Faces like staring monkeys from the Suelan paintings crowded the newcomer. But their wild eyes were not so wild. Rather, they looked down while he struggled to rise with the same interest as would a beast whose spirit had long been broken by the stifling monotony of the zoo. They hadn’t crowded. There was no room.

  The smell of men and globs of gruel rushed him as he wobbled to his feet. Unusually for him, he worried over what was going to happen when the rent was due, Seasmil and Somyellia not knowing where he was, the destinies of his possessions within that meager, gone-now home.

  Gruel…for the rest of his life. He’d have to put in for trustee again.

  “Snier?” a voice said, putting Tymothus onto its cracking, grinning face before it lightened. “What you do this time, pinch a priest ass?” Tymothus turned his back on the toothless pickpocket, resting his arms on the crossbars so he could stare out into the gloom.

  A botched burglary.

  A life sentence.

  He’d started doing burglaries during the grave-robbing downtime. The split with Seasmil kept him out of the pauper lines, but Seasmil’s strong interests in both the freshly dead and the poor made for easy access but meager returns.

  The first dozen houses or so were a silken dream. Excelling seemed instantaneous; Tymothus considered himself an emerging natural. Then, on this same night when a choir of Chapwyn door-knockers did their civic duty and hung a poet who’d stirred crowds with lamentations of longing for pre-Years of Peace ways, Tymothus was caught and his life was over.

  One of the many agonies of the Municipal Dungeon was the way it had been built. With long swaths of hallway without so much as torch or candle, with addition after addition leading up to new unnumbered cells or clever, rickety elevators squeaking down to the catacombs, a prisoner’s inability to discern where they’d just been, night from day, or if the blackness staring back at them bore a wall—or, if the dungeon fever had reemerged, causing its loathsome hallucinations, if that black really went on forever.

  It was fortunate perhaps that Tymothus was already familiar. The Rat’s Nest took up the middle of a giant room. On all sides were the stone walls, caging in the cage by block and mortar. From the cage’s front, in the light of the new torches, the corridors leading in and out of the room could almost be seen. A lone door in the wall faced them. Hanging over it was the ominous placard: Special Concerns.

  Tymothus remained mostly up front, slinking against the bars, stomaching gruel, losing fast the track of days as his only connection with the outside world passed him in the form of working guards.

  About when the slashes on his back stopped throbbing, the cage had transformed itself from the lulls and spits of lament and flare-ups to a congruent, startled hum. From the dungeon’s belly to Rapist Wing, all the way to the shore of Crackpots Range, guards and prisoners alike were bouncing back and forth word that a convicted necromancer was coming in.

  Sorcery, necromancy, crystal gawking—the whole arcana bundle that to Tymothus came with funny children who have more brains than blood—it all had been outlawed in Rehleia not long after The Conqueror and Maecidion the Virulent had struck some deal. The most common rumor was Maecidion’s House could still furtively practice all the things Seasmil and Somyellia showed far too much interest in. The only clause was he had to barter new deals with new devils, the finer tuning of which was lost on the clerk or scribe, but it kept said devilry from stalking the streets and hills, having been common as cabbage in the elder days.

  Despite the law, a convicted necromancer was something maybe seen once in living memory. The concoction necessary to discover, catch, try, and convict a man who for fun talks with the dead and realigns the fiber of natural order was something rarely accomplished. Since the offender often also specialized in the manipulation of the human mind, doubt turned to counter-investigations turned to lynch mobs decrying the inspector and prosecutor. Walls were slopped red, not only in court, but in the family rooms of the men misguided enough to spearhead such an uphill task.

  When the sounds began, those in the cage who didn’t shut their mouth immediately paid for it later. To some it was a blacksmith, working in the near darkness on a metal door. Others noted the rhythm, how it changed, citing a new torture machine shifting with the needs of its first captive. Tymothus strained his eyes, ignoring the excited murmurs.

  Then it happened. Out walked the first guard, then the second. Behind the lugs and their shouldered halberds was a malevolent-looking fellow, barely able to move from all the chains. The culprit of the sound: the chee-chunk cha-chunk of the coil that had swallowed him ended when they reached the doorway for Special Concerns. There the guards stuffed the stranger inside, entering the room after him. Then they shut the door.

