The Fourth Intruder

When he returned the sword to its place over the bar, Gull had no expectation of taking it down again anytime soon, and certainly not the following morning. For one thing, the muscles of his arms and back, his legs, his chest—Seven Hells, it was simpler to say his entire body—hurt so much he indulged in a hot bath in one of the nice rooms usually reserved for high-paying guests. Such guests rarely sought lodging at Montreau’s Sword, which lessened the indulgence a bit; although, he reflected as he lowered into the steaming tub, it would be just his luck if that exact sort of visitor knocked at his front door now. Even with the benefits of the bath and a generous pour of strong wine, Gull expected he would move slowly and stiffly for days to come. Merely reaching for the sword would require heroic effort.

For another thing, last night was the only time Gull had drawn the longsword since he mustered out and purchased the tavern. Drawing it again so soon seemed implausible. Indeed, despite the effects of the hot water and the potent wine, his brain still buzzed with what had unfolded in the old barn next to the harbor wall, which kept sleep at arm’s length and sent him back downstairs to the bar. There were any number of routine tasks he had been putting off—checking the inventories of beer and wine, of smoked fish and meat, of the fresher meat in the ice cellar, noting the amounts needed and drawing up an order for Stolo, the merchant who procured the tavern’s necessities for him. Still-wet hair tied back with a length of string, dressed in a baggy shirt, worn breeks, and old boots, Gull counted his stock, estimated what was needed against what could be afforded, and prepared his list for Stolo. This passed the hours until dawn but brought him no closer to sleep. Next, he went through the glasses, mugs, bowls, plates, and cutlery, inspecting them for smudges and spots and taking a cloth to the blemishes he found. He retrieved Pertra’s broom from its closet and swept the floor’s wooden planks, navigating around the thick beams that supported the ceiling and the rooms above. All the while, as he tallied the carrots and turnips, as he rubbed the dishcloth on the rim of a bowl, as he whisked the broom around the base of a column carved with years of mementos, his thoughts fizzed and popped with memories of the past night. If there was any consolation to be found as the high-set windows glowed with the dawn, it lay in the fact that last night’s escapade was the sort of thing which happened once in a lifetime, the story he would bore customers with in his dotage.

As a child, Gull had believed in the relentless adventures of the great heroes—stoic Mellock of the Lance, ferocious Cengo the Cleaver, wily Issel the Rat—but his time first as a conscript in the High Priest’s army, then as part of Val Vardo’s mercenary forces, had given the lie to those stories; or at least, qualified them dramatically. Yes, he had served as a cook in both forces, but the chow line was where you spoke with everyone from general to private, and where you overheard all manner of conversation. Based on two decades of such intelligence, he concluded that, outside a military campaign, the circumstances under which you would be required to unlimber your sword twice in a row were unlikely to the point of impossible. Even those non-military professions which seemed as if they would necessitate frequent recourse to the sword tended, on closer inspection, to eschew it. Members of the Clerical Guard preferred short, heavy staves for enforcing the law, and in quarters too close for them, shorter, heavier clubs. Thieves favored knives, as much for their use as tools as weapons; assassins practiced their deadly trade from a distance, through the safety of poisons delivered via letter or, when absolutely necessary, the tip of a blowgun’s dart.

Which was to say, when the three bravos stepped down into the bar and, finding it early-morning empty, locked the door behind them and withdrew long daggers from their knee-length coats, Gull did not immediately think of the sword. Within the bar’s cramped confines, with its low ceiling and forest of supports, using a sword effectively required a dexterity he didn’t think he’d ever possessed, even as a young man practicing with his father’s blade behind their lodgings. Rather, he let his left hand drop below the surface of the bar, where a club not dissimilar to those employed by the Guard sat on a shallow shelf. Its mahogany length wrapped in iron bands, those bands covered in raised studs, it was a legacy from the tavern’s previous owners, and Gull had found it useful in dealing with patrons whose inebriation encouraged them to sloppy violence, as well as the few amateur thieves who judged him an easy mark. The Dissuader, its previous owners named it, and a crack on the knuckles from it was generally enough to bring a drunk to their senses, or at least to stop whatever foolery they were engaged in. It caused aspiring thieves to drop whatever weapon they thought they were threatening him with and flee the premises, too. Gull’s fingers closed around the Dissuader while the trio of men walked toward the bar.

