Felton was roused from his sleep the following morning by a shriek from outside his window, and before he was fully lucid he had leapt out of bed and dashed downstairs toward the courtyard in his small-clothes. Outside, he found Lucia, the cook’s apprentice, pressed against the manor wall and breathing in rapid, ragged gasps. She pointed toward the guest rooms. The squire felt a pit forming in his stomach as he approached the scene. A man lay outside the room he had assigned Jorfindr. By the sword and broken axe on the ground beside him, Felton placed him as one of the Carvers’ guards, though his face had been mangled beyond recognition.
A chill prickle of gooseflesh spread over his skin as he inspected the body. The man’s chainmail vest had been ripped down the middle, and his chest lay open, its contents removed and discarded carelessly around him. Streaks of blood and viscera smeared the paving stones of the courtyard and the walls of Jorfindr’s room, as though someone or something had wiped the stones down with the mutilated body.
Felton turned away and stumbled back toward Lucia. His mind swam in a haze of confusion and horror, but he had to hold himself together, at least until Hendall arrived. There was no way the Sword could have missed Lucia’s cry; he’d be down momentarily to take control of the situation.
“Go and fetch a sheet,” he said to the terrified girl.
She didn’t react, her gaze fixed blankly on the corpse.
“Lucia! Please, fetch us a sheet, so I can cover up the body.” He took her by the shoulders, and finally she glanced up at him, like a rabbit in a snare. She blinked.
“Yes, Felton, of course,” she mumbled, and took off into the manor house.
Murmuring voices drew Felton back into the courtyard, where a small group of the manor staff was gathering, attracted by the scream. He shook his head and waved them back. Vera Thorn approached from the far end of the guest hall where she had been lodged, and Felton moved to intercept her.
“What has… Jorfindr, what have you done!?” she cried out as her eyes fixed on the body.
“Master Thorn,” Felton began, holding up his hands as he reached her.
“Out of my way, boy!” She grabbed his wrist and twisted him aside, her grip surprisingly strong for a woman of her advanced years. He bounced into Carill, who had emerged from his own room to join her. The man shoved him off and went to inspect the guard.
Gunter was the last to emerge. When he laid eyes on the body, he lifted a hand to his mouth and turned away. A moment later came the unmistakable sounds of him retching onto the paving stones.
“You son of a bitch,” Carill muttered angrily as he knelt beside the corpse. He charged the door to Jorfindr’s room, only to find that the latch handle had been snapped off from the outside. The Carver pounded heavily upon it instead. “Open this door, Jorfindr!”
Felton frowned, noticing for the first time a pair of deep gouges in the wood beside the broken handle.
“Felt,” Lucia called from within an arched doorway to the great hall. She held out a folded sheet in trembling hands, but did not step past the portal. He trotted over and took the linens from her. She retreated back through the archway quicker than he could blurt out a thank you. The squire turned back to the grisly scene.
“What are you doing?” Thorn snapped as he approached.
He held up the sheet. “Covering him up,” he explained as he unfurled the linen.
“You’ll do no such thing,” the Carver snatched the sheet from his hands and flung it aside. “I am conducting an investigation of this murder scene, and it will not be disturbed.”
“With all due respect, these people don’t need to see—”
“These people,” she cut him off, slashing a gesture at the gathering crowd with her hand, “can mind their own damn selves, boy, as can you! My guard has been vilely murdered, and I will not have some foolish child mucking up my pursuit of justice.”
Felton’s face grew hot. He glanced over at the townsfolk and manor staff, who watched the scene expectantly. Where in all the hells was Hendall?
“We’ll see what the Sword has to say about that.” He aimed for a growl, but shamefully had to admit it came out in more of a mumble. He turned on his heel and marched off to the manor hall, such heat coming off his ears he worried it must be visible.
Once out of sight, Felton took off at a sprint for his master’s chambers. The heavy oak doors were closed; he pounded on one violently to announce himself and then shoved it open and entered.
The Sword and Sigil lay in bed beside each other, sleeping serenely.
“Master Hendall,” the squire called, trying to tamp down his annoyance. A scurrying mouse could wake the Sword from the far end of the manor, but here he was sleeping through a crisis. “Hendall!” he shouted louder when his master did not stir.
