Fitcher eyed the pane of glass with wary apprehension, half-afraid of what ghastly apparition it might reveal beyond the soupy haze of early morning light. As he had dreaded the portal gave sight of the remains of a man, dark-eyed and horribly pale, with a vacant gaze that seemed to burrow into his soul like a brown worm into hazelnut rot. He cringed, twisted his head one way and then the other, his eyes never leaving those of the desperate wraith staring up from the other side of the glass, and then rubbed his chin in a pensive manner.

      God, he really did need a shave.

      Fitcher yawned once hugely, and the mirror propped up on the books on his desk offered him back a fairly unflattering view of his tonsils. Saying that at that particular moment he was feeling somewhat weary would be a mild truth; that he actually felt like death warmed over was perhaps a more accurate exaggeration.

      He scrubbed a hand through his hair, pushing it back and away from his eyes, and gave the man in the mirror a good long stare. The simple truth was that for the past four days he had been fuelled purely by a mixture of adrenaline and nervous energy; day five had arrived and to his dismay he'd discovered that he was running dangerously low on both. Regardless of how much sleep he had finally managed to eke out of his schedule the tension back at the City Hall, as thin and stretched as copper piano wire, was driving most of the staff to distraction. Hairline cracks were appearing even in Lady Anabelle's formidable mien; there was an unfamiliar tenseness to her eyes and an unpleasant briskness hedging her words that, in turn, put everyone unlucky enough to speak with her on edge. The Muse mayor was snappish towards her clerks, the clerks growled at the scribes, everyone snarled at Fitcher, and the previous morning he in turn had aimed a savage retort at an utterly inoffensive chair and nearly broken a toe in the process.

      There was little doubt in his mind as to where the blame for the rising tempers firmly lay. No sooner had the borders to Highland snapped shut than word of the Unicorn Brigade attack was merrily making its rounds through the regular lines of Muse gossip like an infectious disease, spreading alarm and dismay wherever it passed. The unfortunately troubled public had become a restless public, and then a cantankerous one, and answers to questions that should never have been raised were more often than not demanded from the increasingly agitated Muse civil service.

      Fitcher, an avid purveyor of the Muse rumour mill, hadn't been surprised at this development; if anything he had been dreading it. Unusually enough neither had Lady Anabelle - although she had been most displeased by it. Vocally so, and office tension hiked up another notch.

      While his current state of affairs were hardly to be considered pleasant, tolerable or beneficial to his mental health, he had to admit that things could have worked out a lot worse. While most of Anabelle's retinue remained trapped beneath the mayor's thumb back in City Hall, he and he alone had been given a loose rein to range about the surrounding countryside as she saw fit. More often than not that surrounding countryside was in reference to the country of Highland, but he dared not breath one word of complaint. For the moment, reconnaissance missions within the relative tranquillity of a hostile border were a luxury when compared to the furiously humming hive of political activity back home in friendly territory.

      However inhospitable, borders rarely snarl of your incompetence and order you out into the streets for coffee.

      Despite the rising tides of stress he had discovered that there were a scant few among the City workforce that not only rose to the challenge of the increasingly hectic days but also crested it, peaceably riding the office turbulence like driftwood in the face of a gale. That they could benefit from the chaos was extraordinary in itself. That Lord Jess was among their numbers was not. The information being culled within his chamber was extensive at best, confusing at worst, and Fitcher had little doubt that the chamberlain was thriving on the tumult that brought grief to most and raw factual material back to him.

      With information came power and opportunity. Jess was never the man to pass up either.

      Conversely, it was also becoming evident that the chamberlain's stamina was not peaking at the same levels as his ambition; however unreadable the man was his aides were as accurate barometers of his stormy mental state as a facial tic. Even as Jess's china smile grew wider the moral of his clerks went spiralling ever closer towards the black plains of insurrection, and Fitcher watched the elaborate teeter-totter routine from afar with the absorbed fascination of a man watching his neighbour's house collapse. The chamberlain's personal clerk, a formidable woman whom Fitcher took pains to avoid on the best of days, had already threatened him with outright mutiny; how she had escaped immediate unemployment mystified Fitcher entirely.

