I had prepared a feast.

  Cups counted. Plates polished. Candles—enough to outlast the night—bought at twice their worth. The price of light has grown steep; good wick and tallow comes from afar, and “afar” now means broken docks, ruined ports, whispers of places that no longer trade. Still—double the price is nothing when the city’s proud military foots the bill.

  And tonight, by heaven, it would pay.

  No offal and barley gruel for this table. I spat at the thought—twice. A miraculous head of pork took its place, glazed to near-sacrament beneath honey and herbs. Preserved apples and pears were its companions, simmered until they trembled sweetly in their own syrup. The scent filled the loft, rich enough to mock hunger itself.

  For one evening, at least, I would dine as if victory still existed.

  I stood admiring my creation—born of little more than stubbornness and fire. The fat still whispered from the hearth, perfuming the air with that heavy, holy scent of roasted flesh. Hours it had turned, slow and deliberate, until the meat sighed beneath its own weight.

  I turned then, to the room itself. My kingdom of smoke and ink. Shadows clung to every beam, every bottle, the candlelight swimming slow along the warped glass. The walls sweated faintly from the heat.

  Then I looked beyond.

  Outside, the world was swallowed. The streets lay still, lamps unlit, the air thick and hollow as breath held too long. No bells. No dogs. No laughter from the taverns below. Only that slow, creeping dark pressing against the panes—cold enough to leak through the cracks and settle upon the skin like guilt returned.

  My—only a day. A single, wretched day since the Devils came.

  Since Lotte. No—Wigburg. The name lingered like a splinter behind the tongue. Compared to it, our pet name—Lotte—felt an insult. A jest at his expense. A proud and patient soul, pressed into a cow’s syllables. He had borne it kindly, as he bore all things, but it was mockery nonetheless.

  He deserved more. They all did.

  And now he lay burned and broken, sealed away “for the good of the realm.” Cold. Wounded. Alone.

  The pork on my table turned in the air. Its scent, once divine, curdled. I could taste the fat coating my throat—thick as ash, bitter as guilt.

  I began to think the whole affair a mistake. Celebration—community—these were luxuries for gentler ages, not for a city gnawed hollow by flame and silence. Folly at best. Blasphemy at worst.

  And yet—I had secured a victory, had I not? My work now bound and sealed beneath an official decree, my pen sanctified by power. For once, my words had weight enough to be feared.

  They had promised me freedom of hand. Only eyes upon my shoulder, not chains.

  What else can a writer dream of?

  Steps in the hall. The boards below creaked—the weary groan of the old stair.

  Then laughter. Deep, rolling, reckless.

  Good. Just in time to drown my wallowing. Who but madmen or dreamers could still laugh in this city? Fortunately, my friends were both.

  No knock. The door swung wide without ceremony. They knew my threshold was theirs.

  A gust of damp air followed them in, cloaks dripping, hats broad enough to shame a priest’s brim. A barrel of laughter and smoke. My kin.

  Jonas first—broad grin, eyes alight with scandal. Publisher of The Firepit, that seditious pamphlet that set Hasholm’s salons and taverns alike to argument and heresy. He’d written himself into debt, court, and nearly exile more times than I could count, yet his pen burned on, fed by nothing but spite and pride. I admired him for that—envied him, too.

  Then Henrik, curse him—steady, handsome, still in favor with the Theatre Guild. His plays were careful things: well-measured, well-mannered, loved by those who feared the raw. He wrote like a surgeon, I like a drunkard. But by God, he wrote well. I often wondered what might come of that calm hand if it ever dared to dip its quill in iron instead of ink.

  And the smell of them—God help me. A miasma of sweat, brandy, and wet wool rolled in before they did. Fermented laughter, breath steeped in tavern spirits. They had arrived already marinated.

  “My word!” Jonas bellowed, half-coughing through his mirth. “What has the Chronicler of Hasholm conjured now? The air’s thicker than whale oil and sweeter than any woman!” His grin flashed crooked yellow teeth as he tossed aside his brimmed hat, unleashing a tired mane of grey that curled like burnt parchment.

