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dropped its curtain on their struggle. Likely there was nothing to see anyway, the two vessels long since reduced to flotsam by the monster’s massive tentacles. It was well after eleven o’clock now, and there’d been no victory rockets fired from out on the bay, and no word from the shore watchers beyond reports of bodies and wreckage washed up by the tide.
    He sighed and drew his woolen cloak more snugly about himself, the chill seeping into his aged bones. His hip ached where the sword had cut into it forty years ago, a dull pain reaching into the small of his back and down the front of his thigh. He should go in. There was nothing to see out here, nothing that would bring him any more assurance than he already had.
    The boats were surely gone, all three of them—the Mataian barge, the whaler that had pulled it out to deep water, and the Andolen trademaster that had foolishly come to their rescue. Or had perhaps come for the kraggin all along, hoping to claim the ten-thousand-sovereign prize Gillard had offered for the monster’s carcass. Why else would any ship sail into Kalladorne Bay these days? Whatever her reason, the trademaster had paid for it with her life. And so had the Mataians, their ploy to gain favor and power in the realm defeated, for now. They would try again, but tonight Simon could relax, and mourn the men who were lost. . . .
    Wingbeats whispered in the mists coiling overhead, and he glanced upward uneasily. The nights were not safe these days. Especially not a night like this. The kraggin was not the only creature of the Veil to have moved into the realm of late, and only fools pretended otherwise. With a sigh, he turned from the balustrade.
    The glass panes rattled in his study door as he closed it behind him and headed for the sideboard to pour himself a brandy. Despite the conclusions of logic, he knew he wouldn’t truly relax until he looked on the gray choppy water tomorrow and saw the litter of wood and fabric and rope that had once been vessels full of men. Even then the guilt would remain.
    The liquor gurgled pleasantly out of its carafe, its pungent aroma burning his nostrils. Not since his wartime days had he felt an ambivalence of this intensity, hope and fear at odds even as they were the same. For the monster out there absolutely needed to be killed. It had shut down Kalladorne Bay for over six months, devastating the local economy. And since Springerlan was the largest port in Kiriath, accounting for nearly half her population, that translated into a significant amount of hardship and suffering. Suffering that would continue to escalate until the kraggin was removed.
    Unless the Guardians did the removing. Then the suffering would merely change form and venue.
    He replaced the glass stopper with a clink and shoved the carafe back into line with the others, sniffing the brandy with a frown. Guardians of the Realm, indeed! Even the name they chose for themselves was arrogant! To think they alone knew what was best for everyone else, particularly in matters so personal as the spiritual, was not simply galling, it was terrifying. He’d lived this day dreading they would succeed in their effort to deliver the realm from the kraggin.
    “A spawn of evil sent by Eidon to judge us!” High Father Bonafil had declared when the barge was launched this morning. Visions of the demands they would make should they succeed haunted Simon still: a place on the royal council, a chapel in the palace, stringent enforcement of their Laity Laws upon the Court, including mandatory observance of Mataian rituals, bans on religious observances not to their liking, their vicious Gadrielite heretic hunters given more leeway than ever. . . . It was a road of increasing tyranny and oppression that would lead all the way to that unholy purge Mataian fanatics were already braying about.
    The dread, justified as he considered it to be, nevertheless fueled a powerful self-reproach, for his fears were only fears,