They had laughed when he died.

It's not as if any of them cared about each other. This was a cutthroat organization, after all. Literally, on occasion. There was nothing they liked more than to watch each other fail, so they could stand atop the body of the fallen and feel taller.

He had been a fool, anyway. He was dead, and it was his own fault. His schemes had been ludicrous, his plans idiotic. Any of them could have done it better. Any of them would do it better, when it came their turn. They would not be as stupid as he had been. His loss was nothing to them.

Even so, everything seemed a bit off that day. It was odd how the cool, collected men could not seem to perform even the simplest of mundane acts with their usual grace and style. There was one less step on every staircase, one less stride between doorways, one less inch between table and chair, and it cropped up every time they were least expecting it.

It was as if something were missing from their lives. Ridiculous. They cared not for each other, not in the slightest. The rivalry was all they had ever known; if there had been anything else before that, they had all forgotten it.

Yet, there it was. A missing piece, a lost cornerstone. The absence of one of their number. A gap that disrupted a balance they had never known existed, a hole they would all spend immeasurable subconscious effort trying to fill, as space that would not disappear no matter how hard they tried to ignore it.

Where there had been four kings, there were now only three.