Chapter 310: Meting Out - Crime Scene
The corpse reeked with the smells of time and rot. Almost as soon as she saw it, Amarena frowned.
"Tell me what you see," Halie said.
"There’s signs of being beaten, but the marks of torture are too precise for claws." Amarena stuck her finger into a circular wound in the man’s shoulder, finding it went in and then up. The flesh inside was torn. "If a claw made this hole, there should be others. The curve inside was too regular to come from a hand."
"Good. What else?"
Amarena dipped her hand in the waters and washed them quickly. A few curious fish surfaced as they pecked at the morsels of meat that her claw had removed.
She noticed the pier.
"There’s no blood here."
"Could have washed away with the tide," Halie shrugged.
"No..." Amarena stood and cut the ropes free, pulling the half-corpse onto the floating pier. On the man’s back were lacerations, more like he’d received a new and sustained whipping, judging by the lack of scars beneath the lashmarks. "There isn’t enough blood where he was tied."
"An imperial tide would have watched that away," Halie pointed out.
"The last double-moon for the region was more than a week ago. Besides, we wouldn’t have a body if these "glints" swam any higher up."