GRAVE TONGUE: Ch. 1

The tolling of bells announced morning in tones proud and hopeful as the sun split its golden yolk on the horizon.  Their song reached even as far as the kitchens of the Four Feathers Lodge and served to remind the thief that he had to move quickly; the scullions would be rousing soon, and so would the cooks and stewards.

Vash laded slices of sweet-smelling melon onto a silver platter, followed by blackberries, raspberries, dates and round, honey-coated nuts from the pantry.  A bunch of grapes completed the arrangement at the very apex of the pile and taunted his empty stomach as he replaced the platter’s lid.

With his banquet in hand, Vash glided from the kitchens and up the carpeted stairway.  The marble floors of cream-and-lime checker made echoes of his footsteps as his eyes scanned for the red baize door by which he’d entered.  Suddenly each door looked the same.  He wondered if the bouquet that sat atop a polished maple table had been the same one he’d passed before.  Of course it is.  Vash felt foolish as he recalled his bearings and hurried to the door of the empty suite.

He turned the handle, stepped inside and shut the door behind him.  Only then did he realize it was the wrong one.  He stopped abruptly, the platter balanced on one hand.

A young lady in a floral brocade gown sat by the dresser.  She leaned into the mirror and powdered a face almost as white as the pearls that adorned her petite neck.  A clip sporting the tail feathers of a peacock held a pile of walnut hair atop her head.  Two wayward strands dangled to the dimples in her cheeks and swayed when she turned to regard him.

Vash thought she might scream.

She didn’t.  Her lidded eyes looked over him as though considering the last morsel on her plate.  His clothes were fine – exquisite even.  A maroon shirt clung to his emaciated frame, draped over belted breeches tucked into high, finely polished boots.  Of course, like the silver platter he carried, the garments had been stolen too, snatched from the wardrobe of the only aristocrat who shared his tall, slender frame.  Only the veil of black hair that concealed the smooth features of his face sought to betray him; a real steward would have tied it back.

When she finally spoke, her manner was polite and her tone dulcet.  “I was not expecting a meal so early in the morning.”

Vash summoned his most urbane demeanor and said, “I can return later, if you wish.”

“No, it is fine.  What have you brought me?”

Seeing no recourse, he stepped forward and set the tray down on a low table in the center of the suite.  The room mirrored the one across the hall, by which balcony he’d intended to escape.  Sunlight streamed in through three tall windows on the west wall; a pair of gold, wing-backed chairs invited conversation before a brick fireplace; and brass sconces held candles to accommodate a more atmospheric mode of lighting, if desirable.

Vash puffed up his chest and theatrically lifted the platter’s cover.  “Fruits from the islands, my lady.”

“Oh.  I don’t think I could eat all that on my own.”  She rose and stepped over to the table.  “Would you like some,” she offered, as she lifted the bunch of purple grapes overhead and plucked one between two rows of perfect teeth.

Vash’s mouth fell agape with the word “yes” but the sound died in his throat.  In a moment, the real steward might arrive and expose his charade, and have the City Watch drag him to the dungeons deep beneath the streets, where inmates dangle in cages over pits of fire.  Defeated by the knowledge he would have to leave his prize behind, Vash promptly bowed and turned on his heel for the door.

Her melodious voice stopped him there.  “Before you go, could you tell me the way to the Aliterian Library?”

Indeed, he knew the way; not a soul haunted the musty aisles of ancient tomes as frequently as he did.  Vash could not resist.  “Why yes.”  He turned around and spied a half-unpacked suitcase by the dresser.  An easel protruded from amongst other painting instruments and materials.  “You’re an artist?”

She followed his gaze and nodded.  “I hope to paint the library’s façade.  And perhaps the gardens and statues and such…  Do you know the city well?”

“I’ve climbed every bell tower and crossed the banks of every canal in this old city.”

“Well.”  She pressed a finger to her chin.  “Why not be my guide for this morning?  With the money I have put down on this suite already, I’m sure your employer would oblige my request to borrow you for part of the day.”

He won’t even notice I am gone, Vash was tempted to say.  Yet as delectable as her company promised to be, he had to consider the inherent risk of his deception and the insufferable churning in his stomach.  He possessed little energy already, without having to chaperone a curious tourist across the length of the city.

She noted his hesitation and added, “Perhaps a tip then?  A half-Gilliard for your trouble?”

