​This is the testament of one nameless servant of the Bloodsabers, penned in shadow beneath the stones of Qeynos, in the last hours before the gallows were raised and the rope was blessed by trembling priests. Let no soft handed chronicler of the city above take these words and polish them into confession, for I confess nothing. Let no knight of shining crest read them aloud as evidence of guilt, for guilt belongs only to those who kneel before false virtue and call their cowardice righteousness. I write not to plead, nor to bargain, nor to cleanse my name before the eyes of those who have already condemned me. I write because truth is a sickness that must be carried onward, and if these words survive me, then I shall have coughed one last breath into the lungs of Qeynos.

The fools have named this parchment a martyr's tale, though none among them understands the meaning of martyrdom. To the bright eyed citizens above, martyrdom is a crown placed upon those who perish in defense of their city, their house, or their polished little gods. They imagine it to be noble because their priests clothe death in banners, hymns, and hollow comfort. Yet martyrdom is not found in the applause of the crowd. It is not measured by the number of weeping mourners beside one's bier. It is found in the will to die without bending, to be broken in body while the soul remains fixed upon its master, to lose the flesh and yet remain faithful to the purpose for which the flesh was given. Thus am I a martyr, though Qeynos spits upon the word.

I sit now within a narrow cell sunk deep beneath the city. The walls sweat with old dampness, and the air is thick with the stench of mold, old iron, and men too afraid of death to meet it with dignity. Above me, somewhere far beyond the buried stone, the city prepares its spectacle. They have dragged timber into the square and raised the gallows where all may see it. They think the sight of that black frame shall trouble my sleep. They think the rope, dangling like the tail of some patient serpent, shall coil itself around my thoughts and squeeze fear from me before dawn. Such innocence would be almost charming, were it not so tedious.

In this darkness I light a candle to my god, Bertoxxulous, Lord of Disease, Master of Decay, Keeper of the final truth that all flesh denies until it can deny no longer. The flame lifts itself from the wick and trembles before me, a tiny golden thing amidst a kingdom of shadow. See how it shivers. See how it bends when the unseen draught of the corridor slips between the stones. See how it strives to remain upright, as if some little spirit within it believes endurance to be victory. In that trembling flame I behold the proud city of Qeynos, its banners raised, its guards armed, its temples polished, its citizens singing hymns to powers who cannot halt the grave.

I press my fingers to the wick and extinguish it. The flame does not fight. It gives me only a sting and then smoke. The light is gone, and darkness takes back what was always hers. That is the truth of Qeynos. They are not stone, whatever their walls may claim. They are not law, whatever their judges may mutter. They are not purity, whatever the Priests of Life may preach from their perfumed halls. They are wick and tallow. They burn for a moment, bright enough to deceive themselves, then the fingers of plague, betrayal, time, and rot close around them. One by one, their lights shall vanish.

They call us defeated. They whisper the word in the corridors when they think we sleep. Defeated, say the guards. Defeated, say the magistrates. Defeated, say the pious women who gather in the streets to bless the hangman's craft. They speak as though the War of Plagues ended with their banners still standing, and therefore the matter is settled. How small their minds must be. A battle may end. A body may fall. A shrine may be torn down. Yet disease does not yield because a trumpet sounds. Decay does not retreat because some captain scratches victory upon a report. The grave does not close its gates because Qeynos declares itself safe.

I have eaten what they throw through the bars, when it pleased me to eat at all. Some of it was meat cut from the fields after the battle, flesh turned gray at the edges and sweet with the first kiss of corruption. They offered it in cruelty, laughing as if rotted scraps should humble a servant of Bertoxxulous. I thanked them. One guard retched when I lifted the morsel and smiled. Another made the sign of his temple and backed away as though my appetite were more dreadful than his own cowardice. They do not understand that the battlefield is a banquet table of truth. What marches out beneath banners returns beneath flies.

