Chapter 3 : Lords of Sin & Smoke

  His trousers fell to his ankles. His groan aired, unwanted, eager to sully the ears that shared its strum. Hers was a frail whimper, more akin to a wound’s breath than any thread of delight. With eager fingers that curved to claw, he dug into her hips, leaving red trails where his grip lifted. She swallowed hard, winced, then shuddered, as he bashed against her again. Her eyes went dark with resignation.

  The table rocked on its legs. A thick slab of curated wood—carved and mantled in the room’s heart with the delicacy of trained design—was the throne to that degradation. Papers and ink still littered it. A map with darts stabbed across its face laid just beyond her reach. Here were plans enacted, councils entertained. Now, it memorialized that ashamed need, to grant lust a stage each night the heartless depravity sought its sweat of applause.

  On the left stood his spectator. A man, immersed utterly under a suit of full plate, stark as death, glossy as new gores. The glow of that blood-red hue begged an eye only to force terror upon it. The armour was unmarked, though adorned with black twine in the fades of its steel. His crimson was radiant and his helmet no different than a hangman's, save in its monstrous heft. Two eye holes glared through the executioner's countenance though nothing else mortal surfaced to gasp at warmth. A rope was fashioned around the neck, tied tight, then left to dangle over the chest, perhaps as a reminder to a death narrowly evaded, or perhaps as an assurance that he always was readied to peddle doom.

  Under the armour was eight feet of strength threatening to burst through. A greatsword of deep-earth magmas glided over his back, forged in tars to rend it a darkness impenetetrable and a power beyond repel. No ordinary person could lift the beastly thing, though of Osi Dragul of the Crimson Clad, there was nothing ordinary to unearth, nothing to praise and name human.

  He leaned against the left wall, arms crossed, eyes down without curiosities or frets to chase out. He listened to the pants and the pounds of skin striking bone, though a disinterest met it all. Not even disgust could muzzle his resolve. Not even desire could lift the cold of his eyes.

  Above him hung tapestries of blue and black, paintings with gold-rims and pearl ink, crossed blades forged from obsidian. Red carpet dazzled the marble floor. Facing the affair was a grand window, curtained shut to hide Galehaven’s horror and beauty from sight. At the far wall, beyond the table and its sins, stood a statue, towering at sixteen feet. It portrayed a peasant, dragged by robes, with his hands clasped in prayer and his eyes begging the skies. Though there, in that wide, shadowed chamber, those eyes found only a chandelier of silver and gold.

  It hovered over the pale woman, shimmered as if in regal condemnation against her. She saw only the wood below, as a hand held her face down and a ram took her against the tableside. Her gold hair laid in trapped locks, like a towel tossed over her cheeks.

  Grunting filled the space, until by spit were the parchments dampened and passion trailed off into slow heaves. He yanked at his silk trousers—hued in their deep purple. There did he pause, to look over her thoughtfully. There was the quiver of a spine in breach, the slow gathering of composure like a weak leash over the lips. He pondered at the sounds of that discrete dismay, leaned near, but did not smile.

  Grace began to rise, but her patron’s hand came gently over her back and returned her flat. To remain still was a battling of reluctance. She yearned for the corridor and its hundred puzzling escapes again. She retained integrity enough to honour her guarantee, even in duress, even in piling dread, though the shivering was of fear. Here prowled a lord and his killer, engrossed in their private gratuities. Had she a second chance, she might have whipped the coin into his jaw.

  The lord withdrew his hand, confident his declaration would be obeyed, then threw on a robe of black. It parted down the middle, revealing a quite subtle set of abs, lined in scars that shallowed their tissue. His hair was straight, black. His eyes were sharp and undressing, piercingly blue. The High Ovalin was of moderate height, moderate strength, but the swagger in his steps, the swiftness in his hands assured he was capable to lunge, catch, beat and bury. His chin was sharp, gristled with thin stubble that darted under tiny lips. His face, on its own, would strike a soul as skeletal, robbed of passion’s blush and wrinkle, yet the wildness of his eyes imbued within him a fiery life that was undoubtedly industrious.

  Drooping over his chest, slickened in sweat, was a pendant of kite iron. Four dark scratches set over a blue moon absorbed its width. Scholars might guess its likeness, though seldom do tomes lower themselves to mention such an emblem. Soldiers however, vagabonds and mercenaries too—subjects of the underearth pains, would know that cursed adage like the back of their hand. It was the symbol of the Onbstrug Creek Vigilants: an army of reavers who broke the back of the Njall rebellion and earned their page in history with blooded ink. Now, it swayed like a hanged man from the neck of the High Lord of Defence, over the back of his courtesan.