The one taking the lead, such as it was, was likely in charge, or liked to fancy himself in the role. Indoors, he kept on a hat with an oversized brim and hawk’s tailfeather stuck in the hatband (the current fashion, Gull understood). His pointed chin was accented with a blond tuft of beard (also in fashion), and if his coat was of plainer make (though thick enough, Gull judged, to frustrate the bite of one of the unliving, and possibly to blunt the thrust of a dagger), the boots which clopped across the floor had the sound of money. A rooster, Gull thought, a threat on his own perhaps, but more important as a distraction from the men trailing behind him, their blunt faces similar enough to make them cousins, if not brothers.

In contrast to the rooster’s finery, these men dressed plainly: dull caps, worn coats, scuffed boots; the blades of their knives shone, however, and Gull guessed their coats no less resilient than their leader’s. The one to Gull’s left carried a satchel made from the beast hide in his left hand, the contents sufficiently weighty to drag his arm down, and this decided Gull: if (and probably when) the situation soured toward violence, he would deal with the other men first. The bag carrier would have to release his burden and adjust his balance. Engaging three opponents was a tricky business, one in which a multitude of factors came into play: the characters and tendencies of the combatants; their training individually and, in the case of the trio, together; their relationship with one another (as concerned the trio). A good deal of observation, estimation, and calculation had to be done very quickly, and the instant the fight began, all of it might prove useless. If you could handle them one or even two at a time, your chances improved significantly, but who could say the trio wouldn’t lunge across the bar top at him in a coordinated strike? Gull was not wearing a heavy coat, just a linen shirt and a pair of breeks that had seen better days, little defense against the daggers in the bravos’ grips. His fingers tightened on the Dissuader, heart thudding in his breast. His face, he knew, would be flushed, reddened as it was whenever emotion surprised him. How ironic, he thought, to survive the bowel-loosening insanity of the previous night, only to meet his end at the hands of random thieves.

Doing his best to keep his voice level, he said, “Good morning. You fellows are up early.”

The leader touched the tip of his knife to his hat brim. “Good morning.”

“And what is our business to be?”

“Business?” the man said. “No one has said anything about business.” He spoke like an educated man.

“You’ve locked my door,” Gull said, nodding at it. “That must mean there is a matter you wish to discuss with me; one important enough you’d prefer we were not disturbed. Or,” he added, “you mean to rob me.”

“Ah,” the man said. He had stopped a foot or so from the edge of the bar, far enough to keep him out of range should Gull swing. His companions halted behind him.

“Which,” Gull said, “I would not blame you for contemplating. Montreau’s Sword,” he waved his right hand, encompassing the bar top, tables and chairs, stairs to the lodgings, door to the kitchen, “does a fine trade—a robust trade, I daresay. Some might wonder at this, as we are a few streets off the beaten path, so to speak. But you see, the very obscurity of the establishment makes it attractive to all manner of customers. Looking for a few hours’ peace from the spouse? Need relief from the demands of the boss, or the whining of the workers? Why, here we are.”

The leader opened his mouth; Gull preempted his speech with his hand held palm-out. “We also serve the needs of a more elect clientele. The Clerical Guard appreciate a location at which they can enjoy a little refreshment outside the prying eyes of their superiors. They have also been known to procure a private room in which to indulge their milder vices. We are outside the territories of the river gangs, which makes us more attractive to those members seeking a respite from their never-ending feuds. We are not so far from the river itself, not to mention, the Great Northern and Great Trade Roads, and our reputation is sufficient that travelers from all over, sailors and merchants, privateers and mercenaries, journey the extra distance to drink, sup, and stay with us.”

