Chapter 1

There was a part of the Marmortine Prison darker than the heart of pitch. The government refused to admit its existence, although everyone knew it was there. Some of the Crook Street journalists had taken to calling the place the Forgetting. Here, in the place where the night was a living presence, the Commerce kept the worst of Armoria’s criminals. Here, they kept Dormain Fulchras.

Fulchras was permitted one hour of sunlight and one hour of moonlight each day. The wise magistrates of the Judicara called this punishment “the twelfth,” and it was reserved for crimes that, as the Iron Tables ran, “threatened the sanctity of the State of the Republic.” But the Dormain family was wealthy, among the Preferati, and the Marmortine was the perfect microcosm of the state: absolutely everything, including light, was for sale. So Fulchras had the freedom to drape his cell in false suns. Ten thousand candles, hundreds of oil lamps, and, when the Aunts were feeling very generous indeed, the rune-scribed sunstones of some Ingenour.

Fulchras had been so long imprisoned that he’d outlasted the careers of his guards several times over. Whenever a new detachment of fresh-faced Disciplinaires were assigned to his cavernous cell in the Forgetting, they asked what he was in for. “Writing,” he’d always say, leaving out that what he’d written had been false bank drafts, purchase orders, and government seals.

From time to time over the years the governor of the prison would come to dine with him. The governor condescended, on those occasions, to call Fulchras his “guest.” The governor would impress himself on the cook Fulchras payed in the Marmortine kitchens and demand the man prepare two portions with, of course, his Honor dictating the content of the meal. Fulchras would learn of the impending visit because the Disciplinaire servants would set two of his silver dinner plates, and two cups so the governor could share in the exquisite Dormain wine.

The governor, a pig-eyed social climber from a no-account army family, paid this respect to his wealthiest wards once in a year. Perhaps, Fulchras thought, it was how the man contented himself in the absence of advancement. For all nine years of his sentence, Arras Baldo had been the governor. For all nine years, he had eaten Fulchras’ food and drank his wine. Fulchras was skilled at ignoring insults like these. This was one of the favored games in the Preferati: how cruel can you be without stating it? How many barbs can you bear without being drawn to shout and curse? So Fulchras found it easy to entertain M. Arras. Crude he may be, but the governors words were blunt as a hammer compared to those companions Fulchras had known — and hated — in the life he’d lived before entering the penal tomb.

At the end of each of these dinners, the governor would always dab his mouth with the fine napkin and remark, “You have been here for many years. Why does your family not procure your release?”

“You’d have to ask them,” Fulchras always lied, “for they haven’t told me.” In truth, he had no need to ask, for he already knew the answer. He was, to all the Dormains out there in the world beyond the Marmortine walls, an embarrassment.

After all, wasn’t he raised with every advantage? Didn’t he have everything he could have wanted? He had been sent to the best schools, ate the best foods, read the best books, and moved in the best circles. Why, then, had he descended to master the criminal arts? The family could excuse those poor souls living hand to mouth (they couldn’t) but (and here Fulchras chafed) little Fulchras had no motive to debase himself. Except, he answered those phantom voices, to have something that was mine and mine alone, paid for in no unearned coin, given by no fawning deference to my family, no hope for preferment, no thought to the way some other Dormain might make reward and recompense.

This time, however, things were different. Fulchras rose early the morning the second plate appeared. He knew it was early because the outrageously expensive bit of horological magework the Aunts had provided him back when he first when into the Forgetting was chiming sunrise and waking his three still-living sunstones out of their torpor. He splashed himself with water, pulled his old shirt on, and had begun to tie his cravat before he noticed the second silver plate. There it was, bold as brass, laid out on his table. The chalice was beside it, sneering at him. The second plate. At breakfast.

Well, he did not intend to hurry himself for anyone, even Arras Baldo, who controlled the rhythm of his life. So, knowing that it was not long before he would receive a visitor, he left his shirt unlaced, cravat half-tied, and weskit fallen about his ribs like an animal pelt. He affected a casual lean in his chair, swirled the spiced morning wine in his cup, and nearly toppled when the latches were drawn to let the breakfast in and he saw the person in the doorway.

It was not Arras Baldo.

A Commerce advocat stood in the door. She was lean and predatory, her suit trim with its little silver fixtures, her cravat crisp and high as a hangman’s noose. Her eyebrow, thin as a garrote and just as sharp, quirked when she saw his undress. The expression was almost too quick to catch, but Fulchras made no reply.

