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The day after Goodman Tules' boy was sent off East to the Border Duke's with Mayor Hopvoit's Seal, and Xemvarla with the women and children West to Hollyhock City Hopvoit had friends there, he said. At least one., Derreschston sunk ever more into its new quiet.
The sound of work was no longer heard at the excavation of the old Church, nor the new, nearly built.
The trades that went on at Mart Street, crockery, carpentry, curing and casting, work that were always needed, ceased.
People just waited, measuring grain and water by day, and spending their oil anight.
The quiet was different from when the Ghules came, under the Curacy of Deacon Omer. Then, by day <span class="mu-i"><span class="mu-r">they</span> waited, in cellars, emptied houses, the woods, venturing the streets for blood by night, a hissing, ravenous crowd. But there were ways against them. Methods. They could be drawn and tricked, over and over; outrun if the way was clear. A thick collar, workboots and garden gloves, bought time: to split their heads, spear their hearts. The talismen of the Lady worked, keeping them from entering owned houses; the Prayers of Agunechemba worked, with faith.
But this new quiet was not bayed by either. It had no one method, and kept neither to day or night strictly. It cut necks and spilled bowels, spraying blood in gouted waste, but nary sound, no bodies found.
Those who lived past the first nights grouped together for protection, keeping watch by shifts day and night, always paired and sober. It did not work: those that huddled together vanished alike, with every worthwhile thing taken. It was supposed that they had left secretly without word, though those that remained remained unsure.
Those who took their apparent example trooped out by daylight in determined march for Maratvan Station, the watch of Dwarf Lord Baralt overseeing the Myrmid-Rhean disputed territory. They never reached their destination, and notice was never made.
Those too stricken with a new unaccountable weakness, or by their own cowardice, huddled inside the Mayorate stockade and the new Church in-progress, waiting for help that will never come... in time.
The Shoeturner who lived at the head of town volunteered to break open the Church Armory; the Lady would pardon their trespass, if Love was real. The dismay of their find broke their spirits: empty! The Keepers of the Charity LIED!
Those that had long-nursed a hard-bitten doubt of religion rallied and began to make what they could using the armory forge. Their reward was a devastating report that left blind and deaf whom it did not slay. The faithful hearty Shoeturner died painless; near headless. They were staked, beheaded, thrown in a shallow pit, covered together. There were none left who knew the Rites, not one who believed.
The last of them waited together in the Mayorate, drinking and smoking in Hopvoit's strongroom by candle light, pissing into a large empty barrel in the corner, because no one who went out came back.</span>
