The Pathfinder Tales Library

Novels

Prince of Wolves by Dave Gross
Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham
Plague of Shadows by Howard Andrew Jones
The Worldwound Gambit by Robin D. Laws
Master of Devils by Dave Gross
Death's Heretic by James L. Sutter
Song of the Serpent by Hugh Mattews

Journals

The Compass Stone: The Collected Journals of Eando Kline edited by James L. Sutter
Hell's Pawns by Dave Gross
Dark Tapestry by Elaine Cunnningham
Prodigal Sons edited by James L. Sutter
Plague of Light by Robin D. Laws
Guilty Blood by F. Wesley Schneider

Short Stories

"Lord of Penance" by Richard Lee Byers
"The Ghosts of Broken Blades" by Monte Cook
"The Illusionist" by Elaine Cunningham
"Noble Sacrifice" by Richard Ford
"Guns of Alkenstar" by Ed Greenwod
"The Lost Pathfinder" by Dave Gross
"A Lesson in Taxonomy" by Dave Gross
"A Passage to Absalom" by Dave Gross
"Blood Crimes" by J. C. Hay
"The Walkers from the Crypt" by Howard Andrew Jones
"The Ironroot Deception" by Robin D. Laws
"Certainty" by Liane Merciel
"Two Pieces of Tarnished Silver by Erik Mona
"The Secret of the Rose and Glove by Kevin Andrew Murphy
"Blood and Money by Steven Savile
"The Swamp Warden" by Amber E. Scott
"The Seventh Execution" by Amber E. Scott
"Plow and Sword" by Robert E. Vardeman
"The Box" by Bill Ward

"Guilty Blood" © 2011 by Paizo Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Paizo Publishing, LLC, the Paizo golem logo, and Pathfinder are registered trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Pathfinder Campaign Setting, and Pathfinder Tales are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC.

Story by F. Wesley Schneider.
Cover art by Jean-Baptiste Reynaud.
Interior art by Jean-Baptiste Reynaud.

Paizo Publishing, LLC
7120 185th Ave NE, Ste 120
Redmond, WA 98052
paizo.com

ISBN 978-1-60125-435-1

Originally published in Pathfinder Adventure Path #43-#48.

Chapter One: Common Ashes

I'm starting this after the matter, as that's what they say we're supposed to do. I used to think these little diaries were all about fame and letting us insignificant folk know there were bigger things in the world beyond our gray streets and propped-up walls. I suppose I know better now. At some point I realized they're warnings. So if some night the blasted thing takes me, I'll still be able to explain how I met my end and maybe prevent it from happening again.

It's here as I write this, the red glint betraying its hunger. Not for food, or drink, or blood, or anything half-sane like that—it's far beyond those things. You might need to know that first, especially if I'm past giving warnings.

∗ ∗ ∗

It didn't start like one of her novels, no matter what she might say now that it's all over. The evening had brought me around to the Old Horn, the oldest public house in Ardis, a mangy den the owner claimed was constructed in an age when all men were kings and all geese shat gold. How the wreck of sagging beams and cracked mortar looked mangy was something of a wonder, but a wonder the taproom brought off nightly with its threadbare wall hangings, tattered hawthorn wreathes, and dusty bear pelt splayed above its narrow fireplace. The thick decor, along with a years-old haze of cheap spice cigar smoke, unintentionally but effectively baffled noise in the narrow pub, making it a favorite den for those with the contradictory needs to converse and not be heard.

I hadn't thought of it then, but the setting did seem like something she'd come up with; a heroine, daring the city's underbelly to track a moon-mad rake, vengeful corpse, or some such. But while Kindler's heroes always had a pack full of tricks and talismans suited to their noble intentions, my evening's agenda seemed to match what little rattled in my tired satchel: a few coins pinched earlier that day, a few useful splinters of metal, a chipped wharfman's knife, and a battered book—its embossed cover still holding a bit of color upon the words Her Wounds Never Bled and Ailson Kindler. I remember nabbing the book from my mother's library the night I made my escape—it being one of those everyday ironies that seem all the more prophetic in retrospect. Regardless, it was nothing to me at that moment, and my thoughts were on more pressing and less romantic topics.

You had to buy at least one drink or else the hatchet-faced barkeep would get wise and have you tossed out in the street. Sidling up to the bar, I ignored his scrutiny of my freshly pinched coins and took in the night's crowd.

Slim pickings.

Nothing but a pair of clerks in patched coats, a pesh dealer trying to hide his own shakes, some over-painted wharf wives with bleary-eyed beaus, and a conclave of students leaning so close they might be trying to read each others thoughts—two fellows and a sliver of a girl. The sure coin was with the clerks, who were practically flashing their coppers with a second round of drinks. But the easy coin hung off the scruffiest student's belt in an old-fashioned hip pouch. The purse looked malnourished, but there was easily enough to cover the price of my drink and, Desna willing, a meal before the last peddler closed up for the night.

Suspiciously accepting my under-filled mug of water and ale suds, I sought out a bench with its back to the students and took a seat. No reason to rush my drink, as they didn't look to be headed anywhere anytime soon.

Through the smoke and lazy murmur of the room's muffled conversations, I could just make out the whispers behind me. Chalk it up to what my father always called my "elf ears," harking to some probably imaginary ancestor in our family tree.

"—and bowled him right over, just in front of him. If he'd left the counting house a moment earlier, he said it'd been him lying face down in the street instead of ol' Parrigd," said the biggest of the students— likely some laborer's apprentice, judging from his anvil-like frame.

"I'd heard it was the countess's daughter… the one with the piggy eyes. Opaline, I think. That half-heifer, looking out the coach window and laughing behind them fat, pie-poking fingers." The sharp-nosed girl needled every vowel sound to a whine. "It'd be just like them, too. Don't care who they roll over so long as their coffers are full and they can waddle out of this cesspit whenever they please."

There was a moment's silence, as if they waited for the third to chime in with his volley of news and curses, but it didn't come.

"You're taking this well, Garmand," the anvil rumbled. "He was your boss." Only a pointed silence answered.

"If he'd been anything to me, I'd do something," the girl boasted with a shrill arrogance, inviting challenge. "You wouldn't see me in here dripping tears in my—"

"Is that what I'm doing?" The scruffy student interrupted with surprising steel in his voice. "And would it unman me if I did shed a tear or two? I worked alongside that old man for nearly eight years, fed both of us with coin from his purse, and have nearly enough hidden away to get out of this place thanks to him. Doesn't his death—his murder—maybe warrant a tear or two? Or, in all your experience, are you past regret?"

I could hear the girl bristle and sniff loudly, probably unused to holding her tongue, but doing so all the same.

"Anyway," Garmand continued, his voice taking on a thoughtful distance, "you're not wrong. Something like this calls for more than tears and words. I was there when the guard peeled Mr. Parrigd off the street—even saw where the coach's wheels rolled out his blood for five paces before fading off. They all said it was one of the countess's coaches. Even the watchmen did, as if that ended the matter. He might as well have been a crow picking in the gutter, just a bump and not worth a moment of guilt. Parrigd didn't have any people either. So who knows what'll happen to his body. The Watch is more likely to just roll him into the river than give him over to the church for a proper burn."

"So what's for it, then?" the girl accused after a space, trying to recover pride from his slight.

"Not much, sadly. Less than Mr. Parrigd deserves, but I think I might have something in mind. I need to talk to some fellows if there's any chance of making it work. And we might need Sayn's boat."

"This is going to be simple: corpses for a corpse."

"I'll take you anywhere you need, long as it's after dusk," said the big one, apparently the boatman Sayn. "But I can't say it's much for getting out of town. I can't take it off the Tears and side streams."

"We won't need to wait long or go far, I hope," Garmand said. "I want to take care of this tonight, while my nerve's up. I'm just waiting for the right sort to come in. There's a ratty guy I've heard about, and I've seen him in here before. I think we could make a deal with him. But I still need to think it out."

The students' little drama devolved into mumbles of plots, what-ifs, and curses against the Venacdahlia name. It seemed like the three had been though a bad patch today, and I thought about turning my eye toward the clerks across the taproom ordering up their third round. But their talk of making deals made me imagine silver instead of copper weighing down Garmand's exposed pouch. Though I had sympathy for their hard times, their story wasn't anything novel in Ardis these days. If I wasn't the one who made their day worse, it would just be someone else. So why deny myself a meal? I made my move.

Feigning checking my boots and coughing to mask the sound, my dagger flashed, and the coins were in my hands with hardly a rustle. My fingers had danced this dance often enough that it was an easily rushed routine, sliding the coppers—damn—into the lip of my boot, replacing my blade, and straightening nonchalantly as though nothing had happened, all in that half a moment. I casually finished my drink, and after another moment, stood to leave, careful to keep any hint of a smirk off my face, wearing instead the typical downtrodden stare the pub's patrons would expect and ignore. Stepping lightly to avoid jostling the coins sliding beneath my heel, I reflected on what a fine stop this had been and considered adding it to my weekly rounds.

That's when a grip like a pair of smith's tongs clasped my wrist.

I should have stuck to my weekly rounds.

"Ho there, missy," came the boatman's gritty voice. I turned, trying to disguise nerves with outrage at the rough hand on my arm. All three at the table were looking at me, the girl sneering, Sayn half standing, his hairy hand locked on mine. "Not as sly as you thought, huh? I think you owe us a round with those coins you're stinking up."

I knew I couldn't pull away. Maybe I could scream like he was accosting me, but no one around looked the hero type. Maybe if I—

"No, they're hers," Garmand said calmly, interrupting my escape plans and surprising his companions, who turned on him as though he'd gone mad. He produced his pouch and fingered the extra opening I'd just added. "Have a seat, miss. If you're as talented as you just demonstrated, you might be even better than the one I was waiting for."

He gestured to the unoccupied fourth seat. "At the very least, hear me out. I've got an idea that could buy us each our way out of the city, avenge a friend, and slap the aristocracy across the face—all of which must sound better than getting hauled off to the Watch. But tell me, does your skill end at cutting purses?"

∗ ∗ ∗

The skiff didn't run aground. It ran a-grave.

A tombstone jutting out of the water halted our journey and we pulled the sad little boat ashore, rubbing away handfuls of flaking white paint with every tug. The black water lapping against half-submerged tombstones sounded like the lake was trying to hush us, as though it didn't want us to wake the untended dead it had crept upon. In morbid curiosity, I peered into the languid waves, wondering if I could make out an unearthed coffin or a drowned skull, but the cloudy night helped the lake keep its secrets.

Looking inland hardly helped calm my imagination. Evercrown Cemetery. Here Garmand sought his revenge on the living by way of the dead.

The cemetery rose upon a low hill, where naked autumn trees grasped heavenward, their curled finger bones doing little to hide dozens of small structures scattered randomly between them as if tossed by some gargantuan hand. Thousands of discrepant silhouettes vied to be more ominous then their neighbors, holding aloft ornamental wings, urns, or obelisks, while larger shapes hulked like ghoulish giants collecting bones in the dark. The trees and wild grasses rustled in the chilly breeze, their roots seeming to draw up the smell of the dead, their haze of motion disguising anything that might lurk amid the graves. I could make out the nearest of these tombstones, their memorials lost in shadow, but each seeming to bear ominous promises for trespassers.

Hoping not to excite my imagination too much with my first step upon the burial grounds, I looked back the way we'd come. The few lights of the sleeping city flickered across the lake called the Tears, so named for the elaborate burial processions that crossed it to reach the city's mausoleums. Only royalty and nobles were buried here, those who could afford the honor of such costly rites. All others were burned to ashes. Such was a pauper's fate, but one nearly everyone in Ardis expected. Such was also the crux of Garmand's scheme.

Gathering us a few strides away from the shore, a cask of oil and two crowbars under his arm, Garmand spoke hurriedly and in hushed tones.

"This is going to be simple: corpses for a corpse. We find the Venacdahlia mausoleum, break in, and burn everything we find. We keep it small. We're not trying to start a blaze that will have the Watch running. If there's time, we gather up the ashes and put together a fine little memento for the countess. We clear?" It was exactly as we'd agreed after leaving the Old Horn

"And tomorrow we wake up rich men with big houses and fat wives. That's how this all ends, right?" Sayn's tone was arch. Garmand frowned. His sister, Liscena, cursed.

"No," Garmand replied. "Tomorrow we wake up just like we always do. The countess, her daughters, and half the inbred nobles in town, though—they wake to find their forefathers going back a dozen centuries gone, the ones who gave them that noble blood, are just ashes. All burned up, just like we're going to be when we pass on." His tone took on an optimistic enthusiasm. "And maybe, like you'd expect from folk with no sense, the nobles gussy up their dead like they're headed off to the opera. So we help ourselves to a little of that, hock a few trinkets, and finally get out of this place on their coin. Seems like justice to me."

He nodded at me. "All that, but only if you're as good as I hope you are."

"I like my turnout better!" the burly boatman chuckled.

Liscena rolled her head. "Can we get on with this?"

∗ ∗ ∗

It took nearly an hour to find the resting place of the county's rulers, the Venacdahlia mausoleum. We searched without light, fearing the attention it might attract on the exposed hill. Broken flagstone paths, twisted roots, and spidery ground creepers hid among the shadows of tombstones, making the cemetery so treacherous to traverse that in places we had to crawl amid the ornamental mourners and deathly effigies. We found our aim near the end of a walk that wound up from the eastern gate, squatting near the hill's summit, commanding a lordly view of the Tears and the city beyond.

Angels prayed at the tomb's corners, years of grime giving them the wings of crows. Artfully twisted pillars circled the small, temple-like structure, and the dead eye of a shattered, stained-glass pediment window stared down. A tarnished bronze door barred the way inside, its surface etched with a flight of surprised-looking green cherubs in mottled armor, a large keyhole piercing one's breast like a spear wound.

Not waiting for a cue from my evening's employers, I found my makeshift picks and kneeled at the door, trying to avoid making eye contact with any of the angelic mourners. The Venacdahlias earned their reputations as skinflints that night—two twists of the metal sliver and the tumblers gave way. I fumbled with the lock for several moments more, underscoring the worth of my participation. Eventually I stood and, with a casual hand, swung the mausoleum door wide.

Although the burial chamber was open and lofty, the air within was close, with the thick smell of dust and old rot. I'd expected that. I'd even expected the hairy black spiders and other less distinct shadows that fled our intrusion. But I hadn't expected the foreboding, the feeling of blasphemy that rained down from the vaulting, the accusations of eyeless sockets glaring through the lids of dozens of burial alcoves. We were trespassing in the home of the dead, and though they couldn't physically stop us, their indignation loomed even past death's veil.

We'd hardly paused to take in the dilapidated monument for a moment before Garmand moved to the bier at the chamber's center and set down the crowbars and cask of oil.

"Start with the high alcoves and pull down what's inside. We'll burn them in piles." His instructions were matter of fact, though his shifting eyes belied his disquiet. "If you find anything valuable, it's yours to keep."

I helped them, and, being the easiest to lift, even tugged down the remnants of some of Ardis's historic rulers myself. I didn't make any friends among the historians that night—to say nothing of the country's nobility. It had fortunately been some time since any Venacdahlia had been buried here, so we were mostly contending with dry remains, and what we were tossing down looked inhuman enough that we could fool our consciences for the time being. Within minutes Garmand was pouring on the oil and we had a modest blaze going, the smoke of old rulers wafting up through the broken window and invisibly out into the night. The lurid light flickering through crackling skulls did little to lessen the foreboding weighing in the pit of my stomach. Somehow the hellish light seemed ominously prophetic.

Here and there we'd find something worth pocketing—a brooch, a pair of earrings, a gold-capped walking stick—but it was Liscena who first laid eyes upon the dagger.

"Whoa," came her flat interjection, escaping with such dumb surprise that we all turned in curiosity. She had just wrested the lid off a low alcove, not far from the fire. Inside, something caught the light and danced like a serpent's tongue in the corpse-fueled flames.

"I found it. It's mine!" Liscena snapped as we crowded close, doubtlessly not even sure what "it" was. Cautiously, her brother reached into the alcove and tugged forth a corpse unlike any we'd defiled that night.

On the dusty marble of the mausoleum floor lay a withered form in a grim military uniform, its chest seemingly crushed under the medals weighing upon it. Its high-collared coat shone with gold thread, broad epaulettes, and silver clasps. At its hip, a gilt-encrusted saber jutted from an elegant ebony scabbard. But although the corpse was interred with the honors of a leader, it was obvious it didn't receive such esteem in life's final moments. Four vicious wounds marred the body, the open buttons of the jacket and shirt revealing a ragged path from the face, neck, and collar to the center breast, which rot had deflated like an emptied wineskin. There, from the sternum, as though the murderer had tired mid-crime, jutted the handle of a silver dagger. Yet more remarkable than the apparent murder weapon being interred along with the victim was the dagger itself.

