It felt so strange to walk through Westcrown.
For years, the City of Twilight had been the center of Ederras’s life. He had been born in Vaneo Celverian. His earliest memories were of sunlight streaming through the lace-curtained windows of his nursery and of birds singing in the lemon trees outside. As a boy, he’d stolen figs from the orchard and honeyed tarts from the kitchen, and had run out to the gardens to eat them in secret with his brother.
When he grew older, and more aware of life outside the privileged walls of his family’s vaneo, Ederras had become better acquainted with Westcrown’s beauty, and its sorrows. He’d spent countless mornings practicing swordplay along the canal bridges and upon the steep sides of the two-hundred-foot hill of Aroden’s Rise; he’d spent innumerable evenings trying to fend off highborn debutantes at the Lord Mayor’s balls. Faith had come to him late, but that too was indelibly associated with Westcrown, where he’d first heard the call to Iomedae’s service.
And where he’d fallen from grace.
There was a memory he’d fought to keep from recalling, but as he walked steadily toward his family’s ancestral estate, it loomed larger in his mind.
Other painful ghosts came close on its heels. His mother’s wild grief at losing a daughter to stillbirth, and the listless shadow she’d become afterward. His father’s cold rages. The fates that had befallen so many of his friends, and the mistakes Ederras himself had made that caused all those miseries.
That final disaster had happened during the last days of summer, just a little later in the season than it was now. The beach roses had been blooming along the shores of Parego Spera when the first rumors reached him. Their rebellion had been uncovered. There’d been a traitor in their midst.
He stopped, lost in regret and remembrance. The perfume of those pink and white blossoms mingled with the salt breezes of Gemcrown Bay and the cooler river winds, just as it had then. Ederras had breathed the same fragrance while waiting for his lover to die, and while waiting to find out if the imperial executioners would be coming for him.
She hadn’t died. They hadn’t come. But it hurt, fifteen years later, to breathe that salt-fringed scent of roses.
He shook the memories away and kept walking. Ahead, massive walls rose around Regicona, as Westcrown Island was known to its citizens. They shielded the opulent old palaces of the city’s center from the common people who lived on the surrounding shores. Only the towers of the great estates and the domed roofs of the largest opera houses could be glimpsed above their reach.
Several skiffs-for-hire, each manned by a single rower, rested in the canals that separated Regicona from the shore districts. The ones that were meant for wealthy passengers were easily distinguished by their tassled canopies and padded seats; a few offered bottles of wine and other pleasantries for the ride. The smaller boats, available to servants and household guards, contained no such amenities.
At the wide stone steps leading down to the water, Ederras hesitated. In Mendev, he had worn his hair long and let his beard grow out, initially as a way of hiding from himself, and later because he’d found it more comfortable in that bitter northern climate. It was a far cry from his clean-shaven youth in Westcrown, and as yet, no one seemed to have recognized his return to the city. He hadn’t dressed in his house’s colors, and the armor he’d worn as a crusader was bundled up in his mule’s packs. Nothing identified him as who he was.
It was tempting to cling to that secrecy a little longer. Just until he crossed the canals to Westcrown Island.
But he had come to resume the role that his family needed, and as soon as he recognized the temptation for what it was, Ederras knew that he had to forgo it. The right choice is always the harder one.
He waved down a canopied skiff, as befit a nobleman of his stature. No scion of House Celverian would return to his family home in a servant’s boat.
The rower tilted his head as he pulled alongside the steps. He was a slender hellspawn man with a mustache that started red and faded to ash-gray past his mouth. The boat’s ornate covering had been heavily scented with sandalwood and cinnamon, driving off the less pleasant smells of the canals. “My lord?”
Ederras pressed a gold coin into the rower’s callused palm as he stepped under the boat’s canopy. He was who he had to be. “Take me to Vaneo Celverian.”
“Your lord father is waiting in the vaneo,” Belvadio said. When Ederras had last seen the man, his temples were just beginning to gray. Now all his hair was silver. The precision of the cut, however, was exactly the same.
