Orb Sceptre Throne by Ian C. Esslemont

and scraped for monies from this man, and many others like him, without learning when to argue and when to obey. And so, in an effort to salvage some modicum of dignity, he bowed and left.
    Alone, the ironmonger Humble Measure returned to studying the card. It was an ancient artefact of the divinatory Dragons Deck. The single surviving example from an arcana of an age long gone. He held it up to the light and there, caught in the slanting afternoon rays, it blazed pearly white, revealing an image of one of the three major cards of power, rulership and authority … the Orb.
     
    *
    There is a steep gorge amid the hills east of Darujhistan that all the locals know to avoid. To some it is the lair of a giant. To those who have travelled, or spent time talking to those who have, it is merely home to a displaced Thelomen, or Toblakai, of the north.
    Here he had lurked for nearly a year. And though several people had complained to the tribal authorities, no one had organized a war band to drive him out. Perhaps it was because while sullen, and an obvious foreigner, the giant had not actually killed anyone as yet. And the woman who was sometimes with him did eventually pay for the animals he took. And he did seem gruffly affectionate towards the two children with him. Or perhaps it was because he was a giant with a stone blade that looked taller than most men.
    In any case, word spread, and the gorge came to be avoided, and developed an evil reputation as the haunt of whatever anyone wished to ascribe to it. The local tribes became comfortable with having someone conveniently nearby to blame every time a goat went missing or a pot of milk soured. A few unexplained pregnancies were even hung upon him – charges the foreign woman with him laughed off with irritating scorn. As she also did their subsequent angry threats to skin the creature.
    In time, some locals claimed that in the dim light of the re-formed moon they had seen him crouched high on the hillside, glaring to the west, where one could just make out the blue flames of Darujhistan glowing on the very horizon.
    Had he been cast out of that pit of sinfulness? Or escaped the dungeon of one of the twelve evil magi who clan elders claimed secretly ruled that nest of wickedness? Did he plot revenge? If so, perhaps he deserved their tolerance; for the destruction of that blot of iniquity was ever the goal of the clan elders – when they weren’t visiting its brothels, at least.
    And so an accord of a sort was established between the clans of the Gadrobi hills and their foreign visitor. The elders hoped that flame and sword was what the giant held in his heart for Darujhistan, while the war band fighters were secretly relieved not to have to face his stone blade.
    As for the creature himself, who could say what lay within his heart of stone? Had he been thrown out of the city as an irredeemable troublemaker and breaker of the peace? Or had he turned his back on that degenerate cesspool of vice and nobly taken up station in the hills, far from its corrupting influence? Who could say? Perhaps, as some elders darkly muttered, it merely depended upon which side of the walls one squatted.
     
    *
    In the estate district of Darujhistan a grey-haired but still hale-looking man walked through an ornamental garden, but he hardly saw the heavy blossoms, or registered their thick cloying scents. His hands were clasped behind his back and his path was wandering. He was a bard who went by the name of Fisher, and he was wrestling with a particularly thorny problem.
    He was struggling with his growing impatience and lack of respect for his current lover. In the past such a falling away of allure would have proved no complication. All it took was a tender chaste kiss, a last lingering look, and he was on his way.
    No, the problem was that his current lover was Lady Envy. And Envy did not take rejection well. He paused in his pacing, wincing in memory of their last parting. At least he had gotten