  “A feast, my friend!” I announced, arms wide, letting the fire catch on my cuffs and waistcoat. “Pork—tender enough to still thunder itself!”

  Henrik’s voice cut through, smooth as varnish. “And if that thunder brings devils, Van Aarden? Will the scent of good pork hold them at bay?”

  He stood there the very antithesis of Jonas—tall, composed, his smile measured and practiced, showing only what he wished the world to see. Yet even his restraint held warmth; in these days, any smile counted as grace.

  Jonas let out another bark of laughter, sharp and wet. “And what’s this now, eh? You send your younglings to do your bidding? Since when did you have time to father such misbegotten scoundrels?” The fumes of his words alone could have singed a candle.

  “Have you not heard?” Henrik said dryly. “Van Aarden deals in fairy tales now. The orphans’ protector, they call him.” His tone walked a strange line—half mockery, half reverence.

  “Surely they cannot call me that,” I protested, though the corners of my mouth betrayed a twitch. “I’ve regaled them with a story or two, but is that enough to make me Saint Christian reborn?”

  “Enough to make them do your beck and call, I reckon!” Jonas fished a crumpled note from his coat pocket, giggling as he squinted at it through his near-sighted eyes. “‘In somber times, glad news and roiling fire shall cure thine mood. Follow the aura of friendship to my abode. — Van Aarden.’” Not a word escaped him without laughter, the parchment shaking in his hand. “A fellow with breeches shorter than my patience brought this to my door!”

  Henrik nearly choked on his mirth. “Wise of you, Van Aarden! For a story or two you’ve gone and founded yourself a courier company!” His voice came out like a cleaver through meat—rough, amused, cutting, but all warmth beneath the blow.

  “My words do sound less regal than I’d hoped, spoken aloud,” I conceded, watching Jonas’s round figure advance with theatrical gravity.

  “Ah, but regal it is all the same!” he declared, and his great bear’s arms wrapped around me—warm, damp, and heavy with drink. For a moment, I let the embrace hold. It had been too long since laughter felt near enough to touch.

  “Indeed, Van Aarden,” Henrik said, dimples carving deep into his unshaven face as he clasped my hand. “As regal as any court dance left to us in these times.”

  “Well then, sit, my friends,” I said, gesturing to the table. “Ale from the cellar, wine spiced and steaming. No man shall leave my loft thirsty.”

  “Did I not say so, Henrik?” Jonas grinned, already reaching for a cup. “Adalbert would never stint us on drink! No need to fill our bellies before arrival.”

  Henrik wagged a finger at him. “And yet you did. Twice, if I recall.”

  “Why ever say no,” Jonas roared, “to another chance for liquid merriment?”

  Their laughter filled the room—thick, unrestrained, alive. For a fleeting instant, the world outside ceased to exist.

  “But tell me,” I asked, lifting a brow as I readied a glass to cradle, “did Henkel find it in him to join?”

  “Yes,” Henrik said, shrugging off his rain-darkened cloak. “He’s outside still. Met Alexander in the street, poor fool. Stayed behind to lecture him on the legality of martial law.”

  Jonas barked a laugh and nearly sloshed his drink. “Alexander’s always licked the wettest boot—and Henkel’s never owned a pair!” He had already claimed the largest glass in the room and was crouched near the hearth, the amber light glinting off his grin as he poured freely from the bottle.

  Henrik shook his head, half-amused, half-worried. “He was nearly apprehended two days ago, Van Aarden! Imagine it—debating the city guard about its own authority. I’ll grant him this: Henkel lives exactly as he writes.”

  The next sound was a harder rhythm—boots, quick and impatient, taking the stairs two at a time. Then the door burst open with the certainty of a man who never truly stops moving.

  Henkel filled the frame like a shadow carved too thin. The cold dark followed him like a wave, a reminder of the darkness just beyond the threshold. His cloak hung on him like a shroud, dripping and heavy, as though it outweighed his body. His eyes gleamed with the fever of recent argument.