The steward clasped his shoulders in a stiff but heartfelt embrace, tears shining in his eyes. “It’s good to see you again, Master Celverian. Welcome home.”
“I’m glad to see you as well. How is my father?”
“Grieving, as are we all. It is a terrible loss.”
“It is.” Ederras stepped away, gazing up at the vaneo’s stone facade. A blurry figure crossed the windows of the study where Othando was said to have died. A moment later it crossed again, moving the other way. My father.
Something must have shown on his face, for Belvadio cleared his throat. “Whatever he says to you … it is not meant cruelly. You must know that. He has been devastated by sorrows.”
Ederras didn’t answer. As loyal as Belvadio was, and as much as Ederras loved the steward, there were some pains that needed no sharing. “Is my mother here?”
The steward shook his head. “Your lady mother remained in the countryside. She said she had no wish to set foot in Westcrown again.”
Just the old bear, then. That would make things easier, and harder. Ederras sighed. “Thank you, Belvadio. I left a pack mule and some belongings at the Bent Blade. Would you have them brought to the house?”
“Of course.” The steward’s lips tightened around something he couldn’t decide whether to say. “My lord, there is another …”
“Yes?”
“No, please excuse me. This is not the time. Forgive me for interfering with your grief, my lord. Other matters can wait.” The steward bowed and was gone, vanishing with soft-footed grace.
With a final glance up at the study’s windows, Ederras steeled himself and went in.
Time had hardened Lord Celverian and made him more brittle, like the stone trees in the petrified forests that Ederras had seen near the Crown of the World. Deep lines carved his brow, while a lifetime’s unhappiness pinched the corners of his mouth. His features had grown thinner and sharper, and his once-gold hair had gone to gray. In his youth, Abello Celverian had been a lion. In his silver years, he had become a wolf.
Narrowing his rheumy blue eyes, the old lord lifted his head at his son’s entrance. The scent of crushed wintergreen carried on his breath; it seemed Lord Celverian had kept his decades-long habit of chewing the medicinal berries. “Ah, you come at last. Too late to save your brother, of course.”
“I’ve missed you too, Father.”
Lord Celverian waved an age-spotted hand. “I have no time for your wounded sentimentality. If you gave a fig about your family, you would have left that crusade years ago. The Inheritor has servants aplenty. She hardly needs you, and you had duties here. Yet you remained. Othando died because you weren’t here to prevent it, and you dawdled so long in coming that his funeral is past. As you could not be bothered to save your brother’s life or attend his burial, at the very least, you will avenge it.”
Ederras circled the desk, keeping it between his father and himself. He saw dark spots discoloring the worn blue carpet, and a few brownish spatters on the armchair’s sides that the servants hadn’t quite managed to get out. Othando’s blood. “You’re blaming his murder on me?”
“Othando was a scholar. A student of philosophy and the natural mysteries. A gentleman. He was no swordfighter. He saw what pursuing a life of violence did to you. Your brother was a peaceful soul, and he never stood a chance against his murderer.”
Lord Celverian’s hands were shaking with anger. He knotted them around the back of the bloodied chair to hide it, and his knuckles went white as his fingers dug into the padded leather. “If it had been you sitting in the vaneo as the rightful heir of House Celverian, your brother might not be dead today. But you were halfway across the world, serving a fool’s exile. All your kind are the same. You, your uncle—off championing everyone but your own blood. And now? The best you might do is bring his killer to justice.”
There was much Ederras wanted to say to that, and nothing that he could. He closed his eyes, wishing he were back among the demons of the Worldwound. “Have the authorities begun any investigation?”
“Of course.” Even without looking, Ederras could see the contempt that curled his father’s lip. “They’ve assigned a Hellknight to find your brother’s killer. One Hellknight. I suppose I’m meant to take solace that she’s not from the Order of the Rack. They’ve brought in an outsider. Perhaps she doesn’t know about your old follies.”
“Is she competent?” One good investigator was of infinitely more use than a squadron of brutes.
“I haven’t met with her. I have no interest in speaking to some lackey of House Thrune.”
Ederras bit back a retort that would have brought him nothing but grief. “Do you have her name? An address?”
