“To meet me. To see who I am, and decide if she wanted me to stay.” Thane looked at his hand. “So many times, she asked me to come out, begged me for the truth. And I never trusted her with it. I never let her decide about me, because I was scared she’d… she’d… well, you know.”

“To be fair, I’d say she reacted about as poorly as you feared,” said Poldo. His eyes turned to the shrubs, where the Wood Gnomes were constructing a sort of long house from rat pelts and snake bones.

“I’d say I gave her reason to. The first time I let her see me, I was drenched in blood and mauling a corpse. Would she have screamed if I revealed myself in my garden? If I answered when she called me, would she still have drawn the bow? If I had let her see me, if I had trusted her to choose, if I had let go of my fear…” The Troll shook his head. “If I had done things differently, I think she would have as well. But I never gave her a chance.”

Poldo put a hand on the thick fur of Thane’s arm. “Perhaps you should tell her that.”

The Troll’s face froze, and Poldo could see a flash of fear behind his crimson eyes. “She… she does not need me, not the way her party did when I found her. And I… I am not ready.”

“Perhaps in time,” said the Scribkin.

The Troll smiled down at the Gnome. “Perhaps.” He leaned back and took a deep breath of the mountain air, as cool and crisp as a burbling spring. “Fate brought us together once. It may do so again. Until then, she’s made a new career for herself. She’s living a good life. She doesn’t need me to… well, she just doesn’t need me.”

“What do you need, though?” asked Poldo.

Thane took some time to think about it. “I have a home here, and friends. I have a job, and neighbors, and a whole city to explore. And apparently, I still have more to learn about myself.”

“All good things,” said Poldo.

“Very good things,” rumbled the Troll. The setting sun glinted off his broad smile as he looked out over the city. “I think what I need is to enjoy them.”

Chapter 16

“You know. Take the win. Bask in the victory for a moment. Celebrate,” said Burt. “Lady Asherzu is taking a few of us out for dinner tonight to celebrate our recent gains and give the king a Naga’s salute.”

“A what?” Gorm looked up from a pile of eggs over charred gristle and wiped yolk from his beard.

“A Naga’s salute? You know, something like, ‘he looked like a brave warrior, though I only ever saw his back?’”

The Heroes of Destiny exchanged confused looks. They sat around a small table in a musty diner, attacking plates of burned and steaming breakfast fare with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“That doesn’t sound like much of a salute,” said Kaitha.

“That’s the point,” said Burt. “Look, it’s a Shadowkin thing. Saluting an honorable foe after he’s fallen brings you honor, and gloating over the recently dead can actually dishonor you. But the Naga are the thrice-cursed best at paying false honor to a hated foe. We’re gonna do it their way to praise your bastard king down to the depths of the abyss.”

“Prematurely,” said Gorm.

“See? That’s my point!” The Kobold waved a fork at the Dwarf. “My people know a victory when we see one. Wins come so few and far between, you can’t miss ’em. Just enjoy it while it lasts. Stop tryin’ to make this into some sort of… of….”

“Some sort of intrigue,” Gorm sighed.

“Exactly!” the Kobold said. “Trying to make this all cloak and dagger. Talkin’ about secrets and conspiracies! Callin’ for meetings at obscure little holes-in-the-wall!”

“Now hold on!” Gorm said. “Road Brothers’ Diner ain’t some obscure hole-in-the-wall!”

“It’s a franchised hole-in-the-wall,” said Heraldin.

“Not helpin’,” Gorm grumbled.

In fact, the Road Brothers’ Diner may have been the original hole-in-the-Wall. Mark and Larry Road made their name slinging eggs, hash, and charred meat from a stand built into a crook of Andarun’s most prominent architectural feature down at the Base. They leveraged that success to forge a deal with a real estate magnate, and over the decades signs bearing the red road sprouted up and down the city and across the Freedlands. Now they ruled over a greasy empire that stretched from Silvershore to the Highwalls.

“Road Brothers’ is the only place that serves a decent breakfast above the Fourth Tier.” Gorm prodded his fork angrily into a charred, pink mound, then tried to hide the fact that it broke one of the tines. “Though it doesn’t hurt that this place tends to be a bit…”

“Empty?” said Kaitha.

“Abandoned?” suggested Heraldin.

“Gods-forsaken?” said Burt.

Gaist pointed at Burt and tapped his nose.

“Private,” Gorm finished with a glare at the weaponsmaster. He snorted at the empty dining room. A one-eyed Gnoll napped next to the grill. “Road Brothers’ is always busiest down on the lower tiers. Folk up here are too snobbish for it.”

“We prefer our meat… identifiable,” said Jynn.

“Ye’d rather pay two giltin for a bowl of sliced fruit and a lukewarm tea?” Gorm said.

“But you admit that you were looking for a private spot.” Burt’s tail thudded against his chair in triumph.

“We’re just taking precautions,” said Gorm. He nodded to Kaitha, who pushed a brown paper parcel wrapped in twine across the table.

“There’s a key and instructions in this packet,” said the Elf. “If something happens to us, and the time is right to move against Johan⁠—”

“How much help do you think we’ll need to outmaneuver a corpse?” Burt interrupted.

Gorm and Kaitha shared a look, and he knew she shared the same thought as well. You couldn’t survive as a hero as long as they had without a sense for this sort of thing. Just as a seasoned sailor could feel the weather about to change or a veteran alchemist could discern when to duck behind a blast shield, experienced professional heroes felt it in their gut when a nemesis wasn’t fully dead. Gorm had seen too many villains leap back up for a final strike or escape through a hidden passage to believe Johan was truly gone.

“We should be so lucky,” the Dwarf told the Kobold. “But we probably ain’t.”

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it,” protested the Kobold. “You all heard what that messenger sprite said! The whole party’s a pile of monster dung by now.”

“I hope so,” Kaitha said. “But you need to acknowledge the possibility that Johan may be alive.”

“I’d love for that smarmy bastard to be rotting in some monster’s gullet, but I seen Johan fight,” Gorm said. “I saw him take on Az’Anon alone back when… well, I saw him fightin’ the monstrosity Az’Anon alone, and he came out on top. They say he slew Detarr Ur’Mayan with barely a thought. Dueled him as a liche, one-on-one. Same for countless drakes, griffins, slimes, gnurgs, ye name it. There ain’t much on Arth that could take him down that fast, if there’s anything.”

“Well, apparently there’s something that can,” Burt countered.

Kaitha nudged the envelope toward the Kobold. “Just take the key. There’s instructions on how to get evidence of Johan’s crimes. Important evidence.”

“Then take it to the town criers,” Burt said.

“That could be exactly what Johan wants,” said Kaitha.

“The whole city is on his side right now,” said Jynn. “The public loves nothing more than a hero who died in their defense. If Johan’s allies can convince the people that we’ve been fomenting insurrection against a martyr, we’ll be the ones branded criminals.”

“Tell Lady Asherzu what we said, and keep it safe,” Kaitha continued. “If nothing’s wrong, you can laugh at us for years to come for being so foolish.”

Burt stared at the envelope. A conflict played across his face as he weighed the idea that the king might be alive against the likelihood that the Shadowkin would have the upper hand for such a prolonged period, and found both scenarios equally improbable. “And you’re really sure Johan was up to something?”