3
THE GRAVE
I awoke to the sight of stars overhead and the softness of loose soil underneath my back. What at first I took for a shallow grave turned out to be nothing more than a divot in the dusty grass atop the hill that overlooked the village of Phan.
I wasn’t, it seemed, dead yet.
Though I supposed I deserved to be.
No one had forced me into that prizefight. This hill belonged to the villagers, and if they hadn’t wanted me coming up here to visit the grave of a dead King, well, I could’ve just walked away. Hells, I could’ve waited until nightfall and snuck up here without revealing my presence to anyone. Instead, I’d strode into their village, announced myself and my intentions, and waited for a reaction any fool could have predicted. The Greatcoats had never been popular in thes