“It’s no use, Felt.”
In his haste, he hadn’t noticed Magretta, standing in the far corner where the Sigil had her apothecary shelves and worktable. She was hurriedly rifling through the shelves of ingredients, pulling out armfuls of jars and vials and bundled herbs, and depositing them on the table.
“Are they…”
“They’re alive, at least—they’re breathing very shallowly, but they won’t respond to anything so far.”
“What could cause this?”
“I don’t know, Felt.” She began crushing herbs together in a mortar. “Bring me that water.” The novitiate pointed to a pot boiling in the hearth.
He fetched it and carefully walked it over to the worktable.
“What is happening outside?” she asked. Her voice presented a facade of calm, but her state was betrayed by the worry in her eyes and the slight tremors of her usually steady hands.
“The Guild Carvers put a guard at Jorfindr’s door last night. He’s been killed.”
Magretta looked up sharply, but still tipped the contents of her mortar into the pot. A cloud of moss-green smoke puffed up from the concoction.
“That’s not all. He was… eviscerated. All his insides pulled out.” Felton shuddered involuntarily. “What is that? It smells like feet, or old cheese.”
“Not supposed to smell good,” she muttered as she filled a ladleful of the brew and moved to the bed. “It’s supposed to wake them up. Here, help me with him.”
She handed Felton a small funnel, and he propped up Hendall’s head as she tipped the medicine down his throat. They repeated the process on Wymrea.
“You think Jorfindr murdered the guard like that?” Magretta wrung her hands subconsciously as they waited for a reaction.
“I don’t know,” Felton replied, shaking his head. “He hasn’t come out of his room yet. That big Carver was trying to get in when I left. I don’t think he would do something like this though—he doesn’t seem like the kind of man.”
“We only met him last night,” Magretta pointed out, “it’s not like we really know anything about him, however funny or friendly he may have been.”
Felton shrugged. He didn’t want to believe it could be true, but he had to admit Magretta had a good point.
“Where is the other guard?” she asked after a moment.
“I don’t know,” the squire frowned. “Now that I think of it, I didn’t see him out there.”
“And the dead one’s weapons?”
He shot her a glance. “Next to him on the ground. Why?”
“I think you need to get hold of them before that man Carill does. If this medicine was going to work, it would have happened by now.”
Ice flowed through his veins as he took the meaning of her words. The two of them were on their own.
He nodded and rushed out, but stopped short at the doorway, casting a fretful glance back at his betrothed standing over their mistress and master.
“I’ve more ideas to try, go!” she urged him on. He shut the door behind him and took off toward the courtyard.
Felton was relieved to find the guard’s weapons remained where they had fallen beside him, for the moment ignored; the three Carvers had gathered at the accused’s doorway.
“I’m going to kill you when I get in there,” Carill threatened, kicking the base of the door sharply.
Jorfindr’s reply was muffled and faint from within. “And yet you wonder why I continue to refuse your requests to let you in. Carill, you are truly an intellectual powerhouse.”
Felton knelt and collected the fallen sword. The broken axe he ignored. While perhaps not entirely benign, without its haft the axe head was at least not a terribly effective weapon.
“We’ll just have to break it down, then,” Thorn said. She shook her head at the door. “Gunter, fetch your carving tools.”
“You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, Master Thorn,” Felton spoke up.
The look she gave him teemed with annoyance and dismissiveness.
“I told you boy, this matter doesn’t concern you.”
“A murder in Sol’s house concerns us all,” he countered as she turned away, “and it is by Sol’s laws that justice will be done.”
“Then fetch your master with his magic,” she snapped back at him. “I’m sure he can break down this door rather quickly!”
Felton tightened his grip on the dead man’s sword. He’d never used a blade against another in earnest, and he did not relish the idea. But the texture of the tightly wrapped cord encircling the wooden handle, and the comfortable weight of the tool in his hand, granted him a confidence and composure ingrained through years of training. He stood strong against her scathing gaze.
“Master Hendall is indisposed at the moment, which is why I’ve been sent to take Jorfindr into custody until he is ready to try him.” Felton gulped nervously. Composed or not, still he cringed at how bad his lie sounded.
