“Seduce the warden?”

  “She is perfect for the prison master. Well,” erupting in the laugh people do when ruminating on a joke’s punch line, “perfect for both of them. Irion has really taken a liking to her.”

  This Morlia, the object of Irion’s affection, had been Somyellia and I’s third-lover many times in the earlier days. She’d stiffened me the first night I’d met the two of them as a teen in Templeton. Though I may have been overestimating Somyellia’s sensitivity, I kept to myself my understanding of why men were so wrapped around Morlia’s finger.

  “The charm spell wasn’t necessary,” I said, trying to make it sound like a question.

  “Hadn’t seen Cousin Irion in ages,” Somyellia said, perhaps wanting to shift the course of our conversation, “since playing in our family’s gardens as children. Then there he is, rapping at the doors. Right after Maecidion died, actually. Funny how a death in the family can change people. Irion acted quite differently, the way he moved and even how he spoke. A lot like Maecidion used to, in fact.”

  “That’s fantastic—so listen, if he’s so low in your branches or what have you, why the servant-girl role whenever he graces our stoop?”

  “When you talk like that sometimes it makes me think I really should have entertained Morfil’s advances,” she said, successfully irritating me. I watched her as she pulled out what she’d been looking for: her dark robe covered in family regalia. She wore it only when practicing the type of witchcraft that demanded her utmost.

  It didn’t take living with a witch to know her work was outlawed. Along with the parchment plague of new maxims about labor class virtue nailed everywhere, many false witches had been rounded up in plazas and burned to kick off the Years of Peace. Now all that remained seemed to be the real ones. Although there were those practicing black magic who stalked the periphery, Somyellia’s House had, according to her, earned the trust of the evil gods. Such trust bestowed on the Ordrids the secrets of their trickery. But it came with a heavy price. When her family called, she said she had to listen. Noticing I was still waiting for an answer, she only said, “Tersiona weeps for a reason.”

  “I’ll remember that. Who penned that lofty explanation for all life’s quandaries, you or Vandahl?”

  “We’ve been over this,” she sighed. Somyellia knew I didn’t care for Irion. He lived somewhere in the Bustle, so it was rare he appeared at our door. But even during such rarities, I always found a reason to slink on over to Snier’s side.

  “It’s just I hear so many times,” I said, launching my impersonation of her that made her blood boil, “my beast—my beast, I can’t do this or that or that and this—but then he shows up and your schedule’s wide open.”

  “Seasmil.”

  “Wide open.”

  “Seasmil,” she said, culling a tone that started to bring me down out of webs in the rafters.

  “Wide open as…like the Moliahenna River’s mouth after a damn flood.”

  “Vandahl pen that?” she said, returning to bed.

  —

  “I’ll let you get to witchery then,” I said after we’d finished, climbing off of her. Irion’s most recent visit was to ask of Somyellia her major discipline. And she’d done her part. Somyellia had touched some warden who Morlia had somehow found a way to send barreling over to her. The curse had been locked by waves of her hand that she told me was passed off as nothing more than churlish girl anger.

  Somyellia was happy to help. The House of Rogaire had wronged the House of Ordrid, and Irion—in this newfound severity Somyellia occasionally mentioned—was just tidying up family business.

  Even the common-most dung-scooper on the common-most street knew that when the Conqueror’s campaign had swept over the peninsula, ending at the doorsteps of Maecidion’s keep, deals were struck and the land was renamed.

  Yet after enough talks from the bottom of our pillows, I myself could orate the finer points in her family’s spiderweb of shifting powers and trickery.

  The tale told within Ordrid confines was that after necromancy had been outlawed, and Maecidion and his kind were allowed to practice in secret, it didn’t take long for the freshly outfitted Metropolitan Ward, and the people cheering them, to look for a new threat to their newfound tranquility. Rinmauld Rogaire, father of the warden they all hated, was one of the chief legislators after the Conqueror turned to his unyielding seclusion. It turns out that law was the one magic blacker than necromancy. Extorting Maecidion had been both legal and lucrative. Keeping the House of Ordrid’s share of agreed-upon war spoils was payment for Rinmauld not sicking on Somyellia and Maecidion’s House the society that had as soon forgotten war as was quick to start a new one.

