Royce waited in the shadows between two stone giants, torturing himself.

Standing in the dark, narrow street dividing the imposing Imperial Gallery from the immense Grom Galimus, he watched people carrying lanterns and moving through the sprawling riverfront plaza, celebrating a festival of rebirth. The populace danced and sang in joyous abandon as they said goodbye to winter the way a squirrel waved farewell to a frustrated dog thwarted by high branches. They wore bright colors and waved streamers of green, blue, and yellow. Giddy as children, they were oblivious to the dangers around them. They were prey. He’d grown up in a city like this: old, dark, and decrepit. Royce was a panther in the grass, gazing out at a watering hole after a drought, but he wasn’t there to hunt. He was waiting for Mercator.

As unpleasant as it was to ignore the temptation to act when the revelers were such ripe pickings, they weren’t the source of Royce’s agony. What needled him was the way the stakes of their job had risen while the payout hadn’t. What Royce suffered was the contradiction that was Hadrian Blackwater.

While he hoped that his friend survived the night, he also felt, in a purely theoretical way, that Hadrian deserved to die. The fool had willingly surrendered to a mob of revolutionaries. A group that believed he had killed one of their own. That was stupidity taken to an art form, like giving up higher ground or leaving an enemy alive. And yet, this was only a symptom of a larger, more perplexing issue, that irritated Royce like an infected splinter. He couldn’t ignore that their lives had been saved by a random act of kindness that Hadrian had once shown to a total stranger.

From Royce’s perspective, the best insurance for a long life was murder. Potential threats—even remote or indirect—had to be eliminated. Not broken, not reduced, but burned out of existence. Royce left no hatred to smolder, never granted revenge the potential to return to roost. He wouldn’t have violated the blond mir, either—the very idea was repugnant—but given the circumstances, he imagined he would have seen her dead. When you’re part of a force that wipes out an entire town, you don’t leave anyone alive. Not even a young girl.

Back in his Black Diamond days, when Royce was a member of the infamous thieves’ guild, he had been one of three assassins the BD employed. The other two were his best friend, Merrick, and Jade, Merrick’s lover. Jade had been a young girl, too, and just as sweet as Seton, but she had become one of the most feared assassins in the known world. Not despite her gender, but because she was female. Men always underestimated her.

Was Jade a mir, too? Thinking back, he couldn’t help wondering. Not all mir have elven features.

Since meeting Hadrian, he’d recognized that the man was unnaturally lucky, but that thought, that excuse, was too consistent an occurrence. It had become less a rationalization and more of a truism, which irked Royce.

If it had been me, if I had saved her life, Seton would have spent the last seven years training to kill, and one by one she would have seen to it that each of the duke’s soldiers who took part in that raid died a horrible death. Then, when I showed up, she’d be overjoyed to find the one guy that got away. My reward would have been a vivisection.

But it had been Hadrian, and he received a tear-filled oratory of appreciation and an advocate for his defense.

That was the problem with life; it often failed to be consistent. Nothing could be relied on. Royce was positive that if he dropped a rock enough times, he’d eventually see it fall upward. He was also certain that this event would coincide with the worst possible moment for it to occur. What others saw as miracles, Royce perceived as dumb luck. Still, there was a problem with that, and its name was Hadrian Blackwater.

By all accounts, the man shouldn’t have survived childhood. Maybe he had caring parents who watched over their son—yet another example of the universe showing preferential treatment. Still, after he left home, he should have died within a week, a month at best. Ridiculous skill with a sword can protect someone from only so much.

Tonight is a good example. We both should have died, but we didn’t. Why?

This was the puzzle that frustrated Royce, the embodiment of the sliver. It challenged his very clear and proven worldview.

Aside from Hadrian’s professional soldiering, during which he apparently killed the equivalent of a small county’s worth of men, he was unusually kind, empathetic, and forgiving. Everything in Royce’s life had convinced him that those three idiosyncrasies were synonymous with swallowing brews of arsenic, cyanide, and hemlock all in a single gulp. Even if the result wasn’t suicide, such attributes should result in massive handicaps when trying to survive in a world that claimed to value such qualities but in reality punished people who possessed them.

Except in Hadrian’s case, it hadn’t, and by virtue of being with him, Royce had been rewarded. The worst part was that Royce couldn’t pass it off as a rock falling up. This wasn’t the freak singular occurrence. Four years earlier, the idiot had made the worst mistake of his life by staying to save Royce when they were on top of the Crown Tower. Hadrian had the opportunity to escape, but he had stayed, performing a suicidal defense on behalf of a man he hated. Anyone else would have paid for such an error with their life. Not Hadrian Blackwater, and again, by virtue of being with him, Royce had lived, too. Then there was Scarlett Dodge. She was another person Royce would have killed if Hadrian hadn’t been with him, another example of a good deed rewarded. Royce and Scarlett had once laughed at Hadrian’s naïveté, his moronic integrity. But given how things turned out in Dulgath, Royce didn’t find it funny anymore.

Once could be explained as a fluke. Twice was a coincidence. But three times? Three times was a pattern, wasn’t it?And if it is, what does that pattern reveal?

Royce pushed the thought away. It didn’t expose anything. Weird stuff happens all the time, doesn’t prove or disprove anything. Even a rock will eventually fall upward, right?

He was making too much out of nothing. Something he criticized others for doing. People spot a goose heading south in early fall, and they expect an early winter. They see a squirrel amassing nuts and convince themselves the winter’s snows will be deep. All this from an overeager goose and a greedy rodent. One thing doesn’t dictate the other. Hadrian was lucky, that was all. Except . . .

I don’t believe in luck.