  “I like you more like this,” said Veidt Ovalin, with a voice of iced, salted inflection.

  How admirable, he thought to himself. Her back bent like a shapely forfeiture of spirit, her eyes aimed down in surrender of the senses themselves. In that moment, in that room, she was his, without condition. Was this so much to demand?

  Unwittingly, unaware, his hand had found endeavour against her ribs. Veidt did not notice how slicing his nails were along her side, until with a trembing she cast away his touch. He could read so clearly the terror, the waiting revolt, the indulgence of the foul, perfect mind that scraped for a sharp salvation to plunge through his own jugular. It was understood completely and disturbed him to his core. Could his company—all of his passions—be such a frightening thing? Could the want for subservience warrant such ire?

  Still, she shivered.

  In moments, her beauty dissipated. Veidt could at once spot the wrinkles in her pale skin, discover the knots in her golden locks, glimpse the ugliness of malnourished bone wrenching just below the surface. What right did she have to fear him, in a chamber so rich of silk and scenery? What right could there be to indulge fear while at the height of grace, nestled in a city’s nosebleeds, with the world below her and naught but her own gold weighing her down? This dullard, he thought, with a crude shift of shape. Teeth snuck out through his thin lips. His hands, once smooth and gentle, veined with spite.

  “You’re shivering,” he exposed. “What frightens you?”

  She stammered, glanced at him over her shoulder, but her jaw and its jitters could voice no truths. In her place, he persisted, leaning deeper over her with a glare so venomous it was certain to infect.

  “The marble, perhaps? Your feet are cold, astride on such crude earth?” No answer, and so his vexation pulsed. “Or the table, perhaps… surely, such a flower is used to leaning over softer oak?”

  Now worry peeked its head. As if, with her jaw, searching for a diamond under mud her mouth worked, yet she could not speak, instead shrinking before him with each twist of the lip. Experience brought her glare against his hands, careful to not catch the flat side of a fist with her cheek unflexed. She braced for an impact of harsh words or hard strikes, and Veidt marveled at every ripple of fear.

  Damned coward, he cursed. Of course, he remembered such angst in anticipation. He had witnessed fright, clutched longingly around a dull blade, as the hounds closed in. He had felt shivers, in the aftermath of an iron volley, when where friends once stood he found dead stares. He knew horror, as it played with its own insides without understanding what it meant to die.

  For her fear to throb in that pillowed bleakness, that soft threat so heinously uninspired, Veidt knew she was only evidence to a sheltered humanity; she proved that fault of experience shared amidst the ducked-head masses. A sample of a diseased whole, so entwined to their petty speculations they could not fathom the truth of terror, could not withstand warfare's miracles. She was, as so many others proved to be, unequipped to suffer. And yet she would, worse than most. Such was the will of Arakvan.

  Veidt scoffed, certain before him bent another victim that would be rendered to bone when the walls at last fell and the enemy rode scourging through. He leaned back, disinterested with her unremarkable evils. His hand fell into his robe pocket.

  “Four silvers, was it?” he asked politely, as matter-of-fact as any accomplished diplomat.

  She nodded, then began to stand, yet again a hand propped her back down. Only this time, it was not a gentle nudge. Rather, against her back fell the cold grip of command, and it urged a waiting arch of the body. She complied, though now Veidt could not find the patience to smile.

  “Four silvers…” he muttered, glaring at the little coins in his palm. “You know, I knew another servicer who worked for such fees. Like you, he came in the night to offer his work. Only he did not wear scant cotton and jewels so cheap any learned eye would laugh at them.” Now, he did indeed smile. She felt the grin boil into her back. “No, he wore studded leathers, under a cloak so black you’d be convinced you saw only shadows in its place.”

  The tears quickened, while her fingers crumpled into fists. Grace yearned for a quill or a stamp, knowing only cuts and bludgeons could disinfect the contamination of his embrace. She hugged fantasies of clawing through his eyes, though Osi's shadow engulfed all illusions like a ravening nightmare.

