Breathe
Griffin Barber
I entered the City of White Boar for the first time in the fall of my one hundred and seventieth turning. Parting ways—amicably, as it never serves to bite the hand of such people if such can be avoided—with the smugglers who brought me into the city, I stepped into the daylight of the Street of Cubs. My travel-stained cloak was thin defense against the damp weather, my worn boots offering even less protection as I climbed the cold cobbles to the top of Ledge Row. I paused there to take in the view from that highway midway up the Divide, listening to the vast breath of the city below.
Oh, how it breathed:
In with the lives of hopeful, eager youth, the produce of a hundred and more farms, lumber and ore, gemstones and furs, spices and dreams of merchants wishing to make their fortune from the opportunities hidden among the narrow alleys, deep canals, and tall spires of the city.
Out with the smoking and wet waste of thousands, the effluvia of broken dreams and broken people, of destitute merchants broken upon the wheel of fate the gods spin without care, and the myriad finished products of industry flowing to the other cities and even into the hinterlands of the Seven Duchies and beyond.
In or out, White Boar breathed its stinking vitality on all who walked its streets.
Some may attempt to refute my assertion that great cities live, that they grow strong, mature into their strength, and eventually grow old and frail with the passing from one Age to another, but those intrepid idiots would be wrong. I have lived long enough to see villages—not White Boar, but one or two along the Fey Coast and elsewhere—grow from tiny villages to towering metropolises and then fade from memory, pillaged by time, tide, and men, their stoney bones lifted to make new homes, new temples to old gods.
I will admit that White Boar seemed, and still seems to me, more resistant to this trend toward entropy than most places I have visited. Perhaps it is that the Dwarfs created it as their home, perhaps it was some miracle of the Old Gods, said to walk the streets of that northern city on certain nights. The precise reason may elude me, but I suspect the city is as it is because the people who inhabit White Boar refuse to allow it to descend into obscurity.
This much, they accomplish at great cost.
I was in White Boar not by choice, though I had considered moving there some turns prior, but because the Vaggan Incursion had begun in the spring of that turn and its screaming progress had rendered me, like so many others in those turns, homeless. A woman, in those times, faced challenges wealth alone could not overcome.
I was not concerned, overmuch. Not at that late date. As a Select, I was not without resources. As a Necromancer, I must be circumspect in where and how I applied them.
✧ ✧ ✧
The other monster was not circumspect—or rather, not circumspect enough—in his dealings. The city had been uneasy then, and not simply because of overcrowding. No, it was rumored a pathless monster haunted those crooked, mist-slick cobbles, disappearing more than the normal quota of streetwalkers and urchins who braved the city streets of the night. A special squad of the watch was formed to hunt him, and witch hunters called upon from the temples militant, all of which made me uneasy and eager to find myself a home and situation that would allow me to better conceal my existence.
In the end, I found this rival monster rather quickly and, as it turned out, without any especial effort.
I do not blame him overmuch. With the number of refugees flooding the city, finding sustenance was easy. Concealing things was simultaneously very easy and incredibly difficult. So many people in such dire straits was always going to result in blood. A few extra disappearances were not an issue the pumpkins had the resources to look into, but the sheer crush of unfortunates spending restless nights on the streets meant that odds were, someone would see things they should not.
I was returning to the inn where I boarded, having spent a frustrating evening at dinner with the dealer I had hoped would offer me a good price on my jewels. Before the incursion, a few trinkets among the many I’d carried on the road would have bought me a manor in the city. In the wake of the desperate people flooding White Boar and offering family treasures for food to feed their children, I would be lucky to stretch the value of all my baubles to cover a small home in one of the middle districts.
Heedless of the origin of my housing situation, a patrol of the watch appeared athwart my path. I stopped. The patrol had stopped a pedestrian for questioning. A large fellow led them, the green sash stretched over his expansive waist, and the ochre tabard of the watch’s uniform combining to make him the very essence of the nickname the common folk used for the watch: pumpkins. That they creeped about and forced their way into business not their own only added to the aptness of the appellation, in my view. That they are still called such argues that some names never grow stale.
Impatient and not a little angry as a result of my failed excursion, I decided to avoid contact if I could. The last thing I needed was a confrontation with officious members of the watch.
