Vladislav Nocturne stood in the empty throne hall of Bloodmoon Castle and found no throne. The dais was bare stone. The pretender had held court here for two hundred years, and every vampire in the world believed the seat of ancient right sat on that platform. Vladislav had waited out the pretender's alliances, watched him fall, and come to claim what his height and his years entitled him to take. He was taller than any vampire alive. He was older than most. The dais was still bare stone. He pressed his palm against the platform. No hum. No pull. The true bloodline throne answered any vampire who touched it. This was a prop. The pretender had ruled from a fake for two centuries and no one had known, because no one had dared sit down and prove otherwise. A scrape at the far archway. Vladislav did not turn. "Big fella looking for a chair," said one voice. "Big fella in the wrong room," said the other. Vladislav turned. A goblin stood in the doorway with two heads on one narrow body, both mouths grinning at different angles. One eye was swollen shut. Mud crusted his vest. Vladislav knew the name from the courts below — Bickle Brakk, the two-headed goblin who had lost the goblin crown when his heads argued strategy in public. Someone had since tried to kill him in a mud yard. He looked like he had walked here from it. "Why are you in my castle," Vladislav said. "Selling," said the left head. "Information," said the right. "The old bat moved the throne," said the left. "Sixty years back," said the right. "We watched him do it. We were small. Nobody watches goblins." Vladislav closed the distance in three strides and lifted the goblin by the vest. Both heads kept smiling. "Kill us and you stand in an empty room forever," the left head said. "Feed us and give us your voice at the goblin council," the right head said, "and we walk you to it tonight." Vladislav studied the two faces. He needed the throne. The goblin needed a sponsor his own people could not deny. The trade was clean. "Where." "Cellar," said the left head. "Under the old slaughterhouse on the low road," said the right. "He buried it under meat and rot so no vampire would think to look down." Vladislav set him on his feet. His claim, an hour ago, had been a boast without an address. Now it had one. He had also just bound himself to a crippled goblin the goblin world had already rejected, and to enemies that goblin had not yet named. "Lead," Vladislav said. Both heads bowed. Only one of them meant it.