CONSPIRACY: Take the Crown

Collected Stories

Compiled by Kimberly J. Kreines

Contents

Copyright

Conspiracy

1. Betrayal

2. The Black Rose

3. Like Cogwork

4. Blood will have Blood

Take the Crown

5. Laid to Rest

6. Tyrants

7. Proclamation by Queen Marchesa

8. Proclamation by Adriana, Captain of the Guard

9. Bloody Instructions

10. Leovold’s Dossiers

CONSPIRACY: TAKE THE CROWN: COLLECTED STORIES

© 2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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Cover art by Adam Willson

First Printing: July 2016

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Part I

Conspiracy

1

Betrayal

By Nik Davidson

Far from Theros, on the plane of Fiora, the High City of Paliano is home to countless intrigues and plots. The high lords of the city vie for supremacy. Move is met with countermove, and trust with betrayal, all under the auspices of the immortal King Eternal. But the king was a living man, once, and a friend to the elf explorer Selvala...

The walls of the king's private dining chamber were lit with enchanted gems, each carefully placed atop a carved marble rod—a carefully crafted simulacrum of a candle, but without any trace of warmth. The chamber was in the heart of the castle complex, and no natural light reached this far.

The table was large enough to seat twelve, but only two dined this night. The king, Brago, skin pale and cracked, like old parchment paper, rested in an ornate chair. His guest, Selvala, sat at the opposite end, a feast spread out between them. The king's plate was empty. The elf's plate was untouched.

"Why do we still do this, my king?" There was a hardness to the last word, like tension in a copper wire. "Why do we go through these motions anymore? I know it pains you to see me, and it pains me to see what you have become."

The king's eyes flickered, but his body was still for a long moment until a raspy voice escaped his cracked lips.

"Because you help me remember."

Selvala shook her head. "That's not enough, anymore. Maybe it used to be. Before all... this... got so far out of hand." She waved a hand in his direction, disgust plain on her face. "Whether you remember him or not, you are not the king you once were. I remember that man. That man was my friend. And seeing you, sitting in his chair, wearing what's left of his face, is an insult to that man. An insult to the things we stood for."

Brago's body convulsed, and he let loose a choking gasp. Selvala recognized it as his laughter. "Maybe... I should have listened to you. Maybe you should have made me listen."

Selvala's face flushed with anger. "Oh no. You don't get to put this on me. I warned you. In the very beginning, I begged you not to let the Custodi begin their treatments."

"But you relented. We still had so much work to do. For the city."

Selvala narrowed her eyes. The king had already said more in this exchange than he had in their last two dinners combined.

"What's going on, old friend? What has changed?" Her voice softened.

"In the beginning, you and I shared a vision."

The City was young. Young, optimistic, and ambitious, and Count Brago was all of these things as well. Born third son to a minor house, his prospects would have been limited anywhere else. But not here. Not in the City. In the City, a person's dreams and ambitions were the only source of limitation, and Brago could see far, indeed. He could see past the petty grudges and bureaucrats. He could see past the flitting fashions, the endless squabbles for glory and fame. He saw the raw potential of what the City could be. He saw its beating heart, and it thrummed in perfect synchronicity with his own. And he could see a path to that potential. Slim, perhaps. Winding. Treacherous. And he could not walk it alone.

[picture]

Art by Tyler Jacobson

"Ha! You speak to me of a vision? That was seventy years ago, you old fool. Yes. Yes, when I was as much a fool as you have become, I believed in you. Your words dripped with honey and light and I believed. Which makes your betrayal all the more bitter, old friend."

"Betrayal?" Brago's voice rose, almost taking on a human tone once more. "I never. I never lost sight of what was best for the City. Even now."

The two were inseparable, and they worked together flawlessly. He was a terror in the courts and council chambers, his arguments flawless, his entreatments irresistible. He built up a coalition of nobility, clergy, and the merchant class. He rooted out corruption and replaced it with humility. But always, always, more power ended up in his hands.

She was beloved by the people, had her fingers on the pulse of every community and enclave. She fought for the rights of immigrants, and convinced many of the old titled nobility to give up privileges that oppressed the public, before the public rose up to depose them. Together, they drafted the Charter. Ratification was unanimous. It was their hands, clasped together, that forged Paliano.

"You lost sight of everything once you started to value your own life above those you served. How long did you let yourself believe that what the Custodi were doing was medicine?"

"It was. I wasn't going to let my health stop us from achieving our goals."

"Everyone dies, Brago! Everyone ages, everyone dies. Peasants and kings alike."

Brago laughed, a real laugh this time. "That must be easy for you to say, looking just a few years older now than when we met. You can't say what you would have done in my place."

Selvala looked down, and paused. "Perhaps not."

King Brago had been on the throne just three years when the doctors diagnosed his illness. Hereditary and incurable. He would not last the year. Selvala was devastated. Brago was in shock. When the priests came to him and told him there were treatments he could undergo that would magically preserve his body, he was cautious.

He and Selvala discussed and debated the matter extensively. Neither liked the idea of putting his life in the hands of the priesthood, but each feared what would happen should the new king die so soon. The alliances they had struggled to build could crumble in a heartbeat. The shining city could return itself to glittering ashes so quickly. In the end, they relented. The Custodi were formed, and the king lived. And he lived. And he lived.

[picture]

Art by Alex Horley-Orlandelli

"History will judge me fairly. All that we have achieved. All the good we have done. It was the only way."

"Brago, if I heard those words from any other man's lips, I would know him to be a tyrant."

Brago seemed to deflate again. "Selvala. There will be no more treatments."

Shock, joy, and fear flashed across Selvala's face. She stood, walked to his side, and knelt next to his chair. She took his dry hand in hers. It was neither warm nor cold, and felt to the touch like nothing so much as an old leather-bound book. "Brago. This is the right choice. By all we held dear, I will miss you, but this is the right thing."

Brago coughed, a rattling, wheezing sound. "No. It is not like that. There will be no more treatments, because they have gone too far. I cannot die, Selvala. My mind will rot in this cage of bones and skin. It has already begun. My eyes have all but gone already. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. I no longer hurt, but for a long time, I hurt very badly. Now, I miss even the pain."

Selvala sprung to her feet, furious, her hand reflexively grasping the hilt of her long hunter's knife. "Those monsters! What have they done to you? For what they've done, I should..."

Brago lifted a limp hand. "No. No. Turn your anger toward me. Where it can yet serve you. Selvala. I cannot die naturally. But I think I must die. And you are one of only three people in the City who is permitted a weapon in my presence."

Selvala closed her eyes. As soon as he had said the words, she knew that she would do this for him. "Brago. You were a good king. A good man." She stood, stared him in the milky blue eyes, and drew her knife. "I forgive you."

She thrust the blade once into the king's heart. There was almost no resistance, like stabbing a knife into a sack of dry grain. His ancient body began to crumble almost immediately, and as he fell to dust, he whispered two words:

"You won't."

Selvala strode out of the dining room, and cast her knife on the floor. The guards escorted her away without a word.

The Custodi shuffled into the cold throne room, hands concealed in their long sleeves for warmth as much as propriety. Gray faces, hard-eyed men and women, peered out from under embroidered hoods. They formed a circle, and the eldest spoke. "The King is dead. We will keep the news contained as long as we can, but the knowledge will escape these walls. Before it does, if we wish to remain in power, we have much work to do."

The temperature in the room dropped suddenly, and the lights flickered. A presence entered the room. Cold, and angry.

A blue mist began to coalesce, wisps creeping out of the patterns in the smooth marble floor. A few of the Custodi gasped and staggered backwards. The mist grew thicker, denser, and it flowed like a river in an unseen bed.

The Custodi were startled; they looked from hooded face to hooded face for any sign that one of them might understand. Finding no solace, the priests looked around the room, increasingly frantic.

A shimmer appeared before the throne. The mist drew itself up and formed the shape of a man, and the idea of armor became solid around him. Eyes stared down at the Custodi, dark yet aglow, and the priests cowered before him in fear.

[picture]

Art by Karla Ortiz

"You will do no such thing. You will announce what has happened. That the great work of the Custodi is complete. That your king has risen, mind as strong as ever, freed from the prison of his body. This is a day of celebration." The spirit's voice was deep and stern. "For you have succeeded. Unless you wish to tell me that your treatments had another goal in mind?"

Panic flew across the faces of the Custodi. They stammered their confusion, until the eldest stepped to the front of the huddled crowd.

"Of course, my king. Let none doubt your words." She looked over her shoulder to the others, who each bent their knee.

"Hail, my king."

"Hail, King Brago."

"All hail Brago, King Eternal."

2

The Black Rose

By Matt Knicl

The home was more ornate than it needed to be. Marchesa's mansion towered over the palatial homes of her neighbors, each extra story a mark of her success. While the rich afforded three to four stories on their homes, Marchesa had nine, seven of which were mostly unused, although they served their purposes.

Situated among the elite of Paliano, the High City, Marchesa was entertaining a guest and business partner from the lowlands, Ervos Trax.

Marchesa and Ervos were longstanding business partners. Marchesa's network of spies and rogues controlled much of the High City, while Ervos's criminal empire stretched from the lowlands all the way to the city of Talon and the docks beyond. Despite his power in the lowlands, Ervos was still not of the High City. His best clothes, which he had clearly worn, were fancy to lowlanders, but out of date and less impressive to a High City noble. Ervos had made the arduous trek up the Thousand Steps into the High City from the lowlands. Marchesa had invited him to dinner but she didn't send a ship to bring him to her—although she owned several staffed with pilots.

Marchesa and Ervos were sitting in Marchesa's third-best dining room, which afforded them a more intimate meal. Instead of sitting at one end of a massive table meant to entertain two dozen, Ervos sat across from Marchesa.

Ervos was not yet middle aged, although in his line of work that would make him ancient. He was arguably handsome, with sandy brown hair and straighter teeth than most. With his good looks and undeniable charm, he had exploited his first victims. Although he wore last season's fashion, a somewhat garish suit made of golden cloth, Marchesa did note that Ervos still looked pleasing to the eye.

Marchesa wore her raven-black hair pinned up with ornate pins. Nobles and thieves all wondered why Marchesa insisted upon wearing the fashion of the older women in Paliano, although she was only slightly older than Ervos. Even now, at a more casual dinner, she wore the dress one would typically see in the High Chamber during a vote worn by a senator falling asleep as the call was tallied. Some suspected she dressed this way to assert the role she wanted upon others, while others whispered the Black Rose thought herself the ruler of the city. Ervos always smiled at these rumors, for he knew Marchesa dressed that way simply because she liked the clothes, and although she was a woman of grand ulterior motives, her clothing had none. She wore the style of the elders well, Ervos thought, somehow remaining fluid in her movements, using her arms to speak and walking quickly when talking, although the style was typically worn by the slow and rigid.

[picture]

Art by Adam Paquette

Marchesa also wore a ring on each finger, each expensive and ornate. The biggest was the ruby she wore on her left middle finger. Each ring housed a different poison, but the ruby contained the deadliest on Fiora.

Here they sat, regal and dignified, two killers slowly eating their meal of roasted lamb and steamed exotic vegetables. The only sound in the room was the clank of silverware against plates, the knives cutting the lamb through and scratching the plates underneath. Then Ervos, without looking up at his hostess, spoke.

"I think I am going to have you killed," Ervos said, then took a bite of a hunk of over-buttered bread.

Marchesa stopped cutting her food, but only briefly, and continued to carefully cleave her pork.

"Oh?" she replied after the silence. She took a bite of her food, eyes fixed on her plate. "How would you go about that?"

Ervos looked up at Marchesa and pushed himself back in his chair, sitting up straight.

"It would be a challenge, I'm sure, but I do have a plan," Ervos said, confidently.

Marchesa took a sip of wine and then broke some bread from the basket in front of her.

"And why would you wish to kill me?"

"Business, pure and simple. I tire of making the trek up the stairs, and my network is now steadily moving into the High City. You, Dear Friend, are my only obstacle. And I know you would never allow a rival to have that much power in your city."

"I see. But please, do not tantalize me with vague notions," Marchesa said, almost teasing. "I must know how you would plan to end my life. Share the details."

Ervos placed both hands on the table and smiled.

"Well, of course I could not attack now. You have at least two... no, three men, in your walls. I don't hear any breathing, although I do notice that this palace of yours has a strong smell of yantal root. That means you are trying to cover up a smell, so I would guess zombies, most likely bound to protect you if you or they sense danger."

Marchesa leaned back in her chair, smiling, as she sipped her wine, holding the wine glass nonchalantly to the side as she rested her arm on the armrest.

"I would never make it out alive," Ervos continued, "even if I did strike you down where you sit right now and used a spell to render the zombies inert, I would still need to leave the house. I would have two avenues of exit, the yard or sewers—which I know, after murdering the city registrar and stealing the plans to your home, connect to your basement. The yard would be covered by the archers perched on your rooftop, and the sewers no doubt run me afoul of that damnable Grenzo you have arraignments with. Likewise, I highly suspect that if I were to murder you I would, of course, be afflicted with some sort of dark curse that would leave me in a state of horrible pain, but never allowing me to die."

Ervos chuckled. Marchesa took a drink of wine.

"Why would I leave real plans of my house with the registrar?" Marchesa asked.

"Of course, they are not the real plans, although no doubt you would have had enforcers threaten the registrar so he would think they were real, and keep eyes on the man so if he was approached by another you would know. Which would mean the basement wouldn't even lead to the sewers, or if it did, might drop me into a chute that would have me fall out of the city, plunging to sure death into the lowlands beneath."

[picture]

Art by Dan Scott

"You give me much credit, Ervos. I thank you for the kindness." Marchesa placed her glass on the table and leaned forward, resting her head on the arch she formed with her hands. "Please, do go on."

Ervos smiled and continued.

"Knowing that the registrar would be a dead end, pardon the pun, I would instead have to think about how to strike from a distance. Now, my first guess would be to poison your food, but as that is one of your favorite motifs, you would be well prepared for this maneuver. I imagine you get your food from different locations, some even from the lowlands, using different couriers each time, so as to not give anyone the opportunity to tamper with your meals. I am also fairly certain you would feed your food to—no you are not cruel enough to do this to an employee—but maybe to rats or goblins, to see if they keel over. So, killing you through your food would be out of the question."

"It's good to know this wasn't my last supper," Marchesa commented. "I would have preferred a better vintage of wine."

"Quite," Ervos agreed. He leaned back in his chair. "And as I've already mentioned, your home is a safehold. You do not travel regularly, but when you do, you travel with armed guards and agents dressed as nobles and street folk, with some running along the rooftops. A direct assault on you would leave many dead, and you have enough contacts that garnering support would be difficult. Word of my sedition would eventually reach your ears. Even if I tried to recruit a gang of goblins or Custodi guards, you would most likely know."

