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the moon had
looked. Now that he thought about it, he recalled that the moon on
the previous morning had resembled this evening’s moon: small,
silvery, and just past full. And yet to the murderer it had appeared
bloated and huge. Perhaps he suffered from an affliction of the eye.
Or perhaps he had been drunk before tasting the Golden, and thus
already subject to perceptual distortions.
    Both
possibilities, he decided, were worth looking into.
    Once again he
examined the silver bottle cap. It was unlikely that the girl had
been carrying it—there were no pockets in her nightdress. But
what would the murderer have been doing with a bottle of perfume?
Beheim sniffed the cap. A scent clung to it, though not of perfume. A
harsh acidic odor. Medicine of some sort? A drug with which he had
overcome the Golden’s companion? Yet why would he have bothered
to use drugs when he possessed a natural aptitude for swaying mortals
to his will? And where was the companion? Likely crumpled in some
crevice below the castle, flung there from a high window. More
servants would be needed to search the hillsides; with all the sheer
drops and ravines hard by, the body might have come to rest some
distance from the castle walls. But the bottle, now. What could it
have contained? Beheim rubbed the ball of his thumb across the
remnants of the engraved letter, coming more and more to feel that
the answer to this question would illuminate all other questions. Of
course it was possible the bottle had nothing to do with the murder,
that it had been lying there for some time before the Golden and the
murderer had put in their appearance . . . though not
for long, otherwise there would have been no odor. But he did not
believe this to be so. The silver cap seemed to hold a vibration, a
residual tremor of the violence that had occurred upon the turret.
    He glanced down
at the body. Until that moment he had given little thought to the
Golden’s personal tragedy, relating to the case as a breach of
honor and tradition; but now he recalled her beauty, her
gracefulness, and wondered what she had made of all the passion
surrounding her and what sort of woman she had been. Had she known
the particulars of the ritual? Had she been greedy for immortality?
So close. Almost a queen and undying. His mind turned to Giselle,
equally beautiful and informed by the same imperatives. He considered
her childhood in Quercy, her genteel education, her debut in Paris.
None of that could have prepared her for the life she now led. How
she must tremble to live among these dandified, morose lords and
ladies, these blazing-eyed killers with their blood full of dreams
and strange weathers, and thoughts like black spidery stars
shriveling in their brains. How deeply her fear must flow! Fear that
in an instant could be transformed into love, like an underground
river bursting out into the light of day. He considered her eventual
fate. Either dead by his hand or immortal. How would he react to that
first and most probable result? He would be desolate, surely.
Distraught. He would weep. Yet he knew he would find a means not only
of placing her death in perspective, but also of exulting in it, and
that sickened him—this ability to justify every horror in the
name of dark arcana and mystic passions. Agenor was right: The Family
must change . . . and not simply because it would be
the wise thing, the safe and pragmatic thing. And if by bringing the
murderer down, he, Beheim, could be an agent of that change, that
would go a long way toward effecting redemption for what he had done
to Giselle.
    He stepped back
from the body, looking out over the worn hills, yet he retained an
image of the Golden’s sprawled limbs and clawed hands, a
featureless image resembling a golden root that seemed to settle in
his mind and melt like butter into the dark matter of his brain,
infusing him with new resolve. Insoluble though the problem appeared,
he was determined to ferret out the guilty