Luck, as it was understood by most people, was some supernatural force that benefited one person more than another. An incomprehensible, impetuous power that blessed certain people without reason, and would abandon them just as inexplicably. What a load of nonsense. Luck was a word insecure or envious people used to explain events they didn’t understand. What they didn’t realize was that everything had a certain probability. Those people described as lucky were merely individuals who increased their odds of success either by their actions or lack thereof. A man who lives on a mountaintop but isn’t hit by lightning isn’t lucky, he simply didn’t go outside in a storm. People made their own luck. This, too, had been an axiom that Royce had believed. Now these two established principles were slammed against each other, and he didn’t care for the new landscape the collision left behind. The pattern was wholly strange, an alien thing that challenged all he knew to be true, everything he’d learned. If Royce didn’t know better, he would almost conclude that—

Mercator appeared, moving through the crowded plaza. She had added a blue shawl to her attire and dropped part of it over her head. Does she own anything that isn’t blue?

She entered from Vintage Avenue, but that didn’t mean anything. Royce had known Mercator for only an hour and already he knew she wasn’t stupid enough to travel in a straight line from where Genny Winter was being held. The best he could determine was that the Duchess of Rochelle was somewhere in the city or on the outskirts—somewhere Mercator could have gotten to and back in less time than it took Grom Galimus to chime twice.

It took her several minutes to cross the plaza. Because this was the night before the big feast, it seemed everyone was out. Royce watched as Mercator threaded her way through the crowd, looking for anyone who might be following. She seemed unobserved, and Royce met her in front of the cathedral.

“That didn’t take long. Are you certain you have ample evidence? You realize we won’t get a second chance at this. If he isn’t persuaded that she’s alive, this whole thing fails.”

Mercator presented Royce with an understanding smile, the sort an adult would offer a child who has just said something stupid. “This will do the trick.” Mercator drew out a folded parchment.

“A letter?” Royce was disappointed.

“Were you expecting a finger?”

Behind Mercator, not far from the fountain, a Calian man was juggling flaming torches that made muffled whump sounds each time they spun.

“To be honest, yes. A fresh-cut finger shows the victim was recently alive. And there is the added bonus of indicating the seriousness of the kidnapper.”

Mercator continued her patient smile. “You’ve done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”

“Hadrian and I weren’t hired for our looks.”

“Nor for your intelligence.” The insult was presented without malice, making it sound more like constructive criticism.

Royce was never one for criticism, constructive or otherwise, and certainly not when it came to his area of expertise. The presumption of this mir was astounding if she thought she could educate him on blackmail and coercion. She looked to be the type to spend most of her days scrounging garbage for food or begging for handouts in the street.

A ring of people in colorful clothes held hands and danced in a circle as a trio of fiddlers played in the center. All the dancers were red-faced, from either the exertion or drink—likely both. Royce found it hard to believe that he and they were the same species.

“The duchess wants us to succeed,” Mercator said. “Given that her life weighs in the balance, and since she knows her husband better than either of us, it’s sensible to assume she is far more capable of providing us with the means of convincing him to act. Wouldn’t you say?”

Royce didn’t answer. As simple as that concept was, he reran it twice through his head looking for an error. He couldn’t find one beyond the possibility that the duchess might encode a message only Leo would understand, which would convey her whereabouts. This, however, seemed unlikely.

“What?” Mercator asked.

“Nothing.” Royce shook his head.

“You’re shocked. I can see it on your face. You didn’t believe it possible a mir could think.”

Royce shrugged and gave a glance at the revelers laughing and dancing as if they were mad from fever. “Don’t take it as a slight; I’m usually shocked that anyone can think.”

“But how much harder to accept from me, a mir and a female. You assumed I was incompetent, didn’t you?”

She was right, and such an admission wouldn’t have troubled him a year ago, but a year ago he’d thought he was human. Discovering he was also a mir made it difficult to think that those with mixed-blood were inferior. Difficult, but not impossible. The fact that he didn’t exhibit elven features allowed Royce to believe his blood was only slightly tainted. This was a weak, impractical argument, but prejudices were a form of fear, and fear was often senseless. Groundless anxieties permitted ludicrous rationalizations. At least they did in the quiet, controlled spaces of his own mind. Such carefully crafted constructions tended to fall apart when facing the reality of a blue-stained mir who showed no evidence of inferiority.

“Yes,” he admitted.

No offense or anger surfaced on her face. Instead, she nodded while maintaining that understanding smile. “So, what now?”

“We’re waiting on Roland Wyberg. The captain of the city guard is supposed to meet us here. He wasn’t at the guardhouse, but I told one of his men that I’d found the duchess, and he anxiously volunteered to fetch him, immediately. I hope he didn’t lie or exaggerate.”

“You didn’t mention me, did you?”

“No, but would it have been a problem if I did?”

Mercator sighed. “It could. People have a lot of preconceptions about my kind. We’re not what you think, you know. We didn’t cause the destruction of the empire. We aren’t lazy or stupid, nor are we abominations. We don’t carry disease, aren’t cannibals, don’t steal babies or worship Uberlin. We’re the same as everyone else, except more destitute because the rest of society hates us. They keep us dirty and desperate, then condemn us as if we chose our circumstances. The irony is that long ago we were considered superior to humans. I’m guessing you didn’t know that. The term mir comes from the word myr, an Old Speech word that originally meant son of. It was also an honorific, like sir added before the name of a knight. If you put those two things together, you must conclude that we are descended from pretty good stock. It was only after the fall of Merredydd, a province of the old empire that was governed by mir for mir, that the term became derogatory.”

“No offense, but all of that contradicts history as I understand it.”

“That’s because the history you know is wrong. History isn’t truth. You’re not too foolish to recognize that, are you?”

The dancers moved away as acrobats tumbled into the center of the square, encouraged by applause. Men in tight clothes jumped and rolled and climbed onto one another, creating human ladders of various designs.

