For NaNoWriMo

A mysterious and colossal explosion rocks Corvin's Plateau, scarring the land and devastating the nearby city of Tanum. Now, two figures fight with politics and threaten with armies for the power emanating from the newly formed Gorge.

For the past year the Sorceress Queen, Karina Karr, has entertained her enemy's envoy in a series of go-nowhere negotiations, seen three of her council members slain in their sleep. She knows the Lord Commander of Chait, Balistar is behind it, but will not risk war for her already beleaguered people without proof.

She must do something she'd sworn never to do: call upon the Blackwatch. But, there is only one amongst them she can trust, yet he is the last man in the world she wants to see.

Lode, one-time runaway, one-time bandit, and one-time hero ducks and dodges Blackwatch agents bent on recruiting him one more time. He has no love for the Watch, or their unseemly practices, but when he learns he meant to help his former lover he finds himself taking a task which may prove to be his last. Yet, not for the coin offered, and not for the love he'd lost will take up this challenge, but instead for one last chance to make a difference.

He will learn that sometimes it is not one's life that proves the greatest sacrifice, but one's integrity. For to help the Queen, the woman he loves he must go where heroes dare not tread.

1102 Year of the Fragmentation Epoch

He met the old crew on the darkened plain, four raggedy and muted figures materializing from the gloom, drawn from cardinal directions. They came unheeded to the appointed spot, to the salient angle of a worn down megalith leaning alone on Corvin’s Plateau. And though pitch ruled the plains beneath the overcast sky, from the cyclopean stone a soft pale glow lit their features, stirring up conceits about the ravages of time.

Damn, but we got old, he thought, wincing inwardly when he saw how much hair Jacepi was missing from his head, not to mention the extra layers of fat bulging above the thaumaturge’s waist. Tamm hadn’t faired much better, and Mump suspected the shaman had grown that beard to hide a second, or third chin. Shiver seemed to have aged the best of them, a little softer here and there, but she’d always had a timeless quality about her and he found the new lines creasing her face only added to the cold quality of her allure. Unlike the new lines he sported now: heavy and deep, like badland gulches.

He rubbed at his ring with his thumb, nervous, and the feel of the shard affixed there was soothing, incrementally at least. One quarter of an ancient coin, long past obsolete, it reminded him of the days when it was whole and they were strong, united and to perdition with the Administration and their warnings and forbearances; there’d been nations to save! But old age is not the only thing to creep up upon you with the passage of time, so to comes responsibilities and the gradual awareness of one’s part to play in the peace they once warred for.

In the end, no matter how hard they fought or how many deaths they escaped, Sister Destiny had had her way and broken the circle, scattering them like autumn leaves in the wind. And so they returned, dried up, crumpled and ready to rot.

‘Mump,’ Shiver said when they were gathered in the lee of the monolith. ‘You’re looking…awful.’

He nodded, allowing a smile. ‘Did I look much better last time we spoke?’

‘Well, no. You’ve always been old.’

‘Seems that way.’ Mump turned to Tamm and Jacepi, his gaze lingering on the latter. ‘Jai,’ he said, ignoring Tamm - still too much bad blood there. ‘Good to see you.’ His old friend nodded, a tight smile turning his mouth into a crooked slash.

They were waiting for him to speak now, each standing silent, their expressions expectant. Gods, why do I have to start? Because, their meeting had one meaning. His theories had been correct, the hypothesis he’d presented those years ago, and he himself had come to admit since seemed insane was, in fact, correct. And given the esoteric and potentially destructive nature of that hypothesis, he deeply wished he’d been wrong. Failure at this juncture was preferable.

Thankfully, Tamm’s impatient spirit broke the silence for him. ‘I guess I owe you that drink, Shiv.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘and after tonight I think I’m going to need it.’

‘Might not be as bad as Mump thinks,’ Jai added. ‘Could be something else.’

‘Like what?’ Jaded, Shiver always prepared for the worst.

‘I don’t know, just…I don’t know.’

Once more they turned to Mump, waiting for his word, for his confirmation that what they’d all felt through the threads was the genuine article. Olden’s Curse! ‘We can’t know for sure, yet,’ he said, but knew all the same. ‘Not until we find the origin and study it. Jai is right, there are other phenomenon which could cause the trembling, any number of things when you think about it, really.’

‘What does your gut tell you?’ Shiver asked, crossing her arms. Sorceresses, so quick to trust a feeling over analysis. If only her intuition hadn’t saved them a dozen times before he could make an argument.

‘We’re in trouble,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘If it is she, or rather a part of her then there’s no way of telling if it’s pure or if Doom has tainted the essence. I wouldn’t dare speak for the rest of you, but either way I don’t like our chances this time.’

