November 2025

In taverns they sing of me still, though their tunes ring false as they drift on the night wind alongside the smell of woodsmoke. I set no foot within such walls now for the last time I did, there sat a fair-haired minstrel weaving my wickedness into a saint’s lament. He sang that I stole from the Sheriff for love of the poor, that I spared the weak, gave bread to babes and gold to widows with milk-white smiles.God’s truth, I near choked on my own laughter.