DIRTY CASH (MONEY TALKS)

When In Doubt

The magistrate’s house stood on Fleet Lane, its windows shuttered tight against the storm, though the rain still found ways to whisper through the cracks. Judge Alastair Rendell was known across London as a man of temperance. He drank nothing but weak tea, spoke with measured words, and passed judgment with the gravity of scripture. The pamphlets lauded him as incorruptible. Yet in the shadowed corners of taverns, whispers told another story.

It was said he took coin from merchants who trafficked misery into the rookeries, that he signed warrants not by law but by bribe, and that those who could not pay in coin paid in silence. Rendell’s chambers were lined with papers, not only the records of his trials but ledgers of names never meant for the court.

On a night when the city drowned in thunder, Rendell sat alone in his parlor, his wig discarded, his robe hung upon the wall. He leaned forward toward the fire, though it burned low. The logs hissed. He rubbed his hands together for warmth, but the flames seemed to recoil from his touch.

Then the fire changed. It ceased to crackle. It turned pale, a blue light without smoke, cold to the skin, yet it consumed the logs with unnatural hunger. The judge recoiled, reaching for the bellpull to summon a servant. No servant came.

Upon his mantel lay the bones of small birds, collected from his garden and arranged for ornament. Now they shifted. They aligned themselves upon the stone in two scales, perfect in their balance. The judge cried out, struck the bones with his cane, but they returned to their order with the patience of eternity.

The portraits upon his wall turned their faces inward. Where once proud magistrates and lords looked down in oil and gilt, now only the backs of their canvases showed, as if ashamed to witness what followed.

Rendell tried to flee. The door would not open. The latch turned but the hinges refused. He struck it with his cane, and the wood gave no sound. His own footsteps vanished into silence, as if swallowed.

The blue fire climbed higher, yet gave no smoke. It licked the edges of his docket books, turning ink to ash without heat. Each page burned to dust, leaving only blank parchment that drifted to the floor like tired moths. His own name was last, his signature curling away into nothing.

A pressure filled the room, vast and suffocating. He fell to his knees, gasping. The silence pressed his chest flat against his heart. His lips moved in prayer, but no words formed.

When the servants at last entered in the morning, they found their master seated before the cold hearth. His eyes were wide and glassy. His body bore no wound, but his lips were blackened, as if kissed by soot. Around him lay the remnants of parchment, all blank, every record erased.

Upon his lap was an iron key, tied in black thread, its sigil carved deep into the metal. The servants whispered and crossed themselves. None dared touch it.

The constables who arrived spoke only once of what they saw upon the wall. Above the mantel, where the bird-bones still sat in perfect scales, a word had been written in soot. No hand could have reached so high, and no ladder was found. It read:

Grathok.

That night the taverns roared with tales. Some said he was a spirit of fire, others that he was the hand of balance come to judge the false justices of men. A drunkard insisted he had seen a shadow climb the courthouse steps, pausing only to lift its visor toward the storm. Another claimed the rain spelled words upon the courthouse roof, too vast to read, before vanishing at dawn.

Yet in every retelling the fire remained blue, and the silence heavier than any law.

Chapter V: The Counting of Ashes

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