  *

  “You know, it’s not every day someone wants to be here.”

  Irion had learned their names during the walk. “Your esteemed warden is a hard man to have audience with, Moevelt. Can you think of a better way?”

  “Yeah,” Gunroe growled, taking a swig from a bottle then stuffing it back behind his breastplate. “Paint yerr face like a clown. That dummy’ll come runnin’.”

  Moevelt laughed at his partner, listless and unamused. Irion was seated on a bare stool on one side of the interrogation table. On the other they stood, Gunroe unable to resist. “Watchu want to talk with the warden for?”

  “To tell him to his face what a pompous piece of barnyard pig shit he is,” Irion said, “of course.”

  Light in the Special Concerns room was better than outside with the whipped thieves. Moevelt and Gunroe could see Irion quite well; his bony knees in his black stockings, outcroppings from thighs holding up the mountain of chain. When they decided he was no daring trickster and that he actually needed to be hauled in, they’d given special attention to his hands. The exposed fingers could move, but not enough to keep dungeon guards wary of some prefabricated spell. It was the bald man’s smirk they watched now.

  “No, really. Why the request?” Moevelt asked. “What do you want with him?”

  “I want with him what the world wants with him: to send his gelatinous mass down to the void where he can join his mother and mother’s mother in pleasuring devils with whichever hole presents itself the most urgent.”

  Whatever mirth was left in the sober of the two guards was now gone. “An Ordrid would say something like that. Put the hooch away, Gun.” Placing his hands on the table, Moevelt leaned forward. “The warden doesn’t give two high hells ’bout you. Who the hell you think you are?”

  “Your warden will come to me,” Irion said. “Loosen my chains.”

  Gunroe laughed. Moevelt didn’t. “Dipshit, I guess you don’t get it, do ya? You don’t tell anyone shit in here.”

  At this, Irion points a finger. A lone finger that neither guard sees. It is shrouded by the weight and shadow of links of chain, but the finger is pointing. Irion’s finger was pointing at Moevelt. “Kill him,” Irion says, looking at Gunroe.

  “Necromancer or not,” Moevelt said, placing his halberd against the wall and cracking his knuckles, “you’re gonna learn how we do things here, you—Gun, what th—”

  The second slash did it. Gunroe’s municipally appointed dagger sliced deep under Moevelt’s armpit, blood spraying Gunroe and Moevelt screaming. Moevelt had never been afraid of Gunroe, or of any man. Gun being the smaller, little uppity brawlers always listened after a broken bone or six. But Moevelt didn’t advance to start breaking.

  “Gun,” he heard himself say. “Put down the blade, brother.” He stuck out his hands, like a diplomat, fanning his fingers, soon pulling back one missing a thumb for his trouble.

  The entire Rat’s Nest watched as the door flew open. They’d heard what sounded like screams, roaring to reality when one guard clutching his hand tore into the blackness of a corridor and the other chased after.

  “Those two,” chuckled a voice outside the bars. Snier jumped so suddenly he almost hit his head. The orange halos of torchlight made what shadows they couldn’t reach all the blacker. Combined with what had just run out of sight, invisible had been this guard who’d come to distribute, of course, more gruel. The burly man called to another somewhere behind him, “Go shut that door, will ya?”

  *

  Warden Rogaire especially hated menial tasks. Trustees swept shit. His army of guards could damn well have the room better stocked with more and bigger candles. “Well?” was all he said, all he could say, lighting a few and staring at Irion Ordrid out of the corner of his eye.

  “Do you know why I’m here?”

  It wasn’t characteristic of the big man to evade questioning. The warden lit another then walked to Moevelt’s halberd, inexplicably left to lean against a wall. “No. Don’t care either. Just wanted to come have a look at you. That’s all.”

  “And,” Irion let hang, curious what the warden saw as they eyed one another, “you, prison master, are the bigger, dumber, infinitesimally less interesting version of your dead father.”