Vash didn’t earn as much in an entire week of his scrounging and skullduggery.  A half-Gill would afford him a marinated duck, served in regal surrounds and washed down with a torrent of sparkling wine – and with change to spare!  He wondered how much more wealth her purse might contain.  “Very well, but if you want a scene to paint, forget the Aliterian Library.  I’ll show you the grandest view in the entire city.”

She told him her name was Adele Langstrom and to meet her downstairs.  He could only offer “Vash” in return, but not because of secrecy; like many orphans, the detail was the only shred of identity he’d retained since birth.  Without quite knowing what he’d gotten into, Vash followed her instructions and waited by the marble portico of the entrance to the Four Feathers Lodge.

The sun emerged as she did, and cast a brilliant radiance over the black silk of her frilly, three-quarter-sleeve dress.  Atop her head sat the kind of miniature, frilled-brim top hat considered daring by the exalted class of such an old-fashioned city as Carnifex.

She brushed aside a stray ribbon of hair.  “Are you ready, then?"

Vash led Adele through cobblestone streets lined by vendors of dresses and suits, boots and dress shoes, jewelry, and exotic wares from across the seas.  The coats of finely groomed horses glistened with sweat as they drew splendid carriages along the thoroughfare.  Chatter and clinking cutlery bustled from the city’s eateries and cafes, their smells pleasant and yet painfully tempting.

In hope of lulling Adele into a false sense of security, Vash spun brilliant tales of Carnifex’s lore and history.  He spoke of the gargoyles chiseled into the walls of the Imperial Courthouse.  Legend had it that an ancient magic had brought them to life each night, but when a jealous sorceress severed their wings, the stone beasts were forced to climb back to their rooftop perch, where they were frozen by the light of dawn.

He prickled her skin with stories of ghosts: the spirit of an actor whose clapping filled the empty halls of Thorn Theatre; the headless baron who rode his destrier through the streets at the stroke of midnight; the maiden who plummeted from the cathedral’s bell tower when a suitor broke her heart, only to fill its halls some nights with forlorn sobs; and other such tales that held her in rapt wonder.

By the time he had repeated them all, the pair had crossed the canal and descended into the lower half of the city.  Wind howled through broken glass as church bells wailed in the far distance.  The candles in each windowsill were short, fat and foul smelling.  Crude boards barricaded empty storefronts that sagged, groaned and leaned in, almost to meet over narrow lanes and shroud the sky above.

Vash and Adele threaded the streets to the fringe of the city, where a throng of conifers sketched themselves on the hills beyond and blew a fresh breath of pine needles across their faces.  They mounted a path that led to a pillared arch between a palisade of wrought iron.  Adele stopped abruptly, as though an invisible string had caught her at the threshold.  Endless rows of mausoleums, tombstones, statues, crucifixes, and obelisks filled the valley below: all reflected in the wonder of her eyes.  Some monuments reached gallantly for the heavens as a mesh of wild roses smothered their fallen brothers and sisters.

“They call it the Necropolis,” Vash explained.  “Once, people came from all across Valengard to see these graves.  Now they’re as forgotten as the rest of lower Carnifex.”  Indeed, they were the only patrons in the entire grounds.

Adele shot him a sidelong glance and curled her hand around his.  Her skin was soft as velvet.  “Come on,” she said, and led him along the path as an excited child leads a parent.

They strolled past sunken tablets inscribed with forgotten years and strange, antique names.  Here laid a lyre player buried with his wife and infant son, and there a poet or a priest or an “anonymous” – perhaps once a soldier in the Industrial War.

The lee of the valley shielded the wind and a content silence settled in its place at the heart of the graveyard, where the fronts of prodigious mausoleums faced a circular fountain, which waters had dried long ago.  Vash paused and lowered his haunches onto the rim.  Adele swept away specks of dust with her hand and joined him.  Both cast their gaze back to the spires of the cascading city and the cathedral at its crown.

“It’s magnificent,” she declared in a half-whisper, as much to herself as to him.  “How old is the city, do you think?”

Vash stared too, and disquiet began to creep over his skin.  The elegant exterior of Carnifex surrounded a decadent core.  The city clung to its former youth like an aging whore who smothered herself in makeup and perfume.  She smiled despite the bitterness that was swelling inside of her, seething and oozing through every manhole and drainpipe.  They’re all the same: rich, pompous, shallow.  What made Adele any different underneath?  Surely she’d discard him in an instant upon discovering his status as vagrant.