      He grinned at his reflection and it flashed a lot of white teeth back at him. He would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that particular conversation. The public discomfort of Muse's city chamberlain and deputy mayor was a rare enough sight that it warranted special attention.

      But speaking of Lord Jess...

      Fitcher scowled as a memory quietly burst into the forefront of his mind; according to the memo left on his desk this morning he was to forgo his usual five-minute briefing with Lady Anabelle and was to report to her deputy mayor for instructions instead. The note, dropped unobtrusively into the colony of unattended papers currently adorning his desk in makeshift piles, had occupied much more of his attention the previous evening than a slip of paper had right to and was the likely culprit behind a poor night's sleep as well. Even now the memory of it sent a low-pitch buzzing through his head, like the sound of angry insects amassing.

      A meeting with Anabelle meant business as usual. A talk with Jess was a warning of the unusual. And all too often the unusual usually worked out to be dangerous as well, which meant that Fitcher would be the unlucky soul volunteered to jab it with a stick to see if it would move. Or bite off his arm.

      On the other hand, Lord Jess was known to bite off heads for much more innocent offences, which left Fitcher with the choice of facing down either the whiplash of greater authority or the gaping maw of the Unknown.

      Fitcher knew he was in trouble when a predicament approached in which Lady Anabelle appeared as his only saviour. And so, after raking his fingers through his hair and struggling into his coat, he made sure to telegraph his anxiety over the entire situation by slamming the door to his room extra hard on his way out into the streets.

      The second indication that his day was destined not to be a pleasant one came in the form of a short and irritable woman.

      "Just sit tight," she snapped when he fidgeted with impatience, the black curls of her hair bobbing stiffly about her shoulders. "Lord Jess will be with you in a matter of minutes. You're not the only one with a schedule to keep, Mr Fitcher."

      He couldn't argue with her on that point. Rarely could he argue with her on any other points, come to think of it. There was something about the woman that defied debate. More often than not he found it wise to simply keep his mouth shut, his eyes cast down and let any unspoken challenge drone harmlessly past him instead.

      It was his job to learn about things before his employers did. The information he'd accumulated from reconnaissance sorties ventured over the years would have made him the envy of the Muse rumour mill if he had ever chosen to disclose it to anyone other than Lady Anabelle. But despite the data he had managed to divine regarding the woman - that she was a top Greenhill graduate, had left her job at the Rockaxe Armourer's Association and was hired by Muse partly thanks to some suspicious paperwork - he still really didn't know what to make of her. Or, worse yet, what she already had of him. The unknown made him decidedly uneasy.

      Fitcher shoved his hands into his pockets, leaned against the bit of railing opposite from Jess' heavy chamber door, and did his ample best not to meet the cast-iron eyes of the undersized office gladiator barring the entrance.

      He was honest enough to admit that Miss Madeleine Rousseau operated on a level of politics well above his league. She wouldn't have earned the position of Lord Jess' personal clerk had she not, for the Muse chamberlain demanded a certain excellence of performance from of all of his aides regardless of rank or office standing. That she was well qualified and intelligent was a given.

      It was her particular brand of intelligence that unnerved him, for her brain operated with the raw analytical power so distinctive of the trained lawyer. Entering into conversation with the woman gave the hazy impression that you were miring yourself deep within the thorny underbrush of legal talk, where any innocent drift of leaves could harbour a shiny steel beartrap. And, given the woman's penchant for speaking exactly what was on her mind, when those jaws snapped shut they didn't just break the skin but the entire leg as well.

      It was out of his sense of self-preservation that he did his ample best to avoid her. As a member of Lady Anabelle's retinue the circles of his operation usually carried him on a wide track away from the City Hall and its briar-patch of politics anyway, and so a prudent retreat was made a simple task. Unfortunately, from time to time Lord Jess' path of administration converged with the Muse mayor's and it was then that the two camps were bound to bump heads, with a few cracked skulls resulting.

      Although Fitcher's job often coincided with Miss Rousseau's, he had no illusions as to who would mow down whom if the pair ever met while travelling in opposite directions along the political road.