‘Hey,’ Shiver said, surprising him with a reassuring squeeze of his spindly arm. ‘Don’t take the blame on this one, hey? Not your fault for being right.’

He nodded, but her words couldn’t banish the blame he even now heaped into the furnace of his conscience. ‘We all sense the draw point?’ Nods all around. ‘Good. Then let us take wing and be done with this.’

Once, and for a long time Mump had reveled in the gift of transformation. To possess the power to take on another form, to know the skies as does a blue heron, to wing and glide above those trapped on Noth’s surface was, he’d believed, the greatest of freedoms. For what chains could bind those so high; what worries could possibly weigh his flight down when the currents of the air lifted him to the ceiling of the sky? Young naive flights of fancy they were. The tethers which bound a wizard, or a sorceress or thaumaturge or a shaman were ever unseen and ever bound about your throat. Besides, at his age he could only take the form of an old decrepit example of the majestic avian, and like the man he was down on Noth, he rode the sky pitiful and with cringe-worthy grace. His only solace on that midnight flight was the haggard sight of his companions; Jai’s pudgy dove looking more like an overfed pigeon; Tamm’s sluggish raven, loosing ground as he avoided the effort of flapping wings; even Shiver’s snowy owl, dingy and grey now, seemed to struggle when once she commanded the sky.

To think, they once painted murals of us, heroic, supple and strong. If they saw us now… He shuddered to think of that young artist, and the vast yield of her disappointment replacing the gleam of inspiration in her eyes.

‘Mind on the task, Mump.’ He shot a look at Shiver, gaze narrowing over his long, chipped beak.

‘Didn’t think that still worked.’

‘Oh? What made you think that?’

‘You never answer…’

He felt her shrug, the gesture coming as an impression across the threads of sorcery. ‘I’m answering now.’

‘Fantastic timing, Shiv. Just fantastic.’ Before tonight, there had been a thousand things he’d wanted to say to her, amongst them hundreds of apologies and explanations, but in light of the plight they now faced excuses would not do. ‘I’m sorry, Shiver. If this goes south, I just want you to know.’

He felt an unexpected grin from the sorceress. ‘I know, Mump. Of course you are: you always had the softest heart.’

He sent her the impression of a grimace, but cut off contact as a disturbance quivered the threads directly below. Almost as one, Tamm slow to react, the four angled their wings and began a circling descent. A light began to pulsate down there, and at first he thought it a fire, for a ritual perhaps, but the searing of sorcery burned him as if he passed through flames.

Then, part way through their descent, Mump felt something else just past the searing. He could only describe it as a drawn breath, like some demonic beast a moment before it bellows your death.

He barked out a warning with his heron’s call, but it was too late - the skies detonated with a shattering crash and pure, unadulterated fundamental white blinded him, even as his broken body was hurled across the plains.

Mump’s last mote of awareness was of his companions, his oldest and dearest friends screaming as they died.

* * *

Solan Morg, High Administrator of Blackwatch Tower was sipping tea and working bleary eyes across a detailed report in his chamber, alone. He sat at his wide desk, leaning back while the dry words of one of his agents challenged his patience. As he read he considered, not for the first time, ordering this particular subordinate to apprentice with a Rannite bard, if only to help spice up her utilitarian narratives. Too many words just say, ‘we got the job done’. Frustrated, he tossed the scroll onto his desk where it fell amongst a graveyard of its brethren. Then, sighing and taking a sip of the now cold tea he reached for the next, wishing for some sort of distraction.

Someone must have been listening; three knocks sounded at the door in even succession. ‘Come in,’ he called out, thankful to forget his reports and sweeping a hand across his bald pate.

It was the sorceress Vala. ‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’ she said, looking as worn as the High Administrator felt. Dark circles beneath sunken eyes; copper-red hair framing her face in greasy strands; even her tight smile seemed to fight to stay aloft.

‘No, no. Just finished with your report actually.’ He motioned for her to sit. ‘Well done.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, straining not to fall into the high-backed chair as she sat. ‘Flase proved more difficult to corner than I first believed. He had gone to ground with a pack of—’

‘Yes, yes, I know. It was all in your report. But my dear, please, next time try to just give me the facts.’

‘I did.’

‘True,’ he said, putting down his cup and leaning forearms on the desk, deciding there was no time like now to give her another lesson. ‘But, keep in mind that my time - our time - is very precious, and that notes of anecdotal significance are…’ His words died as a nauseating wave struck him through the threads, causing him to gag. From the look on Vala’s face she too had felt it.

‘What?’ she asked, jumping from her set, and Morg felt as much as he saw the shadowy pulse of power emanating from her.

