"He didn't feed," she continued. "This wasn't for blood."

"No more!" Lanjov shouted harshly through the doorway. "I have answered your questions and let you paw over her dress. You should be out in the streets hunting this creature, not putting on a spectacle for my neighbors."

Magiere slipped around Leesil and up the steps. "Chesna knew him. Who else comes here? Does anyone else come regularly to the house?"

Ashen with anger, Lanjov spit his words. "Are you suggesting the murderer is not a vampire?"

"No-he's an undead." Magiere shook her head, the vision now crystallized in her thoughts. And that one word hung in her mind-murderer. "But he didn't feed on her blood. I think he wanted it all over her. He wanted someone to find her that way."

"Leave my home at once," Lanjov said. "My daughter did not know this creature. It… he is a fiend, like those of your own town. The guard captain has taken accounts from those who were either attacked or viewed attacks by this thing, and I assure you, it was not a nobleman."

"There have been other attacks?" Leesil's voiced betrayed an annoyance Magiere could hear growing into open outrage. "With survivors? Why didn't anyone tell us this?"

Lanjov stared blankly at him, searching for a response to a question that apparently made no sense to him.

"There was no need. The city guard took the reports, and the victims were-"

"Common folk," Magiere finished in disgust. "You didn't see a need to call for me until one of your own died. So some survived these attacks to report them, but what about bodies? Besides Chesna, where are the other bodies?"

"I do not know," Lanjov answered tiredly. "Now, please, leave my home. This is a prowling creature that kills at random. If you wish to be paid, take that dog into the sewers or any other place where such things hide, and do not mention this ridiculous theory of a nobleman again."

He closed the door, and Magiere heard the bolts inside slide sharply into place.

"Are you all right?" Leesil asked.

Magiere ran her hand across her mouth, wiping at the lingering taste and touch.

"I saw her die," she said. "I saw it through his eyes. I felt it."

"I know, and I believe you, though…" He paused, and then hesitantly asked, "What did you see when you opened your eyes?"

"Just your face, the lanterns, the walkway, but… as if everything were touched by a hidden, soft light that let me see it more clearly. Why?"

Leesil stepped off the porch and looked away from her as he spoke.

"Your eyes. They were completely black, like their centers opened up and swallowed all the color out of them."

A thickness settled in Magiere's limbs. She was tired enough to crawl away into a small place, not to emerge for as long as she could remain undiscovered.

"I thought this was all done with," she said. "How many more twisted parts of me do I have to face?"

Leesil took her by the arm and pulled her into motion, headed for the front gate.

"We know the Noble Dead can see in the dark. It makes sense that you'd have some of that as well. It's night sight, Magiere. My mother's people have something akin to it, and I do partly as well. As to what you saw through the killer-"

"Why now?" she insisted. "Why haven't I had visions before?"

Leesil shook his head. "Perhaps the dress?"

"Then why didn't it happen in the bedroom when I first touched it?" Magiere held up the bunched ball of the dress.

"I don't know. It could be… I just don't know," was all he could say.

"I want no more of this."

Magiere looked about the street, its cobblestones illuminated by spaced oil lanterns atop posts or hanging from brackets fixed to the inner ring wall across the way. There was no movement and nothing to see in the empty night. Except for Chap, who had somehow passed them by and sat waiting patiently outside the gate.

"No more," she added. "I feel tainted all the time as it is."

"Give me that." Leesil took the dress from her hand. "We won't risk setting it off again, however it happened. We'll walk until we spot a coach to take us to the inn."

Magiere gripped her falchion's hilt, squeezing it tight like a single handhold over a chasm. Who were they fooling? She was an ex-mountebank and a tavern owner. Leesil was an ex-thief and a gambler who loved his wine too much. Yes, they could fight, even against the undead. They'd proven that much in Miiska, but this was different.

"They were right about murder," she said, shamed at what she'd seen, her hand-his hand-around Chesna's torn throat. "He slaughtered that girl with barely a swallow and left her there on purpose. What is happening here?"

"I'll find us a coach," Leesil muttered. "And we'll get you away from here."

After a light breakfast of porridge and grainy apples the next morning, a hired coach took them back to the inner ring wall and the recently built barracks of the Strazhy-shlyahketne, the royal guard division assigned to the king's city. Magiere noticed that Leesil had mended his shirt sometime in the night. Over breakfast, he'd questioned her about the vision. It was disturbing to remember, let alone ponder why it happened at all.

They knew the Noble Dead varied some in powers and abilities. Now, Magiere found her dhampir state continuing to mimic them.

She was changing. She could sense the sun. She'd awoken that morning at almost the moment it arose, though the curtains on her window were closed.

Even in the upper-class districts, people went about on daily business, though fewer street hawkers and peddlers wandered about. Most shops here served the whims and fancies of the privileged. Next to a clothier selling cloaks and voluminous capes trimmed in satins and rare furs stood a wine house built of dark timbers and white plastered walls.

They passed by other shops along the way, from a bakery with full tables of glazed goods to a large cartwright station for the sale and repair of carriages and coaches. At first, Magiere was puzzled when they entered this district rather than Lanjov's, but it made sense that even a king's guard division deployed for the city's protection wouldn't be housed among the homes of the elite. No, even the Strazhy-shlyahketne were still common folk, regardless of their standing. After dealing with Lanjov, Magiere hoped this Captain Chetnik might be less deluded and caste-conscious.

Lost in thought, Magiere was jarred back to awareness as the coach rocked to a halt.

Stepping into bright daylight, Magiere shielded her eyes and looked inside the purse Karlin had given to her. Their coin was holding, but they would spend quite a bit getting around in a place as large as Bela, and she paid the coachman with reluctance. It was either coaches or buy horses, and that meant stable fees as well. On the Stravinan back roads, they'd walked or paid fare on a barge or ferry traveling the main rivers, but time meant little back then, and horses were an unnecessary extravagance. Now, they couldn't spend half the days getting from one place to another.

"Can you ride?" she asked Leesil as the coach pulled away.

"You mean a horse? Only if I have to. I don't care to be at the mercy of a bag of lunacy lunging around on four sticks."

"Well, you may have to. The price of coaches will drain us soon enough."

He stopped his apprehensive examination of the barracks' outer stockade and looked at her.

"You're worried about the price of coaches? Forgetful gods, Magiere, I have never met another spirit as mean with money as you."

"Well, one of us has to be!"

Magiere pushed past him, heading for the gate to the barracks' grounds. She wasn't mean with money. She simply planned ahead. That was more than anyone could say of him.

The barracks' crafted stockade around its grounds was twice a man's height, with a double-wide gate that stood open. Four guards manned the portal, while others inside went about in the cool morning air, drilling at arms. All were similarly outfitted in ring mail beneath white surcoats and armed with sabers. Some, on their way out to posts around the city, carried long, pronged pikes and white shields emblazoned with twin sea hawks. The center ridges of their helms were trimmed in the feathers of these same birds.