Upon my release, I bolted back to Pelliul. With some proper grooming, I’d be employable again in no time.

  I could have kissed those streets. Cobbled beige and rusted ruby. On Lirelet Avenue the jasmine was in bloom, inhaled as jugglers and fire breathers lanced off the stained glass and gleaming lamp posts.

  The portico of Lord Voss’s home was as polished as ever. Rapping at the door summoned a housemaid whom I didn’t recognize. When I advised that I was a former employee and specified my trade, she gave me the up-and-down then shut the doors in my face. Furious, I beat them until they cracked open once more.

  “The lord will be with you shortly, sir,” the housemaid said through the crease.

  After I’d successfully kicked every dead leaf and piece of rubbish off the steps, and as I contemplated another salvo of rapping, the doors cracked once more, then they swung open. Out roostered Lord Voss. I danced on his steps.

  He hammered me with the back of his hand. I was cut by a stupendous ring. I stood up only to take note that I’d fell.

  “You dare come here now!” He rattled his cane. “I should gut you and donate those cum-bloated entrails of yours to the kitchen of that moldy orphanage where I plucked you from! Do you know what your little stunt cost me? The groveling,” he became a parade of grovelings and high steps, “the groveling required to keep—the man you cheated—”

  “Cheated?!”

  “Ohh,” dragging out his disdain, “don’t you interrupt me. I am in no mood.” He slapped me again. I fell down again. I curled up in a clump of dead leaves, forgotten by the gardener.

  The sight of me crying only encouraged his rage. A furious assault of polished boots and an accurate cane had me soon screaming.

  I wish I could have told him. I wish we could have sat down over wine. His grievances could certainly be unlearned, and after hearing my upsetting tale he would have surely shown pity. I wanted to stay in the enchanting light of the glow lamps and frolic among the dainty forever. But wishes only exist in the thoughtful shadows of regret. Reaching down into the dungeons of memory, I went cold and wrapped my hand around a strong twig.

  *

  After a long while I dared to breathe. Voss’s eye socket let out its last reserves of blood. I leaned over his flowerbed and vomited out every piece of me that I could.

  The air was getting colder. The very leaves that swirled whispered an ill fate if I hesitated. Through my tears, I picked every ornament off of Lord Voss before fleeing into the night.

  The doorwoman, the damned housemaid, she was the only one who saw my face. I never told her my name, and I believed no one saw the murder, but I learned fully the one-sidedness of our judicial system.

  There were many things on my side. What, were the Inspectors going to chase down every blond man of minor stature to check the grade of blue in his eyes? “Are you a former gay prostitute who killed his pimp? No, be gone then, scum.” How laughable. Yet, I couldn’t know what Lord Voss may have told his housemaid or what company he’d excused himself from. If the housemaid had even a mediocre memory, a sketch of my likeness was going to be on every lamp post in the city.

  I had to leave Pelliul—for a long time, maybe forever.

  I was no woodsman and Oxghorde bordered swamp. The former would serve me up as food for wolves, the latter a crippling case of fen-lung. Against every fiber of my being I forced myself to consider my best and only option. There was only one place one could truly melt into the maelstrom. In a week’s time I was back in Nilghorde.

  Abject poverty alone. Cemeteries with a lunatic. And then finally, a mansion to burgle clean.

  *

  “Nice breeze tonight,” Werlyle said, sounding uncharacteristically sober and approaching from my rear. There was a cool wind out, slipping through the black trees and caressing the balcony.

  “Some dinner, aye? Don’t know why she insisted on rabbit. Venison was excellent.” Werlyle went on. “Those flimsy buzzards that circle her have to be from Pelliul.” He sucked on his lip. “Where’d you say you were from again, Snier?”

  “I’m from here,” I said into my wine glass.

  The party long over, I was waiting for the last slaves to retire from the brute chores a butler was thankfully spared—I was more a figurehead, after all, and had my own list of errands.

  Werlyle and I talked when the deviations from my reconnaissance and his bottle both aligned. We’d developed a modest friend-ship, one could say. Mostly to share our disdain for Morlia, I would join him in his chambers for a game of dice or a few shots of a potent beverage. One night so potent I woke up half-horrified to learn I’d unwittingly cuddled up against him, having passed out on his bed.