Thorn fixed him with a hawkish stare.
“Or do you mean to ignore the words of a Sword in his own home?” Felton shot the words in just as Thorn opened her lips to reply. She closed them again and snarled.
“Fine! But we still need to get through this door, no?”
“Move aside, please,” he stepped forward, hoping the three would cooperate. They cleared out of his way, and he breathed an internal sigh of relief. “Jorfindr?” he called through the door.
“Felton, that you?” came the muffled reply. “Fine morning to you, my good man. I hear there has been some manner of commotion and gore to be dealt with out there.”
“More than I cared to see. I need you to let me in now, Jorfindr. We must get to the bottom of what happened last night.”
“See, that’s a fine suggestion, but I would rather the option where I stay safe and alive inside this room until good Hendall and Wymrea have thoroughly plumbed said depths of the investigation and determined my innocence. I assure you, it will not take them long.”
“They are occupied, at present, and will attend to this later,” Felton shot a glance sideways at Thorn and prayed he hadn’t given too much away. “I promise you will be treated fairly.”
“By the gods, Felton—are your masters embroiled in carnal pleasures while my life is on the line? I am loath to interrupt, but in such circumstances—”
“Jorfindr! I am getting to the bottom of this, one way or another. If you are innocent, then you must trust me, and open the door. If you are not, well… I suppose I’ll simply have to let Carill break it down and kill you.”
Felton hung in anticipation upon the pregnant pause that followed. A deep scratching sound came from within, and the door shifted in its frame with a crunch and swung open.
“You make a sound argument, my boy.” Jorfindr stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips. Then he gave a yelp of surprise as Carill’s meaty arms brushed Felton aside and gripped him by the shirt, driving him back into the room.
The squire regained his footing and rushed after Carill. The man had Jorfindr pressed up against the wall by the neck, feet dangling a few inches above the ground. He was turning a shade of purple.
Felton pressed the tip of his sword against Carill’s side to claim his attention. With a disappointed grunt, the Carver slowly lowered Jorfindr to the floor.
“Out!” Felton barked, gesturing to the doorway. “The both of you, as well,” he glared at Thorn and Gunter, who were crowding the entrance.
“He’s a murderer,” Carill growled.
“Says the man,” Jorfindr wheezed through gasps of precious air, “Who just tried to crush my windpipe.”
“I told you we are doing this Sol’s way. That is not Sol’s way.”
Carill begrudgingly left the chamber. His feet crunched through gravel as he crossed the threshold, drawing Felton’s attention and confusion.
“Ah yes, I do apologize about that,” Jorfindr whispered while he massaged his throat. “I needed what bound the stone in order to seal the door last night.”
Felton swung the door halfway closed. On the inside was carved a deep, elaborate runeword, three inches high by at least a foot long. The carving was worn and weathered, as though it had always been a part of the wood—though Felton knew for certain that it hadn’t been there when he gave Jorfindr the room the day before. It stood in contrast to the single fresh scratch that cut through the word diagonally.
A sizable patch of the floor, starting right at the border where the flagstones of the courtyard transitioned into the pavers of the bedchamber, had decomposed into fine gravel.
“What… What did…”
“It’s a rune of sealing. Turned the door pretty much into a wall, at least until I scratched it out. Figured it was a little better than propping the table against the handle and hoping it would keep them out.” Jorfindr glanced at the scene outside and nodded. “Seems I was right.”
“The Sword is not going to be happy about that,” Felton mused, fixated on the runeword. He had seen the Sword and Sigil weld powerful magic at Sol’s behest, but this was something altogether foreign to him. It was fascinating.
Jorfindr pointed to the gouges around the broken latch on the door’s exterior. Up close, they were deep and ragged. “I’ll take begging your master’s forgiveness over whatever did that.”
“You know damn well, you did that,” Thorn spit acidly from out in the courtyard, “when you staged this whole gruesome farce after you murdered my guard!”
“Vera, would you pull your head out of your own ass, already? How long have we known each other—you really believe I could do…” Jorfindr trailed off, sweeping his hand over the eviscerated corpse.