Vash let out a tortured sigh.  “You know the true reason I brought you here?”

Adele raised an eyebrow.

“This place is one of the few where a person can be mugged in broad daylight.”

Her lips curled in gentle amusement.  “Then how would it look if you were to bring my meal this evening, having robbed me here?”

“Do you still believe I’m a bellboy?  That platter of fruit I carried…  I meant to steal it, but entered your room by mistake.  I’d never set foot in the Four Feathers Lodge before this morning.”

The expression fell from Adele’s face.  “You’re not jesting?”  She stood and stepped back.

Vash rose too.  He considered drawing the dagger concealed in his left boot to demonstrate his sincerity – he'd been planning to for the last hour.  Yet he merely asked, “Is this not a tour of the city?  I haven’t eaten since the moon set two nights ago.  All I ask is the payment you’ve promised me.  You need never see me again.”

Adele’s eyes narrowed and her cheeks burned florid.  She groped inside her purse, produced a silver coin and thrust it toward him.  “Here!  Take your tip, you rotten fraud.”

His fingers brushed her velvet palm one last time as he took the coin.

Still glaring, Adele grasped the hem of her dress in both hands and turned.  Her heels clattered in furious steps against the path between the sunken graves and back to the arch.  After thirty paces, she glanced back to make sure he did not follow.

The sun caught her eyes, and a wistfulness that Vash would never forget.

She passed through the arch and he was alone again.

He sat on the fountain and idly turned the coin over in his fingers.  The impression of Queen Morgianna’s sharp features rose from its surface in the place her father’s, which remained on duller coins of the same value.

Vash closed his eyes and contemplated where he might dine.  In his mind, he inhaled the aroma of sizzling gristle and twirled a glass beneath his nose to catch the citrus fragrance of a fine wine.  Yet another thought surfaced, so sweet that the imaginary flavors of a feast diminished by comparison: the image of Adele’s alabaster face stirred and rose up like the gradual advances of the tide, until his appetite had all but abated.  If he had dined across from here at that very moment, Vash might not have touched his plate so as to relish every detail of her beauty.  But such a thing would never occur.

Who am I to picture myself in the same room as someone of her distinction?

A shrill horn sliced through his reverie.  It heralded the passage of a steam locomotive as it chugged along the eastbound track that bordered the Necropolis.  Bowls of smoke streamed from its funneled chimney and scattered overhead.  Vash watched the last passenger carriage as it rounded a bend and disappeared into the woods, and a fool’s hope struck him.

He could purchase a one-way fare to another town: Weyndon, Dibella, or even as far as the capital, Valmont.  There, his deft hands might earn him an apprenticeship to a musician, brushmaker, or even a weaver.  As a child, he’d sat on the rough-hewn floors of the orphan asylum and watched the caretaker work the loom.  The old man made quilts and blankets and new clothes for the children each year.  Vash still remembered how to wind the warp, sley the reed and thread the heddles at the back of the device.

The declining industries of Carnifex offered no such fortune.  As Vash wandered back through the pillared arch, their vacant towers and chimneys cast shadows that reached with long fingers, groping and feeling their way toward the horizon.  Soon the shadows would reach him and night would set.  He knew that, eventually, the city would ensnare him like the stone gargoyles on the walls of the Imperial Courthouse.

Vash contemplated his departure until a sliver of moon hung in the sky, and still, hunger eluded him.  He drifted through the streets like a sheet caught in a breeze.  Restaurants closed their doors, and staff rubbed away specials from chalkboards and dumped the contents of troughs into gutters.

By chance, his pacing had brought him to the gate of the Four Feathers Lodge.  The bars framed lush gardens illuminated by twin rows of gas lanterns up to a building that stood tall, narrow and sheathed in ivy.  His fingertips traced the surface of the coin in his pocket.  He turned it over and over as his better judgment tussled with a careless whim.

Impulse triumphed.  He lifted the latch.  You’re a fool, you know?  He shrugged off the thought and slipped within.



