[excerpt from Beyond the Veil: DEATH IN TYSE]

Two Rankan couriers rode into Tyse three hours apart on the last day of summer. Neither was aware of the other; both carried the same information. The parties in the Imperial Rankan court who had dispatched them to seek out a man called the Riddler needed to ensure the delivery of their message.

The sun was setting behind the purple and blue peaks of Wizardwall and its fortress, overshadowing Tyse below and scraping the wide sky above, when the second courier, who went by the name of Belize, urged his exhausted dun horse those last few turns up Broadway and into the souk, Tyse’s open-air bazaar. Where the horse traders had their stalls he was to meet the Rankan agent who could lead him to this Riddler, a mercenary commander also known as Tempus the Black, the Obscure, and a favorite of a storm god who, some said, had immortalized him.

Belize’s superiors had been specific about what this courier should and should not do in Tyse. They had warned him not to check in with his countrymen on Embassy Row. They had warned him not to trust the Rankan intelligence chief, Grillo, thus effectively barring Belize from utilizing his upcountry peers and doing things the easy way. Moreover, they had warned him not to depend upon the local mageguild network or on anything but the evidence of his own senses: With Imperial Ranke embattled from within and without, every diplomat and cabinet functionary who favored peace over this protracted and expensive war with the Mygdonian Alliance knew too well that summary execution awaited those caught conspiring against the Empire, even to bring peace to it.

In the souk’s chockablock maze a breeze blew his way, laced with garlic and sewage. Belize dismounted and led his blowing, sweaty mount through a narrow-eyed throng hurrying home with the day’s profits, bargains, or spoils. Shopkeepers shut and locked their stalls; pickpockets lurched and fumbled their way through thinning crowds.

Belize looked upward. An early-rising moon, full and pale, smiled down on him. An armored cavalryman—wearing the yellow-lined mantle of the “special” occupation forces—didn’t:

“You don’t have one of these, traveler.” Frowning down on Belize from his saddle, the mounted officer tapped an embroidered armband. “You’d better find a guest house. Curfew is in effect.” This he mumbled around a chunk of lamb pulled from its wooden skewer and into his mouth by teeth agleam in torchlight spilling from the rows of wooden stalls, goatskin tents, and brightly colored yurts of the souk.

As the “special” kneed his sorrel horse on by, Belize took a chance and asked for the stalls of Palapot the horse trader. Took a chance because though most special forces in Tyse were Grillo’s men, this one clearly wasn’t. Took a chance because the armband he’d seen on the cavalryman bore the bulls and lightning bolts of the Stepsons, the Riddler’s elite squadron of Sacred Band pairs (exactly the seasoned warriors whose attention he mustn’t attract). Took a chance because the rider’s fine-featured face was Syrese, not local, and the sharp eyes in it sized him up with cold precision.

Belize knew his own kind when he saw one; this cavalry officer would be no less observant.

The Stepson shifted in his saddle, helmet swinging by his knee. “Sure you don’t want the mercenaries’ hostel? Or the east barracks?”

Belize had to fill the pause left empty by the curious Stepson. Damn. “I’m looking for Palapot the horse trader. I’ll swap this horse and then find a bed.” As soon as he spoke, Belize realized he’d said the wrong thing to this horseman. Too late . . .

“Swap it? You ought to put it out of its misery. The only place you’ll get anything for that poor beast is in the free zone. And you’ve precious little time left.” The Stepson glanced up at the sky, then back to Belize: “Curfew’s upon us.” He cast the half-eaten skewer of lamb into the dust, gathered his reins, and with his free hand motioned to the rapidly clearing street. “Palapot will still be there tomorrow. As for that horse, you owe it at least one good night’s rest. It’ll end up in somebody’s stewpot if you trade it looking like that. Come on, citizen. I’ll ride with you as far as the next guest house.”

Belize had to agree; and when he got there, he’d need to show his papers. This must have been what the special wanted, since the tall officer in cavalry-issue leather and bronze insisted on escorting him inside and stayed on, chatting with the innkeeper even after Belize secured a room key and a chit to stable his mount out back. Damn and damn again. Belize looked over his shoulder at the short-haired Syrese leaning on the counter and caught the Stepson unabashedly staring after him. “Life to you, Belize,” said the other, catching his eye: a professional’s farewell.

Belize didn’t answer with a mercenary’s response: he wished no man life or glory. That Stepson had guessed wrong, after all. Belize was no member of the mercenaries’ guild, nor a professional soldier. He was an assassin.

