The Great Pandemonium: The Direction of the Dawning Sun

The Ghost's Crusade: Excerpt

Glancing down at his friend he said, “If I didn't know better I'd say you actually enjoyed this little surprise, Akkali.”

“These tasks you are sent upon are never dull, I'll give you that.” The Enkiri crouched briefly to reclaim her weapon from the fallen man's corpse, planting her foot on his breastplate and yanking it free with a harsh twist. “No Oratio would deal with someone this stupid with their coin.”

“I agree.” He flashed her a mischievous grin and rubbed the palms of his hands together eagerly. “Let's find him and ask who he's really grave-robbing for!”

“Oh, of course,” she answered dryly, her words thick with her ever-present sarcasm. “I love pretending to care about what you humans do with your dead! It's so much fun I can scarcely remember giving a damn."

Blue eyes scanned the dimly lit alleyway ahead of them, looking for any sign of the man they had been told was doing a rather brisk business in dis-entombed bodies in the Oribian. It twisted sharply to the north, but up to that point there was nothing else remarkable beyond the oddly colorful laundry hanging overhead and a half dozen or so barrels and boxes caked in grayish-brown grime. They were covered in bootprints and seemed to be used to scale the walls up to the second-floor windows rather than store anything beyond garbage.

Fourteen men lay dead in their wake both behind them and further on into the open street, but as they were in the worst possible section of the city, nobody paid the bodies any mind. Stumbling upon a corpse in the Ditch of Gendelheim was like finding a red rose in the Crown's Quarter: they were virtually everywhere except the paths where people frequently walked. The only real difference was that corpses smelled like shit and eventually rotted enough to be swept away in the rain or disassembled by various rats, cats and curs that wandered about under the cover of darkness.

Something stirred down the alley and caught their attention. A man clad in a black leather tunic, finely tailored trousers, and copper-heeled boots scrambled out of hiding behind a barrel of filth and took off, his head down low and his arms grabbing at the air in front of him as though doing so would help him escape more quickly.

“I wish they'd just stay put and drop dead for once,” muttered Akkali through her teeth. "I'm tired of running through this blighted cesspool."

“I'll get him. Watch my back."

Just as he was about to give chase the smell of rancid eggs filled his nose. A steady stream of white smoke began to pour from the barrel the man had hidden behind. Before he realized exactly what was going on he felt the very air itself compress against his body and force the breath out of his lungs. Gasping for breath he caught the rotten egg stench of ignited black powder, then realized why their mark had stayed behind instead of fleeing in the battle's chaos...