***



He crossed the courtyard to the building’s flank and scaled the pillar beneath Adele’s suite as a cat climbs a tree.  Behind the glass panes, the glow of firelight cast silhouettes onto drawn curtains.  He tried the door handle.  To his surprise, the brass knob turned and surrendered with a click.  He pushed through a veil of fabric.  Warmth greeted his skin. 

Adele’s shapely figure hovered before the easel in a cream gown.  Her wrist glided across the page with swift strokes.

Vash allowed the door to clap shut.

She spun around as a gasp escaped from her open lips.  In an instant of fear, she hurled the charcoal crayon at him.

It struck his forehead with little effect and clattered to the floor.  Vash might have smiled, had her gaze not been so severe.

“You come any closer and I’ll scream.”  Adele stiffened and folded her arms.

“I only wish to return something.”  He stepped forward and placed the coin on the low table between them.

She looked to the half-Gill an then back to him.  “You have not eaten?”

Vash shook his head.  He peered at the canvas behind her.  “Are you working on a drawing?”

“No.”  Though she attempted to shield the sketch with her body, he caught sight of an outlined figure before she turned it over – and a flush of scarlet on her pale cheeks.  “Shouldn’t you be going then?”

“I never answered your question.  You asked me how old the city of Carnifex is.”

“Do you even know?”

“No one does.  There are passages beneath the city so ancient that no soul has tread there in a thousand years.”

“How do you know so much about this place?  All these stories and myths?”

He squatted by the hearth and spread his fingers above the coals.  “I listen.  I read.  Most of it I learnt in the asylum?”

“The asylum?”

“The orphan asylum,” he explained.  “From the caretaker, mostly.  We subsisted on grain, slept in burlap sacks on iron cots, and if he caught us complaining, he used the cane.  Sometimes worse.  But he spun the most intriguing tales.  He taught me everything I know.”

Though he mentioned the old man, Vash skirted around the most horrid aspect of his time in the asylum.  Each night, creatures with slithering tongues and obscene eyes raised their jaws to devour him.  He’d wake to his own scream as it filled the dorm, and smelled the coppery odor of blood as though it had really been dripping from their teeth.  Such nightmares were a burden he didn’t wish to share with anyone.

“And you had to leave, when you grew up?”

He nodded.  “But it closed down anyway when the old man finally died.  I didn’t know whether to be glad or upset.”  At least the unpleasant dreams became less frequent.  Perhaps he’d finally outgrown his demons, though they still crept into his head on some stormy nights.

“I felt the same way when the man who’d taken me as an apprentice for four years left Valengard to travel the Eastern continent.  He was strict.  He didn’t think women should learn how to paint.”

“Most men don’t.”

She sighed.  “Naturally, my father was the same.  He had paid for the most highly recommended tutors for my five sisters and I.  That’s no small amount, even for someone in his position.”

Vash crossed his legs and rested his chin on his knuckles.  “What was is it like, in Valmont?”

“It’s beautiful.  Though all cities are in their own way.”  Adele described how flora spilled over every trellis, balcony and window box and how petals of red and blue and gold showered the streets below with the mingling of a dozen perfumes.

Vash marveled at the capital in his mind’s eye.  He could scarcely understand why Adele had travelled so far to paint a city as drab and despairing as his own.

They spoke long into the night, like old friends reunited.  The fire soon waned to a smolder.  It had settled into a cool mound of ash once the first amber of dawn filtered in through the curtains.

She glanced at the windows.  “The sun’s up!  Did you hear the first bell?”

Vash shook his head.  He stifled a yawn and rubbed his eyes.  “I should go.”

Adele rose from her chair and hurried over to the table.  She retrieved a tray containing an apple core and a half-eaten sweet roll and offered it to him.  “I know it’s not much.”

Vash took the roll with a grateful nod and stepped out onto the balcony, where a jagged skyline of crosses and spires warmed to the touch of morning light.  He raised one boot onto the railing and looked back to Adele.  He didn’t skirt around the question.  “Can I see you again?”

She nodded.

He vaulted the railing and swiftly descended the pillar.  As he glided along the courtyard and out through the gate, the notion of boarding a stream train and departing the city was the furthest thing from his mind.

After two nights, Vash returned to the Four Feathers Lodge.  He scaled the balcony and rapped on the glass panes.  Adele greeted him with the leftovers of a platter of fish and stuffed olives.  He removed his boots, laid the tray on the brickwork before the hearth and lounged on the floor as he contently devoured its contents.

