Tag: 2017
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The High Throne
by James Van Pelt in Issue 66, July 2017 Rudd sat uneasily on the high throne. A line of supplicants with a scroll or basket or bag in hand and an earnest look about them stretched from the dais’s base to the towering oak doors. Terryn, the Lord High Steward, put his hand on Rudd’s…
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Then Will Die Your Pain
by Tom Crowley in Issue 65, June 2017 Sir Garner isn’t a proper knight, just as I’m not a proper squire. There are no knights where Garner comes from, but everyone in the company calls him Sir. And of course I’m too old to be a squire. The other mercenaries say to me, “You’re gonna…
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Every Midnight
by Sandra Unerman in Issue 65, June 2017 The scream frightened everyone in the Duke’s Grand Chamber, even though we expected it. Just before midnight, the musicians began to play at their fastest, so that the circles of dancers spun wildly about. The rattle of dice and the knock of glasses at the side tables…
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A Woman of Means
by James Edward O’Brien in Issue 64, May 2017 “No one’s broken into the athenaeum and made it out breathing. Nobody. Besides, those days are behind me,” he explained. “Bad knees.” The woman rolled an amethyst monocle between her fingers. She plugged the incandescent lens in her eye and studied the pictograms adorning Shanley’s forearms. “You look like…
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Glass Houses
by Melanie Smith in Issue 64, May 2017 The sun’s light fell and dripped, yolk-like, onto the glass spires and faceted crystal domes of the Second City, pooling in golden puddles on the polished eaves of the great sprawl. The city stretched from the shallows of the Night Desert in the east to the Bay…