“And how do you know your history isn’t a lie?” Royce asked.

Mercator grinned. “I’m older than I look, a lot older. That’s one of the things about mir. We live a long time. Not so much as elves, I suspect, but longer than humans. My mother lived to be four hundred and fifty. She could remember Glenmorgan and his Second Empire. Age gave her the wisdom to conclude that our long life was a gift turned into a curse by a world filled with ignorant hate and bad timing. My grandfather Sadarshakar Sikara was born in 2051 and lived for five hundred and sixty-seven years. Can you imagine that? He remembered the birth of Nevrik, the Heir of Novron, and the appointment of Venlin as the Archbishop of Percepliquis, and he witnessed the fall of that grand city. He was in Merredydd at the time, a province established for the myr who chose not to live with humans.”

She leaned in, placed a hand to the side of her face, and whispered, “Rumor has it the myr were a bunch of bigots.” She laughed as if it was a joke, but Royce couldn’t tell if it was ironic or just silly.

“If you’re the descendant of such an esteemed family, why do you look so . . .” Royce hesitated.

“Calian?” Mercator glanced at her hands and nodded as if she’d expected the question. “When Merredydd fell to barbarians, Sadarshakar brought his family here to what was then called Alburnia. Few survived, and Sadarshakar took a Calian woman as his wife. The situation didn’t improve, and my mother married a Calian man.” Mercator drew back the shawl off her head and pulled on her nappy hair. “Which makes me arguably more Calian than mir. A highly respected combination, I must say.” She laughed again, managing to find humor in every tragedy.

Royce could understand that, at least.

“Fact is,” she said, “I learned history from someone I trust . . . my grandfather, who witnessed the events firsthand. That’s how I know. Tell me . . . Royce, is it? How do you know about the history of your people?”

“I actually don’t care,” Royce said. “All of this clearly means a good deal to you, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Doesn’t matter whether your version is true or not. I’m here to do a job, not debate ancient history. Now, if you want to talk about something, I’d love to hear where the duchess is.”

Mercator shook her head. “Sorry. She’s the only good card I still hold. But she’s safe and unharmed, as this letter attests. I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve grown to like her. She’s . . . different.”

“It was worth asking,” Royce said. He gazed out at the plaza once more, trying to decide if he was pleased or irritated with the number of celebrating people. They complicated everything, which was both good and bad. “We probably—” Royce saw movement where there shouldn’t have been any.

The plaza was still a swirl of activity—dancers spun, acrobats tumbled, jugglers tossed, spectators clapped, and children ran—but overhead, nothing should have moved. Too dark for a bird. Too big for a bat. Royce looked up at the front of Grom Galimus. The great doors were huge but dwarfed by the massive bell towers on either side. Above those doors stood a row of sculpted figures of robed men. Then came the oculus of the great rose window. Next, a colonnade of pillars and arches, and above that, and still only halfway up, was a pediment upon which perched a series of gargoyles.

“What’s wrong?” Mercator asked, craning her neck, trying to see what he saw.

“Thought something mov—”

They both spotted it then. The third gargoyle from the left flexed its wings.

“I’m not from here,” Royce said. “Is that normal?”

“Of course not. It’s—oh no!”

The gargoyle’s head turned. Like so many others, this figure was monkey-like with powerful hunched shoulders, the wings and face of a bat, and saber-like fangs. As it looked down at them, Royce noticed that the eyes had been sculpted to look decidedly evil, but he guessed that was how he’d have seen them, regardless of what the artist had carved—because the gargoyle looked right at him.

Royce expected it to shove off the side of the cathedral, spread its wings and dive. Instead, the beast began to climb down the front of the church, moving awkwardly at first but gaining balance and skill as it descended, until it moved with monkey speed, leaping from pediment to column.

“Run!” Mercator shouted at Royce.

###

“Why did you kill Nym?” Griswold Dinge asked Hadrian. The dwarf sat across from him in the little room.

With Nym dead, Selie preparing for his funeral, Villar gone, and Mercator off to meet with the duke, the dwarf—the last of the civic leaders—had apparently pulled guard duty. Hadrian was glad Erasmus Nym’s widow wasn’t there, as he was certain Seton’s story didn’t absolve him of that accusation. If anything, it cast more doubt, and he’d preferred to deal with an angry dwarf rather than a grieving widow.

“He didn’t kill Erasmus,” Seton affirmed faithfully.

The three sat cozy and close in the stone cellar, which was littered with rat droppings. Griswold had bound Hadrian’s hands behind his back. As an added precaution, he held a naked dagger. His manner wasn’t overtly threatening, but the menace was there.

“She’s right. I didn’t kill the Calian.” Hadrian smiled, but his charm had no effect on the dwarf.

“Oh yes, even though you were right on his heels during your pursuit, someone else came out of nowhere and took his life. Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I honestly have no idea what killed him,” Hadrian said.

“Don’t you mean who?”

“Seemed more like a what. All I know is he was dead, and his face was gone. It looked like it had been chewed away. I only knew it was him because of the clothing and the box he had been carrying. Didn’t seem like a typical murder to me.”

“He didn’t kill Nym,” Seton asserted again.

“And how in the bloody name of all that is holy do you know that? He spared your life; so what? He also butchered a pile of men; you said so. Your own words show he’s a killer, no innocent little lamb here. And his story about Nym missing his face is beyond belief.”

“No, it’s not,” Seton said, “and it’s not because he spared my life that I believe him.”

This caught the dwarf’s attention and he turned, revealing a little gold earring piercing his left lobe. Decoration? Mark of a sailor? Wedding gift? Hadrian knew so little about the small folk that he felt not only stupid but ill-equipped to help himself, much less his cause.

“So what makes you think he didn’t kill Erasmus?”

“Killings where people are mutilated the way he described have happened before.” Seton said. “That’s the reason the nobles wear blue.”