  An Ordrid vendetta on the House of Rogaire had been talked about in dark circles for decades. For reasons not entirely explained, her cousin Irion had picked up the proverbial hatchet on behalf of the late Maecidion, and now apparently planned on burying it into the heads of the Rogaires who remained.

  Somyellia now had to conduct the final ritual and erupt the curse they’d set. I personally didn’t bother much with her duties in this arena, but I also hadn’t really in her leg-spreading one either. Our time together was all that mattered; however, even I had learned that all “great curses” required three parts. The victim must be touched by the curser or cursers, and she and Irion had both done that at different times. The curser or cursers must lock in their work with particular gestures, as she had done at the party. Now, the final act was to be executed. It would take time and the moon at the right position.

  She began her work as I grabbed my shovel and crowbar to head out to do mine.

  VIII: Warhorse on the Horizon

  Purpose tends to be a cruel morning, waking you suddenly and thoroughly. My dour harmony, my focused aloneness, was to be disrupted once more, and once more it would come out of nowhere, as is its preference.

  One day, we had a delivery. A giant man, killed by some disease, lay on my table bloated and blue. Normally I would have commenced to working, and the larger than normal corpse would have been in the cart and ready for transport.

  But I walked around the table in the same fashion that I had done with Somyellia back on Red Wolf. This cold mound looked familiar, causing me without effort to mumble near-forgotten words.

  Tension filled the room, making home the places saved for the cobwebs and rodents grown fat on my occasional forgetting to close the back door.

  I knew who this reminded me of, with deathly certainty. I hadn’t thought about him in ages, and he had been as dead to me as the inhabitants of the mass grave.

  For a moment I wondered if it was him. But I was looking down on flabby jowls on top of a weak chin. His hair had been the same color, but coarse and curled. Just to be sure, and with some effort, I rolled the corpse onto his side. No, no giant scar on his back.

  I had completely forgotten about it until using it as an identifier. My father had a deep swathe between his shoulders from a battle in the first campaign he’d ever embarked on.

  He’d told of the ambushing Pelats and their crude, bony weapons. How they had skewered his horse and overwhelmed him. How he had one pinned to the ground, and how a moment before the fatal strike a sneaky Pelats opened up his back in the vain attempt to save his fellow savage.

  Surviving the ordeal with a fresh trophy of tongues and charms, a field hospital repaired Father’s back, and adorning citations followed in his recovery.

  It may have been the thick neck, or some indescribable similarity, but I couldn’t shake what I began to feel. An idea germinated in me, powerful and driven. Closure, something I had never known. It began to squeak and plea from the core of my being.

  The rest of the day was spent in a hurried discontent.

  After days of research in a back room at the Nilghorde Hall of Records, I learned that he was indeed still alive. He must have had squandered his war spoils. The house in Templeton had been sold long ago. Shoeing for a Ward substation, and likely led with a rabid taste for Black Monk, he took up residence in a small loft off Iron Belfry Boulevard. There, most roads and weaving allies remained nameless, and the view cast on a once thriving populace that hadn’t progressed in the better part of a century.

  When I took my covert observations on foot, for a fleeting moment I saw, silhouetted by firelight, a large figure limp past a window. Cloaked in a black hood, I moved like a rat. The few Metropolitan Ward who trotted by were oblivious. But I wanted to be sure my efforts would not be thwarted. I needed perfect concealment, and a moonless night was soon to arrive.

  Then it came. Midafternoon in my mortician’s cart, after a brief stop inside a blacksmith’s, my horse and I rested under the massive Gahlerrion Bridge. Flowing under the bridge was the Moliahenna, or Black Tongue, cutting deep and swift through the heart of Nilghorde and spilling into the sea. At its shores, parked under an abutment, I watched the sunset and scowled at approaching beggars.

