Even Robert "Bobby" Kane, the King of Redharrow, who had recently shattered his own ceiling and crossed into the Grandmaster Realm, would have had to lower his head in front of Victor Pierce and concede the higher seat without complaint. That was the simple, unsentimental ranking of strength in the Heartland.
And yet this nobody had just claimed, in front of the entire Pierce Family, that a single finger of his could poke Victor Pierce to death.
Was that finger forged out of industrial diamond? Was it carved from the bone of some ancient dragon?
It was, every Pierce in the hall concluded almost in unison, the purest expression of that famous old saying. The ignorant do not know enough to be afraid. To spout a line that grand in front of a man of Victor Pierce's caliber was the work of a
