“Hello, Kaitha. My name is Thane.” The Troll breathed the words like a mantra. “Hello, Kaitha. My name is Thane.”

Kaitha waved.

The crowd roared from all around her. Banners hung from windows and the deep crags of the Ridge. People in the throng held up handmade signs with words of adulation and encouragement, though it was apparent that some had been repurposed from when the Golden Dawn had marched to the Dungeon Gate mere weeks ago. The laziest sign bearers had simply painted a streak through the words “GOLDEN DAWN” but left the signs otherwise unchanged. It looked like some crazed editor had gone on a redlining bender through the city.

“Smile, too,” Gorm growled from her side. He stood with her at the head of the Heroes of the City as they paraded toward the Dungeon Gate.

“You first,” said the Elf.

“I am smiling!”

“Is that what that is?” Kaitha gave him a dubious sidelong glance.

“Aye! We’re doing ‘triumphant heroes marching to victory.’”

“Ugh, no. That’s what the Golden Dawn did,” said Heraldin from behind them.

“I thought we were doing ‘grim and determined stoical heroes walking to the job,’” Kaitha said, as the small procession came to a halt next to a hardwood stage covered in banners of every hue. King Johan walked up to the podium and the crowd erupted in cheers.

“Right,” said Laruna.

“Wait, have I been the only one smilin’ and greetin’ folk since we got here?” Gorm asked.

“Is that what that was?” asked Jynn.

“I thought you were baring your teeth and menacing them with an axe,” said Heraldin.

Gorm looked nonplussed. “What? No! How could ye think that?”

“You did make that baby cry,” said Laruna.

“I assumed you were doing ‘grim hero with a dark past.’” Heraldin thought for a moment. “Or at least a drunk past.”

“Nobody else thought we were doin’ ‘triumphant heroes.’” The Dwarf grimaced in a way that was almost distinguishable from his smile. “Nobody else has been smilin’ and wavin’?”

Kaitha thought back over arriving in guild coaches to the square, their rousing introduction by guild promoters, and their parade to the final podium. “I waved when you asked me to,” she offered.

“Well, ain’t that a fine thing,” grumbled Gorm.

Johan launched into a speech like a lunar cycle; it had bright and dark parts, a tide of applause flowed in and out with its rhythm, and it kept going around in circles. The king spoke with conviction and scintillating energy, but when he paused in between themes Kaitha could see a sheen of sweat on his brow and his eyes darting about like a cornered animal. She smiled, completely spoiling her stoic effect.

Gorm’s almost-grin grew as the speech neared its end. The king seemed to be inviting correction with increasing desperation.

“The dragon—and there definitely is a dragon—is the greatest threat to our nation. These heroes know it. They know what they’re about to face, don’t they?” Johan looked down at them with wretched anticipation, waiting for some sort of lifeline.

But the heroes had planned for this. Gorm and companions nodded respectfully and looked back up at the king with blank, expectant smiles. Denied a last chance at a fight over the truth, Johan was left alone with the facts. And the fact was that it was ten minutes past time for the quest to begin. With a final, empty wish of good luck and gods’ speed, Johan ordered the Dungeon Gate opened.

The heroes continued their parade toward the yawning portal. They walked two by two, uniformly determined and stoic, past the cheering crowds. Flower petals were released, as was customary, but this deep in winter the only blooms available on the mountain were frostgarnets. Their crimson petals looked to Kaitha like a spray of blood drifting through the air at the lazy pace of a memory. Just like the fountain from a Troll’s jugular as an arrow pierced it. And his eyes filled with pain in the instant before she fled, but she should have⁠—

“Lass?” said Gorm. “Your glowstone.”

Kaitha snapped from her reverie just as they passed under the shadow of the gate. The other heroes already had small points of light hovering above their heads like tiny guardian angels. She took her own glowstone from her belt pouch and blew on the milky crystal. The stone began to glow with increasing intensity as it flew into place by her head.

She took a deep breath. The air smelled of damp stone and moldering bones and an adventure about to start. “Ready?” she asked the others.

“Whatever comes,” said Gorm.

“Whatever comes,” Kaitha agreed, moving into a scouting position as the other heroes got in formation. The gloom deepened as the massive Dungeon Gate began to close behind them, pushing the last of the daylight into a thin sliver of silver in the dark.

Chapter 21

The reverberation of the door slamming behind Weaver Ortson rang through the stone halls of the palace. He felt like a man just arrived at a party that has already ended; the palace was empty save for a lone guard standing in the middle of the cavernous entryway. The bannerman gave the guildmaster a quiet nod and averted his eyes as Ortson hurried toward the throne room.

