Cade had only cried twice before in his life. This, he swore, was the last time he would, ever . . .
“I’m home.”
WAKE OF THE RIDDLER
Janet Moms
Tempus was gone from Sanctuary, taking his Stepsons and the Rankan 3rd Commando with him, leaving only outcasts and dross behind.
In the wake of the Riddler’s passing, the town seemed more changed than it should have been because one man (called variously Tempus, the Riddler, the Black, and more scatalogical apellations) had gathered his private army of less than a hundred and departed. Sanctuary seemed emptied, drained, frightened, and confused.
It cowered like a snow rabbit run to barren ground and surrounded by wolves. It shivered and sniffed the breeze, as if undecided as to which way to run. It hunkered in desperate paralysis, seeming to dream of better days while the cold spring wind blew wet promises of life inland from the sea and the wolves skulked closer, red tongues lolling in slaver- ing jaws.
Among fetid streets on this spring evening in question, militias are keeping order, stamping round comers with deliberate tread. Whores whisper rather than croon in their doorways. Drunks slither along white- washed walls, afraid to stagger boldly in gutters where beggars lurk with ready blades. And the wind comes in off the uneasy ocean with a chuckle on its breath; Tempus, his Stepsons, and the 3rd Commando have left the town to its fate, ridden off in disgust to new adventures capable of resolu- tion, wars winnable, and glory attainable. Sanctuary is not only doomed. but shunned by its last best hope, the Riddler and his fighters.