This was another rule of Preferati society: you are never caught off guard. To be surprised is to admit that the world does not bend to your whims and that events could unfold in some way without consulting your own inimitable will. So, Fulchras leaped to his feet and spread his arms, indicating the gargantuan sweep of the enclosure. He had made something of a country house out of the place, despite all its faults. He had erected walls by gesture, defined a bedroom, salon, and cabinet by furnishings and rugs alone. His single room was a mammoth, whispering silence, a desert of forbidding stone that he had tamed — barely — with the chains of a feigned domesticity.

“You have me at your advantage, I’m afraid,” he quipped lightly, the very mirror of the unperturbed dignitary found lounging in some countryside cafe, “for you’ve caught me at home.”

The woman, ignoring both good manners and Fulchras’ attempt at wit, crossed the room and sat herself at his breakfast table. She was followed by a cluster of Disciplinaire servants with the steaming trays of meat, fruit, and cheese. The guest chair scraped across the floor. “You are Dormain Fulchras the forger,” she said, simply, directly, as though giving him an order. There was no arguing with a voice like that.

“I am?” he asked in false amaze. “Bless me. I suppose that explains my lodgings.”

Her eyes flickered across his face. She registered open disdain. Not Preferati, then, he mused. Some underling.

The woman sniffed. “I have in my purse here,” she patted the leather satchel at her hip, “an official scrap of paper that I think you will want to see, Master Dormain. By reason of it being a full pardon, drafted from the Throne to yourself.”

It was Fulchras’ turn to be surprised. “I’ve been to Court,” he cautioned, “so you can’t fool me. I know better than anyone that the Throne is nothing.” It was not a joke: they called it the Empty Throne because the Revolution had unseated, sidelined, and then executed its last inhabitant, the Slave-King Avex Tarques. Whenever the government acted in the name of the Throne, what that really meant was some Throne Committee or Minister. The Throne itself hadn’t seen an ass on its marble surface in two hundred years.

“Yes, yes,” the advocat agreed, “obviously when an offer like this is extended, it comes from the Minister of Judication.” She waited for Fulchras’ next question, but it never came. The Judicara ran the Republic’s spy ring? He couldn’t put enough words together to form a sentence, so the advocat carried on. “Well, you were the author of a play. Perhaps you remember it.”

A play? Dormain Fulchras was, as a matter of fact, the author of several plays, but none of them had ever been very well received. That was before his foray into the underworld and its more enticing lines, like “pay me,” and, even better, “pay me.” “I don’t recall,” he said, trying to regain his flippant Preferati manner.

The advocat rolled her eyes. “You do. It wasn’t much. Had three nights at the Comedy, I believe.” He could tell she hadn’t seen it, she was just reciting dry facts from a dryer dossier. “It offended people. The right people, as it turns out. Our current Minister. So you can now pass among the enemies of Armoria as a factor of the Throne.”

“A factor?” Fulchras gaped, “what in Galta do you mean?”

The advocat pressed her fingertips against the wood of the table. “Master Dormain, you are being offered the deal of a lifetime. You can leave the Marmortine — as early as tomorrow if you wish — and in exchange, our Minister of Judication requires your assistance to start a war.”

Chapter 2

Annka don’t do this. Annka don’t do that. Annka, don’t climb on the roof! You’ll fall and break your head, like poor Obvko the Shepherd, who can no longer speak. Annka, don’t dig that pit, don’t you know that the Infernal Realms are below? You’ll wake the Names and vanish in a cloud of sulfur! Annka, don’t throw stones at Klimko, he has an ax. What if he decides one day to throw back?

What if he does, what if it does, what if I do?

Mother’s life was ruled by these questions. Annka refused to be.

On the day Verevka burned, Annka was, not surprisingly, disobeying her mother. She’d known there was war in the north, the same way you know there’s a storm on the horizon. Riders came down out of the steppelands like streamers of black cloud; leaderless bands sometimes passed through Verevka, stopping just long enough to fill their waterskins, to demand a few chickens, to steal the milk from the farms, and then move south. There were refugees too, usually one or two at a time, or sometimes a family. They were tired from the road, and dirty from their flight, as though the mud and ash of misery followed them out of whatever infernal realm they had escaped. Sometimes they did chores in exchange for a few nights' shelter, other times they slipped through Verevka without so much as raising an alarm. One broke into the church and stole the prester’s entire box of silver plate, and he had raged for weeks thereafter, crying for whips and scourges to flay those outsiders who disturbed Verevka’s peace. But all this was far off, a great ocean of woe that occasionally threw up spray upon Verevka’s shores. As Annka had never seen the sea, she never expected to witness the source of so much sorrow that was now passing through the land.

