It is worth remembering that, when it all began, they were twenty years old and being paid four coppers a night to walk in circles.

  From "The Twin Crown: A Chronicle of the Last Portent" by Emory Sellen

  -ooo-

  The body in the flower bed, crushing the dragon blooms under its expensive furs and considerable heft, looked a great deal like the Marquis.

  Renn circled it once, twice, and then nodded with the considered air of a Guildsman. “That’s definitely the Marquis.”

  He didn’t sound as concerned as Cael might have liked, but then his brother had never been one for dwelling. Or thinking - opinions varied.

  Jagged shards of brightly coloured glass surrounded the body. None of them were the cause of death, unless the Marquis’s neck had always held that unfortunate angle. Cael crouched next to the corpse and looked up, shielding his eyes against the glare of the torches as he searched the darkness behind them.

  Ornately carved columns rose to balconies and then, above, a full rendition of the Trials of the Celestial Martyr in stained glass. A roughly Marquis-sized hole had been added to the Martyr’s Transcendence; it gave His face a rather more surprised expression than most depictions.

  The Guild would be there at first dawn, anything less was heresy, but Cael took a moment to fully appreciate the effect.

  Exquisite, really. In its own way.

  He turned his attention back to the Marquis and felt under the thick, ermine-lined hood. Still warm. There were still no lights beyond the torches - no outcry from inside. Even so late in the night, someone surely should have heard.

  “Ah huh.”

  Renn crouched, shifting his scabbard to avoid a repeat of the Canlan Alley Incident. “Words, not grunts. Try it, you might like it.”

  “Mn.” Cael stood again, looking between the ruined flowerbed and the gaping hole on the fourth floor of the guest wing. “He must be the one Matriarch Idelia was meeting.”

  Renn followed suit. “Ah.”

  Cael stared at him.

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Renn gestured to the low arches of the dormitory wing. “Shall we?”

  “Father said the contract is patrol only,” Cael pointed out. The arms master had slowed with age and winter, but even his blunted practice swords had a sting and he didn’t consider them too old to swat.

  Renn nodded, expression uncharacteristically pensive. “But,” he said, raising a finger. “He didn’t say we had to patrol outside.”

  Cael wavered and that was enough; Renn grinned widely and sped towards the arches, boots pounding across the flagstones. By the time Cael caught up, he was waiting at the foot of the spiral staircase, smirking.

  The heat from the great furnaces below made any activity more rigorous than prayer unpleasant and, by the third floor, it was overly warm: airless. Cael gasped despite his best efforts; Renn wordlessly gripped the straps of his armour and heaved him along and up as they climbed the stone steps to the fourth and final floor.

  “Thanks,” he said, but didn’t try for more.

  “I’ll do the fighting,” Renn grunted. “You…see if they'll trip over you.”

  Cael tried to shake the hand from his back as they reached the final floor. “They?”

  “You’re not the only one who can spot shadow where—” Renn halted them both at the threshold of the Matriarch’s meeting chambers, at the edge of the unnatural darkness filling the doorway. “Where shadow shouldn’t be,” he finished.

  The Dark hung like an unmoving miasma, heavy with the scent of incense. The same that burned over the shrine in Maren’s parlour. A little sweet, familiar enough to disarm.

  It had done exactly that to three of the Keep’s resident guards. They lay in an undignified heap, the skin visible through the gaps of their armour waxen and unmoving. Better that than walking carrion; perhaps there would be no fighting.

  Renn bent to turn the top-most onto their back.

  His back: a young man, limbs still loose, and around their own age. His helmet sat askew, the dented visor no longer covering his eyes. They stared, pupils like dots, above a mouth frozen on a scream. Shaggy brown hair tucked down into the collar of the recruit’s armour but Cael could easily imagine the soap behind the ears.

  Their father would be pleased to know Aldric’s Company would never be at a loss for work. This one’s family would take it significantly less well.

  Renn stood; Cael smacked his gloved hand down before it got anywhere near. “Don’t poke the death cloud.”

  “One touch won’t harm, they probably ran right into it.” But Renn raised his hands, then crossed his arms, gaze tracking the outline of the archway. “Besides, you were thinking about it.”

  Not until he was sure there was no other option, but a sinking in his gut told him his immediate future was almost certainly filled with bad choices.

  “Thinking, not doing,” he snapped anyway. “Try it, you might like it,” he couldn’t help adding, though in honesty hadn’t tried hard.