  “What a place,” he said, leaning over the balcony as if he’d arrived that day. The outer bailey’s wall faded into the floor of the black eastern forest. Squinting one’s eyes under a waxing moon like tonight’s, you could make out gardens turned wild thickets, neglected statues, and of course the stakes saved for the Lady’s wrath.

  Girdling the mansion was a wall separating the inner and outer baileys. Equipped with archer towers and weather-beaten merlons, the crenels from above looked to be once defendable, but now were crumbling with the breeze. In the inner bailey, or as Morlia referred to it if she remembered her nomenclature, the lower bailey, were the wells and a stable in front of the grazing ground. No horses lived in the stable anymore, just droves of rodents and the owl feasting on them.

  Also in the “lower bailey” was the family graveyard. Staring at me from outside my chamber windows, the graveyard now lay somber below me as the night air weaved in and out of its vaulted obelisks. Werlyle was looking at them as well.

  “A Rogaire male has sat in this house since it was built. You know, Snier, that this house is the farthest east in all the Morgeltine?”

  “No, I didn’t. How interesting.”

  “Many a marauder and beast used to live in those woods yonder.” Tossing a nod toward the black. “Still some lurk in its bosom; it was the first Rogaires to settle in Nilghorde that were tasked with their confrontin’.”

  As I listened to Werlyle the Defeated carry on about marveled history and a homestead agreement with Nilghorde, my ears picked up a noise. I am in no regards easily spooked—choosing to live in that duplex on Red Wolf confirms that! Wind on the headstones, the rustle of faraway branches, the slave’s distant chores: they were the cause of such noise. But scrapes and certain shuffles were not always so easy to dismiss.

  “—so after generations, Snier, the Rogaires cleansed all the nightmares emergin’…right off the face of the world.”

  I paced about, nodding whenever he paused. I found a windblown sycamore writhing next to the base of the balcony, but it made no contact with the wall.

  What fiends could have once thrived in the woods a strong arrow shot away? Few nights into my stay, when a full moon cast down from a cloudless sky, I’d seen the skulking and slinking of unaccountable shapes out on the lawns. A cold breeze caressed the balcony, and maybe that was what made me shiver.

  “It’s a shame. What you think, Snier?”

  “Sir, it really isn’t my place.”

  “Nonsense,” he snorted, “a butler can answer a question when asked. You’re no whipped slave putting away pots. You don’t think it’s an atrocity the Rogaire ruling this house is an evil brooch bag? One whose connection here, I might add, is by name only?” I looked at him for a moment and then back into my long-since-emptied glass. He was of the annihilated house of Qell, and his clinging to the name Rogaire was a desperate and powerful attempt to forget that.

  “What of Rinmor? He will come of age soon enough.”

  Werlyle looked away and bent far over the edge. Scanning from left to right—did he hear noises too?

  “Look, Snier, I am going to tell you somethin’ you mustn’t let get out.” He belched into my ear. “Rinlot told me somethin’ right before he died, and I honestly believe it led to it. That boy is not going to sit as head of this house. Not fer long. That big-boobed bitch and her melon-headed spawn are going to the bottom of the Black Tongue.”

  I sat my glass on the ledge.

  “Snier, you never got to meet Rinlot. Looks nothing like Rinmor, or should we say Morden.”

  We? And I had surely seen Rinlot, not as much as I would have liked, but that little secret would have to stay with me.

  He was right, though; Rinmor looked little like his father. Rinlot had a head like a statue of a Pelat god. Rinmor’s was bulbous. The boy’s frame was more like my own, and he didn’t possess the healthy skin color.

  That didn’t really cause a big conundrum, though. Children can take after either mother or father; some display features that weren’t seen since the days of their great-grandparents. Morlia’s desolate beggared family could have worn any and all of the boy’s features.

  “Why does she call him that?” I asked, figuring if I was forced to talk about them at all I’d at least pull out a question that held some genuine interest.

  “I’ll get to that, but you should hear this in the order I did.