"It seems like I have nothing to fear," Marchesa said, still smiling.

"Oh, but you do, for there is your weakness," Ervos said, now taking a large drink of wine. "We both, as a hazard of our business, rely far too much on others. What is a spider when it cannot trust its web? People can be broken, people can be made to turn. So with those who protect you and act as your agents throughout the city, all I would need to do is find someone in your organization I could own."

"Very true, of course, but which player would you invest into this role?"

"It would be a matter of access. Those in your personal guard and your house servants would be harder to meet with; I imagine each spying on the others as part of their position. I would need to find someone on the outside of your operations, someone who would get orders from those you give orders to, but not so far removed from the top they don't know anything. I would need someone like a foreman who oversees shipments or a bookkeeper who distributes funds to your assassins. I would need someone like..."

"Pietro Lokosh?" Marchesa interrupted.

Ervos coughed and drank some wine to calm his throat. Marchesa took the opportunity to take more bites of her food, moving from meat to vegetables, which were slightly cold now but still expensive and delicious.

"Yes," Ervos said, still fighting a cough, his face slightly redder from his fit. "As one of your sub-lieutenants, Pietro Lokosh would be the sort of person I would use. I would use an agent of my own to find out his weaknesses, like his family. And then I would extort him, with threat of violence, into giving me information about how you move your personnel. I'd gather information over the course of a few weeks to see where you would be most vulnerable, even if it would just be an attack against your pocketbook."

[picture]

Art by Lucas Graciano

Ervos began to cough again, this time producing blood into his hands, which he quickly wiped up with a cloth napkin that had been on his lap. Marchesa saw this, although she did not acknowledge that fact. She spoke while he coughed.

"I would, of course, suspect such a subterfuge and end Pietro Lokosh's life as a precaution. Likewise, I would locate your spy and flip his allegiance with the promise of gold, allowing me to keep better tabs on you, feeding back the information I would want you to hear, until I decide to kill the spy and retrieve my gold. For good measure."

Ervos nodded as she spoke, still coughing into his bloody napkin, face redder than before, and held up a finger asking her to pause.

"I would, of course, know that the spy would be used against me," he said, speaking through the coughing, blood now splattering onto his plate of unfinished food. "I also know that any person in my organization would ultimately be corrupted by your promises, and I could never trust someone who had ever been in your employ. I also know I am just not as adept at knowing people as you, seeing all the variables. I admit that as my flaw. I would know I would not be able to kill you, but as our businesses continue to square off against the other, one of us would have to die. So instead of letting you kill me, I would poison myself, knowing I would be dead despite any schemes I might plan."

Marchesa nodded, the smile now gone from her face. "I am impressed, Old Friend. I will say that I am shocked by this play. I had planned to have you killed at your secret penthouse in your sleep two nights from now. It seems I will be blamed for your death and face retaliation from your associates."

She leaned forward. "This was a good play."

Ervos smiled, now shaking as he tried to hold himself up in his chair, but then slumped forward, face into his plate, dead.

Marchesa sighed and fidgeted with her rings. She stood up, pushing her chair back, and walked over the Ervos's body. She wanted to kiss him on the forehead, but she knew Ervos would have put poison on his skin to prey upon any compassion she might show.

Instead, she walked out of the room to summon her butler, who had been in the backyard since before Ervos arrived, digging a hole for his body. Marchesa knew her rival would take his own life, but she wanted him to have the final victory as he died, even if she had known his play all along.

[picture]

Art by Matt Stewart

3

Like Cogwork

By Matt Knicl

Academy at High Paliano Board of Senior Advisors

Meeting called to order by Chancellor Grinaldi.

Members present:

Chancellor Grinaldi

Vice Chancellor Alendis

Professor Emralla

Professor Fimarell

Professor Muzzio

Professor Tulando

Members absent:

Professor Regness (sabbatical)

Business

Motion from Professor Muzzio: For Professor Muzzio to become vice chancellor once Alendis retires.

Vote: 1 in favor, 5 against

Resolved: motion failed

Motion from Chancellor Grinaldi: To elect Professor Tulando vice chancellor once Alendis retires.

Vote: 4 in favor, 1 against, 1 abstain

Resolved: motion carried

"Do you think he was angry?" the ancient professor asked his colleague as they walked into the academy's antechamber.

"No, Tulando, of course not," the chancellor replied. "Muzzio is a practical man. He showed no emotion when we rendered the vote. I swear he is no better than a machine."

"You fail to give him credit, Chancellor. His inventions have revolutionized our society. We now rely on his work in one form or another."

"Oh, of course," the chancellor replied. "But that's why we need him in a workshop and not behind a desk."

The professor looked around the empty marble antechamber. It was night, and none were around, but still the professor found it best to lower his voice.

"You've heard the rumors about him, I take it?"

The chancellor scoffed.

"Spare me. That he is an agent of the Black Rose? Or the one that he is still the patron of the dropout, Sydri?"

"He most certainly killed Daretti."

"If he did, he did us a favor," the chancellor said. He instantly regretted the statement, the night's meeting and late hours raising his temper. "I'll hear no more of this sort of talk. The matter is resolved."

The professor nodded to the chancellor and they both parted ways.

To Muzzio, the matter was far from resolved. He sat in his workshop, the one unknown to his colleagues, surrounded by dozens of half-finished, half-tinkered devices. Among the clutter of books and parts, Muzzio contemplated. He was not elected vice chancellor, which changed months of delicate planning.

[picture]

Art by Volkan Baga

Unlike his contemporaries, who would have crumpled up all their plans and notes in a rage, Muzzio had collected them all, ensuring they were flat and unbent, and filed them away. Never know when I might need them again, he thought. His mind raced with hundreds of scenarios, of blueprints of events unfolding. He needed to work through his thoughts.

After the meeting, he had summoned for his apprentice, Irie. A young man from the Low City, Irie hadn't the funds to enter the academy. Muzzio had seen the potential in the boy and brought him on as his apprentice. Irie kept up Muzzio's workshop in exchange for the same lessons others spent family fortunes to obtain—even if most of the boy's time was spent retrieving parts and books from the Grand Library. Muzzio had spent a few months training Irie, but he needed to accelerate the lessons.

Out of breath, Irie climbed the stairs into the workshop.

[picture]

Art by Winona Nelson

"I'm sorry, Master," Irie said hurriedly. "I came as quickly as I could."

"You came as quickly as I calculated you would," Muzzio replied, standing from his desk. "No need to apologize when I inconvenience you."

Muzzio walked over to one of his many cluttered bookshelves. On it sat the helm of an early model of one of his sentinel constructs. He spun it counterclockwise where it sat, and the book shelf lowered into the floorboards, revealing marble stairs that descended down a spiral staircase. Irie pretended to look amazed, having already found the secret passage on the second day of his apprenticeship. Muzzio knew Irie had found it, and that he was feigning shock. Irie suspected his master knew he had been down there before, but both were more than willing to play the game of ignorance.

They walked down the brightly lit stairwell and emerged in a large room, where more than a hundred mechanical constructs stood in rows. At the head of the room, where Muzzio and Irie stood, was Muzzio's true workshop—large tables where Muzzio could tend to his creations like a doctor tends to patients; parts put in deliberate places littered the workspace.

The centerpiece of the room, surrounded by whirring noises of various machines and the iron army, was a scale model of Paliano, with both the High City and Low City replicated in amazing detail. It took up nearly one third of the room. Irie had spent hours vetting its accuracy and was unable to find flaw in its design. The High City towered over the Lower, just as its full-scale version. The Corru River was painted through the Lower City, every twist and turn replicated. The houses themselves were not as intricate as they were in reality, but important locations, like the palace or the academy, were ornate and delicately painted.

Above it, a cogwork device built into the ceiling moved a false moon, and in day was replaced with a bright light that travelled across the fake city in real time. When it rained, Irie noted that the device ran tufts of cotton across tracks in the ceiling to replicate the clouds. There were no figures of people in the city, but Irie suspected that was how his master preferred it.

Muzzio had already begun working on a construct soldier. Irie was doing his best to pretend like he was taking the sights in for the first time.

"Have you ever killed anyone, Irie?" Muzzio asked calmly, as he replaced a gear in the construct.

[picture]

Art by Karl Kopinski

"No, of course not, Sir," the boy replied.

"Do you think I have killed anyone?"

Irie was taken aback by the question and tried to come up with a meaningful response, but could only reply, "Yes."

Without emotion, Muzzio replied, "How unfortunate. I would have hoped you thought more of me."

"Apologies master, I... it's just... you hear things."

"Never believe a word you hear in Paliano, Irie, unless it comes from me." Muzzio removed plating from another part of the construct, taking a jeweler's eye and small tools to the exposed insides. "No, I am proud to say I've never killed anyone, nor have I had a need to. At least, not yet."

"That is quite a relief, Master," Irie said.

Muzzio looked up at him from his hunched-over position and stared through the jeweler's eye. "Don't grovel."

Irie nodded.

"All of the mechanical wonders our city knows today came from me. I do not wish to brag, simply to demonstrate that I not only have vast intelligence, but that I know how to apply it to the greater good. Every construct in Paliano is either built with my designs or from my designs. The magic that fuels them may come from various sources, but the devices themselves owe their allegiance to me."

"Do you mean that you can control them?" Irie asked.

"I can, but I do not need to. For every obstacle toward my grand design, there is a very simple, nonviolent solution: information. Within each of the constructs is a series of needles that transcribes all that they hear onto wax cylinders, which my sneak constructs can retrieve for me. You would be amazed at what people speak of when they think they are in the presence of a nonentity."

Irie felt like he knew.

"The people scurry about, but on every corner, and now in nearly every shop, one of my constructs tends to them. My creations file their documents, count their money."

"Then is that your 'grand design,' to replace people with the machines?" Irie asked. "There are no people in your vision of the future?"

[picture]

Art by Cliff Childs

Muzzio laughed, which unnerved Irie.

"Of course not! Everything I do, I do for people, to make their lives better."

"But the way you describe the city, it's like you want everything to run like a clock."

"That is a nice goal," Muzzio replied. "But foolhardy. The human variables are what will always throw off any plan for clockwork perfection one could hope to attain. I have met some who have been to amazing places and speak of ancient warring artificers and of the perfect worlds they wanted to create. There are even rumors of a place where the perfection of machines blends inseparably with the vitality of organic life. I hope we can one day be like those places. I must mitigate the variables, as best I can, to help society move forward."

Muzzio closed the panel on the construct.

"A real artificer," he continued, "can step away from a creation and know it will continue to function on its own. But until I know I can step away, I must tinker and keep everything as it needs to be. I do not make the parts, I'm merely assembling them."

The construct jittered, then began to move its appendages. It pushed itself from the table and walked toward an empty spot in the ranks of the other soldiers.

"I do not need to be in charge," Muzzio continued, standing with his arms behind his back, admiring his soldiers. "The vice chancellor position would have given me the autonomy and power needed to move into the next phase of my plan. I wasn't elected vice chancellor, which based on my projections I should have easily taken. But the death of Brago and his seeming ascension, which I couldn't foresee, caused them to vote more cautiously."

"What do you plan to do?" Irie asked. "What do you need me to do for all of this?"

"To watch, listen, and learn," Muzzio replied. "You are my student, after all."

[picture]

Art by Dan Scott

Over the next few days, Muzzio's constructs received new orders.

Professor Emralla found that the bank no longer had record of her money. The magister assured her that no living soul had been into the vaults, nor would any have been able to. Behind the magister, constructs went about counting coin, no more nefarious than a broom or spade, moving currency from one pile to the next. Emralla understood clerical errors, but she had just been made aware her latest payment on her estate in the Santuo District—which she knew she had given to the delivery construct—never made it to the loan house. She went to sort out the situation, but quickly found that due to clerical errors, the home was not properly registered in her name and she was to be evicted. The ink on the quill of the bookkeeping construct hadn't even yet dried.

Professor Tulando feared a wanton construct attacking him in the streets. He had never taken to the machines and had none in his home. He peered nervously through windows, barely able to sleep at night. There is nothing to worry about, he told himself. Muzzio is a reasonable man. The rumors are just rumors. He was almost over his fears when he went early to his breakfast table one morning. His servants were not yet arrived to prepare his meal, but there was a stack of papers where his food normally sat. The papers documented, quite thoroughly, how Tulando had misappropriated academy funds for his own fortune, even going so far as to show covert dealings with the smuggler Ervos Trax. There were signed documents, and even one of these papers would result in his arrest and termination. Tulando was innocent of all these crimes, but the message was clear. He resigned less than an hour later.

Chancellor Grinaldi's money was not touched, his titles were not altered, nor was he unjustly framed or blackmailed. He was having an affair, and a construct recorded this information. The details were documented and a blank envelope left outside the chancellor's house for his wife to find. The chancellor was forced to leave his position to fix his personal life.

The equation remained the same, but the variables were different.

Business

Motion from Professor Muzzio: For Professor Muzzio to become Vice Chancellor once Alendis becomes Chancellor.

Vote: 1 in favor, 0 against, 3 abstain

Resolved: Motion carried

Academy at High Paliano Board of Senior Advisors

Meeting called to order by Vice Chancellor Alendis.

Members present:

Vice Chancellor Alendis

Professor Fimarell

Professor Muzzio

Professor Regness

Members absent:

Chancellor Grinaldi (resigned)

Professor Emralla (sabbatical)

Professor Tulando (resigned)

Business

Motion from Professor Muzzio: For Professor Muzzio to become vice chancellor once Alendis becomes chancellor.

Vote: 1 in favor, 0 against, 3 abstain

Resolved: motion carried

4

Blood will have Blood

By Shawn Main

Some of the grubs were no bigger than a coin. Pale and fleshy, they squirmed their way along the cracks in the floor. Beetles with wiry, clicking legs scurried over them, hissing at each other as they passed. Centipedes, long as a human's arm, curled in the dry ribcages of long-dead prisoners. For being in isolation, Selvala certainly didn't feel alone.

"Little fawn."

The voice was a gnarled whisper seeping in through the cell door. She hadn't seen the dungeon keeper, but she'd heard that voice, pooling its sound deep in her ears. For the first two days, there had been a parade of goblins knocking at her door, screaming in their tinny voices. She'd dealt with each of them in turn.

"Wee faaawn."

Selvala stood in place and focused on the swarming insects. When she didn't watch them, vertigo overtook her—the individual insects would disappear and instead the floor and walls seemed to writhe and breathe like she was in the stomach of some great animal.

"Happy faaaaawn."