The hallway was as silent and empty as an old tomb. Ortson caught a glimpse of a maid in the antechamber, like a deer in a dusty glade, but she fled quickly. He took the chance to produce a flask from his tunic and, with a generous swig of liquid courage, pressed on.

Weaver had heard rumors that the palace had become somber since Johan’s return, but he’d been too busy avoiding the place to see for himself. People said that the bolder and less scrupulous among the nobility and executives still clamored for the king’s attention by day, but the king’s spirits fell with the setting sun. Andarun’s court read the king’s emotional state like seafarers watched the clouds, and departed before the storms rolled in. The lack of court intrigue was notable, but logical.

Ortson felt much more concerned by the lack of servants.

His clerks said many of the palace staff had resigned. Without a lady to serve, Marja’s handmaidens had departed for their native Ruskan. The queen’s honor guard resigned as one, ostensibly for failing to stop the queen’s last, reckless act of devotion. The bakery staff was almost completely cut without Marja’s appetites to keep them busy. Just over a week after Johan’s return, and half of the staff had left the palace.

Some of them didn’t make it home.

Ortson didn’t need rumors to know what had happened. Over the king’s short reign, he’d helped Johan find people who were poking around the northern project and the truth about the recent dragon attacks. After they disappeared, it was up to the grandmaster and High Councilor of the Heroes’ Guild to limit any investigation that could cast suspicions on the king.

Ortson paused by a tapestry depicting the Fifth Age siege of Highwatch, and thought back to his last fight at the ancient fortress. He’d been on the inside of the king’s inner circle back then, building the bureaucratic barricades that kept secrets in and prying eyes out. Yet those defenses were falling, and there were new secrets to keep quiet. Secrets that Ortson didn’t know. He worried that he was on the same side of them as the missing servants.

After all, some of the palace staff must have noticed Johan’s final words to his wife, and could have recognized them as a device from the books she infamously devoured. Some bannermen likely recognized the warped but familiar laugh amid the messenger sprite’s approximation of the Golden Dawn’s dying screams. And anyone with half a brain could tell that the timing of the king’s dramatic emergence at his own funeral was too well-coordinated, too clearly choreographed, to be a coincidence.

Perhaps the best evidence that the servants suspected the king had anticipated—even instigated—Queen Marja’s death was that there were so few of them. There weren’t even enough staff for a proper dusting, apparently; a cluster of spiderwebs lurked behind a ceremonial suit of armor, and the ceiling above it was crowded with cobwebs.

Ortson took another swig from his flask and made his way to the doors of the throne room. The guildmaster didn’t have much regard for Marja, but neither had good King Handor, and it’d never crossed their minds to do the queen any harm. It was like kicking a dog; needlessly cruel, and whatever evils Ortson had done, they had all been for a purpose. They had all been part of a plan, he reminded himself bitterly, because Weaver Ortson had always believed the ends justified the means. He’d just never been on the wrong end of the means before.

Everything had started to spiral when the king and the Tandosians started… whatever it was they were doing down in the Royal Archives. Ortson made a face at the distasteful thought and sanitized his tongue with another draught of whiskey. What was the king doing down there? Why did he assemble the Golden Dawn, only to kill them? If they needed to die, why bring them into the dungeon at all? He had so many effective means of eliminating problems up here. If something down in the dungeon drew the king into Wynspar, why kill his own heroes? The questions haunted him until the moment he walked into the throne room and realized with a start that they all shared a common answer.

Johan was clearly mad.

The paladin king perched upon the throne of Andarun, his mailed fingers digging into the wood like talons. His bloodshot eyes stared at an empty spot on the floor with all the hungry intensity of a vulture watching a marooned caravanner crawl across the desert. A joyless grin split his scarred face, and his lips twitched as he growled a one-sided conversation through his pearly, almost luminescent teeth.

“It can still work. They haven’t found… they might die. They aren’t that… no, there aren’t enough of them… Trust me, it can still work. We just need more time… just a little more time…”

Ortson walked carefully around the empty space that occupied Johan’s gaze. “Majesty?” he said tremulously. “Y-you summoned me?”

The paladin blinked and straightened, inflating with a sudden good humor. “Ah, yes. Weaver! Ha! I wanted to talk to you about the plan!”

The guildmaster’s mind frantically ran through the various initiatives the king might be referring to. Most of them weren’t the sort he’d speak of in a public place, even without any public around. “The, uh… which plan, Your Majesty?”