Although the blade hid within its morbid sheath, what was visible bore an exotic elegance reminiscent of treasure-laden Katapeshi palaces. Delicate flourishes adorned the hilt, but the handle appeared to be carved from a single miraculous crimson stone imprisoned within a web of delicate gold filigree. Proud and deadly, it was the weapon of royalty—and, apparently, the slayers of royalty.

An impulsive girl, Liscena already had her hand around the pommel, yanking before anyone else made a move. Thinking back, I'm not sure whether it was the girl or the corpse who screamed first.

The dagger didn't come away cleanly, but rather burst from the corpse like a surely secured stopper, spilling the thief backward. A geyser of something like luminescent entrails erupted forth from the unplugged wound, an ephemeral burst of upward-roiling ethereal humors. Gushing from the dead man, the torrent of nether fluids refused to rain back down, accumulating and writhing in the air above the corpse, hanging there in defiance of gravity and sanity. And with the glowing viscera exploded a terrible sound, a depthless intonation from an indistinct distance. A noise that grew evenly in volume, as if it falling up into the crypt from the pit of the world.

A moment later, a grotesque apparition hung above the empty carcass, a knot of churning, unnatural organ-stuff glowing the unsteady green of a flickering altar votive. With revolting deliberateness the mass churned and took shape, as if worked by the hands of some invisible fiend. Limbs, garments, a withered visage rent by slashes—each took shape until the thing floating there was a spectral copy of the husk below. And all the while the sound came, issuing from the form like a scream heard through a shattered window, the horror-stricken source hidden at some unworldly remove.

When the phantasmal form moved, the four slashes marking its disfigured body stared like a vertical row of empty sockets, taking us in even as they unleashed that terrible, voiceless howl.

I can't say who made the first move, but terror gripped us each in unique ways.

"Proud and deadly, it was the weapon of royalty—and, apparently, the slayers of royalty."

Garamand was at his sister's side in a blur, shouting something as she gaped dumbly, brandishing the long, silver blade of her prize. For my part, I realized I was backpedaling as the crypt's doorframe came into view, managing to halt myself before my shuddering limbs carried me further. Sayn's terror took the boldest route. Hardly stepping back from the phantom, he hefted a discarded crowbar and, with a bellow, sent it spinning end over end toward the thing.

Were the vaporous corpse a creature of bone and flesh, surely it would have shattered from the wild gusto of the blow alone. As it was, the bar clanged upon the vault's far wall and skittered into the dark.

Like a blind thing, the ethereal carcass's head snapped to where the tool had cracked the aged mausoleum stone. In a series of jerks, it turned its neck in the direction of Sayn's bellow, directing its own howl toward the big man, the slash across the thing's face connecting its empty eye sockets in a single cyclopean hollow. Awkwardly, like a thing unused to moving, the spectre wrenched forth the saber of faintly glowing ghost steel at its hip. Slashing a weird gyre before it, the dead thing propelled itself, blade and body, toward Sayn.

The boatman stumbled backward in the face of the armed shade, obviously rethinking the impulse not to flee as a swipe of the spectral blade transfixed him. The ephemeral saber emerged bloodlessly from his chest, seemingly nothing more than an illusion. Looking down upon his unwounded body, Sayn's face reflected his surprise and the beginning of a smirk in the instant before he collapsed.

A gasp from Liscena drew the deadly wraith's attention. Garmand yanked his sister off the ground bodily, intending to flee, but halted as the spectre came to hover a step between them and the door. Valiantly, he moved between the thing and his sister. As he did, the howling reached a hollow crescendo.

"Ferendri," a name echoed in the moan, the sounds stretched long in accusation, filling with the loathing of bitter years.

Garmand's eyes went wide with confused recognition, and the shade's saber fell upon his brow in a slow stroke, as if knighting him with some grievous authority. The young man fell backward into his sister's arms, the light in his eyes guttering.

As the sounds of Liscena's despair filled the vault, the spectre's howl faded. Somehow the moan seemed to pull back into the thing, revivifying its vaporous shape. Its withered frame straightened, filling the tatters of its uniform with a tall, lean body. Long legs, now booted and unfurled, drew together in military posture. Gnarled hands worked with new dexterity, one tightening upon the grip of the saber—now appearing freshly polished—the other flexing as if stretching vaporous muscles. Its impacted face healed, reforming in the memory of a sharp chin, stern mouth, angular cheeks, and steely eyes, the imperious features of a lord in his prime. When it was done, the thing was no longer a corpse, but a severe, knifelike man, three deep gashes marring his neck and chest. His eyes immediately fixed upon Liscena, now looking very small with her face buried in her dead brother's locks. Nothing more than a child, but a child holding his murder weapon.

I didn't realize I'd made a sound, but that's when the phantom turned his eyes upon me.

"Madam."

That was all the dead man said as he nodded genteelly, the slow word echoing in a voice incongruously civil considering the dead lips from which they issued and the corpses cooling upon the marble. It was mundane and matter of fact, an everyday courtesy made terrifying by the voice of death.

With that, my horror-stricken mind lost control on my straining limbs and, unfettered, spirited me away into the dark.

∗ ∗ ∗

I'd strolled past the tall, lime-colored townhome and its hedge-garbed fence countless times, often craning to catch a glimpse of the famous resident. I'd never had any reason to enter, though. Yet when my screaming legs brought me to the gate that night, things were terribly different.

I easily surmounted the spiked iron barricade and, hardly treading upon the dewy grass, was up the lion-flanked stairs and upon the creaking, whitewashed porch in an instant. My knocks seemed to echo within the heavy oaken door, and I noticed for the first time that my knuckles were bleeding.

No answer.

I banged again, harder this time. Faster. As if my urgency might influence fate on whether or not the antique townhouse's resident was at home.

No answer still, but maybe the creak of a floorboard within.

"Ma'am! Hello? I need your help!" It all came out at once. "I'm Laurel Cylphra—I'm looking for Ailson Kindler! We've done something terrible."

Chapter Two: Decay by Degrees

What had been a blood smear began to run, dribbling down the whitewashed door, trailing a sticky shadow. Whatever scrape was accentuating my banging with bursts of pain hardly registered as I railed upon the author's darkened porch. I was shouting, but only caught snippets of my own pleas as they rebounded off the stolid door, echoing with the same hollow, desperate inefficacy as my bursts of frantic knocking. The question of how long I would go on banging at a probably empty house began to form in one of the few still lucid districts of my mind. Gradually it dawned upon me, the sickening depth of the desperation that brought me howling like a lunatic at the threshold of a stranger's home. I knew I had nowhere else to go, and the first twinge of a shrinking, helpless sensation began to crowd my fear. I felt it coming at last, a chill panic. I was going to scream.

The faintest creak of a door latch being withdrawn spared the final tattered remnant of my composure.

The door opened no more than the finest crack, revealing nothing but a column of absolute dark and the faintest glint of multiple door chains. No sound issued forth—no greeting, no challenge, nothing.

"Miss Kindler?" I hazarded, straining to see inside. "I'm so sorry to… call… at such an inexcusable hour. I'm Laurel Cylphra, I need—"

"Something terrible," interrupted a voice like a rusty, slowly drawn knife. I halted, momentarily unsure of what was said.

"Excuse—" I was cut off again.

"You were blithering about 'something terrible,' you wouldn't be referring to your manners, mayhap?"

"I'm sorry to wake you, ma'am, but—"

"But still you're going on. You've went to greater lengths than a drunk would, and if you're a thief you're going about it all wrong—so what is it? And be brief."

I understand that I roused the woman, but this reception was not quite what I expected. Somewhat sobered by the chiding voice rasping from the dark, I tried to be both concise and reasonable sounding—goals very much at odds.

"Yes ma'am. I was at Evercrown earlier tonight, with others. We trespassed upon one of the resting places… the countess's family's mausoleum. We woke something there accidentally, something lingering from one of the crypt's residents. When we tried to flee it… it was terrible. It cut down two I was with. I ran. There was no where else…." I had done well keeping the tremble out of my voice, but choked on the memory of that final horror—of Sayn and Garamand death's and the terror in Liscena's eyes as I fled, leaving her to the apparition.

"Two with you, eh? Quite a minx. I suppose you've learned better for future trysts, hum?" A dusty chuckle followed from inside.

I gaped. She was making a quip. I was retelling the most terrifying incident of my life, still shuttering from it in fact, and the only person I could think of to help me, a stranger and a spinster, was making jokes at my expense. Certainly I was imposing. Certainly I was trying to cast my plight in a sympathetic light—or, at least, trying to avoid presenting myself as too much of a criminal. But I expected my reception to be met with something other than dismissal. Perhaps I'd been deluding myself.

"Oh, come now girl, show some spunk," the disembodied voice chided. "You've had a bad turn and come through it. I'm sorry about your friends, but obviously the Lady has more in store for you. Count yourself lucky and go home. You'll be more thankful for your luck come the morning."

That said, the door crept shut by the slightest degree. Immediately I slid the toe of my boot into the gap, jamming it open. Did she seriously take me for some churl, some stranger come to her doorstep by accident, hoping for a pat on the head as she prayed to Pharasma for a brighter tomorrow?

The beginnings of annoyance helped steady my resolve, and I hoped my voice as well. "Ma'am, I came to ask your help, I thought you might—" she cut me off again.

"If it's help you want, or a crime you wish to report, I can direct you to the Carpenter Street Watch garrison. Otherwise I don't know how you think I can be of service."

My brows furrowed, as a frustrating possibility came to mind, "You are Ailson Kindler, correct?" There was a long pause, and a sound that might have been a sigh.

"Yes. Though I favor being held at such a disadvantage nearly as little as I favor being awake this hour," came the eventual retort. At least she was talking; you don't ask the name of someone you're going to slam the door on. I withdrew my boot.

"I'm Laurel Cylphra. This isn't how I'd preferred we meet, ma'am, but I'm familiar with your writing and your expertise in matters—extraordinary. I'd hoped you might help me figure a way to right what I had a part in putting wrong tonight."

"Cylphra," she seemed to test the name, searching for its place in some mental file. "Perhaps you should start by telling me what actually happened tonight."

∗ ∗ ∗

The "accidental" clatter of the tea salver on the marble-topped end table next to me startled me awake. It took a moment to remember where I was, and I took in Kindler's disarming sitting room again. It was what one might expect the tearoom of a spinster in her seventies to look like, with the collected knickknacks and curios of a lifetime displayed amid copious settings of lace and porcelain. Yet, at the same time, it was obvious Ms. Kindler was more than some widow enjoying a slow, melancholy slide toward death. Rather than the portraits of lost loved ones or chinchy collectables, her shelves bore the wildest range of oddities, rarities, and grotesqueries. Upon a shelf laden with heavy books—several bearing Ms. Kindler's own name as author—leered a fierce looking tribal totem, while above it a stand for test tubes supported several vials of slender fluids, gnarled lengths of wood, and silken flowers. Over the mantle hung a sinister and quite sharp looking black spear, along with a faded portrait of four eclectic travelers in the rose garden of a sinister chateau. A sideboard displayed the skull of some fanged monstrosity between pieces of painted flatware, and an ancient looking tome supported a bowl of dried leaves and fruit. Even the tea set from which Kinder absently poured was a weird sort of treasure, bearing the knotting shapes of wingless golden dragons upon porcelain finer than eggshell.

I remembered retelling Ms. Kindler my story—twice, in fact, after all the questions she'd had—before dozing off. I had the feeling of being interrogated while recounting the evening's incident, not so much because she seemed to blame me for anything or even disapprove of my actions, but more because with each questioned nuance I felt as though I were giving away more than I'd meant. By the end my plays for sympathy had come to little, and I felt like I'd unintentionally presented myself as nothing more than a girl who'd run scared when she'd gotten beyond her depth. That idea pissed me off—mostly because after my actions I couldn't say it wasn't true. The past evening, its recounting, and my hammering conscience had exhausted me so that I'd fallen asleep on Ms. Kindler's stiff settee when she'd stepped out for moment.

She was more fully dressed than she'd been earlier, her hair pulled back in a loose iron-gray bun, her dress's high collar and long sleeves accentuating her thinness. There wasn't much to distinguish her from any other old maid. She seemed worn and nearly used up. Her reserved, stiffly starched clothing hid most of her skin, but what did show seemed less a part of her and more like wrinkled sheets festooned upon a drying rack too small for them. At some point a sour look had pinched her face and held tight, giving her the perpetually disapproving countenance of a Pharasmin priestess. Altogether, not the imposing adventuress I'd imagined. But the details gave me some hope. Her insistent questioning and even her unappreciated humor revealed a mind still very much active and alert, and through her silver-rimmed spectacles, her gray eyes seemed undulled by the tarnish of nostalgia and regret.

She put one of her delicate teacups into my hands. It wasn't filled with tea, but rather thick black coffee. I muttered thanks, brushing the sleep from my eyes and taming a few stray hairs.

"It's well after dawn," she said pointedly, filling her own cup, half from the matching teapot and half from a crystal decanter of brown liquid on the table. The decanter was nearly empty. "Probably best to be up and about."

Daintily taking a seat across from me, she scrutinized me patiently, watching me like an opponent in some game or—perhaps more aptly—like an unwelcome guest. I returned her look. A long moment of tea sipping passed.

"Altogether, not the imposing adventuress I'd imagined."

"Well?" I finally came to it.

"Well, that's it it seems," she took a long swing from her cup. "It's been lovely to chat with you, dear, but now it's time to be on your way home. Do call again—perhaps during more respectable hours."

"Ms. Kindler!" I protested, straightening in my seat, momentarily thinking I'd mistaken my impression of her shrewdness. "What about what I've told you. What of the spirit at Evercrown?"

"Exactly what I'm thinking of, dear." Neither her tone nor manner changed. "Best to be off. There's nothing to be done."

"'Nothing to be done?'" I repeated, incredulous, the already forgotten teacup in my hands clattering, spilling a bit into the saucer.

"If you're truly that concerned, I might suggest taking a bit of a holiday," she continued unvexed. "Do you have family in Caliphas? Or Karcau? Both are really quite lovely this season and I find a bit of time along the water often sooths my nerves."

"A holiday!? How can—" I began over excitedly, the sound of my own shrill voice in the close room halting me. Pulling in a long breath I paused and tried again, swift but not frantic. "Ms. Kindler, I apologize, but you don't seem to understand. My concern hasn't been for myself, but others. I saw a terrible thing last night. A terrible thing that by all that is right shouldn't be. It's about in the cemetery at my fault and who knows what hurt it might cause. I came for your advice as I've heard tell you've seen and faced down such things before. I need to know how so I can do the same."

From her look I wasn't sure that she'd comprehended. She didn't seem sour or insulted, but rather disappointed, or perhaps slightly sad. The look was gone with a shift of her posture as she set down her cup.

"Ms. Cylphra. I think it's you who doesn't understand," she said evenly, her gray eyes like silver through the sheen of her spectacles. "I am giving you my advice—advice from a long life that's seen many sad things. Leave this be and go. Go home, or if your conscience won't let you, go far away. In either case, let this drop."

I'd had enough of this. This surely wasn't what I'd come for and I'd obviously mistaken my hostess completely. I stood and bit my lip to keep back my words—but didn't bite hard enough. "You know, you're nothing like what they say about you. I'd heard all your stories were based on your life, but—" I just looked at the very old woman and gave my most withering scoff. She watched me, seemingly unperturbed—what worked on amorous barflies apparently held little insult to her. I made my way for the door.

She stood properly, coming to see me out, "Quite true, Ms. Cylphra, but there it is, and there's nothing to be done about it."

The door was open and I was back on the porch with the morning's early rays spilling sidelong through the cool mist. With the night dispelled, I considered other options aloud. "I should have gone to the church to begin with. They'll know how to handle something like this."

A sharp scoff pursued me. Looking back, Ms. Kindler was standing in the door.

"Oh, they'll know. But I doubt they'll believe a stray cat like you," she chuckled dismissively. "And even if they check into your story, they'll hold you for a graverobber while they do—and they'd quickly find they were right to. The Pharasmins deal mercifully with the dead, but tend to be less so with the living."

I halted on the steps for only an instant, half turning and throwing up a hand in frustration. "What then! Just run off like you say? Feh!" Doing my best to look like I had a direction, I marched down the remaining steps, "I'll handle this myself. Good day, Ms. Kindler."

I hardly heard her response, and something in her tone, something wistful, halted me, "You're not going to let this drop? Are you?"

"I think I've been clear about that," I shot back harshly.

"Well, I can't help you—" she started distantly, but it was my turn to cut her off.

"You've made that more than obvious." I took another step.

"But if you're not going to be satisfied until you've had a lick at this," she said evenly, an eyebrow raised archly, "I know someone who might."

∗ ∗ ∗

When I was a child they still called the neighborhood Merridweigh Gardens. I remember attending a lawn party at one of the estates there—wandering off with my brother, staining our hands and faces amid a patch of wild black berries, and upsetting mother mightily. I was embarrassed at the time, but returning I kept a lookout for any hint of that berry patch.