And when she didn't watch them, tiny things would start to crawl up the leather of her boots. She wondered if they were drawn by the scent of dried blood. Three days later, it was all she could smell.

"Sweet faaaaaaawn."

That blood had drawn a crowd three days before as well, but then it was wet and red and ran down her knife like water. She didn't want to think about that. She didn't want to listen to the dungeon keeper's voice. She focused on the swarm. Her mouth was parched.

"Killer faaaaaaaaaawn."

Now, soaked into her gloves, the blood was the color of rust. Three coats had been added on top of that. Goblin blood. Black. Viscous. Sticky. She wondered if she should offer the gloves to her cellmates. They might chew the gloves clean again.

Three days felt like a long time ago.

"Deadly fawn. Vicious fawn. Murder fawn."

She focused on her breathing and tried not to listen to the sound of the dungeon keeper just beyond her cell door. She knew he was watching from the bars, squat face pressed close, keys clanking at his side.

"Don't you want your supper, Fawn?"

She wondered if she could move fast enough to reach the door before he could react, wondered if she could get a shard of bone into his skull while he was still so close.

"Certainly," said Selvala. She swallowed. She hadn't spoken in three days and her voice was like rocks. "Why don't you come in here and give it to me?"

The dungeon keeper chortled. His disembodied voice echoed from beyond the heavy door.

"Oh fawn, what do you take me for? You took the eye of one my best agents. What do you have smuggled in there, knitting needles?"

Selvala smiled and fingered the crudely sharpened weapon at her side. "A femur."

"Ha!" he cried. "Bone to the eye! I knew you would be good. A master! The others said you were all talk, yet here you are: my perfect assassin."

Her smile dissipated. She didn't look at her jailer's face, but she imagined it. Yellow teeth, bulging eyes, breath hot and putrid. He wasn't made for Paliano either.

"Well, your uncle Grenzo forgives you," said the dungeon keeper. "What's a little blood between friends?"

[picture]

Art by Lucas Graciano

She turned her attention finally toward the door. His smiling, bloated face watched from between the bars of the narrow window. "Why don't you get out of here?" she asked. "I'm formulating my escape."

His smile grew until it showed all his rotting teeth. He asked, "What's it like to kill a man you love?"

She turned away, back to the beetles that crunched under her boots. She'd been to the lowlands, she'd survived in the wild, she could stand the taste of insect. Had bluebloods starved to death in here, refusing to deign to eat from the floor?

"Answer me that one question, dainty fawn, and I'll unlock this door."

She tensed her muscles. All it would take was one quick lunge and this conversation would be over. Her shard of bone was no rapier, but he was a lump of a thing and it would do the job.

She said, "I'm sure you don't need me to answer that question."

"Oh, but I do. My hands are clean."

She eyed the skull that lay in the corner. Its empty sockets would stare forever at the dripping ceiling of this cell.

He said, "All I do is turn some keys and talk."

She contemplated the stories she'd heard about the dungeon keeper, about his agents swarming in the sewers, crawling through the night—mercenary killers and spies, dispatching problems and watching for opportunities to blackmail.

He waited for her to speak. When she didn't, he said, "And I'll turn this key here—I've done it before—if you answer your dear old uncle Grenzo's question: What's it like to kill a friend?"

Selvala said, "All too easy."

He scoffed. She waited. Above the hiss of beetles, the jangle of keys, the click of the lock. The door slid open with a creak.

"Next time, maybe it will stick," he said from the hallway.

She turned her attention to the door. No one came. Beyond, she could hear the keeper's labored breathing in the passage.

She didn't understand, didn't know his game. She knew she was being manipulated, but to what end?

[picture]

Art by David Palumbo

"Come on out," he said. "I've got a skin of water and a jug of wine. You've split your time between the low city and the high. Didn't know which one you'd want."

Selvala took a light step toward the door. The shadows trembled in the torchlight. Grenzo had a huge frame for a goblin, but he was hunched over, like his bones were rebelling against him. He clutched his staff and she wondered if he could walk a step without it. He held the waterskin aloft. She waited for the trap—a dozen agents around the corner? Poisoned gifts? Some dark magic?

Grenzo turned his head from side to side as if considering the tunnels. "You can run, Fawn, but the trail is treacherous. I'll take you on your way."

She gripped the shard of bone and contemplated his jugular. It was thick, like a snake sleeping in his neck.

"Well, go on then," she said, nodding. "Lead the way."

Grenzo was right. The tunnels were like arteries, forever branching and changing direction. Selvala was studied in tracking and tried to make sense of the paths, looking for exits with which to escape or landmarks in case she needed to double back to lose pursuers in the tunnels. But the stonework was relentless. The only guide points were the occasional chatter of goblins—averting their gaze from Grenzo as he passed—and the moans of the prisoners—pleading with Grenzo for his keys.

They walked for a long time. Every so often, Grenzo would stop and poke at the ceiling above them. "Palace," he would say and laugh. Or "Brago's bedchamber. Won't need that anymore!" "Sydri's shop—at least since sundown yesterday." Slowly, the map of Paliano began to make sense to her, but still she didn't know where he was leading her or to what end. "Secret council chamber," he said, and watched her face to see if she knew.

At one point, he stopped and sniffed the air. He lofted his staff and banged it against the ceiling above them. "Treasury," he announced. Then he pointed his staff like a long, bony finger. "Take that passage and it leads straight into the vault. Take a handful of gold for your trip if you want. Fill your boots if you want. It's free for the taking."

He stared at her, waiting for a reaction. "Doesn't it excite you? The thought that we're in the secret heart of Fiora?" She stared at him, tried to make her face neutral, offering him nothing. "Did you ever want to see the king's private sculpture collection? Ever eat poached egg of paradise bird? Not of this world! There are stairs into that kitchen, too. Every secret door, every secret lock is known to me!"

He held his keys aloft and shook them at her. "What do you want, Little Fawn? What's your price? I know it's not gold, but I can offer you heaps. Access? Do you want to leave the high city? Or free it? Open the secret gates and let the rabble below up into our streets? Great pulleys to hoist up the beasts from the old world? Information? Just think what it would have been to spy on your dear friend, Brago, and peer into his secret plots. Then maybe you wouldn't have been so quick to stab. Or you would have been quicker! Gotten the job done while you still had the chance."

He stepped closer and hoisted himself level with her face. She gritted her teeth.

"Another chance to kill a friend? Is that what you want? More murder? I can provide that as well. We can make these sewers run red from the carnage of it all." He smiled and his eyes watched her closely. "What about the opportunity to kill an enemy for a change?"

"What," she said, "am I being asked to do?"

He laughed triumphantly. It was loud and unfettered. She didn't know how deep the tunnels ran, but it must be deep enough to mask the cackling of a madman. He scurried down a passage, then stopped, motioning for her to follow.

He put an ear to the wall and she followed suit. There was sound there, although she couldn't place it—low and resonant, like a great elephant dragging a chain, but there were other sounds too. Soft, rhythmic clicks and whirs. They reminded her of bird calls, but there was something off about them—something impossibly regular.

Grenzo sorted through key after key, looking for one in particular. With a grin, he found it and tucked it into a secret lock in the stones. The wall swung open. Grenzo, dancing with excitement, waved her up the stairs.

The nightingale was wound from wire, its beak two brass clasps that opened as it sung out seven perfect notes. It then waved its false wings and spun once in a circle to sing again. Those same seven notes carried through the library, rising high up toward the vaulted ceiling.

All around Selvala, ornate automata clanked and whirred. Metal, spidery limbs sorted books into the shelves. Glass eyes on long wrought necks followed them, twisting back and forth as if checking for errors. In the corner, a shell of iron shaped like a human ran thin paintbrushes over a canvas in even circles, a landscape taking slow shape in their wake.

"Muzzio's library?" asked Selvala in a whisper.

"There's a terrible order to it all, isn't there?" said Grenzo. His breath was labored, as if the air were thinner. "The grand tyrant architect, Muzzio—student of Daretti, who looked down at his legs one morning and said, 'I can do better.' He promised us a new world. One that was perfectly crafted. One that was programmed and understood. One that he would build to replace us all."

[picture]

Art by Volkan Baga

Against the far wall, towering nearly two stories in height, was a beast of a machine. Pulleys stretched across its wooden limbs like sinews. A maw of terrible gears seemed to smile at them. The beast was still as a statue, but between its legs, Selvala could see a great red door.

"So what do you want, Little Fawn? Your world is doused in mud and blood and bile. These shining animals would be a new menagerie for a new world."

"What am I being asked to do?" she repeated.

"It's a new world, Fawn. You've set it in motion. We have a king with no blood. We have beasts with iron flesh. The future is deathless, inorganic, unless you act now." Grenzo held up his key ring and picked out a single key. It was decorated with interlocking spiral patterns—an artisan's object, like everything there.

Grenzo's smiled and his eyes bulged, ready to escape his skull. With heavy, excited breath, he said, "Through that door, Muzzio lies sleeping."

Selvala pulled away from him. "Is that what you're asking me? To eliminate your rival? What? As thanks for turning a little key?"

"Not my rival. One who would see your bleeding world swept away and replaced."

She stared at Grenzo, holding the gaze of those yellow eyes. He smiled wider and she kicked at his staff, sending it sailing. Grenzo crumpled to the floor. She reached for the bone blade at her side with one hand and knelt to grip the goblin's leathery throat with the other.

"I should cut you open right here. I will not be your hired thug. I will not help you mutilate Paliano into your twisted image."

And then she saw the yellow glow. She turned her head to watch the great construct rise from its spiritless slumber. Its gears wound faster and faster. Its pulleys stretched themselves taut as it prepared to spring forward.

[picture]

Art by Yeong-Hao Han

Letting go of Grenzo, Selvala tumbled from the path of the machine. Grenzo moved too, scurrying away with a speed she had not expected from his haggard frame.

The machine swiped with a great paw. She ducked low and books went flying overhead, tomes raining down on her. The mechanical librarians scurried to collect the debris.

Selvala looked at the cracked femur in her hand. It wasn't much of a weapon. She knew where to strike on something human, knew how to hunt the great animals, but the femur wouldn't even dent the machine's casing.

She hurried between the machine's legs and scanned for the dungeon keeper. He was back down the secret staircase, pulling closed the trap door concealed in the floorboards.

"What world do you want, Selvala?" he yelled and, with a great laugh, slammed the door closed.

She dove and tried to pry her fingers into the secret lock of the secret door that led back down into Grenzo's undercity. Behind her, Muzzio's guardian was twisting its wooden limbs, readying itself to strike again. She sunk her weapon into the lock, crudely forcing harder and harder as the beast descended. Then, with a snap, the bone cracked in half and the lock gave way.

Selvala felt like she was falling as she stumbled through the sewers. Behind her, she could hear the clomping of great machine legs. In her mind, she could feel the beast's cold breath on her neck, but she knew that was just her imagination. In her arms, she carried Muzzio's tomes. They spilled from her arms as she ran, but that was the point. An army of artificial librarians chased after her, filling the dark tunnels with the clicking of their limbs.

Somewhere, she could hear the squeal of goblins, their tunnels opened and filling with things not of their world. Soon they would clash—Grenzo's secret killers and Muzzio's artificial animals—and she didn't know which side would win. She hoped both sides might find their secrets laid bare for all of Paliano to see, but she knew that too might not succeed.

When Selvala had run far enough that she couldn't hear the battle behind her, she collapsed. She found an unlocked cell and crawled into the corner with the beetles. The next day, she would leave the High City and go back to the wild places far below and far beyond. Her boots would be caked with mud, her limbs tired and sweaty as she ran through the trees, picked fruit, and watched the wild beasts. But, at the time, her task was to hide in the darkness with the insects and sleep.

[picture]

Art by Adam Paquette

Part II

Take the Crown

5

Laid to Rest

By Kelly Digges

With additional story contributions by Monique Jones

Kaya sat with her back to a corner, legs up on a chair, eyes on the door. Of course, she didn't want to look like she had her eyes on the door, in a place like this. So she kept her eyes on her tea and checked the door one sip at a time.

It was good tea, dark and cold and thick with honey. Not the sort of thing you could buy in a place like this. The place was called the Wasp's Nest, and it was a certain sort of place, perfect for meeting up with unsavory characters. The man she was there to meet was respectable, a nobleman, which she supposed meant she was the unsavory one in the arrangement. Though you never could tell.

[picture]

Art by Chris Rallis

Her fellow rogues came and went to the strains of an inexpertly played mandolin, and nobody let their eyes linger too long on anybody else's business. Tavern, saloon, watering hole, great hall—on a dozen worlds, these places were all the same.

Kaya had tossed the barkeep a coin to cover the drinks she wasn't buying and another to leave her alone. Her prospective employer was only a few minutes late, but Kaya had been sitting and sipping for over an hour, getting a feel for the place. She was contemplating spending one more coin to buy the mandolin player's silence when her contact walked in. The man was wearing an iris in his brooch, the sign Kaya had been told to watch for, but she knew even before she saw that—beneath the shabby clothes, the man's bearing was crisp and military. Kaya inwardly rolled her eyes.

Kaya herself had told them to look for her jacket, a distinctive style in the city. The place was warm, and Kaya had the jacket unbuttoned all the way to reveal a loose blouse beneath, but the man with the brooch caught her eye and walked straight toward her. So discreet!

[picture]

Art by Josu Hernaiz

The soldier loomed over Kaya's table. Kaya didn't move except to wave one hand, inviting him to sit. Instead, the man leaned down over the table and said, "You're the hunter?"

"As charged," said Kaya. "I'm going to guess you're not my client."

"His grace will see you now," said the man, gesturing to the stairway. "Upstairs."

Of course. His grace would never be seen in a place like this. Probably came in the back way.

Kaya rose in one fluid motion, smiling.

"Lead the way."

The man frowned and walked ahead of her to the stairs. Kaya buttoned her jacket as they walked up the stairs and down a short hallway. At the end of the hallway, the man knocked twice on a door much like the others, then opened it and gestured for Kaya to go in.

The room was cramped, with a small desk set up in place of the bed. Behind the desk sat the man she had come here to see: Emilio Revari, third son of a noble house of middling influence. Behind him, standing at attention, were two well-dressed servants whose job had probably been hauling that stupid desk up here.

Revari had greased hair and fine clothes. He sat like a young man, cocky and headstrong, but the lines on his face and the slackness of the skin around his jaw put him closer to 40 than 30. He smiled the bland, indulgent smile of nobility, only his dark, darting eyes betraying his nervousness.

"Please, sit," he said, gesturing to a chair on the near side of the desk with a hand bristling with rings. One was a signet ring bearing his personal seal, and the rest looked jeweled and expensive.

