The Ordrid looked at me, or through me. I felt as if I would fall and never stand again.

Not through my own mind did I see what I say to you now, but through where my eyes may have been if I had been in league with the Ordrid and standing, fittingly, a bit to his rear:

I knew the place all too well. The gate of the Municipal Dungeon was built as if for giants. In front of its iron scales, each alone as large as a shield, two guards leaned on their halberds. Standing in front of them, the Ordrid was clad in black leggings and a dark coat. Its hood hung behind him, tapering down to a point near a thin waist. His head was bald like an onion. His hands moved along with his plea, reassuring and coy.

The bewildered guards couldn’t decide who to gape at longer, one another or this man, in the midst of a full confession stating he practiced all the outlawed magic. Some time must have passed between that image and the next, but the Ordrid—surely this fiend who rose Morlia and Morden—the Ordrid then turned to me.

He had wanted at Rinlot even more than I. For reasons I would never know, now he would have Rinlot’s family, his wealth, and toast fine glasses to having caused such misery. The next thing I saw was he and Rinlot walking out of the front gate. Night had fallen. The two walked like friends. I saw Rinlot’s eyes, in some fashion glazed over beyond their usual simplicity, and then I see it. They shake hands. My mind’s eye, or whoever’s, locks in on these hands and does not move after.

—

Wind was in the trees and rain pelted the gravestones. The three of them descended the stairs. I stayed like a cornered hare.

“Morlia. Sir, a great tragedy has befallen this house tonight. Your cousin, as you have readily identified as the perpetrator, has poisoned your slaves, your guards, and I thought you both as well. I caught him here beginning to loot our dear Rinlot’s final resting place.” I pushed out a grin, or it felt like one.

“Sir, I beg of you—” They had neared to an arm’s distance, walking solemn and in unison. Morlia’s eyes were two black stones above lips whose opening could have contained rows of fangs.

A hand grabbed my ankle, another my belt, ripping it off of me with tatters of my breeches coming with it. Breaking free of this terrible freeze at last, I felt for my dagger, but it must have lain somewhere amid the fallen leaves.

Stone slid with wet grittiness. I found myself looking up at the leering gargoyles. One of my hands pushed against Morlia’s face, which appeared in an instant far less dead. My other hand was clasped around her keys in my pocket, and then they too were taken from me.

Epilogue

Epilogue