      The door to Jess' office cracked open. Fitcher jumped at the sound, but Madeleine Rousseau merely narrowed her eyes. An ashen clerk stumbled out of the room; passed Fitcher a single haggard look that spoke with more dismal eloquence than words ever could and lurched off to business unknown.

      "I believe Lord Jess will see you now," Miss Rousseau remarked formally.

      Later on he would have sworn that she dryly added, while bodily shoving him into the chamberlain's office, "Have fun."

      The heavy door clicked shut behind him and Fitcher suddenly found himself trapped within the chamber of the obsessively studious. From behind the fortifications of books and papers stacked on the desk across the room he could just make out the shape of Lord Jess' head and upper shoulders, the former of which promptly bobbed into view.

      "Ah, Fitcher," the young chamberlain said, his face a smooth study of neutrality. "You decided to make an appearance after all. Allow me a minute to look over this report. I invite you to make yourself comfortable in the meantime..."

       He trailed off and gave an explicit nod towards a comfortless wooden chair sitting placidly at one corner of the desk, then vectored his gaze back to the papers in his hand. Seeing the futility of the request almost immediately, Fitcher chose to remain standing awkwardly at the door and let his eyes roam over the interior of the cramped office instead. To one side of the room brown shelves choked with volumes of law and legislation sat in orderly rows like stiff oaken hedges. Against the far wall a small window made of blown glass meted out essential watery light. A rather handsome brass clock ticked off precious seconds from its place beside the doorway. As the minutes wasted away the sound changed from being charmingly harmless to downright irritating.

      Jess leaned back and shuffled his papers into place with a sense of finality. The city chamberlain, a trim man with neatly combed brown hair, wore his usual attire of a white shirt with a stiff collar, a plain yellow tie and slacks, and a grey suede vest. In a dramatic twist on tradition his staunch sense of decorum had allowed the latter to remain flagrantly unbuttoned.

      Glancing up, his brow furrowed ever slightly upon the sight of a dishevelled Fitcher slouching uncertainly at the entrance of the room. "Please feel free to sit," he said pointedly. "I do so hate to see people uncomfortable on my account."

      Fitcher sat. Warning reports from his spine began almost immediately upon contact with the chair's hard back.

      "Thank you," the chamberlain said dryly. Swivelling in his own seat, a rather plushy green number Fitcher could have sworn he saw in the library a week earlier, he faced down the clerk with an impassive expression and hands steepled neatly over his knees. He then proceeded to say absolutely nothing, evidently preferring to spend a little time in abstract reflection.

      Perhaps not so impassive, Fitcher noted after a minute of gauche silence. Did he detect the barest beginnings of lattice-like tension lines creasing the man's forehead?

      Or was he just damned tired and desperate to see a sign of a similar affliction in someone other than himself?

      "I'll be brief," Lord Jess finally said. "Lady Anabelle is currently engaged in affairs of a diplomatic nature and therefore does not require your services for the day. I, on the other hand, am in dire need of a trustworthy agent for a reconnaissance assignment to Toto village. Guess who's name came up when I brought the matter forward to Lady Anabelle earlier this morning?"

      Fitcher sighed. His back was really starting to ache magnificently now and he already had a pretty good idea of where this conversation was heading. "Uh, I'm guessing she mentioned me, sir?"

      The deputy mayor raised an eyebrow. "Recommended you, actually. I was somewhat sceptical myself but she assured me of your reliability and I am not the man to take her assertions lightly, if you catch my meaning." His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly and his knuckles flared white as the laced fingers of his hands tightened over his knees.

      "Toto village, eh?" Fitcher said weakly.

      Jess leaned back, evidently quite satisfied with the response. "That's exactly what I said. Last night I began getting some unusual reports from the district around Toto telling of strange lights in the sky. This morning I received certain complaints that traffic running through the area has ground to a halt. Nothing is going in, nothing is coming out, and nobody seems to have the inclination to find out why. Frankly, if a problem has arisen there it's going to pose a serious inconvenience to any number of tradesmen."

      A certain lack of plurallness to the previous statement prompted Fitcher to pose the innocent question, "Has Lady Anabelle heard mention of this?"