The man with the brooch closed the door and took up a bodyguard position beside the desk.

Kaya sat, back to the door. Not her favorite thing. She leaned back in her chair.

"Don Revari," she said with a properly deferential nod.

"Indeed. And how shall I address you, Miss—?"

"Kaya's fine."

In fact, Kaya came from a noble line herself, though she and her kin had never stood on ceremony. Since leaving her home plane, she saw no reason to mention her lineage at all. She knew. That was what mattered.

"So," she said, before he could speak again. "What makes you think I can help you?"

Some prospective employers misunderstood her work—tried to hire her for theft, or espionage, or mundane assassination. She had no qualms about walking out on them, nor about cutting right to the part of the conversation where she could decide whether to do so.

Revari shifted uncomfortably.

"Some time ago," he said, "upon the death of my dear mother, I inherited her holdings here in town. My brother, the duke, had granted her a manor here to live out her dotage in peace and quiet. That manor now belongs to me. I waited for a seemly interval of mourning, sent workers to renovate the house, and prepared to take up residence."

The Revari estate was back in Paliano. As the duke's younger brother, Emilio was free to stay there. But this manor out in the hinterlands, a house big enough to quarter dozens of soldiers or a couple good-sized families, would be far more comfortable for one coddled nobleman and his retinue.

"I've heard your remodeling is taking longer than planned," said Kaya.

She kept her ear to the ground wherever she went, and the rumors swirling around town had plenty of theories about the reason for the delays to the renovations. Don Revari had run out of money. He kept changing his mind about the decor. His mistress kept changing her mind about the decor. The house was haunted. The house was cursed. A scam-artist fortune teller had told him the house was cursed, but really...and on and on. Given that he was looking to hire her, Kaya had a pretty good guess which one of those rumors was true.

"Considerably," said Revari. "It was little things, at first. Tools gone missing, repairs being undone. I chalked it up to laziness and peasant superstitions. But it got worse and worse, and there is no doubt in my mind: the place is haunted. Now the workers won't go in there even in the daytime for fear of the ghost, and people are starting to talk."

A specter from beyond the veil of death had a grudge against him, and he was concerned for his reputation.

"And this is...just some ghost," said Kaya.

Revari squirmed.

"...who happened to move in right after your mother's death?"

Revari drew himself up.

"The spirit's identity," he sniffed, "is no business of yours. The point is, there's a ghost in my house, and I want it gone. I was told that's what you do."

Spoiled little lordling. Kaya's mother had certainly never let her speak to people that way, lineage or no.

"It is what I do," she said. "But I'm not just some exterminator, Don Revari, and ghosts are not vermin. I need to know the facts of the case so I can guess what this ghost of yours might do."

He nodded, red-faced.

"I have reason to suspect," he said, "that my mother...has refused to depart the premises."

[picture]

Art by Cliff Childs

"Huh," said Kaya. "Any idea why?"

"She's been clinging to this house for decades," spat Revari. "Could've passed it to me at any time, and I'd have seen that she was cared for. But no. The house was hers, and she wouldn't relinquish it. So I waited, patiently. Now she's dead, and I have mourned, and it is my turn. I want my house."

Kaya nodded, slowly.

"I'm sympathetic to your cause, Don Revari," she said. "I'll take the job."

"Oh, good," he said bitingly.

Kaya ignored that. Perhaps his grace was not accustomed to having the worth of his requests evaluated. In fact, she'd taken an immediate dislike to the man. But Kaya would happily take an unpleasant nobleman's money for ridding the world of one more soul who couldn't be bothered to finish their business when they had the chance.

"Did you bring the building plans?"

One of the servants stepped forward with a cylindrical wooden case, but Revari held up a hand.

"I did," he said. "The originals and the renovations. But I keep asking myself...why you need them. They seem more suited to thievery than ghost hunting."

Kaya laughed.

"You calling me a thief?"

"Well—I mean, really, what else are they good for?"

She leaned forward.

"If you don't trust me, don't let me into your house," she said. "I can always find another client. And you can either find someone else with my very unusual skill set or live with your dear mother's ghost forever."

"There's no need for that," said Revari stiffly. "I meant nothing by it."

"Oh, good," said Kaya. She took the wooden cylinder from the servant's hand and tucked it under one arm. "Has the spirit been favoring any particular part of the house? Your mother's chambers, perhaps, or the room where she died?"

"She's been seen all over the house," said Revari. He paused a moment, seeming to consider, then said: "From what I've heard, however...east wing. Second floor. Not her chambers. Could be where she died, I suppose."

"And have you seen this ghost yourself?"

"No," said Revari. "Since receiving reliable reports of the haunting, I've not set foot in the house, for obvious reasons."

"Obvious?"

"I'm the interloper, aren't I?" said Revari. "If the old harridan is clinging to her property, I'm sure she'd have it out for me in particular."

"Could be," said Kaya. "Anything else I ought to know?"

"Not that I can think of," said Revari. "You'll do this tonight?"

"Tomorrow night," said Kaya. She patted the case of building plans. "Proper preparation takes time."

"Very well," said Revari. "Inform me as soon as the deed is done, regardless of the hour. I'll sleep far more soundly knowing that my mother is well and truly laid to rest."

"As you like," said Kaya. "Then all that's left is the matter of payment. Half down, as I said in my letter."

"Ah yes," said Revari, with obvious distaste.

He withdrew a bag from beneath the table. Kaya took it without looking inside. It wasn't as if the man was in any position to cheat her.

"I was wrong," he said. "At this price, you're not a thief. You're an extortionist."

"Exorcist, your grace," said Kaya, smiling broadly. "It's pronounced exorcist."

She took her money and the building plans, rose, bowed to the nobleman with an exaggerated flourish, and walked out.

Kaya woke the next evening as the light from the setting sun peeked through the gap she'd left in the curtains. She'd spent the night in her little room at an inn, drinking cold tea and studying the house plans, then slept through the day. There was just no sense hunting ghosts in the daytime. Some of them wouldn't or couldn't come out, and others would but weren't substantial enough during the daylight hours to actually fight with.

Kaya lit a candle, yawned, and splashed her face with water from a basin. She rolled out the building plans and studied them one last time, humming an old ballad and unwinding the knots she'd put her hair in to sleep.

The plans had yielded no real surprises. It was a textbook High Troscan manor, with a few Anvar-era flourishes thrown in after the fact. All pretty standard for a house of this age in one of Paliano's less fashionable minor fiefdoms. The renovations were going to be the real challenge—Revari had provided both the original design and the plan the builders were working toward, but there was no indication how much work had actually been done before the workers had fled.

She donned her jacket, checked that her two rondel daggers were well oiled, and securely sheathed them on her forearms. The candle had burned down by then. She blew it out, poured wax into a tray, shaped it into two little globs, and tucked them in a jacket pocket.

She examined herself in the looking glass and saw a well-rested, fully prepared ghost hunter. Perhaps a bit cocky. Perhaps.

[picture]

Art by Chris Rallis

Out the little door and down the stairs, then, to the common room of the inn where she was staying—a rather nicer one than the Wasp's Nest. The barkeep, a stout woman with a missing eye, gestured to her.

"Mail for you," she said, handing over an unmarked envelope. "Hand delivered."

Kaya raised an eyebrow. The list of people who even knew how to contact her here was not a long one. She opened the envelope and unfolded the single sheet within. It wasn't a letter, exactly; in fact, it bore no writing at all, just a symbol. The Black Rose.

Her heartbeat quickened. So it was time—time for the big job, the one she'd been preparing for since last year. She knew where her next big payday was coming from, then...assuming she could actually pull it off.

She thanked the barkeep with a copper coin and walked out the door with a spring in her step.

She arrived at the manor as twilight gave way to full dark. One of Revari's pages unlocked the gate and the house doors for her, then fled the grounds as quickly as he could. The mahogany double doors swung open with a loud creak. She shut them behind her with heavy finality, then withdrew the wax plugs from her pockets and worked them into her ears. Call it a hunch.

[picture]

Art by James Paick

Kaya flicked her hand, and a trio of will-o'-the-wisps sprang from her fingers. They weren't true wisps, just lights, but they wandered around her as though they had minds of their own, sending cold light and deep shadows dancing silently around the entryway.

Kaya walked through the entryway and into the receiving room. Her muffled footsteps echoed in the stillness. From the high ceiling hung a chandelier, which she opted not to walk directly beneath. One of the curving staircases was modern in style, brand new; the other had been torn out and not yet replaced. The whole place smelled of dust and age. She stepped over a hodgepodge of artisan's tools, shattered plates, and shredded paintings. So Dear Mother was one of those ghosts.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Ghost!"

Her voice echoed through empty hallways and was lapped up by lush carpets, fading back to silence.

Fine.

Cautiously, with her wisps bobbing behind her, she walked up the curving staircase step by creaking step. She paused on the balcony at the top of the stairs. To her right lay the western side of the house, given over to bedrooms, maids' quarters, and all the other amenities of noble life. To her left lay the east wing, which mirrored the west but was broken into a warren of guest bedrooms, sitting rooms, and libraries.

She headed left with a purposeful stride, counting her steps. Whatever the phantom was protecting in the east wing, her best chance of finding the thing was to threaten that area directly.

Beyond the balcony was a long hallway, with sitting rooms down one side and a large double door at the end. Behind the other wall, according to the plans, ran a long, cramped servants' passage. There'd been no construction here, and the carpeted floor was clear except for a shattered tea service dropped by some terrified butler. Kaya stepped around it.

"I know you're here!"

This time, a chill wind blew through the hallway, accompanied by a keening wail that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"Very spooky!" said Kaya. "Want to rattle some windows? Maybe throw some plates around?"

Most spirits hated the living, and almost all of them hated being mocked.

A spectral form appeared most of the way down the hallway, as though a curtain had blown open. She looked like an old woman, glowing and translucent, her features distorted by death and rage. Her frail arms ended in slashing claws, and her shawl trailed off into something like a tail. Her sweet-old-lady face was split by a maw full of needle-sharp teeth. She hovered not by the double doors at the end of the hallway, but outside one of the doors along its length. Kaya took note of which one.

[picture]

Art by John Avon

"There you are!" said Kaya.

The ghost screamed at her, a piercing shriek that slammed into her like a physical thing. Doors rattled, and somewhere a glass shattered. Kaya winced from it—but that was all, thanks to the wax in her ears.

She drew her rondel daggers and pushed their blades beyond the physical, into the realm of the dead. They glowed purple-white and grew cold in her hands.

"Yeah, no," she said. "Fun's over. Get out, and don't come back."

The ghost screamed again and charged her.

Oh well. That almost never worked, but Kaya felt like she had to give them the chance.

The hallway wasn't wide enough to dodge the ghost's raking claws. Kaya imagined the blueprints, walking her fingers across them, counting steps. Left: library. No good. Too many loose objects a poltergeist-inclined spirit could send flying at her. To the right, then. Servants' passage. Tight squeeze.

[picture]

Art by Andrew Robinson

She waited until Dear Mother was almost within striking distance, then sprang to the right.

This...was not the fun part.

She started with her hand, already holding the dagger. The ghostly light and deathly chill spread up her arm, almost to the shoulder, as her hand, dagger and all, passed into the realm of the dead and through the wall. By the time her shoulder went through, her hand was in the servants' passage. She brought the hand back to physicality, let it anchor her to the realm of the living.

The ghostly light consumed her head and body, bright and cold. She pulled her trailing arm and leg through and brought herself back to the world of the living, slamming into the far side of the cramped little passage with her now-corporeal shoulder. The whole motion took, perhaps, a heartbeat. Not that her heart actually beat, when she stepped out like that. She didn't dare stay long.

She spun and dove back through the wall, back into the main hall, as the confused phantom flew past where she'd been a moment ago, trailing that shawl.

She lit up one of her daggers and pinned the shawl to the wall.

The ghost lurched to a stop, screaming, and turned to stare at her with dead white eyes.

"Hi," said Kaya.

The ghost struck, but Kaya blocked with the other dagger, stabbing it through the ghost's gnarled palm. Dead eyes grew wide.

That was the fun part—watching an undying, insubstantial phantom realize it had messed with someone who could fight back.

Dear Mother twisted away from her, howling and snarling, tearing the shawl free of Kaya's dagger. Shawl and hand both leaked trails of glimmering smoke—ghost blood, more or less. Then the ghost was gone, spiraling up through the hallway ceiling.

Kaya could do a lot of things a ghost could do, but she couldn't do that. She turned and ran toward the door where the ghost had first appeared.

Dear Mother boiled up out of the floor ahead of her, and Kaya threw herself left, through the wall, into what had looked like some kind of bedroom in the plans. It had been scheduled for a remodel, but nothing drastic—

The bedroom had no floor. It was just an open pit lined with jutting timbers. Kaya glimpsed a half-finished spiral staircase before she went over the edge. That had not been in the plans.

Secrets! Why did nobles always insist on keeping secrets?

Kaya dropped one of her daggers—no time to sheath it—and spun, catching one of the timbers with her free right hand. The dagger landed down on the first floor with a clatter.

She surveyed her situation as her wisp-lights caught up with her. Her feet were dangling maybe six feet above an uneven floor, her hand aching from taking all her weight at once. In front of her was some kind of crawlspace, maybe a foot and a half high, between the floors. She sheathed the dagger in her off hand. She could probably land without turning an ankle, but only probably—and even then, she'd be back down on the first floor.

Above her, the phantom flew screaming through the wall, then floated in a moment of confusion. The shawl-tail dangled tantalizingly close. Kaya swung herself back and forth once, twice. Always have a plan...

...never rely on it. She let go of the timber, reached out into the chilly realm of the dead, and closed spectral hands around the spectral shawl.

She'd caught the ghost by surprise, and it lurched downward a foot or two, snarling and spinning. Then it was up toward the third floor in dizzying flight, through what should have been a bedroom, screaming at the indignity. Kaya didn't want to hitch a ride for long—the ghost could drag her all sorts of nasty places. Straight up, for instance. She judged the ghost's spin, timed her jump, and let go of the phantom's tail.

She passed through a side wall of the bedroom-turned-deadfall, tucked, and rolled on the floor of the room beyond it. People tended to underestimate the amount of acrobatics involved in ghost hunting.

She sprang to her feet and drew her remaining dagger. She'd lost count of her steps, but if she'd seen correctly, this was the room the ghost had appeared outside.

The place had been some kind of tea room, but it was completely wrecked. Splintered furniture lay everywhere, and the ground crunched with broken glass and shards of porcelain. And in one corner, a little pile of debris...

Dear Mother flew shrieking through the wall just as Kaya put it all together.

