When Boltac stepped outside, he was greeted by smoke hanging thick in the air. Everywhere, there were signs of carnage. The Bent Eelpout and most of the other side of the street had burned to the ground. Boltac saw the dead wolf and Orcs, but did not linger over them.

He turned and headed north. On his walk, he passed several bodies lying in the street. One was a young girl, maybe nine. Her pretty dress was torn and soaked with blood. Boltac looked away from her corpse and muttered, “Bad for business,” as if the phrase was a charm that could ward off emotion.

As he crossed the bridge to the keep, he expected to see a line of petitioners. But there was no one. Not even a guard at the gate. The court should have been full of angry citizens demanding redress and protection. The walls should have been decorated with Orcs’ heads on pikes. By now, he should have been able to hear wounded members of the Ducal Guard drinking by the stables. Their laughter and the exaggerated stories of their bravery should have carried over the wall. There should have been smoke from the blacksmith, and the sound of weapons being sharpened.

But there was nothing.

In the courtyard, he passed the royal carriage standing all alone. It looked like someone had abandoned it in haste. From the stable, he heard the whinny of a horse.

Boltac pushed his way through the half-opened door and into the keep. There was no one in the antechamber. There was no one anywhere. Every room he checked was empty. It was as if all the people had simply vanished. He cried out, but only the echo of his own hello answered.

When he reached the empty throne room the penny dropped. Mostly, it was the tapestry flapping in a wind that shouldn’t have been blowing. Behind the heavy, musty, overly stylized scene of a Heroic battle that had never happened, Boltac found a secret door. Behind the door was a staircase.

He followed it down and down again, through narrow stone passageways until he emerged at a set of docks hidden in a high-walled cove on the north side of the island. From this island in the middle of the river Swift, he could see that all the boats were gone. Discarded items were strewn everywhere. Over there was a guard’s helmet; at his feet was a chest of silks. He could almost see the scene as it had happened:

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A woman, clamoring, shrieking for her handmaiden or a guard to bring the chest of rich silks onto the boats. But, of course, there is no room for such things. Someone knocking the chest to the docks. Throwing the woman into a boat. Jumping in after her and pushing the craft out into the current.

The water would have taken them south quickly. If they survived the uncomfortable ride through the rapids, they would already be out of the grey, mist-covered mountains of Robrecht and enjoying a leisurely ride to Shatnapur, the northernmost city in the Southron Kingdoms. Odds were they were all free and clear, floating down a river with the sun in their faces.

The guards would know how close they came, but the nobles–the soft and careless ones who claimed privilege to rule–would be thinking only of what Southron delicacies they might feast upon in a few days’ time. Rare tropical fruits. The brains of monkeys. Anything delectable and procured at great suffering to the peasantry. What they weren’t thinking about, Boltac knew, was the body of a young girl, dead in a gutter.

Boltac spit in the river, then climbed back up the stairs.

Back in the throne room, he tried to wrap his head around it. There was no one. They had all gone. At the first sign of danger, the Duke had fled. Boltac walked to the throne and sat down. For a second, he almost took it seriously. Then he laughed at himself.

This wasn’t the chair for him. He was a Merchant. Everyone knew you couldn’t buy a throne. Of course, such a thing could be inherited. But at some point a throne had to be won, with a sword. A sword drenched in blood. An illiterate barbarian could sooner be a King than a fat Merchant. And it had been so long since Robrecht had had a real King. Or anything other than a figurehead installed by a larger, more powerful Kingdom seeking to control the trade routes.

The health of Kingdoms, thought Boltac, depended not on war but on commerce. The opportunity for everyone to conduct their little businesses in peace was what kept people happy and productive. But, for some reason, the only people deemed fit to rule were warriors and their inbred descendants. Something was wrong with this logic. But it was not for him to fix.

Boltac heaved himself off the fancy chair and left the room. Over the wall of the castle, he saw heavy columns of smoke rising from the north end of town. In twos and threes, people fled from the north gate. To the south, the damage was less but there was a larger stream of traffic. People were leaving. Was this the way it was to be? Was this how his town died?