Introductions had been tedious, each vapid bit echoed by the witch, Zigrel, in the other’s language. Luckily, some of the aristocrats had retired, leaving only three smug Noriacs to remember:

Cad Aarvor, apparently the master of the house, dominated the proceedings. He seemed the oldest, his salted hair cropped into a razor straight, if thinly defined, line high over his forehead. A thin, single braid of it snaked out of the back of his head and fell over his shoulder. He had the stately air and rippling forearms of any good citizen, and the long, disinterested lines of his face made him look more dignified than powerful.

But by His divine hooves, thought Mierel, he looks rich. His tunic, predominated by filigree in sage green and fuschia, boasted, upon closer inspection, an uncountable array of golden threads, which from a distance had merely twinkled invisibly. None of his many bangles were less than marvelous--precious metals and colorful, carved stone, polished all to a glaring shine. He kept a dagger at his waist, tucked into a scabbard of stunning symmetry. Pearls, mostly, and of many sizes, seamlessly encrusted the burnished leather. Its gleaming, gilt handle, sidled with still more streaks of black-lined pearl, poked out from the vents of his tunic.

His skin showed only half of its age, smoothed, buffed, and oiled like a Litherian prince. A quality, Mierel realized with a satisfied snort, which their new friend Kordos conspicuously lacked.

His sister, Melo, did not resemble him at all. She had the bright, vicious eyes and hungry snarl of a wolf, or a large fox, set on her round face. This, in turn, was set upon a round body--the kind which petty merchants and fortunate farmers blushed at. The kind they might even forgive a meager dowry for.

Mierel looked her up and down. All soft flesh. What was it about most men that compelled them to swoon over such weak bodies, anyway? Didn’t they want to share a bed with someone strong and stalwart? Feel the dangerous weight of scars on their fingertips? Didn’t they want to tug, to grasp, and shove--

Oh, he realized, shaking his trouser legs--endeavoring not to look at his partner--this is going to be a long afternoon…

He continued staring idly at the highborn lady, and in due time realized that her dark, perfect bob of hair was, undoubtedly, a wig. He wasn’t sure if that made her look older or younger. She had the same smoothed skin as her brother, perhaps just a touch pinker.

The third Noriac was a man: Melo’s husband, or perhaps a suitor. They called him Pol Tanduken. He was the youngest by far. Strong looking, still gangly with youth, skin tanned dark from the common exploits of his tender age. His hair, darker still, and streaked with bright, sandy patches, careened over his brow into a thick, waving curtain, chopped off in a more or less flat line clear above his eyebrows. Yellow whiskers lined his wide, angular chin like weeds in a field. His own bangles, loose (his arms had not yet grown to fill their hoops), clapped around his wrists.

They welcomed Zigrel and the Sprunishmen with warmth and grace. Patting shoulders with just the right tenderness, kissing cheeks enthusiastically. They marveled at Ayricalt’s stature, and his tremendous ponytail. They complimented Zigrel’s pronunciation. They even found some polite-sounding things to say about Mierel--they were rather transfixed by the smoothness of his beard.

The travelers followed the Noriacs on a tour of the orchard garden, slaves skittering in the distant, narrow gaps between shrunken trees. They laid on benches wherever they found them, greeted always by silver and pearl platters of the garden’s produce. Chain dangled lamps flicked in the waning sea breeze.

Time wore on. A bellyful of fruit churned uncomfortably in Mierel’s stomach. Finally--officially--Cad Aarvor invited the three strangers to dinner.

The villa was filled with open air. Wide, columned porticoes loosely delineated rooms. While some hallways feature walls, still more boasted long, gaping windows--seamless, carved sills distinguishing them from the porticoes. With all the light, the air, wide openings, and columns, it was difficult to discern the chambers from the patios. It was labyrinthine, and gave Mierel an uneasy sense of dislocation.

The dining hall occupied the entire ground floor of one wing--a wall (though fairly perforated with doors) on one short side, and the other three faces of the rectangle featuring high, curtained arches. The curtains, like the tablecloth, a milky sea green. Silver everything else--lamps, trays, inlay on the table. Silver pitchers poured silver water into silver chalices. Wealth which, once again, Mierel could only jealously compare to the Rittel daimyo.