  “This man…” Veidt continued, “was of the darkest ilk. He bore no hesitance, entertained no common conscience. He simply took what he was owed—four silvers it was, and killed wherever the paying finger fell. For four silvers, he’d gut strays, orphans, beggars, nobles… even whores. Members of the highest echelon, all the way down to the street I pulled you off of… All would fall, fast and as inordinate as rain when he set his eyes upon them.” Veidt chuckled. “I could speak a name, and before dawn that name would stain a crypt. A mason, a smith, a harlot—naught but old, rended tissue. A triad of slit hides, with their terror still petrified upon their faces.” He nodded. He remembered. “See, he earned his coin. Every gilded inch of it. Mere as a forward march, he could prove the most heinous feats of man. Punish them or perpetuate. Performed all… for four little silvers…”

  He leaned low, brought his mouth near her ear.

  “And you…” she could hear the slither of his tongue as he spoke. “You let me fuck you.”

  Veidt Ovalin dropped the coins over her bowed head, letting them batter her like a silver hail. She curled her hands up around her skull. The feeling was painful, but the sound—that imprinting ring of metal—was far, far worse. She clutched her ears as if she aimed to tear them off, spare herself.

  “A job well done, Grace,” he said softly, wetly, before rising.

  Barely restraining a scream, hardly keeping her fists away from his jaw, she pulled her clothes against her chest, grabbed at the silvers though caught only three, and barged out the door, taking flight down the hall. In her absence, Veidt plucked the last coin from where it lay and stared into it. He gave its dull emblemage a nod: intrigued, with frustration no more. The face of a bald pontiff, with robes like sharp armour, glared back.

  “Practical, isn’t it?” he asked his red guard. “Doesn’t make sense that she should make as much as a man so skilled.”

  “You toy with them too much,” grunted the guard, in a voice like rock.

  “Them?” Veidt laughed. “Them you say with such distinction, as if you were not one of them before your blade slit the right throat.” His hands fell over the maps, diligent to seek course, careless of the harlot sweat wetting the board. Already, his mind was moved on.

  “I was,” admitted that towering heap of red metal, devoid of shame or pride. “But as you said, we are at least a silver apart.” Now he stood straight, off the wall, with a stature that ordered respect. “I don’t slit throats. I don’t work in the night,” proclaimed Osi Dragul. “And now, your fabled killer wears only red.”

  Veidt smiled. He was impressed by his own handiwork, in coating such a slab of violent flesh with crimson's metal undeath. “Ahh,” he recalled, tenderly, “but you did look so fearsome in black.”

  The hall then grew boisterous with the slap of shoes. Its whisper swelled, twice and again, until it was clear a small host marched up the hall. At the rear stood an ensemble of hustling servants, with polearm guards stamping close behind. From head-to-toe were they clad in plate mail, navy blue and laced with gold. On their breastplates flapped black birds, over blue prison bars that, in turn, trapped a golden sea. Each servent bore the same sigil upon their garb. Twelve serviced a sum of four.

  The lordly quad wore attire finer suited to their station. Their eyes addressed a thousand threats, their ears shunned a thousand claims.

  Behind the short, stubby leader of the ensemble was a gaunt figure. His hands were wrapped tightly behind his waist and his back bent forward eerily, like that of an insect undecided on its dock. His clothes, a fine menage of gold and blue, hung awkwardly, sagged, as if sized for a man much larger. He was slender, yet his face was fat. His hair was white, though he was middle-aged. The strength beating within his weak frame and the puffy eyelids safeguarding his beads of blue fire made him a ceaseless contradiction. He was Rah Montor, the High Rah of Opulence.

  Shouldering his right, of moderate height, walked a man on quick feet. His face was snakish, his eyes at a constant peer—always adrift, always concerned by distant affairs that trumped the importance of anything current. His jaw was without a spec of hair, laying the weak incline of its structure bare. The skull was streaked in a trimmed wave of black strides, highlighted in white dartings. Its nose was small, but the lips smaller. The lord’s tiny, plain features contributed greatly to his apparent insignificance, or at least they would have, were it not for the striking vigilance of his squat brown eyes. His robes were gold streams over a blue splotch, and half-draped over studded armour of red and black fit for a sellsword. At his hip hung a marble baton, with its tip blunted by use. There strode Sunt Conrord, the High Conrord of Asepsis. Across his face was smeared a becoming scowl, rarely abandoning his visage.