She was alone in the forest that grew thick and broad at Verevka’s edge, the one the townsfolk called the Sozka. Her mother hated that forest, it’s dark paths and shadowy glades, the ancient unworked stones that had been raised by olden hands against the empty sky, the looming mountains, and the swift-flowing brooks of green water. She whispered of trolls in the dark — Annka, do not go into the Sozka, the trolls will find you, they’ll smell you and follow you home, and eat us in our beds! But Annka had never seen a troll there, nor had anyone in the village. She’d even asked Trader Simka, who traveled alone with a pack on his back through the ice wastes in the north and down to the warm sea in the south.

“My mother says there are trolls in the Sozka. Is that so?”

Simka had twisted his mustache in thought. “It may be so, little Annka, but not in these parts. At least, I have never seen them, nor have I heard of them here. If there were trolls in the Sozka, the roads would be impassible, don’t you think? And the lords haven’t sent anyone here in ages — if there were trolls, they would send mounted heroes to kill them, I’m sure.”

So, Annka knew that her mother was wrong, and the Sozka had no trolls. She did not consider that perhaps Simka was mistaken, or that the trolls might still be lurking in the darkest places, or that even if the forest had no trolls it might be well stocked indeed with bears, with wolves, with ditches that a little girl could twist her ankle in, and streams that might drown her.

Fira shouldn’t have wasted her time worrying about the Sozka. The day Verevka burned, the Sozka was the safest place to be. This is how Fira was trapped in her home when the riders came, and how Annka was free among the fat twisty roots of the larch trees. Annka was exploring, pretending to fight those very trolls that so scared her mother. She had a firm length of larchwood in one hand she pretended was her binder’s staff. Occasionally, she whipped it around and shouted at the imagined trolls, speaking the forbidden Names and driving them off. She wanted to make her way to the shores of the secret lake that Klimko had told her of one evening while he was drinking.

The lake, Klimko said, was broad and deep, with a color like green glass from the south. “I have been there only three times, and each time it was by mistake,” he told her, his sour breath brushing its knuckles against her shoulders. “Little Annka, why don’t you come closer?” But Annka had danced away and demanded to know more. “There is an island in that lake, and you can see the bald-headed old mountains looking down,” he’d added, “and on the island there is a circle of stones. Giants put it there, I guess, or one of the servant races.”

Annka thrilled to think that she might walk where mysterious and powerful figures out of the mists of time had tread, that she might grace the same patch of ground that priests in the days of old when you could see the gods and talk to them — before they died, before they were turned to dust. She thought, maybe, that when she was there she too might be able to see the gods. Not straight on, not like you see someone in the streets of Verevka, but sideways, like a finch watching out of one eye. She knew they were gone and couldn’t return, but sometimes you could see things that were no longer there, like the impression of a face on a window or the shadow of a loved one in the silver of a mirror.

She was climbing up an embankment when she paused and realized that she smelled smoke. No, not smelled, had been smelling smoke, for who knows how long. At first it had been a pleasant haze at the back of her perception – the smell of a hearthside fire or a little encampment of forest people. Now, it was a billowing haze on the wind, thick and terrible.

Fire was the eternal enemy of everyone, not just in Verevka but in the nearby market-town of Trakajin and even the far market-center of Dumor. Fire, when it escaped its confines of the hearth, could rage out of control and burn down whole districts, whole cities. Annka knew the smell was a warning, a trumpet call of danger, for it was too strong to be merely some trapper’s cookfire.

She realized the source was the village, all in conflagration, long before she saw it. The flames threw a light that was at once both deep and horrible across the landscape. The bare branches of the Sozka shone crimson, as though some foul painter had taken a bucket reserved for the depiction of blood and splashed it drunkenly across the world. Then, Annka felt her heart leap up to choke her. She told herself it was not so, could not be so. How would such a fire start? Verevka was small, but spacious, and the houses were well apart. In her mind’s eye she saw the embers wafted on the wind, across the muddy lane, to land in the sodden thatch of a neighbor’s roof. But it could not be so! Even should two or three of those little tofts burn, it could not spread to all! For Verevka was not a forest of timbered houses as Trakajin was. It is only one or two houses, she told herself. It is not mine.

