Shadows danced across scowls pressed between prison bars. Lanterns set in alcoves in the dungeon walls cast a haunting light on the best of nights, but tonight the moon was full and the lanterns blown out, allowing pale light to flood through the high, peaked windows, giving the walls, and their captives, a ghastly hue.

  This was once a wing of the Cathedral, Wallard thought absently as he watched the man hanging in the cell before him.

  The prisoner’s arms were splayed from two chains fixed to either wall, a crossbow bolt sticking from the brown flesh of his left bicep. His head lay limp on his chest, but he lived. Rasping breath hissed and rattled between cracked lips. The prisoner coughed—a strangled sound—and dropped a bead of blood and drool on to his own dangling foot. It trailed down between his toes and onto the stone floor, a tiny, dark puddle beneath his feet.

  “You’re a terrorist." The man sitting at Wallard’s left had a low voice that resounded off the stones. He flipped the page of an oversized tome as he spoke. “Found guilty of fire bombing a Temple of Time. How do you plead?”

  The man coughed again. Or, perhaps it was a laugh this time. Thick blood trickled from where the bolt punctured his arm. He didn’t look up.

  Wallard took a cigar from his sleeve and ran it under his nose. For a moment he was in a field, thick green leaves bustling, women in light shawls chatting as they picked fresh tobacco, piling it into linen aprons.

  Then the scent was gone, replaced with mildew and the copper tang of rust.

  “What do you plead?” The man repeated.

  Wallard looked over at his companion. With his long black robe, hemmed in gold, the open tome, and the thin gold rimmed glasses it would be easy to judge him as an academic, a scholar. Wallard knew better. He watched sweat trickle down the man’s burnished bald head and knew he’d snap the prisoners fingers one by one if that’s what it took to end this interrogation.

  Leaning forward, Wallard reached a hand through the bars, holding his cigar out toward the prisoner’s left hand.

  “Would you mind?” Wallard asked.

  The man’s wrist hung limp from the chains that bound him, thin fingers slack. His dark eyes remained distractedly crossed for a moment before focusing on the cigar. Then his fingers twitched and a tiny flame burned between them.

  The flame made the silver rings on Wallards’ fingers sparkle. The black beak of the raven head ring he wore on his index finger looked poised to entrap the flame itself in its half opened mouth, while its metal eyes cast back twin reflections. Wallard let the cigar remain there long enough for it to light before he pulled it back and set it between his lips. He breathed out rich smoke, the laughter of sweet women in linen aprons briefly returning, before he gave the prisoner a nod of gratitude.

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  Wallard’s companion slammed the tome shut, then removed his glasses and laid them folded on the black leather cover.

  He shook his head before pointing a finger at the man’s chest. “Your flesh bears the mark of the Observatory, yet you burned a cleric to death in the temple.”

  Wallard traced the tattoo on the man’s naked chest with his gaze. A three tiered tiara; one crown for each of the celestial layers, representative of the first, second, and third Orders of magic. The Orders were a common enough belief, but that symbol specifically belonged to the body who read and interpreted the stars: the Observatory, the Eyeglass of the Heavenly Bodies. Only the most pious and schooled men could be honoured with the highest rank of Timekeeper and granted access to all the Observatory secrets.

  Wallard knocked his cigar against the arm of his companion's chair. The bald man grimaced as he watched ash land beside the crossbow that laid on the stone floor between their chairs, but Wallard pretended not to notice.

  I would like to know what Alosrin the Abominable did to earn a Timekeeper’s robe, Wallard thought as the bald man returned to his interrogation.

  A cloud of cigar smoke made its way to the prisoner who coughed again then licked his lips, black eyes darting up to Wallard—or at least to his cigar.

  “How do you plead?” Alosrin repeated a third time.

  The prisoner still did not reply. Alosrin grew more agitated in the silence, fingers curling around the tome in his lap.

  Wallard sighed and reached through the bars again, this time holding the cigar to the man’s lips. The prisoner licked his lips again, with a greedy urgency this time, before opening them to accept the offered cigar.

  His eyes tilted back in his head as if he were consuming something far stronger than tobacco. He let the smoke roll out his nostrils, a sigh escaping with it.

  “Guilty,” the man said, parched voice just above a whisper.

  Wallard reclaimed his seat, crossing one leg over the other, mauve satin pants shifting, the shiny fabric catching the twinkling light from the old cathedral windows. He knocked the cigar against his chair again before allowing it to drop to the floor. He exchanged it for the crossbow and the long silver bolt that laid atop it, pulling the weapon onto his lap.

  Alosrin slowly unfolded his glasses and returned them to his nose. He opened the tome again and wrote a single word. Then, for the first time in the interrogation, he turned to Wallard. “Your tact in these scenarios is truly appreciated.”

  Wallard winked, then notched the bolt. “Always a pleasure.”

  Alosrin stood and looked the prisoner over. He made a tsk tsk sound with his tongue as he cupped the tome, and the man’s confession of guilt, under his arm. “How could you do this to one of your own?”

  Wallard watched Alosrin leave, the long black scarf he wore pinned to one shoulder brushing the stones in his wake, gold hem grasping at every speck of starlight in the dark dungeon.

  “How indeed,” Wallard mumbled around his cigar. Then, without rising from his seat, he took aim and fired the bolt into the prisoner's heart.