“May you go to better hands,” Haern said to the first sack of gold before stabbing its side. Coins spilled, and he hurled them like rain to the packed streets. Without pause he cut the second and third, flinging them to the suddenly ravenous crowd. They dove and fought as the gold rolled along, bouncing off bodies and plinking into various wooden stalls. Only a few bothered to look up, those who were lame or old and dared not fight the crowd.

“The Watcher!” someone cried. “The Watcher is here!”

The cry put a smile to his lips as Haern fled south, having not kept a single coin.

*

It had taken five years, but at last Alyssa Gemcroft understood her late father’s paranoia. The meal prepared before her, spiced pork intermixed with baked apples, smelled delicious, but her appetite remained dormant.

“I can have one of the servants taste it, if you’d like,” said her closest family advisor, a man named Bertram who had loyally served her father. “I’ll even do so myself.”

“No,” she said, brushing her red bangs back and tucking them behind her left ear. “That’s not necessary. I can afford to skip a meal.”

Bertram frowned, and she hated the way he looked at her-like a doting grandfather, or a worried teacher. Just the night before, two servants had died eating their daily rations. Though they’d replaced much of the mansion’s food, as well as executed those they thought responsible, the memory lingered in Alyssa’s mind. The way the two had retched, their faces turning a horrific shade of purple…

She snapped her fingers, and the many waiting servants rushed to clear the trays away. Despite the rumble in her belly, she felt better with the food gone. At least now she could think without fear of choking, or convulsing to death on some strange toxin. Bertram motioned to a chair beside her, and she gave him permission to sit.