The Othilia Sheriff's Department had dissolved fifteen years ago. For decades, the High Sheriff in the great city had slashed the department's budget, trimming fat, then flesh, then carving through bone and marrow. For Othilia was at the edge of the Last Empire, and when money was needed—for weapons, for war—it was easy to plunder a town few in the capital had ever heard of.

  When the last sheriff in Othilia removed his star, hung up his sword, and locked the door behind him, Baron Wordsworth—whose family had ruled in Othilia since the deluge (or so it was said)—drew deep from his own coffers and established Guardian Force. The abandoned sheriff's office became their base of operations, its thick walls and bygone authority now the last bastion of order. Next door, the long-abandoned Holy House of the Wind became their shed, its once-hallowed halls now cluttered with crates stacked like drunken towers.

  Guardian Force were the last peacekeepers, a coalition of necessity and local manpower. They swore no oath, they answered to no code, bound instead by their own discretion, the orders of Chief Commander Virgil Decinta, and the final word of Baron Wordsworth. Guardian Force was no bastion of principle, only necessity—rough-edged, like the men and women who bore its sigil.

  Giles Durant was the Commander, second only to Virgil. He had joined Guardian Force at seventeen, a young man weary of the mines but hardened by them.

  The day he met Virgil, nearly a decade ago, he sat outside the pub, his hands and face smeared with the black grit of the mines. A plate of steak and chips rested before him, a pint of cheap ale in hand. It was dusk, and the town was winding down—wagons rattled down the road, merchants shut their doors and counted their coins, bloofire streetlights flickered to life with the buzz of failing globes—but the distant clank and grind of the copper mine endured.

  Suddenly, a brawl erupted over a heated game of Two-up. Without hesitation, Giles leapt into the fray, his instinct honed by years of labour, hard camaraderie, and sheer survival on the streets of Othilia. Fists flew, voices roared, coins chinked on the floor. Virgil, whose cider was spilled amid the flurry, stepped in, his posture stern, his face calm but severe. Giles wrestled away one of the offenders; Virgil grabbed the other, and subdued him with the butt of his dagger.

  Virgil threw them both behind bars for the night. The next morning, Giles was summoned to the second floor of Guardian Force. Like a soldier before the setting sun, surveying the battlefield to come, the Chief Commander stood behind his desk.

  “You’re Durant’s boy,” Virgil said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A good man, your father. And the better fisherman.” Virgil’s tone dropped with the respect one owes to the dead.

  Giles lowered his eyes.

  Virgil frowned with pity. “I miss Attila, dearly.”

  “I as well, sir. Not a day goes by …”

  Virgil nodded. For a moment there was pain in his eyes, then he leaned forward over his desk, which creaked under his weight.

  “Ever thought of joining the Force, lad?” Virgil asked.

  Giles blinked. “No, sir. Can’t say I have.”

  “You should. You’ve got the fire for it, and you won’t find much use for that fire down in the mines.”

  The cruel truth burned in his chest. He hated the mines—the suffocating dark, the weight of the earth pressing down, the endless grind of tired machinery. To say nothing of the ever present thought that one day, as had happened countless times before, the supports holding up that unimaginable weight would fail, and the roof would cave in over his head—or worse, see him trapped without sight, sound or sustenance in darkness and despair.

  “What would it take?” Giles asked.

  “Not much,” Virgil said. “Only the will to step out of the dark.”

  And so, with little convincing, Giles Durant left the Wordsworth Mining Co. and joined Guardian Force.

  Giles was sweating as he came back to the office, and clinging to his pants were small spines and dry needles. The lily on his jacket had started to wilt. He ran the tap outside, drank from his hands, and splashed water over his face and neck.

  Like the last sentinel at their post, long after their company was scattered, the old sheriff’s office stood on the high street. Its thick stones were pocked and weathered with age. Lichen spread like liver spots over its surface. Above the doorway, Guardian Force’s sigil caught the afternoon sun. Behind it, faint and half-erased, the ghosts of old letters remained. If one squinted, they spelled: SHERIFF.

  Flanking the doorway were two stone pillars. In the face of one was a bullet hole. Here was the memory of the skirmish that had erupted as the Othilia Sheriff’s Department, and its hold on order, finally dissolved; when the terror of lawlessness briefly caught Othilia in its merciless grip.

