Golden was feeling his age in a peculiarly human way. Just a few years prior he had watched the eastern wall of Rackvidd collapse to the folly of a fruitless rebellion. Construction had already repaired it. There existed now only a certain echo of the battle where Lucius had first become a hero. While workers had toiled, the taverns had flourished, but now they were empty like the sagging udders of a milked cow. They still had bottles of fine wine and liquor, hastily removed of dust when the smell of gold was in the air. He bought privacy for his brooding as much as he bought drinks for the night.

For him, the port city was even older. It held memories scattered across centuries, but mostly it held ghosts of memories. The embrace of wine touched upon the traces left behind by memories lost not to time, but to violence. Though he stretched long through the annals of history, his was a thin string, now fraying and far too much had been snipped off by Anubi in the sunless wastes for a gift he had yet to make good upon.

But, it is a small world we live in, and no privacy is absolute.

He was joined that night by Aria vi Solhart, whom he never suspected capable of leaving the protection of Lucius' guards. The girl had been quiet to the point of traumatized by her ordeal in the capital, but a worse agony ate at her. It was not the fear of being killed but the shame of pity that forged her will anew. A weaker girl would have perhaps wasted away until those around her were forced to intervene, but she had long since been infected by Lucius' vitality.

"Now, I would have thought myself the last person you would ever seek out," Golden said, watching her through half-lidded eyes.

"You were," she answered, tugging the hood of her cloak further about her head as she leaned on the table. "But, you're also the first. I believe you're the only man in the world who can give me what I want."

The mortal angel blew air out his lips and rolled his shoulders. "And what would that be? The boy would give you anything you asked for. You could ask for a city, and he would give it to you."

"If it suited him."

Golden rolled his eyes. "Have you no taste for fancy? You've been a year with Aisha, that should have been more than enough time to pick up some bardic flair. What? What is it you've come to bother me about, which your dear brother wouldn't give you?"

"It's not that he wouldn't give it to me, it's that he can't."

Golden laughed. "His life?"

"Power."

His brow furrowed and he inspected his goblet of wine as well as the half-empty amphora. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he returned his gaze to her. "Are you mad?"

She snarled, her face flushing. "Stigmata! You drunk fool."

At last his eyes lit up and he relaxed back into his seat. "I see, and you think this is something I just hand out? Something I can pull out of my pocket and give away? What am I? Your distant uncle come to buy your affection with a bauble?"

"Look at me," she demanded, lifting the edge of her cloak, revealing the linen dress beneath. "I'm no swordswoman. I'm no alchemist or strategist. I'm certainly no saint. All I am is a walking vulnerability he won't do away with. I've seen the things you and that wizard do. You changed Leomund's stigmata, didn't you? Give me a power that matters! That will at least let me take care of myself!"

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Golden's response was to wave the serving girl back over for a second goblet and empty the amphora into Aria's cup. "Drink, please. For my sanity," he urged and once she had warmed her blood, he said, "What was done to Leomund is not something that can trivially be passed on."

"The Aillish pass divine powers to people, don't they?"

"No, the Aillish kill humans to give their emissaries husks to inhabit. A process I'm quite familiar with, and while I'm not opposed to taking a few decades of youth I doubt you'd want that to happen," he said, eyes roaming across the curves of her body. Having known the corvid for centuries, I can say the thought never genuinely crossed his mind save as a negotiator's threat.

"I'm not asking to be an angel," she said, covering herself once more.

"No, you're just asking to be a killer."

"Aren't you the expert at that?"

He studied her as he finished his drink, his mind working through possibilities in search of an advantage beyond simply alleviating an annoyance. "Suppose I could grant this wish. It would not be free."

"What in this world is?"

"A parent's love for their child," he said with a pained smile. "But, you're hardly my daughter, so that is beside the point. If I give you the power to protect yourself, I'd be giving you the power to kill. You'd have to use it for me. A bit of danger. Commensurate with the strength you'd have. But, it would have to be secret."

She scoffed. "A secret that would get out the moment I used it."

"My price, not your purchase, my dear. By all means, let everyone know you've become a killer. Let your reputation shield you. But, there will be a life you must take for me and that is what must be kept secret."

She wetted her lips. "Someone I know?"

He grinned. "Not at all, but it's someone you will meet. I doubt you'll be friends," he said, ever more teeth exposed by his glee.

He took her out of the city that night. The guards thought nothing of a man of means absconding with a young woman, save for the lies he let them concoct in their own minds. Together they travelled east on a pauper's budget. Coin was never a critical issue, so long as men played cards where alcohol could be purchased. Golden took her to one of the old temples to the Shepherd.

Less than a dozen monks maintained the grounds beneath which was an ancient catacomb. The inscriptions spoke of a war whose glory was long ago forgotten, but whose valorous dead were still interred. As ever at such holy places, he took on the role of priest rather than emissary. The monks no longer knew what relic they guarded. They had no protections for the deep-buried crypt and knew no reason to prevent a pious man from roaming the old halls. Somebody had to sweep the webs and refresh the candles and so long as it was him, the monks preferred to keep to their library.

So he took Aria down into the depths to grant her wish.

She entered the catacombs with a hint of guilt, a bite to her lip. Not just because she still knew not what she had bargained for, but because the remote temple was one of many isolated places her family should have governed. She hadn't even known it had existed there between the civilized lands of southern Vassermark and the desolate fields of Giordana. And yet she delved down and watched as Golden broke the old tablet from the wall. He extracted a box too small to even hold ashes of the dead.

He had told her it was the power she had asked for, but she had expected something like the reaping blade Lucius had recovered for Acheliah. What he held up was as though the thorned stem of a rose, wrought from black iron. Had she the sight for the will of the world, it would have been blinding. By candlelight it reminded her of nothing more than a letter opener. "And what am I to do with that?"

"With this, you will kill an angel for me," Golden said as he turned the small blade over in his hand. It was familiar to him. He had been the one to craft it long ago.

"I asked for a stigmata, not a weapon," Aria said, advancing on him.

His response was to stab it into her chest. His blow was swift, the relic parting her flesh faster than pain could register. She merely stumbled and he seized her by the brooch of her cloak to pull her in. Before she could open her mouth to speak he had forced it into her heart and through to her lung. Her eyes wide, she coughed blood. Hands weak, she still seized him by the collar of his coat. She was reaching for her own dagger when strength failed her.

The former angel caught her as she collapsed to her knees, but he did not speak. It was not his voice that began to whisper in her mind before darkness took her away.

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