      The chamberlain's eyes narrowed a fraction more. "Perhaps once you bring me back some concrete news regarding the matter I'll have enough to justify my bringing it to her attention," he said testily. "I do not wish to bother her with trifles, and if this is simply an issue of the Toto bridge collapsing again then I don't see the point in having her push aside more important affairs to fit it on her palette when I may easily spare her the trouble."

      Fitcher fell silent, his mind worrying over the chamberlain's words like a dog over a soup bone. Given the young man's loyalty to Muse mayor it was entirely possible that he honestly wished to save her from the unnecessary inconvenience of what might prove a trivial problem. He was willing to admit that, if you dug really deeply, you might even find the core of a decent man within Jess, buried somewhere beneath the layers of obnoxious politician. It was his attitude that made him a disagreeable fellow and not his heart, which more often than not was in the right place.

      And then, once you started to think along those lines and believed that, someday, you might just learn to tolerate him, you ran smack into the wall of his ambition. Every time he caught sight of the chamberlain's eyes Fitcher could practically see the bright, shiny cogs of enterprise and aspiration silently winding themselves behind them. He was certain that, if audible, they would make the same sort of noise as that damnable clock of his, tick-tocking down a count to some inevitable accomplishment. Exactly what that goal was Fitcher couldn't hazard a guess, but he imagined that every little victory here and there counted towards it.

      Or perhaps he was just over-thinking the situation. Maybe Lord Jess really did wish to simply spare Muse's redheaded mayor avoidable hassles. Fitcher's premonitions of future woe had proven both accurate and acutely embarrassing in the past and all too often he found it best to just keep his mouth shut.

      "I have, of course, arranged for an armed escort to accompany you should the trouble at Toto prove more serious than expected," Jess added, mistakenly interpreting the clerk's silence for his usual nervous apprehension. "One man should suffice and is, quite frankly, all we can afford at the moment."

      Fitcher nodded. "That, I appreciate that, Lord Jess."

      The chamberlain shrugged it off. "The man should be waiting for you at the city entrance. I've also seen that two horses have been provided. I suggest you to leave for Toto as soon as possible - if there is a serious problem at the village it may take some time to document." He uncrossed his fingers and leaned forward on his arms to offer the clerk a meaningful look. "I would also advise you to be prompt in this. You're simply there to appraise the situation, not to solve it. Time is a valuable commodity these days, you realise."

      "Of course, sir," Fitcher replied, blinking slowly. After a moment of awkward silence he recognised the subtle hint, rose from the torturous chair, and apologetically backed out of the room. The click of the door shutting behind him carried a blissfully welcome note of dismissal.

      Putting his hands against the small of his back Fitcher exhaled an explosive breath of relief and made a futile attempt to work the kinks out of his spine. Why that vile wooden implement of torture remained as a functional piece of furniture in Lord Jess' office was beyond him-

      Twisting his upper torso around to straighten out a particularly nasty crimp brought him abruptly face to face with the imposing visage of Miss Madeleine Rousseau. A peculiar smile floated across her face even as she reached around him to place her hand over the handle of the chamberlain's door.

      "That well, huh?" she remarked, amused.

      There really wasn't much he could say to that, but apparently the embarrassed flush to his face spoke loudly for him.

      Madeleine Rousseau sniggered. "Live a day in my shoes," she said and disappeared inside the office.

      The third indication that his day was, inarguable, ruined beyond repair came with the discovery of the armed guard's identity.

      "You!" Fitcher exclaimed in surprise, grinding to halt so sudden that the horse closest to him threw its head up in alarm.

      "None other," Bram said sourly. The big man was standing between the heads of two horses at the entrance of the city, his fingers crooked through the nosebands of their bridles. Outfitted in the full uniform of the Muse defence force, the guard looked anything but impressed. Impressively bedecked perhaps, but clearly not a happy man. "You do realise that this is the second time you've somehow managed to thoroughly spoil my afternoon off. If I weren't such a nice guy you'd be heading out on your own this morning."

      "Come on," the clerk protested, rocking on his heels with his hands in his pockets. "North Sparrow couldn't have been all that bad. I've made the trip hundreds of times without incident."