  Warden Rogaire stared as he would a man who’d just shoved his head up his own ass. No one—in chains of all things, Ordrid or no—dared speak to him this way. “The hounds,” he choked then repeated. “I’m thinkin’ it’ll be the hounds for you.”

  “Yes, torture, no doubt. May I show you? Free my hands.”

  “I’m the warden of the Municipal Dungeon…of Nilghorde.” Irion didn’t stir. He blinked and let out a theatric yawn. “Lord of the House of Rogaire!”

  “That,” Irion shot like a snake, “that, I know. Now release my hands.” The warden stormed over and seized him by the throat. Irion’s eyes were alight, every candle caught. Words flowed from his tongue like a sweetened air. “There, there we are.”

  *

  Making it all the way into Crackpots Range may have impressed the howling lunatics if they’d known, or understood, Moevelt’s state. His side was wet, his uniform soaked by his sweat and the copper stickiness of his own blood. He could barely move his left arm, flopping it like a limp, dead animal to try and determine its gash’s severity. Panic restruck him like an arrow. Recoiling his thumbless hand, he kept running.

  Out of breath, he leaned against the nearest bars only to be propelled back by snarls and yelps from caged men. These men, residents of Crackpots Range, had long ceased their pitiful states and become agents of fear.

  Footsteps struck the floor stones, fast and loud. It would be only a moment more then Gunroe would round the same bend he had, just brandishing that—

  Moevelt drew his own dagger, thanking Tersiona his strong arm had been spared.

  Reserved for the newest or laziest of guards, these crumbling tunnels and cages that heaped and fell into each other were always poorly lit. What good was light to those who fancied themselves a werewolf or an old worn boot? It was by either the best or worst of luck that Moevelt stood near a sun-bright torch. For he saw Gunroe’s advance, and he saw the glazed but not drunk, depraved but aloof look he wore.

  Moevelt bounced on the balls of his feet, finding his courage as some inmate who must’ve recognized him abusively hooted and hollered. He could skewer this menace with one well-aimed punch. Under the breastplate, where Gunroe’s hooch-rot stomach held plenty of tubes and vein. Or directly above, Moevelt could punch the blade of his dagger through the base of his throat.

  Moevelt had only one working arm, but he’d been down and out before. He stepped back, quick, giving himself the necessary reach when Gunroe lunged. His back pressed against cage bars, suddenly hostile as they exploded with the restraining bloom of dirt-matted hands.

  Moevelt roared. He cut off a thumb, sliced wrists. He couldn’t turn to see, for too many hands now pulled his belt, his beard, his hair. Ghoulish fingers, some mottled with pallor and disease, others chewed, pinned him against the pitiless iron. His right forearm was slammed against the cage. Hands squeezed and fingers crawled, all the way up until they reached his dagger.

  *

  “There we are,” Irion said, pushing out a lustful hiss, tightened and distilled by Warden Rogaire’s squeeze around the veins and piping of his taut neck.

  If Warden Rogaire had been a more astute man, he may have observed the needling of Irion’s pupils, the flash that for but a moment engulfed them. The big blond man let go and swung this way and that until finding a stool and sliding it under him. He looked at Irion with the dimwitted simplicity of an amused child, charmed by whatever whim was its fat little obsession.

  “Did you ever hear of a man named Denoreyph Belot? Did such names ever cross your fine table? Such wonders, the right gestures, the appropriate philtres imbibed, the appropriate moment.” Irion spoke as if no chains draped him. “The power of a human’s touch.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  What fun was raising the dead if one never enchanted and marionetted the living. “Oh, dig up your father’s grave and defile it with the rankest human juices. Set thy flesh afire and go whirling. Jump off a cliff—no, just release me from these ridiculous chains, then let me go. This was most fruitful, Lord Rogaire.”

  “…I’d have to mix up the roster a bit,” the warden said.

  The warden walked out of the room, shutting the door as the cage of thieves fought for best position for peering inside. Tymothus watched as the supreme overlord of the Municipal Dungeon disappeared into a corridor, calling and booming for his lieutenants.

  *

  After full bowls did not come because new guards did not deliver, what torches still flickered gave a wan ambience, just enough that Tymothus saw when the warden returned.

