Beneath a canopy that sparkles like the night sky — a cunning work of midnight-purple velvet, golden threads and silver beads — a large and fluffy white cat paces to and fro on hindpaws across the length of a raised wooden platform, adjusting racks of exotic textiles, setting out baskets of tiny wonders and tweaking the displays in the worn blackoak booth-front.

Suddenly the cat’s attention is squarely on you, golden eyes like inquisitive twin moons. Snowy white paws cradle a weapon that surely, surely no cat should wield so easily.

A purr.

“Perhaps this humble merchant may have something that catches your eye?”


The ghost cat’s armoury

01. Paired ivory-hilted daggers, etched with silvered prayers to the Saint Of Iris
02. Pyre Tyrant’s Needle, a rapier of frosted steel hilt and basket and blade of crimson flame
03. A sabre polished to mirror brightness, mounted in brass and blackened steel fittings
04. Regret, a longsword consecrated to be the bane of spirits, rosewood-hilted and perpetually damp with blessed tears
05. A belt-knife of bone split and polished from a wyvern’s sting, grip wrapped with tawny silks
06. A perfectly plain-looking shortsword, yet it is sheathed in shadepanther pelt and crystal droplets
07. The Moon Calls Me, a silver-trimmed crystal blade that cycles from dagger to shortsword to hunting sword to greatsword and back
08. An ancient broad-bladed sword of greenish bronze, sporting black gold hunting figures that glow faintly
09. Mistine, the white steel bastard sword trimmed in sapphire and white enamel which ballads claim was the oath-blade of Teitaia, Warqueen of fallen Oakhaunt
10. A slim rapier, basket-guard of twisted ivy and gilded, stained with the blood of a vampire prince
11. Aaite, a curved sickle-like blade of deep red horn, said to be carved from a fragment of an angel’s talon
12. Matched set of broadsword, hanger and three daggers, all smoky steel mounted in bronze and ivory and engraved with the same motto — “Endure” — flanked with tiny inset garnets