I turned down a side street and, in due time passed into Sluice Gate, where I met the monster like me. The encounter started as many such events do, in my experience: a nearby death impinged upon my awareness.
Interested, but not terribly concerned, as I had fed recently, I extended my senses that direction. What I found surprised me. Death usually lingers, leaves a residue of energies one of my Talent can easily pick up and follow to the corpse. The energies from this one were disappearing far too quickly for it to be a natural event. Two possibilities occurred: a priest of Vradesh had been present at the death and was ushering the soul directly on to the righteous paths and thence to the Dreaming Realm, or a monster like me was consuming the life essence.
I was, naturally, wary of the first case whilst believing the second case far more likely, given the location and measure. A place, then, as now, not known for its affluence or the care the watch took with the problems facing its residents, Sluice Gate had also been inundated with the lion’s share of refugees seeking safety within the city walls.
Most sensible people would have avoided crossing the district at night if they did not have to. I am not most people, and so peered through the mist-shrouded night in search of the dead. Seeing nothing at first, I paused to weave a set of light-gathering lenses of air before my eyes. I tortured air through the tight confines of my prodigious will and made the substance flex and bend to my desires. My Working in place, I ducked down an alley in pursuit of the rapidly fading death energies. That narrow way opened on a small bridge spanning one of the wide sluices which give the district its name. The far end of the bridge was a T intersection, walkways of stone and timber continuing to my left and right along the mist-shrouded water. I paused at the center of the bridge, extending my senses.
The energies were almost entirely depleted. It was only my proximity that allowed me to feel them at all. I followed the sensation to the left, cautious now.
My Working only alleviated the darkness, not the mist, so I almost missed the open window just above eye level on my side of the canal. As I perceived the outlines of what, from the number of windows, I presumed was a tenement, I heard a small noise from beyond the window. That I heard it over the noise of the mills that ran all night in the district was more of a surprise than my identification of the sound. I had much less experience back then, but every necromancer is well acquainted with the sound of ash sloughing to the floor in the aftermath of a feeding.
I had found the party the entire city was searching for, all without even the least pretense of looking.
Not knowing if the necromancer had been Select or some self-taught ritualist, I decided against entering the window. A former Select would be far more dangerous, if less likely to be a sloppy, power-mad beast than those who came to the Art by resorting to rituals transcribed by the mad servants of noble-born fools pursuing any means of obtaining immortality. Or so I reasoned. That he wasn’t a soul-monger was obvious. Such creatures do not prosper alone. Their madness would have spread like wildfire among the desperate folk then in White Boar.
I retreated to the bridge and made myself as small as possible behind the low balustrade bordering it, settling in to wait.
I cannot fully describe what I felt as I waited. Some small unease, a greater portion of excitement. I had at the time met so few monsters like me. In that distant past, I still felt a need to connect, to speak with another who understood what it meant to be a monster.
I had yet to learn that loneliness is oft preferable to meeting the wrong individual, that two monsters in White Boar was one too many, even amongst the million souls inhabiting that great city.
✧ ✧ ✧
Every millrace splashes thousands of droplets into the air, and there were so very many millraces in the lower city that the mist persisted even on the hottest, driest days. At night, and especially in the late autumn, the damp collected on everything, only to drip from every surface, including my nose.
I watched a thin pair of hands grip the mossy windowsill, quickly followed by a bald head and narrow shoulders as the man levered himself up. He paused, crouching in the window to look both ways along the canal, gaze passing over my still form without a hint of recognition. I scarce breathed, even though I suspected the constant groaning of the waterwheels could cover a great many indiscretions.
There was a coating of ash on the lower half of that thin face, making the eyes shine the brighter in contrast. I noted he had the high, arching brows common to Krommen, but the thick-set jaw made me think him Mìrrowan. Both ethnic groups were common in White Boar, both as long-established residents and newly arrived refugees, so his apparent membership in either of those groups was not exceptional. I noted neither Working nor Charms about his person, and felt some small disappointment. Either he was extremely circumspect or he was a ritualist.
Brief surveillance done, the necromancer leaned back into the room and retrieved a sack which he deposited on the walkway. He quickly followed his baggage, boots thumping lightly on damp stone. Turning to face the wall, he pushed the shutters closed behind him, gaze shifting back and forth along the sluice walk even as he worked.