But the High Administrator had no answer. It felt to him as if two events had occurred, one of destruction and one of loss. Then recalled a sending he’d received hours before, from Tanum, the city on the plateau…from Mump. Something about an investigation into one of the wizard’s more harebrained theories. Dragon Below! It can’t be. He’d been so sure Corvanisi’s essence was broken, lost. Still, it could be many things, and yet…

‘Vala, assemble the Administration. Mump may have been right.’

Graven, she could only nod before rushing to do his bidding.

When she was gone and he was alone once more, Solan Morg turned to one of the great widows lining his chamber atop the tower. Staring northwest, toward the distant plateau he frowned and said; ‘You weren’t supposed to be right.’

* * *

Though the hour was late and the responsibilities of daily rulership had all but drained her, Karina Karr sat up in the deep of night, thinking about a ghost from her past. She sat on the edge of her grand bed playing with a modest quartz pendant on a simple leather strap. A gift from that ghost, and the last piece of him she’d not tossed away. A grin hitched one side of her mouth, thinking of the night he’d given it to her and the hopeful dread she read in his eyes.

In truth she’d forgotten about it for most of the past decade, happy to ignore it, leave it sitting at the bottom of a chest with her other souvenirs of a life she’d left behind. She’d had enough distractions over the years, in the form of a city to rule and many lovers in her bed. But lately those distractions were working against her, reminding her of the reasons he left. Even the two warm bodies sleeping behind her only now made her think of his last self righteous diatribe before storming out of the palace and the city, and her life.

In truth, she’d been growing weary of hedonism, recognizing that entanglings of the flesh were a far cry from entanglings of the soul. She’d loved him then and, being honest with herself in the lonely gloom, she loved him still. But what is a queen without regrets?

She thought of making a sending, calling out to him across the threads, but crushed the thought as she crushed the pendant in his fist. Stop doing this to yourself. Standing, she started for the chest across her vast room, where she could put this regret to bed once more. And in doing so close the lid on him…for tonight at least.

Screams of fright and panic reached her in the same moment waves of power crashed against her, causing her to falter. Her head swam, even as the palace began to shake violently and a vision was burned into her head of a fallen heron. ‘Mump?’

Startled shouts from the bed as the man and woman there awoke with the quake, calling out for her, but Karina was already stalking over to an open window-casing. Out on the distant plain a massive white inferno, and she guessed it must be leagues long! But closer, spires began to tumble within the confines of the city’s walls as devastation hammered Tanum.

‘Majesty!’ someone shouted over the din, and she felt a small hand grasp her arm. ‘Away from the window, please.’

She pushed Zase away, and the young woman fell into the arms of Karina’s consort, Vane. ‘Go,’ she told them. ‘I will not hide and let this palace fall.’ Both stood there in the nude, trying to keep their balance as the floor shifted beneath them. ‘Go!’

Pendant still in hand, she turned back to the window as they fled. Something crashed in the next chamber, large enough to be a support pillar.

Like the mother of six-thousand the need to preserve and protect welled up inside her, along with rage and sorcery. Squeezing the pendant hard enough the sharp edges drew blood, she knelt and drove her fist into the flagstones and poured ever ounce of power into the stone of the palace. We will not fall. Sister Doom may have other plans, but the Sorceress Queen of Tanum was not one to let fate rule in her stead. And though it might kill her, she would hold this palace and the city surrounding it together until the storm was weathered.

Black spots burst in her vision, growing as darkness crept in to drag her down, as her body trembled from the effort of maintaining the protective field. ‘We will not fall!’ But the black could not be beaten away.

She awoke later, every muscle screaming, her head pounding and though the palace was still again, her body shook. All around her attendants gathered, concern for their queen writ plain on their faces. Zase and Vane were there, kneeling over her with water and a blanket. Others stood bleary behind them. She tried to speak, but the effort nearly made her swoon.

‘Shh,’ Zase brushed sweaty black locks from Karina’s brown brow, helping her to lift her head and drink. ‘It’s okay now, Majesty, the quake is done. You’ve saved us.’

‘Healers are on their way,’ Vane said.

‘No,’ she managed to croak, finding the strength to rise on her elbows. ‘Forget me, send them into the city.’

‘But Majesty,’ Zase plead, but the Sorceress Queen would hear none of it.

‘I’ll recover, Zase. Send them where they’re needed. I need to find Mump.’

Attendants helped her to her feet while Zase ran off to redirect the healers. Whatever had happened she knew the old wizard had something to do with it, though she didn’t believe to assign blame just yet. That vision of Mump’s avian form falling from a burning sky played out in her mind, but in her hand she still clutched the quartz pendant.

Silently, as she was helped to her wardrobe, she thought of him and prayed he’d been nowhere near that blast on the plains.