Adele slumped comfortably on the edge of the bed with a silk pillow tucked under one arm.  She eyed the handle of his dagger as it protruded from his boot resting by the door.  “Must you really carry that knife?”

He tore the last flesh from a fishbone and tossed the refuse onto the fire.  “You’ve seen the lower half of the city.  What do you think?”

“I think you’re not as fierce as you like to pretend to be.  And far too smart for a life in the streets.”

He frowned.  “You say it like it’s a matter of choice.  I never chose any of this.”

“You can choose to change it.”

“Just as you chose to be born to a life of silver and silk?”

She folded her arms.  “That is beside the point.  Wouldn’t you rather be in control of your life?”

“It’s not that simple.  I’m just a seed carried on the wind, making the best of its current.  Sometimes I even feel like…” Vash tilted his head as though to swirl its contents so he could properly grasp the thought, “…like my life has already been and gone, and I’m just an old man on his deathbed, looking back on it all.”

She stared for a moment and then laughed.  “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I’m not sure.”

Embers danced up the flue and spiraled down again.  He threw some more coal into the hearth and prodded it with the iron poker.  Flames licked at the dark lumps until they caught.  Old fuel crumbled away and the fire purred.

He tapped the instrument on the ornate brass fender, set it down on the stand and looked back to Adele.

She had pulled the peacock clip from her hair. It cascaded down to her shoulders in two flaxen streams.  Each detail of her visage – the glisten of her lips, the soft curve of her cheekbones and, most of all, the longing that sparkled in her eyes – seemed handcrafted, as though a higher power had spent years conceiving their form.

Vash didn’t hide his stare.  “Have you ever considered a self-portrait?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”  He rose and moved across the room.  The mattress sunk under his weight as he leaned in to kiss her.

Adele turned away.  She spoke without meeting his eyes.  “I think you should go.”

He lingered.

“It’s late.”

A moment passed before Vash stood, replaced his boots and pulled his collar tight about his neck.  “Goodnight,” he said in a tone as frigid as the wind that invited itself in through the balcony door.  It fell shut behind him.

In the three days before his return, the armies of winter had charged down from the north and sent the autumn into a staggering, wavering retreat.  A gale announced their advance and blared like a trumpet, whipping against spires and chimneys.

Frost covered the glass panels of the balcony door when he finally returned, though he’d tried, with all his willpower, to resist the temptation. He wiped the frost away and meekly tapped against the glass.

Adele peered back through the clear patch of the window and suppressed a smile.  That night and each one since, she admitted him on the terms of a silent agreement: so long as he did not stray from his spot by the fireplace, he could share her food and her company.

Vash dined on bread, cheese, shellfish from the peninsula, beef from the northern plains and the remnants of other delectable meals.  And wine.  Whites and reds that tasted fruity, bitter, and sweet.  Each bottle sported a suave label from the vineyards of Oaden, Valmont or someplace exotic.

As the weather worsened, Adele’s hospitality warmed and the uneaten portions of each tray grew larger.  His limbs began to thicken to a healthy girth.  His cheeks regained a vital sheen.  Still, there always remained a certain boundary between them.  She always bid him goodnight when her eyelids grew heavy, even as a deluge of rain fell through a tear in the sky, smattering against the windows.

Vash stood in the rain and looked back through the glass, his eyes wide and sulking like those of a neglected pet.  Night after night, her insistence lessened.  The invisible boundary began to thin; she would soon relent.  He knew it.

On the twelfth night of the new season, the wind of a storm wheezed through the streets and alleys of Carnifex like a living thing, spinning weathervanes, lifting roof tiles and causing crucifixes to dither.

Water drenched his hair and clothes and pattered to the floor when Adele let him in.  She retrieved a towel and threw it over his shoulders and began to stoke the fire.  They spoke of the east of Valengard, of the majestic domes of Brae Ardel to the broad expanse of Lake Redorah and the citadel in its center.  Vash shared his longing to escape Carnifex and begin a new life without fear, hunger or uncertainty.

After a time, the fire signaled with its dying hiss for Vash to depart.  He hung the towel by the cooling hearth and rose to leave.  Something snagged the hem of his shirt.

Adele drew him near.  “Stay,” she whispered, pressing her chin to his shoulder.  “And in the morning we will leave together, to some place far, far away.”