  There was shouting in the streets that day; the heavy thud of fists thrown in fear and outrage; screaming, pleading, and tears; and finally, the deafening cracks of a revolver. Two townsfolk had died in the street that day. A third—a former deputy—coughed, spluttered, and breathed her last in her bed that night. It was a dark day, recalled every year with the lighting of three candles and a moment’s silence at sunset.

  In the aftermath, Baron Wordsworth outlawed all firearms within Othilia’s borders. He charged Virgil and Guardian Force, then little more than a ragtag coalition of vigilantes, with rooting out every firearm in the town. In the spirit of altruism, all were to be destroyed, either smelted down into raw material or dismantled beyond repair. It was said this was done—Virgil swore to it—but Giles had his doubts. Somewhere in Othilia, Giles was certain, lay a cache of weapons, preserved for the next breaking of order—its hiding place known only to the Baron, perhaps to Virgil as well.

  Scraping mud from his boots on the edge of the stoop, Giles pulled open the door which groaned on tired hinges, and stepped inside. The air was stagnant, heavy with dust and the faint scent of mildew. The waiting room was quiet, the service desk empty. In the general office the afternoon sun slanted over the vacant desks, a thousand motes dancing and drifting in the light. He strode with purpose through the desks, his boots heavy on the worn-out floorboards, and came into the archives.

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  Their filing system had reached the point of utter entropy. Filing cabinets under the threat of rust were clustered against the walls, drawers hanging crooked on broken runners. Great stacks of papers and folders loomed like stalagmites in a deep cave. The Chief Commander was amid this mountain of bureaucracy. For six months Guardian Force had struggled through the mayhem of re-categorisation. It wasn't going particularly well.

  On the wall behind the Chief Commander was a faded photograph veiled by cracked and fogged glass. A dozen or so men and women on the steps of the sheriff’s office, their postures stiff, faces sombre yet proud. They were dressed in uniform, not the khaki and leather of Guardian Force, but the blues of ocean and sky not seen in Othilia for fifteen years.

  Virgil blinked as Giles stepped through the doorway. He scowled, his weathered face tightening. “You're late,” he said.

  It had been a wearisome day. Heston still wasn't back from Calla Lily; Hendricks was sick; Millard had worked the night shift and was due back again this evening; and Vashe hadn't answered the Chief Commander's hammering on his door that morning. So much for Virgil’s day off.

  He had made plans to go fishing on the upper waters of the Greenbank, where the woods grew thick on either bank. He had attached his reel and hooked his line last night, and woke early before sunrise to dig the worms out of his garden, dropping them into an old can. Giles had told him to go, to let the day pass without him, but the Chief Commander, as stubborn as a rock in a snowstorm, had refused. He insisted on remaining behind so that two sets of hands were on standby. For Virgil was a veteran of the defunct Othilia Sheriff's Department, the last deputy to take the oath, and so he held hard to old habits. Old habits, Virgil was wont to say, harder to kill than cockroaches.

  "I don't pay you to dilly-dally," the Chief Commander growled.

  Giles stared at his Chief Commander, said nothing. He was impassive. When the Chief was in a mood, Giles and the other Guardians had learned it was best to let him vent, to let his fire rise, roar, and burn itself out.

  "Where the hell were you anyway?” Virgil looked Giles up and down, saw the dishevelled trousers, the mud-streak boots, his glistening forehead. “You look like you've been tromping through the woods. Thought you were going for lunch."

  "I detoured by the Enki River," said Giles. "And my luck that I did, because I found something there."

  Virgil’s frown deepened. "What?"

  Giles reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the stained pouch with the missing drawstring. He held it out to his Chief Commander. "I think we have a problem."

  Virgil’s gaze fell on the pouch. Before he could even reach for it, his eyes hardened, for he caught the acrid stench of strife.

  As he recounted his discovery, Giles poured himself a cup of burnt coffee, plonking a bar of chocolate into the boiling water. Steam curled into the air, the smell of coffee mingling with the sharp sinister stench exuding from the pouch on Virgil’s desk. The Chief Commander dipped his fingers into the demon spice, took a closer smell (as if wishing his first thoughts were false). He wrinkled his nose, then sprinkled the deadly grains back into the pouch.