The dwarf shook his shaggy head. “Bah! The nobles are skittish. The streets are dangerous. Not every person butchered in the alleys is a victim of—”

“I’m not talking about the recent murders.” Seton’s voice lowered and grew several degrees more serious. Her eyes supported the shift in tone, growing solemn. Hadrian found it odd to see so much darkness in a face that looked so young. “I’m talking about Throm Hodinel.”

Griswold squinted his eyes. “Who now?”

“Throm Hodinel. He was the curator of the Imperial Gallery. Some said he was a relation to the Killians, a distant cousin or something. I saw his body the day they found it at the feet of the statue of Glenmorgan. And his face was a mess. They had to identify him by his clothing because . . .” Seton hesitated, her eyes focusing on Hadrian as if he knew the answer.

“Because his face had been chewed off,” he answered.

Seton nodded. “Actually, it wasn’t just his face; a large portion of the man had been eaten. But yes, his face was gone. So were a good number of his bones.”

“Sounds like wolves,” Griswold said.

“Inside the gallery?”

The dwarf stared at her skeptically. “I’ve never heard this story.”

“It happened before your time.”

The dwarf tilted his head and studied her more intently. “How old are you?”

She grinned at him. “Throm Hodinel died fifteen years before you were born.”

This raised the bushy brows of the dwarf. Griswold looked to easily be in his forties, maybe older. Seton wasn’t a teenager, wasn’t human, and if what she said was true, she was decades older than Hadrian. Adding these truths to the embarrassing fact that he hadn’t initially recognized her, Hadrian realized that while he had misjudged women before, this time marked a whole new level of stupidity.

“Throm Hodinel wasn’t the only one,” Seton went on. “Every few years someone dies the same way. It’s almost always a noble, or someone suspected of being an illegitimate child of one of the old-world dukes, usually male, and always within a few miles of Blythin Castle. The murders happen at night or around dusk in a heavy fog, and in every case, the victims are eaten. Some are only eaten a little, others are almost completely devoured, but their face is always gone.”

“You’re speaking about the Morgan. Villar told me that was a myth,” the dwarf said.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Villar doesn’t know everything.”

“Where is Villar?” Hadrian asked.

“Don’t know.” He spoke the words slowly, not looking at either of them. The statement caused the dwarf to frown, and his considerable brows knitted the equivalent of a full sweater.

“Is something wrong?”

Griswold looked up but didn’t answer.

“Griswold, what aren’t you telling us?” Seton asked.

“Riots are a bloody business. If something went wrong, if our people were in jeopardy, we wanted protection. We needed a backup plan. So we could intercede, if necessary. But only if necessary.”

“Is that what the three of you were meeting about?” Hadrian asked.

“For the most part, yes. But I also needed to give Erasmus his supplies.”

Hadrian nodded. “The box. I found it with Erasmus’s body, but it only contained some rocks, just gravel. The way he carried it, you’d think it was dangerous.”

“In the hands of a skilled dwarf, dirt, stone, metal, and wood are all dangerous.”

Hadrian felt that rope ought to be included on that list, as his wrists were starting to ache and his hands throbbed. In binding him, the dwarf had exhibited a level of skill that his people were known for when creating stonework or anything mechanical.

“I don’t understand,” Seton said.

“Of course you don’t. How could you? It’s old magic. Older even than you. Older than Rochelle, older than Novron.”

“What are you talking about?” Seton asked.

“Do you think only mir hold the claim to ancient secrets? For all your age, our collective history goes back far beyond yours. Before Novron and his empire, before the mir, before humans, the Belgriclungreians lived and thrived. I’m talking about the days when only full elves and dwarves roamed the lands, when Drumindor was the world’s greatest forge. There was a time when we had a king, an age of greatness, an age of wonder. They say it was Andvari Berling and King Mideon who did it, but the magic predates even them. It goes back to the gods of the ancient giants, to the ones known as Typhins. They were prohibited from having children of their own, according to legend. But they found a way to bring forth life from earth and stone. A magic they used to create the giants themselves. My people discovered that secret, but because it was outlawed by the gods, it was forbidden. Only once was it attempted, and that was during the War of Elven Aggression when King Mideon saved our people. Elves had used their magic to crush the Tenth and Twelfth Legions on the Plains of Mador, and then Mideon called on the legendary Andvari Berling and asked him to crack the forbidden scrolls and make a weapon that could defeat the elves. Some say Andvari never succeeded; others claim he did, but that something went terribly wrong. They claim it was his failure, rather than the attack of the elves, that actually defeated the Kingdom of Mideon and laid waste to Linden Lott.”

“What did King Mideon ask this Andvari to make?” Seton asked.

“The only real magic our people ever had.”

“Which is?”

Griswold paused a moment. Then a twinkle flickered in his eyes and he leaned in and whispered, “A golem, a protector made of stone.”

###

No one in the plaza had noticed the gargoyle come to life. All eyes were on the acrobats, the dancers, or the juggler. Mercator nimbly raced through the oblivious crowd. For someone who claimed to be old, the Calian mir moved as well as the acrobats they dodged. She and Royce ran through the ring of dancers, breaking the chain of clasped hands, causing a disturbance. Like rambunctious children running through an adult party, they turned heads and provoked shouts. Royce was reminded of his youth. Fleeing had been a daily occurrence back when he survived by picking pockets in the squares of Ratibor. Just as wind was a bird’s ally, crowds were his. They provided cover as well as opportunity, but just as too much wind could kill a bird, too dense of a crowd could jam him up, lock him in, and give his pursuer the chance to catch up. Being able to read a mass of people, to see the patterns and guess the timing, had made the difference between getting away and losing a hand.

