The God Skrae Eats Death
Novelette 10,181 words Recommended by 2 award/anthology sources
"It was an inauspicious beginning to my mission to find the deathmage and bring her to the capital. I found her exactly where the Mandate said I would: at a tavern table, in one of the northern work camps, wasted drunk. Her long black curls, laced with silver, lay like vines across the table’s rough wood. She was snoring faintly."
Content warnings 2
deathviolence
Quasar links out; the story lives on BCS, where the author gets the click.