Dahlia Noir's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Dahlia Noir knelt in the royal garden and counted the black dahlias for the third time. One was still missing. The stem end was clean, cut with a sharp blade, the same cut she had found six mornings ago when the king failed to come to the bench. He had been late that last evening. He had never been late before. Then he was gone, and the stolen flower with him. She was the king's private eyes. She had brought him reports of nobles moving money in the dark, and he had read them here, beside this bed, before anyone else in the court saw a page. Now the bench sat empty. The court whispered and would not speak the word missing. Only one person knew she was hunting. She meant to keep it that way until she had the killer's throat under her thumb, and the black dahlia pressed back into his mouth. But she had nothing. No body. No blood. No name. Only a cut stem and a court full of closed doors. She had worked six days on the noble ledgers and found nothing that pointed to a hand. A killer who took a flower as a signature wanted to be known. He was not hiding from her. He was hiding from her method. She stopped reading ledgers and walked out the servants' gate before dawn. The old cottage sat at the edge of the palace grounds, weathered, its porch dust-soft under her boots. Inside, an old woman kept the garden records the crown had forgotten. Dahlia asked one question. Had anyone else, ever, asked after black dahlia cuttings? The old woman opened a ledger older than the king. Three names in twenty years. Two were dead. The third had signed only a mark: a long-eared silhouette, bunny-shaped, drawn in ink. The old woman said the buyer came at night. Paid in coin. Took cuttings and a handful of graveyard soil each time from a plot beyond the wall, where wilted stems leaned over cracked stones. "Where does he plant them?" Dahlia asked. "He said a house past the north lane. Small. Old. His mother's, once." Dahlia walked out past the wall to the plot the woman named. The soil there was fresh-turned in one square. Petals lay scattered on it, dark and wet. Someone had knelt here recently. She pressed her palm to the dirt. Warm. She rose. She had a mark, a habit, and a direction. Not a face, not yet, but a trail she could follow to a door. She cut one black dahlia from the royal bed and tucked it into her coat. If he wanted to sign his work with her flower, she would bring one of his own to leave on his floor. She started north before the sun cleared the wall.