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and stole ill-behaved pureblood children from their beds.
    In much better humor, I marched on as our “processering” swept through the prometheum door.
    The thick stone surround silenced the courtyard babble. Trickling water echoed in a profound quiet, and faint strains of the Karish plainchant hung in the rounded vault along with the pungent scent of ysomar, the favored ointment for the dead.
    In the way of all edifices built to strike awe in the human heart, the prometheum rotunda was grand. Blazing torches revealed vaulted ceilings, monumental statuary, and larger-than-life murals of gods and angels and human figures of all sorts. Yet the paints that had once shimmered with color were now sorely faded. And the statues were of a crude and common sort, not at all the lifelike renderings pureblood sculptors had produced in the last decades of Eodward’s reign.
    A strident whoop and a burst of laughter quickly hushed shattered the shabby solemnity. Two young men, the elder dark-haired and lean, the younger short, soft, and fair, ducked their heads. Though their heads were bowed, hard breathing and smothered spasms bespoke an aborted wrestling match in the shadowed niche just inside the great doors. Until they glanced up at me and their jaws dropped.
    Leander peered past the two. “Bastien de Caton?”
    Customary respect should have had Coroner Bastien awaiting our arrival under the portico. To greet us inside trod the bounds of propriety—akind of boasting, demonstrating his mastery of a pureblood. But not even to be waiting here . . . The man must be as brazen as a Ciceron pickthief or as ignorant as a brick to put himself so in jeopardy of legal censure.
    The elder of the two—a tall, clear-skinned man with a dark, bold gaze—pointed to a corridor that plunged through the smoke-dulled mural before us.
    Beyond the mural, we passed a number of private preparation rooms awaiting the noble dead. My attention remained fixed ahead, where the white-clad cloud goddess had somehow got ahead of us. Again posed in a graceful stillness, she held open a door to a vaulted colonnade.
    Leander’s sharp inquiry resulted in a whispered, “Through here and rightward, lordship. Bastien’s ta the Render just now, huntin’ dead murders.”
    Yet indeed we had no need to search out this mysterious Render nor discover what
huntin
’
dead murders
might signify. Winter daylight streamed through the arches to either side of the colonnade, illuminating a thickset man in a heavy wool shirt, leather tunic, and thigh-length boots. He stood square in our path, fists on hips and scowling at us from amid a tangle of sand-colored hair. Fog or steam or smoke, bearing a stench so foul as to leave me unwilling to take another breath, wreathed him as if he were some gatzi lord from Magrog’s netherworld.
    “You’re late.” His voice rumbled the stones.

CHAPTER 3
    “I told that Registry woman I required promptness.”
    My new master rudely stood his ground. No shred of respect before five sorcerers. Indeed, his acid tone likely removed yet another layer of paint from the funereal scenes peeling from the colonnade ceiling.
    Leander detached a scroll from his belt and boldly stepped forward into the malodorous fog. “Bastien de Caton, I have the hon—” His announcement dissolved into a choking gag.
    The man snatched the scroll from Leander’s hand. “I’d best not find some magical skullduggery has changed the words since the terms were agreed. Heard that’s been done time to time. But I’m the king’s man round Caton, well versed in the law, not an ignorant villein ready to grovel, as you likely think.”
    “I—assure—you—” Leander’s retching coughs near made me gag as well.
    “So which one of you is bound to me?” Bastien scanned the contract scroll, glancing up just in time to get his answer. Scarlet-cheeked Leander, incapable of speech, waved a finger at me.
    Taking shallow breaths, I stepped out from my escorts.
    We