  After the sun had completely died and the cold winds began, I reentered the streets. The clopping of the hooves and random squeaks of cart wheels echoed against the bricks of homes and shops. For some reason they all sounded too loud. Irksomely loud even. The glare of a Wardsmen and sideways glances from passing carriages sunk me in my seat. Eventually I passed under the Do-Gooder’s Row statues, and began ascending narrow cobblestone.

  If there had been a moon, around when it would have been at its zenith I crept the cart into the correct alley and cached it behind a withered hedge.

  Hugging the veranda wall and unsheathing my knife, the time had come.

  I was no Snier, but the poor man’s lock before me was no match for the blade that wormed its way between iron and wood. When I felt the click and pressure release, I opened the door, painfully slow.

  From what I had gathered, the bed was upstairs, and in his aged state it was reasonable to wager he’d be asleep. Although moonless, and candles out, I could see quite well. Maybe years spent in dark cellars or matching places had rendered me a brother to the night or the creatures therein. I was staring at a familiar parlor, though it felt a lifetime ago.

  To my immediate right was the fanning display of sabers. Next to them, medals from the Far East, Pelat, and the massacres of Serabandantilith. To my left was a table in front of the very leather furnishings I’d once spilt milk on. My eyes passed closed doors to strain the exact shapes of stairs.

  The distance between the front door and this stairwell was soon over taken. The muscles in my heart raced.

  I had practiced on a particularly warped section of planks in the Pauper Morgue’s office. Placing the tip of my boot on the first step, I pressed my weight onto the wood until assured I could plant myself without a crack or noise. Slowly, with a concentrated dexterity unfound in large bodies, I continued this method until I came to a turn in the stairwell. An arm’s length more, a turn to the right, and I would be facing the final steps leading up to the bedroom.

  Cough!

  I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  He had to be withered with age, battle wounds, and the heavy weight of the bottle. Moreover, I was no boy and had faced younger, more able men in the alleys of Nilghorde many times over. No matter how much one changes, I suppose, we’ll never forget some things, and I came to this realization as I began the first of the last steps. My whole life as a man, I hadn’t so much as considered him. Now I was in his home, knife in hand. I made the final climb.

  He was asleep under the window. To my right, his dwindled fire still gave off enough light to expose how thoroughly his hair had grayed. The bedroom itself was a mess of chests and bottles. Preparing to wade through, I put away my knife and grabbed what I’d bought from the blacksmith. It was a special occasion, and, after all, I was a poet at heart. I pulled a farrier hammer out from underneath my cloak, then I stepped forward.

  Without fail, a board moaned under my boot.

  “In the doorway a figure in black, unknown to you, has come to claim you, old man. I have become strong. The menace is upon you. From the crumbling edges of life I have come for you. You taught me to never shut my eyes. You taught me discipline.”

  When I struck, Father flapped and batted at thin air. Above his eyes, blood escaped, violent and free. His hand gripped wildly for a weapon that wasn’t there.

  After a long while, after all the twitching had stopped, I opened the window. Like the nameless falling into the Pauper Vault, I dropped him out and refastened its locks. Walking down the stairs, I kept hearing Somyellia: “My beast, look at what you have done.” Over and over, finally trailing off with that haunting laugh that could blot out life or breathe it in.

  There was one more stop to make, and I needed to get the body prepared. The blanket, now wrapping Father, wasn’t the only thing I had packed away. Once my preferred cove was found, I parked the cart and unpacked my cleavers.

  In almost complete darkness, I dismantled Father and collected his parts into jars that I’d already labeled.

  The scraps were stuffed down a drainage culvert, a feast for the rats I could hear gathering. In less than an hour, I had all the valuables packaged and ready.

