Tempus but a contingent of Sacred Banders as well. The Empire was in worse shape
than anyone thought.
What was bad for Sanctuary and all of Ranke, though, was not necessarily bad for
the re-discoverer of Enlibar steel. With luck Walegrin would find good men in
town, or good gold, or simply enough activity to hide behind. But whenever
Walegrin thought of luck he thought of the S’danzo. They had marked him for ill
fortune: if he had good luck it could have been better and when his luck turned
sour, the less said about it the better.
“What about that house I asked you about?” Walegrin asked after the conversation
had lulled a moment.
The scout was relieved to speak of something else. “No trouble-it wasn’t hidden,
though no-one knew much about it. Right off the Street of Armorers, like you
said it’d be. This metal-master, Balustrus, he must be a pretty strange fellow.
Everyone thought he’d died until the Torch-” Thrusher stopped abruptly, slapping
himself on the forehead.
“-Gods takes take me for an idiot! Nothing is the same in Sanctuary; the gods
have discovered it! Vashanka’s name was blasted from the pantheon over the
palace gate. Vashanka! Sacred Band’s Storm God burned clean. The stone steamed
for a day and a night. The god himself appeared in the sky-and Azyuna, too.”
“Wrigglies? Magicians? Were the Whoresons involved?” Walegrin asked, but without
interrupting the flow of Thrusher’s theological gossip.
“The Torch himself was nearly killed. Some say a new god’s been born to the
First Consort and the War of Cataclysm’s begun. Officially the priests are