“She’ll be coming to the vaneo in three days’ time. She wanted to come sooner, but I insisted that I required time to grieve.” The frosty fragrance of wintergreen approached and receded as Lord Celverian strode past his son to the exit. “I intend to be gone by then. You may deal with her if you like. It would hardly be the first time you’ve consorted with Hell’s disciples.”
It took all he had to keep his voice calm. But calmness was the only victory he’d ever won against his father. “Yes, my lord.”
The only answer was the thud of the door. With a mixture of relief and regret, Ederras opened his eyes.
He was alone. A thread of smoke rose from the single candle on the desk, which had gone out in the gust of the door’s slamming. Around that gaunt black wisp, however, the study might have been preserved in glass, so perfect was its stillness.
The room had scarcely changed since his childhood. Some of the books on the shelves were new, and his brother had replaced their father’s stern wooden chair with his own overstuffed armchair, but the light was the same. The musty smell of old maps, quietly yellowing books, and candlewax was the same. Their uncle Stelhan’s tourney swords and lances still crossed on the walls. The aura of the study was just as it had been when he was a boy.
Even death, it seemed, couldn’t change that. It was oddly comforting. The world went on, whether or not their individual lives did.
Holding on to that thought, Ederras made himself look, really look, at the chair where his brother had died. He didn’t actually expect to find clues. It had been weeks since Othando’s murder. His father had been through here, and the Hellknight investigator, and the servants with their brooms and brushes.
But faint brown stains remained in the carpet and where they’d soaked into the worn, cracked leather of the chair. The comfortable depression left in the chair’s seat stayed behind, outlining the shape of his dead brother’s body.
Who could have wanted to kill Othando? Why? It made no sense. House Celverian was of little importance in Westcrown. Their fortune had dwindled after years of civil war and disfavor by House Thrune. They held no political offices, owned no warships, fielded no significant military force. The better part of their lands had been taken in “settlement taxes” at the end of the Chelish civil war, and what remained was barely sufficient to keep them from penury.
As difficult as it was to imagine that anyone would have targeted their house, however, it was entirely impossible to think that Othando himself could have drawn an assassin’s blade. The man who’d written those years of letters had been quiet, self-effacing, shy. Othando had written long, considered meditations on the writings of philosophers Ederras had never heard of. His brother was a man who compared rites of passage across varied religions and analyzed legends and folk stories for common archetypes. He was toothless as a turnip. He couldn’t have had enemies.
Could he have stumbled on some dangerous bit of lore? It was possible, Ederras supposed, but unlikely. His brother’s interests had been so benign. Even if he had accidentally blundered into some deadly secret, anyone who might have wanted it would have been able to coax Othando into sharing his discoveries simply by feigning a scholar’s curiosity.
But what other reason could there be?
Ederras pulled open the drawers. Papers, pens, sealing wax. Nothing obvious was missing.
The letters on the desk offered no help either. Ederras flipped through the stack. Correspondence from his father, an invitation to a party thrown by some minor Jeggare, a letter to a fellow scholar concerning Desnan religious paraphernalia, and—
—an unfinished message that Othando had been writing to him.
The paper curled around his hand, but its first line remained visible. It was the only one his brother had finished. Do they ever let you take any rest from demonslaying?
There was no ending. There never would be.
His brother’s last words were the only thing worth keeping. There weren’t any clues waiting for him here. Ederras closed the drawers and smoothed the rumpled stack of letters, then reached up and rang the bell that would summon Belvadio.
Within moments, the steward appeared in the doorway. “My lord?”
“Has my father gone?”
“Yes. He took a carriage back to his inn just a few minutes ago.”
“Good. Please send for a bath and a barber. It’s time I started presenting myself as a proper scion of House Celverian again. Also, send a message to Taranik House. Let the Hellknights know that I’m ready to meet with their investigator.”
The return message was as quick as it was unexpected: the Hellknight investigator was visiting a colleague in Parego Spera, and the Hellknights of the Rack did not know when she might return. They had the name and address of the colleague, however, and had provided it to Belvadio’s messenger in case Ederras wanted to find her there.