Royce was older now and out of practice, but it didn’t take long to rediscover the familiar skills and remember old techniques. Mercator did a fine job of finding and exploiting holes as well. Anticipating openings, she managed to stay out ahead. She looped the fountain, heading for the steps of the gallery. He wasn’t sure what her plan was, but then Royce wasn’t certain about the extent of the danger. Seeing a gargoyle come to life was disturbing, but the fact that Mercator felt the need to flee was the real worry. Why, was something he could ask her later. As it turned out, why was answered sooner than expected.

People pointed at something behind Royce, then the screams started, and finally he understood why Mercator was making for the steps of the gallery. The plaza was like a river where a dam had burst upstream. He needed to reach the safety of the bank before the rush of the flood. Whatever the gargoyle was doing, it had caused a panic, and the once happy crowd turned into a mindless mob as people began to push in a frantic attempt to get away.

A man bowled over a woman and her daughter, causing him to trip and fall to the ground, where he, too, was stepped on. The juggler and the dancers were consumed in the tidal surge. Royce and Mercator reached the marble steps of the gallery just as the wave burst. She wasted no time running to the big bronze doors. Royce finally saw her plan and was once more impressed by the level of strategic forethought. And she was a mir.

If she knew, she could say the same about me, couldn’t she?

The gallery wasn’t as big as Grom Galimus, but it was still large and almost entirely made of stone. There weren’t any ground-floor windows, and its doors opened out. Royce and Mercator would only have a few seconds to get inside. The swell of the crowd fleeing whatever mayhem had ignited their stampede would realize what Mercator had: The gallery was protection from this storm. If Royce and Mercator were inside when that happened, the bottleneck would inhibit the gargoyle . . . brilliant.

“Locked.” Mercator pulled angrily on the door. “You can open it, right?”

“How’d you know?” Royce knelt at the door, making a quick study of the basic lever-tumbler mechanism.

“Anyone expecting a severed finger seems the sort to have a background in theft.”

Royce inserted his curtain pick into the keyhole. Lifting the lever, he popped the latch. Although the process had taken only seconds, the crowd moved faster than Royce had expected; a mass of revelers-turned-stampeding-herd pushed up behind them. Unable to pull the door open wide, the two barely managed to slip in before the pressing weight of the mindless crowd slammed it shut again. Part of Royce’s cloak was caught, and he freed himself by ripping it in half.

The two looked back at the pair of bronze doors, backing slowly away, listening to the muffled cries of the terrified crowd that grew louder as the seconds passed. The interior of the gallery was tomb-quiet and dark, but Royce knew the building and remembered the room. He’d been there only the night before. This was the rotunda with the murals and paintings, odd artifacts on pedestals, and that big chariot with the stuffed horses yoked to it. The strange beast he’d seen from above he now saw from level ground. This was the proper viewing position for everything, and from there the dragon hoisted overhead was suitably terrifying.

“What is that thing outside?” Royce asked.

“A golem.” Mercator’s eyes remained fixed on the doors as the two backed away. The fear on her face did nothing to convince Royce that they were safe. “Dwarven sorcery, old, deep, evil magic.”

“That thing was a statue a minute ago. What is it now?”

“Still a statue—in a way.”

“It was after us, right?”

“Still is.”

“Can it get in here?”

Mercator looked up at the broken window in the upper colonnade where the night before Royce had chased Villar. “I think so.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me exactly what a golem is. I hate getting visits from total strangers.”

###

Sitting in the chair was aggravating the pain in his arms, so Hadrian switched to the floor where he could stretch out his legs. Seton helped him, brushing away a pile of rat pellets.

“What does ancient dwarven magic have to do with you, Erasmus Nym, and Villar?”

Griswold reached up and ran fingers under his beard, his lower lip jutting out. He paused there, and Hadrian thought he might not say anything. “We doubted our forces would be enough to prevail against the duke and the city guard. We needed more. We needed what Andvari offered King Mideon.”

“I’m guessing that’s knowledge you can’t pick up just anywhere,” Hadrian said.

Griswold nodded and addressed Seton. “Do you know about the Night of Terror?”

“That was centuries ago,” Seton said.

Griswold scowled at her. “And I suppose you were there?”

“Before my time. Even before Mercator’s, I think.”

“One cold night, mobs came into Little Town—that’s what they called our ghetto back then—and set our houses on fire. Everyone was dragged into the street for a beating. Almost a hundred of my people died on the same night that the rest of the world calls Wintertide. Strange way to celebrate the rebirth of the sun, don’t you think? In the aftermath, the elders found a way to protect us. At that time, the city was under construction, Grom Galimus only half built. My people did the stonework. Cheap, skilled labor is what we were. The archbishop commissioned many sculptures, and we were happy to oblige. Right under his nose and with his blessing, we created weapons that we could call on in time of need.”

Griswold smiled. “Surely you’ve seen all the fanciful downspouts and carvings, malevolent faces that spit rainwater out to the streets?”

Hadrian nodded.

“Those were our creations. Every one of them sculpted by my people. We made them fierce and grotesque as a means of embodying what they are—monsters. The archbishop thought they were fanciful—funny, he called them. What he didn’t know was that each one was sculpted ritualistically, and the shards were saved so that we could use them when necessary. If the day came when we were threatened again, we could breathe life into these decorations and send them to fight for us.” Griswold’s glare hardened. “The nobles have their soldiers, and we have ours. Ours sit upon their perches high above the city, awaiting the day when all debts will be paid in full.”

“You can be really creepy, you know that?” Hadrian asked.

###

“What exactly is a golem?” Royce asked. “Is it alive? Can it be killed?”

“I’m not an expert on dwarven magic,” Mercator said, “but I know golems are sculptures brought to life. Creatures that are supposed to retain the characteristics of the material they were made from.”

