The bats were heading for their roosts when Tristo Arpin and his sons arrived at the Red House.

The hour before dawn was a moment of pause in the cheerfully corrupt and deeply superstitious city of Kota Gelangi. Even the hardest-drinking miners had staggered home, and the politicians and gossip-mongers were yet to rise from their beds. As Tristo bumped a handcart over the cobbles of Rua Capitolana, lamps winked out and wings fluttered above, swarming in clouds as dense and black as a gathering storm.

It still amazed him that thousands of bats could vanish by the time the sun struck the gold cupola of Angel Tower, squeezing into hidey-holes until night fell again. Any crevice would do — chimneys and gables, behind shutters, even in the hollows of statues.

Tristo held the bats in high regard. They provided his livelihood, which was removing the guano that splattered Liberty Square. His sons, who were a great disappointment, called it shit-scraping. Tristo liked to remind them that there were worse ways to earn a living, just ask the poor souls who toiled in the mines.

The three men paused before the steps of the popular assembly. Everyone called it the Red House for its brick façade. Directly across the square sat the limestone offices of the gossip-mongers, whose broadsheets could be relied upon to deliver scandals, sexual indiscretions, and the crimes of the day, preferably violent.

“Like feuding housewives eyeing each other over a laundry line, eh?” Tristo chuckled.

He made some variant of this joke almost every day. Gravi and Gil, his black-haired sons, swapped a pained look and set to work, filling buckets from the fountain at the center of the square. Tristo let them do the heavy hauling and began to sweep. The bat droppings looked like dark brown seed pods. They accumulated the thickest around the makeshift shrines where people left overripe bananas, figs, and melon to appease the Sinn.

The bats ate most of the offerings but not all. As the temperature rose, rotting fruit and guano made a pungent combination. Gravi and Gil tied scraps of cloth across their noses. Tristo whisked the piles near gutters, and his sons washed them down into the sewer gratings.

For a while, the rhythmic sluice of water and scrape of stiff bristles on stone were the only sounds. In the gray light, Tristo’s broom caught a paper idol blown from one of the shrines—a sinuous form with painted blue scales and bit of scarlet felt glued to its mouth. For a tongue, he supposed, or flames.

He was a city man and had never seen a Sinn. Prayed he never would. In his grandparents’ time, the draconic monsters had burned large swathes of Kota Gelangi. After a vicious battle, the witches had pushed the Sinn back to the Zamir Hills, a day’s journey by riverboat. The creatures never returned to the capital, but they still plagued the mines, and people feared and worshipped them in equal measure.

Tristo picked up the soggy idol and returned it to the nearest shrine. He knew it was just paper, and he never left offerings himself, but… best to be respectful with such things.

Lights winked on in the offices of the gossip-mongers, who were always the first to arrive at work. In the crooked lanes around the square, shop gates clattered open, the scent of sesame cakes floating on the breeze. The bats disappeared. Just another day, same as a thousand before.

Tristo pushed his broom across the plaza, watching dirty water swirl toward the gutter. At last, he straightened, arching his back to ease the stiffness. As his gaze drifted upward to the copper dome of the Red House, he noticed something dangling from the spire. Something that hadn’t been there yesterday.

Tristo shaded his eyes, squinting at the object. On holidays, the provincial flag of Satu Jos would fly from the dome, a flame rising from a forge encircled by iron ingots. But it was not a holiday, and this was no flag. As he stared, a crow landed on it. Then another.

“Finish here,” he said, thrusting the broom into his eldest son Gil’s hands. “I’ll be back.”

“What is it?” Gil asked, but Tristo was already crossing the square. The night watchman had worked there for two decades and Tristo knew him well. He went around back and knocked on a door with a brass plaque that said Mail & Deliveries.

It was answered by an elfin, balding man in a blue jacket that was buttoned crookedly. “Arpin,” he said in surprise. “Do you need to use the necessary room?”

“No,” Tristo replied. “But something has caught upon the spire.”

Dimas cupped a hand around his ear. “Did you say caught fire?”

The watchman had been going deaf for years, but his nephew was a delegate’s aide and made sure he kept his job. Tristo repeated himself, speaking slowly so Dimas could read his lips.

