Shadows conjoined and shifted behind Toadly’s windows. With-in, long bouts of silence would rip open in an instant with bellows of ignoramus mirth. Of all the nights for such a home to play host to the living. But as I adjusted a troublesome root for the third time, Toadly’s door swung open and out poured the filth. Though the departing gaggle was of several classes, they struck me as acquainted scoundrels, tarrying under a lone lamplight before finally leaving.

I froze. A pack of other men scrambled out from concealing hedges across from my own. The moment I began to rise I’d been put back down, reduced to peering out through leaves. The pack moved from one shadow to the next, then broke down Toadly’s door.

Toadly had enemies like snakes have scales: I among them. It would have been amusing if a brood of brothers with their stone-cutting father at the helm had burst in to avenge the lamentable state of one of the many concubines that had made Toadly famous. But the pack’s look of intent villainy disallowed such fantasies. The thumps and sounds of breaking glass and feet pounding up and down stairwells were at the bidding of, I knew beyond a doubt, some other fiend who’d also attended the will reading.

“If it is gone—” the rest I hissed into my hand. A sudden headache needled my skull: Someone had beat me to it. I’d sat around, pitying myself with a liquor bottle, and it may have just cost me everything. I felt a shame that my conscious would not fully allow. An image of brewing tricks and potions on the lowest branch in all Necrodom faded, and the part of my mind where words were found refit itself. The puma who slept through the deer migrating while dreaming of idle sheep. I gripped my dagger’s handle. Rain pooled on leaves and ran down my neck.

After some while, the thugs reentered the street, and with their reappearance the vice-clamp around my head loosened its grip. On the ground, behind one of the larger men, was a mammoth bag, sowed tight and soaked with blood. I’d never quite experienced disappointment and elation at once, until just then.

One of the oldest Ordrids ever to be penned to a scroll, Prince Basofial had enjoyed a parade of carnage, yet was denied the blood dipping of his own morning star. Seeing Toadly dead and stuffed into a sack, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is how the long-dead prince had felt when the droves of poor had killed the aristocracy over in Quinnari?

I was again frozen. The grunting shadows were dragging Toadly right toward me.