in the streets.
A pair of Stepsons-mercenary special forces whom the prince’s marshal, Tempus,
commanded-was caught out in the storm, but it could not be said that the weather
killed one: the team had been investigating uncorroborated reports that a
warehouse conveniently situated at a juncture of three major sewers was being
used by an alchemist to concoct and store incendiaries. The surviving partner
guessed that his teammate must have lit a torch, despite the cautions of
research: human wastes, flour, sulphur and more had gone in through those now
nonexistent doors. Though the problem the team had been dispatched to
investigate was solved by a con-cussive fireball that threw the second Stepson,
Nikodemos, through a window into an intersection, singeing his beard and brows
and eyelashes, the young Sacred Band member relived the circumstances leading to
his partner’s death repeatedly, agonizing over the possibility that he was to
blame throughout the night, alone in the pair’s billet. So consumed was he with
grief at the death of his mate, he did not even realize that his friend had
saved his life: the fireball and ensuing conflagration had blown back the mist
and made an oven of the wharfside; Wideway was freed from the vicious fog for
half its length. He had ridden at a devil’s pace out of Sanctuary home to the
Stepsons’ barracks, which once had been a slaver’s estate and thus had rooms
enough for Tempus to allow his hard won mercenaries the luxury of privacy:
ten pairs plus thirty single agents comprised the team’score group-until this