Gull’s outstretched hand halted whatever words were attempting to find their way out of the leader’s mouth. “All of which is to say that yes, you might very well rob me—I'll do my best to prevent it, but I’m one man and you’re three, and while I have more knowledge of the fighting arts than you might think looking at me, the same knowledge tells me one against three is not good odds, and if I were a betting man, I’d lay my money on you. That’s in the short term, the here-and-now. In the longer term, which begins the moment you unlock the front door and exit with whatever you’ve managed to stuff into the pockets of your coats and which continues for I cannot say how long—though I would guess not very long, just until word of your actions gets out—I do not fancy your chances at all. No, not when the Clerical Guard, and the river gangs, and who knows how many pirates and swordsmen, are looking to settle up with the fellows who plundered their favorite establishment. I doubt the three of you are together all the time. Even you fellows standing behind your boss, here—”

“He ain’t our boss,” said the one not holding the bag.

“My mistake,” Gull said. “I’m sorry: are the two of you brothers?”

“Half-brothers,” the one holding the bag said. “Same ma, different pas.”

“I thought I spotted a resemblance,” Gull said. He was talking too much, he knew, the same nervous energy that had fueled cleaning the bar pushing words out of his mouth like eggs from a fish. “My point is, even a pair of brothers—sorry, half-brothers like you must desire some time apart. And when you do go off on your own, what will you do should a group of Clerical Guards surround you? Or could be, it’s members of one of the river gangs, the Wharf Rats or the Drowned Men. Or—well, you understand my point. You’ll end up losing an eye, an ear, several fingers—the end of your nose might be sliced off, your tongue taken. You could suffer one of those belly wounds that festers and stinks for days, and all the time you lie there, crying from the pain, begging for some kind soul to take pity on you and end your suffering.” Gull shook his head, tsk-ing. “Nasty way to die. And that’s assuming a zombie doesn’t find you, first. They say there’s none of them left—at least within the bounds of the city—but serving the customers I do, you’re privy to all sorts of secret information. Do you know? The story about their drool—that it keeps you alive while they devour you—there’s some truth to it.

“All of that, because you locked a door you shouldn’t have.

“Of course,” Gull said, “it’s possible to reconsider your course of action and change it, choose a better one. For example, you might help me sample the latest version of the house special.” He released the Dissuader to gesture behind him on the left, where a wooden cask the size of a large child or a small man rested on its own, specially reinforced shelf. “We call this fellow the Ruminator,” he said, returning his hand to the club, “for he sits up there and ruminates on the ingredients we give him and formulates them into a vintage unlike anything else near or far. Indeed, some of my return customers have sailed from distant ports and ridden from distant cities just to sample the latest product of the Ruminator’s deliberations.”

Gull paused, to allow the trio time to weigh his words. It was horseshit, all of it, loose, runny horseshit. Yes, there was a member of the Guard—Stavos—who stopped in from time to time, but Gull doubted he shared the fact with the rest of his abstemious comrades. There had been customers whose dress hinted they might be affiliated with one of the river gangs, but they had not offered this information nor had Gull asked it of them. He had poured for the occasional sailor, merchant, even some of his former colleagues from Val Vardo’s legions, but as often as not, because they had lost their way to a better destination and come in here looking for directions. What Gull had described to the trio of would-be thieves (he was positive) was the future he imagined for the tavern when he passed the previous owners the bags of gold coins. What he oversaw was something else, a neighborhood establishment whose patrons were principally from the surrounding streets—in a few cases farther afield—and motivated by what Gull assumed was long habit predating his taking ownership. If the bravos decided to rob him and succeeded, the only certain vengeance awaiting them would come in the next life.