* * *

Far across the plateau the city of Chait but rumbled gently as the south burned and quaked. On a balcony jutting out from Shahesh fortress, the Lord Commander stood with hands at his back, smiling to himself as he watched the unleashing of eldritch fires fade and die on the horizon. Below him the fires of invocation dotted street corners and the chants of supplication rose to his ear. To Sister Destiny they owed their sparing, to Sister Doom they owed their future, and so they prayed, giving sacrifice to the Sisters of Fate, and all the while praying that the third, the Twist would not interfere in the events begun this night.

But where their faith in the fates was strong, their faith in their Lord Commander should be stronger - for hadn’t he seen to the third’s imprisonment himself?

Yes, after years of begrudging peace, Balistar had finally found the means to his ascension. There was still a long road to walk before that day, but he took solace in his victory tonight.

‘So it is done,’ Chula’s voice sounded behind as she glided to his side.

‘Only the beginning.’ Then he looked to his sister, and frowned at what he saw. ‘You look distraught, despite the fortune we’ve been blessed with.’

‘Is wanton destruction a blessing? I think not.’ She held herself upright on the marble banister, shaking her head. ‘Pacts with gods are dangerous enough, but to stir the Dragon is madness.’

If she’d been anyone else he would have ordered her flayed for questioning divine plans, but instead he put a hand on her shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. ‘What has been done was not without a great many considerations, you know this. But a sliver of Corvanisi has been released…’

‘And look what happened,’ she motioned toward the horizon where the last vestige of power finally dimmed.

‘And the rest of her is tidily locked away. Come, dear sister, and trust in the fortitude of perdition. Now,’ he continued, wrapping an arm about his sister’s shoulder and guiding her back into the fortress. ‘We must prepare an envoy to offer assistance to our no doubt beleaguered neighbours. I fear the Sorceress Queen and her people are in desperate of our charity.’

Chula shook her head again, but said nothing to counter. She knew her place in this gambit well enough, and he trusted her to do what was right no matter her misgivings. In fact, it was her sense of mercy that made her perfect for her part of his plans. Her mercy, and galvanized loyalty.

‘You will see,’ he said, stepping through the threshold and into his war chamber, where his lieutenants waited. ‘I will bring the peace I promised, I swear to you.’

‘Of course…’

1103rd Year of the Fragmentation Epoch

Almost a year since unknown sorceries rocked the plateau Tanum still bore the wounds of the violent birth of the Gorge. Her great spires, those still standing, tilted at gut wrenching angles while crews worked night and day to dismantle them and the remains of their counterparts still littered the streets. Entire avenues were blocked by wreckage, homes destroyed, lives crushed by tonnes of stone and mortar. But the people of the city were nothing if not resilient, and as she wandered about in the guise of a hooded penitent woman the Sorceress Queen, Karina Karr was proud of her subjects. New homes had been built from the ruins of spires and houses and shops alike, or at least shelter was made from Tanum’s broken bones. Lives had been lost, yes, but she took some solace in the fact that now with the city’s cleanup becoming the grandest of projects there was work. For the destitute who lived well away from those spires and survived the devastation of that night found an honest pay for their labours, and perhaps some hope for the future.

So Karina Karr took heart, watching a motley collection of the formally downtrodden and the once rich bend their backs in a mutual effort to restore her city’s glory.

‘Where are we going this time?’ Her apprentice, Shroud, asked as they passed a small crew tossing dice on break.

She glanced to her companion, noting the scrunch of the young woman’s face. For a girl who’d been born on the poorest corner of Tanum, Shroud had long ago become accustom to the safety and isolation of the palace. In truth, as much as she walked the streets to better understand her people, Karina wanted the girl to remember the world outside her bubble. ‘We’re going to see an old of friend of mine.’

‘Oh?’ Shroud hopped the severed marble arm of a statue laying across the narrow street. ‘Who do you know out this way? Another lover?’

Karina grinned at the thought. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so?’

The Queen shrugged. ‘We used to do a lot more drinking back then. Who knows, maybe I gave a free one some lonely night, but I don’t think so. Roost always had certain…prejudices against practitioners of what he called “them magics”.’

‘You do keep strange company.’

‘I do.’ She gave Shroud a look to say “you are part of that company”, but the blond girl was distracted, watching the crews work away at what was left of Farlon Tower. The Queen followed her apprentice’s gaze to the sundered spire, reaching for the sky like a broken bone jutting from the skin of the city. ‘I think we’ll avoid building anymore towers, hmm? The old kings should have heeded the fable of Kage’s Citadel.’ The ancient emperor had had aspirations of reaching the heavens, and the Olden had seen fit to topple Kage’s work in a display which sent thousands to the Veiled Lady’s domain.

