Teller Mas could tell three things from touching the young female’s face: she was young, she was beautiful, and she was very, very dead. Smell had always been his first sense. His hearing was as adequate as his Air-sense, but he reckoned his taste buds had been killed off by a combination of too much bamboo gin and racta. And any other senses? Those could be left to the Shamans. What those crazies couldn’t feel with their hands, whiskers and ears, the mad bastards would just make up. He always felt, well, like a fish out of water, when he couldn’t smell his way around a case. But when a victim had been in the lake for long enough, smell was nearly useless. The girl was still on the end of a barge pole, hefted by Old Fryk, the Watchman for the Quay. Shuffling and the faint smell of disinfectant from behind them, told of the arrival of the Midwives guild to clean up the mess and take the body to the guild house to be autopsied. The poor midwives wound up doing all the medical necessities in Lakeside, it having no proper Healer’s guild or Alchemists of its own.
“Eh, in your own time, mmmhhh?” Old Fryk groaned.
“Put the stretcher down by Old Fryk please, Yayu,” said Knia, the newly promoted Head of Constables for Lakeside. She sounded much more confident today. Knowing that her old and now disgraced former boss was safely locked up with the Stone-folk was clearly allowing her to unfold a little.
The midwives busied themselves helping to lower the body gently onto the hessian stretcher.
“No stiffness?” Knia pressed.
“That tells us nothing at this stage,” said Yayu. “In the cold water, the stiffness comes more slowly.”
Teller shivered and pulled his loose jacket closer. The Lakesiders were the only folk in the whole of the Dark that used clothes habitually – not counting the stupid robes that the religious sects seemed to like. For the Lakesiders naturally, it was all a bit more practical, more about the fact that the wind that blew out of the tunnels over the lake could be bitter cold. Though it never rained per-se in the Dark, being inside, the Lakesiders even had mists and fog to contend with. And today was all of that: damp and cold. The midwives were still fussing getting the limbs of the corpse onto the stretcher when there was an odd little rattle. Teller spun round as they were preparing to lift.
“Wait,” he said.
The noise stopped as quickly as it had started, it was almost like the rattle of the bone dice the fisher-folk used to gamble with, on the quayside. He reached towards where he’d heard the sound, back at the side of the stretcher. The girl’s arm kept falling off and hung loosely at the side. Teller went to lift it and found the source of the clatter: a small bracelet circled the hanging wrist. He leaned in close to smell it. Like the body, everything smelled of lake water. He frowned and leaned closer, picking up his stylus to lift the bracelet and drop it. Again, that bone-sounding jingle. He broke protocol and picked up one of the necklace beads. Not bone. Mineral. Tiny rocks? He turned them in his fingers. Light for stones, but rough on the outside in places, and smooth in others. A decorative pattern. Lovely really.
“Hey Knia,” he called across to the Chief. He still couldn’t call her that yet, and she didn’t seem to mind. Too soon. “She’s got a bracelet, here. You come across anything like this before?”
She came over and hummed as Teller passed the bracelet beads from his fingers to hers. She spent ten or so ticks rolling them over her thumb and then let the bracelet drop.
“Constable,” she spoke over her shoulder. “Can you bag this, please? This is Stone-folk work, recent too. It’s made from pumice. All the Stone-folk pups are wearing them.”
“She’s not really a pup,” said Teller.
“Not that much older,” Knia sighed.
“No.”
Teller went to the edge of the quay and crouched down. The breeze from the tunnels was getting up. It made a faint moan that drifted across the surface of the water. He absently dipped his paw. Behind him, Knia and the Midwife muttered, presumably regarding an autopsy and when that might be completed. It usually took no more than a span, depending on other calls on the midwives’ time. His nose twitched. He could smell that ghastly chewing root ‘Bocca’ that his father used to chew. He shuddered, then stood suddenly.
“Hey easy,” said Old Fryk, suddenly close. “You fall in too, mmmhhh?”
Mas grunted and jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, face still to the lake, toes, just on the edge stones of the quay.
“Onshore breeze—she brings disease,” said Fryk, knowingly. The old Watchman spat into the water, to ward off evil.
“Puh,” said Mas and pulled his collar up.
“We about done here?” Knia asked.
“Think so,” said Mas.
What was a Stone-folk female, so young, doing so far from home? What had she gotten herself into? Besides the lake. Not unheard of for Stone-folk to be in Lakeside, but she really was young, usually pups of Stone-folk families were cosseted until they were fully adults and then as women, tradition had them involved in complicated inter-caste marriages. Now he thought about it, Pumice was a house wasn’t it? Was that important? Everyone moved away from the quayside and continued their business, slowly and quietly; Teller spat into the water.