Her fears were realized when she saw Klimko struggling through the trees. The woodcutter was blackened with soot and smeared with blood, which ran liberally from a wound across his scalp. His funny beard, which she had so often mocked, was sodden with it, and he had lost a few more teeth since she saw him before setting out from the village that morning. He cradled his ax in his arm; his hair was stringy and wild, where it wasn’t soaked through with the blood of his wound. His eyes were glued open, wide with shock. She knew then that the village was burning from cot to byre. Why, she could not yet say.

Klimko staggered toward her. At first, it seemed as though he didn’t see her, or saw something else that was not her. She shrank back when he raised his ax in his huge calloused hands to strike, as though she were a Szokan troll. She raised her stick, knowing it would not stop the heavy blade. That was an ax made for wood, for the chopping of branches and whole trunks, the splitting of logs. Her heart hammered. “Klimko, no!” she shouted, loud as she could, the words drawn out of some secret place within her, exploding like a cannon-shell.

The woodsman’s fingers fell from his ax. His eyes seemed unglued, and he blinked hard a few times to clear his vision. The ax remained in the cradle of his arms but Annka’s heart was still beating like a blacksmith’s anvil. “Child,” said he, his voice husky and low, “we must run. There is no time. Run now, run!”

“Klimko, what’s happening?” Annka asked. She did not mean to ask it. She wanted to do what he told her, to run and never stop running until her lungs were raw and the mountain air seared her throat, but her stupid mouth and her cursed legs disobeyed. She remained stuck, as though she herself had sprung roots.

Klimko growled and swept toward her. He worked his free arm wide, as though to scoop her up and hurry her on. “Soldiers!” he said, “and horses. Quick, or they’ll ride us down for sport.”

Again, Annka wanted to listen, to do the smart thing and run. Instead, her body carried her forward, almost into Klimko’s outstretched arm, and she shouted, “But my mama!”

“She’s dead or running too, Annushka!” Klimko shouted back. Now he did wrap his arm around her, pushing her back into the depths of the forest. “If she lives, we’ll find her. To have a hope, we must survive!”

Finally, she was able to do what she had been asked, and she ran with Klimko. Her eyes leaked tears unbidden as she went. She was able to get a little more from him about what had happened, though his telling was confused and stilted, told between brief rests for air or in snatches as they ran. She learned that the men wore black and silver coats and carried swords, whips, and pistols. Klimko said he thought they belonged to Lord Ravalkan, which meant little to Annka. She knew Ravalkan and Lord Trenitsyn, to whom both Verevka and Trakajin owed tribute, were on opposite sides of the great war that was tearing the land apart. Neither she nor Klimko could answer why; the matter did not concern them, it seemed – it was some dispute over land or honors or titles, between the Erzyid kings and their subjects, the lords.

That night, she slept huddled in Klimko’s shadow, pressed against his back for warmth. Her muscles ached. Her tears flowed more freely. She cried for wounded Klimko, who she had mocked so often, for Verevka, for mama, and for herself.

Chapter 3 - Part 1

Clasq was tormented by a bedevilment of imps. Clouds of the little bastards swooped about his head and exhaled their sulfurous breath around his ears. They were a screeching cacophony, half a hundred foul-smelling, cantankerous denizens of the Infernal Realms diving and rising like starlings. "Begone!" he shouted, "Begone with you!" Clasq swiped at them with a rolled-up broadsheet, but they were quick to rise beyond his reach. Each time he missed, he was greeted to a horrific face in miniature making some mocking expression or, sometimes, the exposed crotch and a puckered Infernal asshole.

"Suck my cock, pact-slave," piped a diminutive voice from somewhere in the haze of devils. Clasq knew that sing-song tone, would have known it anywhere, for it was the very voice he heard each night when he crawled into bed. The other imps squawked at him to purchase only the finest oak gall ink from Alasart's Inkworks, or to relieve his aches with Vyeran's Balms (Prepared With Real Chimera Heart), or to head to the Crimson Whore and give himself the sweet relief of oblivion; despite their grimaces and the gestures they made to their genitals, the other imps were under an iron interdiction only to hawk the wares of their masters.

Azu alone was free to curse him and spit the foulest meanness, because Azu alone was his.

"Come down here, you disgusting creature," Clasq demanded.