There was nothing, though. The life had drained out of the community along with the snooty manor owners and their money. What had been Merridweigh Gardens, a cluster of the wealthiest, most envied addresses in Ardis, was now just what folks called "Mud Way."

No doubting that the name was apt. With none left to defend against it, the Vhatsuntide River had sought to reclaim the grounds along its banks, conspiring with the frequent rains to drench the earth and undermine anything that stood without roots. Puddles sprawled into entire muddy lakes, fueling a marshy degeneracy as once-manicured lawns and bordering woods degraded into fields of weeds and snarls of tangled shade trees. Patches of irregularly scattered cobbles suggested the routes fine carriages once strolled, leading inevitably to the picked-over carcasses of manor houses and the remains of attendant structures. Over it all hung the pervasive musk of wet earth and rotting leaves, making things seem older, and I felt as though I walked among ancient ruins rather than properties abandoned only recently.

Abandoned, but perhaps not deserted. I'd heard too many stories of Mud Way not to be wary. Stories of homes turned into the courts of cruel gangs and used as the settings of crimes too raucous to commit within city walls. There were also rumors of looters seeking to scrape the last flecks of gilding from overlooked banisters and high molding, only to meet terrible ends at the fangs of beasts and hungry boogeymen. On hearing most of these tales far from their setting I'd cynically dismissed them. Now, here, alone, I chose my path carefully, as though even the most fanciful rumors might be true.

Keeping to the thin tree lines that once separated estate from estate, I prowled swift as I could, hoping not to encounter anyone else along my way. The Watch didn't patrol Mud Way anymore, and anyone I might run into likely had a purpose more nefarious than my own. Such didn't speak well of the one upon whom I was calling, but I knew how nobles were with their homes and to what lengths pride would drive some to keep up even the most easily contradicted appearances. I had no doubt that my host, the Mr. Barttley that Ms. Kindler had suggested I call upon, would be an eccentric, but to resist the rot that permeated the area—both the vegetative and human varieties—his home must be a fortress.

It was nearing noon when I came to "Barttley Manor," a wreck of especial decrepitude threatening to topple into the Vhatsuntide. The estate grounds had transformed into a morass, soggy earth weakening the ground and the grip of trees, fence posts, and foundations alike, giving everything an unnerving, off kilter appearance. The manor house was the greatest victim, loosing its footing and resettling unevenly. The whole structure looked as though it were undertaking an impossibly slow drunken reel, staggering backward before its inevitable pitch to the ground.

But what marked the ruins among the others were its furnishings, the ones scattered about what of its yard hadn't fallen away into the river. Not garden furniture, but carved tables and a pile of sturdy dining room chairs, a dry sink spilling shattered ceramics, a mossy divan, and more, all scattered upon the weedy lawn as though partially carried off but discarded with frantic haste. Where every other home I'd circled was a wreck, they were deliberately emptied wrecks. Something here had kept the looters at bay.

With each step toward the sagging house my boots sunk slightly deeper into the soggy earth and I indulged speed over caution, imagining myself sinking into the swampy lawn if I tarried too long. Reaching a front corner, the house leaned above me, its weathered timbers scaly with the scabby remnants of flaking paint, its façade riddled with shadowy cracks, ingresses welcoming to all manner of beetles, worms, and earwigs. Especially earwigs, an infestation of the ugly brown bugs swarmed in mindless whorls, poking antennae and clawed anuses from seemingly every split panel and dark gap.

"Did nothing lie dead in this damnable city anymore?"

Doing my best to avoid touching the house itself, disgusted by what thrived within its moldy walls and the suggestion of even fouler things within, I made my way to the remains of the porch and with a single high step mounted the platform. The sturdy front door remained trustworthy, settling in its frame only slightly and holding a good lock. Not a great lock, though, as some inexpert prowler had obviously been at it, leaving the broken end of a metal pick within the keyhole. It took some convincing, but lending my shoulder to it, the door reluctantly ground open.

With the sun still high in the sky, gray light filtered into the house through myriad cracks and crusty windows. The invasion of air through the opened front door sent unaccustomed eddies through the entry hall, throwing heavy motes of dust through room, filling it with a cloud of must and old mold smells. The entry had been emptied, with only a stained stairwell reaching to a second floor balcony above. Empty doorframes opened off the hall, the rooms beyond either empty or littered with the wreckage of toppled furnishings. Although shadows clung to the ceiling high above, the house's interior still managed to feel claustrophobic, as though the stale air was decaying along with the memories of past lavishness.

The creak of an upstairs floorboard whined through the stillness, the noise muffled by the thick dust. The second floor coveted its shadows more than the first, hiding everything behind a row rounded balusters. It the noise was anything more than just the complaining of the old house itself, I decided it was probably just some savaging animal—a rat or raccoon—or perhaps a squatter, nothing more dangerous. Or maybe even Mr. Barttley himself. I smirked. My errand was growing more ludicrous by the minute, and from the state of the place it was obvious nothing more discerning than scavengers or transients still made a home of the place. But regardless, I hadn't come all this way to leave my curiosity unsatisfied.

I'd halfway climbed the creaking steps, reaching a wide landing at its midpoint, when a mangy hunting dog surprised me, appearing from around the corner at the stairs' summit. It didn't so much pad onto the balcony as tumble, pitching like a marionette mastered by a manic child, shuddering and threatening to collapse with every awkward motion. Its filthy head lolled toward me, though what gazed down squirmed in the dog's eye sockets.

Sick? Crippled? My mind recoiled though the possibilities, dismissing each for more uncanny explanations as disgust seized my limbs. Had I been cursed? Did nothing lie dead in this damnable city any more? The bug eaten remains of the dog carcass's muzzle peeled back, revealing rows of shattered fangs. A dry rasp issued over its limp, dusty tongue, a noise that might have been a growl had the thing been whole. For the second time in as many days the primitive demand for blind flight shrieked through my mind. Had I not spent the past hours reliving my retreat from the Venachdahlia crypt, I might have fled again, but the built up frustration and indignance fought it back. If I was to be murdered, it would be for pride, not cowardice.

The corpse flung itself—a patchwork of fur scraps, dangling ligaments, and flaking bone shards—down the stairs. Dodging against the landing's banister I reeled for an instant as the railing gave against my weight, threatened to collapse, but ultimately held. The canine tangle of knotted hair and broken limbs landed at my heels with a clamor of sickening snaps, its teeth and exposed ribs scoring the wood with equal ferocity. It didn't bother to regain its footing, and in an instant was lunging at me sidelong, as though whatever foulness enlivened it still saw no difference between gnashing fangs and the jagged split in its side. Its wild spill had given me just enough time to vault halfway up the next flight of steps, and when its gnashing rot lunched toward me I held the high ground. My shout of revolted anger punctuated the impact as I spun my boot in a sidelong kick. Its body gave overmuch, my boot sinking into its splitting hide, overbalancing it. Wildly flailing limbs went out from under the thing, sending it toppling backward into the landing's heavy wooden banister. The railing balked at this second abuse and, in a cacophony of splintering wood and scrapping bones, collapsed, spilling the hound to the ground a half-story below.

I rushed up the remaining steps and spun, preparing an even more forceful kick, expecting to find the creature already loping up after me. The house's heavy silence had returned like a blanket of smothering smoke. Over the second floor railing I looked down upon the dog carcass, which now resembled a trod upon tomato more than an animal. Several furious joints and ravenous organs twitched amid the mess of bones and dog fur, but those broken bits had lost the coordination to pursue me. For a too-long moment of morbid curiosity I tarried to watch the thing die, but its mindless struggles didn't cease. I almost pitied it as I thought of the life, whatever it was, trapped within the abomination below, condemned to wait for decay's slow release rather than death's sympathetic end.

A door's echoing slam startled me back to the moment. Cursing myself for not expecting something worse after seeing the dog-horror—and for not fleeing of my own volition when I'd had the opportunity—I snapped my attention down the hallway, hand quick for my dagger. Slits of dusty light streaming weakly through the patchy ceiling lit the corridor, revealing facing rows of rotted portraits and sunken doors, but otherwise blessed emptiness. Except there was something more, the simple waver of light, that of a lantern or candle, flickering from the hall's end.

The house couldn't be on fire, the tinderbox would have gone up in moments had even a spark strayed across its floorboards. Someone was actually here. I'd given up on actually finding Mr. Barttley shortly after laying eyes upon the manor, entering only to see what kind of jest Ms. Kindler had sent me upon. Expecting a fool's errand and finding a death trap, I shocked myself by again coming to wonder if someone might in fact be living in this wreck.

Although the complaints of the long untrod flooring countered any attempt at stealth, I gingerly made my way down the narrow hall. When the flickering light fell upon my boots I stood before a solid oaken door, its lower portion carved halfway through by endlessly repeated clawing. Could the dog corpse have been a guard imprisoning Mr. Barttley? Or even some roaming monstrosity that had found like decay within the manor, trapping its careless owner within? Such seemed improbable, but I'd witnessed more than my fair share of improbabilities in the past few hours. With good manners seeming a distant and potentially a dangerous liability in this ruin, I gripping the door handle and shouldered my way into the lit room without knocking.

Dozens of eyes pinned me in place, and for a startled moment I though it'd walked into some sort of ambush. A grotesque perfume unlike the wet must that permeated the rest of the house washed over me, the malodorous twin of the stench that exploded from the kicked dog corpse. Once this room had been a library, though a leaky ceiling had ruined whole shelves and rotted out parts of the flooring, pitching much of the collection to the floor. The trove had included more than just books, with tarnished figurines, the chipped busts of stern scholars, and stranger objets d'art scattered amid the shelves, upon the floor, and lolling crookedly upon the walls. Yet there were new additions, inexpert taxidermies and morbid folk art worked in palettes of fur, flesh, and viscera, nailed upon exposed walls and suspended from toppled shelves by the weight of heavy albums. It was their eyes, the hollow gazes of rats and snakes and caught pigeons by the dozens, that had transfixed me and the smell of their decay—many of which had been rotting for months or more—that offended my senses.

I staggered back into the hall in disgust, trying to steal a half-clear breath. At first I mistook the noise for the grating of something being drug in short unsteady bouts across the splintering wood floor. Then the hiss exploded in insane intensity, filling the room, echoing down the hall, spilling through the manor's cracked timbers in a riot of shrill, maniac cackling.

Chapter Three: The Lost Prince

The mad cackle sliced through the rotting manor, shrill like the shriek of a rusty hinge, but one without a wall to halt its opening scream. The tooth-needling whine rose and tittered, unleashing some insane hilarity, stretching on and on rather than reaching a crescendo. A chorus of nails on slate would have been more welcome.

That first impression remained throughout and long after the meeting.

The combination of razor-edged noise and the reek of animal rot had forced me back from the open door, a one-two punch to the head and gut that momentarily disoriented me and knocked me to the brink of retching. A quick clench of my eyes and gorge brought me back to myself. Straightening, I turned back into the room to face the source of the noise.

Were the library the manor's mind, it would certainly be an appropriate one for this rotten, broken-backed body. The remnants of a shattered skylight admitted a gray haze, but also copious leaves, invading ivy coils, and mold-ringed rainwater puddles. The bookcases lining the walls gaped. What few shelves weren't snapped or sagging bore pointlessly few volumes, the majority being strewn upon the floor or reduced to pulp and loose pages by weather and pointless destruction. Everywhere else were the ruins of a once noble collection, with scholarly busts, high-backed reading chairs, and the curiosities of forgotten studies wrecked and dashed haphazardly about the room.

But none of this was the source of the room's reek. Instead, the grotesquely tempting sweetness of rotting flesh spilled from horrible dissections nailed upon rotten walls and shelves repurposed as splintered frames. Pigeons, rats, snakes, and less identifiable base creatures hung blasphemously naked, their insides rearranged, recombined, or removed at the insane whim of some probing sadist. I had no more than a moment to sneer my disgust and seek the object of my instant loathing before, like some hellish genie, the source of that deranged laugh jolted up from the floor to sprawl upon a cluttered table, in doing so sending dozens of battered tomes to finally loose their muddy pages across the floor.

After the encounter with that horrible dog-thing, some part of me expected to find Mr. Barttley dead. As usual, my pessimism didn't disappoint. What I hadn't anticipated was just how lively a corpse he would be. For the second time that day I was silently screaming curses to myself, wondering if the living even outnumbered the wandering dead in this damnable city.

Regardless of the answer, I wasn't about to switch from one side to the other today. My knife reassuringly solid in my white-knuckled grip, I prepared to test my reflexes against those of the corpse, ready to stick the thing and dash out of the manor should it prove as senselessly ravenous as its rotting pet.

With some effort it peeled itself from the table, listing awkwardly as it took me in, volleys of that lunatic noise blaring from the snaggle-toothed remains of its face.

"Oh ho ho! A ripe one! Too long since we've had a guest—a real guest," the dead thing cackled. Rigor locked its jaw in place, causing it to toss its head with every word, nodding like a frantic puppet. Its words were an obscene coo, like a cruel child trying to lull a small animal with its tone even as it promised tortures. "Is it a talking one? Or do its sounds hide inside?"

My curiosity got the better of me once more. "Mr. Barttley?" I asked, disgusted and apprehensive.

Its rotten mouth flew open and the shrill asylum choir exploded forth. "Delightful! What a polite guest. Come in! Come in and visit. It's such a thrill to hear words again."

I held my ground. Accepting the invitation of a corpse seemed like a path fraught with webs of irony, and I wasn't prepared to bungle into them just yet.

"You're Barttley?" I repeated, cautiously.

"A scrap of him. A morsel of him. All that the mold didn't want. Yes, I was Oljid Barttley." His voice trailed off. For a moment a haze of nostalgia seemed to cloud the corpse's dull eyes, but the jaundiced orbs brooked little distraction to their manic rolling. I was quick to pounce, hoping to exploit a fleeting moment of lucidity.

"Someone told me you might know something about a corpse in Evercrown. Somebody buried with a dagger in his chest."

"You can't expect me to know just anybody. I used to know plenty of somebodies. But the problem is that after you die, even nobodies turn into some bodies." More shrill laughter. Damn—so much for that moment of lucidity.

"Yes. But someone special," I persisted over the cackling. "A body buried in the Venachdalia crypt. One with a gold and ruby dagger stuck in his chest."

"If I had a treasure like that, I'd put it in a chest too!" Even more hysterics. Why couldn't he have just moaned and lurched onto my knife? I could have been out of this stinking wreck by now.

I gave him his moment to cackle. Unfortunately, the dead seem to have a completely skewed sense of time to compliment their twisted sense of humor, and the corpse's tittering went on and on. I was preparing to leave the insane thing to jabber till its jaw fell off when its unnatural mirth started to sound like words once more.

"You… you found the prince," Barttley screeched through his glass-shattering glee.

"What?" I asked firmly, tiring of the lunatic corpse.

"The prince! Lieralt. The Lost Prince. You found where they stashed him. And what a perfect hiding spot! No one would look in a graveyard for a murder victim—especially not in the count's family tomb. And even if they did find him there, the backlash on the count would be delicious!" The dead man's hysterics got the better of him once more.

"Who is Lieralt?" I shouted, not willing to let Barttley get his full insane enjoyment out of what sounded like a very old joke.

"The prince! Your some body! Don't they teach you peasants anything?" With a dry scoff, the corpse pulled itself fully off the floor, trailing bursts of dusty gargling laughter. Its stiff limbs carried it unsteadily, like a legless man on crutches, teetering in cautious steps and half-controlled tumbles across the room to a pile of pulped tomes mostly hidden by dry brown vines. Rooting amid the parchment mash, Barttley recovered the back cover of what had obviously once been a sizable leather-bound volume, but was now nothing more than a few dozen torn pages clinging to a dismembered spine. Knife still in hand, I warily watched him make the arduous return trek of eight steps. Nearing the desk, he tumbled upon it like a drunk, tearing loose several more pages as he crushed the book's remains under his equally desiccated chest. Rearing up, he leafed through the crumbling collection as swiftly as his brittle finger bones allowed. Finally he jammed a claw-like yellow nail into a page, threatening to tear the abused parchment.

"Come learn something," Barttley said like a stodgy old professor, his wasted frame seemingly to inflate a bit with this new pompousness.

I edged closer, still wary, yet feeling a bit foolish for it at the same time. Had the dead man's insanity merely been an affectation to lure me close with some shred of trivia, I'd have been shocked and grimly impressed before meeting my end. At the same time, though, I wouldn't skip to the summons of a living lunatic, so I saw no reason to give a dead lunatic any more benefit of the doubt.

Craning my neck to peer at the page—and to remain far enough out of the corpse's reach to avoid his clutches should he grab for me—I looked upon a family tree, one sprawling, over-tall, knotting back on itself unnaturally and well in need of pruning. The surname at the bottom was "Odranti," the nation's ruling family.