East wing. Not the mother's chambers. Crawl space. And now a strange little pile of detritus in one corner of an otherwise ordinary room the ghost seemed to care very much about.

Kaya took a fighting stance with her dagger out in front of her, glowing with ghostlight. The spirit veered away this time, howling, now keenly aware that Kaya could hurt it.

"Wait!" said Kaya, edging toward the corner.

Most spirits were too twisted by rage or grief to be reasoned with, but maybe...

Dear Mother screamed again, and shards of glass and porcelain jittered on the floor.

Kaya dove behind a heavy toppled hutch as every piece of loose shrapnel in the room flew toward her. The shards slammed into the hutch, and she felt a few of them snag in her hair. Dear Mother would be right behind...

Kaya leapt toward the corner, glimpsing a ruined portrait, some jewelry, and floorboards with long, deep scratches in them.

"I said wait!" yelled Kaya, holding out a hand. "I understand!"

This time, the ghost paused.

Keeping her eyes on the ghost, Kaya pushed aside the detritus, jammed her dagger between two of the ragged floorboards, and pried. She pulled up one board, then another.

There, in the crawlspace, was the withered corpse of an old woman. The ghost wailed, and this time it sounded more like grief than anger. Kaya looked at the corpse, then back up at the ghost. The resemblance was striking.

[picture]

Art by Dave Kendall

Kaya glanced at the things she had brushed aside. Men's jewelry, rings and cufflinks. A shirt, tailored for a man, torn to ribbons. A portrait, also shredded, of a nobleman posing. And among the jewelry...

A signet ring. A familiar signet ring.

"Son of a—"

Kaya waited in the fully lit entryway of Don Revari's modest but unhaunted townhouse, standing and resisting the urge to tap her foot. She ran her hands through her hair, picking out what she hoped was the last of the porcelain shards and tucking them in her pockets. Better her hair than her scalp, at any rate.

It was nearly midnight, but she'd been ushered in. And despite the lateness of the hour, Revari himself appeared in the entryway, fully dressed and wearing a coat.

"It's done?" he asked. Avarice gleamed in his eyes.

"After tonight, Don Revari, your mother will rest in peace."

"Take me there," he said. "I want to see the house."

"Weren't we talking about trust?" said Kaya, with open indignation.

"You've performed a valuable service," said Revari. "I can't be faulted for wishing to inspect your work before remitting payment."

"Fine," said Kaya. "Bring the money, though. I'm not coming all the way back here."

"As you wish," said Revari icily.

It wasn't a long walk, but Revari opted to use a carriage, with a driver and a bodyguard riding in front and Kaya and himself inside. Revari asked a string of questions about her work, apparently out of no more than simple curiosity and the conviction shared by so many nobles that everything was their business if they wanted it to be.

"Does it leave...remains? When you kill them?"

"Every ghost is different," said Kaya, not for the first time. "In this case, yes, there's a physical residue."

"Ah," said Revari. "I'll want to see that. Should it be...buried?"

"That's between you and your religion," said Kaya. "I'm not that kind of exorcist."

What Kaya did was seen as blasphemous by some, a disruption of the natural order of life beyond death. But in other belief systems it was the ghosts themselves who were disrupting the natural order, and Kaya who was setting things right. She'd been showered with blessings some places and run out of town in others, all for doing the same thing. Whatever the ultimate destiny of the dead on any given world, it was Kaya's personal conviction that they weren't fulfilling it by hanging around being a nuisance to the living.

[picture]

Art by James Paick

Revari nodded with satisfaction. His own deeply held religious beliefs, she suspected, called for not paying for another funeral unless he had to.

They arrived at the manor. The bodyguard, the driver, and Kaya's payment remained with the carriage, and Revari followed Kaya to the door. He'd brought a lantern, so Kaya didn't bother with wisps.

The scene in the entryway was the same as before. Revari murmured in distress as he surveyed the debris.

"It'll take a month just to clean up this mess so remodeling can resume," he said. "And that's assuming I can get the workers back in the door."

He turned to Kaya.

"Would you be willing to, ah, attest to your handiwork? Tell them it's safe to return?"

"I could be persuaded," said Kaya, which only set Revari to murmuring again.

They ascended the staircase, Revari swinging the lantern around like a nervous young hunter on his first night in the woods. He paused at the top of the stairs.

"You'll want to examine the east wing, I'm sure," said Kaya. "Your tip-off was very helpful. That's where I found her."

"Yes," said Revari. "Yes, of course. And you're...certain it's safe?"

"Safe as your own house, your grace."

He nodded and crept into the east wing, lantern bobbing. He jumped at every gust of wind and creak of the floorboards. Kaya walked beside him.

"Here we are," said Kaya, gesturing to the closed door of the room where she'd found the old woman's body.

"Here?" said Revari.

"This is where it happened," said Kaya.

Revari's breathing quickened.

"You go in first," he said.

Kaya smiled reassuringly, opened the door, and stepped through. Revari peered through the door, then stepped through slowly. He held the lantern high, the shadows of the room's ruined furniture looming crazily.

Very quietly, Kaya closed the door behind him.

"Now then," he said, dry-throated, looking around. "Where is this—"

He stared into the corner where Kaya had pried up the floorboards, then spun to face her.

"What is this?" he spat. "What is this?"

"I know what you did," said Kaya. Her voice was quiet, measured, calm.

Revari's face was red, his veins bulging.

"Whatever it is you're trying to extort from me—"

"I don't want anything from you, kinslayer," said Kaya. She nodded, over his shoulder. "She's the one you ought to be worried about."

Dear Mother had appeared, sorrowful and timeless, behind her wayward son. Revari turned. Kaya covered her ears.

[picture]

Art by Lars Grant-West

"No," he said. "No. Please, Mother—"

The ghost screamed, and Revari fell to his knees, clutching his head. The lantern clattered to the ground. Kaya picked it up and blew it out, so the room was lit only by the cold light of the dead.

Revari turned to her, still on his knees, eyes wide.

"Help me," he said. "I'll pay you—I'll pay double!"

"Your own mother," said Kaya. "You can rot in hell."

His mother's ghost advanced on him slowly, with a flair for the theatric that Kaya could appreciate. Revari edged away on his elbows until he bumped into the closed door.

"You liar," he said. "I paid you to, to, to fix this! Stop her! Do your job!"

"I'm defaulting, with cause," said Kaya. She hadn't lied to him, not quite, but she hadn't actually done the job either. "I'll tell your underlings they can keep the other half."

He snarled and lunged at her, but her legs went ghostly, and he went straight through them and sprawled out behind her with a strangled cry.

"Please—"

Then his mother's wailing ghost was upon him with those needle teeth and those dagger claws. Kaya walked through the closed door in a flash of purple-white light, leaving mother and son to their sad, sorry business. Kaya smoothed her jacket, turned, and walked away.

Behind her, Emilio Revari began to scream, and kept screaming as she walked down the stairs, across the ruined entryway, through the thick, wooden doors of the manor, and into the night beyond.

6

Tyrants

By Alison Luhrs

Adriana is the captain of the guard of the High City of Paliano, a post that puts her in the service of the ghost king, Brago. But recently, she has begun to question the king's actions; he's crueler in his death than he was in life. It's clear from rumblings around the city that others share her doubts.

Old habits die hard, and the hardest habits to kill are those that belong to the dead. Adriana, captain of the guard of the High City of Paliano, knew this better than most. She stood dutifully at her post, at the shoulder of the great King Brago. He had grown paranoid in his afterlife (a curious reaction to becoming immortal) and requested his captain attend him even in his times of counsel. Adriana was now in the great dining hall—an imposing stone chamber that echoed more than it warmed. It wasn't cozy, but the king preferred holding his meetings here for one reason or another. He seemed comforted by its large banners bearing the mark of his city, its swords and signets displayed on the walls. Brago seemed strangely content to spend his death hovering among the things he used to touch and wield. He never seemed sad that he could not hold them—he never seemed sad about anything anymore. He felt plenty of other things, but pity wasn't one of them. It was not a captain's place to question her king, so Adriana leaned to the left and stretched out a cramp in her right calf as she waited on the king to finish playing pretend.

King Brago sat at the head of his dining room table before a clean plate and sparkling silverware, whispering quietly and patiently with two Custodi ghosts who hovered in the chairs to his left. The voices of the dead often grew quiet with age, and from Adriana's position near the back of the room, the clinking of her armor made the only noise in the hall. The three ghosts were discussing church business, and out of some bastardization of habit were doing so in front of glittering empty place settings. As they moved their hands in conversation they would curiously maneuver around the array of empty glasses and barren goblets.

Adriana had served the king for many years. She knew that even in death he retained a sort of muscle memory with regard to the customs of the living. Ghosts weren't anything special, but no one ever purposefully ended up one. When he retained his title after death, Adriana was left with a frightening realization. If her lord would never die, she was doomed to serve him her whole life. Captains in the past had grown close to several generations of royalty, yet she was doomed to only one. Paliano's throne was disrupted. Succession had hiccupped long ago.

Memory of this discovery did not soothe the cramp in her leg.

Every now and then she caught a word or two exchanged between the ghosts. They seemed to be discussing the success in their elimination of cogwork from the streets of Paliano. They seemed pleased with the closing of the Academy, happy that those who stood against them were absent or dead.

She had been ordered to help quell the insurrection then. To dismantle the Academy, to purge the pursuit of invention and innovation from the city.

A whisper of guilt traveled through Adriana's mind. The king she served in his life had become cruel in his death. She would never admit it out loud, but she knew it in her heart.

The ghosts' business concluded, the Custodi rose, and Adriana strode forward to escort them out. A servant girl entered behind her to clear the plates (Do they clean them again anyway? Isn't that a tremendous waste of soap? Adriana wondered). King Brago nodded discreetly at his captain, and Adriana acknowledged by leading the clergy out of the dining hall and into the hallway. The two moved cautiously, with more of a chill to the air around them than normal. The manner all around the three was ill at ease.

Three minutes into the walk down the hallway, the two ghosts stopped in front of the main door. "Captain Adriana..." they whispered. Adriana stilled. She had never been addressed directly by the Custodi before.

The Custodi nearest her raised their hands in benediction. Ghostly fingers tapped chills on her skin—shoulder, shoulder, forehead. Adriana received the blessing willingly, but wondered absently why they were departing with such a formal goodbye.

The spirits departed, and Adriana turned, happy to relieve the cramp in her leg with a brief walk. A sudden but distant crash caught her ear and she walked briskly to the source—the cloakroom? The pantry? The scullery!

The servant girl from before held a mound of plates and silverware in her arms and was throwing them into the rubbish chute, one porcelain treasure after another, their journeys ending with a distant shatter into the trash heap at the end.

"Girl!" Adriana yelled.

The waif dropped a saucer in shock.

"What are you doing? Those are the property of the crown."

"Boss told us that Her Ladyship didn't like the plates," the girl said through alarmed eyes.

Her Ladyship?

"There is no queen in this castle."

"Boss said I wasn't supposed to say anything about Her Ladyship to you."

Adriana's hand gripped the hilt of her sword and turned on her heel, walking quickly up the stairs back to the great dining hall. The sound of more plates being tossed down the chute echoed in the stone hall behind her. The chilly goosebumps where the Custodi had blessed her began to feel more and more like a preemptive apology.

Her eyes raced to the other servants she passed. One hurriedly looked away. Another snuck through a passage to the servants' quarters. One was shaking out a fresh banner—a thorny rose sewn onto plush velvet—and Adriana broke into a full run toward her king.

The leather of her soles pounded the stone underfoot and the edges of her armor clanged together in her hurry, and as she burst into the great dining hall she skidded to a stupefied halt.

In the moment she reacted immediately, but in memory it was a tiny eternity, pregnant with significance.

At the other end of the great dining hall, a resolute woman in a strange jacket was braced in a full-body grimace, her firm arms gripping the shoulders of King Brago (how?!) and a rondel dagger buried deep in the neck of her king. For the first time in her life, Adriana was flummoxed. The woman in the strange jacket looked too solid to be a ghost, yet as she struggled to bury the dagger deeper her arms moved with a strange blur and shimmer of light. The king's mouth was open in a soundless shout. The woman changed her grip on the glimmering violet dagger and met eyes with Adriana across the room.

The captain of the guard of the High City of Paliano remembered how to breathe.

And then she remembered what her job was.

She closed the distance and lurched forward. Adriana did not know the nature of her foe, but she knew the physics of her king. She drew her sword and swung it directly through the face of King Brago in an attempt to slice through his assassin. Adrenaline and fear stretched the seconds. In the instant of her swing Adriana locked eyes with the assassin. As her sword passed harmlessly through the face of Brago, she watched as the flesh of the assassin became translucent violet, the stranger's eyes boring into Adriana's.

[picture]

Art by Chris Rallis

Her attack negated, Adriana quickly dropped her sword and lurched forward as the assassin released and dropped Brago to the ground. Adriana instinctively tried to catch her king and was stunned when it actually worked—the spiritual tie that Brago had to his armor was dying alongside him, and Adriana found herself clutching the armor with the dying spirit of her king still inside.

His death was unlike any Adriana had witnessed before. It was impossible to look away.

The crook in Brago's neck where the assassin had buried her knife was rapidly corroding, the ghostly skin deteriorating and dissipating in a violet necrosis as it spread from the throat across the form of his body. As the virus traveled over his skin it left nothing but air in its wake, and in a matter of seconds the king's form had vanished.

Brago's gently glowing crown, form made physical with the absence of its host, dropped to the ground.

His sword remained sheathed on the belt.

Where her king once lay was now a pile of abandoned, shimmering garments, glistening in Captain Adriana's arms.

The assassin looked down at Adriana with a look of slightly bored accomplishment.

[picture]

Art by Chris Rallis

Adriana grabbed Brago's sword out of its sheath. She was uncertain of the assassin's next move. The assassin stood with the lazy confidence of someone who just woke up—dressed for a night at the pub instead of a day in the fighting pits. It was hateful. Adriana rushed her, Brago's glimmering sword gripped tight in her hand.

"Villain!" she snarled.

Adriana thrust the sword directly into where the assassin's liver would be. In an instant the assassin's stomach turned a bizarre and translucent violet, the sword to passing easily through her. What should have been a life-taking injury was a minor inconvenience—the assassin grinned at Adriana's frozen shock.

Adriana collected her wits and swiftly pulled her slice upward, sword passing through the suddenly purple, unarmored torso of the assassin, through her shoulder. As her blade reached the height of its swing, Adriana took a sharp, surprising, very corporeal elbow to the jaw from the assassin. Adriana wasn't expecting that. The captain of the guard clumsily found her balance and purposefully stood back to assess her opponent.