The two women were forced to take an alley when their way was blocked by a fallen steeple. Refuse chocked, they picked their way through a miasma of rotting garbage and excrement. Shroud made quiet disgusted noises as she nimbly avoided the discarded contents of someone’s bowels.

They were approaching an avenue, and as they drew closer angry voices rose from somewhere around the corner. But one rose above the rest, hollering in familiar tones. ‘All right, settle the hell down before I clobber someone!’

‘That would be Roost,’ the Queen smiled. They came around the corner to find a small group of workers crowded around a red bearded man wearing the uniform of a constable. He was chewing them out, cudgel in hand, pointing it at each in turn while he told them with unflattering language to get back to work.

‘The next person who bothers me with nonsense, I’m gonna put in the hole for a week, you hear me?’ The small crowd, prisoners-turned-workers dispersed, grumbling their dissent. ‘Piss-heads,’ he said, then noticed Karina and Shroud approaching. He narrowed a stare at them, seeming to look directly at each with his cock eyes. ‘Now how can I you?’ he asked with a sneer.

‘By taking a break, Constable.’

Recognition dawned at the man’s face, and he checked over his shoulder to make sure none of his peers were in earshot. No one was close, the other constables too busy keeping watch over the prisoners. ‘Yeah. I think I can do that,’ he said, then nodded toward a gutted bakery nearby.

‘He seems…nice,’ Shroud whispered as they followed the sergeant into the ruin.

‘He has a certain charm, I’ll give you that.’

Inside, the sergeant navigated his way through the clutter of smashed furniture, leading them through a doorway to a room where a table and chairs had already been set. ‘Forgive the mess,’ he said, producing a bottle from it’s hiding place behind a shattered dresser. ‘I ain’t had time to clean up for company.’

‘Even if you did,’ Karina said, taking a seat, ‘Geraska’s not here to make you do it.’

‘No she ain’t,’ he grinned, sitting and pulling the stopper from the bottle with a pop. ‘And thank the Olden for that.’

‘How is she?’

‘Stubborn and belligerent.’ He took a long pull from the bottle, wincing. ‘And wondering how her boy’s doing.’

Karina declined the bottle when the sergeant offered it. ‘You can tell her Letcher is doing well, though I imagine at the moment he’s in a panic looking for me.’

‘Good.’ Roost nodded as if he expected as much. ‘Why don’t you take a seat lass?’ he said to Shroud, who stood at her queen’s shoulder. ‘Have a drink, relax. It ain’t palace wine, and it ain’t all that good, but down here it’s goddamn blood of the gods.’

‘No…thank you,’ she said, and Karina felt the girl’s hand on her shoulder.

‘Suit yourself,’ he shrugged and down another gulp. ‘So,’ he said, ‘to business?’

‘Please. I’ve got to get back soon, my guests are wanting to talk again.’

Sergeant Roost shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you’re still playing being amicable with them. I mean, Maiden’s tits, you and I both know Balistar ain’t got nothing in his heart but hate for you.’

Shroud’s fingers dug into her shoulder, and she guessed the girl was doing all she could not to berate the man for speaking to his queen in such familiar tones. But Karina put a staying hand on her apprentice’s. ‘I’m not going over this again, Roost.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just, three council members dead since that woman arrived and you’re just treating her like the Olden himself came down for a visit. I remember when you would’a relieved her of her head and been done with it.’

Shroud, ever protective of her queen and mistress could be silent no more. ‘Sergeant! You do not speak to your queen like that.’

‘Easy, Shroud,’ Karina said, feeling the girl’s sorcery tingle through the threads. ‘Sergeant Roost earned his candor years ago.’ She looked up into the girl’s dancing blue eyes, held her gaze. ‘I owe him my life.’

To their surprise, the sergeant scoffed. ‘Karr, we ain’t done nothing more than trade life-debts a hundred times or so. Kid,’ he said to Shroud. ‘If you think what comes outta my mouth is uh, reprehensible, then you should hear Karr when she’s halfway through a bottle of whiskey. Could make a dock worker blush. Anyway,’ he said, turning his attention back to Karina. ‘I got bad news. Lost the trail a couple days back. Whoever done Kaltrin in is good, real good.’

‘That’s disappointing.’

‘Yeah, well, I don’t exactly have the resources for a proper investigation. I know, I know,’ he went on with an upraised hand. ‘Not many you can trust right now, but Karr, I need help.’

Karina felt a pulse of dread, and didn’t need the aid of precognition to know where the sergeant was going with this. But still she asked; ‘What do you need.’

