Prelude to a Heist: Chapter II - The Pale Baron

There is a castle in the Thornbound Alps, so dark and jagged that it resembles the mountain's peak itself. The natural rock flows up into the curtain wall in a seamless change: a current of midnight water meeting its twin. A traveller would be forgiven for thinking that it was all one formation, but for the crenelations that jut up from the snow like blackened teeth. 

The castle's name is Izolat, and it has visitors.

The Count leans back on his throne. The room is cold, always cold. Pallid sunlight bleeds through penny-thin arrowslits.

"Speak, then," he says. "You have not come all this way for nothing."

All three of the men bear the bands of the Crown: coiled witchmetal torques worn tight around the neck. Their eyes are hidden beneath hoods. The Count has no time for these men. They are ground-walkers, dragging their shrouded bodies into the mountains to act as living mouthpieces for the Witch-King. A pitiful existence. They know nothing of the mountains, to be so close to the sky as to fold it about their fingertips. They know nothing of the cold.

One of the three speaks.

"Count Richmar. I take it you are not unfamiliar with the rumours about the Pale Baron?"

Richmar flicks a speck of dust from the arm of his throne.

"What of him?"

"So you have heard. Sigmund the White is a wanted man across Kastalav. Three nobles in the last three years have been found dead. Same weapon, same method of execution, same circumstances: that being there was no possible way a killer could have entered unseen."

"Yes, yes. You want an explanation? He's a changeling. Or a doppelganger; it makes no difference. He clinks glasses with the elite by day and cuts our throats at night, that's what they're saying. D'you think I'm not safe up here? I can look after myself, thank you." Richmar surveys the King's men through squinted eyes. "Did you really haul your carcasses from Ostadt to the mountains just to deliver a warning?"

A second man speaks.

"Lannoc Veist, a Kapitan of the Ostadt guard, was slain two weeks ago at his table. Throat slashed: a clean cut."

"Good riddance," Richmar says with a shrug. "He was a lecherous old bastard, that one."

The King's man continues as if there was no interruption. "His servants say the only person who had access to him was his steward, but even under torture the man refused to admit a thing. The King wonders why."

"I'm sure the King wonders many things. I, for instance, am wondering what it's like to have quiet in this hall."

"Count Richmar," says the third man. "Did you hire Sigmund the White to assassinate Kapitan Veist?"

"Bleiße," Richmar swears. "You accuse me under my own roof?"

"Kapitan Veist led the raid on Polthagen, a town on your lands."

"True," Richmar admits. "But that doesn't mean -"

"There were a great many deaths. Buildings burned and men, women, children with them. Needless destruction."

"Yes, but -"

"One would be forgiven for assuming the ruler of these lands would want revenge. Especially if that ruler had a history of unscrupulous methods." 

Richmar stands. "I will not have my honour questioned in this manner. Not by the likes of you. Get out, all three of you, or I'll send your tongues back to Ostadt in jewellery boxes."

There is a moment - just a moment - where it seems they will not obey, but after an order like that, the King's men have no choice. They bow curtly and glide from the room. They accused me, Richmar thinks. The King sent them here for a reason. That was no warning - that was an interrogation. 

One man - the one who had questioned him so persistently - lingers. As his fellows reach the door, he draws from the folds of his robe a small scroll, sealed with wax that bears a Starazyk rune.

"If you meet the Baron," says the man, "give him this, and tell him the Konsortium says hello."

And he follows the others from the hall, leaving Richmar alone with the scroll. He pops open the seal and unravels the parchment. When he has finished reading, his anger has given way to glee.

Count Richmar marches down from the dais and through a side-door, down the coiling spiral staircase into the depths of the castle. He reaches a heavy stone door, locked by a key that only he possesses. The lock clunks and the door swings open, revealing a stark cell, rough-hewn on two sides: a dungeon in a mountain. Sat at the table within, hands placed palms-down on the surface, is Count Richmar. A second Richmar, identical in every way, save for the ghoulish pallor of his flesh, the bulge of the eyes, the loll of the head, and the deep red smile carved across his throat, spilling long-dried blood into his doublet.

"Good evening," says the living Richmar to the dead. "I'd really better move you before you start to rot."

And the face of the living Richmar changes. The nose melts away, the hair thins and retracts until only a shiny pate remains, the mouth becomes a slit in a face of smooth white nothing. He studies the dead Richmar, head cocked.

"I can't do this for much longer. They're growing suspicious. And when storms gather in the capital, all of Kastalav feels the rain." He looks down at the scroll in his hand. "Unless..."

A retainer, a young man in black, helps him carry the dead Richmar by the arms and legs up to the battlements. When they hurl the body over like a sack of grain, it falls so far that Sigmund doesn't even hear it land.

"Now," he says to the retainer, wiping his hands. "Tell the servants to prepare a horse. The Pale Baron rides for Gorgarten tonight. There's one hundred thousand kronen with my name on it."