  In front of them was a woman, close behind the stubby vanguard. Her hair was silver, artificial, her lips tight with a ruby gloss. With a lax stance, she boasted her stark flesh with each lean and sag. She wore a black, white-streaked gambeson, ornamented in woven daggers, befitting of military command more than the Nydessius Seat. Over it was a silk shawl, blue and gold. Searching eyes imposed an aura of discomfort, of sought tractability upon her vicinity and its victims, though this collective was affordably immune. She was Lydae Dryke, the High Dryke of Exchange.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Leading the pack down the hall and into the High Ovalin’s chambers was the shortest, fattest, and least opposing of the prestigious band, though he was the sole to sport guards at his every side. His robes were brown, with only a humble Galehavenin crest upon his left breast. The light of lanterns reflected off his polished bald head. Elderly, with dark eyes and weary cheeks, Vithicar Hollum Darr—whom they named Father—asserted authority not through prestige or pronouncement, but by his discontent alone, which was certainly stained upon his face.

  Veidt stood unimpressed by their honoured intrusion. He crossed his arms, stared to seal upon them an only semi-concealed aggravation. The Pale Vithicar strolled into the chamber and past his disgruntled disciple. He gazed at the shut windows with a contempt braced for the world of brick and stone beyond.

  “I am certain…” Father Hollum Darr began, in quiet complaint. “That entertaining whores in the high keep was previously discussed, Veidt.”

  “It was,” he concurred. “Though she prefers the term ‘sensual performer’.”

  The Father’s flock weeded into the many straights and alcoves of that vast chamber. Soon, the room was dominated by coats of blue and gold. Veidt felt his power trampled. Still, he managed a smirk, watching the High Dryke and Rah glaze their faint, pretend intrigues over portraits and cobblery, desperate to seem in judgement. He knew however, that they flinched in their refinery every time the cold inspection of Dragul fell upon them. Even with three dozen polearms, Osi could make the greatest of men feel defenseless.

  It was the High Conrord that at last made Veidt’s smirk vanish. He did not pretend to care about the Lord of Defence’s affairs, nor did he trifle with any performative pleasantries or slights. He simply stood and stared, watching Veidt’s lips work like a serpent observing sheep in the grass.

  “If you’ve time for bedding whores,” jibed the Father, “certainly you’ve found ample time to acquaint yourself with this lunacy just beyond our very walls.”

  The Pale Vithicar beckoned with two fingers. At once, two guards brought the curtains apart. The sprawling cityscape beyond was revealed as if it sat at a stage’s centre, ready to clap and dance to enthrall the Father’s eye. Only, from a height as imposing as the High Ovalin’s own chamber, one could see naught but lonely rooftops, quiet spires, the smoke from faraway burnings and the smog from a rot that clung to the evening mist. A grey, endless mess it was. Dots swarmed the alleys below and Hollum Darr could smell the stink.

  “Horror,” he pronounced, appalled. “Heathen arts have slithered through our guard. They’ve sunk into the very soil in which our bannermen lay stakes.”

  Somehow, the darkness trapped at the other side of the glass was brighter than the candles of Ovalin’s stall. The light of exposure was a blinding thing. Veidt was driven by it, tucked to the room’s edge where he pretended to test his vision against mounted arts, as if to derail the reality of his fear. But it was real, and it remained. With a million eyes aimed high and half as many mouths set to sneer, it remained.

  The High Conrord observed Veidt curiously, entertained by his musings, intrigued by what seemed an unnerving upon his face. Lurking, hopeful none could see. Sunt smiled.

  Veidt was blind to his studying peers. His mind buzzed with the rattle coiled beyond the window sill, though to others there was a perfect silence. With those curtains left apart, Veidt felt like an exhibit, powerless to evade all the hate pressed against the glass.

  “Which horrors?” he asked faintly, remembering the Father’s words at last. “These heathens you call to shame; they’ve stacked a plethora before us.”

  “The horror of impiety,” he explained. “The horror of doubt—of disease. Of filth and frenzy, of fear and disloyalty. The horror of a house aimed for collapse, and the truth that the pillars hoisting it up are aged and rotten. Truly, has a nation ever been better prepped for damnation?”

  “The Garrison…” Veidt loathed, his lips coming frail with their cursed utterance.

  “The godless, the Patch-ridden, the devils who pray in secret that the Scourge claims all. Have you heard this night’s calamity? The cost of another day yet undone by revolt?” The Pale Vithicar rubbed his ancient hands together and paced closer to the glass. “They—those pagan, pig-fucking charlatans, laid the Chapel of St. Vativ to flame! The fires soared, latched onto a few low roofs, and spread for five blocks! There is at least some peace to be found, knowing a sum of the heathen pack choked to death on the smoke of their sin.”

