Excerpt

PROLOGUE

Tuchera had never been so exhausted in his life. Or so happy.

For months, he'd been trying to find landscaping work. Back home in Barlin—before the fire, obviously—he'd had his own landscaping company with fifteen employees. The nobility of the city-state—most of whom lived in the hilly region of Timnor Heights—were always after him to fix up their gardens and the make the outside of their mansions look anywhere from presentable to fabulous. Tuchera had gained a strong reputation for giving clients what they asked for and also, most importantly, for sticking to his estimates.

Then came the fire.

Like so many of his fellow Barlin natives, Tuchera had been forced to move his family away. Both their home and their business were so much ash and smoking dust now. Tuchera's oldest son, Mairo, was killed. His wife, poor beautiful Migda, had a perpetual cough that could only be ameliorated by healing potions they could no longer afford.

In Barlin, Tuchera had owned a large house in the middle-class district of Barlin. All three kids had their own rooms, and Migda had a craft room where she could sew her tapestries. Now, Tuchera, Migda, and their remaining children, the twins Hamno and Voro, were crammed into a single room in the Albinton region of Cliff's End. Tuchera had found odd jobs here and there, but nothing in his actual skill set. Migda's continuing cough made it impossible for her to work, and the twins were still too young to earn a living at anything. Tuchera had made barely enough to feed, clothe, and house them in their tiny living space.

Which was why he had been so grateful for Gedling.

Gedling lived in the small house next door to Tuchera and his family. He was also a landscaper, and he'd been working a job in Cliff's End's upper-class district, remodeling the garden of the Fansarri mansion. Tuchera was envious of the work, and Gedling had admitted that he'd been lucky to get the job. He'd even offered to see if Tuchera could be added to the crew, but there were no positions open.

Tuchera hadn't even been sure he wanted that. He had run a landscaping company, and a part of him had felt that being one of the menial workers doing landscaping was beneath him.

It was Migda who pointed out to him that the work he was doing was even more beneath him than that. He'd been loading crates on the docks, delivering packages in the middle-class neighborhoods, running errands for the taverns in the lower-class sections of the city-state. Once, he even did some cleanup work in Jayka Park, which he could almost convince himself was similar to landscaping.

So when Gedling came home from work one day saying he wasn't feeling well, and could Tuchera take his shift for the next two days? Tuchera instantly said yes.

The hardest part the first day was not trying to manage the landscaping. The Fansarris had their notion of how they wanted their lawn and garden to look very precisely worked out. In Tuchera's professional opinion, the master landscaper—a very tall human named Fulban—was showing very little imagination.

However, by the day's end, he had had brief encounters with both Sir Boslin and Lady Elmira, and then he understood. He'd had clients like these two. The lack of imagination shown by Fulban was a direct result of the very explicit instructions given to him by the Fansarris.

At the beginning of the second day, Fulban approached Tuchera. "You did very well yesterday. If I'm honest, you're better at this than Gedling."

"Thank you, sir." He hesitated, then decided to throw in all his coins, as it were. "I actually ran a landscaping business in Barlin."

Fulban frowned down at him. "What's your name again?"

"Tuchera."

"I know your work! I travelled to Barlin for a family wedding two years ago. You did the Zerbenig Atrium, yes?"

Thrilled to be recognized, and even more thrilled that Fulban had seen the atrium in question, he proudly said, "Yes, that was me."

"That was stellar." Fulban's face then fell. "You got caught in the fire, I take it?"

Tuchera just nodded.

"I think I can justify adding you to the payroll, so you can keep coming back after Gedling gets better. I can't guarantee you anything more than what you're doing as a laborer, but—"

"That's fine," Tuchera said quickly.

By the time he finished the second day, he was exhausted. He was in better physical shape now than he had been back in Barlin, particularly with all the manual labor he'd been doing. But those other jobs had been an hour or two at a time, not an entire day's worth of physical activity, and after two days of it, he was wiped out.

But still, he had an actual job in his actual field! Despite his exhaustion, he walked happily down Meerka Way and turned onto Boulder Pass, which would bring him to Albinton.

The neighborhood had been created specifically to handle the influx of refugees from Barlin following the fire. Lots of people called it "New Barlin" for that reason, which Tuchera had always found to be silly. That wasn't the name of the section, Albinton was, after the recently deceased lord of the demesne.

