She might’ve had to wonder about where the smell was coming from, if it weren’t for the charred corpses on the palace walls. Spears had been driven in periodically, stretching every ten feet or so above them. A body had been strung up to each one, with far less dignity and respect than anything in the crypt below. Not all of them were burned, or even dead. The palace had acquired its own flock of carrion birds, which passed overhead in slow arcs, occasionally descending on one of the bodies and covering it with dark feathers.