  Veidt’s teeth clamped shut. The Vanished Garrison was a band of militant rebels, composed of state beasthunters who turned tail and veterans embittered that no trumpets were sounded to welcome them home. Then the young idealists, of course, who did not know their holy war was only a long bartering for compromise. They, in their nests across the byways and in port shacks, waged a battle against the Clergy, though consequenced only its faithful. In time, Veidt knew, he would see them crushed.

  “The Chapel of St. Vativ was a hostel for lost souls,” groaned the High Rah. “Such villainy, to burn a sacred place…”

  “I’ve heard it told it housed more than the lost,” Veidt countered. “But also the complicit, and an altar owed to a quite embracive priest.”

  “Hearsay,” Rah Montor snuffed, before turning away.

  “If we are to combat a threat, let us not delude ourselves to its intentions. The Garrison, above all else, wants every man in this room laid bare over a stake.” Veidt’s harsh glare fell over all in the vicinity, vowing sincerity. “In the meantime, until they stir a fire that can climb castle walls, they will settle for our institutions, assets, any function of the Clergy that embodies that which they seek to destroy.”

  “And does the prevention of our destruction not fall squarely under the jurisdiction of ‘defense’?” asked the High Dryke, a salt in her breath, which swayed a tone of cold, condescending moxy.

  “Does the sun fall under the clouds?” he answered.

  “Then why is it that we find ourselves in the midst of a losing battle, Lord?”

  Veidt readied a retort, yet the condoning harumph of the Father soured his haste. He snarled, shook his head of all its playful vice, and resumed false composure with which he reeled at Lydae.

  “How do you kill a gorfly?” he asked patiently. “Do you swing a sword at it? Of course not, it is far too swift, nimble—concealed to be found by a tool too blunt.” He shrugged. “Do you gas its air? No, then you kill not only the gorfly, but the spiders and the butterflies too. You can only swat away again and again until its guts stain your hand.” He turned towards the Father’s back and loudened himself. “This is a battle of persistence, my Lords. Of chance and continued efforts. It will not be won on a whim. Nor will it be lost on one, no matter how many blocks might burn.”

  The lords spun on one another. A cage for their bickering found form, and as if in prediction, the Pale Vithicar turned around with annoyance hot in his eyes. Silence loomed, until his jaw creaked low.

  “Galehaven is marshed by sick tents. Caravans, coming with our trade or leaving with our coin, are set upon by fangs, mere miles from our walls. Arrenfaeld is reportedly in ruins. And now, I’ve a dead priest at my door.”

  With disgust, he brushed his contempt across the room in one broad, silent stroke.

  “Whatever efforts have been made, whatever chances taken, they have failed, my Lords. There will be results, or there will be a change of station.” A particular malice fell toward Veidt, scolding and threatening in one shift of stance.

  The Father turned away and the bulk of the guards turned with him, leaving the lords to soak in their shame. But Veidt twisted, stretched his neck until it cracked, and grew a sneer.

  “Oh, Father,” he called before Hollum Darr could step out the door. “A raven reached me an hour past. The perpetrators of this attack on Arrenfaeld were discovered. My Crimson Clad interrogated the bandits responsible: a rogue outfit of zealots, out from Nelkard. They hang from the arms of the Haddlebush as we speak.”

  Hollum Darr stopped, then in four slow steps was returned to the chamber’s heart. He observed Veidt curiously, bent his head at him. A quiet inquiry, it found only the calm and confidence afforded.

  “Hm,” the Father grunted. “Well done, High Ovalin. It is comforting to know among a host so dignified, so qualified for success, that there is at least some marginal victory.”

  The High Ovalin nodded, but before he could speak his gratitudes, the Father’s weak little hand fell against his shoulder.

  “Take caution, Veidt, that in your crusades you do not turn worshippers to wanters. The Vanished Garrison has furnished a keen ability to steal hearts. I would not see fringe hangings—justified, unjustified, or worse, fashioned into a rally’s pin. Your past endeavours have denied you your fair share of council seats. I would not be caught unsuspecting if they took not only your chair, but your rank from you as well. Savagery, is no solution for savagery.”

