Somyellia was happy to help. The House of Rogaire had wronged the House of Ordrid, and Irion—in this newfound severity Somyellia occasionally mentioned—was just tidying up family business.
Even the common-most dung-scooper on the common-most street knew that when the Conqueror’s campaign had swept over the peninsula, ending at the doorsteps of Maecidion’s keep, deals were struck and the land was renamed.
Yet after enough talks from the bottom of our pillows, I myself could orate the finer points in her family’s spiderweb of shifting powers and trickery.
The tale told within Ordrid confines was that after necromancy had been outlawed, and Maecidion and his kind were allowed to practice in secret, it didn’t take long for the freshly outfitted Metropolitan Ward, and the people cheering them, to look for a new threat to their newfound tranquility. Rinmauld Rogaire, father of the warden they all hated, was one of the chief legislators after the Conqueror turned to his unyielding seclusion. It turns out that law was the one magic blacker than necromancy. Extorting Maecidion had been both legal and lucrative. Keeping the House of Ordrid’s share of agreed-upon war spoils was payment for Rinmauld not sicking on Somyellia and Maecidion’s House the society that had as soon forgotten war as was quick to start a new one.
An Ordrid vendetta on the House of Rogaire had been talked about in dark circles for decades. For reasons not entirely explained, her cousin Irion had picked up the proverbial hatchet on behalf of the late Maecidion, and now apparently planned on burying it into the heads of the Rogaires who remained.
Somyellia now had to conduct the final ritual and erupt the curse they’d set. I personally didn’t bother much with her duties in this arena, but I also hadn’t really in her leg-spreading one either. Our time together was all that mattered; however, even I had learned that all “great curses” required three parts. The victim must be touched by the curser or cursers, and she and Irion had both done that at different times. The curser or cursers must lock in their work with particular gestures, as she had done at the party. Now, the final act was to be executed. It would take time and the moon at the right position.
She began her work as I grabbed my shovel and crowbar to head out to do mine.
VIII: Warhorse on the Horizon
Purpose tends to be a cruel morning, waking you suddenly and thoroughly. My dour harmony, my focused aloneness, was to be disrupted once more, and once more it would come out of nowhere, as is its preference.
One day, we had a delivery. A giant man, killed by some disease, lay on my table bloated and blue. Normally I would have commenced to working, and the larger than normal corpse would have been in the cart and ready for transport.