They sat at the bitterest end of a long, otherwise empty table. Every place along the bench was set, as if the servants had anticipated a larger party. The unoccupied spaces left a haunting silence in the plain air room. The seabreeze died in the sun-bled orange sky, and the western windows glared with the early evening light. Mierel thanked the setting sun for his bearings.

Zigrel chatted convivially with the aristocrats, turning at quiet intervals back to the Sprunishmen, briefly (and always fruitlessly) explaining what they’d said.

Then there were the questions. “How did you two meet?” “What are the courts of the Karafin Princes like?” “They say he doesn’t look like a Sprunishman.” Mierel spun answers from thin air, as Ayricalt smoked his pipe silently beside him.

“He saved me from a patch of hungry bog,” and “More silk…and gold,” and “No, he doesn’t.”

Eventually, a staggered procession of bald, vaguely Sprunish looking servants wound through the open doorways (hell, thought Mierel, maybe through the windows) carrying silver-rimmed, porcelain bowls filled with matte, earth-toned circles of liquid. One bowl for each diner.

Mierel grimaced suspiciously, prodding the soup with his forefinger. The Noriacs grimaced, too, barely hiding their mocking titillation. Zigrel snipped at Mierel, and he back, and all the while the Noriacs offered each other curious glances, now more amused by Ayricalt--who wasted no time in chugging the whole bowl down.

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Then he bowed silently. The Noriacs smiled and nodded. Zigrel fiddled somewhat uncertainly with a tablespoon while Mierel, still uttering bitter curses at the Tushikan, swirled his finger through one great circle of soup, then removed it. He squinted at the sticky, brown wetness congealed along his finger.

“Poisoned,” he grunted. Zigrel gasped, her silver spoon damply jingling as it fell onto the tablecloth.

Ayricalt frowned. The Noriacs looked merely inquisitive--utterly hospitable, to the last. Zigrel leaned down to sniff the soup. The Noriacs asked her something, and she responded with much conciliatory hand-waving.

Mierel wiped his finger off on his pant legs, then drank what was left in the bowl. He sighed heavily, rose from the bench with a full-belied groan, and turned a broad smile to his hosts. He glanced at Ayricalt, whose eyes were fluttering. Not ill, perhaps, he hoped, just tired. He walked slowly toward the end of the table, grinning.

He caught the young Pol Tanduken shifting his eyes nervously in Zigrel’s direction, anticipation staining an otherwise pleasant enough demeanor. Then he caught the young man by his bony shoulders, shaking the young Noriac fraternally back and forth, wringing hard at the stringy muscles below his neck.

“Delicious! Tell them, Zigrel, with my compliments.”

Zigrel stammered out the translation. Cad Aarvor nodded politely toward her, said something aloud.

“He’s says it’s just the appetizer…” Zigrel began to explain, just as the master turned to offer Mierel the same perfunctory salutation. But she didn’t finish, her voice choked off. The room froze, Cad Aarvor’s smooth face set as stone, his patronizing smirk shocked into a tight line.

Then Pol broke the silence, groaning, moaning. His voice was wet.

Mierel grinned wider, jerking his shoulder forward. A few red drips flung out onto the tablecloth, beading thickly. Then, with an easy tug, Mierel removed the knife, and Pol Tanduken’s drained, dying body folded over the table, ineffectually hacking out the blood which drowned him. Ayricalt’s unconscious head followed suit. Cad Aarvor scowled. His sister Melo shrieked.

Mierel inhaled deeply, and seethed it out, invigorated. There was no time to waste. He jumped up on the table first, stomping over the young Noriac’s fresh corpse, grabbed up one of the silver pitchers, and swung it down on the mistress’ head. Cut her shrieking off with a hideous gasp.

Then he turned to address the master, but before he could get his bearings felt a blinding, numbing bite across the left side of his face. He froze, stunned. Only after the second bite nicked the side of his neck did he feel the blood welling up from the abrasions. Reflex demanded he turn his head, keep his eyelids shut.

Against that, he glared through his squinted right eye. He could only barely see the receding figure of Cad, maybe five yards away, raising up his arm and chopping it back down. Slashing the air? It caught Mierel, somehow, at the edge of his scalp, further bloodying his already useless left eye.