      The guard passed him a look that clearly stated that, against all supposition, it actually had been 'all that bad'. "It rained," he said flatly. "Quite hard, for the entire ride there. It took me all of five minutes to deliver those orders, and then another four hours to get back home. You're just damn lucky I made it back before the storm hit."

      Fitcher winced. He vaguely remembered the weather that day as being decidedly abominable, and that he himself had been comfortably entrenched within the City Hall library filing paperwork and drinking hot coffee while the rain slashed down against the windows outside. "All right, all right," he said apologetically, holding up his hands. "I'm sorry I foisted that assignment off on you. And I had no idea you'd wind up stuck with me for this one. Lord Jess just told me I was getting an escort to Toto."

      The big man eyed him for a moment in wary silence but evidently didn't feel inclined to argue the point any further. Instead he unhooked his fingers from one of the bridles, looped the reins over the horse's head and tossed them to Fitcher with a flick of his wrist.

      "At least it's a short ride," he grumbled as he gathered the reins of his own mount in one hand, drove his foot into the stirrup and vaunted into the saddle with practised ease. Fitcher absently noted that his sword, standard issue for the Muse soldier, had been clipped to the ring at the saddle skirt. "And the weather's holding. Maybe I can pick up a drink in Toto while you go and do whatever the hell it is you wind up doing."

      "There you go," said Fitcher half-heartedly as his horse, a wiry dun with viciously intelligent eyes, made a spirited attempt to sidle away before he had fully swung up into the saddle. "It can't be all that bad."

      Bram's expression said otherwise but he spurred his horse into motion regardless and, collecting the reins in both hands, began to lead a path out of the city.

      Outside of Muse the panorama was so bright it hurt his eyes, all white daylight and brittle indigo shadows. At least, as Bram had remarked, the day promised no bad weather; from horizon to horizon the sky was one broad blue band of uninterrupted colour, so incandescent that Fitcher had to squint just to look at it. The air was crisp and clear, although when the wind picked up and knifed past his cheek he thought he caught the faintest taint of smoke in the air, most likely from some Muse farmer burning his rubbish.

      For the most part their trip was spent in sullen silence; any attempt at friendly conversation made on Fitcher's behalf met a dismal end, strangled into solemn stillness. Eventually he just gave up entirely and focused his attention on the scenery instead. Winter had made a ponderous retreat that year and a certain crispness remained unbroken in the air. Nevertheless the late-spring landscape around Muse really was a lovely sight, all fresh emerald grass stretching out as far as the eye could see. Here and there stands of poplar and birch had regained their greenery as well and were alive with birds and...

      And...

      He frowned and sniffed. Dammit, the smell of smoke really did hang in the air. Twisting the reins around one fist he turned around and around in his saddle, trying to pinpoint the evasive source of the odour. Concentrating on it didn't help; it was only when he sat back, closed his eyes and breathed with a regular cadence that it wafted back, unseen and yet everywhere.

      Bram, who had been watching him in amused silence, finally let his curiosity overcome his bad mood and said, "Just what the hell are you doing, lad?"

      "Can you smell smoke?" Fitcher asked instead, opening his eyes to stare intently at an invisible point on the horizon. So absorbed in his pursuit of the illusive origin was he that he barely noticed the uneasy way his horse shifted beneath him.

      The big man arched an eyebrow and sniffed. "Not really. Sort of. Maybe."

      Fitcher opened his mouth for a surprised exclamation just as an eastern wind picked up and all but slapped the aroma across his face. "Don't tell me you can't smell that!"

      Bram crinkled his nose and reined in his mount. Resting his hands on the pommel of his saddle the guard leaned forward and inhaled deeply, his brow furrowed in thoughtful disgust. "Phew. Something must be burning."

      "But I can't actually see any smoke," Fitcher countered. He brought his restless horse about in a wide circle, scanning the horizon intently for the telltale brand of a fire as he did so. Towards the east Toto village was an indistinct form in the distance, hedged within a thin belt of scrubby red pines. Tracking the treeline with his eyes eventually brought his gaze north again without interruption; he twisted in the saddle to face the open fields of the south and still couldn't spot a smudge of smoke to mar the unblemished sky.

      "No actual smoke," he repeated, puzzled.