  “Not terribly long before you got here, we had an All Malevolent Masquerade party. The place was crawlin’ from top to bottom with fairies, demons, come-back-to-life celebrities. Morlia, get this, dressed up as a peacock.” After a laugh, “I forgot what I wore— anyhow, I spent my night at the outdoor bar they’d set up with a pretty young thing, Sammi somethin’, all dolled up like a lizard.

  “Rinlot spent his night driftin’ from one circle to the next. I remember watchin’ a Minotaur with wooden horns goin’ up and down the stairs all damn night. He had a lot of those men from the dungeon attendin’. Wonder if that lizard came with ’em?”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, you know the tradition: the boar was brought out to be cut up by the guests in the best and worst costume. You know. Right after, Rinlot came runnin’ outside…to find me. I say, for just a smidge I thought a real Minotaur had bust in the party and was storming my way. He was furious. Barreled my sweet little company right over. Poor darlin’ was so beside herself she did some hex before gettin’ carried off by a few laughin’ guards that were all painted like Suelans.

  “He ripped his snout off and embraced me, Snier. I saw tears wellin’ in his eyes. When he went looking for Morlia, about feast duties or what have you, Rinlot learned a thing or two.”

  “Let me guess, she was getting fucked.”

  “Close, Snier,” he snickered, but there was no fading to his intensity. “She was tucked away in a nook with her flimsy buzzards. I can just see peacock feathers and crossdressers gigglin’ in some damn corner. The spiked punch, opium, you name it, I guess it all allowed Rinlot to walk up unnoticed. You know that big statue on the second floor, the crane gulpin’ the fish?”

  “Yes, dusted it yesterday,” I lied.

  “He stood behind it and learned his boy isn’t his.”

  “What?!” Looking about, I checked my volume. “Come on now, bunch of stoned drunks—”

  “Morlia was braggin’ about it.” Rechecking his own voice. “She said she had met an Ordrid.”

  And there it was. The House of Ordrid, you’ve probably heard of them: fully known for their arcane practices, singularity, and madness. Not originally from Rehleia, they were commonly understood as delvers into the blackest of arts. Meeting an Ordrid meant meeting a necromancer, or a witch, and no other name I could think of mustered the same caliber of gossip. They peppered the landscape, their stronghold not far from this very mansion. Since Maecidion’s death, however, that stronghold had become more a museum for scholars and macabre teenagers. A few coiled in Pelliul, but word had spread that most now nested deep in the Thunder Bustle.

  Somyellia was one, though she had to be dismally low in that House to join me as a flesh peddler. Others were said to dwell in the woods outside Nilghorde and as far as the border that Rehleia shares with the desert wasteland known as Azad. Sailors from Quinnari have told of a city of towers, across the sea and tucked away by a guardian forest. Allegedly, that is where the notorious clan had spewed forth.

  But despite all the legends, someone claiming to have merely met an Ordrid was rather common. Hell, I had lived next door to one and robbed graves with her stud.

  “Werlyle, are you saying Morlia had an affair with an Ordrid?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m sayin’, what Morlia was sayin’. Rinlot must’ve listened for a bit; he told me more. She never said where she met him, but Rinlot and I knew she still had her connections in the Bustle. I still pick out the occasional dinner guest that’s a sneak thief. Don’t smile; I’m serious.”

  I knew what to look for, and the only person in the home with a penchant for that work, other than me, was Morlia herself. “Sorry, sir.”

  “So she meets this fellow and he throws a good fuck in her now and then. Don’t know when, but how the hell could I? Poor Rinlot was at the dungeon most days, and he wasn’t the assumin’ type anyhow. So, she gets pregnant. Of course she tells Rinlot it’s his, and of course he believes her.”

  “Wait, she said all this at a party, tucked in a corner passing around pipes?”

  “You don’t believe me, aye?”

  I was foolish for letting go of my subservient front. His conviction was without doubt; he certainly believed himself. I really cared little one way or the other. I just wanted him to tire out so I could excuse myself.

  Shrugs were all I could muster.

  He sighed. “I don’t know why I am tellin’ you all this. Maybe it’s just been bottled up fer too long.”

