Hello dear readers.

Gilgamesh999: Fair enough! You caught me out! Because things were a bit crazy over Christmas (my wife has to work Christmas), I did not get a chance to edit the last chapter properly before I put it up. That is fixed now. Oh, and I think you may have misread my note at the start-I said I'm going to release a chapter TWICE a month now (till September), not once every two months. I hope you enjoy!

BansheeSerenade: Welcome aboard! Thank you so much for joining m on and for leaving your reviews here. Interesting about the Prologue... I know at least one reader, KyleQuicksilver (are you still reading, Kyle? Or maybe you are saving up the chapters for a future binge) started with the Prologue and really liked starting that way. I'll have to think carefully... My intention at the moment is to use the Prologue as a 'reader magnet', giving it out for free in exchange for email addresses as an advert for the final Kindle version when that is done. And thank you very much for the detailed notes on chapter one-very helpful. I'm going to have to check out 'Dark Cloud' now!

WhiteFangofWhoa: Thanks to you too for the review as ever. I am planning ten volumes of SotJ, and have been from the start. Let's see how that goes. Now 50,000 words into Vol 2 first draft (which BansheeSerenade has already read ALL of on m n!). You will get more of the chosen twelve in volume two, but not all of them yet I'm afraid. We need space for each character to breathe. Also, no more Imperial villains yet in volume two either I'm afraid (probably). For reasons which will become clear they won't be around. They will appear eventually though!

Anyone and Everyone: Because they became my supporter o n, BansheeSerenade turned up on my Discord, where some more of my readers from other sites also hang out, and it made me realise that you don't need to b supporter of mine to join the SotJ Discord channel. So, while it's only a small channel at the moment, if you want to chat about SotJ on Discord, head to Discord dot com forwardslash 771017838017773598 :)

Anyway, this is the Epilogue of Book One. Book Two begins on or near the 1st Feb. Enjoy!

Very best wishes,
Faenon

Vish sat on the end of the bed and stared at the two black poppy seeds in his open palm.

Why wasn't he just taking them? This was his chance. Dinner, which he grudgingly admitted to himself had been quite good-what he could taste of it, that is-with its roast pig and truffles and little birds marinated in wine, was over. Everyone else had retired to their chambers too. He had all night to enjoy the sweet delights of the not one, but two poppy seeds he had taken from Elpis before he killed her. A double hit. The hot fast rush as he first swallowed them, the building intensity in his head as his body processed them, the wave upon wave of pleasure that would gradually overwhelm his entire being, the warm afterglow he would eventually bathe in afterwards, the loosening, the calm, the relief. This was his chance.

So why hadn't he taken them yet?

The old man.

Damn the old man! The old man had planted a different kind of seed in his mind. A different kind of seed that had slowly been growing, and had now produced a small shoot that was big enough to notice. If you space out the hits far enough and start to come off it, you can start to feel other things too. It is possible. I've seen others do it. I've helped others do it.

The old man had planted the seed of the idea in his mind that it was possible to come off the poppy and learn to enjoy other things again. But he didn't really want to do that, did he? The poppy was his life. The poppy was pure joy. The poppy was the greatest thing it was possible to experience. He didn't want to 'come off' that. He didn't want to lose that. He didn't need to be 'free' from that.

But then why hadn't he taken them yet?

He put the poppy seeds down on the nightstand next the bed, stood and began to pace the room. The floor was made of white marble shot through with wisps of black. The walls were of white stone, hung with tapestries and paintings that in the light from the candle on the nightstand he could see depicted long-haired Manolians winning battles over other nations, or successfully defending their realm from invaders. There was no god on any of them. A strange people, these warrior-women who made the men do all the women's work in their country, who worshiped a single invisible God who made everything and didn't acknowledge any of the other gods. Though not uniquely strange, he supposed. The old man worships this 'One' as well, after all...

The curtains were thick and made of purple velvet. Vish drew one back to look out of the window, but only found the blackness of the night beyond it, except for his reflection which looked back at him, lit up in the candle glow. He pulled off his head scarf, revealing the branded 'X' scar on his forehead, his thick, cropped black hair, the black discoloration around his mouth.

