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Vereumene, too.”
    “Won’t ever happen,” I said. “Dercy wouldn’t ever go against Braddock.”
    “If Chachant plants the seed…”
    “Fine,” I relented. “Make sure it doesn’t happen. Last thing I want while I’m in Erior is a bunch of knuckle-dragging armies to come pounding on the walls.”
    “Erior?” Sybil questioned. “You said your brother—”
    “He’s been in Erior for the last month, probably on leave. So I have the pleasant assignment of finagling my way into that bloody kingdom without alerting any of Braddock’s court or the king himself.”
    Sybil raked her nails across her scalp, freshening up her hair. “What kind of naughty boy have you been to draw such ire from Braddock?”
    “Offed his uncle,” I answered. “He supposedly burned an entire field of some lord’s crops as petty revenge. Some lord with very deep pockets who could afford a very expensive assassin. Botched it a bit and word got back to Braddock.”
    “Well, try not to get yourself caught, hmm? I like you, Astul.” She smiled.
    “You’ll know if I do. He promised that if I was seen within two hundred miles of his walls, he would impale me, string the Glannondil banner up through my intestines and out of my mouth and then parade me across the whole of Mizridahl.”

Chapter Four
    T he relationship between my brother and me was complicated, largely because I’d stabbed him five years ago. Despite my profession, I tried to reason without violence, but after he insisted on joining the Glannondil army — good pay and free food, Astul! — I socked him in the jaw. He tackled me, I kicked him, he spat in my face, yada, yada, yada, and I ended up taking a small chunk of flesh from his shoulder. It was hardly noteworthy in my opinion, but he made a big fuss about it, stormed off and told me never to talk to him again. Hopefully he wasn’t serious.
    Pormillia had valiantly trotted along for eight days, pushing on through the bogs and swampy marshes of the Paggle Badlands. There’s a misleading name if I ever saw one.
    The clomps of northern snow were in my distant past now. As I rode eastward, the quagmires dried up and the mud hardened into lush soil upon which meadows of rich green grass and rainbows of flowers grew. After another couple days, my girl and I arrived at what people around here affectionately called the capital of the world.
    Its sixty-foot-high sheer walls, decorated with crimson banners featuring a grinning jackal, roosted upon the shoulders of Mount Poll, and behind it lay a skyline of sculpted peaks surging relentlessly into the clouds. When the sun was bright and would melt away the gray sky like ice, you could tilt your head till the back of your skull touched your shoulders and you still wouldn’t have seen the conclusion of those bluffs. For all intents and purposes, life on this mountain ended right here. Go up much higher and you weren’t coming down, at least not with the widely accepted definition of liveliness pulsing inside you.
    I guided Pormillia inside the walls of Erior, and the capital of the world came alive.
    It smelled like the sea was roasting in an iron pan of shallots and lard. A few more steps and the spunk of mutton and cloves nosed its way in, quickly elbowed aside by the sharpness of cinnamon pies and the sweetness of berry cakes.
    The cobbles teemed with merchants and buyers, a haggle here, a thank-you-good-sir there. Crooks preyed upon the wide-eyed, explaining that this here stick, you see, you burn it at night and the fumes — quite strong, now, don’t sniff them — they keep away vampires, werewolves and even ne’er-do-well fairies corrupted by ekle mog. What’s ekle mog? Oh, my, my, my dear sir, step over here and take a look at this contraption of string and wire, it’s designed to blunt the essence of ekle mog which surrounds each and every one of us, and…
    So on and so forth.
    Rain began to fall, tinking off the garbage pails that Braddock implemented