It may have been the thick neck, or some indescribable similarity, but I couldn’t shake what I began to feel. An idea germinated in me, powerful and driven. Closure, something I had never known. It began to squeak and plea from the core of my being.

The rest of the day was spent in a hurried discontent.

After days of research in a back room at the Nilghorde Hall of Records, I learned that he was indeed still alive. He must have had squandered his war spoils. The house in Templeton had been sold long ago. Shoeing for a Ward substation, and likely led with a rabid taste for Black Monk, he took up residence in a small loft off Iron Belfry Boulevard. There, most roads and weaving allies remained nameless, and the view cast on a once thriving populace that hadn’t progressed in the better part of a century.

When I took my covert observations on foot, for a fleeting moment I saw, silhouetted by firelight, a large figure limp past a window. Cloaked in a black hood, I moved like a rat. The few Metropolitan Ward who trotted by were oblivious. But I wanted to be sure my efforts would not be thwarted. I needed perfect concealment, and a moonless night was soon to arrive.

Then it came. Midafternoon in my mortician’s cart, after a brief stop inside a blacksmith’s, my horse and I rested under the massive Gahlerrion Bridge. Flowing under the bridge was the Moliahenna, or Black Tongue, cutting deep and swift through the heart of Nilghorde and spilling into the sea. At its shores, parked under an abutment, I watched the sunset and scowled at approaching beggars.

After the sun had completely died and the cold winds began, I reentered the streets. The clopping of the hooves and random squeaks of cart wheels echoed against the bricks of homes and shops. For some reason they all sounded too loud. Irksomely loud even. The glare of a Wardsmen and sideways glances from passing carriages sunk me in my seat. Eventually I passed under the Do-Gooder’s Row statues, and began ascending narrow cobblestone.

If there had been a moon, around when it would have been at its zenith I crept the cart into the correct alley and cached it behind a withered hedge.

Hugging the veranda wall and unsheathing my knife, the time had come.

I was no Snier, but the poor man’s lock before me was no match for the blade that wormed its way between iron and wood. When I felt the click and pressure release, I opened the door, painfully slow.