He looked to be about my height, and no more than a stone heavier than I.
I prepared to follow him, but the necromancer wasn’t ready to leave yet. Instead, he bent again and removed a rolled garment from the sack. He glanced around one more time, then shook what proved to be a short gray cloak out in a billow of ash and partially rendered bone. The detritus pattered into the waters of the sluice; the remains of his repast quickly disappearing in the chill current.
I smiled, committing that particular trick to memory as he bent and splashed some water on his face. He was not entirely wise in his feeding habits, or he would not have ash on his person, let alone his face. It is possible to remove the essence from the dead or dying without touching them. I had done it many times by then, and I was very new to the experience at that time. To be fair, such methods would not only require the skills of a fully trained Select, but one with significant Talent for working air, that element closest to the essence which flees a human corpse upon death. Not every Select can perceive, let alone work, air as I do. It has always been among my more significant advantages.
Thoughts of whether he was Select or not drove me to remember the lenses that hovered before my eyes. A sufficiently accomplished Select might have seen my working, even without observing me. That the necromancer hadn’t—or seemed not to have—perceived the energies worked through the windlass of my will led me to believe he was not a full Select. A mystery, then. If my curiosity hadn’t already been, it was piqued now.
Wiping his face with one hand, the necromancer stood up, loose, empty sack trailing from the other.
I tensed, ready to move if he came my direction.
The Lord of Sevens must have favored me in that moment, as the necromancer threw his sack over one shoulder and walked away. I slow-counted to thirty-and-five as an offering for further favor before setting out after my prey. I moved in some silence, which is, when all is said and done, considerably quieter than the average city lass. I am, like all proper monsters, somewhat gifted in this area, though I had yet to receive any formal training in the skill. Some might question my caution, given the noise of the district, but whilst the din of Sluice Gate’s waterwheels and mills covered many sounds, residents could often hear the slightest disturbance. Experience granted them the ability to discern sounds between the thuds, groans, and splashes common to the neighborhood. Those who had legitimate business on the streets carried lanterns, making them easy to avoid. That said, there were very few people out and about that late.
I kept him in sight without much difficulty. Movement draws the eye, even in the mist. It was the intersections where I risked losing him. I had to hurry to each corner lest he get out of sight around another bend. So it was that when the necromancer took a right at the next intersection and onto Fuller’s Row, I hurried forward.
Right into the trap he’d laid for me.
✧ ✧ ✧
I turned the corner, peering into the darkness, but did not see my quarry.
The sack the necromancer had carried smelled of fish and other, older foulnesses. I learned this as the thing was swept over my head and shoulders, followed almost instantly by a heavy blow to my gut.
More surprised than injured, I staggered under the assault. Another blow hammered into the side of my skull, just behind the ear. My concentration slipped, releasing the oculus to dissipate into the close darkness of the sack.
Now, there is nothing so frightening, and therefore enraging, to a necromancer than having their brain rattled about in its bone vault. An inability to concentrate is anathema to controlling the functions of stolen flesh, and the one thing all necromancers—ritualist or otherwise—fear most.
Anger flaring in my dead guts, I threw myself to one side. My left shin collided with something hard, sending me reeling. The stagger must have thrown the necromancer’s aim, as the sack was tugged sideways with a seam-splitting tear. I raised my arms to remove it and was struck again, this time in the shoulder. My opponent had fists hard as mallets and knew how to use them. He would pummel me unconscious if I didn’t prevent it.
I infused my limbs with some of the power I always husband against just such a need and ripped the sack away. My reward was the briefest glimpse of knuckles before they crashed into my nose, breaking it and sending me ass over cauldron. The sodden boards of a trapdoor creaked and moaned beneath my weight.
“Who might you be?” he growled, coming after me. He carried himself on the balls of his feet, each step smooth and balanced. As he drew close enough to make out details, I noted the horizontal scar that all sworn soldiers of experience in that Age bore on their foreheads. Something about the helmet biting into the flesh even whilst it protected their skull from more grievous injury.
Spitting blood, I shook my head and tried to rise, to answer him. He, however, was on me in the next instant, fists cracking against my head, forearms, hands, shoulders, and back as I squirmed and writhed in my vain efforts to escape the beating.
