The conflict within me howled. The fabled Rogaire treasury was here somewhere. Retirement was out of the question if I settled for leaving without it. Maybe I’d team up with Seasmil again, if I could find him. But an overgrown in dark garb was as common as cabbage in Nilghorde. Besides, a trek back to Red Wolf showed that our old duplex had been leveled and covered in exorcising heraldry. I could keep working. A true professional—and that is what I was—can get out, move on, and let safety conquer hypothetical reward.

But most of all, as much as it nagged me to admit, was that confounded story of Werlyle’s. The more time passed, the more his words seeped into my head.

I continued with my daily duties, high-stepping over the boy’s string traps, all the while trying earnestly to remain focused on what to take and in what order.

Gold-lined torch-holders were—

Ugh, it was no use.

Regarding the boy, there was the creeping sensation that if I looked at him Werlyle’s words would somehow become more and more true. They held at least some minimal plausibility; the impish gaggle, Morlia’s taste for ruthless self-centeredness. All of which I could see rooted in a demented reality.

On more than one occasion, I had to pull the boy off a balcony for dinner. The result of breaking the seal betwixt his eyes and the moon was a baying and clawing from the little brat that I hadn’t witnessed since the orphanage days. You would have thought he was being carried off to join a grain ship, when all that waited for him were tarts and pastries. Then there was this thing about his two names; what explained such strangeness? And yet looming over it all was the grandest quandary: how did this alleged affair contribute to Rinlot’s death?

Rinlot had died when I was in the Municipal Dungeon. Sweeping the floor of a hall nearby, I learned he had succumbed to a gruesome ailment that viciously flung blood out of every hole. The guards who attended his funeral hooted and ranted for days about how awful he looked. Despite the undertaker’s best efforts, the corpse put shivers down spines as the lid was sealed.

In fact, it was news of his death in conjunction with knowledge of his wealth that led to my current scheme. What I was shocked to learn, shortly before my harrowing prison escape, was that his widow was refusing to remarry—and, oh, how the brotherhood of guards left their wives to try and convince her otherwise. Popular gossip held that even the Rogaires of higher shelves had traveled from Oxghorde, calling upon Morlia at her doors in their polish and buttons. But she showed them all away. Before long, their outrage decayed to dismay, and finally to sagging departures.

I predicted the droves of suitors lining up to take Rinlot’s place. The sight of them, larvae crawling on meat barely dead. What I didn’t expect was his widow to show such fortitude. After all, isn’t lack of humanity a prerequisite for maintaining wealth?