My faith shall be rewarded. Perhaps not beneath this skin, for this skin is already promised to rope, earth, and worm. Perhaps not in this breath, for this breath shall soon be taken by the cheer of those who think my silence will serve them. Yet reward is not always a jewel placed in a hand. It is not always escape, nor triumph, nor the continuation of pulse within the veins. Sometimes reward is deeper. Sometimes it is assignment. Sometimes death opens doors the living are too blind to see. I know this as surely as I know the taste of iron when my lips split in the cold.

I am bound by no promise that Qeynos would understand. I seek no absolution and no restoration. I do not ask to be made whole, for wholeness is a lie told by healers who cannot bear to confess that all bodies are temporary arrangements of failing matter. I do not long for forgiveness, for forgiveness is a chain placed by the weak upon the stronger, a ritual by which the injured imagine themselves judges over the necessary acts of others. No treaty binds me. No family claim shackles me. No city law has root in my soul. I belong to Bertoxxulous, and in that belonging I am freer in chains than the guards who pace beyond my door.

We nearly won. Let Qeynos remember that in its private nightmares, though its public histories shall scrape the truth away. We nearly took the city from beneath its own feet. While the walls stood proud and the watchmen stared outward toward the roads and fields, we moved below them through passages older than their present pride. Beneath taverns and chapels, beneath noble houses and market stones, beneath the very paths where soldiers marched, the Bloodsabers gathered in the dark. We knew the veins of the city. We knew its drains, its sealed wells, its forgotten crypt steps, its old foundations, and the places where the earth had swallowed memories the Bayles preferred to forget.

Kane Bayle guided us. There, let the name be written without trembling. Kane Bayle, praised in public by those who never understood him, scorned in private by the house that should have honored him, beloved by those of us who perceived the wound beneath his mantle. He was not the witless traitor they now paint upon their courtroom scrolls. He was not a weak man led by whispers alone. He was hunger, grievance, intelligence, and ambition bound in noble flesh. He knew the taste of being passed over. He knew what it meant to stand near greatness and be treated as its lesser shadow. Such men are not created by cults. They are prepared by families.

The city acclaimed him when it suited them. They dressed him in titles and duties, set him before crowds, and expected him to smile as though gratitude could fill the hollow carved by insult. They compared him to Antonius, always Antonius, always the favored son of destiny, the bright name upon every tongue. They did not see how praise given to one man can become poison in another. They did not see how every polite slight, every withheld trust, every chamber from which Kane was gently excluded, prepared him for us more surely than any sermon. By the time I first placed my hand upon his sleeve, the rot had already entered the fruit. I merely showed him that it had meaning.

In those days I sang in a local house of food and ale near the quarters favored by the Guard. It was no grand hall, though men who had drunk enough swore my voice made it so. The beams were dark with smoke, the rushes often sour beneath the tables, and the laughter of soldiers rose there night after night like a chorus of crows. They came to forget their wives, their vows, their debts, and their fear. They came wearing the faces of protectors, and in the warmth of wine and song those faces loosened. I saw them as they were, soft bellied beneath their breastplates, eager for praise, ravenous for glances, careless with secrets if the listener knew when to smile.

Ah, the Guard. How they loved to speak of honor. How they polished their buckles and boasted of duty. How they complained that their wives did not understand the burdens of service while their hands wandered beneath tavern tables and their eyes followed every maid who passed. Many a husband of Qeynos pledged fidelity to his household at dawn and sought forgetfulness by dusk. They had another mistress already, though they named her duty. Qeynos was the beloved to whom they gave their best hours, their proudest posture, their obedience, and their excuses. Their wives received what remained. I received what both were denied, the truth that came loose with wine.

I learned names. I learned patrol routes. I learned which gates were watched by pious men and which by men who could be distracted. I learned who hated his captain, who feared dismissal, who owed coin to gamblers, who resented priests, who had lost brothers in service to a house that never remembered them. I did not need to force secrets from them. Men are wells that overflow if one sits patiently beside them. A song, a look, a laugh at the proper moment, a silence where rebuke should have stood, these were keys enough. Qeynos prides itself upon walls, yet its men opened doors in their own hearts with astonishing ease.

