A loaf of bread would be nice, thought Myrten as he laid the last stone for the day. He wiped his brow on his sleeve and patted his hands together to rid them of dust. The building would be a new Guard barracks when it was finished, but there were still quite a few days’ hard work before that.
A loaf of bread, and a skin of cold wine, he thought. He had been out in the sun all day. Fortunately, he knew of a place that made the best, tastiest bread in the whole city – just what you need after an afternoon laying stone on stone. The bread at Larryn’s was always fresh and tasty, perfectly baked, with no stones or grit.
It hadn’t always been that way. Only a few months ago before Larryn had lost her husband, the bread was very ordinary. Myrten thought that just meant that Larryn was a better baker than her husband had been. Not just better – much better. Furthermore, she baked throughout the day, rather than just in the morning, so even at this time of the evening the bread would be fresh and hot.
Myrten climbed down the ladder and wiped his stone-roughened hands on his leather apron. He returned to the foreman’s tent to report his work shift complete and to collect his pay. The foreman marked him off the ledger and wordlessly handed him a small pouch of coins. Myrten tipped them out into his hand, quickly eyeballing to make sure he had been paid the right amount. He needn’t have bothered – the paymaster was meticulous and never misled his labourers.
He returned to the street and headed towards the market district. Larryn’s shop wasn’t on the main trading street, but he did want to stop by the nearby water fountain to wash up.
It was after he had washed his face that he realised that something was missing. Larryn’s bakery was just around the corner, and he couldn’t smell the bread. Normally the smell of hot fresh bread wafted into the street, but not today. That was very odd indeed.
Patting his hands dry, he set off towards the shop again. He approached the counter, but it did not look like Larryn was there.
“Hello?” he called. There was no answer. “Hello?”
“She’s not there,” said a passerby – an old man with missing teeth who smelled of mouldy herbs.
“Where is she?”
“No-one knows,” the old man replied, starting to move off down the street.
“Has anyone told the City Guard?” Myrten called after him. The old man ignored him and turned a corner into the main street. He looked back at the shopfront. It didn’t look like she had been robbed. Since no-one else seemed interested in finding out where Larryn was, he glanced around the street to see if he was being observed, and hopped the counter.
He knocked on the door separating the shopfront from the bakery proper, first quietly and then louder.
“Hello?” he called again. “Is anybody there? Larryn? Are you there?”
There was no reply.
A new smell assailed his nostrils as he carefully pushed the door open. A sour, acrid smell that reminded him of a butcher’s shop. It took him a moment before he realised what he was looking at.
Larryn was still there, after a fashion. Coarse chunks of flesh and bone were strewn about the room as though flung in random directions. Some of them still had scraps of Larryn’s clothes stuck to them. The floor was awash with sticky, congealed blood and bits of unidentifiable organs. From where he stood, Myrten could see a hand, two parts of what appeared to be a leg, and chunks of her torso, all brutally torn apart and scattered about the bakery.
Finally, Myrten’s stomach caught up with what his eyes were seeing, and the meagre contents of his stomach were hurled up and onto the floor.
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