‘I do,’ he said. ‘We will deliver the message as quickly as we can and then return to the Olmori, and if they are angry then I will pay whatever reparations or face whatever judgement they deem right. You won’t suffer for this, I’ll make sure of it. But for Varlen’s sake, we have to deliver his last warning. Maybe then something good can come out of this damned tragedy. Maybe it’ll be enough to save lives.’

Borik grunted noncommittally. Romilla looked somewhat mollified.

‘Very well then,’ she said heavily. ‘For Varlen.’

‘Ah! Got it!’ said Eleanora in sudden triumph, her tools giving a final flurry of clicks. She looked around at them and smiled. ‘It’ll work now,’ she said, holding the inexplicable gadget up for their inspection. ‘We can go.’

Hendrick sighed, shook his head, and stooped to gather his gear.

‘For Varlen,’ he echoed.

Act 1

Act 1

GLOAMING

‘Listen child and heed me well,
A grave warning you must fear.
Get to bed and silent stay,
Lest the blackencap might hear.
Shuttered must the windows be,
Your eyes, quickly, close them fast!
Or the Bad Moon’s light you’ll see,
And the sight will be your last.’

– Azyrheimer nursery rhyme

Chapter One

Chapter One

SHADOWS

Tobias Kench stepped from the tavern door into the cobbled street beyond. He wiped the blood from his knuckles and took a deep breath of cool evening air.

‘That’s better,’ he sighed, rolling his shoulders. The Wayward King rose at his back. The tavern was a slab-like architectural pile that looked as though it had been carelessly discarded rather than built. Its bottleglass windows were webbed with cracks, its heavy roof slates had begun to erode, and the rain-proofing was peeling down its frontage where the landlord had been remiss in his duties of care.

Tobias wouldn’t have drunk in this dive if his life depended on it. He wouldn’t have drunk anywhere in the Pipers’ District, come to think of it. But the Wayward King was always good for working out the stresses of a bad day. It had got so that the regulars knew to get very quiet and attend their flagons of rotgut when Tobias walked in, but there was always someone who didn’t know better: docksnipes off the barges that came upriver from Hammerhal Aqsha, spending their ingots before they’d earned them; a local piper who’d scraped together enough dust to drink their resentment away in the cheapest dive in town while cursing their betters for their own misfortunes; ne’er-do-wells making sure to celebrate their latest score a safe distance from any who would place their faces. Some days it was just outsiders that he judged to be lacking in piety, or those Tobias suspected had turned from Sigmar’s light.

Tobias would never take his fists to good, God-King-fearing folk. He would have been horrified at the thought. But the Wayward King never let him down.