It was through such nights that I first met Kane.

He did not enter as the common guards did. He did not roar for ale, strike the tables, or call for my song as if demanding tribute. He stood near the rear of the room in a cloak that failed to conceal his bearing, watching more than drinking. I had been warned to notice men who watched. Drunkards are tools, but watchers are doors. When I sang that evening, I turned the last verse toward him, not openly enough for others to mock, but enough that he knew. His eyes lifted. There was intelligence there, and something more precious, injury hidden beneath discipline.

Later he found me in the narrow passage behind the hall, where servants emptied slops and lovers pretended secrecy. He asked my name. I gave him one of several. He knew it was false and smiled. I asked whether noble men had taken to lurking in alleys for sport. He answered that noble men often found more truth in alleys than in council chambers. I laughed, for the line was well made, though bitterness sharpened it. We spoke long that night, far longer than prudence permitted. When he departed, he carried no doctrine from me, no symbol of the Fly, no oath. He carried only the knowledge that someone had listened without comparing him to another.

From such little beginnings do cities fall.

Our affair began as many do, in glances, small meetings, letters folded too carefully, and conversations that pretended not to be confessions. I wooed him, yes, but let none imagine him conquered like a drunken watchman led from a stool. Kane was never so simple. He tested every word I gave him. He drew back when I pressed too quickly. He spoke against our god to see whether I would rage, and when I did not, he studied me all the more closely. He asked what Bertoxxulous offered that Qeynos did not. I told him the truth. Bertoxxulous offers no comforting lie. He offers the world as it is.

That intrigued him.

Kane knew rot, though he had not yet learned to call it holy. He had tasted the rot of noble affection, the slow spoilage of a family that smiles while withholding trust. He had seen how councils decay into envy, how loyal men become instruments, how public honor conceals private contempt. When I spoke of disease as revelation, he did not recoil. He asked questions. When I spoke of plague as equalizer, he listened. When I told him that every fair surface hides corruption and that wisdom lies in mastering what others deny, he was silent a long while. In that silence I knew the first gate had opened.

I fed him knowledge in careful portions. Too much truth can choke an unready throat. I spoke first of philosophy, then of history, then of rites performed by those who had accepted decay as teacher rather than punishment. I told him of old sanctuaries beneath Qeynos where candles burned before altars unseen by the sun. I told him of physicians who secretly revered the Lord of Disease because only He revealed the full nature of their craft. I told him of the Bloodsabers not as monsters from nursery tales, but as those who had laid aside fear and embraced the power that waited in every graveyard, battlefield, and sickroom.

At last I took him to my mistress.

She was called Mother Vaelra among us, though no child born of her womb walked Norrath. She had once served among healers and knew more of fever, humors, infection, and flesh than any temple physician who wore the clean robes of Qeynos. Age had bent her body, but not her will. Her hands trembled when still, yet became perfectly steady when holding a blade, a vial, or a page of forbidden lore. She received Kane beneath a sealed cellar where the stones had been marked with the sign of the Fly in lampblack and old blood. She looked upon him once and told me afterward that ambition clung to him like perfume.

Mother Vaelra did not seduce with softness. She despised softness. She asked Kane what he hated most. He answered with courtesy at first, naming enemies of the city, disorder, cowardice, and those who betrayed trust. She struck him across the face so sharply that I reached for my dagger before remembering myself. Kane did not retaliate. He merely touched the mark upon his cheek and looked at her with colder eyes. She asked again what he hated most. This time he answered, "Being used by those who call it love." Mother Vaelra smiled then and called him honest enough to begin.

From that night forward he descended when he could. Never often enough to draw notice, never at the same hour twice, never by the same stair if an alternative could be found. He learned quickly. He had the discipline of a man trained in command and the hunger of a man denied the command he believed owed to him. He studied our passages beneath the city. He listened to reports from agents hidden among carters, priests, gravediggers, scribes, laundresses, and guards. He came to understand what Qeynos had refused to believe, that beneath their glorious order lay a second city made of secrets, resentment, filth, hunger, and old stone.

