“Don’t you worry, Johnny,” Lockwood had said as I paced. “You won’t take long if you’re as smart as Captain Crewe said you were.” It was the first compliment I’d heard coming from Lockwood. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Lord Glamwell had slunk off, back to his parlor, like a cuckoo clock figure getting ready for the next hour, and Anna cautiously led us away from the library, through the halls of fallen grandeur. The portraits along the walls had numerous bullet holes through them. “There’s Riven in the basement and attics,” she warned us quietly. “I’ve stayed here before.” “Stick to the devil we know,” said Lockwood. “Better Riven than the masked guard.” She led us to the kitchen, an enormous room with three stoves and numerous cupboards and fireplaces, and locked the doors behind us. Like everything else in Nod’ol, it was abandoned. Pots lay strewn about the stone floor, flour containers lay on their sides, licked clean. A broken table. The rancid smell of some vegetable gone liquid.
