Cyrus knelt before the older man. His wounds were already fatal if untreated, but one significant goal for the day remained. An unease settled in his chest that he found distinctly unwelcome. The Vagrant’s legacy was to be one without mercy or remorse. None of the empire may live.

“The people must know this death was at your hands,” Stasia said, for she, too, understood Cyrus’s hesitation.

“I know,” Cyrus said softly. “Thorda has already spoken with me of such a need.”

He grabbed Marthalos by the jaw and lifted him up so they looked eye to eye. There was no recognition, not with Cyrus’s face hidden behind the skull mask. He adjusted his hood to ensure the magistrate saw the silver crown that looped about his forehead.

“Your church stole from us our gods. Your soldiers stole from us our kingdom. You stole my crown, magistrate, and so I give you the only crown I deem you worthy to bear.”

He pressed the shortsword to the magistrate’s forehead and cut him temple, forehead, to temple, and dropped him to die. The others watched but said nothing. Silently he strode to the dead paragon and gifted him a similar crown. A magistrate and a paragon. They couldn’t have hoped for a better start.

Bells sounded in the distance, the rest of the city finally alerted to the ambush.

“Let us hurry,” Rayan said, and he clasped Cyrus about the shoulder with his healthy arm. “It would be a sad end to Vagrant’s story if he were captured due to laziness.”

Waiting on the other side of the alley was a covered wagon, the driver a burly man with a long beard and complete indifference to the growing clamor from afar.

“Was worried my shipment would be late,” he said upon seeing the four come running. Cyrus saluted him with two fingers, then joined the rest in climbing into the back. The group sat amid piles of cabbages as the carriage rumbled across the cobblestone with a clop of hoofbeats. Mari sat before her sister, who took a prepared blanket and laid it across her lioness form.

“A fine victory to remember,” Rayan said as he set his helmet aside.

“The church will indeed remember,” Stasia said. She yanked off the cloth mask that covered her face. “To lose both a magistrate and a paragon will anger and humiliate them. They will respond. They must.”

A soft crack of bone followed by ripping skin delayed further conversation. The body beneath the thick blanket twisted and changed, arms and legs extending, wings retracting, and thick, corded muscle and armor-plating bone relaxing into fat and tissue. When finished, a naked Mari sat up with the blanket wrapped about her body.

“Everyone’s so dour,” she said, and she beamed a smile at the group. “We succeeded in Cyrus’s first real mission! And I must say, it certainly could have gone worse.”