Everyone knew better.

The police called it a suicide, but everyone knew better.
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The room was tiny and with the door closed it had no light, natural or otherwise.  A desk sat in the middle, once probably stately and elegant but now notched and dented with years of careless use.  On top lay a thick book, flipped open to a page in the middle.  Leaning closer, I could make out a list of names - some scratched out, some circled, all with a price next to them.  Kalen, £350.  Aliastra, £475.  A sad Jaled, who only cost £120.  Did the boy know that’s all his life was worth before he died?

A man sat in the chair, slumped over.  He had blondish hair and scruffy beard at least a week old.  His face was slack, the skin loose, like an ill-fitting mask or a stuffed toy with the insides pulled out.  Deflated.

I had come to kill this man, but found him already dead.  A knife speckled with blood was still clutched in his hand and a river of crimson trailed down his shirt.  It looked like a suicide, and I wanted to believe it.  The things he’d done.  The lives he’d stolen and then sold.  The people he’d killed without ever getting his hands dirty.  You would think it would weigh on him.

But he was a Drogoi.  They didn’t have souls.  They would kill their best friends in a brawl over a mug of ale and sleep the deep, restful sleep of someone with an unburdened conscience.  I had seen them destroy their own homes with their families still inside in a fit of pique.  One Drogoi that frequented the Rusty Nail told me he had killed his sister when she refused to service him.  Then he sold her body to his friend, a well know deviant with a love of cutting things into smaller pieces.

This man, this trader of flesh, had not been crippled by guilt and then taken his own life.  So who had beaten me here to kill him?