"Lord Halboncrant had little interest in warnings."

"This. This here!" The corpse prodded the page, leaving a score amid a cluster of names with dates from just over a century ago: "Prince Knoldaman Odranti, 4537–4604" then, reaching beyond him, "Lieralt Odranti, 4577–4604" and "Queen Maraet Odranti, 4584–4658." Below Maraet the line stretched and diverged in raucous tangles. Lieralt, however, proved a dead branch.

"So the prince and his son died together?" I guessed. The tangled affairs of the aristocracy had never been of much interest to me, despite my own family name.

"What a pleasant little package that would make, all wrapped up with ribbon for Harvest Feast," he mocked, looking at me without blinking. It was difficult to read whatever rancid emotions still lingered behind his moldy features, but hate is a hard sentiment to miss.

"Murdered, then? Or should I start guessing all the ways royals might die?"

"Murdered indeed, like most would-be princes," he said in a hissed chuckle. "But that's the irony. This one didn't want to be prince, he wanted to be common."

"What's the point of murdering him, then? If he didn't want the crown, why not just foist it off to his sister and be done with it?"

"That wasn't good enough. It wasn't just that he didn't want the crown, he wanted to break the crown. Not only didn't he want to be prince, he didn't want there to even be a prince."

"What? Why wouldn't he want that?" I instantly realized the ridiculousness of my question, having lived my entire life under the rule of impotent counts and princes. "I mean, why wouldn't he want to rule?"

"Some people are leaders, some people are dreamers," Barttley explained whimsically. "And some people have dreams and try to lead people into them, but they usually turn out to be nightmares when they realize no one else wants to live in their dreams"

I was catching on. "No prince means no princess. So then his sister had him murdered?"

Barttley gaped, his smoldering eyes squinting at me. "What a grim place the world's become if that's what you expect of family."

Apparently I wasn't catching on. My unamused glower prodded him on.

"No prince doesn't just mean no princesses; it means no counts, no court, no nobility, nothing. It means generations of titles, properties, favors, allowances go down in a burning wreck. Utter chaos!" The corpse threw up his claws for effect, sending up a cloud of flaking skin and startling me enough to leap back. If he had actually been lashing out at me, I would have been just a moment too late. Grinding my jaw and suppressing a frustrated shout, I glared at him. The scabby remains of lips pulled back, displaying a jagged row of mismatched black and yellow teeth. There was a joke here, and he seemed too pleased to know I was in on it.

"So, they murdered him," he finished matter-of-factly, punctuating the sentence with a mirthful croak.

"The nobles?" I clarified. He nodded stiffly. "And threw his body in the Venachdalia family mausoleum?"

"So you say. No one ever knew. It was some business in its day. Everyone put on quite the show of being distraught and vowing justice. All the best sleuths and seers and whatnot went on the trail, but the culprits never turned up." He leaned toward me conspiratorially, continuing in a hoarse whisper. "The truth of the matter, though, is that they were all in on it. The best investigators were paid to find out what happened, but then were paid even more to turn around and go home. Very few people ever knew who the actual murderers were, or how Leiralt was killed, but everyone knew he had to die, and in the end were quietly relieved that someone had gone and done it. Except for Maraet, that is."

"The princess." I followed cautiously and was ignored.

"Without ever seeking the court's advice, she had the church do what they could. The bishop of Ardis took the task on himself, promising to call the prince's spirit back from the Lady's grasp. He tried. And he failed." Something about a disappointed priest obviously tickled the dead man, his new cackle nastier than all the times before.

This was starting to sound like some folk story. If anyone knew something about the dead and bringing them back or putting them down, it was the clergy of Pharasma. "How's that even possible?" I said, not bothering to keep the incredulity out of my voice.

"That's the best part," he snickered. "Nearly no one ever knew. And then after the tears and veils there was a new queen with a crown on her head and things were as they always were. Leiralt became the Lost Prince, just another royal mystery—just another story for the taproom."

"Nearly no one?" I asked. He was baiting me with this and his mention of "murderers," but for the moment I was content to indulge the withered wreck.

"We Barttleys have always had an interest in magic. When old Prince Knoldaman died, I was studying with a mystic who called himself Kirrahjah and claimed to be from Qadria—even though he spoke with a Chelish accent. Although foremost a showman and quite popular in Ardis at the time, he did truly know something about the arcane. I was there when the messenger first came with a bag of platinum and a request to solve a very strange puzzle: how to cut short a man's life and any life he might have thereafter. Kirrahjah mused on this for many nights, and then I didn't see him for nearly a month. Soon after the prince was killed, and I knew my mentor was involved. It took many years to be sure, but I finally found my proof." Barttley tried to nod proudly, an absurd lurching of his too stiff neck.

"After Kirrahjah's death, I bought all of his possessions and papers—many of which I still keep in my library today." He gestured around him to the ridiculous wreckage. Had Kirrahjah's papers truly held any secrets they were long lost.

"The old wizard had grown poor in his dotage, but worse, forgetful. Among his works I found four names—names that could have made him the richest man in Ardis had he remembered who they were: Ferendri, Geirais, Halboncrant, and Troidais, four of the oldest and most esteemed families in the city. They'd paid Kirrahjah to find a way to kill an unwanted prince and keep him dead, and he found a way—and he didn't. The old charlatan was never as skilled as his performances led most to believe, so there was no way he could actually do what his patrons asked. At the same time, he was a greedy coot, and the first bag of coins came with the promise of more of the same. So he conned them in a way only a better wizard would be able to reveal—and he knew they didn't have a better wizard. He created a dagger, and made it as grim and fabulous as only a showman could. I only saw the sketches, but I'm sure the murderers were quite delighted with his work. Truly, it was a weapon to kill a prince. But that's all it would do. Souls are sturdy things, you see—just look at me!" he spread his arms wide in a momentary burst of cackles.

"Kirrahjah couldn't conceive of a way to actually destroy a soul, but he was clever enough to trap one. So that's what he built: a cage for a soul. A cage shaped like a dagger. That way, when the prince was slain, his spirit would be locked into the dagger and nothing, not even the bishop of Ardis's magic, could call him back from the Boneyard, because he wouldn't be there. Clever fool!"

For the past day I'd been beset by dread: of the rotting thing in front of me, of a patchwork dog, and especially the murderous spirit I'd unleashed on Ardis. Now, I found myself actually starting to pity it.

"Then the spectre is the spirit of this Prince Leiralt," I mused absently, "and we set him free."

As soon as I looked upon Barttley's face I realized my mistake.

"You unleashed the Lost Prince's spirit. Then you have Kirrahjah's dagger!" A greed beyond death replaced the hate in the dead man's eyes. "I must have it! You must give it to me!" The corpse was scrabbling across the table toward me, eyes locked on my knife, broken yellow nails stretching out for me.

The damnable thing was faster than I'd expected, and again I lurched away too late. One of Barttley's dead gray hands had wrapped around the knife's blade and he was trying to wrestle it away from me, mistaking the crude dockworker's tool for his former mentor's masterpiece. I heaved back, but the corpse was far stronger than I had imagined his atrophied frame would have made possible. A black ichor—not quite blood, but more of a running clot—oozed down the blade, over the hilt, and, to my revulsion, beneath my grip. I could feel my hand slipping, yielding to the dead man's wrenching, but I'd be damned if I was going to be without a weapon in the corpse's lair. Jamming the ball of my left hand against the pommel, I shifted my momentum and thrust the blade directly into the corpse's grip. The half-sharp knife tore through the flimsy gray flesh, slamming the twitching claw back, pinning it to Barttley's hollow chest.

The blow had brought me intimately close to the dead thing, so when he screamed, he did so directly into my face, the full foulness of his decomposed bowels breaking over me along with the terrible, breathless noise. The dead man's scream was somehow even more profane that his laughter, a sound of agony that seemed to come from beyond bodily pain. Forcing the knife deeper, I met Barrtley's furious gaze, but there was more than hatred of the living in those dead orbs. A noxious yellow flame burned within, an unnatural light that swiftly filled the corpse's eyes and exploded forth, filling my vision and consuming the library around me. Blind, my head echoing with the scream of a damned soul, I felt a gut-wrenching vertigo, and then all went silent.

∗ ∗ ∗

Something incredibly large struck me, something wet and cold. I blinked and tried to clear my head. The realizations came gradually. I was on the ground. Mud was oozing between my fingers. A whippoorwill was rambling nearby, with the sound of water farther away. I hadn't been struck then, I'd fallen. But, the manor—how?

Kneeling, I looked around. I was outside the house, sprawled on its marshy, furniture-strewn lawn. I didn't think I'd blacked out. It was something Barttley did, some defense after I'd stabbed him. That sickly light had somehow magically flung me outside. Well enough for me. It seemed that the cordial part of my visit with the dead man had ended, and I wasn't eager to think of how our scrape might have ended otherwise. There were also other matters at hand.

"Leiralt," I murmured, testing the name. Somewhere out there was the spirit of a murdered prince, alive—or something like that—after a century of who knows what hell. Thinking back, it had been we who had attacked upon seeing the apparition. Could he have merely been defending himself? And when he killed Garmand…

Ferendri. Garmand Ferendri. Leiralt had said his last name. Had the prince mistaken Garmand for one of his killers?

The questions rushed past me, and I wasn't about to find their answers crouching in the mud, waiting for Barttley to chase after me. The dead man's recollections had left me with far more questions than I'd had before I'd come. Now I had a ghost to find, and I had a few leads on where he might be.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Just a moment more, Lord Halboncrant!" I tried to explain, doing my best to ignore the glares of the affronted house staff and the bluster of the corpulent nobleman who refused to hear how his life might be at risk. I'd had to make claims to get past the stodgy butler, claims he'd taken to his master as promises, and now that I'd thrice explained my deception and true reason for intruding I was suddenly—bafflingly—unwelcome.

"I've no times for jokes, girl. On your way, or I'll call for the guard." He dismissed me with a wave of his hand, which in turn set most of his upper frame waggling. The butler took an insistent step forward, wielding his disapproval like a pike.

"Your life is at risk!" I said as plainly as I could, not for the first time. "If you'd only listen for a moment I—"

"I'm quite sure I know better than some street trollop whether or not my life is in jeopardy. I don't know what you think you've heard or what reward you think you'll swindle with your lies, but you'll have to find some other mark. Ginieus Halboncrant is no dupe. Now good night!" He turned his attention to the butler. "Collis, see her out now. And we will discuss this later."

Nodding his obedience, the butler took another step toward me, guiding me with his gestures back toward the entryway. He was already gesturing for a footman to open the heavy front doors, as if at any moment he might pick me up by my coat and heave me though like a sailor offloading his bundle. My quick glower dissuaded any parting indignity he might have tried as an attempt to get back into his master's good graces.

In the next moment, I was past the barred outer fence surrounding the Halboncrants' overwrought townhome, the metallic echo of the slammed gate the only immediate sound on the dark avenue.

It had taken me the better part of the afternoon to sate my curiosities and eventually seek out Lord Halboncrant. I only passed through the city on my return from Merridweigh Gardens, knotting up my courage and returning to Evercrown Cemetery—by way of the road and front gate this time. The grave tenders paid me absolutely no mind, leaving me to suspect that our decision not to enter through the main road the night previous had been grossly overcautious. I found the Venachdalia mausoleum easily in the afternoon light, and in perfect repair—the door closed and without a sign of our disturbance or the other tragedies I knew had happened within. The great stone door was still unlocked, though. With a few bolstering breaths I had them open and was back inside.

"The squalor of an Ardis alley was no place for this creature."

It was just how I'd left it. The charred bones and ashes of a dozen counts scarred the mausoleum floor, the cold body of Sayn the boatman among them. Garmand was there too, a look of wide-eyed terror frozen on features that looked withered and wasted, as though he hadn't just died, but had every spark of vitality drawn from him. I looked away quickly. What wasn't there was both an immediate relief and a new mystery. Liscena, Garmand's sister, who had found the body with the remarkable dagger, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was that dreadful weapon. But most obviously, neither was the spectre of what might be Prince Leiralt. In the dust, the few flakes of his tattered corpse remained, crumbled to near nothingness with the spirit loosed from its rotten confines.

I departed swiftly and was back in the city before dark. With no idea where a century-old prince might go, or even generally how the dead might while away the daylight hours, I sought out what I could about the four families Barttley mentioned. Most gossip surrounded Ginieus Halboncrant, the only scion of the Halboncrant line residing in Ardis, a lecher who seemed to personally consume most of the profit—and product—of his family's local fisheries. I had hoped to probe him on what he might know of his ancestor's crime, or at the very least warn him that a murderous sprit might bear him ill will, but my audience did not go as well as I had hoped.

Here and there along the avenue shadowy travelers made their way through the night, drifting through irregular islands of yellow light as the ill-tended street lamps flickered and guttered in the chill evening breeze. The whole day had been a debacle, and a near-deadly one at that, serving only to remind me why I so purposefully avoided the company of the city's so-called nobility. It'd had been nearly two days since I'd had an honest sleep, and though the house I'd been squatting in was no palace, it was warm, dry, and relatively safe. With a long sigh, I cut into an alley, plotting the shortest path home.

I made one turn in the dark and he was there.

Royal and terrible, his severe features girded in the imposing finery of a bygone Ustalavic lord, he was like something from legend, a being that had lost his own life but won a greater existence for the reputation that persisted past his death. A crown adorned his head, one similar to that of royal heirs, but twisted and made morbid in death, transformed into a symbol of dread. He was as I had seen him the previous night, but somehow even more real, more present than before, though still his extremities grew transparent and faded away on ethereal eddies, making it impossible to mistake him for a living man. The squalor of an Ardis alley was no place for this creature, and the filth-smeared walls seem to shudder in dread of his very presence. I'd nearly run into him, and my flesh recoiled at the thought of his touch, both at the unnatural collision of flesh and soul and at the knowledge that everything I'd seen him encounter had died. He looked down at me, griping me with his gaze, judging the shocked expression upon my face. I waited for the blow to come, the touch that meant death, tensing in preparation—but it didn't fall.

With grim intent he was around me and moving silently away, fixed on some purpose of which I was not a factor. I gasped, releasing the breath I'd momentarily clung to, thinking it was my last. I hesitated only an instant, knowing I might never have the chance again.

"Prince Leiralt!" I called after the spectre, trying to keep fear's waver out of my voice. The spirit came to a slow halt, and turned to fully face me. A ghostly blade that hadn't been there a moment ago now shimmered in his hand—the same blade he had slain Sayn and Garmand with. His gaze was his only response, a swordsman's challenge to a potential adversary.

I hadn't thought this far ahead—being honest with myself, I'd half expected to be dead by now.

"Your highness. I was among those in the crypt last night—those who released you. I know it must have been a shock, but we meant you no harm, and any who did are long dead. Is there some way I can help you find your rest?"

Again his gaze locked me in place, his insubstantial features ever in motion, flickering like a silent blaze between expressions of hatred, rage, fear, confusion, and sorrow, all faster than the eye could follow. When his voice came, it was hollow and from a great distance, as though his being were merely the aperture through which the sound escaped.

"You would do well to be away from me, my lady. There is no rest. I am doomed. And so will those around me be doomed." With that, he was moving away again.

I pursued him out of the alley, halting in the street as he reached the iron bars of the Halboncrant home and passed through as though they were so much fog. For long minutes I waited, watching the darkened house through the foliage. But I fled when the screaming began.

Chapter Four: Relics

I almost returned home that night.

It would have been easy. The old house wasn't far from the manor of Lord Halboncrant—the late Lord Halboncrant if my more than ample suspicions held true. As if seeking the solace of familiar cobbles, my steps had turned toward the avenues I'd been chauffeured over countless times in my youth. But as I reached the cross of Garvin Way and Viola's Walk, a scant three blocks from the old home, I remembered the pain of a million shallow cuts, a million petty insults and guilty manipulations from a life of vicious luxury. In the shadows around me I could see her practiced smile, her arrogant welcome, her empty words drowned by the words in her eyes: "I knew you'd be back."

No. I wouldn't be facing my mother this evening. After having faced the shade of Prince Lieralt I'd confronted enough monsters for one night.

Exhausted, I turned toward the wrecked district of White Corner and the cold night that gave nothing and asked for nothing in return.

∗ ∗ ∗

A sound from the street woke me from a black, oblivious sleep. It had been nearly two days since I'd had the opportunity to actually lie down. That whole time I'd been trying not to think of sleep, trying not to dread it, expecting dreams to agitate the wounds and terrors of the past days into vivid, inescapable nightmares. When finally the opportunity came, I hadn't expected to completely shut down like I did and jerked awake as I came back to myself. The rest was a blessing, but in the slums of Ardis, such unwariness could swiftly become much more abiding.