As for the house specialty, that was a fancy name for the combined remnants of bottles left half-finished and less at the close of business each day, cheap vintages not worth the effort to recork. But pour them in an impressive looking cask with a handful of the right spices and you could prolong their lives. Gull estimated a third of his regulars saw through the deception, but they liked the sharp taste of the blend enough not to care.

Deception of various stripes seemed to be his stock-and-trade this weather, though the stakes were never as high as they were with these three and their blades. But if he could convince a skeptical diner that the daily stew was full of the tenderest cuts of young lamb, simmered in a secret mix of herbs and seasoning, and not fatty chunks of goat boiled in cheap wine, then Gull judged he might have a chance at convincing the aspiring thieves to abandon their plans.

Already, his wager appeared to be paying off: with an apologetic grimace, the leader returned his weapon to its pocket and nodded for his associates to do the same. “Perhaps,” the man said, “we have given the wrong impression. We are not here to rob, but to buy.”

“Oh?” Gull said. “Why the knives, then?”

“For our protection,” the man said. “Word of your exploits this night gone has spread quickly.”

“Exploits?” Gull said, amazed though he knew he shouldn’t be. If you wanted to ensure the entire neighborhood—Seven Hells, this half of the city—knew something, all you had to do was pick a random passer-by and tell them you had a secret for them to keep. The encounter that had left his muscles sore and his mind weary hadn’t felt much like an exploit: it had been a damned catastrophe, from which he figured he had used up any remaining luck he owned extricating himself.

Whatever gloss had been added to the events in the barn loft, it had dazzled the eyes of this fellow and from the expressions on their faces, his companions. “I hope you can appreciate our caution,” the man said.

Gull wasn’t sure if it was caution or an explanation invented on the spot but decided to let the difference alone. He relaxed his grip on the Dissuader, but kept his hand on the club. “And I suppose locking the door was for privacy, after all.”

“Yes,” the man said. Gull could see the lie spreading across his face, which did not bother him especially. A person who knew they were dishonest, he had found, was in general easier to deal with than one who was unaware of it. “All right,” he said, “what’s so important it demands my uninterrupted attention?”

The man pointed with his right hand at the sword displayed on the wall behind Gull. “That,” he said.

Gull glanced over his shoulder. Of course the fellow meant the sword. If he knew, in whatever garbled fashion, about the events of the night past, then he would have some idea of what the sword had done—or rather, allowed Gull to do.

“My associates and I,” the man said, “represent a party who is interested in yon blade. Very interested, I should say—excited is not too strong a word—so much so that the instant he learned of it, he dispatched the three of us to this establishment to enter into negotiations with you for its purchase.”

“This?” Gull said, jerking his head at it. “Fellows, I don’t know what you heard, but the sword is entirely for show. It’s a replica of Montreau’s sword, not the actual thing. No one knows where that is.” Immediately, he knew he was not going to sell the sword to these fellows—to anyone, for any amount of money. It was true: as far as he knew, this was not Montreau’s legendary blade. What the previous night had shown it to be was an object of some indeterminate power, which Gull intended to keep under his watch until a better option presented itself. This trio was not that option.

With his left hand, the man withdrew from another pocket a drawstring purse the size of a man’s fist. He set the fawn-colored bag on the bar top, untied the string securing it, and pushed it over. From its open neck, a half dozen translucent stones clattered over the polished wood, red, green, and blue. Gull was no jeweler, but was reasonably certain he recognized rubies, emeralds, and a large sapphire; nor did the purse appear to be close to empty. Doing his best to mask his shock at being presented an amount sufficient to purchase the tavern itself, let alone the sword, he said, “What is this, exactly?”

“What’s it look like?” said the man holding the satchel.

“Colored glass,” Gull said, squinting a little as if studying the gems. “Pretty, but I don’t know why you’re showing them to me.”

The leader flushed. Younger, then, than Gull first estimated. The man without the satchel said, “Hey, Damico, what’s he on about?”

“Nothing,” the leader—Damico—said. “He’s toying with us.”