He had mentioned this to Migda, who had smiled at him and asked, "Where are you doing this landscaping job again?"

"On Shade Way."

"No, I mean what part of Cliff's End are you working in?"

"The upper-class district."

"You mean Unicorn Precinct?"

Tuchera had let out a sigh. "That's a ridiculous name. I mean, I suppose the Castle Guard uses it, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to."

"But that's the name of the region," Migda had said, pointing out the absurdity of his complaint about "New Barlin."

He'd said nothing in response, and she had another coughing fit, and then they talked about other things.

From what he'd been told, the part of Boulder Pass that intersected with Albin Way—the latter being the road that encircled Albinton—had been a dead end, right at the large boulder for which the thoroughfare was named. Boulder Pass had been reorganized to go around the boulder instead of ending at it, and then intersected with Albin Way.

Previously, the other side of the boulder was the Forest of Nimvale, but a large portion of it had been cleared out by the order of Lord Doval and his mother Lady Meerka, and Albinton built in its stead.

Tonight, as he reached that intersection by the boulder, four people in hobgoblin masks approached him, blocking his way forward. They stood side-by-side on Boulder Pass. One was shorter than the others—probably either a gnome or halfling, he wasn't bulky enough to be a dwarf—while the other three were likely human, though the masks covered their faces and ears, so one or more could've been an elf. While real hobgoblins had orange fur and yellow faces, these masks were in different colors.

"Goin' home, bahrlan?" That was the tallest of them, his voice muffled by the red hobgoblin face that covered his own.

Tuchera closed his eyes and sighed. Bahrlan was a word in Ra-Telvish, the elven tongue, meaning "filthy," but it sounded enough like "Barlin" that it had become a common slur directed toward Tuchera and his fellow refugees over the past few months.

"Please, I don't want any trouble."

"Too bad, 'cause we do," said the very short one, whose mask was green.

Red mask yelled, "Answer the question, bahrlan, you goin' home?"

"I just finished a very long day of work, and—"

"Work?" Another one of them stepped forward, the only one whose mask was the proper yellow color. "How come you get to work?"

"Excuse me?" Tuchera asked, confused.

"I'm from right here in Cliff's End. Born and bred. And I can't find work. How come you can find work, you stupid little bahrlan?"

The last one, whose mask was orange, muttered, "Probably workin' for shit wages."

"Yeah," yellow mask said, "taking work away from the rest of us."

"I'm being paid the same as any landscaper," Tuchera said defensively. In fact, one of the things he most liked about Fulban was that he paid comparable wages to what he himself had paid his workers back in Barlin.

That seemed to get all four of their backs up. Red mask stepped forward and raises his arms, hands clenched into fists.

"Did you say landscaper, bahrlan?"

Tuchera swallowed. "Y-yes. For—for the Fansarri family."

And then, without another word, red mask reached back and punched Tuchera right in the stomach.

All of a sudden, Tuchera found that he couldn't breathe. He doubled over, pain shooting through his entire torso as he struggled to inhale properly.

Then yellow mask kicked him in the shin, causing him to fall to the ground, and then his entire world became a haze of pain and breathlessness as fists and feet collided with every part of his body over and over and over again.

Dimly, he was able to recognize when they stopped, but their ceasing to punch and kick him did nothing to ameliorate the pain.

Tuchera heard voices, but he wasn't sure which was which, especially since they were all muffled.

"Now that we finally got him, can we go home now?"

"C'mon, there's gotta be more bahrlans we can beat up."

"Not with his body laying there. Someone'll be by soon."

"I know someone'll be by soon, that's my point! It's another bahrlan we can—"

"We can't be here when they find this guy's body! Pay attention, will you? Besides, we got our money."

"I agree, let's go."

"Fine."

Their footfalls moved away. Tuchera couldn't tell if they were walking into Albinton or back down Boulder Pass. Not that Albinton was likely, since it was full of what they called bahrlans…

He could no longer feel his legs. Or his arms. Or much of anything else, either. He stared up at the star-filled sky, but found that his vision was also fading.

A voice that seemed infinitely far away was now speaking. "Are you all right, sir?"

"Look at 'im, 'e ain't even close t'all right."

"Try to find a healer."

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me who did this, sir? Sir?"

Tuchera tried desperately to answer the question, but he couldn't make his mouth work.

His last thought before darkness claimed him was of Migda and the twins.