James Davis - Circle of Skulls

"No surprises there," Tavian replied, smiling and crossing his arms. "I imagine Rorden Allek didn't take kindly to impersonators of the Watch on his shift, eh?"

"They say they were hired on by Rorden Dregg last night," Aeril said, a strange seriousness in his gaze that caused Tavian's smile to falter, sensing something far graver than mere stolen uniforms.

"Rorden Dregg? Lucian Dregg?" he asked, incredulous.

"Aye, sir," Naaris answered.

"Dregg couldn't find his arse with both hands, and I doubt he'd have the work ethic to carry out the task in the first place," Tavian said and stepped back toward his desk, motioning for the officers and their charges to enter. "I'll never understand how he became swordcaptain, much less rorden. Who in their right mind would promote him?"

"Someone discreet, I'd wager, and quick," Aeril said, lowering his gaze and adding. "It seems Rorden Allek was killed in the line of duty last evening, during a fire at the Storm's Front."

"What?" Tavian said. It had to be a mistake. Allek Marson had sponsored his training, had put him in charge of his first patrol. "How do we know this?"

"A friend of mine patrols in Sea Ward, sir," Aeril answered. "He said things have been strange for some time now, but he was loyal to Rorden Allek, keeping things quiet to avoid a panic. When Dregg stepped into Marson's position…"

"He spoke up," Tavian finished, nodding absently as he stared at the floor and leaned against the desk, trying to absorb what he'd been told and formulate a suitable course of action. "A good man knows a bad officer."

"Aye, sir."

Tavian drummed his fingers thoughtfully, his eyes glancing over the scattered, mundane reports cluttering his office. He glared at the two men in stolen tabards.

"So Dregg steps up, a swift promotion under unusual circumstances, no doubt somehow funded by favors or coin. It'll ride for a day or so," he said at length. "If Allek wanted secrecy, we'll respect that until we know why. Keep in touch with your friend, Aeril. Put together a small patrol, and meet me here at midmorn tomorrow. Throw these two in a cell until further notice. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," both men replied and saluted before turning to go.

"And practice not doing that," Tavian said, stopping the men in midstride. "No salutes and no tabards tomorrow, this will be a quiet patrol. Eyes and ears only."

The men nodded and dragged the impersonators out, closing the door behind them and leaving Tavian alone. He sat still for a long time, trying to convince himself that Allek would turn up alive and well. As several broadsheets slipped to the floor, bearing stories of murder, conspiracy, and danger across the city, he had a fair idea of what he could truly expect to find.

"More of the same," he muttered, though he was eager to get his boots on real streets and deal with the situation on terms that felt more natural than sitting behind a desk.

NIGHTAL 22, THE YEAR OF DEEP WATER DRIFTING (1480 DR)

Jinn crouched in the shadows of a small park just outside the squat, modest tower of Archmage Tallus. Situated in the center of a large block of businesses and servant homes, the tower sat in darkness, an iron fence around its perimeter, a rusted gate left open and creaking in the winter breeze. Black windows at its base revealed naught but the reflections of weak streetlamps and the bare branches of thin trees. Decorative crenellations at its top were worn and cracked with age and exposure. Water stains crept down the sides like the tracks of tears down an old man's face collected at the bottom by dried-out vines of ivy clinging to the stone.

Had Quessahn's directions been any less accurate,

Jinn would have thought the tower abandoned for years.

"No guards, no lights," he whispered. "Perhaps he's not in."

Maranyuss stepped closer to the park's edge, leaning on the bark of a winter-shorn tree as she lifted her nose to the air and closed her eyes.

"I smell blood," she said. "He's in there… and we are not alone."

She turned as a figure approached them, cloak and hood pulled tight against the cold. Jinn relaxed as the hood fell away, revealing the troubled stare of Quessahn. She met his gaze only briefly as she neared, averting her eyes to look upon the archmage's unkempt tower.

"Tallus is not in there," she said. "Technically Tallus does not exist."

"What did you and Briarbones discover?" Jinn asked, more eager to confront the wizard than argue with Quessahn over whether or not he should.

"Before he came to the House of Wonder, Tallus was known as Ashmidai," she said. "An aspiring, ambitious, and secretive wizard for the Vigilant Order of Asmodeus. This alone would not have barred him from becoming a master at the House of Wonder, but he kept it hidden anyway."

"Well," Jinn replied, "that's one puzzle piece that fits."

Shadows shifted near the encircling buildings, hunched figures drawing nearer. They were not close enough for Jinn to accurately identify them as ahimazzi, but instinct told him what his eyes could not. They were only a few, but their numbers could quickly swell. Mara hissed quietly at the sight of them. Her senses being far greater than Jinn's, she could smell their hollowed presence, their empty husks bearing no value to one dealing in souls.

"Let's get inside," she said, exiting the sparse tree line of the park. "I grow tired of pretending stealth will hide us from the wizard."

"Wait!" Quessahn said, glancing at Jinn in disbelief as she chased after the hag. "You can't just walk in through the front-"

"The door is open," Mara said sharply, staring down the eladrin and pointing at the tower, its wide double doors a dark hole beyond the iron gate. "If we're not going in now, we might as well abandon this little hunt altogether."

"Agreed," Jinn replied, already on his feet and following Mara through the gate. He paused briefly to glance at Quessahn, feeling as though some unknown confession were hanging between them, but he could not find the words to express the strange idea. She said nothing, appearing indecisive at the gate, her blue eyes glittering as they finally turned to him, something in their depths causing him a momentary pang of inexplicable sorrow. "We could use your help," he said at last. "Perhaps we'll find more about how to stop the killings."

"That's not what you're looking for," she said.

"I can think of few instances in the past tenday when I've ever found what I was looking for," he replied with a grin. "Perhaps this time we'll be lucky."

"I don't believe in luck," she said and passed through the gate to stand on the tower's doorstep a moment before entering the dark beyond.

"Me neither," he muttered, eyeing her suspiciously, certain that she knew far more than she'd been letting on.

The tower's interior stood in stark contrast to its humble exterior. A tall, circular chamber dominated the entrance, the ceiling lost in the shadows above. The floor was of a highly polished, dark marble and a wide set of fine, wood stairs spiraled up toward a second-level loft, the bases of several shelves just visible through the chamber's gloom. The whole of the room bore little decoration, all of it centered dramatically upon a massive statue set before the circle of windows.

Light filtering in through the windows seemed magnified, illuminating the tower and gleaming on the smooth contours of the statue's perfectly sculpted musculature. Carved from black stone, it stood three times as tall as Jinn surrounded by a circular pool of clear water. Jinn approached slowly, glaring into the blank eyes of the statue, its visage shaped into the likeness of a handsome young man, smiling with its head lowered, small horns curving gracefully from its brow. It held one hand, its left, palm up in a frozen gesture of dubious welcome.