  “Njall was barbaric,” Veidt consented. A glow steadied itself in his gaze: one of remembrance, hate, rattled sanity. “None who saw its face were so privileged as to stay perfectly humane.” He leaned closer, cutting in with a sly tongue, catching the Vithicar with eyes wide. “But Arakvan is different. There is power in sigils here, in chants and creeds. Nearly more so than in true force. But be it symbolic or true, there is no power that inspires greater dread in our enemies than that of the Crimson Clad. And the Crimson Clad answer to me.”

  The Father withdrew his hand. First he was bewildered, then offended, then adrift in the bizarre of his own mind and the fears it dared to indulge. The words were stern, spoken like a warning, but in them was a great deal of truth. It was, as Hollum Darr came to understand under the weight of Veidt’s maddened eyes, that in a reality so morbid, so devoutly without composure, barbarity could not be shunned. The Father nodded slowly, appreciating the depth of Veidt’s commitment, though so hopelessly estranged by his severity that he was stranded in a land without words.

  “I must wonder,” said the High Dryke, a salvation to his mind’s drought, with a confident drag slowing her steps closer. “Why it is that only one among our council maintains his own militia? Court tones are loud, High Ovalin, equally fierce, and the Nydessius Seat whispers that your red guard is no security at all, and certainly not a Clergy agency, but rather a pack of hounds, loyal only to their master’s every indulgence.”

  “Jealousy does not suit you, o' merchant queen,” Veidt mocked. “But if your walks to and from banquets demand bladesmen, certainly we can spare you soldiers.”

  “Between jealousy and national concern…” she retorted, with a twist of her back that gave her face to light. “There exists a great divide.” In approach, her paleness was striking, her ruby lips fat enough to sip out a soul.

  The High Ovalin paced the table’s length. His strong, slender fingers brushed over parchments charting the northern expanse. Under his nails ran dense ranks of stubbed mountains, sampled with snows, tree swaths like an oaken mold, and cragged descents that stretched deeper than the Caverns of the Morlen Saints, for which the land was stricken of any human ingenuity but the ruins where it failed.

  “It would be a worthy thing,” he began. “Could I compose a group of seven effective enough to threaten a state. Yet I am afraid, my dear, that the greatest threat to our sovereignty remains the shortcomings, failures, and fears of those in this room.” His eyes fell gravely against her. “No matter how trivial they prove. No matter the progression they obstruct.”

  “Progression?” she chided through a wide grin. “Since when has progression been measured by the sum of nooses filled? Where you see a sunrise, Lord Veidt, a common mind can recognize oblivion. I had presumed, in harbouring a crippled father, you could better distinguish between progression and impairment, my Lord.”

  Like balls of fire, his glare struck her, vowed to deeds most uncivil; then were they sworn to hate beyond mortal measure. The High Dryke lurched back an inch, compelled by his caution, before recalling that the unimpressed stare of the Pale Vithicar had sought her out.

  “Exchange your indignities later,” ordered Hollum Darr, unenthusiastic. “I came to express my desires, not entertain the bickerings of children. There are lower chambers for such matters.” He paced back towards the door, then turned to his four disciples. “Ensure, no matter your duties or your drawbacks, that the word of arson does not reach my ears a time again. Not against the Clergy. Not in this city. Let it be known, my lords, and seen in the skies at dawn, that Galehaven is owed to the All-Father, and those so succumbed to presume otherwise have no place within its walls.”

  He stepped over the threshold, the bulk of the guards drawn like magnets behind him.

  “Be steadfast, my Lords,” he warned. “The clouds of Arakvan thunder, always. But in this dark I have seen lightning, and things align for a disastrous storm.”

  At a leisurely waddle he departed the chamber. A horde of metal boots clanged across the marble after him. The High Rah bid his fellows farewell with a nod, then followed suit into the corridor, with four more armed men flaking to his rear. The last two lords remained in the chamber, alongside a robed Veidt and his monstrous warhound.

  “How ironic it is, Veidt,” voiced Sunt Conrord, his stature heightening in the absence of the Father, his strength swelling in his shrunken frame, and his tongue growing quick, uncautious. “Out there amidst the swards, you and your butchers are an unmatched force.” He picked a piece up off the map: a brown stallion, marble-carved. In its tiny eyes he found some pleasure, but that smile—crooked and narrow—wanted anything but. “Yet in here, in sacred halls… The Pale Vithicar thinks a change of station may be in order, repurposing you to an outfit more appropriate for your skills… I would guess banditry, but the Father has an imaginative mind, if not maliciously unconscious.” Sunt flipped the piece in his grip, squeezed it against his palm. “It would appear, Veidt, beyond the battlefield, you are as vulnerable as the babes you slaughter.”