“Who are you?” he said again. He wasn’t even breathing hard. I suppose such should be expected from a necromancer, but I was still quite put out that he was having such an easy time of it. At least I’d had an answer to my question as to his origins: no Select was ever so good with their fists. That, and the fact he’d not yet tried to feed from me was also telling. He had no true Talent, then, but was one of those who must rely upon scribed ritual circles and repeated chants to consume the souls of their prey.
I managed to set the bottom of one foot against his thigh and shoved as hard as my enhanced muscles would allow. As luck would have it nearly all his weight was resting on that leg in that instant. He fairly flew, back and down, slamming face first into—and through— the damp-rotted trapdoor I had fetched up on. He fell out of view with a loud series of crashes and angry cries.
I got to my feet, shaking a sullen trickle of blood from my eyes. Standing at the top of the ramp the trap had covered, I made out movement in the darkness below. I Worked, then, beginning to fashion the necessary connections through which to steal his ugly little spirit, running the tattered threads of his filthy soul through the windlass of my mind.
A heavy length of wood spun out of the darkness below. I turned my head aside, only to be struck along the temple. My every thought shattered, individual pieces of consciousness scattering at my feet where I quickly joined them.
✧ ✧ ✧
An evil whistling penetrated my skull and worked its dull blade back and forth in the cold molasses between my ears. The whistle receded after a moment, leaving me wondering if the ringing it left behind in my head wasn’t worse.
Another long blast of the whistle came; closer or louder, I couldn’t say which. I could say that the noise confirmed that fresh pain induced by the shrilling was, indeed, worse than the residue of the earlier injury done me.
Dimly, I heard shouts among the creaks, drips, and groans of a Sluice Gate night.
My hearing worked, at least. For the rest, I was adrift in a shaky spectrum of sensation: the scent of rotted fish, of unwashed man, the scratch of coarse sackcloth under my bruised and battered face, the pain in head and gut, the cold cobbles of the walk against my belly and side where I was pressed down against it by a weight astride my back.
The ignorant might question your humble narrator here: why I didn’t simply stop the sensations and rise to deliver a mighty beating upon my assailant. The complexities of my existence are not easy for the stupid to comprehend, but suffice to say it is hard to walk, let alone fight, when one cannot feel one’s appendages. In short: there is no control without sensation, and no sensation without exposing oneself to pain.
Another whistle sounded, this time accompanied by a faint glow. I blinked, relieved. The lantern light was diffuse, owing to the ever-present mist of the district, not damage to my eyes. Eyes are fiendishly hard to repair, even for one of my gifts. I managed a quick look around. We were some distance from the intersection where he’d set upon me, up an alley that came off the Row at an acute angle. He had dragged me among the heavy timber supports of a wooden stair that gave access to the upper floors of the tenement looming above us. A party of pumpkins entered the intersection we had fought in, a pair of them holding lanterns aloft on long iron rods while another pair cautiously descended the cellar ramp.
My thoughts assembled into a semblance of coherence, revelation following: the pumpkins were on the hunt for whomever had been rowing and fighting in the street. Indeed, more lights were appearing in some upper-story windows. The residents of the poorer districts of White Boar might pay little attention to most night noises, but someone had whistled up the full strength of the watch, rendering it safe for residents to take notice of goings-on just outside their windows.
A blade was laid flat against my cheek. “Not a peep, nor a move,” the whisper sounded from near my ear, and positively reeked of rotten teeth. If I shuddered then, it was disgust which drove me to it, not fear. This was certainly no master necromancer, to leave such telltales uncorrected.
I abided, unable to understand why he hadn’t just stuck a knife in me and left me for dead. He could have easily dumped my lifeless body in the sluice and walked off into the dark. Instead, he’d dragged me up the alley and laid down with me in that dark closeness.
On the positive side of the ledger, he clearly had no idea who—or what—I was. I am occasionally underestimated. Less so as the turns pass and my reputation spreads, but back then I had not earned many of the names my later infamy would grant. Taking full advantage of his ignorance, I fed my muscles with stolen vitality and awaited an opportunity.
Almost as an afterthought, I Worked air to hear what conversation was being made at the intersection.
“Nothing but a pool of blood down here!” a voice rose from the cellar the ritualist had fallen into.