  They dragged the bodies to the side to the accompaniment of creaking armour and muted alarm bells, then stood shoulder to shoulder, staring contemplatively into the Dark.

  Renn drew his sword, checked the edge with his thumb, sheathed it again. "We have to get in there. All the other guards will laugh at us if we don't at least try to save Matriarch Idelia."

  “Yes.” Cael studied the floor, the archway, the vaulted ceiling, and wondered on their chances of scaling the outside wall like spiders. Perhaps they could make a hole in the roof. “That’s definitely the worst of our problems.”

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  “So can you…?” Renn waggled his fingers like a mummer in festival season.

  “Yes, I can wave at it,” Cael grumbled, but began to bite at the fingers of his gloves to tug, then peel them off. “This isn’t a good idea,” he mumbled around the stiff leather, before Renn could retort.

  “Then give me another.” Renn nodded to the pile of guardsmen. “I’ve no more love for Idelia than anyone else, but others will come looking for this sorry lot soon enough - or the Marquis’s own guards will find him. Or—”

  “Enough.” Cael drew a shallow breath and held his bared hands out to the waiting Dark. Their halo, invisible by day, flared into a searing green. Seeking tendrils that had crept closer were near to whips as they snapped away.

  “Hardly terrifying at all.” Renn clapped his shoulder. “Good job.”

  Cael took a half-step forward, Renn kept close at his back, safe within the cold green flame. The shadow retreated in a pocket before them; the light of the candelabras high in the hallway illuminated the dark oak floor.

  He could sense it—he could feel its interest. He could—it had seen him.

  Incense became sulphur, became something he had no name for as the shadows collapsed, flowing into the corners of the hall. In that moment he saw - he thought he saw - a figure? A man, hunched and misshapen, bent over the crumpled form of Matriarch Idelia, reaching towards her to—to—

  He staggered back, expecting to fall though he didn't know why - Renn had never allowed that to happen. Well, not unless Renn had been the one to do the pushing. Steadied, he bent and braced his hands on his knees, breathing as Maren had taught him as a child.

  Here, now. Deep, now. Out, now. Good.

  Renn left him to it, striding into the hall towards the Matriarch. He knelt beside the old woman, turning her with gentler hands than many would manage. Idelia had few friends in lower Strand. Idelia had few friends anywhere.

  Apart from the late Marquis, apparently.

  “She’s alive.” Renn sat back on his heels. “Think I should slap her to bring her around?”

  “I’d prefer to live, if it’s all the same to you. Put her on the day bed.” Cael straightened and nodded to the furniture in question, draped with silks and furs, next to a table laden with fruits and cheeses.

  What else would befit a Matriarch of the Poor Order of the Celestial Martyr?

  Rotten fruits now - cheeses too. Plants withered on the shelves, flowers blackened and stiff in their vases.

  The Matriarch stirred with a disgruntled sound but didn't wake as Renn dropped her on the bed; they left her to her rotting opulence.

  By the time they reached the courtyard, the Marquis had been joined by two figures in the red and tan leathers of the Watch. They’d planted their tall coal brasiers in the flowerbed, casting the scene near into daylight and pitching the courtyard beyond their circle into untextured darkness.

  At least it didn’t smell of incense.

  The nose-burning stench of dragon blooms lingered instead. They gave their scent twice: a sweet perfume when their petals first opened, and foulness when their stalks were cut. The Watch had probably damaged them when they moved the body.

  Cael recognised one of them: Sergeant Lower. Taller than Renn and girth to give the Marquis competition, though he carried most of his weight above the gut: a solid barrel of muscle under the fat.

  “Evening, Flower.” Renn grinned and rubbed Lower’s bald head as he passed, easily spinning to avoid the elbow that drove towards his ribs. “New recruit? What happened to the last one?”

  Cael nodded to said recruit; a woman, older and almost as tall as himself, with fire-bright hair and freckles enough to match. She looked towards the main gate, nose wrinkling.

  “Went for army, didn’t he? Better pay.” Lower spat to the side. “Speak up, fast now. Dark, was it?”

  The cooler air had worked into his lungs but fast asked a little much of them; Cael shrugged.

  Lower snorted. “I didn’t mean you. Martyr forbid you’d deign to say a word, your highness.”