      "Look at your horse," Bram noted, nodding towards the other man's mount.

      Fitcher glanced down in surprise. The animal's ears were pinned flat back against its neck, and along the tension of the reins leading up into his bare fingers he could feel the way it was worrying the bit in its mouth. Behind him the horse's black tail switched like a flag, slapping a nervous tempo against its hindquarters as it crab-walked sideways on legs rigid with tension. Its feet drove great furrows into the soft earth and kicked up clumps of mud and grass.

      "What's bothering him?" Fitcher exclaimed as he struggled to curb the animal's restless motion.

      "Dumb animals are always the first to know when something's wrong," the guard commented blandly, leaning back in his saddle. Ignoring the sour look his companion shot him he squinted out towards the Toto bridge, an innocent shape against the steep banks of the Muse River. He glared at the sight and muttered something indecipherable.

      "Pardon?" Fitcher said, his horse pacing out an uneven circle around the guard's. From a copse of pines just off to his left he heard a crow strike up a clarion call, a harsh and solitary cry. A draft of wind blew through the grass, rattled it like dry bones. Aside from that he was lucidly aware of standing within what seemed a sphere of sudden, unnerving stillness.

      "I said, why don't we pick up the pace a bit?" Bram replied, his gaze never leaving the distant Toto village. His tone was clipped and terse.

      "Why? Something wrong?"

      Fitcher saw the big redhead roll his shoulders into an irresolute shrug. "Dunno," he said. "Just a hunch. Bit of intuition. That sort of thing. I'll sort it out once we get to Toto. Let's just hurry it up a bit."

      He pressed his horse into a canter towards the village without a glance back to assure that Fitcher would follow. Not wishing to be left behind anyway, the clerk managed to pull his horse from its errant orbit and urged it forward to close the gap between them.

      Even before they had reached the bridge Fitcher began to notice the first signs that something was seriously amiss with the town; the closer he drew the more salient the smell of smoke became. And not only smoke but an unfamiliar fetor as well, an oily and cloying stench hanging so thickly that he was forced to draw up his horse before his stomach turned over in nausea. Gagging, Fitcher took the reins in his left hand, shook his coat sleeve over his right and pressed it against his nose and mouth. Even then the smell persisted; it clung to his clothes like old grease. Eyes watering, Fitcher squinted through the haze.

      Several paces ahead of him was Bram. The big guard, a length of old cloth tied tightly across the lower half of his face, was vainly trying to push his black horse forward into Toto. The animal's front hooves drummed out a hollow staccato against the wooden bridge, its hindquarters swinging from side to side as the horse abjectly refused to walk any further. Fitcher could see the way Bram drove his heels into its flank, and how the horse tossed back its head so violently it nearly smashed into the guard's face. After a moment of vehement resistance they seemed to come to a mutual agreement; Bram turned the animal back towards Fitcher. Above his mask his eyes glittered with irritation.

      "Bugger this," he finally said, his voice muffled and angry. He dismounted roughly and looped the reins over his horse's head. "Let's just tie them here and go in ourselves."

      Fitcher did likewise, still taking care to have one hand pressed tightly over his mouth. "What happened here? And what's that horrible smell?"

      "That would be blood," Bram replied bluntly as he lashed the reins securely to the branch of a nearby conifer. Standing at his horses' shoulder he rummaged briefly through a pack sewn into the kneeroll of the saddle. From it he withdrew another length of cloth, which was passed to his companion and accepted gratefully. Finally, he unsnapped his sword from the saddle skirt and, with a motion of his hand to Fitcher, began to stride across the bridge.

      Caught in the act of securing the makeshift bandanna in place, Fitcher had to jog to catch up. "W, what do you mean, blood?!" he exclaimed, his hands still fumbling with the knot. His voice seemed unnaturally shrill, even to his own ears. Underneath his feet he could dimly make out the throb of rushing water as the Muse River surged past to either side of him. He caught himself staring at the foam on the water and shook his head.

      "I mean, it looks like they had a bit of a fire here, not a massacre," Fitcher tried again. "Where are you getting b-blood from-"

      Bram abruptly stopped at the apex of the bridge and the smaller man had to swerve violently to avoid smashing into his back.

