The Black Chalice had been a bar once.
Grigor wiped the rim of another glass with his rag, watching the stormwater trace crooked veins down the cracked glass do above him. The storm this ti around was a long-lasting one. Rain had been spitting against the panes for the better part of the past two nights, but each impact was muffled by the roar of forty throats that belonged to n and won who’d long since forgotten they were human. Their laughter was coarse and their boasts were heavier than the thunder outside. Bugs in n’s skins, he thought, though they were sothing uglier than bugs.
They were Repossessors.
Six-ard gangsters crowded every table, every stool, every corner of the bar that used to be his, and they drank loudly. Dice clattered on warped tabletops, darts flew nowhere near their boards, and sowhere—always sowhere—a small brawl was breaking out, which he’d have to deal with the fallout of eventually. Always him.
His hands moved slowly as he continued polishing, though the glass was already spotless. He simply wasn’t tending ‘his’ bar anymore. He was tending ‘their’ nest. No common man dared step foot in the Black Chalice anymore—not since Finger Tobias and his vermin had decided the Ossuary Lane was theirs. A year ago, he might’ve had doorwardens to fight back against the hostile takeover, but now he knew better. These new Repossessors were crude, unrefined, and violent beyond belief. They killed his doorwardens a year ago when Lorcawn took over, and since then, Finger Tobias had been running his information division out of the bar.
Grigor lowered the glass. His jaw clenched. He’d owned this place, damnit. Folk once ca here to drown their sorrows, not fester them—
“Oi! Grigor!”
The shout cracked through his thoughts. Six heads swiveled towards him. Finger Tobias and his five goons were sat along the bar counter, and it seed they were finally getting thirsty.
“Another round. One Black Vein for ,” Tobias said.
“I’ll take a Widow’s Draught,” rasped one of his goons.
“Put down for a Gallows Red,” another laughed, tossing a coin that he’d no intention of paying with.
“Nightgrave Bitter,” hissed a third, his spider-limbs scratching impatiently on the table.
“Two Bonefires,” Ivarra, Tobias’ right hand, added with a smirk. She elbowed the fifth goon. “You want a Bonefire too, right?”
“Damn right.”
Grigor gave the faintest nod, his voice a low rumble. “Coming up.” Then he turned around, fingers working the flasks, bottles, and shakers with the sa cold precision he’d once reserved for honest patrons. Glass clinked like rattling chains as he poured the Black Vein—dark as congealed blood—followed by the frothing Widow’s Draught and the crimson Gallows Red.
The scents of smoke, bitter root, and iron filled the air as he set each drink down with grim care, his mind far away from the laughter polluting his bar.
As he worked on the Bonefires, Ivarra slid a folded letter across the counter to Tobias, her eyes narrowed. “Boss. This ca in again.”
“What is it?”
“The letter. Second night in a row. I didn’t think much of it the first ti—figured it was just a brat’s prank—but it just won’t leave us be.”
Tobias snatched the letter with two human hands while his spider-arm drumd against the wood. He tore it open and squinted at the scrawled words before snarling them aloud:
“If you don’t want to die, run.”
His goons erupted in cruel laughter. “What is this joke?” one sneered. “We’ll find the little bastard and peel their limbs off slow,” another chid in.
“Where’d you get it from?” Tobias asked, looking sternly up at Ivarra.
“Doorstep,” she said. “No clue where the ssenger ca from.”
Tobias only grunted, tossing the letter back onto the floor. “Ignore it, then. Focus. We hit the Gulch Pipelines again tomorrow. Big boss wants us to drive the Gulchers deeper into the mud where they belong, so no sense in chasing after so ghost-scribbler.”
One of his goons sighed. “Ain’t that the truth. And once Blightmarch is ours, we’ll be shoulder to shoulder with the Steelborn and the Three-Faces.”
“Which one we gutting first, boss?” Ivarra asked.
“The Three-Faces.” Tobias leaned forward on the counter, cracking his neck left and right. “Word is Bleakhearth’s precious little heiress just upped and vanished a few days. While the whole west ward’s chasing after her skirts, we’ll carve through the clowns’ holdings. After that, we’ll gut the Steelborn and move up to the Fishern.”
“Then we’ll have our blood and gold?”
Tobias nodded. While the others roared approval, Tobias turned to Ivarra with mock gallantry. “So I suppose you’ll have your noodle shop at last, just like you dread when you were a girl.”
Ivarra’s grin glead sharp in the lanternlight. “And you, boss, will have your rcenary company. A nest of killers you can call your own.” She raised her empty glass to his, eyes glittering. “We won’t be dreaming alone, huh?”
The liquor trembled first.
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Grigor caught it out the corner of his eye: a bottle of Black Mire Gin rattling against its shelf though no hand touched it, glass clinking faint as a heartbeat. His frown deepened, a slow wrinkle across his face. Nothing in his bar moved without him moving it. Not unless sothing foul was afoot.
And then the lanterns flickered.
The Black Chalice plunged into brief darkness, drunkards and gangsters suddenly stripped of their noise. For three seconds, maybe four, the only light was the sickly moon bleeding down through the do ceiling, silver washing over sweat-slick tables and half-empty glasses. Boots scraped. tal clicked. Voices muttered low.
Then the lanterns burned alive again.
Grigor’s eyes darted up.
Three ravens. They were black as coffins, perched upon the do, and their beaks were opened wide as they loosed a shrill, tearing screech. It rang like nails dragged across a crypt door. The Repossessors winced. Most of them covered their ears, while others glared up as though to shoot the birds down with curses alone.
