“I mean, I saw her eat… the poison…” Ortson’s eyes were beginning to water. “It… it was suicide.”
Johan’s shoulders fell, genuine disappointment pulling his face into a deep frown. “I… I really did love Marja,” he said.
“Of course, sire—”
“The princess I saved. The damsel that needed a hero. That needed me.” Johan held a hand up as he descended the stairs, as though reaching out to touch a memory. “It was a tale out of storybooks: a hero, a wicked wizard, a maiden in distress, a daring rescue. Lovers kept apart for years… decades… by caste and fortune, reunited at last. I loved our story, Weaver. I loved her.”
Ortson stepped back from the descending king. “Sire, I didn’t mean—”
The king closed his hand into a mailed fist. “But I have important plans, Weaver. More important than you could ever comprehend. Failure is… it’s not an option. It’s not even a possibility!” He growled the last remark, as if to cut off an unheard dissent. It took a moment for his snarl to fade back into a mask of melancholy. “When she threatened those critical projects, I… I knew we couldn’t be together any longer. The best I could do was give her a happy ending.”
“She went mad with grief and killed herself,” said the guildmaster, backing away.
“For love. The way she always wanted to. It really was the best I could do for her, once she got in the way. I don’t have a choice in this. I cannot fail.” Johan turned his eyes on Ortson. “I can’t tolerate failure.”
“Sire—!” Ortson started to back away, but Johan was on him in a flash of golden armor and ivory teeth. A gauntlet like an iron vice clamped onto his arm.
“I needed a plan. I needed Ingerson stopped. You didn’t do that. You… let… him go into the dungeon, when I needed… him… stopped.” Johan’s voice was level even as his face reddened and veins throbbed on his forehead.
“Sire, I… I’ve served the crown loyally… for many years.” Ortson’s words were a whining wheeze. The king’s grip sent waves of agony through his arm.
“Ha haaa! Indeed you have, Ortson. For many years. Long enough to know that in this business, there’s two types of people.”
“Not the speech,” Ortson sobbed, trying unsuccessfully to pull his arm from the king’s grasp. “Not the loose ends speech—”
“Ha! I see you’re familiar with the basic concept.” Johan wrenched his arm and grinned as the guildmaster screamed.
A few moments later, the lights in the eyes of the shrine of Mordo Ogg at Sculpin Down flashed with sudden brilliance.
“Ooh!” Ignatius cooed, watching the crimson glow fade away. “Another big one! And so soon after Her Majesty. And she after…”
The old man pursed his leathery lips and stroked the thin, ivory strands of his beard. He didn’t know much about math—serving in Mordo Ogg’s priesthood didn’t require much arithmetic beyond counting the departed. Yet he could see a logarithmic pattern in the interval between major deaths lately, even if he had no idea what logarithms were.
Ignatius licked his lips, deep in concentration. He glanced suspiciously at the sky. Something in the clouds sparked a decision in the old priest, and he quickly opened a small compartment beneath the shrine and drew out a small wooden placard. He carefully placed the sign in the stone skeleton’s lap. It read:
Attendant away. Service continues.
Moments later, Ignatius made his way toward the Pinnacle, clutching his robes close against the chill as he ran through the streets. People hurried out of his way, perhaps because he was a clergyman in service of the god of death, or perhaps just because he was an old man in tattered robes laughing and muttering as he sprinted up the road.
The old priest knew of an observation tower on the Fifth Tier where a sightseer could pay a shilling to look out over the lower tiers of the city. People lined up by the dozen to see the city in the summer, but in the frosty Highmoon air nobody stood by the tower door but a dour-looking Goblin minding an empty till. Ignatius dropped a silver coin into the tin bucket and ran up the stairs to the observation deck.
The winter wind carved through the old priest’s robes as he stepped up to the railing, but he paid the cold no mind. The sky above the city was chill and clear, but to the south, clouds drifted toward the western coast as though pulled along by the Tarapin. His gaze followed them Ridgeward, where he saw a cluster of cumulus puffs drifting north up the coast. He looked back toward the Wall, and on the eastern horizon saw thin wisps of vapor teased south by the wind. The upper tiers and Mount Wynspar blocked the northern sky, but he could guess that winds toward Scoria were trending east, pulling the clouds into the beginnings of a very large spiral.
“More to come,” he whispered, watching the sky. “Much bigger things to come.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t deal with anything else at the moment.” Feista Hrurk waved Aubren away without looking up from her memo. “You’ll have to see to it.”
“Yes, ma’am, but—” The young Human was barely audible over the war drum, manned now by two Wood Gnomes bouncing up and down in turns.
“It will have to wait. I need these numbers. Next, do the Plus-Five Corporation!” Feista barked at the Wood Gnomes. Teams of the diminutive workers moved furiously across various spreadsheets laid out over the desks of Warg Inc.’s analysis office. Swirling patterns shifted in the crowd as the Domovoy calculated and marked figures to the rhythm of the war drum. Around them, Goblins and Orcs shuffled papers and checked figures. “This report is due by the lunch hour!”
“But ma’am—” Aubren hovered by the office door, a dusting of snow on her winter shawl.
“If this is about the shoddy work in the kitchen, you have to handle the contractor.” Feista glowered down at the stubborn numbers on her parchment. Reams of untouched paperwork lurked behind the page, metastasizing within her inbox as she struggled to concentrate.
A messenger sprite landed atop the pile of papers, it’s faint pink glow literally highlighting the daunting workload in front of her. “Feista Hrurk?”
“I’m busy,” snapped the Gnoll.
“Message from Asherzu Guz’Varda.”
Feista carefully recalibrated her demeanor. “Yes?”
The sprite began to speak with the deliberate cadence that Asherzu reserved for ceremonies or important meetings. “Feista, I know that you have much work, but honor me with your opinion on J.P. Gorgon’s liquidity versus its holdings in the dragon’s hoard. I must have this by sundown.”
“Spug! Thrice curse Grund’s cudgel!” swore Feista. “She probably had someone from J.P. Gorgon in the room with her when she sent that!” She brushed the report away and turned to the Wood Gnomes. “New report! Put these on hold!” she said.
A loud groan went up from the Wood Gnomes.
“Ah, but Mrs. Hrurk…” Aubren still hovered by the desk.
Feista felt her hackles rising. “Aubren, I can appreciate your challenges, but you cannot come all the way to my office every time—!”
“I know, but it came!” Aubren shoved a large envelope into her employer’s paws. “The letter finally came!”
