“If you’d tell me who you’re looking for, Aegin, I can have a look at my tally here.”

The husker holds up an unfurled scroll lined with columns and hastily scribbled lists of names and other related information.

“Is this all the recently departed in the Capitol?” Daian asks, ignoring the offer.

The husker hesitates.

“…no, ’course not.”

“Why not? Where are the rest?”

The husker sighs, relenting. “D’you know what Gen All’s-Breath is charging the Capitol for ice these days? I don’t have a block for every pauper who keels over in the Bottoms.”

“I’m not here about paupers, I’m here about two assassins.”

The word “assassins” quickly sobers the young man. “Oh. Them. Yeah, I heard about them.”

“Good, you know who I’m talking about. Now, where are they?”

“Follow me,” the husker bids him tentatively.

Abandoning his rice bowl and chopsticks, the husker leads Daian away from the rows of the dead. He escorts the Aegin through an archway on the opposite end of the room from the entrance. What lies beyond is an antechamber where they clean and prepare the bodies before committing them to the surface of the ice for preservation. The slab upon which the newly dead are laid out is currently empty. The water bucket beside it is dry and the tools occupying a table adjacent to the slab are clean.

There’s a small door on the other side of the room. The husker opens it, daylight illuminating the dust-speckled air of the confined space. The younger man motions Daian through.

The small stone courtyard behind The Dry House smells far worse than any part of its interior. The garbage and other refuse piled there has yet to be claimed by Gen Tallman’s waste collectors.

“Don’t tell me they’re in there?” Daian asks in shock, pointing at the garbage bins.

“Of course not,” the husker assures him, trying and failing to sound genuinely offended.

“What’re you gonna learn from ’em anyway?” he asks. “They’re dead.”

“What do you learn from a trail after your quarry has already come and gone from it?”

The husker only stares back at him, his face a blank canvas that will never see an artist’s brush.

“Just show me the remains,” Daian orders him wearily.

The young man nods, walking past the bins. In the far corner of the courtyard rests a stone box almost but not quite big enough to allow a full-grown adult entry. It has a door but no roof, only an iron grate with slender, charred-black bars.

The husker opens the door, stepping aside to allow the Aegin full view and access.