Ahira's Hangar

Back to the stews of the revolting city of Lethar - the 19th century London of its world - with glittering wealth coexisting with filth and poverty beyond measure, crawling with rats and roaches and zombies and other unhealthy beings.

Tehol and Bugg continue their finaancial plotting - and now wish to extend those plots to the Rat Catching Guild - which among other delights, also functions as a sort of assassination bureau.

Brys discovers that thousands of people go completely and mysteriously missing from the city every year, and that the beaurocracy does nothing. he immediately suspects Tehol of having something to do with it.

More hints that Bugg is a lot more than an impoverished manservant, when it turns out that he knows ancient history and can read Jaghut, among other pretty much extinct languages.

The high mage, worried about the crazy hold tiles (which show much the same as those Feather Witch saw) sends Brys to the Azath House. He meets up with the little dead girl, Kettle, who is the guardian of the house. He learns that the Azath is dead, even though Kettle has been killing thousands of people a year to feed it with their blood. the imprisoned dead are being kept down by the dying trees, which she continues to feed blood.

The Azath has appointed a champion of sorts, whom Brys is able to contact with the help of Kettle. The champion needs two good swords to fight the evil dead imprisoned there when they try to break out. rathwer than asking Brys for help, the champion instead shows him a vision of the Crippled God falling to earth, and tells him that the earth itself is now poisoned and that there is no hope.

When he returns to the high mage, the mage helps him find two appropriate swords, made of good Letharii steel.

Tehol and Bugg plot with the Rat Catchers.