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There is no justice.

There is no heaven.

Gaelan wasn’t dressed in black. It wasn’t night. He wore a plain blue tradesman’s tunic and a big, worn hat, and he had his cloak draped over his lap. He was sitting on the ruined base of an old statue—long since torn down—and eating a loaf of bread and cutting sausage to go with it. The sun was going down, and this Warrens market bordering the Plith River was beginning to close for the day. A few stalls would stay open for another hour or so, hawking hot food for those heading home. But the boat shops that came and docked and sold their wares were already pushing off, not willing to spend the night docked in the crime-ridden Warrens.

It was busy, but not packed. Gaelan saw his target enter the market from the far side. He was a plain man, could have been a tradesman himself. But Gwinvere’s sketch had been very good. It was the wetboy, Nils Skelling. He was reputed to be the best man alive with an axe, despite his small stature. Great climber. Fearless swimmer. Excellent in unarmed combat, said to have killed fifteen Lae’knaught Lancers with his bare hands. Said to have quite a sense of humor, too. Nils was walking along the edge of the pier. The crowd tended to be thinner there, because sometimes when the crowd suddenly swelled, those at the edge would get pushed into the sewage-befouled water.

A wetboy wasn’t worried about such a thing.

There is no sixth sense.

There is no hell but life, and death is worse.

Gaelan coughed a few times, pounded his chest, and walked, still eating, cutting a piece of sausage. Among the bustling, wheezing, sniffling masses, he might as well have been invisible.

The wetboy passed between Gaelan and the water. In his eyes, Gaelan saw murder. It was enough. Gaelan slammed the knife into the man’s kidney. A lethal blow, and so painful you couldn’t cry out. In an instant, with the hand under his folded cloak, Gaelan clipped a lead weight to the wetboy’s belt, and with a hand of magic, he propelled the man gently toward the water.

Still walking purposefully, putting distance between them, Gaelan faked another loud coughing fit to draw attention to himself as the wetboy sank to his knees, and slipped right off the pier into the water. The slight sound of him hitting the waves was covered by Gaelan’s coughing. The weights dragged the body into the depths. And it was done.

There is no glory.

There is no light.

There is only victory.

* * *

“You can’t tell me once you start killing,” Ben Wrable said. “I’m still bound by my oath to the Shinga. If I know of a direct threat, I’ll have to go report it. You understand? Not ‘I’ll have to do it because I’m so honorable’—it’s a magical compulsion.”

Clever Ben Wrable, he knew exactly the bounds of his compulsion, and with Gaelan, he was pressing right against them.

“If the Shinga orders it, I’ll have to try to kill you, Gaelan. So you need to do your business before they even know it. I won’t have taught you everything, but if you’re successful, I can teach you the rest at our leisure. I report to the Shinga in two weeks. He doesn’t always remember to do so, but if he asks if I know of any threats to him, I’ll have to answer honestly.”

“Fair enough.” Two weeks. So the water clock was grinding away. Good. Gaelan liked to feel the press of time. It had been too long.

* * *

Like most of the wetboys, Polus Merit worshipped Nysos, the god of blood, semen, and wine. He was already half drunk when Gaelan ran into him in the brothel. He was a big man, fatter than you’d expect a wetboy to be. But then, his specialty was poisons. And claymores.

Another product of the Death Games. He’d been an apothecary who got too far into debt to the wrong people and had been forced into slavery, along with his wife and children. They hadn’t made it—Gaelan knew no more than that, and didn’t want to. When Polus had been pushed into the Death Games, no one thought he’d last a day. But he’d taken to it with relish. Now, he was forty-five, bald, paunchy. Still powerful under the fat, and with a massive Talent.