For a moment I didn't recognize the cracked plaster of my second favorite squatting place, an abandoned townhouse without even a brass doorknob left to loot. Gaining my footing, I looked through the flyspecked shudders to see what commotion had roused me. The final improbable thrashes of a clash between a scabby stray dog and a rat almost half its size played out in the broken avenue below. I didn't tarry to learn which would be the victor. In Ardis, one didn't need go out of her way to find desperation and outrage, and I already expected my day to have more than its fair share of both.

Apparently I'd let my satchel drop last night as I fell upon the pile of rugs, towels, and drapes I'd heaped into a makeshift mattress here weeks ago, spilling what little I had across the floor. Tossing the contents back inside, I paused with the largest object in my hand, a familiar, battered book with the title Her Wounds Never Bled stamped upon the spine. I'd read the adventuresome romance time and time again, vainly dreaming of such excitement in my own life, idolizing the author who was purportedly much a part of the fictional heroine. Flipping the cover open for a moment, I rolled my eyes at the frontspiece—a dashing lothario kissing the neck of a pale maiden in a bloody wedding dress—and the facing title page where beneath the title's elegant script the name "Ailson Kindler" stretched across the page.

In the last two days I'd had more than one brush with death and met my idol, and found neither quite to my liking. Snapping the cover shut, I flicked my wrist and sent the book spinning into a corner—no sense in that tripe weighing me down anymore.

I pulled on the frock coat I stole from my brother months past and headed out onto the gray street. The sky matched the flagstones, with the only evidence of the sun being what vague light managed to leak through the dense clouds. There was no way to tell what time it was, but I guess it didn't matter. I had a call to make, and I figured there was no good time to tell someone that a dead man is coming to kill him.

∗ ∗ ∗

Before I even reached the front porch I knew there was something strange about the Troidaises. The coach gate leading up to the family's city home was shut and, from the rust encrusting the lock and sagging bars, didn't look like it'd be opening again any time soon. A guard booth bearing the pealing green and gray colors of the old noble family faced the street from its place amid an unkempt hedge wall, but it looked like drunks and bums had been the only recent occupants. Obviously the Troidaises had fallen on hard times, that was no surprise and only made them like nearly every other family in Ardis. The strangeness—the downright social sin—was that they let it show.

I immediately suspected Rarentz Troidais wasn't common to the city's doomed aristocracy when he personally opened the door to his family's home.

"Madam?" the young gentleman asked simply the in the slow, sleepy voice cultivated by many nobles. Had I been the sort to judge others on appearances—or rather, to seek out points to criticize as most of the city's elite did—I would have taken Rarentz for some rake trying to pass himself off as his betters. His coat was several seasons out of fashion and, worse, was becoming threadbare at the elbows. His boots showed dried mud, he was unshaven, and his hair was left to do what it pleased. Overall, he was quite the sight—though not wholly an unwelcome one.

I'd learned something about barging into the homes of nobles after the debacle at the Halboncrant home, but this time around it didn't look like I'd have to rely on innuendo and desperation. I knew I didn't look like a messenger, but I tried to sound like one. "Pardon me, sir, but I'm here to call upon Lord or Lady Troidais. I have a message of dire importance for them."

His brow furrowed. "I'm Lord Rarentz Troidais," he said, most unexpectedly. This was "Lord" Troidais, the head of the Troidais family? While certainly he had the features of a young noble, and he had obviously known the slap of enough nannies to leave him with the telltale aristocratic stiffness, he surely didn't look like any lord I'd even seen. At best an heir putting on airs while his parents were away.

"This was 'Lord' Troidais, the head of the Troidais family?"

"Is there a problem?" he pressed. I hadn't meant my doubt to be obvious.

"No, your lordship, but... not to question..."

"I know," he said, letting his curiosity drop for a moment to flash a slightly embarrassed smile. He'd obviously faced such skepticism before. "But I am indeed. And if your message is all that important, you'll just have to take my word."

Well enough, I supposed. After all, there was no reason I absolutely had to give my news to the family patron if this wasn't in fact him. Though warning someone no older than myself of impending doom seemed somehow more daunting than doing so for some curmudgeonly old sot. I nodded.

"You'll come in then," he said, stepping back and holding the door wide to admit me.

The glory had passed from Troidais House, but it was still a far cry from the Barttley Manor. As Rarentz led me through the house, we passed several rooms cleared of furniture or spare except for fixtures hidden under white covers.

"You'll have to excuse me. I'm in the midst of selling." Rarentz said, acknowledging my gaze.

"Leaving the city?" I wondered, my curiosity breaking through my formal messenger role.

He eyed me, but answered plainly—though few lords would indulge a servant's presumption at all. "Not intending to, no."

Interesting.

Following him though a pair of sliding wooden doors, we entered a salon that retained most of its more comfortable furnishings. Light streamed in from a pair of, cathedral-like windows and embers in the fireplace kept off the chill. Where it not for the discolorations on the walls where long-hanging portraits had obviously been removed, the sitting room might have been quite cozy.

We weren't alone, though. A couch under the windows had been covered in mismatched bed sheets and blankets. Amid the tangle of covers, a young woman with a familiar sharp nose huddled like a beggar: Liscena Ferendri.

I halted abruptly. I hadn't expected to see Liscena again after the tragedy at the Venacdahlia crypt. Actually, I'd assumed she was dead, and seeing her now in light of the past days' terrors, I wasn't yet convinced she wasn't. My suspicion wasn't dispelled by her reaction to my entrance, though. Nothing. Utter blankness. She might as well been an ivory carving with that frozen posture and her pallid features.

Rarentz looked from me, to Liscena, and back. "You know one another? Good. That might help."

"Help?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. The Liscena I remembered seemed quite... "independent"—sure to bite the nose off any who might presume she couldn't handle the world by herself. Though, there she sat, swaddled like an invalid.

"I've known Liscena and her brother for years, but she hasn't said a word since she came. I found her on my doorstep yesterday morning, huddled on the stoop, wide-eyed, shivering like she'd been out there all night." He crossed the room to Liscena's side. "I don't think she's slept. I called a doctor to consult, but he seemed out of his depth. The best he could suggest was taking her to Havenheart Hospice—but after what I've heard of that place, I'd much rather look after her here.

Kneeling, he looked into Liscena's face, his voice soft and slow, as though talking to scared child. "Lissy. You have a guest. Laurel's come to visit."

My eyes snapped from the comatose girl to the nobleman, as he looked back over his shoulder with a smile.

"Don't worry, I didn't recognize you at first. If I hadn't just happened into Leonyl the other day, I don't think I would have at all. You were all he had to talk about."

Leonyl, my dear, genius brother, he was the only one I missed. Well, him and my horse. But it was nice to know he was thinking of me.

"You're a friend of Leonyl? I'm sorry, but I don't recall all of his friends."

He shook his head as he chuckled politely, "No? I'm not surprised. I never really paid a social call. Lee and I shared a tutor and partnered on an assignment or two before he left the academy. It's been years since we spoke, and even as a student I only had reason to visit once or twice. Our introduction," he said pointing at me, "was passing at best. You'd just broken your arm and the house was in a panic. So I suppose I can forgive you for not remembering." He smiled in a way that might have charming if it didn't feel so practiced.

I grinned to reciprocate and nodded. I truthfully didn't have the slightest memory of him. I also figured it'd be impolite to press him on which time my arm was broken, and if it was due to a riding accident—mother always blamed it on riding accidents. A moment passed in silence, made somehow all the more awkward by the vacant-eyed girl sitting by.

"So sorry. I've moved on from all that, so sometimes it's difficult to remember," I offered by way of a polite but meaningless apology. Rarentz was courteous enough to nod, though there was no way he had any idea what I was talking about. No matter. There were other matters to discuss. Best not to draw out the wound I was about to inflict.

"But Lord Troidais—Rarentz—I'm afraid I didn't come to pay a social visit, either to you or Liscena. I've come to warn you of something that may be unbelievable, but true... and terrible."

∗ ∗ ∗

Rarentz dropped into the chair by the fire, brow knotted, jaw set. He looked upset. Less in the watery eyes and quivering lips sort of way and more in the shouting and drawing a knife manner. I prepared to leave hurriedly in case he was of the aristocratic school that had no qualms about shooting messengers.

When he spoke, he surprised me. "I'd assume you were lying but for two facts. First, I know your breeding and you were at least raised to be above that." He halted upon that point. It sounded like a slight, but I don't think he meant it that way. "Second, when Liscena came here, she had a knife like the one you described."

"A dagger? With a ruby pommel? The prince's dagger? Where is it!?" I scanned the room quickly for the rich, deadly looking device, the thing that the terrible Mr. Barttley told me had the power to murder a man and lock away his soul. When I hadn't found it at the mausoleum upon returning I'd assumed some grave tender had pinched it.

"It's gone." Rarentz said flatly.

"Gone? Where?" I persisted, sharpening the words so they didn't sound like a polite question. That dagger was the cork in the genie's bottle, and maybe with it I could recapture what I'd help unleash.

Rarentz looked at me sidelong with a bit of the indignation I expected from a typical nobleman. "The doctor I called on to see to Liscena. He saw it and was quite taken with it. Liscena had dropped it and cringed every time I brought it near, so I gave it to him in trade for his services. I don't... carry much coin these days, so it seemed a fair enough trade." He stressed the word "carry" in such a way that I caught his meaning. He was a pauper. A pauper with a big house, but that didn't look like it was going to be the case for much longer.

I sighed in frustration. "Who was the doctor and where can I find him?"

"Wait just a moment," Rarentz snapped, his civility expended. "You come here and tell me there's some monster coming to kill me and all you're interested in is some gaudy letter opener? What's your game in all this?"

"I don't have a game. But I'm responsible for this and am trying to set things right. That knife killed Prince Lieralt once and, if it has to come to that, maybe it can do it again." I came around the chair to look him in the face, needing him to see my sincerity and know this wasn't just some elaborate con. "If you tell me where the dagger is there might be a way we can still save your life."

∗ ∗ ∗

The beauty part of an entire city drowning in destitution is that all the same jobs get done, but just well enough to say they've happened, never as well as they would be were there the coin to do things right. Take locks, for instance. All the doors in Ardis have them, but no building constructed within the last decade has a good one. They're expensive things, and most folks either don't think about them or think one's as good as another. In the morning, the good owners of Omberbain's Auctioneers were going to realize they had thought wrong.

I can't say I picked the lock on the auction house's sturdy storage hall door. I would have, but it came off in my hand before I could do much more than jiggle a metal splinter in the keyhole. If a goddess was with me tonight, I was certainly glad it seemed to be Desna—especially after it seemed like I'd been Urgathoa's plaything the last several nights.

Rarentz's doctor hadn't wasted any time admiring the artistic value of the dagger he'd been paid with. The man had known gemstone when he saw it and was quick to sell. I doubt he got what the princely blade was truly worth, but I suspect it made the inconvenience of a house call well worth his time. In any case, it had ended up here at Omberbain's, and with the holes in my pockets there was only one way I was going to get it back.

Slipping inside, I closed the now latchless door behind me as best I could and slid along the wall in pitch-blackness. Even in the deep shadows I could tell the storeroom was big, my softest steps sounding hollowly on the stone floor. No light shone, but the night's less absolute dark slipped in through the ceiling's narrow skylights, outlining awkward stacks of crates along with the silhouettes of furniture, framed artwork, and less recognizable shapes. Gradually my eyes adjusted and I felt capable of moving without bungling into a pile of boxes or toppling some unsteady curio case. From what I'd already seen it seemed Omberbain's was too cheap to have a watchman, but there was no reason to attract any attention with suspicious noise. So I made my way carefully through the treasures and trash of Ardis's former princes.

The warehouse wasn't what I'd expected. I'd imagined neat rows of chests, organized staging grounds for the next day's auctions, sub-areas for like inventory, and shelves of precisely tagged baubles. Instead: chaos. If there was any organization it existed entirely in some mad stock-master's mind. Crates dared each other to dangerous heights, stacks rising treacherously wherever there was space. The contents of entire estates were dropped wherever there might be room, piled in careless heaps. The shelves of baubles did exist, but packed with boxes of clutter and collections of junk. If these were Ardis's treasures the city might be worse off then even I realized.

But as the state of things dawned on me, all I could do was stare into the maze of shadows. How was I supposed to find a single dagger in all this? I cursed, then winced at hearing it echo back at me, but there was nothing for that either. Best to just get started. I wasn't keen on going through the auction house's entire inventory, but maybe there was a chance my luck hadn't run out for the night.

Weaving and worming my way across the cluttered work floor, I slipped amid the rows of smaller ephemera, of shelved books, stray decorations, and guady knickknacks. The gloom from the skylights hardly penetrated here, leaving me squinting at outlines in the dark. I felt like a blind woman, leaning close and scrutinizing every trifle, trying to tell a seashell from a soupspoon more by intuition than my dim impression of its silhouette. Then there were clusters amid the commonplace objects that baffled me utterly, weird amalgams of handles, piping, wire, and whatever else—tools for lunatics hidden in the dark. This wasn't going to work. I'd hoped to avoid it, hoped to seem somehow a little less sinister in my trespassing, but I was going to need actual light.

It wasn't hard to find a candle amid the junk heaps, and by way of a gentleman's flint lighter, I struck a light and restarted my inventory. Even though the tiny wavering flame felt like nothing more than a spark amid the vast room, it far from comforted me. I was instantly visible should anyone wander in, and with all the disarray, I wasn't even sure from which direction an investigator might come. All the more reason to make this fast.

I practically raced amid the shelves, scanning, checking, doing my best to upset the collections of junk as little as possible. More than once a bumped a rack or unbalanced heap clattered at my passing, the noise ringing clearly and echoing back. The groans and shifting of old furniture and whatever tiny things skittered back and forth from hidden dens elsewhere in the storehouse tormented me, all too often sounding like slow footsteps, or a creaking door, or any of a hundred other preludes to an arrest. My sense of urgency grew.

At one point I found a stand for canes filled with bent fencing foils, rusted cutlasses, swords tested only in showrooms, and other weapons of dubious quality and thought I might have found some semblance of order amid the confusion. Yet I was disappointed—no daggers. Turning the corner around a particularly packed row of shelves near the room's rear I made a strange sort of discovery. I found myself looking into a filthy, yellow window beaded with moisture and facing into the building. Shadows pushed up against the glass from beyond in formless shapes and web-like patterns, and for a moment I was baffled by what the auctioneers might be keeping hidden in the depths of their storeroom. A bit of cracked glass gave it away, a leafy tendril escaping to creep into the dusty warehouse. A sort of indoor greenhouse—or green-room, anyway—I supposed. I hadn't anticipated such a thing, but with the nobility's proclivity for elaborate gardens and exotic decorations I suppose it made a sort of sense. Dust and earth clung to a glass paned door leading inside, but doubting that even the unruly workers responsible for the mess around me would keep weapons in amid the flowers and shrubs, I turned back to my search.

The long creak of rusty door hinges caused every hair on my skin to bristle, and the echoing bang of the rear door slamming carelessly against the far wall jolted through me. Gods be damned, they actually did have a watchman! I huffed out the candle's flame and froze, trying to gauge from across the big room who had joined me.

"What the hell had a hold of me?"

"Eh! Anyone in here?" the gruff voice echoed, a threat, not a question. I felt that suicide reflex squirm in my stomach, the sensation that dares you to leap from high places, challenge me to reply. Oh, so sorry sir, I must have gotten lost. Good evening to you.

Yeah, perhaps next time.

Instead, I slowly moved to the greenhouse door, careful now more than ever not to disrupt anything at my feet. I could hear the guardsman's footsteps, careless of the noise he was making, echoing with dull slow thuds. A beacon of light cut through the shelves around me. I was sure the clutter hid me that time, but I needed to get out of sight if I didn't want to test my ludicrous little lost girl routine.

The door to the greenhouse was a simple thing, with nothing more than a spring and a basic metal latch to keep it in place. It took all my restraint to resist yanking it open and darting inside, but I pulled it slowly, keeping the creek and agitated twangs of the spring as muffled as possible. As soon as it was open more than a crack, I squeezed inside and eased it shut behind me. There was no way to tell if the guard had heard any of it, but I didn't think the complaining metal had been any louder than his boot falls—at least, so I hoped.

The greenhouse's warm, heavy air made breathing uncomfortable, especially with the acrid combination of a thousand thick herb smells. The room had none of the skylights of the larger storeroom, leaving me in near total darkness, just able to pick out the leafy specters of dozens of withered tree and brush shapes. Somewhere amid the indoor jungle something rustled, something small and probably annoyed that I'd intruded upon its foraging.

I pressed my way deeper into the room, terrified of shattering some unseen planter or overturning a box of hidden tools, trying to hunker down amid the thickest decorative bushes. My camouflage felt weak at best, and while I was sure it would disguise me should someone merely glance through the murky glass, there was no way it would stand under direct scrutiny. I tried to make myself small, hunching against the rear wall. This seemed to alarm whatever scavenged in the shadows even more, and perhaps its family from the panicked sounds of the rustling nearby. I had other concerns than rats, though.