Do not mistake me. Kane used me as I used him. I knew it then, though desire is a candle one often lets burn even after the smoke stings the eyes. There were nights when he seemed almost tender, and perhaps in some narrow chamber of his heart he was. There were mornings when he departed before dawn and did not look back. He sought knowledge beyond me, authority beyond me, and eventually women and men within our ranks whose stations granted him greater access. Some would expect me to write that I wept, raged, or clawed at the faces of my rivals. I did none of these things. Jealousy is a child's fever. I had served a greater infection.

I was grateful to have known him intimately for as long as I did. His mind was a blade drawn slowly from a velvet sheath. He could flatter a council elder while arranging that elder's ruin. He could stand before Qeynos wearing the face they had fashioned for him, all discipline and inherited honor, then descend below to sit among us with that mask laid aside. He did not become one of us in a single night. No, the court records shall say otherwise because simple stories soothe simple minds. The truth is richer. Kane Bayle belonged to us long before the city knew enough to fear him.

For years he steeped himself in our lore. While his family offered him duties shaped more like restraints than honors, he read the histories they would have burned. While Antonius received admiration like sunlight, Kane took nourishment from deeper soil. While Qeynos praised his outward service, he gave us knowledge of inner weakness. There were plans, maps, messages, warnings, moments when a patrol turned aside from a place where our brethren were gathered, moments when a sealed door was found open, moments when a suspicion died in committee because Kane knew which voice to silence with courtesy and which to inflame with pride.

He was not alone in aiding us, though his name now bears the weight because noble blood makes a finer scandal. Many hands served the Plague Lord in those days. A baker who marked loaves to signal watch changes. A clerk who misplaced warrants. A mason who left stones loose in a passage beneath a chapel. A midwife who carried messages in bundles of clean linen. A priest's assistant who copied temple inventories so that medicines and reagents might be turned toward holier work. A captain's groom who listened while saddles were cinched. Qeynos fell open not because one man betrayed it, but because many souls within it already knew its purity to be false.

Then came the War of Plagues, and with it the hour when secrets ripened.

There had been sicknesses before, of course. There are always sicknesses, creeping through alleys, slums, barracks, nurseries, and courts with equal patience. Yet the war was no mere season of fever. It was revelation armed. Pustules bloomed where arrogance had once shone. Coughs became hymns in houses that had forbidden our prayers. The strong found their knees. The beautiful watched mirrors become enemies. The priests of healing raced from bed to bed, pouring prayers and potions into bodies already claimed by truth. Panic moved faster than any courier. Doors were barred. Fires burned in the streets. The city began to smell like honesty.

We were positioned beneath Qeynos when the great strike came. Through the buried ways we moved, carrying vials, blades, scrolls, powders, and relics kissed by sacred filth. Kane's warnings had guided us away from the heaviest watches. His knowledge of battle plans allowed us to choose routes the Guard believed sealed or useless. He advised where panic would draw soldiers away, where bells would be rung, which officers would hold position and which would chase rumors like dogs after scraps. Above, Qeynos saw only confusion. Below, we saw design.

I remember the sound of the city during those hours. It was not one sound, but many braided together, bells, boots, shouting, coughing, crying, wheels over stone, doors slamming, horses screaming, commanders cursing, priests chanting, and somewhere beneath it all the soft, steady drip of water in old tunnels. That dripping seemed louder to me than all the uproar above. It was the measure of time, patient and indifferent. Men were dying. Plans were unfolding. Houses were being searched. Blood was being spilled. Yet water fell, drop by drop, as it had before Qeynos rose and as it shall when Qeynos is dust.

We nearly had them.

Let that be written again.

We nearly had them.