  “Free movement, Adalbert,” he declared at once, slamming the door behind him, “is the God-given right of any upstanding child of this city!” He cast off the cloak, and the truth struck me—my already frail friend had withered further, his cheeks hollowed, his shoulders drawn up like a man braced against the cold of the world. I should have seen him sooner.

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  “And Alexander?” he went on, breath still sharp from his tirade. “He tells me, ‘Our guardians guard us as they see fit to do!’ A nonsense answer! A mockery of law and logic both! How, pray, does rotting indoors preserve us from a world already falling to ruin?”

  “Alexander believes in a strong hand, Henkel,” I said, passing him my glass. It was clear he needed it more than me. “The soft grace of liberty and communion is beyond his understanding.” He took it without thanks, drank as though the act itself were a continuation of his argument.

  Then he fixed me with that stare—those hard, fever-lit eyes that seemed to read thoughts rather than faces. His mouth hung open slightly, a form of focus, as if he drew breath through it to better weigh the truth of me.

  “You have children working for you now, Adalbert?” he asked at last, voice cutting low.

  “Younglings in rags, carrying your words through the gutters?” He unfolded a small square of paper—my invitation—creased twice with care.

  “‘Roling fire.’” He tapped the word with one bony finger. “A fine sermon, but misspelled. A typing error in so short a summons—did you write this in haste, or have you finally gone daft?”

  “My good man, one is allowed an error or two when hastened for company! And yes, I employ children—and yes, they were paid, in coin and sustenance both! You know me better than this, Henkel.”

  Henkel studied me for a long breath before the thin line of his mouth bent upward. “Then you treat them better than the poorhouse. I will give you that.”

  His gaze shifted to the table. The pork gleamed in the firelight, the fruit beside it steaming faintly in their honeyed glaze. “Fat pork,” he said. “Sweet fruits. A banquet, in such dire times?”

  “Is all a question to you, Henkel?” Henrik drawled, settling into a chair with the lazy grace of a man long past restraint. He reached for a plate, eyes on the pork.

  “Questions make us human, Henrik!” Henkel fired back, his voice taut with the edge of conviction. “Aye, I question my very summons here; I question the tyranny of the city guard; I question the so-called devilry that set Hasholm aflame; and I question the caging of the Blemmyes—just as they begin to speak, to think!”

  The air thickened. His words cracked like kindling.

  I reached for the nearest bottle and wrenched it open, letting the cork strike the rafters—a deliberate cannonade to reclaim the room.

  “You ask true, healthy questions, Henkel!” I said, forcing brightness into my tone. “But please—please, my friend—can we not share company and comfort with our inquiries into the nature of man?”

  I poured the wine liberally into their cups. The scent rose rich and old; I had dug this bottle from the cupboard’s farthest depths—a gift once pressed on me by some forgotten baroness. I’d spat at her name often enough since, but her vintage I would not waste.

  “My savoury fruits,” I went on, lifting my glass, “are not fallen from heaven, nor pulled from any hidden floorboard. I bring tidings, and opportunity—the very same that bought me this brief scrap of comfort amid the ruin!”

  “We knew your sudden grace and hospitality did not spring from thin air,” Henrik said, the corners of his mouth folding into a knowing smile. “So—who pays thee now? Have the bastards on the Theatre Board lifted your sanction at last?”

  Jonas’s laughter came loud and ragged. “That sanction’ll outlive us all! No, our sly devil’s carved himself another patron, I’d wager!” He slapped the table, sending a tremor through the cups.

  Only Henkel remained still. His gaze moved from the pork to me, the steam curling between us like a curtain. “May I?” he asked.

  I nodded, half in jest, half in mock sanctity—like a priest granting communion.

  He sat, carved a thick slice from the cheek, and as he ate, continued his assault. “You write for someone,” he said between measured chews. “You always do. From one baron to the next, you’ve peddled your gossip and your bile. Tell me, Adalbert—whose purse buys your conscience this time?”