  “A patch in Matriarch Idelia’s hall,” Renn said. “It killed three of her guards. I’d guess the Marquis decided to take his chances with a drop instead.”

  “Bollocks.” Lower spat again. “And the Matriarch?”

  “Still alive.” Renn clasped his hands before him and raised pious eyes to the crescent moon. “Thank the Martyr.”

  Flame-hair’s attention drew back to Renn, disapproving lines hardening her face. “You mock the Martyr?”

  Lower spoke quickly, before Renn could worsen his crime. “He’s Company - they both are. I told you about them, Guardsman.”

  She pursed her lips, her expression softened with curiosity.

  “What did he tell you?” Renn tilted his head, pressing closer and flashing a smile. “Lies, I’m sure.”

  Renn was the elder by a matter of moments, Maren had said - shortly after swearing them to secrecy on pain of unimaginable tortures, which had turned out to be entirely, gruesomely imaginable for both seven year olds.

  They told anyone who asked that Renn was a year older and the lie was easy to believe. Renn had grown tall, broad at the shoulder - a natural swordsman, a fine athlete and, according to himself at least, a notable dancer. At twenty he was in possession of a well-trimmed beard, a deep laugh and the tokens of half the middle city debutantes.

  Cael, in contrast, was a reedy, wheezing afterthought who preferred to be clean shaven anyway, thank you so very much.

  “You won’t find sell-swords more responsible, more respectable, more respectful,” Renn said, smile widening to a wicked grin.

  Flame-hair looked him up and down. “More ridiculous?”

  Renn laughed with no offence and stepped back, hands raised.

  “We’re past time,” Cael said, before his brother could rejoin the fray.

  Lower nodded in quick agreement. “Right you are, was there anything else?”

  “Not a thing.” Renn patted the purse on his belt. “You want to keep us, fish out your coin.”

  “Nah, I’m saving for the corner lassies - they’re a better value. Bugger off, then.”

  Lower waved them away; Flame-hair didn’t bother, apparently finding the corpse more interesting.

  They left the keep behind, following the wide, brazier-lit stone concourse down towards the middle city and home. The coal-tenders crouched next to their poles, some seemed to be half-sleeping, others staring moonwards in contemplation.

  One throwing dice against himself - famously the only way he could ever win.

  “Torren?” Renn said as they walked closer. “Heard you’d gone for the river.”

  The old man grinned, one remaining tooth glinting. “Not my time. Not my time,” he said again. Perhaps he hoped they’d believe him. “Copper for the light?”

  Renn fished in his pouch, then flicked him a small copper coin. “For the light,” he said. “Don’t drink it all at once.”

  They moved on in silence, until the pools of coal light died in the glow of the Saint’s Quarter, along with the peace.

  The calls of revellers, hawkers, corner workers and more rose in a glorious cacophony as they walked under the western arch. Flagstones became cobbles, worn by feet over the centuries until they were smooth and, under the slickness of mud and worse, halfway lethal.

  Cael picked his way over them carefully. “You didn’t tell Lower about the man,” he said, in a lull between Renn hailing the lads and lasses and being hailed in return.

  Renn frowned. “What man?”

  “There was…I thought it was a man.” Perhaps he’d been mistaken; easy to mistake things in the Dark. “What did you see?”

  “Shadows, Idelia. No man.” Renn stared for a moment. “You’re sure? I’d appreciate it if you said no, you’re already weird enough.”

  Cael swerved to avoid a drunken woman carrying the largest jug of wine he’d ever seen with the filthiest cackle he’d ever heard. “I’m sure it was something, and that something looked like a man.”

  “Bollocks,” Renn said, tone precisely Lower’s. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  Of course, all those many people Cael would be disposed to tell. The extensive list had exactly one name on it.

  “Don’t tell Senna,” Renn amended, presumably off the flatness of Cael’s expression.

  Cael didn’t deign to reply.

  Renn huffed as they turned off the main fairway, into the warren of alleys and trade roads. The banner of Aldric’s Company waved ahead. The ever-open gates to the small, well-lit courtyard. Empty, save for Daft Willem sweeping the flagstones, and the smell of Maren’s famous Century Stew.

  Willem stopped his large, bristled brush and sucked at his teeth with grim amusement as they passed. “Himself’s waiting.”

  Renn laughed. “He can’t possibly know.”

  “Oh,” said their father, framed by the wide, warmly lit doorway of the main hall. “He knows.”