The rain had ended, but the streets were filled with puddles, and with so many open lamps extinguished Hadrian struggled to keep his feet dry. Once again, the city had changed its disposition. Dark, slick, and silent, except for the dripping that was everywhere at once, this new temperament felt not at all wholesome.

He had delivered Millie to the Cave, which was pretty much just that, a hole in the side of the cliff where long ago a whiteish mineral called salt had been mined. Being that the miners had been dwarven, however, they couldn’t help embellishing it with columns and engraved designs that Hadrian was certain meant nothing to anyone anymore, but once did. Hadrian had declined Millie’s offer to take the book from Royce and run off with her to excavate dwarven gold. He first explained that stealing from Royce was about as intelligent as slapping a rattlesnake, and second that Royce didn’t have a book to steal. He didn’t bother mentioning that even if the first two weren’t true, he still wouldn’t do it because he and Royce were more than partners, they were friends. For some reason, Hadrian got the impression she wouldn’t understand that part.

Millie didn’t believe he didn’t have access to the book, and that had dampened the mood far more than the rain. But she wasn’t the sort to take no for an answer. She refused to let him into the Cave for his own good because Andre would be inside and she thought it best that fire and grease kept a safe distance. Still, she wanted him to think about it and if he changed his mind Hadrian should tie a white cloth to the hammer of Andvari Berling’s statue, the one down at the harbor and she would meet him at the Parrot that night. Later as he made his way down Berling’s Way heading back to same-said danthum, Hadrian wondered if she chose a white flag because it was easy to come by, easy to see, was a symbol of a truce, or the flag of surrender. He wanted to think it was one of the first three, but suspected it might be the last.

He had walked all they way back down to tier six without seeing another living soul, although he did hear the distant bark of a dog, which only made the night more dismal. Something about a lonesome animal howling in the dark always set him on edge. In the military, sentries often had dogs. They were trained to be quiet, but to bark and growl when the enemy was near. Hard to train a dog who the enemy was, so they barked at anything unusual. Strangers mostly, and mostly they were right. He spotted the lamp shop where Angelique had his stand. The roadside chef, the awning, cooking pot, and campfire were all gone. In their place was a dark puddle where the rain had mixed with the ashes of the old fire.

It’s the emptiness and solitude.

Hadrian had been trying to pinpoint why he felt so anxious. There was a sense that he was somewhere he shouldn’t be, except he’d been there before and had felt fine. Hadrian remembered talking with Angelique and enjoying the Hakune and the conversation. Now, the same place felt forbidden, even a tad sinister.

It’s the lack of people. He looked up. And the lack of stars.

Invisible clouds hid everything overhead. Without the sky, he felt as if he were walking in a cave. A cave that belonged to someone who might not like him being there. No, he reconsidered, not someone something. And what bothered him was wondering if they—or it—was still there.

Once more Hadrian lamented his lack of weapons. Albert had said the Blue Parrot prohibited swords, but he wondered if the city had an ordinance. Since arriving he’d not seen a single one, not even the Port Authority officers had worn any. The lack of long blades had made the city feel friendly, inviting, and safe. People wore weapons for a reason. If they didn’t—that was for a reason, too. He liked that about Tur Del Fur. The whole place felt polite, respectful, and civil, which is where he supposed the term civilized came from. Hadrian had also enjoyed how light and unencumbered he felt in just his cloth shirt. He didn’t need to be paranoid about turning and knocking over an expensive vase. But that was all beneath the sun and the moon, when the streets teamed with people. In this dark world of shiny streets and inky pools, Hadrian felt naked and vulnerable.

He was just passing the puddle where a man had sold him the Hakune his brother caught, when he heard the first sounds other than dripping water and the barking dog. The noises were exactly what he expected to hear in that place under a black sky: scuffling, grunting, and a cry. Hadrian also anticipated the sound of ripping, snapping, tearing, and eating.

The murders happen at night or around dusk in a heavy fog, and in every case, the victims are eaten.

