Remarkably, Fae put her book down. “A financial motive seems unlikely, as the victims were all foreigners and mostly lower income. It could still be blackmail, though—no need to assume all payments are made in money. There is also the possibility of a shared superstition being taken more seriously than we can imagine.”

She paused and looked at their surprised expressions. “When you talk, I do pay attention, you know, even when you’re not talking to me. It’s an interesting case. I’ve been following it for some time.”

“How do you know?” asked Khabir. “The newspapers didn’t say that much about it.”

“The newspapers are only interested in crimes against Freemen. They know their readership,” Fae replied. As the only non-Freeman in the room, she had a right to be cynical. “Now, have you looked at the possibility that only a few of the murders are meaningful and the others are window dressing, so to speak?”

Miranda gave a small chuckle. “Yes. I am looking at only a few of the most recent murders as significant.”

“Do you have a reason for that?” Fae asked. Khabir leaned forward, clearly interested in the answer.

Miranda opened her mouth, hesitated, and began to speak. “The ritualistic aspects only began in the later murders. Before that, the deaths were swift, silent, and clean. The attack on the Mermaid was the first attempt to take away limbs or organs. I’d like to know what changed.”

“He became bolder—reckless, even. He began to take more time with each killing,” suggested Khabir.

“Maybe,” Miranda admitted. “And maybe there was some other purpose for the later murders.”

“You’re certain that all the murder victims—all those that you know about”—Fae corrected herself meticulously—“you’re sure none of them were Freemen?”

Miranda nodded. “No Freemen, and quite a few were transient workers, which is why so many were connected to the City Shelter and also why there were so many murders before we caught Grey. People who are always coming and going aren’t immediately missed when something happens to them.”

“And it’s not only the transients that people forget,” added Khabir. “Some men keep their wives indoors, invisible. Those women can disappear very easily. ‘Visiting her sister’ is a common excuse.”

Miranda thought for a while. “I wouldn’t put Galina Arnaud in that group. Her husband, he wasn’t a Freeman, but his family came from a nearby town, and he’d been a resident of the City for over a decade.”

“She behaved like an old-world wife for some things,” Khabir noted vaguely. “Look, we’re trying to think about this like rational people. Grey was not a well man. It could be that he saw them all standing in the same room together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and decided there and then that he wanted them for hunting trophies.”

“True,” said Miranda despondently.