“You will?”

“Yes.”

As the storm roared outside, Vash felt the touch of silk sheets and skin equally as soft… and the last boundary between them receded to nothing.



***



Vash woke in the night to the weight of Adele’s body pressed against his, the soothing rhythm of her chest as it rose and fell, the smell of her hair on the pillow next to him.  Yet something lay amiss.  A chill had begun to penetrate the warmth between them.

He lifted his chin and peered over the smooth curve of her shoulder.  The balcony door stood ajar.  A breeze whispered past swaying curtains, swept under the arms of chairs and prickled the skin of his face.

Impossible.  He knew he’d shut the door and secure the latch, but there it stood, open as though some preternatural force had turned the key in the lock.

He gently lifted her arm and slid from the bed.  As his feet left the rug and fell upon icy marble, he recalled the rough floors of the orphan asylum where he’d shivered in his cot.  Sleep made him weary, and though he tried to fight it, it came for him each night as sure as the rising of the moon.

Now the moon’s light cast deranged shadows within the suite.  His imagination evoked figures dancing across the walls in a sinister ritual.  You’re not real.  Vash quelled his imagination as he’d learned to do during the forlorn years of his childhood.

He reached for the handle of the balcony door.  Its touch cool his palm.  When the door clicked shut, the glass panes reflected the room behind him.

The figure of a pallid woman loomed over his shoulder.

Her skin was white as bone and withered like a corpse washed ashore.  Bright eyes locked onto his – bright yet dark, burning like windows to hell.

He did not turn, nor scream or tremble.  The fear froze him solid.

Candle-white fingers clutched his wrist from a limb that felt as though lowered into a bucket of ice.  A hiss of acrid breath came cool over his shoulder and filled his nostrils.

It made him sick, but he could not wretch.

As the burning eyes held his own, the shadowed walls of the suite turned to tar and melted away.  All that remained were those fiery orbs leering back, and then even they were gone.

Rage superseded his fear.  It brimmed and frothed and then spilled out, rising up in pillars of flame all around him.  A howl erupted from his lungs.  The hatred that burned in his veins made the surrounding flames seem like candles by a pyre.  It corrupted him.  It transformed his teeth to fangs and his nails to claws.  Wood splintered beneath his fists.  White sheets ripped and shred like the thin wrapping of a parcel, and his hands found something soft underneath.

Something innocent.

Then the flames swirled and died and receded to darkness.  The dream dissolved to reality as the floor of the suite solidified beneath him.  His vision cleared.  Vash began to perceived the embossed pattern of the ceiling.  Moonlight streamed in through the glass panes to where he lay in the center of the room.

A thud landed against the red baize door in the corridor.

Vash blinked and lifted his head.  Something solid weighed down his palm: the dagger’s handle.  He raised his hand and turned it over, straining his eyes.  A flash of moonlight caught the blade, and the bright red blood slathered on it.

He gasped.  The weapon clattered to the floor.  Its tip marred the tile.

Blood tainted his hands too, up to the wrists.  It covered the floor in flecks and spurts that trailed to the bed – more than a single person could afford to lose.  With a trembling hand, Vash grasp the edge of a toppled bureau and hoisted himself up.  Its draws had spilled their contents across the floor.  Sheets were ripped, chairs smashed, the suite thrown into disarray.

Another thud beat against the door, and then another.  Each crash caused the frame to groan against its hinges.  There was heavy breathing too, it grew louder and more vigorous.  Voices murmured.

Vash crept toward the bed.  Blood splayed shreds of fabric cast haplessly about.  The pillows had exploded and spewed white feathers smeared with red.

Thud, thud, thud.

His voice trembled as though it belonged to someone else.  “Adele?” By some dreadful intuition, he already knew that she lay on the other side of the bed.  He stepped closer.

Auburn stands fells over her vacant eyes.  Patches of dark scarlet stained her gown around gashes angry and deep.  She looked like a porcelain doll, lifeless, still.

Another blow burst the red baize door inward.  Splinters of wood rained to the floor.  A portly cook stood in his frame, panting.  Light peeked in from the candelabrum held by a steward behind him.  The cook’s eyes darted from Vash to the bloody dagger, and then to Adele’s mangled form.

His cry roused the city.  “Murder!”