “It is always a pleasure to meet a devotee of the arena.”
The younger watchman was grinning like an idiot as he bowed in the style of the Sea People. “Honor’s all mine, my lord. I made a bundle last year when I bet on Dhrunarman. Was overjoyed when he won and joined your divinity complex.” Then he lowered his voice to conspiratorial volume. “Don’t suppose you could give me any divine tips on who’s the smart bet for this year’s championship, hey?”
The older watchman cleared his throat loudly.
“Oh, right, Captain Kekoa,” the younger man said. “Sorry, my lord”—this to Dhrun—“investigation and all.” Dhrun nodded as the younger man bent to examine the body at his feet.
Now Lea remembered: Captain Pika Kekoa, very competent and respected, originally of the Sea Culture, who then disavowed all cultures when he became a captain of the city’s watch and therefore a high priest of Dhamma, the high goddess of law and justice.
Captain Kekoa was looking at Holokai twenty paces down the street. He was still prowling in circles, but his coloring looked more human. Leandra hoped his eyes and teeth were also. The captain started to ask, “Is that your sh—”
“Sea god,” Leandra interrupted. “Best not to say what he is. Makes it harder for him to come back to his human incarnation. That’s why I have him pacing away from the meat. His leimako did for those two.” She nodded to the two men who’d been half chewed open by Holokai’s blows. The pool of blood under each body was now growing sticky dark in the tropical sunlight.
Leandra preemptively offered her story. “My officers and I came in this morning from patrolling the bay. I was returning to my family compound, when we passed that man.” She nodded to the body that the younger watchman was inspecting. “Seems he was a spellwright of some kind. He cast a wartext against Dhrun and came at me with a knife. The other two appeared out of nowhere. One attacked Holokai and the other loosed a crossbow at me.”
Dhrun held out the bolt.
“Nice catch,” Captain Kekoa grunted.
“Captain,” the young watchman said while examining the side of the knife man. “It’s another one.”
Captain Kekoa stood behind his partner. Whatever he saw there made him swear. “Where are they all coming from?”
Leandra refitted her headdress and went to the captain’s side. By pulling the lungi slightly down, the younger watchman had revealed on the dead man’s hip a tattoo of a circle contained within a square. It looked too exact to have been made by human hands.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Well … I suppose it is safe to tell you, my Lady Warden, since it’s likely it’s you and your officers who are going to have to figure this mess out. But that tattoo is what the street folk are calling the Perfect Circle. Supposedly it’s a symbol of the Cult of the Undivided Society.”
Leandra snorted. “Rubbish.” Suddenly her stomach tensed. Hadn’t Baruvalman called her a circle maker? “I’ve heard rumors of the Undivided Society for years and never heard of such a tattoo.”
“Me either,” the captain agreed. “But last night was full of changes. Maybe you heard about that brawl on Cowry Street? That left two bodies on the street, one of them with a Perfect Circle tattoo. Then the nightwatch were kept busy with attacks on minor deities. What I heard was that two miserable deities—one the goddess of a village cleared out by plague last year and another a god of lepers—were killed.”
“Killed?” Leandra asked.
“Surprised me too. Dhamma has manifested herself in the city to investigate and doubled the watch. That’s why we could be here so quickly. Reports say the attackers were in groups of three or four, some disguised as beggars, some as red cloaks. There was an attack on the god of the Banyan Districts that failed; he killed two men, both with Perfect Circle tattoos.” The captain nodded toward the corpse at his feet. “Though, if you’re right about this one being a spellwright, that’s a first.”
The younger watchman had finished examining the man that Dhrun had killed and moved on to the other two bodies.
“Any idea who they are?” Leandra asked.
The captain shrugged. “At this point my best guess, crazy as it sounds, would be that the Cult of the Undivided Society is real after all. Maybe they’re tired of waiting for the demons to come across the ocean and decided to raise a little hell of their own.”
Leandra had to work to keep her expression neutral. Meanwhile, the younger watchmen had collected the weapons of the attackers. “All three have the tattoo,” he reported to the captain. “Nothing special about the weapons. The crossbow’s of a Dralish design, but that’s the most common found on the archipelago. The crossbowman only had three other bolts on him. The knives are steel push daggers, nothing fancy. They could have been forged anywhere in the northern three kingdoms. No coins.”
“No other weapons? No spellbooks?” Leandra asked.
“None, my Lady Warden.”
Leandra thought for a moment. “Lightly armed, so they weren’t expecting much of a fight. In fact, given what you told me, there were four attacks and only two succeeded.”
“That we know of,” the watchman added.
Leandra nodded. “Fair enough. But still, attacking my party or the Banyan god with those ticklers”—she nodded to the weapons in the watchman’s hands—“means the attackers don’t know how to size up their targets.”
“You don’t think it’s the Cult of the Undivided Society?”
“I don’t think it’s any cult. If a neodemon is subtle enough to keep itself hidden during an attack, it’s subtle enough to avoid attacking any deity who might be a danger to them.”
“But this isn’t a neodemon attacking,” the younger watchmen said. “It’s the devotees. Devotees who want to bring the true demons across the ocean.”
“True, devotees can get carried away. But four different attacks across the city, two on poorly chosen targets? The cult would have to be coordinated enough to arm their kill teams but ignorant enough to attack gods far too powerful for them.”
“So, you think it’s what, an incompetent cult?” the young watchman asked.
Leandra shook her head. “More likely it’s some organization pretending to be a cult. An organization that doesn’t know much about Ixos or divinities.”
The captain of the watch frowned. “What sort of organization