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preferred to dance around a topic, not discuss it openly. But they did bid, and bid well. By the end of his first circuit of the room, Winsting had to forcibly contain his excitement. No longer would he have to limit his spending. If his brother could—
    The gunshot was so unexpected, he at first assumed that one of the servers had broken something. But no. That crack was so sharp, so earsplitting. He’d never heard a gun fired indoors before; he hadn’t known just how stunning it could be.
    He gaped, the drink tumbling from his fingers as he tried to find the source of the shot. Another followed, then another. It became a storm, various sides firing at one another in a cacophony of death.
    Before he could cry for help, Flog had him by the arm, towing him toward the stairs down to the saferoom. One of his other bodyguards stumbled against the doorway, looking with wide eyes at the blood on his shirt. Winsting stared for too long at the dying man before Flog was able to tear him away and shove him into the stairwell.
    “What’s happening?” Winsting finally demanded as a guard slammed the door behind them and locked it. The bodyguards hurried him down the dim stairway, which was weakly lit by periodic electric lights. “Who fired? What happened ?”
    “No way of knowing,” Flog said. Gunfire still sounded above. “Happened too fast.”
    “Someone just started firing,” another guard said. “Might have been Dowser.”
    “No, it was Darm,” another said. “I heard the first shot from his group.”
    Either way, it was a disaster. Winsting saw his fortune dying a bloody death on the floor above them, and he felt sick as they finally reached the bottom of the stairs and a vaultlike door, which Flog pushed him through.
    “I’m going to go back up,” Flog said, “see what I can salvage. Find out who caused this.”
    Winsting nodded and shut the door, locking it from the inside. He settled into a chair to wait, fretting. The small bunker of a room had wine and other amenities, but he couldn’t be bothered. He wrung his hands. What would his brother say? Rusts! What would the papers say? He’d have to keep this quiet somehow.
    Eventually a knock came at the door, and Winsting glanced through the peephole to see Flog. Behind him, a small force of bodyguards watched the stairwell. It seemed the gunfire had stopped, though from down here it had sounded only like faint popping.
    Winsting opened the door. “Well?”
    “They’re all dead.”
    “ All of them?”
    “Every last one,” Flog said, walking into the room.
    Winsting sat heavily in his chair. “Maybe that’s good,” he said, searching for some glimmer of light in this dark disaster. “Nobody can implicate us. Maybe we can just slip away. Cover our tracks somehow?”
    A daunting task. He owned this building. He’d be connected to these deaths. He’d need an alibi. Hell, he was going to have to go to his brother. This could cost him his seat, even if the general public never discovered what had happened. He slumped in his chair, frustrated. “Well?” he demanded. “What do you think?”
    In response, a pair of hands grabbed Winsting by the hair, pulled his head back, and efficiently slit his exposed throat.

 
    2

    I figure I should write one of these things, the small book read. To tell my side. Not the side the historians will tell for me. I doubt they’ll get it right. I don’t know that I’d like them to anyhow.
    Wax tapped the book with the end of his pencil, then scribbled down a note to himself on a loose sheet.
    “I’m thinking of inviting the Boris brothers to the wedding,” Steris said from the couch opposite the one Wax sat upon.
    He grunted, still reading.
    I know Saze doesn’t approve of what I’ve done, the book continued. But what did he expect me to do? Knowing what I know …
    “The Boris brothers,” Steris continued. “They’re acquaintances of yours, aren’t they?”
    “I shot their father,” Wax said, not looking