The beam of light sliced through the greenhouse, tainted yellow by the filthy glass. I could hear the guard's ominous footsteps from beyond. I imagined that I could tell his purpose from his steps, that he sounded like he was still unsure and not striding with intent. I filched as a stray leaf—or worse, maybe a rodent—brushed my ankle in the dark. Biting down on the inside of my cheek, I refused the impulse to jerk away and investigate. Just a few minutes more and I'd be out of here, and if I kept calm, maybe not in the grip of some two-copper lot watcher.

Then it grabbed me. Not a rat. Whatever it was had hands, rough, strong hands that were instantly on my ankles, pulling on my claves, and tugging upon my belt. Too many hands even, small but tenacious with their many tight grips. I stared into the dark furiously as I squirmed, unable to see what had me. Instantly I forgot the precariousness of my situation and thrashed, kicking out, but feeling only the rustle of leaves and the snapping of twigs under my boots. What the Hells had a hold of me!

I managed not to give voice to my rising panic or the stream of curses coursing through my mind. Conflicting fears vied for priority, one demanding silence lest I be discovered, the other seeking only escape from whatever had me.

The latter won. I'd gladly take a few nights in jail over being dragged off in the clutches of whatever was trying to claim me.

Rolling onto my back and kicking both legs up something came loose, and I was able to squirm a little ways from my attacker. The whole greenhouse seemed to be shaking, and around me I could just make out leaves and some thorny bush that had toppled over me, disguising even the barest hint of the thing with a hundred hands. Then it was back at my feet, pulling away at my right boot. I slammed down hard with the heel of my left and I felt something crack, but that was all. Nothing cried out, nothing relented, still it grabbed and grasped, relentlessly climbing my body, seemingly seeking my throat.

Some part of me screamed as light fell upon me outside, hazy through the glass, but enough to give me a glimpse of what had me. Confusion mingled with panic as all I saw was a toppled vine, a thick, winding creeper covered in broad leaves, fallen across much of my legs. What kind of fool was I to get so tangled in some common root?

Then it moved. As if detecting the light in its own senseless way, several leaves rising in attention like the heads of alerted serpents. It didn't seem to relish competition for its prey, and suddenly the deadly vine jerked forward, flinging an arm covered with snapping, grasping leaves at my face. I grabbed for it as best I could, and instantly three bloodless grips locked upon my arm, tendrils and underdeveloped sprigs knotting around me like dozens of tiny constrictors.

I heard the greenhouse door screech open, saw the watchman's light fall full upon me, felt the dozens of leafy hands yanking me down, pinning me so the thing might more easily squeeze the life from my body. My frayed composure shattered. Throwing my head back I screamed in the face of the perplexed watchman, "Get it the hell off of me!"

Chapter Five: Fateful Lot

My escort, one of an army of dour black-clad clones that tromped automatically through the Ardis Department of Constables, surprisingly unhanded me a step before reaching the station's heavy front doors. The first thing I'd learned after my utterly dispassionate arrest and processing was that not only did no one here care that I'd committed a crime, no one especially cared about my reasons. Or me at all, in fact. Every patrolman I encountered—a difficult number to guess considering their identical uniforms—went about their duties in the same malaise. It was like the whole department suffered from a reoccurring boil, the habitually lancing of which had changed from a matter of medical care to a boring chore.

Wherever we were going, at least it wasn't the crushingly boring communal cell I'd spent the night in. Soon after arriving I'd quickly confirmed what I'd long suspected: a life behind prison bars was not for me—especially if habitual toot-grinders and sobbing drunks to flank your sleeping pallet were fixtures of all jailhouses. Regardless of the noise, I must confess it was the first night in months I can remember not worrying about having my throat slit in the dark. Still, I'd prefer not to repeat the experience. The clone-constable hadn't seen fit to speak more than my name before rousing me and marching down the hall. I'd followed silently out of bored dread, not expecting any answers out of this solider ant, but also not expecting any real danger. I'd figured wherever we were headed had to be better than a day of listening to the petty tragedies of addicts and failed pickpockets.

I was wrong.

Brass rivets seemed angled to reflect the morning sun's already piercing rays directly into my eyes. The rare contraption of polished wood, shining filigree, and sturdy wheels appeared at once both ingenious and maniacal, descriptions also fitting its occupant.

"Ah, there we are at last," came the bored voice, hiding a hint of a witch's cackle. "I thought they might have lost you wherever they keep you hooligans filed away."

I'd kept Miss Kindler waiting apparently. She sat there grinning in her wheeled chair, a much more compact device than the bath chairs that typically carried swaddled invalid loads from quack to coffin. I resisted the urge to smack the wrinkles from her condescending look.

"Funny how often spirit hunting leads to petty theft," she went on. "You've been up to quite a bit of mischief, my dear. I'd have thought you would have learned your lesson after your last trespass turned out so poorly."

The clattering of my gritting teeth sent a shiver through my sneer. I started down the steps, restraining myself of setting her chair rolling down ahead of me.

"Manners, young Lady Cylphra," she tutted. "Your freedom didn't come cheap. At the very least you can repay me by wheeling an old woman home."

Both my heels and back teeth ground into what were below them. As furious as I was at the woman for sending me into the den of that nightmare at Barttley Manor, and for indirectly contributing to last night's arrest—from a point of view—the chains of my upbringing tightened mercilessly and dragged me back up the steps to my elder's aid. As I took the handles on the back of her chair I took some measure of bitter delight in knowing how many stairs and rough cobbles lay between here and Kindler's home, and the foreknowledge that we'd be hitting every one.

To her credit, Kindler minded her tongue on her backward avalanche down the station stairs and we were soon holding up foot traffic on Willowbank Avenue. Nearly half of our journey passed in silence before she returned to her musing.

"I was awfully surprised to hear you'd been arrested—a clever girl like you."

Her voice needled my patience. "You're awfully well connected for an old lady. Lots of grandkids, or are they just all admirers of your stories?" I shot back.

"Spend your life doing favors for others and they'll do favors for you when you no longer can. It's an arrangement that's played out quite well for me this far." She waited a moment before adding, "And admirers. I'm quite good you know."

The semi-peace of our silent stroll broken, I had to know. "Did you know about Barttley?"

"Yes," she responded flatly, unapologetically.

"And you sent me there anyway?!" I accused, speeding the chair over a particularly deep pothole and taking a moment's bitter pleasure in her gasp of surprise.

"Don't fuss," she said, readjusting her dark sun hat. "You obviously came through it. Barttley's mostly molded away and sometimes it's useful to have firsthand accounts of old news—even if the worms have gotten at most of his sanity. He's dangerous to all the right people out there in his rot."

"He tried to rip me apart!" I protested.

"You're the one who went chasing after corpses and you're upset you found one? If Bartley upset you so then why are you here? Why didn't you just go home?"

Their validity made her questions all the more frustrating, and good answers didn't leap to mind. "I'm no coward," was all I could come up with, and it sounded weak and hollow even as I said it—especially knowing how often the urge to flee had gripped me in the past days.

"No your not, are you." Her candid response surprised me and we wheeled on in silence for several minutes. I could tell something was percolating under the bonnet bobbing in front of me and I eyed it suspiciously, increasingly unsure of what to make of its wearer.

"So you obviously turned up something in your visit with Mr. Barttley. What did he have to say about your ghost?"

I told Ms. Kindler of my encounter at Barttley Manor, of the patchwork dog-thing, my discussion with Mr. Barttley, how he tried to attack me, and how I inexplicably wound up face down in the mud outside—ignoring her chuckle. I went on, telling her how I tried to warn Lord Halboncrant and was thrown out, only to encounter Prince Lieralt outside. Finally I explained meeting with Rarentz Troidais, how he'd come by the dagger that had once imprisoned the prince's soul but had since pawned it, and how I'd been trying to recover it when I was arrested.

Ms. Kindler listened but didn't remain quiet as I told my story, interjecting that Lord Halboncrant hadn't been found dead, as I'd expected, but had vanished entirely, the same with both Lord and Lady Geirais. She also frequently interrupted to ask questions or further explain details as I went on, not only about what I'd discovered, but about what I thought of certain things or how I felt in situations. At some point during the discussion I started to feel as though I were being interviewed for a job—one I was relatively sure I didn't want.

By the time everything was said I was dragging the wheeled chair up the steps of Ms. Kindler's earwig-infested porch. As she unlocked her door I mumbled something by way of thanks and turned to take my leave.

"Where do you think you're off to?" Kindler said as she wheeled herself inside. The condescension that had vanished midway through our walk had crept back into her voice. My look back and half shrug were apparently all the comment she needed, as she didn't wait for more of a response. "Come in Ms. Cylphra, you have some studying to do."

"Excuse me? What for?" I was thoroughly perplexed, and didn't really have the time to visit with the old woman any longer—not that I had any clue as to how I might get the prince's dagger after last night's debacle.

"There's work to be done before tonight," she said, rising shakily to her feet. "It's funny how often spirit hunting leads to petty theft."

∗ ∗ ∗

Having seen it from both sides, I have to admit I find Omberbain's Auctioneers much more welcoming from the front. The lobby was abuzz with conversations and laughter, and while men doffed their coats and gave stern instructions to courteous valets, ladies cooed over ones another's gowns and coiffures. Over it all hung a chandelier the size of a modest sailing ship, it pearl fixtures and glass prisms scattering miniature rainbows across the wood paneled floors and walls, the colors playing like sprites over portraits of dour strangers and displays of heavily polished but entirely virginal armaments. Servants in the black and orange livery of Omberbain's circled the assembled nobles with trays of refreshments and programs detailing the highlight's of the evening's auction.

Were it not for the reserve prices fixed near so many of the fine items on display one might have mistook the scene for a gallery opening or reception amid some noble's private showroom. In truth, though, those assembled weren't revelers, they were vultures. The objects on the block this evening weren't pieces of art, after all, they were heirlooms and antiques, family treasures carted in from the collections and lives of those who had committed the greatest sin a member of the Ardis aristocracy could: they'd gone broke. Now came the scavengers to gape at the corpses of whole houses laid bare, pecking and mocking the most intimate parts now that the innards had spilled into the open. Many of these gawkers were less than a half step away from the same fate themselves, come not to buy but to mingle with the rest, all sharing in the communal lie of their worthiness and privilege.

All my reasons for forsaking this rose anew, leaving a fresh taste of bile in my mouth. Of course, now that we were there, the crowd wasn't entirely made up of vultures—now there were vultures and thieves. I much preferred being in that latter camp.

No sooner had I pushed Ms. Kindler's wheeled chair through the door than did a tick detach from a circle of vultures. A greasy man wearing an orange and black sash like a royal commendation, he flung his arms wide in greeting as he came toward us, the few hairs on his oily pate clinging desperately to their places. "Lady Kindler, as I breathe, what an unexpected pleasure! Let me be the first to welcome you to Omberbain's."

I halted the chair abruptly, trying not to bowl the man over as he rushed forward. Ms. Kindler cursed and knew it wasn't for my awkward handling. Around us, several of the nearer conversations had quickly paused and renewed with a new topic. Although Ailson Kindler might not be widely known by appearance, she was surely known by reputation, and extra attention would not make our task this evening any easier.

"Farbass Omberbain, my word, so flattering of you to remember an old woman," Kindler said as our host came to a halt just before us. I must admit I was impressed. There was a shaking wistfulness in Kindler's voice I'd never heard before, the exact tremble one would expect from a dowager with a foot in the grave. Even more impressive was how it came through the gritted teeth of an utterly false smile.

"My lady, how could I forget. Omberbain's wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. You will always have a seat of honor in our hall—though I dare say, not a discount." He chortled breathily at the obviously well-used joke. Ms. Kindler affected a mindless coo in response.

"Will we have the honor of you calling tonight's auction Mr. Omberbain?" she asked. "You inherited your father's skill if I recall, and I'm sure you've improved upon his technique in the years since he passed on."

"Oh, you flatter me your ladyship. I don't know how much of an honor it is, but yes, I'll be overseeing the evening's bidding. With Mr. Baldermol as my ringman," he said, nodding vaguely to a stiff gentleman standing by the doors leading into the auction hall, an unfortunate figure with a face that appeared to be mostly chin.

"Those assembled weren't revelers. They were vultures."

I let my attention wander from the conversation, as I obviously wasn't a part of it. No surprise considering the uniform Ms. Kindler had dressed me up in. Scanning the group casually, careful not to make eye contact with any of the nobles present, I tried to distinguish any potential hurtles to our plan—anyone who seemed likely to play hero when the chance arose. No one in the crowd fit the profile, but I was chagrined to see the auction house wasn't entirely defenseless. To the contrary, in fact. I'd expected two, maybe four aging watchmen, mostly serving as stage dressing to imply the rubbish up for auction had some significance and value. Rather, at least eight footmen that I could see chafed in their formal wear. One openly adjusting his jacket revealed a heavy baton slid into his orange cummerbund. Already looking bored at their posts, these guards certainly didn't carry the air of professionals, but they might still complicate matters. My confidence in not spending another night in the constables' lockup was not increasing.

"We'll just have to see," Ms. Kindler said noncommittally. It wasn't her words, but her repetition of the sentence that drew me back to the conversation.

"Well, do keep us in mind. An Ailson Kindler original tale would fetch top coin, and as you're a friend of the house, I'm sure we could come to an arrangement regarding our percentage," Mr. Omberbain hurried on excitedly, the color of gold almost evident in his. "But don't answer me now. Just think it over during the course of the auction. We'll talk afterward."

Some new arrival blessedly caught the greasy auctioneer's attention. "Lady Kindler, if you'll excuse me. Do enjoy the evening's events and good luck in your bidding." He leaned close to her level, whispering conspiratorially, "We'll talk later."

Ms. Kindler smiled vapidly and nodded, putting on a fine show even as she reached back to touch my hand. I took that as my cue to see to our escape incase Omberbain's attentions returned to us.

"Man's breath smell's like a river trout," Ms. Kindler groused as I wheeled her to the rear of the decadent lobby, hiding behind the statue of a stag-horned knight that had won relatively few attendees' consideration. I couldn't help but chuckle. "Fetch a program dear, and lets see what we're in for."

With little trouble I waved over a servant who handed me a lavender handbill. Beneath a XXX bearing a stylized "O," two even columns listed the lots on the block that evening. While interesting pieces of artwork, pieces of especially worth, and the names of dishonored former honors dominated much of the space, several larger lots also listed attractive particularities. The second lot after the evening's intermission included multiple pieces of display weaponry. Amid the showpieces and weapons of imaginary heroes ran the most understated description on the page: "barbarian dagger with gemstone."

"It's this one here or it's none of them," I said, leaning to show Ms. Kindler.

She made her own examination and nodded. "The timing should be manageable if this is the one. That Baldermol fellow Omberbain pointed out, he'll be the one to watch. Keep a careful watch on him and you'll manage fine."

"I'm still not sure I have the talent for this. It's really more my brother's forte."

"Oh, should we fetch him then? If he's here you really should have introduced him," Kindler said scathingly, looking up at me archly. Her sarcasm dropped as quickly as she'd summoned it, though. "You'll do fine, girl. No getting squeamish now. Lets find our seats."

∗ ∗ ∗

For two of the most fantastically dull hours of my life Ms. Kindler and I sat in the lavish auction hall in silence, watching nobles dicker over niceties they'd likely have to auction themselves in a few short months. Aside from Mr. Omberbain's florid descriptions and speedily slurred bid calling the bargaining transpired in silence, adversaries staking increasingly ludicrous sums, more desirous of the prestige of winning than the actual items on the block. For most of the time, though, I kept my attention fixed on the craggy Mr. Baldermol and his mysterious role in the evening's business. He and Omberbain shared a language of glances, nods, and gestures I found utterly mysterious. Even as the auction house's owner announced a twenty-minute intermission and invited the assemblage to partake of refreshments in the lobby I had little more insight into the gentleman's duties than I had when I entered. As I rolled Ms. Kindler back into the lobby, I let her know.

"Little time to worry about that now, we'll make do," she said, waving my concern way. She pointed toward a dimly lit hallway leading deeper into the building. "The house keeps offices and meeting rooms this way. Lets see if we can find one to our liking."

I wasn't concerned that anyone was going to miss an elderly lady and her maid, and so made no disguise of our intentions, strolling away from the muttering assemblage. Once in the shadow hall a few yanks on sturdy door handles revealed a packed cleaning closet, a locked office door, and finally a cramped meeting chamber. An impersonal side space, likely for agents to discuss their employers business, a half dozen high-backed chairs circled an antique wooden table. Little effort had been made at decoration, aside from a few sizable frames that looked empty in the gloom, and a sideboard bearing two sturdy candelabra and a pocket flint.