"I was paid to hit only one mark. I'm not going to kill you," the assassin said.

Adriana's rage seethed through ragged breath. "Fight me fair, coward!"

The assassin's lips parted in an amused smile, and she returned a playful wink.

The captain of the guard responded by spitting directly at the stranger's eye.

In a flash the assassin's face shimmered with willful transparency and the spittle easily passed through to hit the wall behind her.

"Haven't had to dodge that before," the assassin said. Grinning, she stepped forward through Brago's empty armor on the floor. Her feet and shins shimmered with that same strange violet as she passed through the clutter of metal.

"You put an awful lot of effort into defending an empty suit," the assassin said with a sly drawl.

"That man was our king—"

"I heard he was an empty suit long before I put my dagger in him. And before that he was a tyrant," the assassin said. "As long as tyrants die, the chance for freedom lives."

Adriana was struck with an odd wave of guilt. She didn't know how to respond to that.

The assassin casually bowed, maintaining an amused eye contact with the captain of the guard. "Pleasure doing business with you."

The stranger straightened her jacket smartly and dropped into the floor. She descended in a quick ripple of violet. Adriana could only stare dumbly at the spot on the floor she disappeared through. The stables are directly underneath. There's no way I could catch her in time.

The great dining hall was quiet. In that silent moment, Adriana let her breath out in a sigh. Brago's armor and crown lay in a heap in the spot where he fell. No evidence remained of his spirit save the light glow that lingered on his newly corporeal armor and crown. Adriana had never seen a ghost die before—perhaps it was normal for their belongings to materialize as their spirits vanished into a second death.

None of it made sense. None of it was possible.

I was foolish to accept this positon, Adriana thought. My job was to protect the king, and I failed at protecting a man who couldn't be killed. What purpose did I serve in the first place?

The castle started to stir in realization. Banners bearing a thorny rose were unfurled. Servants came with dark curiosity to inspect the empty armor on the floor. Through it all, Adriana stayed silent at the back of the great dining hall.

Adriana's fingers grazed the hilt of Brago's sword. She supposed it would be safest in her hands.

[picture]

Art by Chris Rallis

The Custodi crowned Queen Marchesa, the First of her Name, the following day.

The ceremony was held in an immaculately decorated throne room. Banners bearing the sign of the Black Rose draped from freshly dusted rafters, new armor of thorny plates gleamed silver in the lights of candles dipped the prior week. The room was fresh with rare primroses and stunk of new clothes.

The castle staff looked at the new queen with familiarity. The Custodi obligingly went through the script of the coronation ceremony. None of the Paliano elite seemed unprepared. Everyone was ready. Everyone knew.

Adriana ached to kill each of these traitors where they stood. Every spare inch of the room bore the sigil of the new queen and it was all wrong.

Earlier that morning when she had spoken with the guard, Adriana was relieved to find all of them as deep in the dark as she was. The great secret had been hidden from them, as well, and the captain of the guard was relieved to hear that at least her company burned with the same confusion and rage she did.

They stood now at her back and attending each door. The guard had their duty to crown and church, but none of them were happy about it. Brago's sword—she wouldn't dare lose sight of it—had remained tight in her palm through the duration of the ceremony.

Marchesa, the Black Rose, stood in the middle of it all, the dazzling conductor of a hideous symphony. Her gown was prudent and her jewelry humble, save for the glimmering ghostly crown that sat atop her head. Adriana did everything she could to not roll her eyes at the obvious attempt at modest attire to please the Custodi.

As soon as the spirits were finished with the coronation and the ghostly crown of Paliano sat on Marchesa's head, Adriana moved quickly to follow her to the royal chambers. She walked upstairs and behind the new queen, past a sea of averted eyes, followed by a gaggle of handmaidens in her wake. As they walked, Adriana began to realize how much money must have gone into this endeavor. Bribes to pay off the Custodi. Money to pay off the staff. Payment for the assassin. And then there was the matter of the heaps upon heaps of rose-embroidered textiles that adorned the walls, bodies, horses of the castle.

[picture]

Art by Titus Lunter

And I had no idea. I watched for so long over the shoulder of a careless ghost and I had no idea.

Adriana gave pause.

If I had known, would I have stopped it? Brago was cruel. He deserved a second death.

Adriana studied the back of Marchesa as they all marched upstairs. What happened before would happen again. A king would be crowned, killed, replaced. A queen would be crowned, killed, replaced. And how many hundreds of her countrymen would die in the process of perpetuating this hideous cycle?

It is an endless engine.

All we are doing is feeding this awful machine.

Rage filled Adriana's heart as the realization set in and the assassin's words echoed in her mind. As long as tyrants die, the chance for freedom lives. Paliano had their chance for freedom with the death of one tyrant and instead gained another. Killing them off isn't enough. How can we turn that chance into certainty?

Marchesa stopped in front of the doors to her chamber and allowed a servant girl to usher her in. Adriana followed, patiently waiting by the door as the handmaidens helped the new queen change from the coronation gown to the gown she would wear to address the public for the first time.

Her handmaidens disassembled her, revealing layer after hidden layer. Gown. Partlet. Farthingale. Kirtle. Petticoat. Bodice. When she was down to her stockings and shift, the handmaidens built her back up again, this time in garments more luxurious and finely made than before. Adriana could see the stitches that hid countless inner pockets, the secret lining to conceal pouches of rare poisons. Bodice. Petticoat. Kirtle. Farthingale. Partlet. Gown. The handmaidens topped the endless opulence by securing a chest plate.

There was no seduction in this chore, only a simple dominance when the queen met eyes with her captain of the guard. Endless layers containing endless secrets. Do you see how much I carry? Can you fathom how much I hide?

Once the last stay was tightened, Marchesa shooed her handmaidens out. Adriana stood tall and firm in stance before the velvet-drenched queen of the High City of Paliano.

"I sense you have words for me," the poisonmaster cooed. "My coronation speech to the citizens begins shortly, so please be quick with my time."

"This isn't how right of succession works."

"This isn't how right of succession works, your highness."

Adriana swallowed a snarl. "The Custodi claimed you were named in King Brago's will as his heir. You know I am no scholar, so perhaps you can be the one to explain to me why a ghost would need a will."

The new queen smiled. Her answer came easily. "The undying have no need to protect their assets, of course. But the Custodi was very willing to accept properly filed legal documents."

The captain of the guard's armor clinked as she stepped forward. "Brago had descendants, his daughters are—"

"Old and weak-willed. Their sons and daughters are just as bad. I dealt with them a while ago, however, and it just so happened that my name was next in the line of succession."

Her name? Marchesa's family was small and distant in the royal family tree. Adriana felt nauseated. She held her ground as Marchesa calmly strode to the vanity near her, sitting daintily to apply an oxblood-red stain to her lips.

The question escaped without restraint. "How many of the other successors did you kill?"

"I only killed Brago," Marchesa said with an admissive eye roll. "Well, Kaya killed Brago. Paid her good money for it, too. The rest of the former king's family received a very generous grievance and the Custodi will receive a healthy tithing during each year of my reign."

The queen stood and smiled through venom-painted lips, "I pray that everyone who claimed me a fallen daughter of a fallen house enjoyed their fall from the High City."

Adriana had stared down many a foe over her years of service. She had dealt with her share of household pests as well. This snake was no different. "Our city will not turn over to you so easily."

"They already have," Marchesa said plainly. She stood from the vanity and opened a chest under the window. From where Adriana stood she could see, peeking out of the interior of the chest, a brilliant and shining suit of armor. The queen lifted the black-rose-adorned breastplate so the captain could inspect it from where she stood. It was clearly built for her.

"You already know I'm not putting that on."

"I felt I should offer it at least."

Adriana shook her head in disbelief. "And what about the people?"

"They will adore me," Marchesa said, leaving the chest to return to her vanity. Despite only having ten fingers, she seemed to require thirty rings.

Adriana's heart quickened with rage. "And what if they don't adore you?"

Marchesa obviously hadn't considered that. She met Adriana's eyes as the captain continued.

"What if you step out to deliver your coronation speech and are met with a thousand citizens calling you a tyrant?"

"Then I will be tyrannical."

Adriana refused to let her eyes leave the gaze of the queen. "You won't kill me. If you do, my guard will retaliate without a second thought."

Marchesa shrugged and returned to applying rings. "Unfortunately, your deduction is correct. It is in my best interest to allow you to live," she said, her eyes shifting up. "It is in your best interest to stay in line."

Adriana spat in the Queen's face.

This time, the spit hit its target.

The Black Rose, for once in her life, did not see it coming. She sat in stunned horror, a shaking hand wiping saliva from her eye as Adriana grabbed the new armor from the chest and left.

Adriana wasted no time in letting her feelings be known.

She immediately went to where the rest of her guard was stationed and told them to find her after the coronation speech. She then made haste for the stables and tied the dreadful rose-adorned breastplate to a rope, hitching it to the back of her saddle to drag in the dirt behind her.

Adriana mounted her horse and began to ride.

The crowd making their way to the queen's speech parted in front of her. Look at your captain, Adriana thought, and look at what I think of your new queen.

In the distance she could hear Marchesa's speech, amplified for all to hear. "The former captain has retired, with thanks from our fair city and a generous pension from the throne that will support her for the rest of her life, however long that may be."

Adriana rolled her eyes and urged her horse to move on. She rode towards the Thieves' Quarter, past hundreds of her fellow citizens, and felt overcome as she rode to make a speech of her own. She slowed to a stop, looking out over the confused and alarmed faces of her people. From atop her horse Adriana felt a power she had always allowed others to wield. She was tired of standing by while those around her grasped control.

She spoke to the crowded Thieves' Quarter with unassailable conviction. "Marchesa would have you stand with her, in service to a true crown resting upon a false head, and thereby she would make you a traitor!"

Adriana raised the sword of Brago and beat the symbol of her city on her shield. "If her flag is not your flag, then do not bow to it. If her rule is illegitimate, then so too are her laws. If she is not truly queen, then the servants of the throne are no better than her spies and assassins, and should be treated accordingly!"

The crowd hummed with agreement, and Adriana's spirit flew. They are sick of the engine, too.

In the weeks that followed, Brago's forced peace gave way to Marchesa's deep unrest. Those who served in Brago's guard broke their oaths to the crown under cover of darkness to patrol the streets and provide protection for the citizens. With the setting sun came a switching of sigils, and the symbol of the city became a reliable marker for who could be trusted in the night.

"Do you stand with the city?" the graffiti would ask passers-by in quiet places of the city. The citizens of the High City heard the rumors and felt the disquiet. They listened to the decrees of a poisonmaster-queen and the hiss of corruption her supporters sowed. The citizens heard it all, and Adriana heard it the loudest. But after her declaration in the Thieves' Quarter, she held her tongue. Her voice was not the one to ultimately rule the people. I am the hand that guards the voice, she knew. I am the one who listens for trouble.

And so, three moons after the night of the regicide, she traveled under cloak and cover of darkness to the home of the person she knew could help.

Adriana hadn't slept in days. She had been listening. Listening to her guard, listening to her citizens, listening for what the people needed and why they weren't being treated with respect by a leader who should love them. All that listening had proven one thing: Paliano didn't need a monarchy that hid itself behind castles and assassins. It needed a leader who understood Fiora at large.

Reaching her destination, Adriana quietly rapped on an ornate door built of sturdy foreign wood. The door creaked, and she was let inside by a face anyone in Paliano would know instantly.

[picture]

Art by Jesper Ejsing

The elven explorer Selvala stood on the other side of the door and glanced over her unexpected guest.

"Adriana. You come with news?"

"I come with a proposition."

Selvala took a second to assess the former captain. She nodded, and quietly showed Adriana in.

Selvala's home was quaint and modest; a traveler's home away from home.

Adriana left her cloak near the door and joined the elf at a table in front of a wood stove. Selvala, through the habit of her people, silently waited for the former captain of the guard to state her business.

There are no other options, Adriana knew. If she will not say yes then the future of our city is lost to tyrants forever.

Adriana accepted a small mug of tea the elf had set on the tabletop. She looked Selvala in the eye and built up the courage for the most important pitch she had ever given. "Paliano's monarchy isn't stable. It is an endless, murderous engine of violence," Adriana said, voice steady and confident in the privacy of the elf's home.

Selvala nodded. A small movement heavy with affirmation.

"If we as citizens wish to live for the possibility of freedom, that engine must be halted. You are well-respected among the people and a uniting force for our city," Adriana continued, "the finest nominee for a senator I can think of."

Selvala's eyes widened in half-contained surprise.

Adriana leaned forward in her chair, heart burning with the conviction of an entire city. She allowed a rare smile to escape her lips as she asked the most important question she would ever ask in her life.

"Will you help us build the Republic of Paliano?"

7

Proclamation by Queen Marchesa

By Kelly Digges

[picture]

Art by Kieran Yanner

People of the High City!

It is my solemn duty to inform you that Brago, King of Paliano, is no more. His death shocked the city all those years ago; his spiritual continuance brought joy and relief to us all. Now, he has at last passed truly and forever beyond the veil. His long reign has come to an end, and his spirit is finally granted the eternal rest it deserves.

In his beneficent wisdom, our late king appointed a successor with the will and the strength to bring peace to his beloved city. As his designated heir, recognized by the sacred order of Custodi as his one true successor, I vow to uphold the laws of Paliano, to maintain order in the city, and to see that justice is served swiftly and even-handedly. Though I know that I will never be a worthy heir to a man whose commitment to his city transcended life itself, I must hope that, with the blessings of the Custodi, I am able to guide our fair city to a new age of prosperity.

The transfer of power is always difficult, and all the more so when the end of a monarch's reign comes unexpectedly. Even loyal and steadfast servants of the crown may find themselves ill-equipped to serve a new monarch in the same capacity as the old. As of now, the post of Captain of the Guard is disbanded. The soldiers of this city will now report directly to me. The former captain has retired with thanks from our fair city and a generous pension from the throne that will support her for the rest of her life, however long that life may be.

In the absence of any natural heir, Brago made his intentions for the disposition of his throne quite clear. Lamentably, not all of the king's former vassals respect his final wishes. Those who might use this transition as an excuse for rebellion should know that treason will be answered, as it always has been, with the harshest punishments, while loyalty will be rewarded lavishly. May fortune smile upon Paliano!

—As proclaimed by Her Majesty Queen Marchesa, the Black Rose, first of her name, head of the council, guarantor of lawful governance, sole sovereign of the High City, true heir to the throne of Paliano and all the rights and privileges thereof

8

Proclamation by Adriana, Captain of the Guard

By Kelly Digges

[picture]

Art by Chris Rallis

Free Citizens of Paliano:

When you fell asleep last night, you were loyal. You laid down your heads as steadfast servants of the one true king of Paliano, Brago the Eternal. Perhaps you did not love him. It is not the role of a ruler to be loved. But you obeyed him, and you respected him, as any citizen should.