Despite the fact that Azu (self-styled Azumaryndor, Seventh Marquess of the Infernal Realms) was nominally Clasq's slave, assigned to him  by the machinations of the debt-bond and the Armorian government through the contract some high-placed magus had made with the Infernal Princes, Azu spent most of his time reminding Clasq that he was in the bonded service of the Commerce. The mystical power that Clasq wielded hadn't come free. The price tag, in fact, was a ten-thousand thaler debt. So, the devil was determined to engage in the most irritating schemes and pranks to put him, Clasq, the master, in his "place"; for instance, today, he had somehow convinced what appeared to be every single imp in the third-rate city of Trantz that Celendaro Clasq had both the money and the interest to buy from each of the shops, manufactories, or warehouses to which they were bound. This, despite the fact that Clasq wore a somber black suit with black buttons, and despite the fact that the Empty Throne was sewn in silver over his heart.

"Do you see these?" he shouted at the cantankerous cloud, pulling on the patches affixed to the shoulders of his long outer cote, each of which displayed the scroll-and-sword of the Embassaria. "I'm on a salary," he shouted. "Buzz off!"

Azu flapped down to settle on his shoulder. "As for you," Clasq grumbled, "I have half a mind to feed you to the grinder."

The imp, like all Infernals, was a hatchet-faced gargoyle with a smirk to match his hateful temperament. "Aw, you din't like my friends, boss?"

Clasq bit back his response. Trantz was a cold city. He hated it. If he hadn't signed his warlock's indenture all those cursed years ago, he would never have come to this gods-benighted region of the earth, far from the warm winds of the White Stone Sea. Trantz was perched in the alpine slopes of the Thousand Rivers, the very doorway to the fabled Black Plain and its barbarous, backwards kingdoms of Leznyy, Czaravakan, and Zamorzh.

Instead, he adjusted the high collar of his cote, which came up almost to his chin, and glared at the imp. "Disperse them, before I disperse you. You know we aren't supposed to be attracting attention."

It was hard to believe they were in their eighth year of their little partnership. Things had never been smooth, per se, but it seemed like they were headed toward a cliff. This posting in particular was a snub. Why would the Embassy send him here? Surely there was some fresh-faced scribe - a real scribe, not someone imbued with mystic powers who had signed an indenture - they could send to handle their affairs here.

"Oh, right, boss," Azu agreed, his voice dripping condescension. "Because we're working."

The fact of the matter was, Clasq hadn't done any real work for months. He was masquerading as a low-level Embassy courier, but his real assignment had essentially run out and he hadn't received any new orders. The Commerce, through the Ambassador, had dispatched him to Trantz to distribute false documents among the Blacklanders. Clasq didn't know what they said (he didn't read their ugly block lettering) but presumably it had something to do with the troubles the King of Leznyy had soon after Clasq's arrival. The thing is, once the things had made their way into circulation by way of a network of paid agents, Clasq was just supposed to monitor things. The worst part of the job.

That meant living just like a low-salary Embassy clerk. At least he didn't actually have to transcribe anything, but still, he wasn't supposed to suddenly flash money or do anything out of the ordinary.

Clasq was, generally, good at his job. None of his agents in Trantz knew who he was or had any idea they had been working for an Embassy factor. He was a non-entity in the city. He had installed himself in a little run-down tenement a few blocks from the Embassy and tried to keep his nocturnal activities to an absolute minimum. Oh, he drank, and he gambled, and he even whored, but he never wore his Embassaria suit while he was doing it, and never let it get so out of control that he was known for his dissolution.

Or rather, that's how it had been. Before his overseers in the Embassaria had abandoned him. Lately things had been out of hand. He would be the first to admit that, although not, of course, in any official capacity or documentation. He would admit it to Azu, anyway, who was with him every step of the way. It would be hard to conceal it from the imp.

The thing of it was, this morning he'd received new marching orders. New purpose! And now Azu was here acting like everything was a game, like his cover didn't matter, like it would be fine if everyone in Trantz recognized his face. And that would make things hard, if not impossible.

Rather than argue with the little devil in the street where the carters and drovers would splash them with mud and the public nature of the dispute would expose them to even more scrutiny, draw even more attention to them, Clasq clucked and strode quickly away from the warehouse he'd been poorly attempting to surveil. "You stupid little creep, get rid of them!" he hissed. To his credit, although the spindly imp rolled its enormous yellow eyes, Azu did wing up to the cloud overhead and begin to send them back to their shops and stoops.

Clasq hurried away, glancing over his shoulder and scowling as the imp went about undoing its own chaos.