“Respectfully,” Gull said, raising his left hand in a calming gesture, “I am doing no such thing. I am not acquainted with any of you fellows, but I can see you are serious men, all of you. I would not for a single instant think of mocking you. Nevertheless, what you have shown me is so much pretty glass. May I?” He nodded at the gems and without waiting for Damico’s permission, picked up the sapphire with his thumb and index finger. Lifting it to his eye, he turned it side to side, affecting the expression Magg, his cook, put on whenever he surveyed whatever dubious meat and exhausted vegetables comprised the day’s meal. He grunted, the way Magg did while holding a potato sprouted with eyes.

“What is it?” the man holding the satchel said.

“What do you see?” his half-brother said.

“He doesn’t see anything,” Damico said. “I told you, he’s mocking us.” But the irritation crisping his words was undercut by another emotion: doubt? Anxiety?

The thing was, Gull had noticed something within the sapphire’s perfect blue depths, what he initially took for a flaw but which upon further inspection appeared to be a figure of some kind, perhaps a letter—though if it was a letter, it was from the ranks of no alphabet known to him. Almost, it resembled one of the petroglyphs carved on the stelae lining the upper reaches of the Great Northern Road. As far as Gull knew, there was no way to mark a precious stone in this manner—except by sorcery. His pulse, which had been slowing, sped into a run, the hairs on his forearms rising. Removing the sapphire from his eye, he set it next to the other precious stones, shaking his head. “It’s excellent work,” he said. “I can understand how a person might be deceived. But if you study this carefully, you’ll see a flaw in its very center.”

“Impossible,” Damico said.

“Please,” Gull said, sweeping his hand over the gems, “check for yourself.”

“Let me through,” the man without the bag said, shouldering past Damico to the bar top and seizing the sapphire between his thick fingers. (His nails, Gull noticed, were ragged, chewed almost to the quick.) Closing his right eye, the man screwed up his left. He angled the gem this way and that, licking his lips nervously. “What,” he muttered, “what.” His eyebrows lifted, and he said, “Shit. Shit. Shit.” He turned and hurled the stone at the front door with considerable force. It whapped off the wood and went skipping across the floor, disappearing under a table.

“You saw it, too,” Gull said.

“Shit!” the man said.

“What is it, Figer?” his half-brother said.

“It’s shit, is what it is,” the man—Figer—said. He grabbed another stone, a ruby, inspected it, then sent it flying after the sapphire. Flashing across the pools of morning light on the floor, it rattled under another table. He repeated the process with the remaining gems on the bar, checking each before flinging it at the door, growing angrier with every throw. When he was finished, he reached for the fawn purse, but Damico snatched it from the bar, hissing, “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“You,” Figer said, jabbing a heavy finger at him, “are either an idiot, or you think Nok and me are.”

Damico’s face darkened from scarlet to beet. His right hand stole into the pocket to which he had returned his knife. Figer stepped clear of the bar, hand moving to his coat pocket.

“If I may,” Gull said. He was, he judged, on the verge of convincing the trio to unlock the front door and abandon their enterprise. At least, Figer and his half-brother—Nok—appeared ready to leave. That was fine. Deprived of his hulking accomplices, Damico would be easier to handle. (The ensorcelled gems were still a concern, but cook the onions first, as the saying went, before you add the meat.) He said, “There is a third, more forgiving explanation. Your spokesman is young, and in his inexperience has made an understandable mistake. After all, which of us has not dreamed of discovering a horde of treasure? I suspect your friend is guilty only of a robust imagination, which has turned glass costumery into a fortune in gems and a well-made replica into a legendary weapon.”

“He’s guilty of wasting our time, is what,” Nok said. “Fools we were, to listen to him.”

“That is enough!” Damico said, voice quavering. “Nok, bring the satchel.”

“Why should I—”

“Bring it!” Damico screamed, hammering the bar top with his fist. Fine beads of sweat had broken out on his brow, across his cheeks.