“More up here,” another whispered, pointing at the cobbles at his feet. “There’s a trail.”
A big, broad-shouldered fellow joined the one pointing, knelt and examined the cobbles at their feet and said in a deep, authoritative voice, “On me.”
It was whilst the sergeant’s men gathered about him that I noticed the wet damping of the cobbles beneath my chest and face was blood. I focused, discovered more pooling where my captor straddled me. It explained much, that tacky fluid. The ritualist must have been hurt, badly, in his fall. Lacking my skills at repairing the flesh without resorting to time-consuming ritual and copious amounts of fresh vitality, he must have planned to keep me alive in order to use my vigor to affect his healing.
The knife trembled as the pumpkins started toward the alley.
Under no illusions as to what my captor must decide and disinclined to wait for him to plunge the blade into my skull, I bucked with all my stolen strength.
Caught by surprise, he pitched back and slid down to straddle the backs of my knees.
The blade sang in the dark. I thanked Hesh he was better with his fists than with the blade as the knife tip skated across the cobbles beside my head.
I bucked again, managed a half-turn onto my side. My upper body free, I flailed at him, smiling as an elbow found a home in something soft and elicited a grunt.
His fist cracked against my head, making a constellation shimmer and sparkle behind my eyes. For the second time that night I lost a Working. Ignoring it, I flailed at him, managing to interpose one arm between my face and his knife-hand as it descended. The blade rammed home in the meat between the bones of my forearm.
I screamed, then, as much from fear of pain as the pain itself. Screamed and turned my impaled arm to punch down into the ground, wrenching the knife from his hands. It hurt. Oh, how it hurt.
“Stupid!” the monster sobbed as another battering ram struck my face, slapping the back of my skull against the cobbles. Rather than make sparks this time, everything grew dim and dark.
✧ ✧ ✧
I returned to awareness with the sensation of unsteady flight toward a glow. I thought for a moment the light might be the raised lantern of the god of death, there to guide me along the Paths of the Righteous.
A gurgling laugh escaped my lips. The gods will not offer the likes of me kind guidance to the paradise beyond the Dark between. Such is not my fate.
“Damn you to the dark!” The monster’s hiss as much as his words penetrated my mental fog. His weight disappeared from my legs.
I blinked, realized the glow was the approaching pumpkins when I heard the tramp of hobnail boots on cobbles, quick and close now. The ritualist was already in the alley, a jagged length of wood jutting from his back, one arm thrown out against the alley wall for support. No mortal could have moved with such an injury, let alone as quickly as he made his limping progress.
I felt an instant’s sympathy for him, quickly drowned by self-interest. There may be honor amongst mortal thieves, but we monsters suffer from no such limits to our behavior.
A lantern was thrust into the works above, quickly followed by a young woman’s face.
“Dear Lady!” the pumpkin said in horror, looking down at me.
“Not my blood,” I said, gesturing weakly with my good arm, hoping she would take her eyes off me for a moment. I needed to remove the blade from my other arm.
“A physicker! A physicker here, now!” she cried over her shoulder. “She’s alive!”
Well, she wasn’t entirely wrong, at least. I did not want a physician taking a look at me. Most were fools and idiots, but some could tell dead flesh from living.
“There he is!” cried her compatriots, pounding down the alley after the other monster.
The woman’s head disappeared beyond the wooden trusses. I took the opportunity to pull the knife from my arm and repair some of the damage done to me. Not all, mind you, just those which would prevent me refusing treatment.
“Will you look at that pathless bastard!” one of the pumpkins cried, voice awed and fearful.
“GET ’IM!” I heard the sergeant bellow. The shout was followed by a series of thrashing thuds and squeals as the pumpkins put boots and cudgels to work on the hapless monster.
“Lokkar, hold the light steady there—no, don’t go after them, from the sound of it, they’ve got things well in hand.” A shriek punctuated her statement.
That neither the light nor my interlocutor were moved by the scream, I took for a sign the screamer wasn’t one of their compatriots. The female pumpkin reappeared a moment later, crawling to my side. She squinted at me in the light of the lantern. “You all right?”
Another scream from down the alley. A few more shouts from the watch.
“I’m fine,” I said, ignoring the shrieking. “Just some bumps and knocks on the head.” Injecting some wonder and gratitude into my voice, I added, “You’ve saved me.”