“Havarel Needlethumbs?” he read aloud. “That sounds like a gnome.”
“He is,” Belvadio confirmed. “An alchemist of a sort. One hears unsavory stories about his work.”
“Unsavory stories like how he cooperates with Hellknights?” Ederras strapped his sword on over his blue-and-gold tabard. It was a garment better suited for a knight than a Chelish noble, and it was for precisely that reason he had chosen it. He wanted to remind others—and himself—who he was, and why he was in Westcrown.
“Please be careful, my lord.”
“Always.”
In the waning light of late afternoon, the streets and canals of Westcrown glowed gold. Once again, Ederras was struck by the beauty of his city. The sunset ripples on the canal water, the painted silk canopies and carved poles of the wealthier skiffs and adels, the delicate soaring towers of Westcrown’s bygone age of glory. It hurt his heart to look upon it, especially with the red and black roofs of the newer, diabolist-influenced buildings blending into the scarlet shadows of the dying day. He could ignore what House Thrune’s rule had done to Westcrown and could pretend, for an evanescent moment, that the city still existed as it had before Aroden’s Fall.
Once he had believed it was possible to restore Westcrown to that righteous path in reality, not just in these sunset daydreams. Once he’d known others who believed that, too.
Many of them were dead now. Others, like him, had fled into exile. But most still lived in Westcrown, keeping their heads down and their mouths shut, seeing every day that their hopes had died in ashes.
Could we ever have won? Would the city ever have changed? The question, unanswerable, followed him like a second shadow as he crossed into Parego Spera.
The address written on the card was located down a smoke-hazed street that rang with the cacophony of smiths’ hammers. By the time Ederras reached its steel-barred door, he’d been deafened by the din.
He didn’t expect that anyone would hear his knock over the smithies’ clamor, but almost instantly the door’s slotted window slid open, revealing a squat brass golem with a horned dog’s head and clawed hands. Heat glowed between its curved teeth when the golem spoke, although its mouth never moved. Its voice was a slow, grinding rumble, like coals tumbled into a forge. “The master is busy.”
“I’m not here to see him. I’m looking for the Hellknight Jheraal.”
Firelight flared in the golem’s eyes. “What is your name.” Not a question. He didn’t think the automaton had the capacity to ask questions.
“Ederras Celverian.”
“I will tell him.” The window slid shut, and the golem’s thunderous footsteps receded. Ederras stood in the street for several minutes, trying to ignore the stares of passersby, until he heard the metal creature’s heavy tread return.
A lock turned with a dull clunk, an unseen bar scraped across metal brackets, and the door opened. The golem stood just inside, occupying most of a low-ceilinged hallway lined on both sides with metal lockboxes recessed into the walls. Overhead, magical lights spun behind opaque golden domes like trapped dervishes.
“Follow.” The golem lumbered down the hall. Its brass shoulders came within two inches of hitting the lockboxes on either side. There was no question of moving around or past the thing; it was as much barrier as guardian.
Four times the golem held up one or both of its clawed hands, raising its palms to the golden domes in the ceiling. Blue light flashed in its palms when it did. Once, as it lowered its arms, Ederras glimpsed an azure sigil shining like a jewel in the creature’s hand. An instant later, the light was gone, and the runic marking was invisible.
“What was that?” he asked.
The golem offered no answer. It trudged on to the end of the hall, where two identical bronze doors faced each other across a brass-lined alcove. “That way,” it said, pointing to the door on the left. The golem stepped into the alcove and rotated itself with short, shuffling steps until it had turned around to face Ederras. Then it went still. The glowing heat dimmed in its eyes and sank out of its throat, leaving the paladin with the unmistakable impression that the creature had gone to sleep.
Bemused by his host’s peculiarities, Ederras pushed open the door.
A gnome with a bushy gray beard and rose-tinted spectacles stood next to a white-scaled woman wearing the Order of the Scourge’s distinctive scarred armor. Sharp, curved horns jutted through her coppery-streaked raven hair. She had to be at least six feet tall, almost as tall as Ederras.