Roost seemed to think on it for moment, and she guessed he was trying to sort out just how to ask. But, as always, the sergeant relied on bluntness to ensure he was understood. ‘I need you to go and talk to that wizard, and tell him I need a stalker. Karr,’ he leaned forward, ‘I need Lode.’

‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ll get you a stalker, but not him.’

The sergeant growled. ‘If you can play nice with Balistar, you can put your bullshit aside. Karr, you know how I feel about working with the Watch. He’s the only decent one among them.’

‘He’s not even one them anymore.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’ll think about.’ And she stood to leave, suddenly weary of the company of old friends. ‘I’ll contact you soon.’

‘Right. Be well and take care. No one here wants to see you fall.’

With pursed lips she nodded her thanks, and left the sergeant alone to finish his drink.

* * *

After checking her majesty’s chamber’s for the third time, Letcher closed the doors and stood in the hallway nearly shaking. Chula, sister and emissary of the Lord Commander of Chait was getting impatient. Twice now she’d cornered him, demanding to know why the Sorceress Queen insulted her by keeping her waiting. Of course he had no answers, only apologies and assurances that the queen must be delayed with important matters, and that he’d not rest until he found her.

I guess I’ll try the wizard’s chamber. He hated going up there, hated the way the old mage spoke to him, and the way there always seemed to be hidden eyes watching him from the shadows. With a steadying breath he smoothed down his tunic and started off down the eastern hall.

His stepfather had warned him not to come between two women at war, and while he’d never giving much credit to the man bedding his mother, he well understood Roost’s point. He was present for most of their meetings, their arguments, and too often was forced to absorb their ire for one another. And day by day it made his belly burn with bile. I think I’m getting an ulcer. Maybe the wizard has a remedy. Though, he didn’t relish the thought of asking the crusty mage for any sort of aid. It was never an even trade.

Passing through the third intersection along his way, he stopped at a voice calling his name. It was the queen’s concubine, Zase - and with her the consort, Vane. Two of his least favourite denizens of the palace. ‘Yes?’ he said as they neared, trying to sound polite, but coming off terse.

Zase, a beautiful woman if a touch hard around the edges, barely wearing her black silks marched up to him, frowning. ‘Where is she? The Lady Chula is ready to throw a tantrum, and you are supposed to be at the Queen’s side at all times. Explain yourself, gutter rat.’ Vane, the towering figure behind her, smirked.

‘I, uh, well…’

‘You’d best find her,’ Vane said, his white teeth made all the brighter by his onyx skin. ‘The Chaitish do not think twice about flaying pledgers, even their host’s own.’

‘Of course,’ Letcher said, nodding, and hating that he had to put up with these two at a time like this. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

‘I doubt even the Beggar God would excuse you,’ Zase said, dismissing him with a wave.

Bitch! ‘Thank you, Concubine, Consort. Maiden’s Mercy to you both.’ And may you both walk off a ledge in the near future.

With their arrogant barbs behind him, Letcher hurried to the end of the hall, where waited the stairs to the wizard’s chambers.

The whole climb up Letcher had to contest with sparse lighting, almost tripping up the winding stone stairs. Exotic smells wafted down from the ancient door at climbs end, stinging sulfur and pungent cleaning solutions prominent among them. He found his handkerchief and, putting it to his mouth and nose to filter the stink, ascended the last steps and knocked twice on the iron banded door, hard. No answer, though he was sure he heard voices on the other side, too muffled to make out. Still, it gave him hope that his queen was in the wizard’s laboratory. He pounded again, harder, adding a third and fourth knock. ‘Hello!’

The voices died, replaced by what he could only imagine was the wizard’s grumbling. Then came shuffling as the decrepit mage no doubt made his way across to the door, taking his time about it. Come on already. After an eternity of waiting on the top step, Letcher heard the clacking of a crutch just the other side of the threshold.

‘Who’s there?’ the wizard asked, his willowy voice barely reaching through the heavy portal.

‘It’s Letcher, I’m searching for the queen.’

‘The queen, hey? Haven’t seen her. Go away.’

‘But…I heard…’

‘Never mind what you heard; you heard nothing, lad. Go, the queen’s not here and I’m in no mood for company.’

Letcher groaned, the bile rising in his gut to burn at the back of his throat.

‘What’s that? Your stomach bothering you again? I told Karina you weren’t fit for this sort of work.’ Letcher frowned at the wizard’s expected disapproval, and was turning to leave when to his surprise he heard the latches and locks of the door pulling open. ‘You’ll be no help to anyone if you’re writhing in pain, least of all the queen.’ The door cracked open and orange light shone through, leaving the wizard’s face in relative shadow. ‘I think you’re developing an ulcer, lad. Hmmm. Well, stop standing there like a slow witted child and come in, come in. I have something that should help.’