Chapter 3 - Part 2

Back at the Black Hog, the tavern around the corner from the Armorian embassy, Clasq reviewed his new orders a second time. Directives came hand-written on embassy vellum, just like official communiques from the city, and were disguised as anodyne requests for scribal work. There was a science to the decoding of the things; despite the fact that this message appeared to be for one Celendaro Clasq to complete the copying of lines 120 through 568 of a document called the "Storage and Printing Protocols of the Exchange Street Complex," it actually meant that he (his indenture number was 568, so the messages always contained this number buried somewhere in their body) was intended to listen ("copy") and report on a storage or printing shop located on Exchange Street in Trantz. There was no Exchange Street Complex in Armoria for the simple fact that the city lacked an Exchange Street. The 120 could be the number of paces from the nearest corner, he supposed. He sighed. It would be better if the code was clearer... but that was the risk, wasn't it.

"So what is it, boss?" asked Azu, who was seated on the table, doodling in a puddle of sweet Blacklander maruvov. Imps normally didn't drink, Clasq was fairly sure, but his had taken up the habit. It was hard to say whether the imp was rubbing off on him, or he was rubbing off on the Infernal. "We're on a snoop job, eh?"

Clasq sipped the plum liquor and made a face. "Something like that. It has to do with the letters we sent out, I'm sure." He kept his voice low enough that only Azu could hear it. The imp was less voluble now, chastened as he was.

Azu nodded. "So we're supposed ta' be watching for developments over the border." Azu, like all devils, was particularly perceptive when it came to intrigues and politicking. That was why warlocks normally got the Republic's spying jobs. Clasq had come to rely on Azu's head for plots and conspiracies. After a moment, the imp added, "I bet it's for the copper."

"What?" Clasq picked his head up and looked down at his familiar. His thoughts, as they so often did these days, had been far away, on the comforts of home. He missed the warm sunny days of the lowlands. When was the last time he had been back to the city? Ages ago, it seemed. Before Trantz had been Burgoven, and before that... "Sorry, what?" he repeated himself.

"The copper. Leznyy has a lot of it in the mountains, on the other side of the border. Good red copper, comes straight up outta the infernal realms. Great stuff for enchanting. But, you know..." Azu waved vaguely at the things he supposed Clasq knew, "the Republic can't get any of it because the Leznians aren't part of the, whatsitcalled. The market."

It was true that the Blacklanders didn't deal much with outsiders except through the few trade hubs like Trantz. In the Republic, anyone could own anything. If you had the money, it didn't matter if you were Armorian, Carrandine, Provincial, whatever. Hell, you could be a hill tribesman from the Grand Massif and still own a whole firm on the Armorian Commerce. The same wasn't true up in the reaches of the Black Plain. Leznyy, Czarkravan, and Zamorzh, those three insular kingdoms up there, didn't permit the operation of firms. There were a handful of trading companies, but those were all controlled by the old noble families. All that meant that whatever goods they sold in Trantz, they sold them at prices they dictated and in quantities they allowed. That was historically a bad move when it came to the Republic.

"Someone wants to invest in infernal copper, so I have to scoot my ass around this burg. Makes sense," he said with a sigh.

Azu waggled his eyebrows. "Ya know, boss, there's a Leznian trading company on that street. Where we were. Right next to a printing house."

Clasq wanted to spit. Trust the little homunculus to decide it was time to do work. "Fine," he growled, "only this time, nothing showy."

"Oh no, boss," Azu said, his face a mask of mock-horror. "Not me."

Chapter 3 - Part 3

Azu's hot and horrible breath rasped across his neck and Clasq did his best not to gasp. It was several hours into their observation of the warehouse block. His muscles ached and his mind was like a slate that had been inexpertly wiped over and over, leaving a smear of chalk behind. Within the first two hours he had worked out the rotation of the warehouse watch and noted the movement of large crates and drays that bore the markings of the port of Savendor and the stamps of the various transport guilds that moved it over land. After that, most of his effort was spent trying to find new places to stand and new excuses to stand there, rather than actually observing anything. All of his energy was strained on the building, watching it, ensuring that he wasn't himself being observed by its inhabitants, so Azu's furtive message shivered him.

"Boss, someone's coming up on us," the imp more muttered than said. Clasq, of course, had been granted the power to understand his devious little servant implicitly. There was a thread of communication that could not be severed, that made him at all times aware of the presence of Azu, that helped him comprehend even the words the imp spoke in the infernal tongues, that granted him the ability to feel Azu's emotions and gave the horrible creature that same access to Clasq himself. So, he had merely to form the thought in his mind to warn Clasq, and even the half-spoken warning was clear as a crystal bell ringing in a high tower.