There came a moment beneath the city when I believed I could feel Qeynos weakening above us. Not in metaphor, not in prophecy, but as a body weakens when fever takes hold. The stones themselves seemed warmer. The air moved with a sickly pulse. Reports came that districts were sealed against one another. Patrols had broken formation. Accusations flew among captains. Families of rank demanded protection. Common folk demanded answers. The temples overflowed. The Guard, those proud ornaments of civic virtue, showed cracks enough for roots to enter. We had not yet extinguished the candle, but our fingers were upon the wick.

Then came failure, which is another name for the impatience of fate.

Some among us moved too soon. Some trusted fear to do the work of discipline. Some delighted in slaughter when silence would have served better. The Qeynosians, for all their blindness, were not without teeth. The Knights of Thunder rallied. The Priests of Life poured themselves into the work of containment with a devotion I almost admired. Houses were searched. Doors were broken. Tunnels were flooded or sealed. One route Kane had promised would remain open became a killing ground when a patrol returned earlier than expected. Whether by chance, betrayal, or divine interference, I do not know. I know only that men and women I had known for years died in darkness without song.

I killed my first pursuer near a stair beneath the market quarter. He was young, scarcely older than some of the serving boys who once carried trays at the house where I sang. His sword shook in his hand. He told me to yield in the name of Qeynos. I laughed because he sounded as though he were reciting lines taught by a drillmaster. He lunged poorly. I stepped aside and opened his throat with a little curved blade that Mother Vaelra had given me. His eyes widened in surprise, not at pain, I think, but at the discovery that his city had not made him immortal. He fell quickly. I stepped over him and kept moving.

Do not search these pages for remorse. Remorse is another luxury of those who believe they could have chosen a cleaner path without losing what mattered. I slew my own family before the end. Yes, let that be written plainly, for Qeynos has whispered it already and made of it a chain they think shall drag my head low. My mother would have delivered names to the priests had she known them. My elder sister had married a guardsman and would have raised alarm. My father, old but stubborn, stood in my way when I came to reclaim what had been hidden in his workshop years before. Blood is not sacred merely because it is shared. Purpose is sacred.

The family is the first temple in which weakness is taught. A child is told to love because of birth, to obey because of age, to forgive because of relation, to carry the dead weight of affection long after it has curdled into obligation. Bertoxxulous freed me from that little altar. I did not hate them when I ended them. Hatred would have granted them too much dominion over me. I acted because their lives had become obstacles to the work. A surgeon does not weep over gangrene. The blade falls because the body must be preserved. My body was the cause, and so the diseased limb was cut away.

They captured me in the third night after the lower sanctuaries were broken. I had taken refuge in a storeroom beneath a tanner's yard, with two wounded brethren and a satchel of records wrapped in oilcloth. One died before dawn, whispering prayers through lips cracked black with fever. The other begged me to end him before the Guard entered. I granted that mercy. When the door finally splintered, I had burned most of the records and hidden what little mattered within a wall niche behind a stone whose mark only our faithful would know. They found me seated beside the ashes. Captain Aldren Varos, may flies nest sweetly in his eyes, ordered me bound alive.

The trial was swift because the verdict had been decided before my name was spoken. They brought witnesses. Some lied, some told partial truths, some repeated rumors and were praised for courage. The magistrate wore a face of grave sorrow, as though it pained him to condemn me. I would have respected him more had he smiled. Kane's name hung over the proceedings like smoke from a pyre. They asked what I knew of him. I told them he was greater than they understood. They asked whether he had betrayed Qeynos. I told them Qeynos had betrayed him first. They struck me for that, but pain is a poor editor.

Kane's own trial, I am told, became a feast for the righteous. The Bayles had to make a shape of him that preserved their pride. Thus he must be deceived, corrupted, manipulated, ensnared by wicked influences, made into a warning that did not implicate the house that formed him. How convenient. How beautifully false. They cannot bear the thought that one of their own might have looked upon their shining city with clear eyes and chosen the rot beneath it. They cannot bear that Kane was not stolen from them. He walked away from them, step by step, guided not by blindness but by recognition.

