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Ash Lenthard struggled to hide her rage.

Strangers were walking through Genevieve's house. Tramping into the still-room in their heavy boots, fumbling through the small shelf of books, crushing the plants lined in neat rows in the huge garden. Uncaring outsiders in Genevieve's bedroom, standing over unmoving flesh, ignorant of all which had been wonderful about the woman whose home they invaded. Just another in a series of unexplained deaths.

But Ash's fury was for herself, not the city's Watch. In the last two months, six people had been murdered in Luinhall. The one link they shared was their knowledge of remedies, of medicines and herbs. It had seemed only logical to Ash for her herb-wise guardian to leave the city until the killer had been caught, but Genevieve had refused. They had argued about it not two days ago, Ash searching for the right argument while Genevieve, calmly immovable, refused to abandon clients who relied on her skills.

Too little effort too late. Now Ash, a sun-browned young woman dressed as a boy, huddled in the big chair in the kitchen, bereft of all her usual self-command. She could not move past the fact of death. It had been beyond any nightmare Cuinefaer had brought her, to walk into her guardian's bedroom that morning and find...all that blood.

Everything smelled so wrong! All the old scents were there, sharp rosemary mingled with sweet majorum. Thyme, heartsease, pennyroyal, countless other herbs. But they had become thin, weak notes against a heavy, underlying iron.

A butter-soft voice cut through red thoughts.

"The condition is much better than I expected. A day or two of work and we can put it to use."

Disbelieving, Ash turned to see a plump, sweet-faced woman, smoothing her carefully coiled white hair and surveying the room as if she owned it. Which, Ash hated to admit, she did. Something glittered in the woman's eyes as they found Ash's, but her expression held nothing but cloying sympathy.