A trail of slaves, heads hung and chained neck to neck, follows someone in a crimson hawk mask. In the masked one's hands is a barbed whip that drips with the blood of those behind them. Thrace: The City of Masks, where the only ones considered human are those who hide their faces behind porcelain. The whispers of the city gave the rest a few names: Stock, Nameless, or the Faceless. Perhaps you will find the witch you need for The Keening in this foreign place.

"Put the coin down, you wretch!" screams one of the masked ones. "Or I'll have you hanged."

Great swaths of people are being herded down the red-brick street, some by the cane, toward a stony oval structure in the center of the city.