For a moment Letcher stood on the threshold of the open door and watched the wizard’s painful trek across his cluttered lab. A single cot was pushed up against the far wall, across a field of tables overfilled with arcana. Alembics and crucible and other alchemical tools on one; heavy tomes piled on another; surgical tools and the grotesque cadaver of what appeared to be a small demon. All surrounded a round stone hearth from which the orange light of a fire lit the musty chamber. The smell was worse here, and Letcher kept the handkerchief to his face as he took a step inside.

Nearly crippled, the wizard dragged a malformed leg as he hobbled to a collection of vials atop one table. ‘One, and only one thing we share, lad, is a troubled belly. Here,’ he picked a vial of dark liquid. ‘Yes, this should do you, though if you wish to be of any future use, I would suggest a change in diet. Yes, yes, more vegetables and less fatty meats, hey?’

‘I’ll, uh, take it under consideration, sir.’

‘See that you do.’ It was hard to watch the wizard’s return, relying so much on the crutch held under his arm. Letcher found the courage to meet the mage halfway, but after two steps felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as those unseen eyes tracked him. ‘Just half now and half before you go to bed,’ the wizard said as he handed over the potion. ‘That should ease your tummy for a few days, in which you should find the clarity to reconsider what you put in there,’ and he jabbed Letcher in the stomach.

In the glow of the fire the wizard’s craggy face and hawk-nose seemed sinister, and though he knew it for a trick of the light, it gave him pause. He held the vial close to his chest. ‘Sir,’ he ventured, taking an involuntary step back. ‘Have you, or, uh, do you know the queen’s whereabouts?’

For a long moment the wizard studied him with sour-faced scrutiny. ‘Why should I? Do you think the queen deems me important enough to forward her itinerary to me? Hmm? I am flattered by the position you believe I hold, but I fear I am but another forgotten fragment of the queen’s past. She, like the rest of you only come when you need something of me. Oh, Mump, my tummy hurts, pray, do you have a cure-all? Mump, the rats have returned to the cellar, why don’t you conjure up something to deal with them. Please Mump, you must have a love potion I can use on that boy!’ The wizard spoke these words with venom and a pitiful flourish of spindly arms. ‘You see, lad? I, like you, am but a tool at the queen’s command. And she has not commanded me to inform you, or any other tool of her goings-on.

‘Now, you have your cure and have your answer. If more proof is needed, just look around. I am alone, and would prefer to return to that blessed state.’

Letcher nodded, but thought; Then who were you speaking to? Then blanched when the wizard’s voice whispered in his head; Never you mind about that, unless you wish for a private lesson in the conjuring of nightmare things.

No more words were needed, Letcher scrambled to escape the wizard’s laboratory.

Mump grinned as the youth sped away. He was a good lad, loyal and urgent, but not fit for his chosen path. Better if he’d followed his mother’s footsteps. Yes, far better suited to craft work than the bile-stirring ins and outs of the palace. ‘Remember your vegetables!’ he called after the fleeing pledger, before straining to close the heavy door. Then, as he worked the latches and locks he added quietly; ‘Don’t let this place become the death of you.’

‘Now,’ he said, turning to the hearth and seeing the flames take the form of a man hundreds of leagues east of the Red Path Mountains. ‘Where were we, hmm?’

* * *

When Karina Karr entered her private audience chamber she found the emissary Chula waiting alone, save for her single masked bodyguard. She could see the woman was fuming, standing near the lit fireplace and fighting against the glare burning in her eyes as she stared at the Sorceress Queen. ‘Lady Chula,’ the queen said, sashaying over to the table sporting a platter of finger-foods and a carafe of chilled wine. ‘So sorry for the delay.’ She took up the carafe and poured them each a goblet. ‘But matters from the city needed my attention.’ And she would have been there sooner still, had she not taken painstaking efforts to make herself presentable. Gone were the simple robes and hood of the penitent woman, replaced by the suggestive cut of her cream silks and the gold around her neck and atop her head. She still hadn’t been able to glean the other woman’s preferences, but she made sure to show more cleavage than was proper. If it didn’t distract the woman with desire, it should with conservative offense.

At least, she noted the eyes of Chula’s bodyguard lingering from behind his bronze, featureless mask.

Chula, sister of her rival was in many ways the queen’s opposite. She wore modest robes of drab satin, showing off only the dark flesh of her arms and neck. Karina had never noted the woman’s gaze lingering on any one person, unless it was with scorn or analysis. In many ways she reminded the queen of a priestess of one of the more prudent cults.

‘I wonder,’ Chula said, joining the queen and taking the proffered goblet. ‘What matters could steal the queen’s attention, when she has a council to deal with such?’