No time to question it, he thought--or something to that effect--and he charged. Bounding off the table, he caught one of Cad’s fleeing knees in the chin, but managed to wrap up the Noriac’s legs, bringing them both to the ground.

On the ground, Mierel was tall as any man--just as well bred and exercised. He crawled up over the palace master, jabbing his hands into soft tissue as he pressed himself into a thigh grip around the aristocrat’s waist. Then his knuckles digging into the stringy lumps of Aardvor’s neck: once, again, again.

Cad sputtered choked and blood-misted breath. He swung his arms in hard, hopeless arcs. Bone crunched, cracked, and gave beneath Mierel’s thrusts. He started aiming for the face, compacting nose and cheeks into the spongy stuff behind them--burying them--until all the movement of Cad Aarvorts former body was a shivering of dying nerves. He stood, pressing himself up against the inert chest, lifted up on the Noriac’s tunic sleeve-holes and slammed the limp torso back down.

He stumbled back into the dining room, throwing aside wooden stools as he reached for Ayricalt. With a huffing, grunting effort, he laid his companion flat on the carpeted rug. Ayricalt’s eyes were open, eerily alert on his immobile body. From Mierel’s perspective, they appeared to be darting around, bewildered. It hardly seemed likely. Everything in his vision was pulsing, pounding with his own heartbeat. He saw Ayricalt's chest rising, if only just shallowly--if only just a symptom of his throbbing exhaustion.

But it was enough. He laid down in the crook of Ayricalt’s arm, and nodded off.

It was only later, when Zigrel’s funerary wailings reached an unignorable pitch, that he finally roused himself, his face stinging and his whole body stiff with early soreness, and surveyed the scene. Melo’s leg was still twitching, her lips quivering neurotically. He didn't have the energy to deal with that.

“Quiet witch!” he growled, loudly if not articulately. She hushed instantly to silence, but the sternness of her face was neither reverent nor cowed. She looked at Mierel with all the fury which he might have expected from the Noriacs--if they’d still had the living faculties, or requisite facial materials, to do so. “Guards?”

It took her a second to comprehend. Or, it took her a second to decide whether or not to answer.

“They took off,” she finally announced. “It seems they recently lost their employer.”

Mierel snickered into a dull fit of coughs.

“It’s a common beast which amuses itself with killing,” Zigrel observed disdainfully. Her scowl sunk deeper.

“What’s stuck in your craw,” he scowled back. “Prefer to be like him?” He nodded over to Ayricalt, still in corpse-like repose.

“That’s not the question.”

Mierel laughed maliciously.

“All life is sacred,” she warned.

He stared at her, theatrically presenting his dumbfoundedness. “That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And I’ve met a lot of madmen.

“And pilgrims,” he added.

Zigrel scoffed at him, swung her arms up and only just failed to stomp off.

“Still,” he continued, as if that had settled things, “seems they might have at least been a little…incensed.”

Zigrel snorted. “That’s not just your spittle dried up on your face--nor Cad Aarvor’s. You’re just lucky they thought the poison got you.”

“You’re not dead,” he responded, interrogating.

“No,” she agreed impatiently, “I’m not.”

He matched her tone. “And they just let you be?”

“I am an ordained apprentice of Prighuyt Tuzhk,” Zigrel lectured, emphasizing with her hands. “The only villain base enough to interrupt my rites is you, you befouled mongrel, you…” She stopped herself, clenching her fists white and working her tongue beneath lips pursed razor thin.

Mierel dropped his head back on the rug, chuckling breathlessly. “You’ve got a mean streak, witch,” he whispered. “I like that.”

After a bit of disconsolate grumbling, Zigrel once again took up her wailing, eyes closed in trance, jaw quivering. Mierel lacked the conviction to make her stop, and was presently distracted by a clunking chorus thudding along the stone floor. From the corner of his eye, he caught the salient features of a familiar figure:

Ellusenese armor--a vest of iron chains which came down to the knees, cinched at the waist by a leather belt with a buckle of elaborately braided wire. The middle-aged face--a bit sagging, with an arching brow carved out of a long, peppered mane.

The man from the palace basement, he thought. Good.

Maybe he has a sense of justice.