‘He is dead,’ she said. ‘The one you have come here for. Gaz, my husband.’ She pointed with a blood-slick knife. ‘Here.’
The guard walked closer, sliding back one of the shutters on the lantern and di shy;recting the shaft of light until it found and held on the motionless body lying on the stones.
‘He confessed,’ she said. ‘So I killed him, with my own hand. I killed this. . monster.’
The guardsman crouched down to study the corpse. He reached out and gently slipped one finger under the cuff of one of Gaz’s sleeves, and raised up the battered, fingerless hand. He sighed then, and slowly nodded.
As he lowered the arm again and began straightening, Thordy said, ‘I understand there is a reward.’
He looked across at her.
She wasn’t sure what she saw in his expression. He might be horrified, or amused, or cynically drained of anything like surprise. But it didn’t matter much. She just wanted the money. She needed the money.
Becoming, for a time, the mason of the Lord of the Slain entailed a fearsome re shy;sponsibility. But she hadn’t seen a single bent copper for her troubles.
The guardsman nodded. ‘There is.’
She held up the kitchen knife.
He might have flinched a bit, maybe, but what mattered now would be Thordy seeing him nod a second time.
And after a moment, he did just that.
A god walked the streets of Darujhistan. In itself, never a good thing. Only fools would happily, eagerly invite such a visitation, and such enthusiasm usually proved short-lived. That this particular god was the harvester of souls meant that, well, not only was his manifestation unwelcome, but his gift amounted to unmitigated slaughter, rippling out to overwhelm thousands of inhabitants in tenement blocks, in the clustered hovels of the Gadrobi District, in the Lakefront District — but no, such things cannot be glanced over with a mere shudder.
Plunge then, courage collected, into this welter of lives. Open the mind to con shy;sider, cold or hot, all manner of judgement. Propriety is dispensed with, decency cast aside. This is the eye that does not blink, but is such steely regard an invitation to cruel indifference? To a hardened, compassionless aspect? Or will a sliver of honest empathy work its way beneath the armour of desensitized excess?
When all is done, dare to weigh thine own harvest of feelings and consider this one challenge: if all was met with but a callous shrug, then, this round man invites, shift round such cruel, cold regard, and cast one last judgement. Upon thyself.
But for now. .