My Kane was never the blind fool their histories require. Even when he seemed to toy with me, even when he let my hand rest upon his and allowed me the sweetness of believing myself huntress rather than hound, he already knew what he desired. He desired significance no council could ration. He desired knowledge no temple would license. He desired vengeance shaped not as a tantrum, but as architecture. I gave him passages. Others gave him doctrine. Mother Vaelra gave him the severity he needed. He took from each of us what he required and left lesser attachments behind. That is not folly. That is strength, however cruelly it cuts those who admire it.

Now they have set the gallows where we may see it from the barred windows of the prison. There is a narrow slit in the wall high above the cell floor, and through it I can glimpse part of the square when I stand upon the stool they gave me in mockery, perhaps imagining I would use it to rehearse my hanging. The wood is new. The scaffold smells of sap, pitch, and rain. Men worked all morning upon it, hammering as though constructing a shrine. In a manner, perhaps they were. Qeynos worships order, and public death is among its sacraments.

The prisoners around me do not all meet the sight with equal courage. Some pray. Some curse. Some bargain with gods who did not prevent their capture. One man, who wore the sign of the Fly only when it profited him, wept until his throat gave out. Another scratched at the mortar until his fingernails split. I do not despise fear in all its forms. Fear is natural. Even animals know the shadow of the hawk. What I despise is fear disguised as repentance. If one has served only until service becomes dangerous, one has not served a god. One has rented a costume.

I stand beside the barred slit whenever they raise their eyes to see me. My spine remains straight. My head remains high. Let the guards look. Let them carry stories back to their captains that the woman in the crimson rags does not tremble. Let the priests hear it and be troubled. Let the citizens whisper that some Bloodsabers go to death as brides go to wedding chambers. Shame is a garment woven by others, and I have no use for it. They may strip me, beat me, bind me, feed me carrion, curse me, and parade me. They cannot make me ashamed.

I shall miss certain pleasures of life. I am no liar in this. The flesh is not worthless merely because it is temporary. A cup of dark wine, a warm room after rain, the hush that falls upon a tavern when the first note of a song is rightly struck, the weight of a lover's attention, the cleverness of a secret carried under the tongue, the laughter that rises when one has successfully deceived a fool, these things have their savor. Bertoxxulous does not demand that His servants pretend the world is flavorless. He teaches only that flavor fades, and in the fading lies the deeper sacrament.

One pleasure visited me even here, as if the Lord of Disease wished my last night to contain a jest.

The guard assigned to watch me was once a patron of my singing days. His name is Jorlan, though in those days I called him brave Jorlan when his purse was full and dear Jorlan when I required him foolish. He had a wife with pale hair and anxious eyes, two children, and a habit of swearing he came to the tavern only because the noise eased the burden of service. He would sit near the side wall, not bold enough to command attention, not humble enough to leave before I had sung at least once in his direction. I remembered him by the scar near his thumb and the way guilt made him generous.

He knew me when they dragged me past him. Recognition struck his face like a thrown cup. For three days he tried to behave as if memory had not opened beneath his feet. On the fourth, he lingered after the other guards had gone. On the fifth, he spoke my old tavern name. On the sixth, he offered me freedom in exchange for a favor he had no courage to name plainly. How the world curls upon itself. There he stood, clad in the authority of Qeynos, keys at his belt, lust and fear wrestling behind his eyes, offering treason not for Bertoxxulous, not for truth, not for vengeance, but for one more taste of a fantasy he had cherished in secret.

I let him enter.

Of course I did.

Not because I intended to flee. Flight would have been wasteful, and Jorlan was not competent enough to carry it through. I let him enter because weakness should be allowed to ripen before it is plucked. He whispered that he could lead me through a service passage. He said there were still men who owed him favors. He said the gallows need not have me. I looked upon him as I had looked upon so many men before, until his voice faltered and his hands shook. A person need not wield magic to command the weak. One must only know the shape of their hunger.