You awoke as unwitting traitors beneath the bloodstained banner of a usurper queen: Marchesa, the Black Rose, a known assassin and plotter, a criminal of the highest order whose veiled threats and hidden thorns have allowed her for far too long to flaunt the law of Paliano. She has made you traitors by raising her flag above the palace and placing the crown upon her treacherous brow. She has forced you to choose between loyalty to the crown and loyalty to your city.

Somehow, this vile deceiver murdered King Brago, ending his immortal existence and dispersing the essence of his spirit. Somehow, she inserted herself into the sovereign's will and testament—a document forged, no doubt, from whole cloth, for why would the King Eternal have a will at all? And if he did, why would he name the murderous daughter of a fallen house to rule in his place? Somehow, she commands the loyalty of the Custodi priests who once made the king's word manifest in the world. Alongside them stand numerous servants of the throne who cannot or dare not question her right to rule, and in the shadows lurks her own existing network of thieves, spies, saboteurs, informants, and assassins.

Already, the false queen raises her own sigil, the emblem of the Black Rose, above Paliano. She would quietly ignore the symbol of our city, the symbol Brago carried with him on the pommel of his own sword, an image so enduring, so emblematic of our city and its lawful ruler, that the Custodi consider it a religious icon in its own right. Oh, the Custodi wave it even now, and it means as little from them as it ever did. But the banners of the City Troops have already changed. You will not see that symbol in the halls of Marchesa's palace or on the shields of her defenders. She claims to rule legitimately, to have the interests of the city at heart, but the flag that has flown above us all these years is absent at her own command.

And why? The reason is simple. Marchesa has no right to that sign of our city's history, and she knows it. She wears the crown and sits upon the throne, but she does not carry the sword of Brago—the blade that bears the symbol of our city. I know this because I now carry that sword, and with it the burden of upholding law and order in Paliano. I have been stripped of my title by the traitor queen, but I do not relinquish it. I hold this sword, this symbol, this duty to defend our city from all its enemies—even and especially an enemy who sits upon the throne. I have no wish to rule, only to unseat the usurper so that we may determine our rightful sovereign in the wake of King Brago's tragic end.

Marchesa would have you stand with her, in service to a true crown that rests upon a false head, and thereby she would make you a traitor. I offer you a different path: stand with me, and with Brago, and show your loyalty to your city through your disobedience to the pretender.

If her flag is not your flag, then do not bow to it. If her rule is illegitimate, then so too are her laws. If she is not truly queen, then the servants of the throne are no better than her spies and assassins, and should be treated accordingly.

What say you, citizens of Paliano? Do you stand with the city, or with its self-proclaimed queen? Are you loyal rebels, or obedient traitors? Every day, as long as Marchesa sits upon the throne, you are one or the other. Make your choice!

—Adriana, captain of the guard

9

Bloody Instructions

By Shawn Main and Mel Li

The city of Paliano is quickly descending into political chaos. Meanwhile, the goblins Grenzo and Daretti have plans to cause chaos of a different kind.

It was a sweltering night, but the fireworks on the streets kept Paliano aglow. A lone sentry stood at his post. In the distance, the Festival of Our Sovereign Lady's Grace raged. Obscene profusions of color and light danced their way through the plaza, loudly declaring the populace's love for its new sovereign. Drink was flowing. This morning they whispered about Marchesa's legitimacy to the throne, but tonight they sang her praises.

The sentry, however, had neither song nor drink. He considered abandoning his post, but no, he remained steadfast, guarding the home of an old buffoon of a man from the fallen Academy. Royal decree had recently dissolved the institution, long considered the seat of knowledge and study. Stripped of his professional stature, the academic was now simply a citizen. A very old and very paranoid citizen. Night after night he stood here. And night after night the academic told him to remain alert. And it annoyed the guard. He knew the academic had been instrumental in bringing cogwork to Paliano, back before it was outlawed. But who would care about some forgotten relic of a dead institution?

[picture]

Art by Jason A. Engle

In an alleyway across from his post, the sentry spotted a toothy smile. A goblin, small, probably just a child, watched him. The guard waved. "Go home, kid."

The goblin slunk back into the shadows.

Then suddenly something came flying at the guard from the alleyway. Small and round. It arced through the air toward him. An overripe, mealy tomato splattered across his carefully polished armor and spilled down the plate like blood.

"Kid, get out of here!"

From the shadows of an adjacent alleyway, another missile came hurtling toward him. An apple this time, with an impact to his helmet that set his ears ringing before it bounced to the ground. He spun in the direction it came from. A volley of vegetables—heads of lettuce, bundles of carrots—sailed toward him. It was like someone had catapulted a fruit cart. From the alley, he could see a dozen squinting eyes on green faces. They chortled and laughed. The sound seemed to reverberate all around him.

"You filthy goblin scum! What's your game?"

Then from behind him, he heard something else. He spun around again to see a glass bottle sailing through the night air in his direction. It landed at his feet with a burst of liquid that erupted instantly in flames. He stumbled backward, flames burning on the street. He looked around and spotted the mob. They smiled back at him. Some held torches, some weapons, one had a cart full of rotting vegetables. Weapon raised, he raced for them. The mob turned and scattered, tripping over themselves and abandoning their cart to get away from his wrath, laughing all the while.

[picture]

Art by Jason A. Engle

Waiting in the shadows nearby, Daretti shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He watched after the fleeing guard and the goblin mob. "Buffoonery," he said. "Amateurs." The street was empty again, but the distraction hardly seemed like a certainty.

From beside him, Grenzo hobbled across the cobblestones, a hunched but hulking figure of a goblin. "They're passionate," said Grenzo, smiling, "like wildfire. You just need to get them started in the right place." He reached the unguarded door, his huge frame hoisted by his staff. Three of his tiny lackeys hurried to catch up with him.

Daretti gripped the arms of his chair. This was not the delicately orchestrated night of revenge he had planned.

Grenzo looked at the door and shook the knob. It gave a satisfying rattle of heavy metal tumblers and latches but refused to give. He grinned.

"Will you at least maintain a modicum of quiet?" Daretti hissed.

"Bah! I will have you know that I have been breaking down doors since before you had hair on your cheeks." One sharp thump from his staff and the villa door crashed to the ground. "If Marchesa wants to hang up her poisons and wear a new hat, that's her business, but if she wants to take away my keys and lock me out of my dungeons, then we're coming to the surface and we'll make our own doors." The goblins answered with a chorus of shrieking cheers.

Daretti scowled and looked over his shoulder.

"You worry too much. Embrace not knowing. Besides," said Grenzo, pointing up at the fireworks exploding overhead, "who could hear us over this squall?" Grenzo waved and his lackeys rushed in. "Go forth and claim your bounty, my beautiful cubs!" He stepped inside, alive in the darkness, soaking in the treasures of the villa.

The crowd of goblins flooded into the foyer, covering the pristine Trestian blue marble columns with kerosene fingerprints. One grabbed the hide of a rare albino feline from its artful arrangement over a chair and repurposed it into a handsome cape. From vaulted ceilings above them, framed portraits of aristocratic forebears sneered down at the mob.

Daretti entered more cautiously, maneuvering his chair around the fallen door. "Perhaps, old man, perhaps, but also consider: who could sleep through all this?"

[picture]

Art by Jason A. Engle

Upstairs, Zadrous Fimarell tossed back and forth in his bed. He could hear the pomp and grandeur outside through latched windows. Through the curtains, flashes of garish reds, blues, purples, and greens from the fireworks illuminated his room. The spectacles he'd left on his nightstand vibrated to the drumbeat of drunken parade heralds. It wasn't a sound so unfamiliar to him once.

Once. Once those heralds had trumpeted his approach. Once he'd commanded crowds of his own. Back in his Academy days. He'd been their darling. And they'd been his world. A world he moved through with ease. Family members opened doors for him and he played the system like an artist. He was never a genius, he knew that, but one invention, the universal cog (who could even say whether it was his own?), a whole lot of hand shaking, a few books, a few lectures, and he was set for life. Let the Muzzios of the world toil in their laboratories.

Until it all came crashing down...

[picture]

Art by Svetlin Velinov

Three city guards lay unconscious on the floor, pinned under a toppled bookshelf. Broken vases and mangled paintings lay all around, a sign of their fray with the goblins. As his underlings went about the task of tying up the guards, Grenzo pulled out his loot sack and returned to the wall of bookshelves.

"I thought you told me this guy was some kind of big deal. But this is all junk. Our dank sewer is more luxurious than this festering heap." With a sweep of his staff, books tumbled to the floor. He tapped at the wall behind. Nothing.

"I told you he was considered a forebear to the field of cogwork." Daretti lifted a fallen volume. He cringed. Principles of Cogwork Autonomy: A Comprehensive Treatise on Constructing Mechanical Life. Daretti thumbed through the pages, but he knew it all only too well. "But your observation is accurate. The professor was in all ways a fraud."

Grenzo moved onto an exquisitely carved rosewood desk, inlaid with opaline stones. Every drawer was carefully locked. With a heave, he brought his staff down onto the center. Splinters of rosewood flew off and locks scattered across the floor. Inside, he found nothing but stacks and stacks of papers. Daretti picked up one and read. It was a personal note from a supposed academic luminary. Full of effusive praise for Fimarell's "genius." Grenzo grabbed a handful and dropped them into his sack.

"What is your goal here, old man?" asked Daretti. "This is nothing but garbage."

"No," said Grenzo, hoisting his bag and packing it underneath the hump of his hunchback. "This is fuel."

Daretti made a face. In the volume was a folded piece of paper. He opened it. "Ha! Old man, do you know what this is? It's the blueprints for a cogwork sentry. One of the first of its kind, intended for municipal security." He laid out the sheet on the desk. "Look at these appendages, such a mess. The power requirements alone must have cost a small fortune. Garbage. Can you imagine the team of technicians it would have required to—"

"Talk! Talk! Talk! It's all garbage! Every word in here. You gave your life to the academy, you dedicated your existence to that braying pack of blowhards. You begged for scraps from them. You dedicated yourself to that apprentice Muzzio and what did he do for you? What did they all do to you? Well, the academy is dead and Muzzio is exiled. And do you know why? Because all it takes is a few open locks, a few great inventions crawling through the streets, and everyone throws away all reason." Grenzo leaned in close. "All your precious cogwork is broken, scattered, and outlawed. Everything you dedicated yourself to is dead. And we, we are the hyenas picking at its bones. Now stop acting like a scientist and start acting like a hyena."

Daretti paused. The academy seal at the bottom of the plans glittered gold. Daretti handed it back to Grenzo. Fuel. He could feel it ignite inside him. Daretti nodded. "Burn it. Burn it all. Burn the ashes. Burn the guilty. Burn the righteous."

Grenzo smiled.

Daretti eyed something among the papers on the desk. His eyes widened. He withdrew some yellowed parchment. His hands shook. "This is it, old man. This is it!" He swallowed and spoke carefully. "I believe it is time for us hyenas to stop congregating around this particular cadaver and seek a fresher one." His chair clanked into motion and carried him toward the stairs. Daretti moved with purpose now. Grenzo's smile broadened. He followed up the marble staircase.

At the top, Daretti came to a sudden stop. He dropped the papers carefully in his lap and started searching himself, turning out pockets. "I've forgotten it." He turned to Grenzo and gave a pleading look. "I must have misplaced it. We need to turn around. I could not possibly proceed without my speech."

"What? Suddenly, you can't talk?"

"No, and I am as startled as you."

"Look, smart guy, you know this."

"Grenzo, I don't. My mind is a blank. All that preparation for naught. We'll reseal the door, we'll drag the guards out, return the papers. I'll review and return tomorrow night."

"Cub, you can you can relock a door, but you can't so easily put it back on its hinges. Now say it with me, whether or not I agree: 'To be honest is a constant...'"

"Yes, yes. That's it. 'To be honest is a constant, thankless churn."

"One cannot hide..."

"One cannot hide behind honesty—"

"Goblins!" Fimarell stood in the hallway in his dressing gown, bedroom door open. Grenzo and Daretti exchanged glances. "Thieves!" Fimarell yelled and slammed the door.

They chased after him. Daretti rattled the door. Locked. He looked to Grenzo. Another thump of his staff and the door collapsed.

The elder human scientist was at the window, calling out. "Someone help me!" He turned toward them, shaking. "Filthy goblin vermin from the street! This is a respectable neighborhood and I am a respectable man!"

Daretti stared blankly. Grenzo tapped his chair with the staff. Daretti shook himself and began addressing Fimarell, "To be honest is a constant, thankless churn. One cannot hide behind honesty. Falsehood and deception is the chiefest sin for the scientist. And it is the burden of the honest to bring lies to bear and carry the falsifier to justice."

Daretti's chair extended its mechanical legs, hoisting itself off from its wheels and raising him up to nearly the height of the ceiling. In the flickering lights from the street, Daretti was like some vast spider descending upon its prey.

[picture]

Art by Victor Adame Minguez

The whimpering academic shrunk to the ground.

"You may not remember my name, nor my face, but I suspect you remember my robes and my hat. I once wore my station with pride as an agent of the highest order—knowledge, and engineering, and truth." His tone lowered. "But you would know nothing of such virtues." The chair lurched the goblin forward, bringing their faces close enough that Daretti could see the beads of sweat running down the wrinkles of the old man's face. "The academy knows your name very well. Your name is written oh so many times." He held up the papers. "Like this one."

Fimarell went white.

"Do you recognize it? Do you recognize the handwriting? You criticized it. You criticized all my words, then took them as your own. You built your career on the back of my words. How dare you call us thieves, you sham!"

Daretti's breathing was heavy. His eyes narrowed. He balled up the top page of the manuscript and shoved it into Fimarell's mouth.

From behind them, Grenzo called out in an exasperated tone, "Stop drawing this out, you green fool! This is Paliano—murder is how we get things done. Just kill him and let's get on with it."

Daretti and Fimarell eyed each other awkwardly. Daretti called back, "Will you please give me my moment?"

Grenzo raised his hands. "Fine! But I'll be starting fires until you're done talking."

Fimarell's eyes shifted between them. Daretti tried to regain his menacing composure. "I..." He stammered. "I...the career I was supposed...where was I?"

Fimarell spit out the page in his mouth. "The manuscript I stole from you..." he said cautiously.

"Oh yes," said Daretti. "Well...it's you who is the..." He paused. "Very well. Let's get on with it." Daretti reached under Fimarell's legs and heaved him up and through the window. He tumbled down two stories and landed with a heavy thump on the street below.

