All through its streets, Kithamar shows the signs and remnants of the cities that the city has been. Walls that defended the border of a younger town stand a dumbfounded, useless guard between the noble compounds of Green Hill and the fountain square at Stonemarket. The great battlements of Oldgate glower out over the river, its arrow-slits and murder holes used for candle niches now, and the enemy races who stormed or manned it sleep side by side in its armories because the rents are cheap. The six-bridged Khahon was the border between a great Hansch kingdom and savage near-nomad Inlisc to hear it one way, or the first place that the frightened, violent, sharp-faced Hansch had come from the west if you told the story from the other bank. Now the river is the heart of the city, dividing and uniting it.

The ancient races killed one another and swore eternal hatred, only to bury their enmity and pretend to be a single people, citizens of one city. Kithamar has declared itself the subject of the one true god. Or the three. Or the numberless. For three hundred years and longer, it has been a free city, independent and proud and ruled by princes of its own rather than any distant king.

Only today, its prince is dead.

The reign of Byrn a Sal had been brief.

Less than a year before, the streets had filled with revelers and wine, music and joy, and more than a little imprudent sex to celebrate the great man’s coronation. The months between then and now were turbulent, marked by ill omens and violence. A winter of troubled sleep.

Now, as the first light of the coming dawn touches the highest reaches of the palace towering at the top of its hill, the red gates open on his funeral procession. Two old women dressed in rags step out and strike drums. Black, blindered horses follow, their steps echoing against the stone. And all along the route, the men and women and children who are Kithamar wait.

They have been there since nightfall, some of them. They love the spectacle of death and the performance of grief. And, though few of them say the words aloud, they hope that the season of darkness will end and something new begin. Only a few of them ask their questions aloud: How did it happen? Was it illness or accident, murder or the vengeance of God?

How did Byrn a Sal die?

The black lacquered cart passes among the gardens and mansions of Green Hill. The heads of the high families stand at their entrances as if ready to make the dead man welcome if he should stand up. Servants and children and ill-dignified cousins gawk from the bushes and corners. Only the burned-out shell of the Daris Brotherhood ignores the funeral. And then the body passes into the city proper, heading first for Stonemarket and then south through the soot-dark streets of the Smoke.