We were discovered before he could decide whether his desire was stronger than his terror. I had arranged it so. The guard who found us shouted. Jorlan collapsed to his knees before anyone touched him. He confessed to intentions I had barely encouraged and denied intentions so clumsily that the denial damned him. They stripped him of his belt and placed him in the cell across from mine. He has been crying for hours. At times he pleads with me to tell them he was bewitched. At times he curses me. At times he begs Rodcet Nife to forgive him. I have given him no answer. His tears are answer enough.

The fool.

Yet I bear him no hatred. He is merely Qeynos in one small body, all discipline on the surface and appetite beneath, all law until longing arrives, all virtue until tested by a locked door and a remembered song. In him I see the city more clearly than I did from any stage or tunnel. Qeynos is not false because it sins. All things rot, and all creatures are vulnerable to desire, terror, hunger, vanity, and grief. Qeynos is false because it refuses to know itself. It heaps its corruption into hidden chambers, calls those chambers exceptions, and declares the house pure.

The Bloodsabers know better.

We do not hide the rot. We crown it. We study it. We ask what it may teach and how it may be directed. The Qeynosians think a plague is evil because it does not respect their boundaries. Yet neither does truth. A fever passes from beggar to noble without asking rank. A wound festers beneath silk as readily as beneath rags. A corpse in a royal tomb swells no more elegantly than a thief in a ditch. Bertoxxulous is hated because He cannot be bribed by station. His scriptures are written in every body, and every body eventually becomes legible.

Tomorrow, when they lead me forth, I shall look for the gallows and then beyond them to the faces gathered below. I know already what I shall see. Some will be hungry for spectacle. Some will be frightened and call their fear justice. Some will have lost kin in the War of Plagues and will believe my death a coin paid toward their grief. Some priests will stand near enough to be seen, yet far enough that no spittle from the condemned may strike their robes. The hangman will avoid my eyes if he is wise. If he is foolish, I shall bless him.

Perhaps they will ask for final words. Perhaps they will not, fearing that a Bloodsaber's tongue may sow sickness even at the scaffold. If they grant me speech, I shall not waste it begging. I shall remind them that every breath they spend cheering me is one breath nearer their own end. I shall tell them to embrace their children, for children die. I shall tell husbands to hurry home, for wives grow cold. I shall tell priests to polish their altars well, for dust has patience. I shall tell the Bayles that their tombs are not sealed against consequence. If they silence me, the silence shall speak the same.

I know where I shall go.

Not to the bright gardens promised by gentle priests. Not to some clean hall where ancestors sit in peace pretending blood was never spilled for inheritance. My path descends. I feel it beneath me even now, as if the stones under this prison have become thin as old parchment. I shall be assigned below, to the catacombs, to the tombs of the Bayle line, to the hidden ways where old bones keep counsel in dust. They despise Kane now, yet blood and politics have their own ceremonies. They shall bury him among those who scorned him, because noble houses would rather imprison a disgrace within the family crypt than admit he belongs elsewhere.

I will follow.

Death shall grant me what life denied. In flesh I had hands, voice, beauty enough to open doors, cunning enough to turn glances into weapons, and faith enough to endure. In death I shall have patience. I shall have hunger untroubled by the body's little needs. I shall move where memory festers. I shall whisper through cracks in tomb walls. I shall teach the worms to arrange themselves in signs. I shall wait beside Kane's resting place, whether he greets me as beloved, tool, sister, servant, or inconvenience. The title matters little. We served the same rot. We drank from the same hidden well.

Let the Bayles seal their tombs. Let priests march with censers. Let knights stand watch outside mausoleum doors and tell one another that the dead are quiet. The dead are never quiet. They speak in inheritance, in disease, in fear passed from parent to child, in family secrets that sour with age, in names carved upon stone until weather eats the letters. Kane shall not be ended by burial. I shall not be ended by rope. The Bloodsabers shall not be ended by trials, pyres, flooded tunnels, confiscated texts, and songs rewritten by victors. We shall wait beneath the city because beneath the city is where all truths eventually settle.