“Clearly, I have been deceived.” She turned to Felton. “I demand he be clapped in irons at once, that we may prepare to depart for Valhost.”
Felton gritted his teeth. “First of all, we don’t keep irons to clap him in. And second, like I told you, I am taking him into custody until the Sword and Sigil can decide what to do about this.”
“And when, pray tell, will they grace us with their presence and make this blasted decision?”
“When it damn well pleases them!” Felton bellowed, as all his stress and horror and embarrassment erupted into anger within him. In the shocked moment that followed his outburst, he grabbed Jorfindr by the arm and purposefully marched him across the courtyard. “I’m taking him to the dungeon,” he said loudly, and ignored the confused looks from the manor staff watching from the sides.
Jorfindr inspected his surroundings, nodding absently at the shelves of wine and provision barrels. “Quite the dungeon you’ve got here.” He gave Felton a smirk.
“Best we’ve got. I’m making this up as I go.”
“You don’t say.”
Felton shot him a nasty look.
“So, tell me,” the rogue Carver hopped up onto a barrel and settled down with his elbows on his knees. “What has happened to your masters that keeps them from this?”
Felton glanced at him, but remained silent.
“Come now, Felton. A man is butchered and the Sword of the manor hides behind his squire? It’s preposterous—what has happened? Are they slain as well?”
“No, but they will not wake. And how am I to know that you did not cause this?”
“With my Carving?”
Felton shrugged.
Jorfindr shook his head. “Carving doesn’t work like that. Runewords only affect what they are carved upon, with very limited exceptions. If I wanted to cause your masters ill, I would need to carve curses into their very flesh, a practice which takes considerable time, restraints, and is heavily frowned upon, to say the least. I believe Master Hendall would have taken issue with that had I tried—to say nothing of Mistress Wymrea’s response!”
Felton sighed. “No, you would be dead. It’s true.”
“I’m afraid this is something far more dark and twisted than I am capable of. It was darkness like this that I was digging into in the Carver’s Guild before I was forced to flee.”
“And what did you find?”
“Not much. Stories and rumors were as far as I’d gotten before an attempt was made on my life. Only shortly after that, the Earl lay dead by a poisoner’s hand, and I was a fugitive.”
“You’ll have to forgive my skepticism,” Felton frowned.
“If I survive through the night, I’ll forgive whatever you wish.”
The squire turned at the sound of boots tromping down the stairs to the cellar landing. It was the blacksmith, with a heavy chain and padlock.
“These’ll do, Felt?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you, Leifan. Do you mind keeping watch over the door for a while? I need to get back upstairs and make sure the guests are kept occupied.”
The thick man nodded casually. “Aye, my boy can mind the forge for a spell. Oh, Miss Magretta was asking for you.”
“If I might suggest?” Jorfindr held up a hand as Felton moved to shut him into the back room. “If you’re off to see your lady, you may want to think about dressing first. They tend to like that, too.”
Felton glanced down and blushed. It had been an eventful morning, and through the excitement he still wore his small-clothes, stained and soiled from the mess in the courtyard.
“Perhaps I’ll do that,” he mumbled, and handed off his sword to the smith. The clink of chain being secured around the door latch followed him up the stairs to the house.
A few minutes and a fresh set of clothing later, he found Magretta in their masters’ chambers once more.
“No change?” It was a pointless question; Hendall and Wymrea had clearly not been roused from their fugue.
Seated in the apothecary nook, Magretta shook her head. The once tidy and organized shelves looked as though a gremlin had been set loose upon them, and the worktable was in no better shape. Jars and bags and vials of herbs and mysterious fluids lay open and strewn about, mixed in with half a dozen books on herbal medicines and curses.
“I’ve tried everything I can think of. Every remedy the Sigil’s library has to offer, but nothing has worked.”
“Do you have any idea what’s caused it?”
Magretta checked that the door had been pulled shut behind Felton before waving him over to the bed. She lifted up a corner of the covers, exposing one of Hendall’s legs.
“What is that?” Felton breathed. A small welt stood out from his ankle, darker than the surrounding skin. A branching spiderweb of black tendrils spread out beneath the skin around it, creeping toward his shin and calf.