It had been in Rochelle, almost a year ago that Seton said those words to him. He’d thought she was a young girl but it turned out she was probably close to a hundred years old with next to no human blood in her veins. Yet that wasn’t the point, but rather, how on particularly dark nights something hunted people and ate at their faces. Hadrian had once stumbled on just such a victim on just such a night—and this night was a lot like that. Different city, different country, same state of affairs.

And me with no swords, or even my blue scarf.

The sounds came from just off Berling’s Way. They bounced around a little, but Hadrian guessed the something that was happening was happening behind the cabinet maker’s shop across the street. Like most every building the shop had been carved from the original stone, but up on the higher tiers, where the land began to flatten a bit, there were more connecting streets turning the place into a complicated maze of stone islands hewn into buildings. Any place else, a passerby would guess the shop carved in such a lofty fashion from solid rock might be a small church, but in Tur all the buildings were made of stone. This one had a signboard in the shape of a cabinet and on its porch—safe under awnings swollen heavy with pooled rain water—were a half dozen examples of the woodworker’s craft.

The dog was barking again, this time louder and closer and from the same direction. The shadows behind the cabinet shop appeared to be the popular place that night. But that begged the question: popular with who, or…what?

Just keep walking. He told himself. Nothing good ever happens behind a cabinate shop in the dead of night.

“No where else to run. I’m gonna kill you boy.” A man’s voice but so filled with hate, that to Hadrian it sounded inhuman. It came from—where else—behind the cabinate shop.

Why Hadrian began circling around the building, was still being debated in his head. The word boy was the obvious trigger. An actual child wouldn’t be out that late. Given the sounds that accompanied the words, Hadrian deduced that an angry man was about to kill the dog for barking. Starting with this premise, he filled in the rest of the picture surmising that the man was a light sleeper; the dog had woken him by barking outside his window; the man had enough and was going to silence the animal forever. Hadrian also imagined that under the light of day, the would be killer of over-excited mutts would never dream of harming a cute little pooch.

I’ll be doing the guy a favor and saving him the guilt and greif he’ll feel in the morning.

Hadrian believed this was the case, but his gut weighed in with an opposing and convincing argument: Nothing good ever happens in the dead of night behind a cabinate shop. Walk on.

Hadrian ignored his gut and moved around the building.

The rear of the cabinate shop was a fenced yard that housed sawhorses, and numerous piles of lumber. Some were out in the rain, some covered in tarps, but most were stacked high beneath the shelter of roof-and-post-only sheds. An older man was out in the yard dressed in only a knee-length nightshirt brandishing what looked to be a long-handled broom. Barefoot with his thinning white hair a tousled mess, the man appeared to have just come from bed. The dog, a fair size mongrel, was nearby barking incessantly. All of this was expected, but from that point on the scene diverged from Hadrian’s imagined narrative. The animal wasn’t barking at the old man and the man wasn’t yelling at the dog. He wasn’t even looking at the mutt. Both of them were focused on something perched on the roof of one of the sheds. Treed like a fox, a person, wrapped in a cloak and hood, clung to the steep roof tiles with naked hands and bare feet.

“Help!” the figure cried.

The man swung and just missed a foot that dangled.

“Hold it! What’s going on?” Hadrian demanded trotting into the yard.

The man, who didn’t seem surprised to see Hadrian, pointed and said, “He’s up there.”

“I can see that, but why?”

The man appeared confused by the question. “There’s plenty of lumber. Get yourself a good stick. We’ll drag him down by the ankles and beat him to death.”

Hadrian shook his head. “Again, I must ask why?”

The man stared at him once more puzzled as if Hadrian was the stupidest person on the face of Elan. “Look at him!” he shouted, and what followed was more of a scream. “He’s pure evil!”