  Veidt turned his back to the High Conrord and leaned against the table. His gaze found Osi Dragul in incessant vigilance. An unappeased watch fell over the gloss of Osi’s armour. In its reflection Veidt beheld himself as a fierce cut of red metal, broadened and abstruse. That sight was assurance enough, and with a grin he chastised the whittling lord behind him.

  “Your tales are tall, Sunt,” said Veidt. “But your threats are a stunted thing. Do not assume warning can be passed through my chambers like the gossip of farmhands. Too often is the Nydessius lightened by its quick tongues.”

  The High Conrord took the horse and slid his fingers down its spine, then up, then he tossed it lopsided back to the map, skidding papers askew on its course. “You are unsuited for court. I have seen.” Over his shoulder crept two tight eyes like shooting stars, crawling across a canvas of black. Only in their watch they grew dim, steady. In focus, Sunt seemingly forwent light itself; come a killer’s grey. “How long until the Father sees your machinations for what they are—the mines, the fires? How long until he concludes you’re better off rotting beneath a grave than digging one?”

  The High Ovalin closed the blinds, shielding himself once more from the bleak fluorescence of a dormant humanity. In one pull, the lamplight and bonfires went out, so Veidt breathed easier.

  “I imagine long after age has claimed his sanity,” he chirped. “By which time I will have all the graves I could ever need dug and decorated.”

  Sunt strafed the table, grappling a fist along its edge.

  “You think I fear you?” he asked with a goading grin.

  He reached the table’s end when Veidt turned to face him, tasting the iron in his qualm.

  “Of course,” said Veidt. “Why else would you deign to visit when my wardogs are on the hunt and your own men guard the door? I implore you, good lord, repeat these words at a later hour. I will show you then how vulnerable I am.”

  “It is impressive, Veidt,” said Lydae. “To have a daughter in a cage and a father trapped to his chair, and still be the weakest of your line. Scared of leaving the window ajar—quivering without your red guard. While before it has perplexed me, I recognize now how it has been reduced to just you three. You are without an ounce of strategy, wild as the beasts you stuff.”

  Veidt bowed his head with a sigh. He wanted to maul Lydae, hew her head, batter it against Sunt’s feeble frame until his blood filled the cracks on the floor. He wanted to show them just how little their words meant; how easily a defiant spirit could falter when it met true mortality in the form of fists and blades. He wanted to kill them for the fault of their innocence, but here, regrettably, was no place for bloodshed. So he raised his head, gave a dry chuckle, and faced the High Dryke with words and eyes alone. His hands curled behind his back, wrapping around each other and tightening until the flesh grew red under the brand of his nails.

  “You speak so courageously, Lydae. What will that courage become, I wonder, when the walls fall… and the beasts swarm in…” Veidt lost himself to her gaze, obsessed with the dark of her pupils. “What will become of your bravery… when the hunger sets in at last…”

  He spoke to her, but was attentive to anything but. Something existed in the air, in the gaps between thought and beyond sight, that called to him, reminded him of otherwise. Something whispered of past and truth and dragged his focus elsewhere, where things were crueler and just all the same. That place held him and, for a moment, anything outside of it dissolved to dust. But the dust stacked, and soon Veidt choked on it.

  Readjusting himself, he braced for the words and stares that would steal his paradise.

  “Do take care,” Lydae advised, bemused by his estrangement, though wiser than to pry into even the shallow depths of an unsettled mind. “In this city, I will not let you take anything else.”

  Sunt Conrord marveled at the stunt. Veidt’s distraction, the lunacy that rode his disturbed gaze, was a thing of beauty. The High Conrord observed Veidt, and in him found a perfect balance of insatiable fury and diplomatic zeal, one never rising too high above the other. Sunt saw this and in his visions were doom.

  “Good ‘eve, my friend,” he said politely, before departing behind Lydae and in effect dismissing the rest of the guards. “May we next meet amidst kinder tidings.”

  It was for a while that Veidt threw his contempt at the open door. He bit at its texture and carved up its modest scent, until its press against his eyes became too familiar for comfort. The High Ovalin grinded his teeth and rolled his shoulders back, before his hand found the will to slam the door shut and reimmerse himself in the dark. Osi watched, as was his duty, but was too detached to care.

  Veidt paced and pondered and, without knowing, a towel had ripped atwo between his hands.