      "I know what it smells like," he said bleakly, then sprinted down into the town. Fitcher was left alone on the bridge to stare, aghast.

      Toto smoked like an empty firepit. Wisps and tendrils of it still seeped like wraiths from the burnt-out remains of shops and homes and even the hard-packed dirt seemed to smoulder angrily. Even though a day had passed since the likely time the fire had blazed a curtain of heat still hung shimmering; the feel of it against his skin was like the draft from an open oven, its fire long extinguished and the coals left to cool. The air was murky and unpleasantly warm, with cooler currents sluggishly swirling tiny ashen particles through it like grey mayflies. Even despite the strip of cloth across his nose and mouth soot caught in his throat and made him cough. The town stank of smoke and pine and meat left in the sun to rot.

      Fitcher drifted through the streets. Beneath his feet crunched broken glass, the sound seeming painfully loud in the vacuous silence. A single silver fork lay in his path, bent nearly in half and its prongs twisted; he regarded it bemusedly and kicked it aside before ambling onwards, eyes wide and staring. Although there were no signs of life that he could see that there were those of struggle - the sod was deeply gouged in places, debris thrown up and splattered several feet away. Doors lay strewn and splintered about vacant alleys, torn from their hinges with unusual force. Here and there an arrow either littered the ground or bristled from a broken timber. All evidence pointed to violence but revealed no victims. Even Bram, he noted absently, had long since disappeared. The fire-blasted foundation of Toto was his alone.

      Giddy with shock and heat, Fitcher approached one of the houses with light-headed curiosity, towards the yawning black cavity that marked its entrance. A bit of the lower door still clung to one hinge; without really knowing his intent he caught it between his hands and tried to wrench it aside with what little leverage he had. The metal hinge squealed under the pressure and Fitcher yelped painfully as a large splinter was driven into the palm of his left hand. He jerked it back reflexively and, leaning back against the house, splayed out the fingers to survey the damage.

      A slim sliver of wood still remained in the flesh; squeezing his eyes tightly shut and willing the tremor in his arms to still he caught the protruding end and tugged. The sliver pulled cleanly free and he eyed the bloody length of smooth wood for a moment before dropping it into the ashes in disgust. He flexed the hand reflectively. The wound was bleeding thinly down his wrist and it hurt to move his fingers but for the first time since entering Toto he found himself thinking clearly again.

      Toto may have been burnt to the ground like dead wood, but first it had been looted. The signs were as clear and stark to him now as a barren tree against the sky: the way the doors had been torn from the frames, not pushed open but wrenched aside with enough force to twist their metal hinges. The broken arrows and the damaged silver fork left behind on the street. Pushing away from the house and ducking his head into the entrance he recognised telltale shards of glass mixed amidst the ash on the floor; a window had been smashed in from the outside. An overturned cabinet across the room, the crumpled rug with darkened holes, a heavy black footprint on the doorframe, too clear and perfect to have been made by a panicking man - all silent witnesses mouthing an obvious crime.

      If he wasn't so certain that at any moment he was going to be violently ill, he might have hazarded a grim smile. Blood and fire might stupefy, but crime was even footing.

      He was about to back out of the doorway when the hard glitter of light on metal caught his eye. Frowning, he wiped his bloody palm on the corner of his shirt and stepped gingerly inside the gutted house, half expecting the remains of the roof to come caving in at any moment. Charred wood and ash crunching beneath his feet, he padded towards the splintered remains of a heavy table, which was gently righted and a torn scrap of red material snagged in a crack plucked from it. Something bright and brass bounced away across the floor and rolled a short distance, winking back as it caught the light. He picked it up with his good hand and crouched back on his haunches, turning it this way and that between his thumb and forefinger.

      It was a clasp of some sort and a little over an inch in diameter. Something had been etched into the front but despite the gaping hole where a good portion of the roof had once been not enough light filtered into the ruins for him to make out what it was. Standing, he edged his way back across the room and towards the door, flicking the clasp up and down on his palm like a coin. Grimacing at the bright sunshine outside, he stepped out across the doorframe and suddenly found the tip of something sharp pressed lightly into the skin and fabric over his left kidney.