At the end of the alley, occupying half the side of a small square, sat the Blue Wolf. Its roof sloped and sagged like a crooked smile. Two chimneys filled the air with the thick, black smoke of yellow fires. Shapes and shadows milled about still. It irked him they were not out working, making use of the gifts the goddess had given them. Were he a more courageous man, more dutiful, he might stand up to them and demand they do something useful. The Mornae of his grandfather’s time would never allow such lassitude. He shouldered through them.

The tavern was full despite the hour, but the patrons spoke in low voices, whispering to each other or quietly sipping the last bit of their valley ale; for some, the only hearty meal they may have that day.

The barkeep watched Taul closely as he wiped down the counter.

“What’ll you have?” asked a youngish man with close-cropped brown hair and a mottled pink and gray face.

It took Taul a moment to acknowledge him. “Brandy,” he said.

“Right,” the lad said with a crinkled nose. “Closest we got is apple wine.”

“I’ll have that then,” Taul said.

“As you say, milord. Take any seat you like.”

Taul removed his coat, but then reconsidered. Everyone else looked well bundled, concealing everything they were about. Eyes looked up surreptitiously as he crossed the tavern to a table away from the door.

The tavern, lit by yellow light, swam a little before his eyes as they adjusted. A fireplace still roared at the far end. The heat was stifling, but he kept his coat on.

“You never get used to it, not really,” said a voice from behind him. “Take the next booth, more shadowed, more comfortable for you, milord.”

The man said milord with a hint of ridicule. Taul frowned, irritated the man lumped him in with those demanding the foreign title. He was not superior because his house employed others. Calm yourself, he thought. It was a joke they could both share.

“Of course, milord,” he replied with a laugh.

The man behind him chuckled and took a seat.

The server brought Taul his apple wine in a small, murky tumbler and Taul set a silver bit on the table. The server palmed it.

The man before him was not like the gutter folk of outer Halkamas. His eyes were pale blue with silver flecks, and his hair, though close cropped, clearly held goddess-light. His skin was deep gray and youthful, without the crisscrossing white lines of age he expected from an agent of a high born Mornae.

The server set a golden-brown liquor in a clean glass for the agent, who smiled and nodded to the server.

An awkward minute passed while Taul opened his coat and loosened his tunic.

The agent downed his brandy.

“Well then,” he said. “I hear you need a child. Matron having a hard time?”

Taul swallowed. “I was told you would have something to tell me, and I should listen. Not that I should answer impertinent questions.”

The agent smirked. “The thing I’m about to tell you, your type shouldn’t ever know.”

Taul clenched his jaw and resisted lashing out. The pride of his house and his birth house, reaching back across the cycles, now had to tolerate veiled insults.

“There is a rot in the third high house,” the agent said. “Something of which you are unaware. Your consort is not the first, nor will she be the last to experience this… this disaster. Children move about to stop the gaps, to plug the holes.”

Taul frowned even more, his jaw heating. “Speak plainly. We just want a child… favor from the goddess.”

The agent tapped his ear. “Listen then, prime consort. I am telling you.”

Taul pushed back from the table and refused to drink the apple wine in the dirty glass.

“The high matron would execute me for sharing this information with you,” the agent said. “I’m no errand boy. I do this as a favor for a friend.”

He made as if to leave. Taul observed more closely. The embroidered trim of the man’s tunic, the silver chased pommel of his blade. The soft lambskin of his gloves.

Taul reconsidered and said, “Please, take a seat. Let me buy you another.”

The man eyed Taul and motioned to the server, who returned with a small decanter of brandy and two clean tumblers. The brandy was fine, too, glowing. Not even like what he drank in the crater. Vakayne brandy, or something akin to it.

“Look,” the man said, sitting. “I have seen things, followed the threads. I, too, had a problem like yours once and received no help. Some find a remedy, and others find none. It is not the goddess who is fickle, but the high matron.”

He whispered the last words. To speak against one’s matron was a death sentence. Or was it that the matron should only speak as the goddess would? And if she no longer did, should anyone obey? Taul had heard such talk during his time at Isilmyr, and even from his brother when he’d gotten too philosophical or inebriated.

“What do you get out of this?” Taul asked.

“Nothing except to pull up an ugly business by the roots. Not all in Hosmyr want this sort of thing. It is shameful and dishonors the goddess.”

“What is the business, then?”

His face turned grave, and he leaned closer. “The trade of children,” he said. “Mornae children.”

Taul blinked and a chilled sweat broke out on his face. At times like these, when they wore guile as a mask, he felt keenly how much of a valley Mornae he really was. Had his darkest thoughts taken form?

“You mean the temple bounty?” he asked. “Or something else?”

The man scowled at the mention of the temple. “Else. It has always happened in secret, but never to this degree. When you want a certain bloodline and the temple hides the child’s origins, a house may go a different route to get what it wants… or rather what it needs.”

Taul rolled the last drops of brandy about in the tumbler and then downed it. “Unspeakable,” he said finally. “It violates all Accords. All good customs and traditions. Only the goddess may give and take.”

The man scoffed. “There is only the Fifth now, and whatever rules the high council makes up every ten years. A high matron is now life and death beyond her own house.”

Anger welled in Taul. The man poured him another drink, which he accepted gladly. The fragile notions of his society, the norms and customs, collapsed in his mind. Others had acted to get what they wanted, violating every good law of the goddess. The goddess was fickle, though. And she had made them ruthless people. Was this encounter a test of his virtue?

“But the high matron must serve her city and her house,” he said.

“That may be,” the agent said, “but it is happening. Believe me! I did as you did. Asked for aid. I expected aid from her—a woman I’ve known since childhood—of all people. To whom else could I confide this?”

He retrieved a long, thin silver pipe from inside his coat. He rubbed his fingers along the bowl’s kith rim and a blue spark lit it. Drawing on it deeply, his eyes rolled back. A moment later, he blew out the smoke.

“She rejected me… us. My house… a storied house… a…” he said through the haze. Taul suspected the next thing he’d say was a founding house. “I couldn’t bear it,” the agent continued. “So, like you, I searched for a way. But it was not to be. My consort insisted we try again for our own child. We failed. I failed.”

“To lose a child that way,” Taul said.

The man’s eyes turned glassy. “No, something worse. I lost my consort, as well. And with it, my house.”

Fear overtook Taul. His heart raced, and his throat clamped down hard as the rush to act, to protect and defend his consort, stirred so deeply. The binding, the power of it, drove him near mad. He clenched his fists and eyes, flushing hot as the man watched him. The agent said nothing, no doubt familiar with the feeling and worse. What had befallen this man could not happen to Lor’Toshtolin. It might not fall at once, despite the high matron’s disdain, but houses that couldn’t keep their ancestral line going usually fell in time.