Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

Her three-fingered hands rose in the air, then tilted back, like a waiter holding a tray overhead. The motion revealed her delicate sly hands. More slender than my own, and with more fingers than her show hands. Five on her right, four on the left, indicating that she was right handed. I filed that away.

I don’t know which came first, the way we describe Barekusu hands or the way we talk about those sleight-of-hand experts who can mimic sorcery through mundane methods. The stage trickster distracts the audience with flourishes of one hand—the show hand—while manipulating or palming an object with their sly hand. Similarly, Barekusu sly hands worked behind the scenes, raking their fine undercoat and coarse outer hairs, collecting loose strands to weave into kusuma textiles. Combining the strength and durability of the outercoat and the undercoat’s silky feel, kusuma fabrics were treasured across the continent. The Barekusu were equal parts scholars, diplomats, and merchant kings.

“I came to the guidepost to lead a meditation.” Serrow spoke in a low singsong voice, the sound of a plastic tube being swung overhead. A whoosh whoosh that sent a slight chill up the back of my neck. “I never thought I’d be chosen to commit such an act . . .”

“Chosen? What do you mean?”

She took a long breath, and nostrils the size of my fist flared. She had two or three times my mass and could have crushed me with her sheer bulk, if nothing else. The bone eye plates rose and lowered, jagged and irregular as a series of overlapping slate roofing tiles. I wasn’t used to reading Barekusu expressions, but I took it to mean she wasn’t quite able to look me in the eye.

“Only that I felt my actions weren’t mine. That something overtook me.”

The buzzing. I steeled myself, afraid we’d be encountering yet another transformed body.

“How many people were here?” Jax’s pencil hung over his notebook.

“I don’t believe I counted, a few dozen perhaps? Most of them, though, were in the larger chamber. Out there, everything was fine.” Her grammar was impeccable. Like most Barekusu, Serrow seemed to have a natural inclination for languages, which meant communication shouldn’t be an issue.

“When did things start to be not fine?” I asked.

“While I was in the dream chamber,” she said.

“Had you taken any sedatives?”

Her head rotated like a doorknob in mid-turn, swinging her fur and flapping her ear tips. I guessed it to be the equivalent of shaking one’s head. Still, I asked for clarity, “Is that a no?”

“It is a no, Detective. It was thought best that I not enter a true trance, out of consideration for the waiting crowd.”

“Who was in the room with you?”

“Myself, one reporter, and one assistant from the city.”

“Only one reporter?”

The DO spoke up. “They were doing a press pool,” she said, mandibles stretching. “One reporter, no photographer. Not unusual for an event like this.”

I acknowledged that with a nod, keeping my focus on the Barekusu guide. “The assistant from the city, was that one of the men in here earlier?”

“No,” she said. “That person is, I believe, sedated.”

“Sedated?” I glanced at the DO, but Serrow answered first.

“I believe they were injured in the events. Or perhaps they were traumatized by what happened.”

“She wasn’t injured,” the DO said. “She’d stepped out of the room to get refreshments. She’s lying down, now. She needed to after she came in and saw, well . . . the aftermath.”

“And what was that, exactly?” asked Jax.

Sly hand fingers stretched toward the Barekusu’s chest, stroking and adjusting her fur. Although the physiology may have been different, the drive was clearly recognizable: I’d seen countless witnesses and suspects fiddle with their clothes or hair in the same way.

“You may not believe me when I say this, but it’s true: I don’t entirely know.”

“Just do the best you can.”

She huffed, composing herself, and I felt her breath against my cheeks. It smelled of honey and fresh-cut grass.

“I was relaxing, in a light meditation. But what I heard was not something I’ve encountered before. Have you read of whale song?”

“Whales sang?”

“I’ve read of it in books, and older Barekusu have confirmed it to me. Before they were extinct, whales sang long, low songs that reverberated through the ocean. What I heard today was similar. Deep and low, and sounding like it came from far, far below, a wail swelling into a chorus of rage. And I believe the more I listened, the more it resonated in my chest, in my head, in—” Serrow’s arms twitched, and her sly hands worked through her fine-haired coat even faster.

“I embraced it,” she said. “I gave myself to the song and I swayed, and I danced, and I clenched my hands . . .” With a snap, the sly hands disappeared, and the powerful show hands were back, folded into massive fists. I wondered what that grip would do to human bones. “When the song faded, I looked down at the reporter’s . . .” The horn plates rose, and she stared at me, the split pupils dancing around like minnows in a fishbowl.

I took a breath. “Those men before, they weren’t your lawyers.”

“I believe not.”

“I suggest you get some.”

The Mollenkampi DO walked us down the short hall to the chamber where the attack had taken place. The tech crew waited at the opposite end of the hall, shuffling their feet and looking anxious. I didn’t know if that was caused by the press attention, the idea of such a crime happening in a guidepost, or something else.

We crossed the threshold into the crime scene, and I immediately felt an itching need to get out of there myself. The reporter’s body was exactly as Serrow had described. Everything about the crime scene indicated that she was telling the truth, to the best of her abilities. The victim was in a pile, twisted and broken in more places than I could count. It was what I’d expected to see. What I hadn’t expected was that I’d know him.

Taran Glouchester, the reporter