Offering a hand in greeting, Ederras strode forward. “Hellknight Jheraal? Am I interrupting you?”
The Hellknight glanced up from the glass-covered table she’d been studying alongside the gnome. A pendant lamp hung between them, presumably illuminating whatever it was they were looking at, but also making it difficult for Ederras to see anything beyond its glare off the glass. “Master Celverian. It’s no interruption. I’m glad you could join us. I had hoped to speak to your father, but he seemed reluctant to make time for me.”
Ederras tried not to wince. His father’s intransigence had put him in a bad position already. Even the nobility of Cheliax didn’t scorn the Hellknights lightly. In overlooking Lord Celverian’s discourtesy, the investigator was being kinder than she had to, and that was never a good sign. “I apologize. He’s asked me to represent our family in any further proceedings. If there’s anything I can do to help—”
“There might be.” Jheraal beckoned for him to approach the table. “See if this looks like anything you’ve seen before. Havarel, show him.”
The gnome pressed a lever of fiery orange spessartite on the side of the table. Flames roared out under the glass top, consuming everything underneath in such an intense wash of heat that Ederras had to take a step back, eyes watering.
After a second, Havarel flicked the spessartite lever back up and pressed down one of nearly colorless aquamarine. The flames died, and a gust of wind sent the gritty ashes blowing away in a flurry that collected in a small curved tray attached to the table’s side. After raising the aquamarine lever up again, the gnome emptied and replaced the tray, then lifted the glass tabletop on its hinges.
Using a pair of tongs, Havarel lifted a pair of dismembered fingers from a sack and placed them into the steel-walled compartment under the table’s glass top. One of the fingers, rough and callused, had belonged to either a dwarf or a stout human who’d spent a lifetime at hard labor. The other was covered in leathery, brick red skin and had unquestionably come from a hellspawn.
“Where did you get those?” Ederras asked.
Havarel lifted a thick eyebrow as he set the fingers onto the table, placing them twelve inches apart. “Bought ’em off a grave robber, and I don’t want to hear a word of lecturing about it.”
“There won’t be any trouble,” Jheraal assured the gnome. “Just show it to him.”
“I am, I am,” Havarel grumbled, trudging over to a wooden box on the floor. He stooped to collect something from it, then eyed Ederras up and down. “You’re not secretly dead, are you?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Good.” Returning to the table, Havarel dropped a sliver of mossy, discolored bone between the two fingers, then lowered the glass lid and set his tongs aside. “I’m allergic to mold, and this stuff’s got a nasty appetite for corpses.”
“I don’t—” Ederras began, but then he saw what was happening under the glass.
The bone fragment that Havarel had placed between the dismembered fingers was coated in patches of fine-haired mold. Seconds after being set down, a cloud of spores puffed from the bone shard toward the two dead fingers. They clung to the human flesh and, with impossible speed, melted its skin and muscle under a cloak of fuzzy, grayish-white mold. The decomposition took hold so quickly that the mold rippled as the flesh under it dissolved. Almost before Ederras had registered what was happening, nothing was left but a second chunk of bone with a furry ruff of mold tufted around its joints.
But it never touched the hellspawn finger. A full minute passed, and not a speck of decay marred the burgundy skin.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Havarel asked conversationally, flicking the spessartite lever to consume the moldy remains in a second incinerating flash of fire. Wind whisked it away a moment later, and he emptied out the tray containing the grainy remains. “Quite a feat of selective breeding. I’d guess it’s Ristomaur Tiriac’s work, or one of his disciples’. That speed and specificity bears all the hallmarks of the master’s craft.”
“Who?” Ederras regarded the gnome blankly. “What does this have to do with my brother’s murder?”
Jheraal dusted specks of ash from her scarred plate mail. She’d been watching him closely throughout the gnome’s demonstration, but he couldn’t tell why. That inhuman face revealed nothing. “Someone in your house had formidable enemies. Your brother, your family, or maybe your servants.”
“Our servants? How?”
The Hellknight gave him a tired smile. “Let’s take a walk, and maybe you can tell me.”