“This one is made from stone.” Royce stared at the bronze doors with their detailed reliefs, nine framed images that told the life story of a grand city. “How do you harm stone?”

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The gallery echoed with the sound of drumming on the doors by what could have been a huge hammer. They both watched as the elegant images were distorted by dents, the metal puckering where it was struck.

Mercator and Royce backed up.

“Can’t burn it. Doesn’t have any blood, so slitting its throat is useless. Pretty much nothing sharp will be helpful . . .” Royce was thinking out loud as he scanned the chamber for a weapon. “What is this place?”

“The Imperial Gallery,” Mercator said, bumping into a bust of a balding man. The sculpture toppled, fell, and shattered on the marble floor. She stared aghast at the ruined artwork. “The noble houses brought a lot of this stuff with them after the fall of Percepliquis. They keep the best pieces in their homes, and the rest is displayed here.”

“I don’t suppose there’s an ancient weapon around that kills stone gargoyles?”

Mercator flashed him a scowl that he guessed had more to do with the beating on the door than his poor attempt at humor.

Hadrian would have appreciated it.

Royce found a pair of hammers set on a display pedestal, one large, one small, both old and crude. He felt the weight of the heavy one, thinking it might be useful. “Why is it after us?”

Mercator stared at the door. “It’s being controlled by Villar.”

“How do you know?”

“He’s one of the few people who know how. Erasmus Nym is dead, and Griswold is busy guarding your friend. It has to be Villar.”

“So what does he want with us?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes darted back and forth in thought, then they widened. “Wait, you said no list of demands was found in the carriage?”

“No one but you appears to know anything about a list.”

Mercator placed a cupped hand over her mouth in disbelief. “The list wasn’t overlooked or blown away; he never left it. Everything makes sense now. Villar didn’t kidnap the duchess to seek concessions. He never wanted a peaceful solution. He was only placating me, pretending. And now—”

The bronze door ruptured. A stone fist punched through. Claws reached in and began ripping the hole wider. The metal screeched as it tore.

Mercator stuffed Genny’s note into Royce’s hand. “Take this to the duke.”

“What are you going to do?”

She looked back at the doors and Royce couldn’t tell if she was scared or angry. Both maybe.

“Stop him, I hope. He’s driving that thing, running it like a puppet. He can see and hear through it, so I can talk to him, reason with him.”

The golem pushed in farther, and Royce dropped the hammer and sprinted for the stairs. The extra weight would only slow him down, and speed was what he needed now. He took the steps three at a time. Four flights up, he glanced back.

Mercator remained in the middle of the main room next to a statue whose plaque read GLENMORGAN THE GREAT. The gargoyle had opened the hole to the size of a window, and it was pulling its body through, emerging like some hideous insect splitting a pupa sac.

“Villar!” Mercator shouted. She had both hands up, palms out. “Stop! You don’t have to do this. I’ve talked to the duchess. She’s on our side and wants to help.”

The creature appeared to be listening, or maybe it was merely having trouble getting through the ragged opening it had made. The bronze had left deep scratches across its stony skin.

“I know you want your war, Villar. You think it’s the only way, but it isn’t. Genny can get the duke to change the laws, and they will force the guilds to change their rules. The duchess was already working on it. The very night you kidnapped her she was on her way back from . . .” Mercator stopped. “Oh, my Lord Ferrol.” She staggered as if from a blow. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along that she was working on a solution. That’s why you did it. You wanted to stop her. You needed to stop her.”

The gargoyle cleared the door. Using its feet and the knuckles of its hands, the thing scrambled monkey-like across the room. It slowed down as it neared her.

Mercator shook her head in disbelief. “Villar, how could you?”

The golem hesitated for a moment, and Royce thought she had a chance, then the thing sank both sets of claws into her body. Royce was no stranger to violence. He’d seen—he’d performed—brutalities that many would label gruesome, even sick. He was as used to bloodletting as a butcher, and yet what he witnessed in that artifact-filled chamber unsettled him. It didn’t so much vivisect Mercator as tear her open like a cloth bag with poor stitching. Royce heard muscles shred and her bones make a greenwood-splinter sound. The Calian mir whom Royce had only begun to know, and thought he might like, died in an explosion of blood that splattered the statue of Glenmorgan and stained the perfect marble floor.

The gargoyle showed fangs and pointed teeth, grinning its delight. Then, as tears of blood ran down stone skin, that grotesque monkey-face tilted up. No more encouragement was required. Royce resumed his rapid climb.

The window on the top floor was his goal, his exit, the broken one Villar had shattered the night before.

Reaching the top floor, Royce once more spotted the suit of armor standing against the wall, still holding its long spear. Behind him, the gargoyle was climbing the steps. Royce listened to the crack of stone on marble as if someone were clapping rocks together.

Glass from the window still lay on the floor. Outside was the wall, the leap to the cathedral, and a trip across rooftops that Royce had made once already. Except this time, he would be the prey, the one who would slide down slate shingles and fall into the river. Maybe he, too, would survive. No . . . that sort of thing happens to other people, not me. He wasn’t Villar, and he wasn’t competing with a mir. With Royce’s luck, the thing would embrace him in a bear hug, they’d hit the river, and he’d be dragged to the bottom.

. . . supposed to retain the characteristics of the material they were made from.

Remembering what had happened to the bust that Mercator had knocked off its pedestal, he grabbed the spear. Jerking it free of the armor, he positioned himself near the balcony’s railing. Hope this works, he thought even though he suspected it wouldn’t.

I’ll still have the window, he consoled himself. If I survive that long.

Royce held the spear low, not in front, not braced against himself, just at his side. He didn’t want to slam the beast head-on. Royce was certain if he tried that, the gargoyle would splinter the spear—or more likely drive it from his hands. He didn’t want to stab the thing. He wanted to do what Hadrian had once achieved when facing an indestructible foe. Worked once, might work again. But theory and reality were often distant relatives. After seeing what the golem had done to Mercator, Royce was less than confident. Watching a person being torn apart had that effect.