Nok looked at his half-brother, who nodded. “Go on.”

“All right,” Nok said. He walked to the bar and heaved the satchel onto it, grunting with the effort. The bar top groaned with the weight. Rubbing his shoulder, Nok retreated a step as Damico shoved in front of him. He reached for the neck of the bag, which was held shut by a brass cord looped and secured with an elaborate knot. Unlike its smaller compatriot, the material of the satchel was old, scraped and rough, faded from blue-green to dull gray. The surface was scored with hundreds of what Gull deemed were characters, siblings (perhaps) of the one inscribed in the heart of the sapphire. Dread cold as a mountain spring rushed through him. Damico was fumbling with the knot, one strand of which tightened every time he pulled at another. The young man was biting his upper lip, the way a schoolchild might while attempting to solve a difficult problem in front of the rest of the class. His breaths were coming fast and short, his eyes shining with incipient tears. His fingers slipped on the knot, and he yanked at it in frustration.

Figer and Nok exchanged looks. Gull contemplated applying the Dissuader to Damico’s skull, a light tap, to daze him. Doing so, however, might provoke the half-brothers to action as, despite Gull’s success at opening a gap between them, the trio still had enough in common for a move against one to draw a response from the others. Damico tugged at the knot; he pushed his fingers under the bronze ribbon in an effort to force it up and off the bag. It did not move. Somehow, Damico had cut the fingers and palm of his left hand on the fastening, and his blood smeared the knot and the bag’s surface, which seemed to shift ever-so-slightly at the contact, for all the world as if that portion of it was trying to move closer to the young man’s bleeding flesh.

The hairs on the back of Gull’s neck prickled. “Hey,” he said. “Hey. You’re hurting yourself. Why don’t you leave that and we’ll have a drink together? On the house,” he added. The cost of three cups of wine seemed negligible compared to what he was watching unfold.

Damico ignored him, instead using his uninjured hand to fish his dagger from his coat. Placing his bloody palm against the satchel to steady it, he worked the blade under the fastening and began to saw at it with short, quick strokes. The edge of the knife shrieked on the bronze ribbon, a sound Gull felt in his back teeth. Both half-brothers grimaced at it. Sweat dripped from the end of Damico’s nose, darkened the tuft of hair on his chin. There was no doubt: where his hand was set on the bag, the surrounding material was darker, several shades nearer its original color, the figures incised in it black, as if filling with ink. The hot odor of burning metal wrinkled Gull’s nose. Damico uttered little grunts as his arm sawed back and forth. Tongues of blue flame licked the blade.

Gull’s unease turned inside out, shifting from the nape of his neck and forearms to his chest, where his heart seemed to whack in a vast cavernous space. His mouth was dry. Although he couldn’t name the exact stripe of sorcery in front of him, this was undoubtedly a manifestation of the crooked path. In a moment, the situation had gone from slow walk to brisk canter and was on the verge of breaking into a full gallop.

“That’s enough of this,” Figer said. “Come on,” he said to Nok. Turning for the door, he called to Gull, “Sorry for the intrusion.”

Nok stayed where he was. “Wait,” he said. “I want to see what’s in the sack. I’ve been carrying it long enough, ain’t I?”

“Leave it alone,” Figer said.

“Just wait,” Nok said, placing a hand on his half-brother's shoulder, an expression of fascinated horror on his face. “For a moment’s all.”

Figer paused.