Someone glancing briefly at him might be forgiven for thinking it was a beard. But if they looked for any length of time, they would see that, no, in fact it was the skin around his mouth and the lower part of his nose that had turned from barky tan to black–deep black, black as a poppy seed, black as the darkness of the night outside. It was almost as if the flesh itself had died, and indeed Vish had much reduced sensation in those places. Why did the poppy do that? Yes, it went into his body through his mouth, or sometimes crushed up through his nose, but then it went into his stomach or his brain. Vish supposed that the poppy was so powerful that it simply had this effect on his body at the point where it entered him. There were probably parts of his insides that were discoloured black and had reduced sensation as well. He had often wondered if it would eventually turn the whole of him black. Then he would truly have become a creature of darkness; his transformation as a Shadowfinger would truly be complete.

He turned and looked back at the nightstand where the two poppy seeds lay, two inky dots staining the room, marring it. Wasn't there a life that he had had once before the Imperial agent had got him hooked on the poppy and recruited him for the Emperor's Hand? Of course it had been a hard life, working as a personal assassin for the Leader of Aibar, and he hadn't known the poppy. But he had had a measure of freedom, the ability to do what he wanted between jobs, his own dwelling. He had been able to fully enjoy the taste of food, the touch of a woman, laughter, the feel of the breeze on his skin…

The poppy had taken all of that from him. It had enslaved him, made him only want it, only really able to feel it. The times in between the hits had just become times when he was waiting for his next hit, or doing something to enable himself to get his next hit. They had become times when he wasn't really alive or tuned into the world, just drifting or trudging through a pale grey landscape questing for the next poppy seed. That was no way to live, was it?

Vish walked back over to the nightstand and picked up the poppy seeds. He was going to throw them away. He had lived in this bondage for too long.

He walked back to the window and slid it up and open. He barely felt the chill of the night air on his body.

He was going to throw them out of the window.

Come on. Throw them out of the window.

Only...only what had he gained by taking the poppy? What would he lose if he threw it away?

The greatest pleasure he had ever felt. Pure, all-encompassing, ecstatic sensation washing over every inch of his body. Thrill. The ability to be completely focused on and lost in something that wasn't pain, self-hatred, regret and bitterness.

How could he throw all that away?

No, he wouldn't throw them away, but he would wait a while before he took them. That way he would be 'spacing out' the hits a little more, and maybe he would be able to come off it eventually like the old man said.

He shut the window, walked back to the nightstand and put the poppy seeds down on it.

He sat on the bed and looked at them.

The thing was, it had been a fair while since his last hit. Not since that Zerlanese village they had stopped in to rest and stock up on supplies.

Just one now, and one later.

He picked up one of the seeds and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger. A little black orb that encompassed a world of pleasure.

But if he was going to have one hit now anyway, why not have two? A double hit. How often did he get the chance to have a double hit? Even the old man only gave him one poppy seed at a time. There was no way that he would ever give him two at once, especially with his talk of spacing out the hits and coming off them.

Vish picked up both poppy seeds and chucked them into his mouth, swallowing them in one gulp.

Pleasure exploded in his body, starting in his mouth, his head, and then spreading down through his neck, his chest, his arms, and the rest of him.

He lay back on the bed, falling into the poppy trance.

In his poppy trance, Vish got up off the bed.

He looked around the bedchamber, working out where he was.

He padded to the door of the chamber and turned the bronze knob gently till it clicked.

He eased the door open slowly and silently.

Only the glow from the wall-mounted lights lit the corridor. The Shadowfinger looked both ways down it. Only furniture-wall hangings, a wooden chair, a table with a vase atop it.

He shut the door quietly and made his way down the corridor, sticking to the candle-thrown shadows, as was his way, and taking care that his footsteps did not make a single sound on the carpets or marble floor, his poise and focus only enhanced by the poppy trance.

Which chamber was he looking for?

There were several other doors that led off from this corridor.

None of these.

He continued to make his way through the palace, allowing his intuitions to lead him to its most opulent area, a wide hallway bedecked with more huge versions of the ridiculous tapestries, up a flight of stairs, and…

There.

Vish drew back from the corridor into which he had just peered, concealing himself around the corner on the landing at the top of the steps.

There were two guards posted outside of the door that he wanted, of course. The Manolains, though they were stupid, would have to be colossally stupid not to guard her. And it.

He could use his talents in this state to slip past them, but they would be alerted by the sound of him opening and closing the door to the chamber.

