"So what's special about this killer? What makes him a celebrity?"

Brothe was the world's second largest city, first honors going to Hypraxium in the Eastern Empire. Hypraxium enjoyed a thoroughly decadent reputation. But Brothe had its dark side. Murder was a fact of life. Law was mostly a private matter.

Some murders always fell outside common understanding.

"I can't tell you anything more than I have. I don't get out to find out what the poor and the squatters are saying these days. I just know people are scared. And the Collegium won't take it seriously."

"Is it like when the soultaken were here?" That part of his past Hecht understood only because his current mentor, Principate Delari, had taken pains to find out what he could about those divinely possessed butchers. Which had been very little.

"They just killed people to make money to get by till they could do whatever it was that their managing Instrumentalities wanted done."

Only the soultaken knew they had been elected by their gods to destroy a mortal those Old Ones called the Godslayer, a slave-soldier of far Dreanger. Else Tage, one of the most capable captains among the Sha-lug. Sent to Firaldia by Gordimer the Lion on behalf of the Kaif of al-Minphet, to blunt Sublime V's lust for new crusades.

Else Tage never learned that he was a target of ancient gods. He did suspect that the Instrumentalities of the Night had a marked interest in him, however. With only the vaguest notion why.

Else Tage survived the soultaken. Else Tage now wore the name Piper Hecht. He had risen amongst the Episcopal Chaldareans to become Captain-General of the armies being raised by the one man most determined to loose fire and sword upon the Unbelievers of the Holy Lands.

Few knew the truth.

Piper Hecht would have been more comfortable if those few were fewer still.

Hecht said, "Pinkus, you see Doneto all the time. Does he have any idea what's going on inside Sublime's head? Will he want Clearenza punished?"