When his enemy’s servant gave him the bronze coffer shaped like a human hand, Vandibar Nasha accepted the gift politely. He did not have to open it to know that it contained the severed hand of one of his own servants, who had died hideously in a cellar beneath the enemy’s house.
The other had taken Vandibar’s piece, but the game would continue. That a little blood seeped through the hinge and stained his sleeve was the only cause for true offense. It was inelegant and unworthy, and Vandibar was, if nothing else, a fastidious man, who maintained about his person and his house a sense of unadorned, even austere, but undeniable elegance.
He gazed across the glittering sea of his guests, as they surged over the roof-garden in the twilight, beneath swaying paper lanterns. He spied his enemy,
