The Silver Tower (The Age of Dawn Book 3) by Everet Martins Page A

too quiet here. Folks yelling, cursing and speaking plain, that’s what men should talk like.
    The people around these parts sat sipping on bright Scarlet Berry wine. Lounging on their small garden plots in front of their oversized houses. The houses here were as big as his Pa’s tavern in Shipton, the Hissing Gooseberry. A fine establishment if you asked him. All of this stuff wouldn’t go with them to the Shadow Realm. That was certain.
    The nobles whispered quietly to themselves, discussing things that were silly tidings in Grimbald’s mind.
    “Can you believe the color she painted her house?” A dainty woman hushed to her overfed husband.
    “It’s atrocious. There must be something wrong with her mind,” the man replied softly.
    But who was he to say what was important? A folk’s interest is but their own. Say one thing for Grimbald, he was big, that was certain. But he also had sharp ears that had served him well over his life.
    “Gia, look at that man!” another dainty hissed to his wife. Grimbald watched the dainty out of the corner of his eye, laughing at him like he was some kind of fool. The wife turned from watching a pair of big Sand Buckeye’s, bulbous plants snapping at each other for a piece of meat. A fine waste of food. There were a lot of hungry people in the lower district, especially outside the city walls.
    She turned her porcelain face towards him, just as Grimbald wheeled his head towards her and let out a growl. She gasped and her arm twitched, launching a blob of wine from her glass onto her frilly shirt.
    Grimbald grinned and snickered to himself. “City folk, too soft,” he said, loud enough so that they could hear. The man in unwrinkled clothing put his glass down with a tink, standing from his chair, trying to do his wife some justice. Grimbald stopped and slowly turned to the man, mouth forming a toothy smile.
    “Why… let’s go, Gia,” The man said with a scowl, guiding the woman by the elbow through the front door of their palace they called a house. Men would build houses as high as the sun if they could figure out how.
    He turned east onto Falcon way and fine construction gave way to buildings with warped window frames, sagging roof lines, and rotting trim. Must be in the right place.
    A merchant wheeled a rickety cart with strings of sausages hanging from the top. The smell of salted meat and garlic filled Grimbald’s mouth with saliva as it came near.
    “Sausage, sir?” the man asked, nose red with sunburn.
    “Couldn’t say no to that,” Grimbald said with a smile. The man looked him up and down and cleared his throat.
    “Perhaps two for you?”
    “Alright, two then. How much?”
    “Three marks,” the man said, cutting a length from a meat strip with a short blade. Tiny black flies buzzed about the cart, landing on meat and the greasy merchant. Grimbald fished the marks from his trousers, careful not to pull out more than he needed to pay. “It was wise to keep your extra marks hidden,” his Pa had always said. The merchant wrapped the sausages in some thin parchment.
    Grimbald counted the marks and dropped them into the merchant’s dirt lined hands. The man’s dark eyes fell upon Corpsemaker strapped to his back and lingered there, giving it the eye.
    “I’m hungry,” Grimbald said. The man smiled, handing him the meat, and stuffing the marks into a belt pouch. Grimbald strode on, finishing the first sausage, licking fat from his lips and moaning at the mouthwatering flavor. Just needs an elixir ale to go with it. He raised the second sausage to his mouth, ready to tear into it when something bumped into his arm, sending it rolling across the ground, gravel covering it on all sides.
    “Damn it!” he yelled, staring as the filthy meat stick came to a rolling stop. There was a lot you could do to Grimbald without making him angry, but messing with his food wasn’t one of those things.
    A man in a white outfit stepped in front of him, short with fire in