If any faithful soul finds this testament, know that I died unrepentant. Know that the gallows did not frighten me. Know that Qeynos, in all its splendor, is more fragile than it appears. Its strength depends upon forgetfulness. It survives because its citizens forget the bones beneath their roads, the lies beneath their vows, the hunger beneath their laws, and the sickness beneath their skin. Teach them remembrance. Teach them with fever, with whisper, with scandal, with opened tombs and spoiled wells, with the collapse of trust between husband and wife, captain and soldier, priest and patient, ruler and blood. A city that knows itself cannot remain holy in its own eyes.

Do not mourn me. Mourning is for those who believe absence is defeat. I go ahead, that is all. I go where the corridors are older, where the air is colder, where the dead have more patience than the living. I go to my Lord not as a child begging comfort, but as a servant awaiting further command. If He grants me form, I shall use it. If He grants me only a whisper, I shall whisper until stone remembers. If He grants me only dust, I shall become dust in the lungs of Qeynos. Nothing is too small to serve decay.

The candle has burned low again. I lit it anew after Jorlan was dragged away, for the act pleases me. Wax pools around its base like pale fat. The wick bends, blackened at the tip, stubborn in its little labor. Soon it shall fail. Soon the guards shall come. Soon dawn shall climb over the roofs of Qeynos and discover that I have not spent the night in fear. I can hear Jorlan still, muttering prayers through his sobs. I can hear another prisoner scratching at the wall. I can hear rats in the drain and rainwater descending through some hidden channel. Best of all, I can hear wings.

Flies have found the cell.

One rests upon my wrist as I write. Another circles the candle. A third walks along the edge of the bowl in which they left my last meal. Tiny heralds, humble and perfect. The people above recoil from them, swat them, curse them, cover their food and dead from them, yet flies are among the truest priests of the world. They arrive when pretense has ended. They gather where flesh admits its destiny. They do not flatter. They do not judge. They do the work given to them by the great design.

I shall leave this parchment beneath a loosened stone where my fingers have worried the mortar away. The guards searched me, but they do not search darkness well. Their eyes pass over what they do not expect to find. Perhaps the damp will devour these pages. Perhaps rats will nest in them. Perhaps some future servant of the Fly shall uncover them and know that one who came before kept faith until the end. It matters not. Writing is an offering, and offerings belong to the god whether or not mortal hands preserve them.

The wick leans lower.

How bravely it pretends.

I think of Qeynos above, sleeping beneath its towers, dreaming of victory. I think of Kane, wherever they hold him, his mind surely moving even now beyond their chains. I think of Mother Vaelra, if she yet lives, and hope she laughed when she heard how many soldiers died clearing the lower chapel. I think of the men of the Guard who once applauded my songs and later hunted me through the streets. I think of my family, returned now to the truth of soil. I think of the battlefield meat they tossed to me and the guard who gagged to see me eat it. I think of the gallows, standing patient in the square.

Then I think of nothing but Bertoxxulous.

My Lord, receive what is already Yours. Take this body from the rope and give it to rot. Take this name from the mouths of enemies and let it be forgotten if forgetting serves Thee. Take this hatred and refine it. Take this faith and plant it in the catacombs beneath the Bayle tombs, where proud blood lies still and old secrets have not yet finished ripening. Let me return in whatever shape Thou deemest useful. Let me trouble the weak. Let me strengthen the faithful. Let me be fever in the marrow of Qeynos until the city remembers that every wall is already a ruin awaiting its hour.

The flame dwindles.

It trembles once, twice, as though struck by invisible blows.

I lift my hand.

This time I do not pinch the wick. I let it die by its own nature, consumed by the life it spent pretending to possess. The darkness gathers close, tender as a veil. Beyond the bars, a guard calls for the morning watch. Keys ring. Boots approach. Somewhere above, bells begin to toll.

So ends my breath.

So begins my service.