No matter. He knew what he needed to know now.

Vish walked back to his room, keeping silence. As he did so he paid close, poppy-enhanced attention to the exact route he was taking, to the descent of the stairs, to the particular twist and turn of the corridors he took, to the number of steps.

He shut the door to his room carefully behind him.

He walked over to the window and slid it open. Cool night air blew in.

He took off his black gloves and let them drop to the floor by the window.

He reached into a pocket stitched into the inside of his robes in the left breast and drew out another pair of gloves, slipping these on instead.

He held up his fingers and gave them a little wiggle. Ten small, vicious, gleaming points twinkled back at him in the moonlights from the tips of his fingers.

He turned round and climbed out of the window backwards, shoving one clawed hand into the wall on the outside of the window.

Vish smiled. The points on the end of his gloved fingers stuck fast in the stone of the Manolian palace, giving him a purchase.

Slowly, carefully, the Shadowfinger made his way along the outside of the wall in the direction of the chamber he had identified, crawling across like an oversized, four-legged spider in the darkness. He drew on his considerable strength, honed by all those years of training and assassinations, and then more training, and held himself up with his arms alone as he crawled, though when he could find a ledge or

He traced the route to the chamber with his body, making use of the mental map he had formed in his mind when he walked to and from it on the inside of the building.

He arrived at the outside of the chamber.

Not just one or two windows here but a whole wide wall of them, looking out on the courtyards below which were, thankfully, empty at this hour.

Many windows, but they looked to have the same design as the one in his room, and would therefore open the same way. Vish supposed the Manolians had never counted on anyone being able to infiltrate the palace in this manner.

He crept over to the nearest window, got level with it, and then took off one glove by pulling it off with his teeth as he hung from one hand.

He pressed the palm of his now gloveless hand to the window, cold to the touch, and slid it silently up and open.

He swung himself underneath a curtain into the chamber, crouching as he landed to take his weight and muffle any sound, and was still.

He remained crouching, listening.

No sound came to break the stillness of the room, even to Vish's poppy-enhanced senses. Only, perhaps, if he strained his hearing to its limit, the rhythmic rises and falls of sleeping breath.

Good, the thought echoed in Vish's entranced mind.

He took a step.

The person in the bed grunted in their sleep, and Vish froze ice-still again for a moment, but then they rolled over and the rhythmic breathing resumed. Vish exhaled noiselessly.

Darkness cloaked the chamber. But darkness was Vish's element. His eyes grew accustomed to it even more quickly than usual, helped by the poppy, and he saw that the chamber held two large cupboards against the wall, a dressing table with mirror and chair, a nightstand, and bed, in which lay the sleeping girl, Nuthea.

Vish moved to the bedside like a cat closing in on its prey.

It was not on the nightstand.

It hadn't been on the table either-Vish would have caught its glint from the candle-glow in the brief moment the door had been open.

That must mean the girl was wearing it.

Fortunately, the girl was sleeping on his back, where he was breathing heavily. Quilts and blankets covered her up to her neck.

Vish slipped his hand around the hem of the blanket, paused, then ever so carefully folded it back, not making a sound.

A chain. The girl was indeed sleeping with the crystal in it setting in the pendant about her neck.

Unfortunately, she was also clasping the Jewel tight in one fist.

What to do?

Vish put his finger underneath the girl's left ear and tickled it very gently.

When the girl did not respond, he tickled it slightly less gently.

The girl grumbled in her sleep and let go of what he was holding to itch his ear, then let her hand lie flat on her pillow. The rhythmic breathing resumed again.

There it was. A pendant, and set into it, a crystal which even now glowed with the silent crackle of pent-up lightning.

Vish's mouth made a smile underneath his face covering. Too easy.

The Shadowfinger reached inside the fold of his uniform to another of its many inner pockets, the one sewn into the right breast, and found there a small implement, which he retrieved, and a small hessian bag, not unlike the one that the old man kept his poppy seeds in, though this one was currently empty.

He reached over the girl with his gloved hand and used the implement, a small steel rod that came to a thin sharp line at a right angle at its end, like a miniature pick, to scrape the crystal slowly once, twice, thrice.

He held up the implement, and when he was satisfied that it had enough minute glittering crystal scrapings on it, he deposited them carefully in his bag.

The Shadowfinger left the room by the way he had come in.