  Deep into the tiny-eyed hours of night I arrived at one of the reception doors at the Institute of Human Sciences. The groomed gentlemen peering out the viewing port refused to open the door. Holding up a freshly plucked liver, however, turned them around. I had pocketed a few coins this way before, but withered organs and mummified limbs were no longer in demand. Here I had fresh materials. The cart emptied as my purse filled. I called it justified compensation.

  By early morning I was back at the Pauper Morgue. After the follow-on tasks were finished, I sprawled out on the floor to finger through the enrollment application the query-eyed doorman had handed me upon request.

  At some point I fell asleep. There I dreamed of many things. When I finally woke, all I could recall was a thunderous storm, met with the charge of some unnamable legion.

  Soon after, I applied to the Institute. With a successful attempt at their elect entry exam, much to the chagrin of my bosses, I resigned from my position at the morgue.

  I signed up for the monastic dormitories and made its space home as best I could. It was strange I was told that I couldn’t decorate the walls and shelves with my old tastes, considering where I was, and how it had always served as such esteemed motivation.

  The scholarly swarm was quite younger than me, and during orientation I caught the ample look-aways from pubescent faces. Days at the Institute were long and tedious, overflowing with assignments and sapped inkwells far into the night.

  Vast does not describe the vaults and exhibits that made the interior. Libraries towered up to ceilings so high their elaborate mosaics were but mere smudges of light and dark when viewed from the ground. There were the fabled viewing cages too. And, if you wanted to venture from the main arteries, you could easily lose yourself in the dungeon-like bleakness, where polished stairs became old wood and peculiar echoes.

  The student body rivaled the Institute’s vastness so that even I could sometimes get lost in the fray. To my shock, some students were hesitant to handle the muck and piping of our being. That was no issue with my studies, and I enjoyed anatomy class over the more daunting core requirements that left my head a scrambled bowl of confusion.

  Dreams are a strange thing. Standing too close to the street performer may often lead one to see the flaws in his act and the streaks in his makeup.

  I was passing the courses, though some with great struggle. But I noticed that I never read poetry anymore. My collection of works sat dusty and unused in a corner above all my research papers, scribbled in haste to make punitive deadlines. My muscles ached from inaction, and collapsing into a chair became a ritual after classes. Slowly I began to see my peers as spiritless larvae rather than prestigious scholars.

  After a semester, it was clear my life was not in the clean walls of the Institute, or among the kind that never had to fight for their plate. I dropped out shortly after marks were posted. I was tired of feeling sucked dry and hung up in some closet apart from the world. I left numb. Nothing that was shown to me could raise the hairs on my neck or streak wide a smile across my face any longer.

  Except for one.

  In route from my dorm to my composition class, I would cut through the exhibits. In the Wing of Trauma, displaying hundreds of examples of life’s hard edges, I walked past a familiar skull with a hole in its frontal plate.

  I returned to the Pauper Morgue, where my return was met with great rejoice. They doubled my old salary, killed my replacement, and with a warm broth escorted me back to my old station, where, aside from a fresh batch of run-through workers who’d proved unsatisfactory to the House of Rogaire, laid many a fair corpse, nude and uninspected.

  Such things, so beautiful yet so dead, went to their final resting places uncaressed. The post-mortem with Somyellia would remain unique. Call it loyalty, perhaps.

  A Tale From A Good Butler

  I: Humble Beginnings

  My name is Tymothus Snier. At least that is the name scribbled on the paperwork at the orphanage where I spent my childhood. I never knew my parents and have honestly given it little thought. A whore and a priest, an actress and a soldier; it all makes little difference to my plight. Having always been on my own, unknowable parents did little but cloud the mind.

  The books that I dusted and rearranged had to be worth something. They better—fair compensation for suffering the House of Rogaire, and, in what was a growing likelihood in some peculiar way, the House of Ordrid too.

  The books: all that remained was finding an interested and well-funded collector. Verdigris-stained spines could be wiped clean, and with a little buffering, the leather covers could be restored back to their pre-Years of Peace glory.