Along with the warning there came a distinct visual message, like an impression in wax. Azu sent him a warning, an image of a man who walked with a rolling, prize-fighter's gait. He wore a blue mantle with a lining of fur and his face was graced by a nose like a crushed plum. This did not bode well. The man was sidling up on him, sloughing through the mud in the alleyway. Both Clasq and Azu knew him - his name was Theomyr, but in Trantz he was called simply "the Counter" because he made his living making books. Clasq owed him some ten thousand thalers (give or take a few fennigs), and had been avoiding him for the better part of two weeks.

Clasq grunted as Azu's little claws dug into his neck and the devil sent a series of images, like flashes of lightning. This was a barrage of coins and nearly-empty cups, the sorry tale of Clasq's gaming woes. Dice, dice, cards, cards, loss, loss, and now... the Counter.

There were many gaming hells in the city, and Clasq had seen them all, but the one where he'd had his run of bad luck, the one in the Leznian quarter with the two bears on the sign, well those were all owned, as it were, by the Counter. So, the money that Clasq had lost, all those thalers from the Embassy, and the debt that he accrued, it all belonged to the Counter. This Leznian who had once been a merchant and was now a land magnate in Trantz, was not to be trifled with. And now, while Clasq was about his real business, serving the interests of the Profectine Republic, here came his chief creditor with a truncheon in hand.

Clasq sucked in a deep breath and swung around the corner just as Theomyr was about to come into the alley. The Leznian, to his credit, didn't respond to this provocation except to slightly raise his club. "Theomyr," Clasq oozed, flowing into the street and putting his arm around the bandy-legged thief. "Fancy meeting you here."

"I don't know what you're doing, and I don't want to know," Theomyr growled as Clasq piloted him away from the warehouse, "but you've been ducking me, Celendano, and I don't like," and here Theomyr gripped the club with both hands and made a wrenching motion, as though strangling something, "ducks."

The truncheon, Clasq noticed, had a metal cap with a sharp spike atop it. He ignored the tension knot forming between his neck and shoulder and walked up the street with the angry little bookmaker. "Master Counter," he said, "I know that I owe you a great deal of money. You know that my accounts in the Republican Bank are overdrawn and my credit is exhausted. You came here to threaten me and, possibly, even to hurt me so I would understand how important it is that I turn up this money by any means I can." Clasq had given this speech half a hundred times in half a hundred cities throughout the world, always on the Embassy's dime. He just couldn't stop himself - when he was on assignment, he loved to lose money. "But I assure you, I already know. It's just a waste of your energy to..." He tapped the club. "To... ah... demonstrate it to me."

Theomyr started to growl, but Azu fluttered into the Leznian's face. "We got things to offer, though," said the imp, before the bookmaker could bring his threat to bear.

"That's right," Clasq agreed. "We work at the Embassy and we can arrange certain affairs for you; on top of that, we have a certain set of skills that are... somewhat unique for scribes. Obviously, you've met my compatriot, Azumaryndor, and it should be clear by now that I put my name on a warlock's indenture, so..."

"You want to work for me," Theomyr asked, his huge, furry brow twisting itself up in concern. "To work off your debt?"

"You have it exactly," Clasq said, real relief creeping into his voice. "After all, you should have someone to go out and make threats like this on your behalf... shouldn't you?"

Chapter 3 - Part 4

The sharp crack! of the crowsbeak echoed in the empty warehouse. Clasq's flinch lasted only a split-second; once he saw what was inside the enormous crate, he hissed quietly instead. "Dorea damn me," he spat. "Carrandelian artillery. On a Republican pattern."

The dwarf who owned the warehouse, a little Leznian with a beard that gave him the appearance of an agitated bear, could be hauled before a Republican court-mercantile for possession of weapons like these. Whoever sold them could face execution. Clasq started to sweat, cold rivulets pouring from his armpits. He'd been in scrapes before in the service of the Embassy, but nothing that put him in a position quite like this one. "There must be twenty of these here... all going up to the Leznyy. Realms below, there's easily ten million thalers of material in here."

"And every fennig smuggled against Armorian law, eh boss?" Azu chuckled, his little voice crackling like dry leaves. "So what are we supposed to do about it?"