  “The people,” I answered. Lofty words—they rang almost absurd in my own ears, yet they were what my heart insisted upon.

  “I write for posterity, for remembrance, for the dawn that will follow this long and endless dusk! When the curse of the storm is lifted, when the fires gutter out and the devils are laid to rest, when sons and fathers return to their hearths from shores long forgotten—I will be here. I will have written of every sorrow, every hollow belly, every tear shed while our nation bent beneath the weight of ruin. And I will write of the rising that must follow.”

  The air thickened in the pause that followed. Henrik’s smirk faltered. Jonas’s mirth cooled into stillness. Henkel only stared—his eyes sharp, almost fevered—as though he meant to flay the truth from my words, to test whether belief or vanity had spoken.

  “And I seek you,” I went on, letting the words fall heavy and deliberate, “to help shape it.”

  Silence. Searching eyes. Much to digest at once. Very well.

  I drew in a breath and sat at the table’s far end, my guests framed by platters of shining meat and syruped fruit. Their faces, in the candlelight, might have been carved from the same wax—caught between skepticism and hunger.

  “The city is vast,” I began, voice steady, “and its ailments are legion. I seek to name them. To give the chaos form. I have, by decree, the right to mark what I see—and a pension larger than one man deserves. But the task is larger still. I need companions who can move where I cannot, who can seek the stories that pierce the heart and trouble the soul.”

  The smell of salted meat rose around me, heavy as confession. I lifted my cup.

  “In dire times,” I said, “one must share what one has. And I would share both my burden—” I gestured to the ledgers, to the papers at my desk “—and my fruits.” I nodded toward the feast. “Let this be the first of many.”

  Henkel’s eyes shifted at last. They slipped from mine and fixed upon the blackened pane beside us. Beyond it, one could almost feel the chill pressing against the glass—the city’s breath, cold and wet, whispering at the seams.

  “There is genuine sorrow,” he said quietly. “I know you have felt it, Adalbert. I know your station of late—the names you have counted, the widows you’ve comforted with ink alone. It’s spoken of in the alleys. The lawyer’s assistant who refused to let her husband’s death be tallied.” His voice hardened, then softened again. “If this work is to mean anything, it must be true. Every name, every loss—if you do not give them voice, all will be for naught.”

  Jonas raised his cup, the wine within trembling faintly. “And the children,” he said, his tone gone grave. “The ones left to roam the gutters, turned beggars before they’ve learned to read. They are becoming a generation of ghosts, bereaved before they’ve even known love. Their voices should be counted too.”

  Henrik leaned forward, the firelight catching on his weathered grin, though there was little humour left in it. “The higher gentry keep their ledgers as well,” he said. “Report of stagnant parties, quiet halls. Officer husbands missing. Desperate letters from the provinces—some still sealed, some returned unopened.” He took a breath, then added, softer: “There’s no corner of this city untouched.”

  The three of them—each in turn—had given the thing its bones. Sorrow, youth, and power. And suddenly the feast before us seemed not a celebration at all, but a council held over the carcass of a dying world.

  Another faint sound.

  A tap-tap up the stairs, rhythmic, light.

  And a knock at the door.

  “Who else have you convened to linger in fat and sorrow, Adalbert?” Henrik chuckled.

  I smiled.

  “One that can help us with both,” I said, rising to open the door.

  In the dark corridor stood a figure in a well-kept dress of fine, modest fabric, the folds caught faintly in the spill of my firelight. A dark hood framed a sly, familiar smile.

  Dear Linda.

  “The aura of friendship has called me hither,” she said, smiling. “Not even a simple calling can be plain, can it?”

  I reached for her hand and held it softly. “My dear madam, nothing can be plain with you,” I said, and pressed my lips to her knuckles in the manner of gentlemen who still pretend at grace.

  “Your sour grapes have turned to fine wine in but a short while,” she said, her smile careful yet warm. “What of the sorrow that befell you recently?” There was kindness in her tone, but behind it—true curiosity.

