Behind him, another window shattered as the killer crashed through it and into the front room. The tavern keeper’s husband shrieked and dove for cover.

“To the innocent,” Poldo added.

Thane’s face, apologetic and spattered with crimson, loomed in the broken window. “Sorry!” he said. “I was swinging her by a leg and I think her boot must have slipped off.”

“It’s fine,” Poldo called, trying to avoid the tavern keeper’s eye.

“Let me get that.” The Troll reached in and began tugging at the remains of the assassin. “I can get carried away when… well, you see.”

“It’s really fine!” Poldo called. “He’s just very protective of his friends, is all,” he added to the proprietress.

“Oh, it wasn’t just her boot! Her foot came off at the knee.” Thane held up the offending appendage. “I knew I had a good grip.”

“Extremely protective,” said Poldo, rubbing his temples.

“He’s a Troll,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide for emphasis, but otherwise she let the argument stand on its own merits.

“Now listen, I would be dead many times over if it weren’t for that Troll,” Poldo said. “He’s as good and loyal as⁠—”

“Oh, stuff it with that nonsense,” the tavern keeper hissed. “All you city-folk are always tellin’ us that Orcs are friendly, and Gnolls are sweet as puppies, and Goblins don’t stink. Well, I’d like to think thirty years runnin’ a tavern on the edge of the woods may have taught me sommat about them Shadowkin, and I know they’re thieves and bloodthirsty killers to a one!” Her voice rose in volume until she was cut off by the hollow thud of a body hitting the oak floor.

Poldo turned to where Thane had dropped the ex-assassin. “Sorry, I… I forget sometimes that… I’ll just—” The Troll disappeared from the window.

“Thane, no,” Poldo began, but the Troll was gone. Fury boiled up within the Gnome, so much so that he shook until his stool wobbled. “Well, I can see my gold is no good here,” he hissed. “I shall take my leave, madam.”

The tavern keeper nodded in satisfaction as Poldo climbed down off the stool. The action must have dislodged a thought, because she demanded, “Oi! What about my windows!”

“I suggest you fix them, lest more vermin creep in to tend the bar!” snapped Poldo, pausing at the door. “Good day, madam!”

Outside, the Scribkin followed the nickering of nervous horses to find Thane sitting by the inn’s stables. “I think we’ll be better off making some more progress and camping on the road tonight,” Poldo offered with forced cheer.

The Troll sighed and started to put his desk-pack on. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “If I hadn’t been there⁠—”

“If you hadn’t been there, I’d be rotting in the woods.” Poldo took a deep breath and tried to calm himself by staring at the last of the season’s foliage. The Green Span was gray and brown now, and those sparse leaves that remained were gilded by the amber light of the setting sun. “You’ve nothing to apologize for.”

“I…” Some memory struck Thane, and he shook his head. “I just wish things were different.”

“If by ‘things,’ you mean those witless bumpkins running the inn, then I do as well.” Poldo strapped himself into the desk. “I’d change a lot about them.”

“They’re just set in their ways.” Thane waited for the last of the Wood Gnomes to scamper up his leg before he set off down the road. “It’s hard for people like that to deal with… well, with me.”

“The problem is their smug, smarmy overconfidence! They won’t give a new idea a chance, let alone a new person. They can’t accept what it would say about them if a new person brought something good to society.”

“If they… they didn’t see things the way you wanted them to…” rumbled Thane.

Grim realization came upon Poldo like dawn over a battlefield, and he was horrified by what he saw. “We never give anyone different a chance…” He caught Red Squirrel’s eye peering out from the Troll’s fur. “I never gave her a chance.”

The Wood Gnome chirruped and nodded.

“I just dismissed Mrs. Hrurk’s insights because… well, because she’s not an old analyst like me. Her information is sound and her logic can’t be faulted, but I…” Poldo shook his head and gave a bitter chuckle. “All the world’s evils are so much easier to spot in someone else.”

“Never gave her a chance,” the Troll repeated, lost in his own thoughts.

“Well, all the world’s evils are only possible to fix in ourselves,” the Gnome said. “Let’s draft a new letter to Feista. And then a letter to Emblin and Stormbreaker. We also must tell my broker to divest ourselves of all our shares of the Dragon of Wynspar’s loot.”

Several more Wood Gnomes peeked out of Thane’s coat, squeaking a chorus of surprised questions.

“I am absolutely serious. I’m putting my faith in Mrs. Hrurk, and that means our shares in the dragon’s hoard must go,” said Poldo. “Every last one.”

Chapter 12

“There’s far too many for that,” hissed Kaitha.

“No more than a dozen.” Gorm peered over a boulder. Across the rocky slope, men and women in red and white robes carefully unloaded the wagon. The explosive barrels were loaded onto small carts that workers wheeled through a wooden gate into the side of the mountain. Beyond it, a strange fortress loomed over the basalt plateau. A new fort bulged from the ruins of an ancient one, like a Dire Hermit Crab living in a discarded helmet. Old Stennish ruins were carved into the northern crags of Mount Wynspar, covered with carvings of flowing angles. Wooden palisades and freshly painted walls poked through the gaps in the crumbling ruin and hung out its yawning doorway.

As the workers pushed their cargo into the wooden facade of the fort, more people came streaming out the wide door.

“Okay, maybe two dozen,” said Gorm, dropping back behind the stone. “Still, we can take ’em. Ye drop in, I sneak round that ravine there, and Gaist runs round the other way. Then we knock ’em all out.”

“Before the alarm goes up.” Kaitha’s voice was level, but her brows rose on a tide of skepticism.

Gaist shook his head.

Gorm scowled and scratched his beard. “Well, ye… ye use a few arrows⁠—”

“Arrows are for fatalities, Gorm,” said Kaitha. “We can’t kill anyone.”

“Lass, these are the people conspirin’ to fake the dragon attacks. They’re unloading explosives that was smuggled to a secret site where they ain’t supposed to have one. They ain’t innocents.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re just day workers at an industrial forge we know nothing about. Or researchers looking into the curse of the Winter’s Shade,” the ranger said.

“Ye know those ain’t the case. They’re wearing Tandos’ colors.”

“Exactly my point! Shooting people is the sort of thing you want to be really certain of, and that goes double for clergy in the king’s patron temple!” Kaitha hissed. “Johan is itching to declare us villains. If you’re going to kill some priests without cause, you might as well do up the paperwork for our executions while you’re at it.”

Gaist inclined his head and blinked, conceding the Elf’s point while maintaining a posture that was very clearly pro-fatality.

Gorm opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again with a snort. “I suppose ye got a better proposal?”

“Look. There are other entrances to the complex.” She pointed to Mount Wynspar’s northern face. Several gates and doors were visible farther up the mountain, some no larger than a Halfling’s hole, several as big as a stable’s gate, and one opening as wide as a street built inexplicably high in a sheer cliff face. “We can find one with fewer guards, get in, and see what they’re hiding. If it’s nothing, we sneak back out. If it’s as bad as you think it is, we gather proof to use as leverage.”

“Simple as that?” snorted the Dwarf. “We just stroll in and have a look around?”

She smiled in a way that got his guard up. “Well, we could just walk if⁠—”

“Don’t ye say it,” Gorm growled.

“Every one of them is wearing red and white,” Kaitha insisted. “We each get a set of robes, and we can walk right in the front door.”