"Gold below, I don't know," Clasq hissed. He had to inform his masters in Armoria about it, of course. What would that enciphered letter look like? "We'd better get a good handle on everything here. If the big crates are cannons..."

Azu flitted through the dark to one of the smaller barrels. Clasq kept watch as the devil pried the lid off with his claws. "Uh... boss. Muskets in here."

"Republican?"

"Nah, regular Carrandelian sulfur-spitters."

That was good, at least. Clasq did a quick calculation. "We can't do anything about the artillery," he said after a moment. The cannons were too big to move alone, anyway. Each one would require a sledge and a team of horses, even packed in parts as they were. Besides, he considered, the Embassaria hadn't actually told him to intercept anything, just to observe. Maybe they knew these things were here. "I think we --"

"Hsst," Azu cautioned him, and he felt a flash of impression: the devil had heard something. Footfalls. Infernal names and cursed gold, Clasq realized, there's still a watchman!

The dwarf that owned the trading enterprise (he was called Vesnich, Clasq had learned) was known by the Counter. He was apparently a regular at the Counter's club, the Black Leznyy, and Clasq had worked a few tidbits out of the bookmaker before they parted. He had also, he reminded himself, promised to pay the cocksure bastard back in warlock's trade. Vesnich apparently hired only Czarkravnitch watchmen, on the basis (so Theomyr had said) that Czarkrav and Leznish scripts were not interchangeable and he wanted to keep the knowledge of what was in his warehouses secret. Apparently, he'd had a good reason for that, Clasq was now realizing, since proof of this particular cargo could come with a death sentence.

Anyway, it had taken the rest of the afternoon and into the night for Clasq to find the three watchmen who were supposed to be attending the overnight shift. With a little magic and a judicious application of his monthly bribery allowance, he managed to convince them that they'd have a better night elsewhere. It had only taken a single threat, too, which had seemed too good to be true at the time.

Who was this fourth man, then? Someone called in, fool, he told himself, in a little mind's-voice pitched too low for Azu to hear and join in, when the other three failed to present themselves.

There was the light, spilling from a lantern held up at the side door. Infernal names, that's the door we came in. Clasq hadn't made any effort to be gentle with the lock. They were supposed to be well clear before anyone so much as wrinkled their nose at it. Oh well. Nothing for it.

"Over here!" Clasq called, trying to pitch his voice low. His Czarkrav was terrible, but it needn't hold up for more than a moment; the enchantment had worn off hours ago.

A huge ogre with a face like a battering ram came around the corner. Her face was creased by a deep frown. Of course. Why not a bruiser? She was clad in a light leather tunic, but a huge club was tucked into her belt. "Look! Someone's been in these crates, here!"

"Who're you?" she asked without moving any closer. In any other situation, Clasq supposed, her hesitance, her reserve, would be worthy of credit. There was no reason for anyone else to be here, so she was well within her rights to pummel him first and ask questions later. It did, however, make the task of selecting a way to dispatch her somewhat finicky.

"Who are you? Called in to cover for those fools, like me, I think." He was reaching the end of his Czarkrav. The confusion on the ogres' face led him to repeat the words to himself. That was what he'd intended to say, anyway.

"Boss, yer not making any sense," Azu hissed.

Clasq shot back at the imp, "Be quiet, you!"

This was enough for the ogre, who shook her head and, in thickly accented Armorian, said "You come with me." She started to approach, one hand out to grab Clasq by the forearm.

"Damn," he said.

Before she reached him he began to speak; not the Common Armorian that was his native tongue, but rather one of the many languages of the Inferno. The moment he lifted his pen from the contract, the dialects of hell had flooded into his mind, like a river when a dam bursts. It was one of the benefits of an indenture, he knew, because the languages came with the knowledge to use them. Now he was using them: he spoke bindings into being, and luminous ropes of glistening magic suddenly illumined the dark warehouse in a garish display of color. The ogre hesitated but a second - and it was second enough.

Clasq couldn't help but feel sorry for her. The strands of magic made a strange knotwork, a pattern that evolved and changed with a sinuous gyration. She couldn't keep her eyes from it. Even as it shifted and hissed into new forms, it chimed and murmured. He watched as the living magic insinuated itself into the place behind her eyes. It took only a moment, then the light and the magic were both gone, but the ogre swayed on her feet, her eyes glazed by a pattern only she could see.

"Sorry," said Clasq as he walked up to her and placed the barrel of his pistol against her temple. "Azu. Get ready to run."