Daretti leaned forward and held himself by the windowsill to see the limp body. The ground was smeared red beneath it. It was done. So much time had passed since he was a young man desperate to share his words with the academy. He'd long ruminated on this moment, yet it was over in a flash.

"Not bad. Was that as cathartic as you hoped?" Grenzo was beside him again. He held a large ornate pot under one arm and a burning torch in the other.

"I believe it might have been. Next time...let me finish."

Grenzo held up the pot. It was stuffed full of refuse. Daretti picked up the pages of his manuscript and dropped them in. Grenzo dropped the torch after them. The pot ignited with a crackle.

"One last step." Grenzo hoisted the pot to the window. Burning garbage rained down onto the Paliano street. Somewhere in the city, the fireworks had begun again.

[picture]

Art by Steve Prescott

Downstairs, Grenzo's minions had cleared out anything of value and were now smashing apart furniture. They swept it into the corners with heaps of paper and books. One poured oil over the pile.

Daretti and Grenzo descended the staircase. "Well, good work, my protégé. You'll make a fine goblin yet."

Daretti recoiled. "Your protégé? No, no, no. Let's be clear here. You are my enforcer."

"Bah! You wish! More like you're my crony."

"Crony?!"

"Boss," interrupted one of the goblin lackeys, holding a torch aloft. "Er...bosses. Are you ready?"

"We'll discuss this later, Grenzo," said Daretti. "Yes, burn it, please. Burn it all down."

The flames caught quickly and the fire crackled, crawling up the walls. Daretti shook his head. "Let's head home." He sighed. "Back underground."

"Who's next on your list?"

"His name's Alendis. Told me the Academy wasn't ready for a goblin. Told me I was bad for their reputation. Sounds like the oily bastard joined the Custodi."

"Well, if that means he's in league with Marchesa, then he's on my list too." Grenzo stepped out of the house and back into the garden. Daretti followed.

"Okay, you old crank. How about right-hand man?"

The air crackled. Fire burned behind them. Already goblins were scattering in every direction. "The queen used to run in shadows," said Grenzo, looking up at the smoky sky. "She knew the game. She knew the sweet twist of a knife. Now she's got her comfy chair and locks every door at night. At least she knows how to throw a party."

"I suppose everyone leaves the shadows eventually."

"We should crash a party. We should crash all their parties." Overhead, pyrotechnics lit the sky in reds, blues, and greens. Daretti fanned himself with one hand. The night remained swelteringly hot.

10

Leovold’s Dossiers

By Nik Davidson

In these uncertain times in Paliano, information is as valuable as any treasure, and no one knows that better than Ambassador Leovold of Trest. He will exchange what he has collected with the right people, for the right price.

MARCHESA'S ASCENT

Party planning takes time. Why, the last time we held an event at the embassy, I spent a week doing nothing but negotiating with interior designers and patissiers to ensure that our decorative emblems were correct and complementary shades of blue. The queen claims that Brago left a will naming her his heir, which is laughable enough (I don't mean to disparage the spectrally advanced, but estate planning rarely enters into their concerns), but let's talk about the true proof of her deception—on the very day that she announces her ascension, the throne room is immediately decorated in Black Rose tapestries, the guards all have Black Rose emblems on their shields, there are Black Rose flags flying over the capital. The citizens are openly wondering how she managed to convince the Custodi to legitimize her crowning, but I just want to know how she managed to commission this much embroidery from every seamstress and tailor in the city to without anyone noticing.

[picture]

Art by Titus Lunter

Now to the matter of Brago's death. (Second death? Additional death? I didn't know we needed a term for this, but apparently we do.) My access to the new queen's court has been limited, but the best picture I can piece together from rumor and innuendo is as follows: an assassin infiltrated the palace, by some accounts walking through stone walls, in order to reach Brago's chambers. Exactly how you kill (permanently kill? Extra kill? I'm going to task a writer to come up with a term for this, or it will drive me mad) a ghost remains unknown, but visitors to court say that the new queen's crown seems to glow with the same spectral energy that used to be associated with the visage of Brago himself.

[picture]

Art by Kieran Yanner

More information will be forthcoming once my associate can re-establish lines of communication with this new monarch. Forgive the cliché, but we must reach out carefully, as this rose is defined not by her petals but by her thorns.

Leovold

SELVALA OF ALBERON

A delightful young woman whose taste in hats is beyond compare, Selvala has twice been brought into conflict with the city she tries so very earnestly to love. She drafted the Charter alongside Brago (back when he was several notches more alive than today) and guided it through ratification. Her thanks came in the form of betrayal and imprisonment. She retreated to the hinterlands, only to be drawn into the city's affairs once more as the nobles of Paliano took to using exotic beasts as replacements for Muzzio's artificial servants.

I spoke to Selvala at a riverside cafe and extended our hand in friendship—did you know that she still has cousins in Trest with whom she corresponds regularly? (A summary of those correspondences has been made available through the State Security Act, and are available for review.) We spoke at length of her current predicament—the newly minted queen will not entertain Selvala's presence in court, and she has little interest in allying with Captain Adriana, due to the latter's indifference to issues that she holds dear.

[picture]

Art by Tyler Jacobson

I suggested that perhaps Paliano had been ruled by humans and their ghosts for too long, and that it might be time for someone capable who truly cared about harmonious rule to assume a caretaker role. She replied with a look that I know well: ambition, not for its own sake, but to right a greater wrong...with just a touch of anger to fan the flames. Before we parted, I made it clear that her cousins back in Trest would be extremely interested in supporting her in any of her future endeavors, whatever they might be.

Leovold

CAPTAIN ADRIANA VALLORE (RET.)

I spend a great deal of time observing the young people of Paliano; their behaviors are as endearing to me as they are baffling. Among the colleges of the elites and the markets and guilds of the lower classes, the mating rituals of human youth are on open display. Oh, such delightful dramas unfold! Perhaps the most common tragedy, and the one most often put onto the stage, is the tale of unrequited love.

Alas, poor Adriana. Her love for the city is firm and unyielding, yet when Brago's end came, the city showed that it has, in fact, no love for her. She has only narrowly survived the queen's ascension, and, bold as she is, I believe she can continue to rely on unannounced visits from the queen's emissaries until one of them proves successful in persuading her to join her king.

Before that end comes, however, she seems to have her heart set on causing as much unrest in the name of righteousness as possible. I reached out to her via messenger, but the messenger returned with a broken nose and a completely ruined shirt. The nose will heal, but alas, I believe there is nothing to be done for the shirt.

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Art by Chris Rallis

It remains to be seen precisely what sort of stage production this will be. Will our noble heroine win over the object of her affections and usher in a new age of peace, equality, and prosperity? Or will her hopeless egalitarian utopia prove as ephemeral as the king she once served? Were I a betting elf (and I assure you, I am not), I would wager on the latter. Regardless, we have a front-row seat to this dramatic production, and further missives will be available at the intermission.

Leovold

HER MAJESTY QUEEN MARCHESA, the Black Rose, first of her name, head of the council, guarantor of lawful governance, sole sovereign of the High City, true heir to the throne of Paliano and all the rights and privileges thereof

Aliases: The Black Rose, Marchesa d'Amati

There are two types of hunting beasts, in my experience. The first exists for the thrill of the chase and exults in service. You'll see these creatures chasing carriages or loping after horses, and hear their joyous roar in the air. The beast is no threat to the carriage or the horse. The creature simply loves to run.

Then there are others. You wouldn't be able to tell them apart during the hunt, as they are both filled with pride and fulfillment as they chase their prey. The difference is one of purpose. The second kind tracks and kills because it was meant to do so; any playfulness or happy expression is coincidence or show. The beast hunts because it was created for this purpose. Today, perhaps, it kills what its master bids, but in the absence of all else, it would still kill.

Marchesa is a creature of the second kind.

I do not blame my predecessor for missing the signs. The carefully cultivated persona, the genteel "mother of assassins" role that she played for years, all of it seemed to be pointing toward a specific ambition: to exert control and influence from the shadows. In retrospect, the entire persona was a distraction. The throne was always her target. Always.

In the streets, some call her usurper. I've heard scoffing references to her "power grab" in the void left by Brago, but her intent is not just to seize power.

She intends to rule.

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Art by Daniel Ljunggren

Within hours of taking the throne, there have been proclamations and policies, clearly drafted weeks and months before. All are aimed to consolidate her power, gain the nervous acceptance of the populace, and legitimize her rule—if her edicts are obeyed, then how can she not be queen?

The next weeks and months will be crucial. The entire coup could unravel given the right nudge, but at the same time, a nudge from other parties could help consolidate her power. I have made an official outreach on Trest's behalf. You will be updated posthaste with Her Majesty's reply.

Leovold

GRENZO, WARDEN OF THE ROYAL DUNGEONS

I love goblins. I know what you're thinking, but it's true! A goblin, by his nature, helps us understand ourselves. A goblin is everything we are not: aggressive, savage, uncouth, and loud. When a goblin truly embraces his nature, and becomes the pinnacle of what he is capable of, I cannot help but find him endearing. This would be the case with Grenzo, if I were not somewhat concerned that he and his rabble will murder me in the night alongside everyone I hold dear.

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Art by Svetlin Velinov

Grenzo was content to be part of the machinery of Paliano; he had maneuvered himself into a position by which he could control vast swaths of the underworld. By serving as warden for Brago's prisons and commanding the unwavering loyalty of a network of bondsmen, bounty hunters, and criminal gangs, he was a powerful force in the city who never needed to dirty his hands. (This is a figure of speech only; his hands were, I assume, filthy all of the time.)

In the absence of Brago's patronage (and it is entirely unclear what the inciting event was that led the former king to tolerate and encourage Grenzo's operations), Grenzo has adopted a different tactic, one that simultaneously surprises me more and less than the ones he has employed before—open rebellion. He incites mobs to violence, not directed at the new queen per se, but at the idea of the city itself. He has twice now taken advantage of large gatherings assembled by Captain Adriana, infiltrating them, turning a peaceful demonstration into a violent mob. His goals are now completely opaque to me—he is certainly not establishing himself in a position of power, unless you consider attempting to bring about the downfall of all positions of power a means to that end.

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Art by Steve Prescott

Is this anarchy an actual political philosophy? I would like to give Grenzo the benefit of the doubt on this, as I have become fond of him over the years. Perhaps he actually mourns the loss of his king, and expresses it through rage? Doubtful, but I can't rule it out. Perhaps this chaos is at the new queen's behest? It seems out of character with her favorite sort of games. Or perhaps he is simply reverting to his baser instincts. Smashing and burning for the sheer glory of the sounds of broken glass, the dancing lights of the flames. Regardless, I have instructed my diplomatic staff to stay clear of any large gatherings, as the streets are more volatile than I have ever seen.

Leovold

Note: Last week, one of my diplomatic attachés interrupted a dead drop from one of the new queen's agents—imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that the contents were nothing other than a dossier on yours truly! I take every word contained herein as a sincere compliment.

AMBASSADOR LEOVOLD OF TREST

To Her Majesty Queen Marchesa, the Black Rose, first of her name, head of the council, guarantor of lawful governance, sole sovereign of the High City, true heir to the throne of Paliano and all the rights and privileges thereof

Per your instruction, I have gathered the following information regarding the recently appointed ambassador from the city-state of Trest. He has been making his presence known in the city by hosting elaborate parties, banquets, and other displays with the express intent of "cultural exchange."

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Art by Howard Lyon

The Trestians seem to struggle with our cultural norms, and opt for a display of wealth and supposed refinement, but attendees to these events describe them as gaudy and gauche. As the elves of Trest tend toward the primitive and backward, this is no surprise. Leovold himself seems content to play the part of obsequious host and court jester, with his grand gestures and bold proclamations of friendship. It seems clear that he is trying to ingratiate himself with the nobility and commonfolk alike, with some success—the Trestian delegation is generally welcome in polite society as well as among the lower classes.

The embassy does retain a small armed contingent of guards; given the size of the embassy staff, this is unsurprising, and while the guards seem well-trained, they are certainly not on any sort of aggressive footing, seemingly happy to wonder at the sights and sounds of the greatest city in Fiora.

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Art by Anthony Palumbo

Now, there have been some rumors of members of the Trestian delegation being associated with minor diplomatic incidents—suspicion of being involved in espionage and the like. There are two potential explanations for these reports. Either Leovold and his attaches are engaged in highly sophisticated spying efforts against the state, or members of his delegation are simply prone to nosing around and occasional petty theft.

I think the latter to be the much more likely explanation, but I admit, I cannot entirely rule out the former. I will continue to monitor the Ambassador's movements, but given our current situation, I do not recommend devoting too many resources to doing so. We have much more pressing matters at hand.

Lucia Covi, Thorn of the Queen

THE CURTAIN RISES

What a time to be alive in Paliano! The pieces are all in place, the lights are lit, and the game is about to begin. All eyes are on the queen, of course, as she gears up to confront the renegade Captain Adriana. The city guard has been largely thrown over in favor of troops loyal only to Marchesa, but these are elevated spies and assassins, not a group trained in keeping order—most of them look as if they would be more comfortable holding a short blade in a dark alley, rather than sitting high atop a horse, covered in mail.

The former guards? Some were imprisoned, but the prisons are a sieve! Grenzo has no desire to help the queen keep order, and he has largely abdicated his post. Adriana has managed to stage some rather daring rescues to bring her former guards to her side—there was a particular prison break that involved a domesticated hydra, a wagon full of meat pies, and a trio of infiltrators dressed quite unconvincingly as washerwomen, but I digress.

Captain Adriana claims to fight for the city, as if it were some sort of personified ideal. A delightfully poetic concept, but her tactics are more in the physical realm. Demonstrations too large to be peaceably put down. Coordinated strikes against some of the queen's former holdings. And speeches. Let's just say that the dear woman does not shy away from the sound of her own voice.

But while all eyes are on this main event, the hinterlands are abuzz with activity as well. Some, including the illustrious and storied Selvala, are looking to take advantage of the unrest to strike against the indolence and excess of the nobility, who are being so brazenly courted by the new queen. Others wonder what has happened to the remnants of the now-disbanded Academy. Most of its former masters remain in the city, retreating to private workshops (some of which more closely resemble small fortresses) whose lights are lit every night, shadows cast against the walls, until dawn's light dispels them.

In all, we sit atop a hill of kindling, as children run with torches in the streets. Contingencies are in place to take action in any of several directions, or we can simply keep our heads down and court favor with the victors. I await further instructions with a capable and steady hand.

Yours,

Ambassador Leovold of Trest