The roof breathed. It wasn't the wind. It was a slow, heavy exhalation from the stone itself. Threads of dark, oily miasma rose from the floor and laid themselves along the places my body liked to move, like a dog stretched across the exact doorway you need to walk through. The sky above wasn't a sky at all, only a pale glass ceiling pretending, its edges running into the tower's brass ribs.
He stood in the middle of it, a man in a red coat with working pockets and a sword that had seen hard days. There were no medals on his chest and no show in his stance. He was the kind of man you only notice when something important is already over.
"Arthur Nightingale," he said, as if checking a name off a list.
"Corvane," I answered.