  “They are not hidden,” I replied. “But they have been sanctioned—to be preserved. On a sum that called for repayment and celebration both.”

  “Repayment?” she teased, her voice lilting with familiar mockery. “Are your longstanding tabs to be paid at last?”

  Laughter stirred. Henrik rose, gesturing grandly. “You invited your Muse! The Lady of the Hasholm Theatre herself!”

  “And I see my gracious host has gathered a true congregation of ne’er-do-wells!” Linda answered, grinning as she stepped inside, her gaze sweeping across the table and its company.

  She had once lived among men like these—writers, pamphleteers, dreamers with ink-stained fingers and foolish courage. She had given voice to their words in the grand halls, when words themselves could still draw blood. Dangerous words. And she had spoken them beautifully.

  “My friends,” I began, raising my cup, “the days are dark. The work—taxing. The burden—heavy. Please, help me lift it, bear it, and together we will write a story and a witness worth the telling.”

  I had turned to my comrades as I spoke, but before the silence could settle, a hand fell upon my shoulder.

  “All is theatre with you, Adalbert,” Linda said, her voice smooth as a curtain drawn. “Death and life, sorrow and pleasure—you’ll pen them and speak them all the same.” She stepped past me, light glinting in her eyes as though she already stood upon a stage. “I do wonder,” she mused, “what the play of our times would have looked like, had you been allowed to write it.”

  Henkel shot back at once, voice sharp and delighted, “Any play this man would stage would have him hanged! It’s happened once before, and still he slipped the noose—curse his luck!”

  The room broke. Laughter thundered against the beams; wine spilled; Henrik near choked on a pear as Jonas slapped the table for air. It was Henkel’s first jest of the night, and the release of it swept through us like sudden light.

  “I was almost hanged at the third wife,” I said, steadying myself by Linda’s arm, “the fourth would have had me burned for certain!”

  “Van Aarden! Linda!” Jonas bellowed, half-standing, “we demand an encore!”

  “The third wife’s story must be heard!” Henrik bellowed, slapping the table so hard a slice of apple took flight and struck the floor with a wet thud.

  “Will you let the gouted fools of high court silence you here as well?” Henkel roared through a mouthful of pork. “Their scandals are ours too!”

  I turned to Linda. Linda to me. That old, dangerous smile—the one she wore before a packed house—had returned. The smirk of a woman about to conjure worlds.

  The stage was set.

  I stepped back, adopting the horrified poise of the Courtier—the same trembling fool who once made bishops spit wine into their collars. She knew the cue at once.

  “A fourth?” I cried, hands raised in mock despair. “Has our noble Lord a mistress in every hall?”

  Her smirk curved wider, then melted into the sharp, indignant grace of the First Wife. “Who spoke of great halls?” she shot back. “My sisters in marriage are not drawn from such nobility—unless pigsties and brothels now merit titles of state!”

  “So what of the second?”

  “Met on the privy!”

  “And so with the third?”

  “Was previously courting one of the livery!”

  “Do not tell of the fourth!”

  “From the smokehouse—lungs coughing and black!”

  “And, pray tell, the fifth?”

  “From the local butcher, behind the porkshops in the back!”

  The room erupted. A roar of laughter rolled through the loft, thick with wine and smoke, the table near shaking beneath the mirth of our audience. The sordid tale of Baron Kanton—his five wives, his five disgraces—spilled back into the world after too many silent years. A full recitation would take hours—three, to be precise—but the best pieces, the juiciest cuts, could be carved up here by firelight, with meat and meaning enough to season them.

  We played on. I, the pitiful courtier, wringing my hands, pleading vainly for reason. Linda, radiant and ferocious, the wronged wife whose honor crumbled with each revelation.

  For a time, the air turned bright again. The laughter swelled; the storm, the silence, the suffering beyond these walls—forgotten.

  For a time, life felt simpler. Merrier. The burden eased.

  The darker tales could wait until morning.