In the rafters above, some eight feet from the leftmost horn, the filthy young woman again glanced over her shoulder. Pushing her matted and reeking hair from her face, she asked quietly, “This doesn't actually change your situation, does it? Them seeing your idol, I mean?”

A resounding sense of denial ran through her body. She grimaced.

“All right,” she said, shifting her attention back to the events below. “This is bad. Still, I think we can talk our way-”

“Sergeant! I've found something!”

“This keeps getting better,” she mumbled.

Chapelle appeared beside the young constable, who was pointing toward a carefully concealed catch at the rear of the idol. “You seem to have a knack for finding these things, Bouniard,” he said gruffly. He looked over the constable's find: a simple switch, set flush with the stone, just beneath the lip of the platform. With a leather-gloved hand, the sergeant flipped the switch.

A drawer, so expertly crafted as to have been all but invisible, slid from the stone. Within lay several small candles, a long quill, a jar of ink, and a wood-bound and velvet-wrapped ledger. Without so much as a pause for breath, Chapelle snapped up the book and flipped it open, eagerly scanning the pages for answers.

Even the most casual examination suggested the book could be nothing less than a roster of membership for this strange little cult, each page devoted to one individual. There were no names-gods forbid they make this easy! — but it did include dates, titles of rank or seniority that were pretty much meaningless to the old Guardsman, and a monetary value listed in gold marks, perhaps indicating donations.

Chapelle was quite sure that he'd just found the motive for the horrific crimes: The sheer quantity of gold in the sect's coffers must be staggering. Why, the first eight or nine entries alone totaled up to more than ten thousand marks!