At the outburst, Hadrian took a surprised step back. The elderly fellow in the wrinkled nightshirt began panting, breathing violently through his mouth as he wrung the broom handle with both boney hands as if it was the neck of a chicken bound for the supper table. The dog was losing it, too. The animal alternated between snarling and growls. The thing’s hair was up and long strands of saliva dripped from it’s jowls as hiked lips exposed fangs.

“Oh, please help me!” the guy on the roof cried.

“Call off you’re dog,” Hadrian ordered the man with the broom.

“Not my dog,” the man said.

“This isn’t your dog?”

“Not my rats either.” The man pointed with the broom at several dark rodants that leaked out of the woodpiles and climbed the shed posts. Two made it to the roof biting at the legs of the cloaked figure. Dirty feet kicked them off the edge. The rat’s bodies thumped hard on the dirt. The fall didn’t kill them, nor did it change their minds. A moment later they were climbing again. The dog, didn’t interfere.

What’s going on? Hadrian looked at the old man, the dog, and the rats all unified in their hatred of the person on the roof.

“Oh, dear! Please help! I can’t keep holding on.” The voice was that of a young man who spoke with a south-eastern accent, that reminded him of— “Master Hadrian, please, help me!”

“Pickles?” Hadrian didn’t say it loud. He said it mostly to himself in the way a person might use profanity to express shock. “You’re alive?”

“Yes! Yes! And so are you. We are both so very much alive…but for not so long, I think. Please help. This roof is steep and I am losing my grip.”

Stunned, overwhelmed, and baffled beyond knowing where to start, Hadrian didn’t bother. He set the whole thing aside to deal with the issue at hand. Grabbing the broom handle he wrenched it away from the elderly man. Hadrian expected a fight, but once more the man just seemed confused. Using it Hadrian struck the rats climbing the post. They scattered. Then he charged the dog. The mongrel, started, retreated, then halted looking back and growling. Hadrian advanced again swinging the broom and shouting. The dog gave up and trotted into the shadows.

“Okay, come down, Pick—”

The boy fell and thumped the dirt letting out a yelp of pain.

With no more than his bare hands, the old man advanced. Hadrian stepped in-between.

“You need to kill him,” the man declared with religious passion.

“Why?”

“Because he’s evil!”

“He’s not evil. He’s Pickles.”

Hadrian heard the flutter of wings as a seagull swooped down and clawed at Pickles who lay on the dirt fending off the feathered attack with one hand. He got in a good swipe and the bird flew off into the dark.

“See!” the man said. “When have you ever seen a gull attack a person? A gull—at night! This thing is a demon and must be destroyed!”

Hadrian stared after the bird. That is really strange.

“Ah-ah!!” Pickles shouted in pain. Turning Hadrian saw the kid slapping himself on the arms and legs as he quickly scrambled to his feet.

“What now?” Hadrian asked.

“Spiders, and ants! They keep biting me!”

Hadrian looked at the broomless man, then back at Pickles.

He appeared like the kid he used to know, sort of. His hood had fallen back revealing that familiar grinning face, only now a bit thinner—older. The smile, as Hadrian once predicted, was different, too. Not so carefree or innocent as it had once been. The boy had become a man.

“But you were dead, and now you’re here, and everything is trying to kill you. Taken altogether, that’s…disturbing.”

“Oh yes, Master Hadrian, you must believe, it is me. You must help me.”

That he was older Hadrian took as a good sign. Hadrian thought that if he were a ghost or a demon posing as Pickles, he would appear exactly the way he had at his death. Seeing this mature version suggested it really could be the genuine article.

“I am as much of flesh and of blood as you,” Pickles said. “But…”

Hadrian’s eyes widened. “But? How is there a but to that?”

Pickles looked down ashamed. “I’m not a demon, or a ghost, or anything like that. But I am cursed.”

The man whose broom Hadrian held had wandered away muttering to himself about how late it was and how his lumber was likely to warp because of all the rain. The rats too had vanished back into the countless holes under the woodpiles, and the dog, where ever it was, had stopped barking.

