He didn't have any choice but to believe them. After all, his father had ordered it. But it was strange how nothing he was told ever added up. That first time he met these men, the one who was sitting next to him and talking told him that his father had given him orders to be silent and obey, but not much more than that. He couldn't remember the man's name. It seemed like he should have asked, but he was afraid that might anger the man and make him angry, which meant he would be killed. He didn't know that this man had murdered his mother, or that he had eaten her blood, but there was no point in asking about that, either. Maybe he wasn't supposed to ask. It would be better if he didn't. If he did, this man would probably try to kill him.
As long as he kept his mouth shut and did whatever he was asked to do, no one would hurt him.
It turned out that the man's name was Kortin, and he worked for the Council of Seven.
They didn't bother giving him a real name. They said he was called Kortin because that was what they called him, after the street he grew up on. They said he was from Vastia, but he wasn't from Vastia proper. He grew up in a poor area that was mostly occupied by criminals. He had been brought up to be a criminal, and his crimes were many and varied. He robbed, he raped, he murdered, and he took bribes. He was very good at it all and had earned a reputation as a master thief. As his crimes became more serious, he found himself drawn farther away from his family and home town, to places where it was too dangerous to live, because the people in charge knew him and would have wanted revenge for everything he'd done if he hadn't run away. There were plenty of other places to go, though, and eventually he ended up in Haven, where he met the man who would become the leader of the Council of Seven.
For years he worked as the bodyguard and advisor to that man, who then rose to be the most powerful person in the entire world. He used his power to help the common citizens and keep them safe. For years, he did this for free, making sure that when the Council of Seven needed his help, they were the ones who benefited.
Then one day he made a mistake. He helped someone who wasn't the Council, and that person told everyone who would listen that he was an informant, that he was betraying the Council, working for the people, and that he was going to ruin them. The Council, the people that he'd worked for for so many years, wanted to make an example out of him, so the man he worked for told him that if he did what he was told, he wouldn't get killed, and if he didn't, he'd be killed anyway. If he was lucky he'd get beaten up badly. The Council didn't mind hurting him, as long as he was hurt enough to keep telling everyone that he'd been tricked into working for the wrong side.
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Kortin agreed.
The man who hired him told him to find the woman who was the leader of that group, whoever she was. Find her and tell her that the Council of Seven no longer wished to work with her. Tell her that it was over, that she was no longer welcome in the lands that belonged to the Council of Seven. Tell her that she and her people were no longer safe here, and never would be. Tell her that if she kept on doing things they way she did, they'd put a stop to it. Then he would meet them on a specific night and time where he had already arranged a meeting, show her the bodies of all of her people who had died, and tell her that if she came back again, the Council of Seven would destroy her completely.
That was when the girl with the red hair showed up. He had no idea why he thought of her as a girl, but he did, and she was. He knew he was supposed to kill her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it, even after she threatened to kill him, because she didn't seem quite so strong as she pretended, and because he felt sympathy for her for having lost her friends. She didn't know that any of the other people whose bodies he'd shown her were her friends; she knew them as other people who had been involved in some kind of conspiracy against the Council of Seven, but she didn't believe him when he told her that they were her friends and that he didn't mean to kill them, and when she ran off in a panic he followed her. She led him right to one of the Council's strongholds, and when she saw that he was looking to arrest her, she shot him in the leg, so he was forced to run. She went to the stronghold after that, and there waited until he could escape, knowing full well that the Council would come after him once they realized he was injured and could no longer fight. This was what happened next.
He was in the city for weeks, recovering. He tried to get rid of the bullet in his leg by sticking it in a fire and hoping it would burn out, but that didn't work so he had to have a healer look at it. By that time word had spread that he was still alive, and that all of the people who had been part of the conspiracy to take down the Council were now dead. His wound was far worse than anyone realized at first, but he was finally healed and able to move around. It had taken so long that he was starting to doubt whether the Council of Seven would try something else before he got better, so he decided to head north. He didn't know if the Council had sent someone after him—they might not have known who else he was or what he looked like—so he headed to the northern cities, hoping they were safer.
The girl in the red hair had gone to the northern cities too, and now he was following her from a distance. He figured that if she was going to go after the Council of Seven again, he would find her, and maybe she would talk him through what he was supposed to do and how he was supposed to kill the Council. He didn't want to die. Not yet.