Ms. Kindler nodded her approval and we rolled inside. Before I had finished lighting one of the candles and brought it over to her she had already produced a thick fold of parchment and was quickly opening it square by square. I could feel the first dull thrum of a headache beginning behind my eyes as I scanned the unfolded sheet. Dozens of elaborate symbols wound unevenly across the page, their shapes straddling the line between letters and diagrams. Their complexity aside, each figure appeared to writhe and readjust upon the page, and focusing on any one only seemed to make it list away like a fleck of dust floating in one's eye. It could have merely been a trick of the poor light and the wavering candle flame, but I ascribed a more sinister cause: magic hated me.

After she'd produced this folded up spell—which she'd been using as a place marker in some massive tome—Ms. Kindler had subjected me to something of a refresher on arcane theory. I'd had some instruction in the field in my youth, but the combination of my own impatience and my brother's easy talent had soured me toward the subject completely. Since then, I'd had enough mishaps with would-be wizards and magical devices to realize the arcane arts held me in similar regard.

I opened my mouth to again protest this part of our plan, but Ms. Kindler—likely anticipating my complaint—cut me off. "You'll be wanting to fetch him now, we haven't much time."

Restraining most of my grumbling, I found a false smile and went back into the lobby. It took me several minutes to locate Mr. Baldermol, long enough to leave a fluttering sensation in my gut out of fear that he'd departed early and the entire evening had been for naught. Finally, though, I found him emerging from a washroom, and, to his obvious surprise, approached him. I didn't say much, and he said even less, but I like his imagination fill in the innuendo as he curiously followed me back to the meeting room.

Letting him enter before me, I could sense his confusion as he saw the old woman sitting there in the candlelight, smiling up at him pleasantly. He straightened, obviously reassessing the situation. I brought the handily placed twin to the pewter candelabrum on the table down on the back of his head before he had time to excuse himself. With polite quietness he crumpled to the ground and I closed the door behind us. In the hall beyond a muffed echo announced that the auction would resume in five minutes.

"Alright girl, we'll have to do this quick," Ms. Kindler said, pulling the magical document close to the table's edge. I was done complaining at this point, and I resigned myself to the coming failure or success.

"Look closely at the face," she went on, trying to be helpful but just putting me even more on edge. "That's the most important part. This will all be rubbish if you can't picture the face just right in your mind."

I did what she said, taking in Mr. Baldermol's unhandsome features, imagining how they would look were they not half flattened upon the wood floor. With them set in my mind, I turned to face the page.

As expected, the symbols seemed to scatter as I looked at them, as though each line was written in ants rather than ink. Concentrating as best I could, I skimmed the page one final time, mouthing the complex and variable syllables as best I could remember. It was like reading a page in Kelish, I could make the sounds passably, but the meanings were utterly lost on me. Oh well.

I began and the sounds spilled out, varying from guttural gibberish to lilting murmurs. Although she couldn't unleash the page's magic for me, Ms. Kindler was obviously reading along, and rather than speaking the words was humming a sigil or two ahead of me, noting the syllables of each complex sound like a music instructor punctuating the beats of a song. My speed would have probably made the most inexperienced apprentice laugh, but I deliberately captured each symbol before continuing my steady pace.

I was shocked when a glow like ghost light began rising from the ink upon the page, a faint light that leaked up through the runes as though they were more than just strokes upon a page, but rather miniature windows letting in a radiance from somewhere else. I hesitated between sounds, but Ms. Kindler's touch on my elbow spurred me on. As I went on, the light intensified slightly, playing over the symbols as I read them. I had expected this, and in the moment's thrill sped up my reading, hoping to complete the page while the power remained present. The sounds came swiftly, and energy spilled from the words, exaggerating their shapes and crisscrossing the page. Nearing the end it was like an avalanche, I was barreling through the words, speaking the sounds before I was entirely sure of the symbol I was looking at. It seemed to be working so I went on.

Then something went wrong. It was immediate and unforgiving. The light spilling from the shapes was more than just a gentle glow, it was fire. I knew immediately that I'd lost control and the ghost light tracings that had elaborated and enhanced the symbols upon the page lost their shape, spilling over the parchment like a sheet of flame, consuming ink and page and meaning in a blazing breath. The parchment was gone.

I gasped as though someone had smacked me, but aside from that could do little more than gaze at the empty table. Outside in the lobby an echoing voice announced the end of the intermission.

"Don't you have someplace to be?" Ms. Kindler asked.

I looked at her puzzled. She was smiling her condescending half smile, and in response, all she did was tap my hand. What I looked down at wasn't my hand, but a wrinkled furless bear's paw, a giant weathered thing, a man's hand. The big scarred hand of Mr. Baldermol, in fact, poking out of a gentleman's jacket. I couldn't help but laugh and touched my face. It still felt like mine.

"Yes, yes, you're the complete picture—and quite a sight at that. But it's not going to do us a lick of good if you don't get moving.

∗ ∗ ∗

"How could anyone not know this diabolical thing for what it was?"

I jumped as Mr. Omberbain hissed in my ear, "What's wrong with you. Pull it together!"

I straighten my posture—Baldermol's posture—and cast my eyes across the stiff-looking crowd. From my place standing before the stage I had a view of every seat in the house. Well, every seat but one. Ms. Kindler in her wheeled chair was nowhere to be seen.

On the stage behind me, Mr. Omberbain threw himself into an extravagant description of the next item up for auction. I'd stood through several of these now, trying my best to emulate the real Mr. Baldermol's actions, acknowledging bidders and trying to take cues from Omberbain as best I could, but obviously I wasn't grasping some vital aspect of my duties. So be it. All I had to do was last a few items more.

It took the better part of an hour before finally Mr. Omberbain announced our reason for coming that night.

"The next item for bidding is a true treasure, my friends, an exotic piece, cut from the wild mountains of the north, forged with the ferocity of the barbarian tribes, and wielded by many a savage queen. Don't be fooled by its designs in gold and gemstone—even though they show delicately and detail of the highest mastery—this fine dagger is much more than just a display piece, its razor-edged blade sharpened upon the hearts of a hundred virgin sacrifices. The bidding opens at 500. Shall we have 500?"

The bidding went swiftly, the blade fetching just over 900 gold pieces at the end—a paltry sum considering many of the ludicrous amounts bandied about that night. It wasn't surprising, though, the dagger wasn't a stylish piece one might display upon a desk or in a sash. Rather, it would probably just get horded into a curio case, another piece for the servants to dust. It was small, though, so without surprise the auction's winner stood to receive his winnings. Delicately, Mr. Omberbain handed the blade down to me upon a tasseled amber pillow.

How could anyone not know this diabolical thing for what it was? No sooner had I touched the pillow than my blood seemed gripped, pulled toward the blade. Had I some cut I imagine my gore would have leapt right out of me and arched to the dagger, which would have drunk up every drop. It was thirsty, for blood, for life, for something more, making its unholy desires obvious in the obscene crimson glinting of its ruby hilt.

Swallowing hard, I stiffly marched Baldermol's figure toward the dagger's new owner, a pudgy young nobleman bobbing his head proudly to those around him. I tried to be nonchalant as I cast my eyes over the rest of the crowd, most of whom were directing their attentions to the next lot being hoisted onto the stage. Even the well-dressed guards seemed bored with the proceedings, slumping at their posts.

When I walked by the row the dagger's owner was waiting in, no one immediately noticed. My route to the lobby door was unobstructed, with the house's main doors waiting just beyond, and I quickened my pace up the aisle's long red carpet. The murmur of confusion started in the rows still before me, and several eyes shifted my way. Then came a less than courteous call from the last auction's winner. That was enough to catch the guards wandering attentions, and as they tried to suss out the source of the commotion, I folded the pillow into a sheathe around the dagger and broke into a full run.

The rows of perplexed and aghast nobles raced by me, shouts rising along with several gentleman making overtures of boldness. The guards had drifted from the doors over the course of the evening, and by the time they had their batons drawn I'd already be past them.

Then the doors to the lobby opened wide, agreeably swinging out so I might sprint through unimpeded. Or so I thought. An instantly later a barrier of brass and hardwood wheeled directly into my path, moving intentionally and obstructing most of the door's opening. From her wheeled chair, Ms. Kindler's narrowed eyed fixed on me as I charged toward her. She was purposefully trying to block my path!

Chapter Six: Traitor's Blade

Ms. Kindler's command echoed through the auction hall, ringing even over the clamor of the dozens of attendees straining for a better view of the ruckus. Through the hall's double doors—opened wide to accommodate the dowager and her wheeled chair—danced the lobby's prism filtered lights, and beyond that, streetlamps glinting through a light fog, a cloak to cover my escape, if only I could reach it.

Narrowing my eyes at Kindler I charged toward her, her arm still outstretched, accusing. "Bitch," I mouthed, exaggerating the silent word to make sure it was clear on the unfamiliar lips of Mr. Baldermol's illusory face. The tug of a suppressed smirk assured me she caught my meaning as I sped up the aisle's thick trail of red. With no time to slow and squeeze past the old woman, I sprinted to within a yard of her and launched myself. Mrs. Kindler snapped her extended arm back, a mousey squeak escaping her lips as my feet brushed the far armrest. The commotion from the hall behind me confirmed what I imagined was a ludicrous sight, Mr. Baldermol's ungainly body balling up upon itself to vault the old woman with uncanny agility.

I landed with a skid but barely lost any speed, the pillow wrapped around the infernal dagger still slung soundly under my arm and I sped on. My breath momentarily caught in my chest as something clattered heavily behind me and I heard Ms. Kindler wail. Venturing a glance I saw the old woman's contraption upset across the floor, wheels spinning impotently, with Ms. Kindler thrown headlong onto the thick carpet, her spindly limbs flailing with uncharacteristic helplessness. I almost halted, but was sure I hadn't struck her with enough force to unseat her so.

Then came the house guards, their chipped black batons drawn from disheveled cummerbunds. The first reached the door at a rush, the up thrust wheel of Ms. Kindler's chair catching him just above the knee, spilling him over it in an awkward tangle of ill-fitting formalwear and curse words. The next guard was right on his heels and nearly trampled Ms. Kindler, halting just in time to avoid her, but too fast to prevent one of his compatriots from crashing into his back. Both toppled to the floor, even more thoroughly jamming the door with bodies.

Suddenly, no one was pursing me. I couldn't help but chuckle, shaking my head at the wily old woman's distraction. Nodding to a pair of baffled footmen minding the house doors I raced onto the street and into the night's fog.

∗ ∗ ∗

"A fair stretch finer than yours it appears, thank you for asking," Ms. Kindler said stiffly, picking her way back through the sitting room and into the kitchen, leaving me to make myself comfortable and wonder if she had expected an inquiry about her evening through the door. I found my way to the straight-backed lavender settee and took a seat.

I'd spent the last several hours wandering the alleys and backstreets of Ardis, letting the ringman's illusionary guise fade away, then making triple sure no one was following me. Only then had I decided it'd be safe enough to make my way back to Ms. Kindler's home.

He voice drifted in from the kitchen amid the clatter of dishware, "Omberbain was a pretty package of livid after you made your exit, ending the auction and hustling the crowd off as fast as he could. He even offered me anything on the block for three-quarters value—his way of either thanks or apology, I'm not sure. But I talked him into giving me that tea setting, for free."

Her freshly won treasure was sitting on the centre table, a slaver, several tall cups, and a pot like a fat peacock, all in copper. The thing wallowed in its own ostentatiousness. Leaning forward absently, I pressed down the pot lid's ornate lever and let it drop with a hollow clang.

"Ugly thing, isn't it?" her voice came again. "He said it was Thuvian, but I know a copy when I see it. Regardless, losing it is sure to keep that greedy fop up nights for a full week." I could practically hear her wily little smile.

She came in a moment later, carrying a familiar porcelain pot and two cups on a sterling tray. Jostling her new prize out if the way with the favored setting, she sat in the armchair across from me and poured deliberately. For a moment, she actually looked like a respectable old gentlewoman should.

Accepting a steaming teacup, I had nearly taken a sip before smelling the whiskey in bore. Looking across the table at her, Ms. Kindler sipped daintily, as though this were common for polite company. Catching my look, her only explanation was the briefest shrug of thin eyebrows before taking another nip.

"So, lets see it," she said, lowering her cup but keeping it handy. Putting down my dangerous drink I unwrapped the bundled I'd created after my escape, exposing the fiendish weapon within. Its ruby embedded hilt glimmered unnaturally in the light, the stone's cut irregular, savage even, seeming to capture and hold light within rather than reflecting it away.

"I hate this thing," I said as I thought it, looking down at the profane blade.

Ms. Kindler nodded, "Funny how rarely we want the burdens we pick up."

She stood and crossed to a curio-laden bookshelf and produced another sheathed dagger, a simple thing with the design of wings upon the hilt. Drawing it, she replaced the naked blade upon the shelf and returned to her seat, setting the sheath of leather and blue ribbon before her. "That should hold it. You don't want to go running around with it bared, especially if its cut is as nasty as you suspect."

I took the sheath and slid the dagger inside. The fit was a bit loose, but it would do. "Trust me, I don't plan to simply go running around with this damnable thing at all."

"Dear girl," she said with a regretful seriousness that immediately seized my attention, "sharing your intentions is the surest way to make the Lady laugh."

My brow furrowed.

"That tea setting," she started with a nod. "Omberbain was selling it on behalf of an estate. Your accomplice from the other night, Lord Troidais, was supposed to be at the auction this evening. He never arrived."

∗ ∗ ∗

The Troidais house was dark, its outline only visible by the shape it displaced in the night's fog. I'd bolted out of Ms. Kindler's home still dressing, the dash far easier in my own clothes rather than that baggy maid's uniform. The city sped by me in a fever dream of half-formed apparitions and muffled noises, the fog off the river dense and growing thicker, as though it would smother the city should the promised dawn come one moment to late. Through my midnight run I could hear the dagger rattling at my side, clinking incessantly in its ill fitting sheathe. It almost seemed to be vibrating, tingling at my side, the vile thing agitated by the activity after so long a slumber.

Bounding up the big house's stairs I rapidly bludgeoned the door. Should Rarentz be home and Ms. Kindler mistaken in his evening's missed appointment this would be unforgivably discourteous. But urgency seemed to be out weighing courtesy with some regularity as of late. My first volley not having been immediately answered I didn't give the sturdy door time to recover, launching another barrage.

It cracked open with the meekest slowness, making me think for an instant that I'd knocked it loose. As though doing so took some effort, pale hands reached around the door and pulled it fully open.

Liscena Ferendri slouched in the entry of the lightless house, wrapped in a blanket like a child just unmasked while playing at being a ghost. She might as well have been one for all the noise she made and the lifeless blankness of her eyes.

It all came out in a rush, my urgency halted only as I strained to catch my breath after the run. "Liscena! Thank the Lady. Is Rarentz here?" When she didn't respond immediately, I surged on. "Rarentz? Lord Troidais? Upstairs maybe?" Her vacant stare deflected each question. "Do you know—anything? By the goddess girl say something!" I was trying not to be short with her, I know she'd lost much, but if what I imagined had occurred Rarentz's time might be as short as my patience.

Still she just stared, her head lolling slightly, casting her blank gaze into the dark. I could feel my pulse in my lips I'd pinched them together so tightly, resisting the urge to slap the words out of the girl. An extended sigh helped me gain some small amount of ground on my rapidly retreating composure. I put my hand firmly on Liscena's shoulder, physically but gently guiding her attention back to me.

"Liscena. I need to find Rarentz," I said, trying to keep my voice even and words simple. "I think he's in danger. I'm trying to stop something terrible from happening to him," I paused, hoping it just needed a moment to sink in. "Something like what happened to Garmand."

That last bit was a cheap shot—Liscena looked up at me immediately—but it worked. The tears that instantly welled up in her eyes washed away the blankness. Though I hadn't wanted to make the traumatized girl cry, it was good to see there was still something of a person hiding behind that corpse's stare.

Her first attempt at words was nothing but a dry whimper, but the second attempt was a little better, each sound a sob given a measure of meaning. "The thing… from the crypt was here. The one that got…" she halted, the lake of tears in her eyes overflowed their shores in a cascade down her cheeks. She didn't sob, though, and as a credit to what strength was left in her, continued on. "With men. Silent men in old, dark cloaks. They came out of the night and took him."

"Took him? Where!?" I insisted, grasping for any details I could before she lapsed back into her stupor.

"Coronation," she breathed, the words dripping out almost as softly as her tears. "It said it wanted them all there… for its coronation."

∗ ∗ ∗

For thousands of years the near legendary kings of Ustalav ruled their people from the nation's heart, the city—this city—of Ardis. And for much of that time, the regalia adorning the country's royal city was Stagcrown. Called a palace, the seat of the nation's rulers came from a different time, when ancient lords feared that any day barbarian hordes might surge back across their newly marked borders and their dalliances as kings might come to a bloody end. Although it had been rebuilt and renovated countless times over the centuries, Stagcrown's silhouette was still that of a frontier fortress, its spires and battlements just as ominous after courtiers and aristocrats replaced the knights and barbarians battling for its walls.