“At first I thought some kind of spider bite, but there’s only one small puncture at the center of the welt, not two from a set of fangs. So, some kind of poisoned needle, perhaps?”
“Jorfindr told me the Earl of Valhost was murdered by a poisoner… The Sigil, too?”
Magretta nodded gravely. “On her right foot. Our guest must have snuck in and stuck them while they slept.”
“Without rousing either? That seems… Well, highly unlikely.”
“I have no better theories to offer, Felt. We need to search Jorfindr’s things.”
“I don’t think Jorfindr did this,” he shook his head. “Call it a hunch; instinct, maybe. It just wasn’t him.”
“That’s fine—search his room anyway, and you can confirm his innocence. But Felton, if he didn’t do it, then that still leaves the question of who did?”
The squire thought of the three angry Carvers, and their second, missing guard. “We’re going to have to search all of them,” he shuddered.
Magretta nodded slowly. “They are not going to be happy about that.”
“This is outrageous!”
Master Thorn crossed her arms as she gave Felton a deathly glare from across the table in the great hall. A thorough search of Jorfindr’s room had turned up nothing of an incriminating nature. He had arrived with only his pack, which contained meager trail rations, an assortment of blank wooden blocks, and a fine array of carving knives and chisels—some of which were fine enough to be almost needle-like, but Magretta had ruled them out as the weapons in question. There was a leather-bound journal as well, half-filled with intricate, arcane runewords interspersed with the common runic script, though neither quill nor ink was present.
“Simply preposterous,” the Carver continued, her voice shrill. “Have you not even considered that his first action would be to dispose of the evidence of his crime?”
“I have,” Felton replied, “but I also consider that there are three other people—four, if we include your absentee guard—who may not have bothered to dispose of evidence if they were certain the crime would be pinned on Jorfindr without question.”
“You haven’t even told us what evidence you seek,” Gunter spoke up in his labored voice. “This charade has gone on long enough, I think. Where are the Sword and Sigil of this house?”
“Agreed,” Thorn nodded. “I am done talking to a naive little boy. Summon your master—his mind-games grow tiresome.”
“The Sword and Sigil have been poisoned,” Magretta said, entering the great hall from the arched hallway that led to the living quarters. She took a seat next to Felton at the table and crossed her arms. The room fell into a hush.
It was Carill who broke the silence. “They are dead?”
The novitiate shook her head. “They live, but as of yet I have been unable to rouse them with my craft.”
“Believe me when I say, this is most unwelcome news,” Thorn’s stony facade cracked ever so slightly. Either she was truly shaken by the development, or she was a phenomenal actor. “I still cannot allow you to simply rummage through our belongings. We carry sensitive materials and property that is not meant to leave the Guild. Why, even the book you found in Jorfindr’s room should never have been seen by either of you.”
“Are you truly afraid that a pair of Sol’s postulates will steal your blasphemous trade secrets?” Magretta raised an eyebrow, matching Thorn’s stare.
“I— It is not—” for the first time, Thorn stumbled over her words in search of her response.
“Let me propose a compromise,” Felton jumped in. “Master Thorn, you will oversee Maggie’s search of your rooms, to ensure that she doesn’t remove any sensitive material. Your associates will join me and a search party—our stable master tells me there was a partial trail of blood leading out the manor gates from the courtyard. We will follow it and see what new evidence may be uncovered. Is this acceptable to you?”
“I would much rather stay indoors,” Gunter said quietly. The pale man looked even queasier since hearing of the Sword and Sigil’s condition.
“Have I any other choice?” Thorn asked acerbically.
Felton shook his head.
“Know this, boy: the Guild Congress will hear of this travesty.”
“As will the Council of Sol,” Magretta replied beside him, calm and cool. She met Thorn’s glare evenly, not giving an inch. But her hand found Felton’s under the table and gripped hard, belying the truth of the matter. She was just as terrified as he was.
“Very well,” Thorn grumbled, “I accept your terms.”
The Carver’s Gift, available now on most major e-book platforms (and a good few minor ones, too)
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The Literary Diversions of K.T. Lazarus 
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