I don’t have Hadrian’s luck.

The gargoyle’s head rose above the steps as it climbed. Its wings spread wide like the hood of a snake before a strike. It spotted Royce, and its eyes widened, the mouth displaying more teeth. Stone teeth, stone face: Every inch of it was craggy and coarse and covered in rivulets of blood. The creature broke into a charge.

The spear didn’t give the monster the slightest pause. It didn’t try to dodge, didn’t shift or slow. The gargoyle appeared bemused, even joyful. Royce couldn’t have had a more accommodating enemy, and he imagined the golem felt the same way. As they came together, Royce planted his rear leg and held tight to the pole, then as they collided, he gave ground to prevent the gargoyle from jarring the spear from his hands. The impact was nonetheless powerful, and the tip broke. Royce fell back, dodging to one side while pushing against the stone beast, acting as a lever instead of an impediment. The golem’s course altered, only two feet to one side, but it was enough.

Shoved off balance, all its weight slammed into the balcony’s railing. A man would have hit the balustrade and slid or bounced off.

. . . supposed to retain the characteristics of the material they were made from. It may have wings, but stone can’t fly.

The heavy body of the charging gargoyle shattered the rail, and over the edge it went, crashing through the suspended body of the dragon, shattering the whole exhibit and sending it all to the floor four stories below.

A bang, deep and solid, echoed off the walls, bouncing back and forth twice.

Shatter, you miserable figurine! This half thought, half wish filled Royce’s mind as he peered over the edge. He hoped to see a burst of plaster, as when Mercator had overturned the bust. Four stories down lay a mess of broken dragon parts and the torn body of Mercator, her blood draining through a large crack in the checkered marble floor that marked the impact crater of the golem.

The gargoyle hadn’t been pulverized. The creature was on its knees in the center of the cracked floor.

No, not Hadrian’s kind of luck. Royce then noticed that the golem hadn’t escaped unscathed. Part of it was missing. Its left arm lay on the floor a few feet away. The gargoyle looked at it mournfully. Then the fanged monkey-face once more fixed its stare on Royce. This time it added a hiss.

Great, I’ve made it angry. Well, angrier.

The golem ran for the stairs, and Royce raced for the window. Already knowing the route was his one comfort. The map was still engraved in his mind, which allowed Royce to move with speed and confidence. Poking his head out, he saw the street below. The avenue throbbed with a mass of people, some of whom wore uniforms and held torches. Bodies lay in a line, marking the golem’s path to the gallery.

Ducking past the remaining broken shards and out the window, Royce climbed up the wall. He wished he’d brought his hand claws, but he hadn’t had them the last time and had managed just fine.

But I was the hunter then. Being the prey is a different matter.

Royce had been chased before. He never cared for it, and usually the hunt ended when he managed to gain enough distance to turn around unseen and don the role of huntsman once more. That wasn’t going to happen this time.

How do you harm stone?

He’d broken its arm by dropping it from a height.

Perhaps taking a tumble from higher up?

Reaching the roof of the gallery, he looked back. Nothing but a single sheer curtain fluttered, blowing out through the broken window by an errant wind. Is it possible the thing lost interest?

The answer came when the window’s remnants burst outward and fell, along with portions of the frame and a few stones of the wall. More screams erupted below. Arms went up. Fingers pointed. Men shouted, “Up there! There it is!”

The gargoyle wasn’t as nimble as it had been when descending the cathedral—climbing was clearly harder to manage with only one arm. Brute force now replaced grace. It fearlessly launched itself up from the sill, one clawed hand creating its own handhold, gouging out mortar like soft dirt. Rear claws did the same, then punched up again—stone muscles propelling it amazing distances in single thrusts.

Royce didn’t like the ease with which it followed nor the power it displayed. Mercator’s death remained fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want to be anywhere near those claws. Taking a cue from the previous night, he pulled slate shingles free and threw, hoping he might make the golem fall. Royce’s aim was better than Villar’s, and he struck the beast three times: once in the head, twice in the body. The slates shattered. The gargoyle didn’t notice.

How am I going to make it fall again? The question was pushed aside as he realized it didn’t matter—not yet. He needed to get higher. Royce resumed his flight.

Running out along the gable, he jumped the gap between the gallery and Grom Galimus, landing on a stony lion’s head. Below him, he heard the crowd cheer with excitement. As he scaled the cathedral’s pier, Royce realized how futile the effort was. Even if he got away from the golem, reached the duke, somehow convinced him his wife was alive, and persuaded the man to concede to Mercator’s demands, Hadrian might still die. The issue of Nym’s death hadn’t yet been addressed. If Hadrian’s luck provided him the means to slip free of that noose, Royce just might kill him anyway.

They were up six stories now.

Is that enough? No, I need to go higher.

After Royce reached the flying buttress, obtaining additional height was no longer an issue. He ran up its angled length, and the world below dropped away as he climbed several stories as quickly as ascending stairs. Reaching the high balcony just below the cathedral’s eaves, Royce saw it as a death trap. Too narrow to pull another spear stunt, even if he had one. Up there the golem would have all the advantage. Facing the thing on the steep roof of Grom Galimus wasn’t to Royce’s liking. The peak was equally dangerous for both. The battle odds would be even: each had a good chance of falling. Royce was never pleased with a fair fight, but fair was better than certain death. They were about two hundred and fifty feet up, and he guessed his odds of surviving a fall, assuming he could hit the water, were one in a hundred.

Villar had managed it. Hadrian could probably pull it off as well, but I don’t have his kind of luck.

Royce saw it as a last resort.