Tobias sneered, dragging his stare from the birds to the bar. “This place is rot, barkeep. Get this place new lanterns that ravens can’t poke with, or next storm they’ll all gutter out and leave us alone in the dark.”
Grigor’s tongue itched with the words ‘and who’s paying for new lanterns, you sorry bastard’,but he bit them back, jaw tight. What use was defiance when his wage was a crust and a bone? Instead, he turned to the cabinet, hand stretching for the final bottle he needed for the two Bonefires.
That was when another hand reached past his, grabbing the bottle before he could.
Grigor blinked. He hadn’t heard a step. Hadn’t felt the air shift. But there—suddenly—stood a man beside him, behind his bar, as though the lanterns’ brief death had carried him in from so other world.
Top hat. Black. Walking cane leaning against the counter. A giant canister strapped around his back, and a mask, raven-beaked, covering his entire face.
Grigor blinked again.
The Raven humd softly as he plucked the bottle out of the back cabinet, tipped it into the half-filled glass of the Bonefire, and then lifted the drink to his mouth—before his own mask denied him. The glass tapped against his beak.
“Hurry it up, Grigor!” Ivarra barked. “Where the hell’s our…”
But her words broke apart halfway, dying on the tip of her tongue as her gaze t the Raven’s.
One by one, the rest of the Repossessors in the Black Chalice noticed the new arrival. Their grins curdled. Their laughter drained. The bar fell into a silence thick enough to choke.
The Raven sighed, tilting his head.
“Ah,” he muttered. “Can’t drink with the mask on. Right.” Then he swept all six glasses off the counter—shattering them all at once—before reaching both hands into his coat. “How about I make sothing special instead, then? A drink for everyone. A drink we can all share together.
Steel rasped. Chairs scraped back. Pistols clacked. Blades whispered from their sheaths as Tobias, his five goons, and every Repossessor in the bar rose from their seats, weapons drawn.
Grigor backed away slowly, too, but the Raven drew no weapon from his coat.
Instead, he drew two small flasks and set them on the counter. The first held a pale, milky fluid that glimred faintly under the lantern light. Lysor’s Tears, if Grigor’s old nose didn’t mistake it. The second sloshed with sothing darker, almost black, but threaded through with little veins of red that pulsed like blood. This one had to be a chemical of so kind. No way it was drinkable.
“Now, this is a very cool drink. First, you take this,” The Raven tipped the first flask into an empty glass, and the liquid struck with a hiss like steam escaping a coffin lid, “and then you pour it with this.” He added a careful asure of the dark liquid, swirling the glass so that pale and black bled together. The mixture then foad up in jagged, frothing ridges, red threads writhing like worms until the brew settled into a poisonous green.
“But that’s not all.” The Raven went on, reaching back into his coat to produce a pouch of fine white powder. Grigor didn’t know what that was, either, but the Raven pinched so between his fingers and let it snow into the glass. Instantly the liquid sparked, fizzing with a sickly glow that burned faint lines into the glass.
The Raven chuckled, low and easy.
“Then you stir, then you shake, then you do this, and that, and…”
With a flourish, he slamd the glass down on the counter, and every Repossessor in the bar flinched. The green concoction inside pulsed with light like a beating heart.
“Tada.” His voice rang bright with mockery. “A drink so fine a man can only taste it once in their entire miserable life, and it’s called…”
He paused. Slowly, he tilted his head up, as if gazing through the glass do towards so mory in the black heavens.
“Oh, but co to think about it, Old Banks did ask once about the slowest way to kill a man. I told him of this very drink. It’s called…” He paused again, lingering on the word like savoring an aftertaste. “The Bonechewer.”
With that, the Raven clapped his hands together with sudden, boyish delight, the sound sharp as a pistol crack.
“Two letters I’ve already sent to this fine little den of yours. Two! If you’re all still here, then I must presu you’ve all signed off your wills.” His masked gaze drifted over the packed bar, unhurried, indulgent. “No hard feelings, eh? Most of you are orphans, anyway. No kin, no blood. Not a soul will mourn you if all of you vanish like gutter-smoke tonight, hm?”
He tilted his head, almost playfully.
“So… who’s first to try my drink?”
He flicked the glass forward with a lazy snap of his wrist.
It spun once in the air before striking the ground, shattering.
The liquid inside imdiately ignited into vapor at once—glowing green, hissing like molten glass dropped in water—and it spread out into a dense tide of mist that rolled across the bar. It slithered over tables and boots, swallowing the floorboards in a crawling wave, and Grigor’s eyes stung as the fus bit deep into the air.
The Repossessors staggered back at once, hands tightening around their weapons, fear cutting through bravado.
All but one.
Ivarra snarled and lunged forward with her rust-bitten spear raised high. She drove it forward like a harpoon, aiming to pin the Raven’s chest to the wall behind him, but—
In the sa heartbeat, the Raven unsheathed his bladed cane, and his thrust was clean and rciless.
The blade punched straight through Ivarra’s throat.
Her body jolted to a halt, the spear tumbling from her hands. Blood welled across her collar. She convulsed, gurgling, eyes wide with panic, and slowly—with the last drag of life in her—she turned toward Tobias.
Her trembling lips moved once, forcing out a single whisper through the bubbling blood:
“... Plagueplain Doctor.”
Her knees buckled. She crumpled to the floorboards with a hollow crack, her eyes still fixed open.
And chaos unfolded.
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