  He frowned, and he looked unappealingly like an old man tired of the world.

  "I understand your concern, Giles. But I caution you against getting ahead of yourself. This isn’t a hoard, and we don't have strifers lying in the streets. It's the demon spice all right, I know the stench well enough; but let’s not call a flame an inferno. I think I know what's happened here. A couple of kids, maybe the Turner twins and their little gang—they've bought this filth from a hawker out of town. They've tried it, because they've heard from Bill, what Bill heard from Ted, that Ted knew a guy who sniffed strife once, abandoned his body for a night, and flew over the mountains to Fairyland.”

  Virgil held Giles in a gaze that was part reprimand, part dry humour. “You were young once too, if I'm not mistaken; and how much of a fool were you?"

  "Not fool enough to taste the demon spice," Giles snapped.

  Virgil's eyes narrowed. Deep wrinkles unfurled along his leathery skin. “What then? Haul every fool in town through these doors and wag my finger at them?”

  "And why not?"

  "Because it wouldn't change a damn thing."

  "It might make them think twice about doing it again."

  Virgil grunted laughter, but it was entirely sardonic. "Think twice? If they're fools enough, as you say, to taste the demon spice, what sense could I hammer into them? Either they tried it once, and once was enough, or they'll come back for more. And unless you cut the head off the snake, it will spit venom. Even if they gave up their hawker, they're like roaches; you can squash one or two or ten, but there's always more scurrying in the walls."

  "So what?” Giles’ voice was rising. “We ignore it?"

  "I'm not ignoring it; I said don't get ahead of yourself."

  "I don't want the demon spice in my damn town, Virgil!"

  "And yet here it is." Virgil’s cold eyes locked with the fire burning in Giles.

  For a time, neither man spoke. Giles lowered his gaze, swore under his breath, shook his head.

  Virgil sighed, opened a desk drawer—pens rattling, papers shifting—and dropped the pouch inside.

  "Listen to me carefully, Giles; listen with the ears you once gave your father. I care not for pulling at every loose thread I find, because if you're not careful, soon enough the whole thing falls apart. Sometimes you must wait, even if waiting is the last thing you want to do. Because if you wait, and you watch, then maybe you'll see something. Better for us that no one knows what we found; that no one knows we're watching."

  He dragged himself to his feet, groaning as he straightened his back. He placed both hands on the desk. "Follow the process, Giles. Write up your report. And wait. That's all we can do for now."

  "And what if next time the demon spice drags those young fools to Underland? What if it kills?"

  Virgil frowned, and for a time he was silent. "Let's hope it doesn't."

  The command was clear. The matter would proceed no further, not until more evidence presented itself.

  "Tell no one," said the Chief Commander. "This remains between us. Use your eyes, nothing more. Be patient, be passive. Do you ken?"

  "Yes," said Giles.

  And he gave the Chief Commander his word.

  It was not his first lie, nor his last; but one of many links in a great chain of mistakes that was the life of Giles Durant. A life of misery. May he have our pity.

  The rest of the day dragged. Papers shuffled, the old filing cabinets screeched and clanged. There was little chitchat, and the air was heavy with tension.

  Giles wrote his report, but he was distracted, constantly lowering his pen and staring at the old fan wopping away on the roof. Like vultures over the dead, Giles’ thoughts circled the demon spice.

  He recalled his brother’s stories of their father—a shadow in his fragmented childhood. His father had been a strifer; and it was the strife that had killed him. For he fell into his own nightmares, and amid thrashing and screams, they devoured him.

  Giles scarcely remembered his father, but he remembered that night. He remembered the horror in his father's black and tortured face. He remembered his sightless, bloodshot eyes, his final fatal scream. Then the deep silence.

  Millard arrived at sundown. By then the lily pinned to Giles' jacket was dehydrated and drooping. Giles said hello, said goodbye. Virgil’s gaze lingered on him, teeming with an intensity that reiterated all they had spoken about that day concerning the demon spice.

  Giles turned away, angry and agitated. He tore the flower from his chest and tossed it on the cracked bitumen.

  His boots echoed under the lengthening dusk. His thoughts remained with the demon spice.

  Coming up in Chapter 3 …

  Baron Wordsworth.

  Chapter 3: Fire and Shadow

  Coming this Thursday.