The clouds thinned in just the right place and the near half-moon cast the yard in a pale light giving Hadrian a better look at his old friend. Pickles wasn’t doing so well. His eyes looked weary with dark puffy circles beneath them. The cloak he wore was tattered and frayed along the edges. Beneath it he wore only a stained vest and short trousers, but in his right hand he held a…

“Pickles? What is that you’re holding?”

The boy—turned young man—glanced down at the book he clutched to his chest and preformed his old familiar embarrassed grin while rocking his head.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Pickles bit his lip then said, “That all depends in what you are thinking it is being.”

“A book.”

Pickles looked down again as if to verify. “Then yes, your thinking is most correct.”

“And what do you mean you are cursed?”

Pickles lifted his shoulders. “What I mean is that I am cursed—forgive me, Master Hadrian, but I do not know any other way to say it. It has been a bad week.”

Hadrian continued to stare dumbfounded. He planted the end of the broom on the ground and shook his head. “Arcadius told me that they executed you. He said Angdon accused you of attempted murder. He said they…” Hadrian shook his head. “But you’re alive.”

“I am, but I am thinking perhaps not for so very long.” Pickles was staring past Hadrian with a look of dread on his face.

Hadrian turned and in the moonlight saw another figure enter into the lumber yard. A man with cadaver-white skin and hair the color of a robin’s breast entered through the gate. He wore an old-fashioned gray cloak that looked to have seen more miles than the rag Pickles was wearing. His hair was long, his mustache thin, and his beard pointed. And across his neck was a thin red line.

Behind Hadrian was a friend he thought was dead, and in front, a man who looked every bit alive, but whom Hadrian suspected might actually be dead.

This is a nightmare—only it’s not mine. Hadrian took that moment to apologize to his gut: This wasn’t good. What happened to my irritable old man angry at a mangy mutt for keeping him up at night?

Maybe the guy is just really sick.

But Royce said he cut off his head, and that looks like the sort of mark such a thing might leave.

But dead people don’t walk around. So, maybe…

What? Head severing isn’t what it used to be?

I’m dreaming. That has to be it.

But what if I’m not?

Facing a walking corpse wearing only a light shirt and no weapons in the empty ink of an eerily dark night was enough for Hadrian to give up the field. He would have fled in the hopes that the walking dead was not the best of runners, except…

Pickles has his book.

The Gingerdead Man wasn’t there for Hadrian, he was after Pickles. If everything from ants, to seagulls, to old men were drawn to murder the kid, why not the dead as well? Just as when they first met on the docks at Vernes, Pickles forced his decision to stay and fight.

Hadrian braced himself for the attack, but the Gingerdead Man surprised them both.

He approached just short of arm’s length, then stopped. He glanced at Pickles, then turned to Hadrian.

“Thou do not wish his death?” the corpse said, and his voice was a horrible rasp like how a cobra with a mouse caught in his throat might sound if it could speak—and if it had a Alburnian accent. At least, there was nothing especially demonic about it.

Hadrian shook his head. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“Such shouldn’t matter.” The corpse continued to study Hadrian, puzzled. Then he looked at Pickles. “If thou return our book to us, the curse shall be lifted. If not, every living thing that comes near will seek to kill thee, from now until thee are dead.”

“The book is cursed?” Hadrian asked.

“Only if read,” Falkirk replied. “He hast read the words. His time past at midnight, but moments ago.”

Hadrian looked at the Gingerdead Man and guessed he wasn’t the sort to haggle. “Pickles, I think maybe you ought to give the nice man his book.”

“But you don’t understand, Master Hadrian. I have gone through so very much effort in the obtaining of it. You are a great warrior. Can you not defend me?”

Hadrian continued to watch the Gingerdead Man who stood before them with the patience of the perished. Concern was no where in his posture. “I don’t have my swords and I don’t think it’s that kind of fight. For one thing, the man is already dead. Give him the book.”

“Master Hadrian, this thing I carry is important, my life is not.”

Hadrian finally turned. “It is to me.”