But now even those days were gone. Stagcrown stood abandoned, the nation's royal court having relocated decades ago to the city of Caliphas over the mountains to the south. Now the former throne of Ustalav stood in state, the city's rulers holding it as a monument to the nation's idealized history, assuring its safety and preparedness for the unreciprocated promise of the court's return.

Tonight, it's gates stood open once more.

This didn't make any sense. I'd witnessed Prince Lieralt pass through stone and bars, this gate should have proven no barrier. Who, then, were the prince's collaborators? Could, after a hundred years, the ghost have vassals still? The thought of facing Prince Lieralt again had been dreadful enough, but I'd always expected we'd share even numbers. This was a most unwelcome turn, but my curiosity into who might follow a dead prince was piqued.

I slipped through the towering black doors and into the fortress.

Within stretched a lengthy courtyard, surrounded by ancillary buildings and the wings of the palace proper, all ornamented with the cathedral-like spires, statues of horned knights, and friezes of grim cherubs popular in centuries past. Above rose the Palace Tower, one of Ustalav's most famed landmarks and national symbol, yet also the source of a thousand legends, tales of suicidal princesses and starved captives who stalked the palace grounds on foggy nights. Nights like this. I kept to the shadows of the walls, moving swiftly to elude what I imagined watched from above, or real spectators spying from any of the palace's hundred windows.

At the yard's end, the face of the palace extended in an elaborate porte-cochère, its symmetrical pillars supporting balconies studded with statues, anonymous in the fog. Something in those shadows moved. It was nothing more than a shifting of fog and shades of black, but I was sure it was more than just nerves and mist. Crouching in the dark, several breaths passed before I saw it again. It was a window, which something had passed by. Then again. And again. Figures walking in line, as though in some grim processional.

Once the forms seemed to have passed, I crept under the portico, slipping between pillars patterned with knights and huntsmen. Here the main entrance into the palace stood partially open as well. Had the fortress's royal former inhabitants been hosting a midnight ball I imagined the entry might have looked much as it did now, inviting guests to partake of the festivities within. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd forgotten my invitation. Watchful for whatever had moved, I cautiously slipped inside.

Within rose a foreboding foyer, elegant with shadows and the silhouettes of darkened masterpieces. Chandeliers sprouting the antlers of dozens of stags and hundreds of unlit candles hung lifeless in the gloom. Whoever had been invited to tonight's event apparently wasn't interested in the royal décor. Yet, that they hadn't tarried here was a relief, the dusty smelling hall almost perfectly still. All that moved was the faintest flickers of light from the ornate doors at the long chamber's end. Light that, as I watched, was snuffed to faint slit by the door's closing.

I chased after the light, doing my best to keep my footfalls from echoing upon the dark tile floor, it being my only destination in the darkness of the deeper hall. Listening at the cold metal, not a sound came from within, and I knelt to peer through the gap between door and floor. I could tell the room beyond was vast, but could see little more than a few inches off the cold stone floor. Especially as something was blocking my view: a body, dropped in the chamber's center.

Seeing and hearing nothing else, and fearful that I might be looking at Rarentz's corpse, I prayed the hall be as empty as it appeared and pushed upon the door to peer beyond.

Twin braziers lit the ancestral throne room of generations of Ustalavic rulers, a crypt of forsaken opulence rising intimidating and forlorn. Columns marching along the chamber's edge supported tiered galleries above the business of the audience floor. Banners and decorations that once festooned the balconies hung moth eaten and rotting, sagging from the shadowy heights like the webs of some massive, lurking spider queen. Yet the focal point of the chamber was the throne, a majestically grim thing of silver, ebony, and oily purple silk upon a frame of deepest black marble. And the figure upon the throne, Prince Lieralt Ordranti.

He was much as I had seen him in the alley two nights past, yet, like then, he seemed even more there, healed, if one can say such things of the dead. Where my first sight of him had been of a corpse riddled with wounds, they had faded in the days since. Now only one marred his noble form, a gash at the center of his chest. One wound. One victim remaining—Troidais.

The prince wasn't alone, though. While I had been prepared for the terror of his wandering soul, the murdered royal had somehow drawn a vestige of his long dead court from Stagcrown's haunted stones. Seeming to fade in and out of existence, chilling vapors as insubstantial as the night's fog floated through the hall, the shades of a hundred grim courtiers and aristocrats. The costumes of an age past adorned aristocrats the very memory of which had rotted away, their spectral finery draping mere skeletons. Skeletal ladies and lords waited in uncanny silence, patience for the commands of their spectral prince. A chill seized me as I wondered if I were glimpsing the afterlife itself.

Yet one figure was definitely real. Rarentz, lying at the room's center, unmoving and, I hoped, only unconscious.

"This place is no longer for the living, good lady" came the prince's slow, formal words, echoing their deadliness through the crowded chamber's unsettling quiet. "Leave."

I'd be lying to say that I bravely stood my ground. Truth be told, I almost obeyed. Part of me was screaming for an excuse to flee, and there the greatest terror I'd ever known bid me do just that. But another part of me, a part I'm sure will someday kill me, knew that if I fled, I'd be saving my own life at the cost of another's. I held my ground, and took what I hope looked like a deliberate step into the crowd of souls.

Swallowing hard, I prayed my words wouldn't betray my fear. "Lord Ordranti, apologies, but I can't. Not when the one you've taken is innocent."

Dozens of gazes, eyes replaced by oblivion's absolute black, turned to face me, hollow and dispassionate. All but one pair, the prince's eyes smoldered.

Raising his hands in an imperious gesture, the crowd parted and three figures in heavy cloaks dragged themselves forth. These were more solid than the room's other terrors, things with form and flesh and faces. Yet I wish they hadn't, for those features were what made two of them instantly recognizable, the corpulent Lord Halboncrant and the once proud Garmand Ferendri, both now lifeless, walking corpses.

"And these?" the prince tested. "Were these innocents as well?"

"Of your murder, yes." I said, trying to walk the line between respect and insistence. "Your highness, you were killed over a hundred years ago. Those who betrayed you have met their punishment in death."

The prince shook his head thoughtfully. "Did they? And what do you know of death's punishments?" he waited, baiting me to test my empty religious rote against his deathless perspective. I deferred. "Do these, then, look like the sons of traitors? The shamed offspring of criminals punished for betraying their families' most sacred duties?"

With another gesture the corpses staggered forward, ungainly and slow, but still with some measure of the dignity they held in life, the already reeking Halboncrant still draped in his silks and gaudy jewelry.

"This land's honor is dead. I knew that in my time, and was killed for daring to free my people from the exploitations of families called noble only as a matter of tradition. I see now that Ustalav has fallen from a nation of heroes to a nation of victims. So be it, then. It is my will that all be equally victimized, starting with those most deserving of justice: traitors to the crown."

"Who are you to judge me, who should be your prince!"

He pointed, taking in the three dead men and Rarentz upon the ground. "Should the sons of traitors continue to enjoy the privileges of their titles? Should a master keep a servant who steals from him? And by extension, should a ruler heap favor upon families who repays him with treason? Just as the greedy servant is cast out of the house, so too will the traitor lines be ended."

"But these men didn't betray you, or your family," I insisted, still hoping to make him see what seemed like such an obvious point. "You're condemning innocent men."

"That justice's execution has been delayed is regrettable, but guilt taints these families' blood, and only by spilling it might it be expunged," the prince decreed, his words those of a judge. "Had this happened in my time, the result would be no different."

I took a step before I was even sure what I was doing, my flesh bristling with a chill. I knew I wouldn't convince him, especially as he defended his murders with the skewed logic of the entitled. The assembled dead looked on in silence, siding with neither the prince nor me.

"So good people should die for their parent's sins? Are we really nothing more than our blood?" I kept talking, trying to distract him, taking another slow step.

Lieralt didn't even hesitate, "My lady, you may never know the burden of your blood, and were I you, I would pray to the goddess daily for that mercy. Yet for some of us, our blood is a chain, one that binds us to duties that perhaps we would not choose. We are but links in such chains, bound to our fathers and our sons for generations into infinities past and future. I tried to alter the responsibilities of my blood, and for that I was punished, my place in my family's chain severed. Yet my murderers too denied the responsibilities of their blood, and so does justice demand their families' chains be severed. That their families were given one more link then they deserved should be seen as a mercy, but not a reason to deny justice."

I'd neared the base of the throne, my locked eyes and slow nods hopefully suggesting I'd been listening intently. In truth, the prince's words were distant, nearly drowned out by the sound of blood pounding in my ears. I was close enough to see through him here. That he was a thing of ether and death and not flesh and blood maybe explained his cold vision of justice.

Looking at the floor I shook my head, trying to look defeated, at the same time calling upon whatever nerve I had left. I only expected to have one chance.

Ignoring my repulsion for the thing, my hand was around the dagger and the same motion that yanked it from its sheathe sent it flying at the throne. The blade's gemstone hilt seemed to catch fire as it flew, looking more like the eye of some ravenous creature than ever before. When it struck, it embedded itself into the back of the throne solidly, quivering with a resounding thrum.

Yet it thoroughly missed the prince.

In that second I knew I was dead.

Instantly Lieralt was in motion, rising from the throne, his blade materializing from the shadows. "How could you know what hell it was, locked in that thing for a lifetime? Living for more years in my own corpse than in my living body," he started slowly, even calmly, his voice growing terrible with anger until it was a resentful shout echoing through the throne room. "How could your words color me a tyrant, then your hands repeat an injustice a thousand times worse? Who are you to judge me, who should be your prince!"

He moved with such speed I couldn't follow him. I cringed from the blow I expected to pierce straight to my soul. But it didn't fall. Swiftly I looked about the room. The corpses, the spirits, they were all there—bar one. Prince Lieralt was nowhere to be seen.

Motion from the floor caught my attention. Rarentz. Knocked out, he finally seemed to be coming to. Instantly escape seemed like a possibility. If I could get him to his feet and running, we both might be able to escape the palace, even the city, before the prince attempted to take both our lives.

Rushing to his side, I kneeled to help him up. Whispering urgently, hoping his groggy mind might understand my tone if not my words. He complied slowly, rising and taking a staggering step, still unsteady on his feet. I put an arm around his waist to steady him and he turned to look at me quizzically.

"Have you known betrayal?" came Prince Lieralt's voice from Rarentz's lips.

I gaped and staggered back, jerking my hands from the repulsive things using Rarentz's body like a puppet. Doing so I stumbled into the rigid corpse of Garmand and tripped backward, landing on the first step of the throne.

"Have you known your vision, your life, ruined by the pettiness of the scared and weak?" the prince, or Rarentz, went on, taking a step toward me. The corpses parted to admit their master, and four dead men looked down upon me. I could feel the scream welling up in my lungs as I scrambled up the stairs until my back struck against the base of the throne.

"Do you still think the traitor's dagger a suiting end?" he gestured toward the devil blade above me. "Would you exact the justice you claimed I was so unsuited to?"

My mind grasped for options, for ways to escape. With Lieralt and Rarentz sharing one body, who knows what the dagger might do. It might trap Rarentz, condemning him to a fate like the prince. Or it might trap both of them together, sealing them both away in an entirely different kind of damnation. I shook my head.

"Truly?" he said, reaching out to Garmand's corpse and drawing the dead man's own thin dagger from his belt. "But I find your idea so…" he lifted Rarentz's hand and ran the blade down the length of his forearm, drawing out the final word, "inspired." Blood welled up from the long slash to run courses down Rarentz's arm, dripping from his elbow in a steady stream of heavy droplets.

I gasped my disgust, horrified by the sight of Rarentz's eyes, flickering between the blank dispassion of Lieralt and the panicked helplessness of one held prisoner in his own body. "Stop!" I shouted, knowing it sounded pitiful.

"How, dear lady?" he said mockingly. "How will they speak of him? How will his wretched family be remembered?" He swapped the blade into his bloody hand, "Shall he have died in a duel from a dozen cuts?" As swift as a butcher, Lieralt sliced scores into his captive's arm.

Again I shouted, but was ignored.

"Or shall we indulge irony with an assassination?" he quipped, placing the dagger behind his back. He didn't wait for a response before gasping, "Ah, no. I have it," he put the blade to his throat, "a suicide. How the neighbors will talk." He laughed vicious and terrible.

"Can't choose?" he taunted after a moment more. "I'll do it for you then." Placing the blade to Rarentz's temple, he began pulling it across his brow and down his far cheek in a languid stroke. Again the crimson welled up and overflowed, covering Rarentz's face in a mask of blood, made all the more terrible by the prince's laugh coming from his trembling lips.

Screaming I found my feet and yanked the ruby-hilted dagger from the ancient throne, brandishing it before me in trembling hands. The prince called my sad little bluff, tilting Rarentz's neck up and drawing his own blade to the lower corner of his victim's jaw. "Know that I take no pleasure in this," he lied, smiling mocking. "It's his duty to die."

"And it's mine to stop you," I said, lunging forward and driving the dagger into Rarentz's shoulder.

Instantly the dagger become hot as flame and I yanked my hands away. Its ruby hilt glowing a fearful, hell red, it thrummed swiftly, like the pounding of a panicked heart. Rarentz's body went rigid, convulsing wildly as the screams of two men howled from the bloody wreck of his face. I could see a smoky wisp drawn along the exposed length of the blade, draining from the body and pouring into the flickering hilt. Then something snapped, the swift sheer shriek of metal and suddenly the pounding light and shuddering body halted as if the moment had frozen, then collapsed. Rarentz's fell in an awkward pile upon a floor already slick with his lifeblood, the dagger clattering from his wound to skid away.

I knelt at his side, gasping, apologizing, crying. Desperately checking, I found his heart still beating and did my best to bind his wounds—not truly knowing who I was trying to save.

When next I looked up, the phantasmagoria of forgotten spirits was gone, the dead men lay upon the floor as they should, and the dagger lay at the center of the throne room, pulsing a waning bloody light.

∗ ∗ ∗

"No. You did well, dear," Ms. Kindler said, trying to disguise her lack of conviction. She still seemed to be working through the worst possibilities.

We were in our usual places back in Ms. Kindler's sitting room. I'd managed to get Rarentz here and Ailson had been quick to send for a doctor. The old man had just left, and to his credit had not asked how the young man had come by his wounds—he'd obviously dealt with Ms. Kindler before. With several days of rest he expected Rarentz to recover, though not without some weakness in his arms where the deepest cuts had been. The scars would never naturally heal.

Ms. Kindler had managed to resist interrogating me until the moment the door shut behind the doctor.

I leaned back on the settee and stared at the ceiling. I felt terrible, and still wasn't sure if we were nursing a monster just upstairs.

"Truly," she said, a measure more convincingly.

I huffed. My guilty conscience wouldn't let me off that easy.

Something landed hard in my lap, jarring me back to attention. It was small book bound in black leather. Flipping through it, every page was blank.

"Your next opus?" I needled.

"No," she scoffed, "Yours."

I arched an eyebrow.

"Its an old Pathfinder trick," she said. "Live it, write it, share it. If you did right, people should know and learn from it. If you did wrong, others make far better judges—saves you the work and helps you move on. Best thing I ever learned from that lot of fools."

"They're really that bad?" I asked, having always been curious.

"You'd fit in just fine," she shot back without hesitation.

I looked at her, assuming she'd be smirking over her quip. She wasn't.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Laurel."

I stepped into Ms. Kindler's darkened guest bedroom.

"Hey," I whispered in relief. "Didn't expect you to be up so fast. How are you feeling?"

Rarentz lay in bed, the covers rising shallowly, but steadily. The bandages on his face and neck muffling his voice.

"Laurel?" he said again.

I came to his side and kneeled down. "The doctor said you'd be out a while. Honestly, my coin was on you not coming back at all, but I've never been much of a gambler."

Rarentz rolled over in the bed, his one uncovered eye closed. He breathed a long soft snore.

Still exhausted. I smiled faintly and stood to leave. As I did, my eyes fell across the small writing desk. Something there was glowing, like an ember fallen upon a hearth.

I heard my name again. The light pulsed with every syllable, the infernal radiance illuminating the shape of a wretched dagger, the prince's dagger.

Gapping, I neared warily. "Prince Lieralt?" I whispered, doubting my senses.

"Laurel Cylphra," the prince's spiteful voice murmured from the blade. "Now my captor has a name."

About the Author

F. Wesley Schneider is the Managing Editor of Paizo Publishing and co-creator of the Pathfinder campaign setting. He is the award-winning author of numerous RPG adventures and source books, including Rule of Fear, Book of the Damned Vol. 1: Princes of Darkness, Seven Days to the Grave, and Endless Night.