  “It’s all right, sir,” regaining my humility, “it’s just a lot to take in.” “Well, Snier, I will at least finish it since I started, and you be the judge.

  “When Rinmor was born, Rinlot was runnin’ all over singin’ his praises, right? All the while Morlia was still sneakin’ off. But somethin’ happened to that Ordrid, ’cause the sly charmer ceased to see Morlia outright. Bitter, she starts to mock Rinlot. I tell you, Snier, there isn’t a member at these little get-togethers that don’t know what I am tellin’ you now. She laughed behind his back and made fun of ’im, swingin’ the boy around.”

  His tone had digressed. Amid the slurred curses I heard something behind me. I leaned over the balcony. The sycamore stared back and I heard a groan, or what had to have been a groan, from the graveyard. Completely deaf to Werlyle’s words, I glared, the graves and sarcophagi glared back like the impeccant sycamore. What close-to-death creature had wandered in and now let out these ghasts? I needed to grab a torch, spear, and two slaves to carry them.

  A hand placed itself on my shoulder, rendering me a paroxysm of yelps. “Snier, what the devil?”

  “Nothing, sir—”

  “Enough with the sir shit. I’m no royalty nor do I want to be a part. Again, all this is just kind of comin’ out now. Don’t mean to put you in an odd way.”

  “Werlyle, how about we call it a night? Let us continue this sometime soon. I feel there is more.”

  “There is.” He paused, sliding his arm off my shoulder then giving it a squeeze. “There is and we will.”

  “Please call if you need anything, s—Werlyle.” Then he slumped away.

  Almost complete silence, save the night noises. Maybe the creature had died? I decided to go down to my room and grab my dagger and a hearty candle.

  At my dressers, I realized what was bothering me so. It had been a bit of cosmic irony that I’d given up robbing graveyards just to be assigned quarters next to another one. Outside my windows, the outlines of white headstones and obelisks loomed, distorted by the texture of the glass.

  For the longest I’d tried to track down a noise only heard when in my chambers. The sound itself shifted; sometimes a premonition of rats in the walls, the moaning of a crawlspace door yet to be discovered, drunken arm-wrestling goons, fucking slaves, or other times it unsettled my nerves due to its indescribability. But it was one of those things that happened with such regular irregularity that given long enough you tend to just go on without another strained thought tossed its way.

  Tonight, however. A sound directly below the balcony meant that it was coming from right outside my window. I didn’t wish to will my mind to actually speak it, but there was a chance the noise I’d heard many times was coming from the same place. No logical explanation appeared, the longer I sat on the edge of my bed. With a sturdy fire in the hearth and the dagger tucked under my pillow, I stared at the windows until dreariness took me. Sometime in the night I was awoken by what sounded like a labored grunt, but so faint that I could have imagined it.

  *

  The next few days were a blur. Things were getting too strange to stay much longer. Not least of my concerns, Morlia was not forgiving, and, as much as it pained me to admit, she had an iron memory. A few more insubordinations and I could easily see myself pleading I was no slave as her goons dragged me to the stakes. More than that, I’d located enough loot to rid myself of the servant cover.

  The conflict within me howled. The fabled Rogaire treasury was here somewhere. Retirement was out of the question if I settled for leaving without it. Maybe I’d team up with Seasmil again, if I could find him. But an overgrown in dark garb was as common as cabbage in Nilghorde. Besides, a trek back to Red Wolf showed that our old duplex had been leveled and covered in exorcising heraldry. I could keep working. A true professional—and that is what I was—can get out, move on, and let safety conquer hypothetical reward.

  But most of all, as much as it nagged me to admit, was that confounded story of Werlyle’s. The more time passed, the more his words seeped into my head.

  I continued with my daily duties, high-stepping over the boy’s string traps, all the while trying earnestly to remain focused on what to take and in what order.

  Gold-lined torch-holders were—

  Ugh, it was no use.

  Regarding the boy, there was the creeping sensation that if I looked at him Werlyle’s words would somehow become more and more true. They held at least some minimal plausibility; the impish gaggle, Morlia’s taste for ruthless self-centeredness. All of which I could see rooted in a demented reality.