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.”