This Stepson had escorted him to a guest house near Tyse’s city limit where Commerce Avenue met Peace Falls, an adjoining township that observed no curfew, flouting Tysian discipline and Tysian jurisdiction. Belize need only stable his dun horse, secrete his effects in his room, cross a street no wider than an alley, and he’d be within a stone’s throw of Commerce. The yellow-mantled Stepson had done him a favor, showing him to the merchants’ quarter which held the souk and spilled into Peace Falls’ anarchic bustle.

The inn was called the Dark Horse. He memorized its salient features : its back doors, its overhanging roof; its rear balconies and adjoining buildings. In its stable yard, bargaining with the head groom for liniment, sweet feed, and a better carrel for his mount, Belize watched the intersection where Commerce met Souk Avenue, hoping to see the Stepson on the big sorrel ride away.

He didn’t. So he went inside the stable to examine box stalls while the head groom, biting the Tysian half-crown between his teeth, began making good his promise to “have him roadworthy in the morning, generous sir. Just pick any stall you like and I’ll move out the other nag.”

Belize had everything he needed: local currency; genuine travel papers issued by the Rankan chancellor’s office and affording him safe-conduct empirewide; a free hand in accomplishing his mission. Nevertheless, his gut kept telling him he’d missed something, some detail more troublesome than being a day late to meet a man who didn’t know he was coming. Damn the mages, every necromancing, oversold soul among them. If the mageguild network had been trustworthy, his job would be much easier. In fact, if the mages weren’t suspect, Belize wouldn’t be here at all; he was somewhat more than your average courier. But then, some messages require specialized delivery. Whether the Riddler agreed with the proposition he carried or not, the parties Belize served wanted their dictates expedited.

When the groom had cleared and cleaned the stall he’d chosen, Belize put his tack in the stall’s trunk and bedded down the third horse he’d run into the ground to get here. Then he headed for the rear stairs to the inn.

He saw nothing alarming in the sooty twilight. He heard no sound out of the ordinary, only laughter wafting on a southwest breeze from Peace Falls; snorts from horses behind in the stables and before on the street; the snap and hiss of oil-soaked torches. Yet he grew increasingly uneasy. Someone watched him: eyes rested on him, eyes he could feel but could not see.

He paused there, one foot on the staircase leading to the inn, instinctively cautious. Among the secular adepts of Bandara, Belize had trained in many disciplines from many cultures, all meant to keep a man alive in hostile situations. Surviving so many years of treachery and war had honed his skills and instincts sharp. Standing still and holding his breath, he sent every sense he possessed out questing through the dusk but found no threat, no source for his disquiet: It’s nothing, only a rat or a bat. Or the disorientation of arriving alone at nightfall in this strange and famously dangerous town—war-torn, factionalized, and smarting under martial law.

Belize sighed to exhale his jitters, then took the back stairs two at a time amid dancing shadows. A few minutes in his room, and he’d be ready to see what Commerce Avenue had to offer. Just a quick prayer to his god, some security precautions . . . He wouldn’t need long.

Halfway up the creaking staircase, he thought he heard a sliding foot, leather scraping on wood. He stopped. He spun full around. He saw only the stables, the head groom, stableboys; no imminent threat. He wiped his hands on his thighs. Why was he so nervous?

Turning back to vault the last few steps and begin his evening, Belize feels a sharp sting at his throat. He slaps the spot. A marsh festers nearby, but mosquitoes don’t usually—

His palm recognizes the shape of the dart even as he slaps it more deeply into his throat, where its point pierces a nerve.

He halts. He pulls loose the barb, thinking about the scuffling footstep he’d heard. Then his eyes begin to tear, and a burning sensation spreads out from his throat to reach up into his brain and down toward his heart.

As he seizes the railing for support, sensation leaves his extremities; his tongue swells to thrice normal size, choking him.

He doesn’t feel the impact as he drops to his knees on the board stairs. He prides himself on being a western-trained fighter. Relying on his mind-over-body discipline, he has always prevailed against his enemies, endured rigors most could not survive. Until today. Now his training allows him what he craves most: a look at his murderer.

What he sees, as his body pitches forward like a sack of stones, is an urchin’s face, grubby and beardless, with hair like straw and huge eyes nearly colorless in the torchlight. Soon enough, he feels himself being examined, but by then the fire in his blood is consuming him entirely, and he sees a light far up in the night sky which he must follow.

He feels the young mugger’s fingers searching out first his purse and his wallet; next, the belt at his waist in which he’s secreted . . . something . . . something he’d been at pains to protect.

Gods, avenge me!

Anger pushes back death’s chant for a moment. Then cannot.