Eyes still focused on Damico and the satchel, across whose surface a tide of blue-green now flowed while the young man’s skin paled and his arm jerked, Gull backed away from the bar top one-step two-steps to the stool he had climbed to return the sword to its place. He was expecting the half-brothers—Figer, most likely—to ask him where he was going, but the two of them remained transfixed by the spectacle of Damico and the bag, which already shone with the luster of a living creature. Gull lifted his left foot and set it on the stool’s lower step. To retrieve the sword—which now struck him as a fine, an excellent idea, no matter the confines of the room—he was going to have to turn his back on Damico and, more importantly, on Figer and Nok. There was no remedy for it, and the longer he waited, the worse grew his chances of lifting the blade from its brackets. Once the sword was in his hand, Gull was not sure what would come next. While the weapon had afforded him a degree of protection against the previous night’s perils, the scene developing in front of him appeared of a different nature. But the trio had walked through the front door intent on obtaining the sword by means foul or (eventually) fair, which seemed a (possible) indication it might be effective here. Whatever terrible fate had taken Damico in its slavering jaws was biting down hard. His flesh had gone corpse-gray, tightening against his bones. His eyes were vacant, cloudy, his jaw slack. Incredibly, his right arm continued to drag the knife across the bronze ribbon, whose strands were finally parting with small pops of blue fire, but it was like watching a puppet operated by an amateur. A wave of pity for Damico swept through him. The future the young man had anticipated when he entered the tavern could not have been this.

“I’m not watching anymore,” Figer said, once again making for the door. “Come on,” he said to Nok, giving him a light shove. “We don’t need to see this.”

“Wait,” Nok said.

“No,” Figer said. “Let’s go. Don’t make me leave without you.”

“Wait!” Nok said with enough heat for his half-brother to listen to him.

This, Gull decided, was as good a moment to make his move as was likely to occur before Damico’s dagger finished its shrieking passage through the last of the bronze ribbon. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast, he thought, his father’s well-worn adage chiming in his memory. Pushing up with his left leg, he brought his right foot to the stool’s upper step, pivoting away from the sight of Damico and the satchel carefully, so not to tip over backwards into the bar top or forwards into the row of expensive bottles, in whose glossy green and brown surfaces he saw the young man’s doom repeated and distorted. He reached both hands over his head to the sword’s wood and metal scabbard, cupping it below the locket on the right and the chape on the left. For a moment, the scabbard felt as if it were caught on the brackets, as if the weapon was as incredulous at being taken down again this soon as Gull was at having to retrieve it, and he had a momentary vision of himself struggling to pull the reluctant blade from its perch while Figer and Nok watched from below. He could see himself losing his balance, crashing into the good bottles, dropping to the floor on his ass, impaling its fleshy abundance on shards of glass large and small. Then whatever protrusion had snagged the scabbard surrendered it, and the weapon was in his grasp. Exhaling a, “Thank you,” to any of the High Gods or their servants who might be listening, he stepped down from the stool, the sword held against his chest. Feet securely on the floor, he turned.

And saw Damico’s dagger complete its journey through the bronze ribbon. With no further flash of blue light, the fastening slithered off the satchel. There was a clank like the turning of one of the great locks that secured the city’s main gate. The knife blade snapped at the hilt and fell dully on the bar. Damico’s left hand came loose from the bag and to Gull’s amazement, what remained of him lurched two steps back from the blue-green satchel before tripping on its feet and tumbling to the floor with a clatter like old, dried sticks. With the motion of a flower unfolding its petals, the bag opened, spreading over the surface of the bar top as it revealed its contents.

“What in the Seven Hells?” Figer said.

In the center of the outstretched satchel sat a skull. Technically, Gull supposed, you would call the object a head; albeit, one that had parted ways with everything below the neck ages ago, centuries, if not longer. White as the mushrooms with which Magg extended the stew, its skin was still visible, constricted against the bone’s angles and curves, the nose collapsed, the eyes dried and shrunk deep within the sockets. The ears were grandparent large, the lobes tattered, as if earrings had been torn from them. Hair fine as cobwebs adhered to the sides and back of the head, impressed against it by its sentence in the bag. In the faintest sky-blue ink, the forehead and cheeks were traced with designs similar to those on the satchel. Gull’s left hand was already on the sword’s hilt. Around the head, the air appeared darker, smokier. A dry odor, the smell of bare rock long baked in the sun, reached Gull’s nose.