Paison Meer had served as a steward at Bluestead House, the official residence for the Prefects of Gallowsport, for over forty years. For the last twenty-five of those years he had enjoyed the title of Chief Steward. In that time he had come to believe there were two sorts of Gallowsport Prefects.

The first sort was an unimaginative puppet who did nothing but what the Emperor demanded of him in exchange for the title (which, unlike most Prefectures, was not hereditary), and under whom the city's thriving criminal underworld operated so openly there were sometimes bloody gang wars right in the streets. Inevitably the city became so ungovernable such a Prefect would have to be replaced, sometimes executed for incompetence (though the warrant never said so outright), but more often trundled off to some distant corner of the Anointed Realms where he couldn't do too much damage.

The second sort was closer to the criminals themselves. Usually such Prefects threw themselves into so many of the various underhanded dealings in the city that they often became victims of one of the guilds they had somehow crossed, or else found themselves in front of the High Bench in the Grand Curia, only to be hanged and displayed out over Hangman's Harbor.

Oraldus Traiste, who had survived seven years as Prefect and thus was the one Paison had served the longest, was somewhere in between.

The Prefect had served under Perseun Deyn in his embassy to Q'Sivaris, until a fever had forced a return to his home in the Vilain Reaches. On the Prince's suggestion the Emperor had installed him as Prefect when his predecessor was convicted of running a slaver's ring right out of Nightgate Armory, and in the subsequent years Gallowsport had become a more tolerable place than it had been since the days of Senrich Mourthia, even if it was still not exactly safe or reputable. Oraldus seemed to understand instinctively how to thread Gallowsport's uniquely treacherous needle: he could appease the criminal guilds without actually endorsing them (and even managed to break a few when they became too violent), and he knew how to please the Emperor without becoming a sycophant. Like Varallo Thray, he knew when to challenge the Emperor and how to do it in a way that provoked his humor rather than his wrath, and had managed some improvements for the city. The Grand Curia was better staffed than it had been in years (though in his most private thoughts Paison believed the courts would never again be what they had been when ruled by the seer-magistrates), and the city guard was finally well-funded enough that there were no districts they feared to police, barring occasional bribery by the criminal guilds.

Within a few years, Paison Meer had begun to feel something for Oraldus he had never once felt for a Gallowsport Prefect: respect. It wasn't something he usually displayed in any overt fashion, although he pilfered a good deal less wine from Bluestead House's cellar than was his usual wont. That, however, might have been due to his advancing age.

So it was with a genuine sense of grief and aching sympathy Paison had witnessed the swift, awful destruction of the Traiste family over the last few months. To lose not one but both of his sons to illness when there was no plague in the city was something Paison couldn't fathom. His own children were long grown and departed from Gallowsport, but he still got letters from them every now and then, and occasionally they reunited for Festival days.

Oraldus, who could not have been older than fifty, looked closer to eighty on most days, and was usually surrounded by a most uncharacteristic reek of drink. Lady Perrine wandered around Bluestead House in a fog, often not changing from her nightgown into more appropriate daytime clothing for days at a time, and Paison rather suspected she would not live to see Yearsend herself. Whether she would pass from sheer despair or at her own hand was something he didn't care to contemplate.

In a way Paison was disappointed in the behavior of Prefect and Lady Traiste. Yes, it was a tragedy that their sons had died so close together, and so young. Yes, it was a dreadful shame that Toris should catch fever and die just weeks after receiving a letter from the Imperial Prince himself inviting him to Q'Sivaris. Yes, it was terrible that Sorence had passed only days after his fifteenth birthday. Yes, he was aware that men who had children later in life, as the Prefect had, tended to be more attached to them. Paison understood the situation perfectly.

But Oraldus was a man who was fearless in the face of both the criminal guilds of Gallowsport and the current occupant of the Malachite Throne, and so he supposed he had expected a sterner spine in the face of even an overwhelming tragedy. After all, losing children was something almost every peasant family had to face at one time or another. Hadn't his own daughter Nyra died of grippe when she was still in her clouts? Perhaps, he thought sourly as he scolded the linkboys for horseplay in the house's wine cellar, the upper classes simply didn't know how to cope with such misfortune the way the common folk did.