“Is it a bat?” Dimas asked, looking worried now. Bats were a protected species in Kota.

“Not a bat,” Tristo said firmly. “Bigger.”

The watchman stood aside. “Arpin, you’ll come with me to check, won’t you?” He winced. “My knees.”

Tristo didn’t want to. Surely it was just an empty flour sack, or perhaps a large paper idol caught by the wind. Yet the shape of the thing bothered him. And the way it didn’t move in the wind, as if it was heavy.

No, he didn’t much care to take a closer look, but Dimas was blinking at him hopefully, so Tristo came inside. The corridor smelled of expensive carpets and polished wood. Dimas led him past smiling portraits of past consuls. They reached a nondescript door and beyond it, a winding staircase that spiraled upward through the heart of the building.

“A long climb,” the watchman warned, lighting a lamp.

Tristo’s legs already ached from hours on his feet, but morbid curiosity pulled him forward. They ascended in silence, breath puffing. Through narrow windows, he glimpsed the awakening city—coaches and carts rolling down avenues, smoke rising from kitchen chimneys, shrines coming alive with morning supplicants.

The stairs seemed endless, and they paused several times to rest. At last, they emerged onto a landing with a door leading outside.

“The dome gallery,” the watchman explained, unlocking the door with a key. “Mind your step.”

A narrow railed walkway encircled the copper dome. The cool morning air was a welcome relief after the stuffy staircase. Kota Gelangi spread out beneath them, stone and terra cotta broken by green parks and a muddy brown ribbon of river. On another day, Tristo would have marveled at the view. But his eyes were drawn upward, to the spire that rose another twenty feet above them. And to what hung from it.

For a few seconds, he could not make sense of what he was seeing. Then Dimas was noisily sick, startling the crows. They exploded upward with raucous protests. When Tristo saw what they had perched upon, what they were doing, his stomach own twisted, bile rising in his throat.

“Travian’s bones,” he breathed.

The naked man faced the sky, eyes half open, skewered through the chest by the spire’s point. A heavy gold chain of office had been looped several times around his neck, but it was impossible to tell if that was what had killed him. The thought that he might have been alive when he was hoisted upon the spire made Tristo tear his eyes away, pressing a fist to his mouth.

“We must inform the authorities,” Dimas said weakly. “The vice consul, the witches…”

Tristo nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He stumbled back towards the stairs, Dimas following. By the time they stepped outside, the square was already filling with gawkers. As Dimas went to fetch help, a group of smartly dressed gossip-mongers came running over, notepads in hand, shouting over each other.

“Is that what it looks like?”

“Who’s up there?”

“Hey, you clean the square every day, don’t you?” A big phony smile. “I remember you!”

Tristo regarded the eager group. Not one had ever glanced his way before, let alone bid him a polite good morning, though he recognized most of them. He drew a steadying breath as his sons reached his side. Gil whispered in his ear, and Tristo nodded. It was a terrible thing, but such opportunities came once in a lifetime.

“How much will you pay for my story?” he asked.

A spirited negotiation ensued. The winning offer, from Kota Confidential, was more than six months’ wages. Tristo tucked the dragha banknotes into a pocket of his apron and followed the scribbler to the edge of the crowd. She had shiny black hair and a stain on her cream-colored blouse.

“Spilled my kopi,” she said when she noticed Tristo looking. “First off, do you know who it is?”

Tristo nodded. “The dead man is Consul Barsal Casolaba. I saw the chain of office.”

The notepad dropped to her side. Her eyes widened, drawn past his shoulder to the spire. “Three fucks to the wind! Murder or suicide?”

“He was naked and impaled upon the Red House spire, so I would say murder.” Tristo wondered if he should have asked for more money. The other scribblers were casually drifting closer, pretending not to listen.

She made a shooing motion at them. “Get lost, I paid for an exclusive.” She waited for her rivals to slink away, then turned back to Tristo. “What else? I need details. My readers want to know everything.”

He swallowed, voice sinking to a whisper. “The worst part… Well, his eyes were burned from the sockets as if he’d seen the Great Serpent herself!”

Dark Bringer comes out in August 2025. Stay tuned for more chapters next week!