The guard was confused. Was the Lord of Death apologizing?
‘But this once, I shall have my way. I shall have my way.’ And he stepped for-ward, raising one withered hand-a hand, the guard saw, missing two fingers. ‘Your soul shines. It is bright. Blinding. So much honour, so much love. Compas-sion. In the cavern of loss you leave behind, your children will be less than all they could have been. They will curl round scars and the wounds will never quite heal, and they will learn to gnaw those scars, to lick, to drink deep. This will not do.’
The guard convulsed, spinning down back into the corpse on the cobbles. He felt his heart lurch, and then pound with sudden ease, sudden, stunning vigour. He drew a deep breath, the air wondrous, cool, sweeping away the last vestige of pain-sweeping everything away.
All that he had come to, in those last moments-that scintillating clarity of vi-sion, the breathtaking understanding of everything- now sank beneath a familiar cloud, settling grey and thick, where every shape was but hinted at, where he was lost. As lost as he had been, as lost as any and every mortal soul, no matter how blustery its claims to certainty, to faith. And yet… and yet it was a warm cloud, shot through with precious things: his love for his wife, his children; his wonder at their lives, the changes that came to them day by day.
He found he was weeping, even as he climbed to his feet. He turned to look at the Lord of Death, in truth not expecting to see the apparition which must surely come only to the dead and dying, and then cried out in shock.
Hood looked solid, appallingly real, walking down the street, eastward, and it was as if the webs binding them then stretched, the fabric snapping, wisping off into the night, and with each stride that took the god farther away the guard felt his life returning, an awareness of breathtaking solidity-in this precise moment, and in every one that would follow.
He turned away-and even that was easy-and settled his gaze upon the door, which hung open, and all that waited within was dark and rotted through with horror and madness.
The guard did not hesitate.
With this modest and humble man, with this courageous, honourable man, Hood saw true. And, for just this once, the Lord of Death had permitted himself to care.
Mark this, a most significant moment, a most poignant gesture.
Thordy heard boots on the warped floorboards of the back porch and she turned to see a city guardsman emerge from her house, out through the back door, holding a lantern in one hand.
‘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-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-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-sider, cold or hot, all manner of judgement. Propriety is dispensed with, decency east 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?