  When he opened the Special Concerns door, the trapped light seemed eager to escape. The door shut. The Rat’s Nest murmured and conjectured. The door reopened. Warden Rogaire and another man were making their exit. Having to be the same man formerly reduced to a walking metallic spool, the prisoner’s bald head shined orange and white as the warden held him with a gentle pair of handcuffs.

  Then they were gone, disappeared in the same direction those two guards had gone running, towards where Tymothus judged lead easiest to the cells of the dungeon’s frontal layer.

  It is possible that Tymothus Snier was the last prisoner to see the necromancer. His eyes were keen; his placement, irksomely pressed against the front-most bars.

  Rumors would soon bounce back and forth, from the dungeon’s belly to Rapist Wing, all the way to the shore of Crackpots Range that the confessed necromancer earned the warden’s instantaneous ire and was broken on a rack somewhere deep in the catacombs. More rumors persisted he escaped, having bedeviled the guards and the warden too.

  When prompted, Tymothus always stuck to which theory tested his credulity the least. In places like the Rat’s Nest, though, experience taught him you don’t always say how you really feel.

  *

  In an instant when Gunroe leapt, the pinned man freed a leg and used it to send his attacker scrambling. The focused, bleeding guard locked his boot against a crossbar and pushed, pushed until his burning muscles tore and he began feeling his back press free of the cage and the ghastly, clawing fingers.

  Moevelt had been deprived his dagger, a sinister tool to be fought over in such cages. He grabbed the torch from the wall with his good arm, waving it as he would a wooden club. Moevelt didn’t hear the lunatic just behind him, hidden in shadow, using his dagger with an establishing authority on his peers. Gunroe was back on his feet, his blade gleaming in the burning light.

  When they found the body, the dungeon summoned the condescension of inspectors from the Metropolitan Ward. A string of questions led back to Crackpots Range, where futile interviews with madman held a bizarre consistency.

  That one guard had killed another was no strain on the imagination, to speak of nothing for the imaginations inside of men who work in dungeons. But, that after the victor had sliced the throat of his victim from one ear to the next, he’d abruptly shaken and wailed as if he’d woken from a dream— hardly. Hardly so, and any interview with the conscious-stricken assailant was now impossible. For the more articulate of the madmen repeated that after such entertainment had sadly ended, the killer pulled out a bottle from somewhere in his armor. After sucking down the liquor—verified by the investigation’s discovery of said bottle and smelling its portents—he mistakenly leaned against their cage to cry and cry and cry. Here the testimonies got skittish. Fights erupted and an inspector was bitten.

  Deep in the cage, the dead guard’s dagger was found. It was licked clean, but it matched the one hundred and twenty-seven stab wounds on a murderer who now needed no cage of his own.

  VI

  All Malevolent Masquerade

  “And the loser is.” The crowd fizzled to a murmur. Morlia adjusted her array of peacock feathers to better scrutinize the scroll. “Bennero!” she rejoiced. “Our dead poet.”

  They whole place rang with laughter, flinging wine-slimed spit on the faces of any would-be doubters. Morlia’s entourage dressed in the pinks and purples of fairy, Rinlot’s troops from the dungeon coated in the one-night black of the Suelan. All bellowed inane stanzas as Bennero ended the long walk to dither next to Morlia.

  His first mistake had been dressing as Denom Vandahl. More Vandahls populated any given All Malevolent party than the red devils and demons, though these too were in no short supply.

  His final, fatal error had been the costume itself. Vandahl: His pleasant girth was poorly concealed fluff, his auburn curls the painted wires of an old donkey tail. Most obvious, more even than the frayed ends of a soiled pillow, were his blatherings of acclaimed verse, proving the attendee’s attempts were not mirthful mockeries but the worst costume in the lot, earning him, by way of tradition, the first sword to slice open the awaiting boar.

  “And our winner is…” The lady of the house eyed her parchment, pausing for effect. “Somyellia! The sexy lizard!” Cheers and lustful hoots. Somyellia was carried out from the dungeon guards who’d ringed her. Allowed to her feet and free from further groping, she stood at Morlia’s other side.