“Oh, that we have!” Her broad smile revealed a rather endearing chipped incisor.
I blinked in confusion.
The distant sounds of street justice slowed, the screaming monster’s cries devolving into a series of low, tortured moans.
“We’ve been tracking that murderous creature for nearly a turning,” the woman said, eyes traveling my face and wincing at the damage there. “Pathless creature murdered six people this last season alone.”
“How did you kn—?” I began, making a show of struggling to lever myself to my elbows.
She reached out, helped me to a sitting position, and answered my incomplete query, “We had an informer, a bawd, claimed the bastard took one o’his stable earlier tonight.”
“An informer?” I repeated stupidly.
She nodded. “We thought you might be her . . . ” She let the thought trail off, inquisitive eyes taking in clothing. I had attended the dinner in a well-tailored but conservative set of trousers, tunic, and coat, all of which were stained, tattered, and torn.
“But clearly you are not,” she said.
“No,” I agreed. “I made a wrong turn and quickly became lost. He set upon me at the intersection, here.”
“Can you crawl out on your own?”
“I can,” I said, and showed her.
✧ ✧ ✧
The steady thump and moan of the district’s myriad waterwheels suddenly impinged on awareness again as I stood straight, the city reasserting its presence over the petty, transient squabbles of those who walked its slick cobbles and darkened alleys.
The pumpkins were bringing the other monster back up the alley as the young woman took stock of my injuries. I reassured her the vast majority of the blood soaking my clothes wasn’t mine and redirected her attention by spitting on the creature held, still and lifeless, between two of the watch. The pumpkins, apparently, knew better than to mistake his stillness for death. Cautious and smart, that sergeant’s squad, they had the creature shackled at both wrists and ankles. A fist-wide shank of wood protruded a handspan both fore and aft from the lower right of his torso.
The big sergeant stopped before us, looking me up and down. “Are you well?”
“Well enough,” I said, not needing to falsify the cautious optimism my voice carried. “It’s not my blood. Or at least, not most of it.” I gave a small smile, cracked lips and all. “Given what you saved me from . . . ” I let the thought trail off with what I hoped was a reasonable facsimile of a victim’s natural desire to avoid reliving hateful experiences. It was a somewhat novel experience, this being the victim rather than the monster.
“Name?”
“Lilli Sunderhaven,” I lied easily, even then. “And yours?”
“Sergeant Kolp, City Watch.”
“I thank you and your people, Sergeant Kolp.”
He put his boot under the necromancer’s chin, raising it. “You’ll bear witness against this creature.”
I nodded at the not-quite-question, nervous whisper of trepidation creeping along my spine. “I do.”
He nodded. “I’ll have the stain of this filth removed from my city as soon as possible. If you could lay your accusations before the Black Bench afore the break of day, that would go a long way to seeing things put in their proper place.” He had a strange way of speaking, did Sergeant Kolp. Not an accent, but an almost archaic manner that immediately endeared him to me.
✧ ✧ ✧
Say one thing for the justice to be had in White Boar: it is swift and without compromise, at least for monsters caught bloody-handed by its officers. I had heard elsewhere that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but not before the Black Bench. At least, not for monsters like me.
But I get ahead of myself. After a brief interlude during which I was allowed to get somewhat cleaned up, my fellow monster and I were brought to the Divide, the district which separates lower and upper White Boar. The courts, of which the Black Bench was the highest of the duchy, were in chambers set in the very wall of the Divide.
There I had occasion to hide a sigh of relief from my escort. My relief was a result of the different paths we two monsters used to enter the Black Bench. While the one monster was brought in through the Penitent’s Gate, I was escorted to the Gate of Audience by the taciturn Sergeant Kolp. I was relieved because, at that time, the courts had only the ward upon Penitent’s Gate, with the Gate of Audience secured by members of the Watch.
Even using that distant gate, I could hear the shouts of awe and fear as, with the necromancer’s passage, the ward activated. Pulsating with savage, searing light meant to alert everyone to the monster in their midst, it had yet to cease casting long shadows by the time we’d entered the great hall just without the courtroom. I managed a small prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord of Sevens as we walked in without any such fanfare. I say “managed” because in my long, misspent life I have had more occasion to believe the gods were out to get me rather than feel gratitude enough to offer thanks in proper and timely fashion.