Reaching up, he grabbed the eaves, scowling at the row of gargoyle faces that glared down at him. Each one, he now realized, was grinning. I really hate these things.

Royce was breathing hard, his clothes stuck to his skin, and as he pulled himself up, he realized his muscles were weakening. Stone, he guessed, doesn’t get tired. As he reached the roof, the wind greeted him with a familiar blast of cold air. He replied with a grunt and a scowl as he was forced to remember that spring, while very near, hadn’t yet arrived. The chill sent a shiver through him and whipped what was left of his cloak over his shoulder.

Below, he spotted the golem racing up the buttress, wings extended like an acrobat’s balancing pole. When crouched and seen at a distance on the walls of buildings, the gargoyles appeared small. Up close, the creature was eight feet tall.

This isn’t going to end well.

Royce shimmied up the ribs to the fence-like peak of the roof where he would make his last stand. His options were limited. He could try to climb the bell tower as Villar had considered doing, but there was no more benefit in it now than before. He could climb down the other side of the cathedral and hope the golem would follow and fall the way Villar had. Already tired, Royce knew if anyone fell it would most likely be him. Each step inched him toward exhaustion while the gargoyle showed no sign of weakening.

The thing lost its arm! If I lost one after falling four stories, I’d quit. It hasn’t even slowed down!

Royce had to make a move while he still had the strength. The golem was one-handed now and needed both feet to stand on the roof, so it couldn’t rip him apart as it had Mercator, the thing would have to resort to slashing, biting, or crushing. But without a spear, without a weapon, fighting the golem would be suicide, except . . .

Royce pulled Alverstone from the folds of his cloak. Moonlight gave its blade a luminosity that was pleasantly eerie. Royce had few possessions; the dagger was his most prized for two reasons. The first was that it had been a gift from a man who’d shown him kindness and saved his life. The only one to do so—until Hadrian acted the fool on the Crown Tower. The second was that the blade was remarkable. He had no idea how it had been created. The weapon had somehow been forged in secret in that infernal pit that was the Manzant Prison and Salt Mine. The one good thing to come out of there. No, Royce corrected himself, not the only good thing. The dagger wasn’t the real gift he’d received; it was but a symbol, the embodiment of something more. The gleeful, thieving assassin who entered that salt mine wasn’t the same as the one who’d crawled out. As Royce straddled the peak of Grom Galimus waiting for the arrival of the golem what he held in his hand wasn’t a dagger; it was what it always had been—hope.

He didn’t wait long. The gargoyle leapt onto the roof and once more grinned with delight to find his prey waiting.

With his other hand holding on to the decorative iron fins along the roof’s peak, Royce braced in a crouch, facing into the howling wind.

Is this the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever done? That this was even a question made him suspect the idiocy of his past life choices.

Using the stone claws on its feet, the gargoyle pinched into the slate, creating firm footholds as it walked up the steep slope. A gust of wind hit its wings, staggering and nearly toppling the beast, but the creature folded them away and continued its climb.

This is what Villar had seen last night. An unstoppable predator. Irony, oh how I hate thee.

Royce maintained his perch along the line of the peak. When the first attack came—a wide swipe from the remaining arm—he shuffled back along the length. All this did was grant the gargoyle room to take position on the ridgeline with him. With only one arm, the golem couldn’t both attack and hold on to the fins. Still, it had claws on its feet and, of course, fangs. Royce couldn’t forget the fangs. Mercator’s blood was already drying, aided by the brisk wind. An ever-present, sinisterly sculpted smile revealed zigzagging teeth as pointed as spear tips, the invention of an artist with a sick mind and no concern for realism. The gargoyle moved forward with the confidence Royce lacked.

Facing the monster, guarding from attacks, Royce shuffled backward blindly, knowing he would eventually run out of roof, and do so without warning. He was a sailor walking a plank backward.

Royce dodged a swipe from the golem’s foot. In the process, he backed up too far and found the end of the roof. He fell, catching himself by grabbing the decorative ironwork.

The golem pressed the advantage, rushing forward. With Royce dangling and nearly helpless, the sensible thing for the golem to do would have been to crush his hand and let him fall. Instead, it grabbed his wrist and jerked him up. The golem’s grip on his wrist was exactly what Royce expected, vise-strong and cold. This was the end of the fight, but while the golem had but one arm, Royce had two. As the golem jerked Royce up, it had no defense—likely didn’t feel a need for it.

How do you harm stone?

The golem had no reason to fear a delicate dagger. Royce had slim hope himself, despite knowing the weapon was endowed with an extraordinary blade that cut wood like hot iron cut wax. Once, it’d even cut a link of iron chain. Alverstone was hope in the face of despair, and Royce hoped very hard as he jabbed at the gargoyle’s chest.

Rather than turn, deflect, or snap as it should have, the dagger’s blade punctured the stone. Not deep; it didn’t have the opportunity. The golem screamed, recoiled, and in that instant of shock, the heavy stone creature was thrown off balance. Falling from its precarious perch, the golem let go of Royce in the hope of grabbing support.

Released from bondage, Royce fell. He hit the roof’s surface, started his slide, and without thought used Alverstone the way he so often used his hand claws. Royce stabbed into the slate with the blade. It penetrated, caught, and held, leaving Royce hanging from the dagger, as beside him the golem tumbled.

The gargoyle’s weight worked against it. It managed to grab an edge but tore it free. The onetime statue fell, rolled, and picked up the sort of speed one expects from a rock rolling down a steep roof. It bounced, jumped, and finally fell, this time on the plaza side. The gargoyle’s wings spread, but stone wings did nothing to slow its fall.

Royce didn’t see the impact. The edge of the roof blocked the climax. He heard it: a loud crack. Screams and shouts followed. They were short-lived, the sort that came from the surprise of a falling stone, rather than the fear of a living golem.