Paison Meer was a stern man -- one did not run the household of a Prefecture capital for decades without being such -- but he was not so heartless as to begrudge the Traistes their grief. If it had been a simple matter of the pair of them going about in mourning clothes for too long, or being subject to fits of hysterical weeping, or even both of them drinking to excess, he would have quietly gone about his duties and done what was necessary to keep the household staff from gossiping too much. But things had gone further than that.

Oraldus had begun to let his grief affect how he discharged his duties as Prefect. Which is to say for weeks he had not discharged them at all. Appeals to his office went unanswered. Invitations, not to mention more crucial correspondence from the court at Talinara and other capitals of the Anointed Realms, had begun to stack up in Oraldus's increasingly disheveled office. The Prefect and his wife rarely left Bluestead House unless it was to go to the outskirts of town to visit their sons' tombs at the Temple of the Graces. Dignitaries seeking audiences with the Prefect were usually left waiting for hours, often departing with impatient lectures to the steward or some long-suffering member of his staff.

Paison did what he could to smooth over the situation, including answering the drearier and more routine pieces of correspondence (forging the Prefect's signature and knowing where the seals were kept was an essential skill for a steward), but this could not go on forever. Sooner or later the Malachite Throne would realize the Prefect of Gallowsport could not attend his duties and it would be time for a new one. Paison only hoped the Traistes would be shipped off to Marhollow or Cobblestown instead of sent to one of their own city's innumerable headsmen. He feared the latter was increasingly likely, though, mostly because of the people who were permitted to see the Prefect, no matter what ungodly hour they came calling.

Here was the worst example, right at this very moment, pacing in the hall outside the Prefect's study. He called himself Lord Andreth, but if the man was anything but a jumped-up cutthroat Paison Meer would eat his badge of office. What he could be doing at Bluestead House just a few minutes before midnight Paison had no idea, but this was hardly the first time he had been here, or even the latest hour. More than once he had found himself answering the cheery door chimes at three o'clock in the morning, only to find the grim-faced Andreth and one or two scowling companions on Bluestead House's porch.

Paison liked nothing about him or his friends: not their coal-black leather coats (garb for a thief or assassin if he had ever seen such a thing), not the greedy way their eyes roamed the various treasures that belonged to the Prefect, not the tattoos of winged feet he sometimes observed when they arrived in shorter sleeved tunics. Paison even disliked the way they smelled. They carried a wild, foul odor as one might find in a stinking animal den in the deepest forests.

"Is Oraldus available or not?" Andreth said bluntly as Paison Meer marched into the study with the Nythelian vintage he had requested. Oraldus, Paison noted irritably, not Lord Prefect or the Prefect or even Prefect Traiste. Even Varallo Thray was politic enough to refer to Oraldus in some proper fashion during his infrequent visits.

"I can check again, milord," Paison Meer said unctuously as he filled Andreth's glass. He scowled at the steward as he threw back the drink as if it were a common flagon of ale, glowering at the study door with glittering cobalt blue eyes. Paison tried to imagine someone from the noble class with a face that scarred, with hair that poorly cut, as if it were frequently restyled and even dyed -- his ragged coif had a strangely piebald look, though Paison supposed the mouse brown at the roots was its natural hue. Setting the bottle at "Lord" Andreth's elbow, he approached the Prefect's door and knocked again.

"Yes?" said a weary voice from within.

Paison poked his head in. Oraldus was slumped behind his desk, unshaven and red-eyed, his salt-and pepper hair unkempt and unbound, nearly down to his shoulders. "Milord, it's that Lord Andreth fellow again. He has been waiting about a quarter hour -- "

The Prefect covered his face with his hands and sighed. "Very well. Send him in, Paison. You should retire for the night. I'll see Lord Andreth out myself."

"Very good, milord."

But nothing about this was good, and judging from the sly grin Andreth gave him as he escorted him into the Prefect's study, Oraldus's nighttime visitor was perfectly aware of it. So when he closed the doors behind him, instead of retiring to his quarters as the Prefect had instructed, Paison lingered in the alcove usually occupied by one of the city Sergeants, listening in on the conversation in the study with a skill Casimir would have envied. What he heard chilled him to the bone. But he could not imagine what he might possibly do about it.