Karina smiled without humour at the comment. ‘Oh, nothing of great import.’

‘But important enough to earn your eye?’

Karina’s smile broadened, and she lifted the goblet to her lips. Before taking a sip she said; ‘Yes.’

‘Indeed. In any case we’ve much to discuss.’ Chula took a seat where she’d already laid out scrolls detailing logistics and account balances and all manner of dreadfully boring things. ‘Payments have not yet come in for last month’s supplies; there are teams of workers in Chait ready to come to aid with the city’s restoration, still waiting on their hands for you approval; and now I hear that fighting has broken out between our forces lining the Gorge.’

‘Minor fighting,’ the queen countered, taking a seat. ‘A few soldiers restless from all the waiting.’

Chula looked none too pleased with Karina’s dismissal. ‘Minor fighting which, left unchecked, could cascade and throw our kingdoms into war, despite our efforts here. Your Majesty,’ and the woman’s face softened, ‘I know how feel about my brother, and I cannot say that I blame you. But I am not him. I only care for peace.’

Words used by the woman a hundred times, yet Karina Karr still found herself moved by Chula’s genuine concern. Moved enough to give her some slack. ‘I know.’ Then, taking a long sip, she said; ‘I suppose this is going to go late.’ Across the room hung a silk rope which, when pulled would signal a pledger forth. The Sorceress Queen needed no such device, instead sending out a vibration to a servant through the threads, like a spider on her web. ‘How about…’

Both women turned as someone stumbled into the chambers. It was Letcher, and the young man wore an expression caught between fear and relief. Karina was about to note the speediness of his reaction, but Chula beat her to it.

‘As you can see, Pledger, I’ve found the queen without your aid.’ She blew her disdain out her nose in a huff.

‘Once more, Lady Chula, I do apologize.’ He bowed, eyes darting from one woman to the other. ‘I, uh…’

‘You were looking for me?’ Karina tried not to let her sympathy show for the young man. Mump was right: Letcher was not well suited to his duties. ‘I’m sorry, I was in my wizard’s chambers, and Letcher here has an understandable aversion to Mump’s laboratory. Don’t you, boy?’

Antsy as he was, Letcher did her proud and nodded in agreement. ‘Aye, Majesty.’

‘Well, you should have steeled yourself and come and found me, if only to keep our guest up to date, don’t you think?’

‘I do, Majesty.’ He bowed again, and Karina promised herself she’d make it up to him. The stress was eating away at his insides.

‘Don’t worry, Lady Chula, I will see to his punishment myself. But, until then, Letcher, hurry to the larder and bring some coffee beans. We have a…long night ahead.’

‘As you commanded, Majesty.’ He could have done better to not appear so eager to leave, but Karina was finding it harder and harder to stay mad at Roost’s adopted son.

She turned an honest smile on her counterpart, unable to ignore the humour of the situation. ‘Once more, I’m sorry. What is it they say about good help?’

‘It’s impossible to find.’ And lo! The Lady Chula grinned. A miracle quickly dashed as the woman fell back into her diplomatic role. ‘Now, about the fighting at the Gorge…’

It was well past midnight when Karina, exhausted from her trek down on the streets and her subsequent negotiations, returned to her bedchambers. So tired she was that she deadened herself to the threads, cutting off the constant hum of sorcery’s web. Zase was nowhere to be found, but Vane she saw was stretched out on the bed, naked and waiting. She didn’t hear him snoring, so took it that he was awake.

‘I’m glad to see you waited up like a good boy,’ she said, wearily making her way to bed, slipping off her silks and letting them fall to the floor. ‘But don’t get too comfortable, I expect you to do most of the work tonight.’ Closing her eyes she stretched out a kink in her back, reaching for the vaulted ceiling and giving her consort an excellent view of her bronze figure, to entice his vigors. ‘A little reaction would be nice,’ she said when he didn’t stir, and drew her hands down over her heavy breasts. ‘Or are we playing a game?’ Still nothing from the man, and now she took a closer look at his chiseled, unmoving body. ‘Vane?’

Her heart began to pound with worry and she took to the bed, leaning over her consort. She heard no sounds of breathing and saw no sign of his chest rising. ‘No, not you too.’ She put a fingers to his throat, searching for a pulse. But the flesh was cold and lifeless.

For a long time she knelt there staring at Vane’s corpse, letting outrage boil and bubble to the surface. First my councilors and now my Vane. This is why you dragged our meeting on Chula. Fine, then let the game be changed.

With a thought she reconnected with the threads and called for her wizard, adding to it her outraged voice. ‘MUMP!’ and felt the mage’s immediate response: a sigh.

Too far. You’ve gone too far this time Balistar. In my very bed…