Kolp ushered me in to the court proper and bade me sit whilst he ascended to speak with what appeared to be the senior of many, many clerks stationed before the bench. I used the time to get the lay of the land, as it were. I sat in the lowest tier of benches, separated by but one row and a heavy ironwood railing from the Black Bench itself. Between our tiers was a pit where the clerks charged with recording the doings of the court worked. The age-blackened ironwood bench where the magistrates presided was most impressive, covering the entirety of one wall of that vast hall. The Black Bench was actually three benches, each large desk situated behind a pulpit-like barrier higher on the wall than the last. Only the lower two were occupied by magistrates when we entered, leaving the highest and most impressive—the one located directly beneath a strikingly large and beautifully enameled crest of the City—vacant. Judging from the number of signs of the open book or the unfurled scroll on prominent display, many of the clerks wanted to be seen as devout followers of the god of knowledge and clear thought. I had some small hope that none of them were truly temple-sworn, as I had no desire to tangle with the penetrating gaze of a Book just then. The thought of gazes reminded me to push fluid into the bruises and a tiny trickle of blood into the marks left on my body by the other monster.
The lesser magistrates announced their verdict on a petty case whilst I waited for Kolp to return: an immediate apology before the bench and two marks fined for falsely accusing a merchant of the use of carved weights in his transactions. That the case was being heard at night meant the defendant must have some means, for aside from myself, there were few people in the tiers to witness his apology.
“The chief magistrate will be along within the measure.”
I started. Having been engrossed in the minutiae of the case before the court, I had failed to notice Kolp’s return to my side.
“Sorry,” he said softly, smiling apologetically. He gestured with one thick-knuckled hand for me to make room for him, which I did.
“So soon?”
“Ours is the only case he’ll hear this night. The clerks had to wake him.”
A thought occurred.
“Why the rush? I mean, I want him gone for what he did to me, but surely we could wait until the morning,” I said as the next case was called.
“The temple-sworn will try and make a case that this creature should be tried under temple law, not that of the city.”
I nodded, but some portion of my lack of understanding must have been reflected in my expression, because he went on, “The temples have been pressing for the right to hear all cases involving suspected pathless. The magistrates are hesitant to advise the duke to allow it, not least because of the number of false accusations brought by witch hunters in the wider duchy. White Boar is a city of laws, after all, not some humble-born village of dung-in-the-teeth peasants accusing one another in order to remove a romantic rival or secure a claim to a field or some such.”
I looked at him. The sergeant’s contempt for humble-born peasants was obvious, if not entirely fair, but there was something more . . . personal behind his desire to see the case handled here.
He noted my regard, shrugged, and added, “And I’ll be damned to the Dark if a man I’ve hunted this long and hard will be judged in some closed temple court by some temple-sworn who cares not a lick for my city.”
I waved a bruised and battered hand at the open seats all around us. “Not as if there are many here to witness your victory.”
He shrugged. “Not my victory, White Boar’s victory.” He pointed with those thick-knuckled fingers at the clerks. “It will be recorded by them, for all the residents of the city—present and future— to see that Sergeant Yarvis Kolp and his squad of the City Watch did bring the pathless creature before the Black Bench, where he was duly judged and thereafter punished according to the laws of the City that caught him.”
✧ ✧ ✧
The first rays of dawn’s light had yet to begin cutting the mist-shrouded lower districts of White Boar when a monster was tied to the stake and the pyre beneath it set alight.
I confess to being conflicted in that moment. On the one hand I had been attacked and beaten by the convicted, who would surely have consumed my soul if he could. On the other, but for the grace of the gods, there go this monster.
I admit, also, to some small measure of self-satisfaction. I had evaded a pyre of my own yet again.
Such self-satisfaction was quickly quelled as my eyes fell on the squad of pumpkins drawn up to witness the burning. I had no doubt that the screams, smoke, and flames which rose from that screaming monster would be my fate as well, if ever those who protected the city of White Boar were to catch me at my game.
And, yet.
And, yet, this city and I, each in our own way, continue to breathe, to consume the hopeful dreams and bodies of lesser beings in pursuit of our own ends.