Chapter 5 – Hands in the Shadows
“Is this necessary, Skir?” Geth, the nervous, rat-faced man asked his scarred companion.
“It is if you want to get paid for this job,” Skir said sarcastically as he toyed with his knife. “We have to report to the Master, like ordered.”
“But what about those kids?” Geth pressed.
Skir laughed, but there was an edge of desperation in his voice. “He doesn’t need to know they got away, does he?”
“I suppose he doesn’t,” Geth said miserably.
Skir cracked his knuckles as he looked over his shoulders, making sure that neither he nor his companion were being followed. Ordinarily, the leader of the Plague Rats would keep a large group of his toughest followers with him at all times, but their new employer, who went only by the name of “the Master,” was exceptionally paranoid about his privacy. So cautious was he, in fact, that this was the first time that they would be meeting the Master in person; before this night, all their communication with him had been through anonymous intermediaries. Once he felt sure that the two of them were truly alone, Skir said, “You remember what we were told about finding him?”
Geth shook his head affirmatively. “It’s down this alley, where we should see an open door down into a cellar,” he said. “We’re supposed to meet him there.”
Skir looked up at the sky for a moment before grunting his acknowledgement. It was a gloomy, moonless night, lit only by the glittering stars half-hidden behind a layer of oppressive clouds and the flickering lamps lining the streets. The mist rising from the ocean was just beginning to roll into town, softly muting all noises beneath it. Even the noise of the market district as it slowly shut down for the night was distant, as if originating in another world. The only thing grounding the thieves in reality was the overwhelming smell of fish that permeated every foot of Varin.
Geth spoke again, asking, “Do we really need to keep working for this ‘Master?’ Something about this whole job just feels…off to me, Boss.”
Skir laughed nervously. “Are you scared, Geth? Besides, as strange as his orders might be, he is paying us more for this one night’s work than we could make in years of our usual work. Let’s just go and collect our reward, and then we can put this whole messy business behind us.”
Geth considered this, then, after wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, said, “After you, then, Boss.”
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Skir said, “Let’s not keep the Master waiting.”
The pair of thugs made their way down the alley, finding at the end of it the open doorway just as they had been instructed. Within the doorway stood a flight of crooked, ancient stairs descending for several steps before they took an abrupt turn to the left. An inky blackness swallowed up all light which trickled down from the street, making the stairwell look like the gaping mouth connected to the throat of some nightmarish creature.
Swallowing slightly, Skir braced himself for a moment before descending the stairs, Geth standing so close behind him that when Skir stopped, he nearly collided with his back. Past the turn, the stairs led them into a large underground chamber, whose walls and roof were lost in the darkness. At one point, judging by the numerous now empty caskets stacked throughout the chamber, the room had been used as a wine cellar. The room was deep beneath the water level of the bay, and a pervasive dampness filled the air. Every inch of the walls was covered in a thin, slimy layer of growing mold, which Geth surmised was the reason the cellar had been abandoned in the first place. Skir considered whether he could use this room as a base for his crew in the future, away from the city guard’s prying eyes.
The only remotely new or useable piece of furniture in the room was a small wooden table set up near the bottom of the stairs. On that table stood a sputtering, half-melted candle, whose feeble halo of light was the only source of illumination in the entire chamber. It was woefully unequipped for the task, and nearly half of the chamber remained plunged in a darkness so deep that nothing within the shadows was visible to either Geth or Skir. Upon their arrival, something stirred deep within that unlit region. Whoever it was, neither of the thugs could make out any details of the shadowed figure.
“Boss?” Skir called out as he stepped towards the table, hand outstretched to pick up the candle. “Is that you?”
Judging by the sound of feet squelching on the damp stone floor, the figure in the darkness had shifted once more. “You will refer to me as ‘Master,’ cretin. And, if you come any closer or touch that candle without my express command, I will kill you within the instant.”
Skir put up his hands in a soothing manner. He didn’t know if the voice in the darkness had the capability to back up their threat, and didn’t want to find out, either. “Listen, Bo-I mean, Master, I didn’t mean any offense. It won’t happen again.” He elbowed Geth in the side.
“Apologies, Master,” the other thug said.
“Very good,” the Master said. “Now, report. What transpired in your meeting with the hemomancer?”
Skir gulped nervously, then said, “It didn’t go well, Master. The old fool refused money, a royal command, even physical violence. His principles wouldn’t let him do it, he said.”
The Master let out a sigh of disappointment, followed by a wheezing cough. “A shame. He was one of only two hemomancers in the world who knew how to accomplish the ritual I required. His refusal to comply leaves me with only one option - one I am loathe to take yet to which I appear to have no remaining alternatives.” The Master lapsed into a moody silence at that, which dragged out, leaving Geth and Skir standing there, frozen, afraid to move for the risk of incurring the Master’s wrath. Seeming to remember then the presence of his hired thugs, the Master said at last, “I take it then, that you did as instructed?”
“Just as you told us to do, Master,” Skir said. “Burned his house to the ground. Made it look like an accident, best I could.”
“Marvelous,” the Master said in a soft voice. “Were there any witnesses to your setting of the fire? The Empress must not even have an inkling of suspicion of what I am trying to accomplish here.”
Skir opened his mouth, then stopped, carefully considering what he would say next. He looked to his accomplice for assistance, but Geth, his back to the damp wall, was nervously biting his fingernails, eyes darting back and forth through the darkness for any sign of the Master.
“I asked you a question, Skir,” the Master said, his voice becoming harsher still. “Were there any witnesses?”
“Just some kids!” Skir blurted out at last. Geth flinched slightly as he did so. “Some kids, the old man’s apprentices, I think. A boy and a girl. They looked like twins to me. They spotted us talking with the old man, before we burned the place down.”
“Interesting. So, Gerok finally took on some apprentices after all these years. If they had lived, they would doubtless have gone straight to the Empress, presumably with a note or something of that ilk from Gerok telling her what he could deduce of my plan,” the Master mused aloud. “Naturally, I assume they were disposed of.”
“Oh,” Skir said, now sweating profusely. “Naturally.”
The Master lapsed into silence once more, leaving Skir and Geth standing there, unsure what to do or whether they should leave. The darkness seemed to press in on them from all sides, and Skir could hear his own heart beating so loudly in his chest that it seemed to drown out everything else.
“Skir,” the Master said, his voice as soft and smooth as velvet. “Are you lying to me?”
Skir considered the question very, very carefully. Geth mouthed at him, “the truth,” but Skir ignored his underling’s suggestions. Standing up a little straighter, he looked into the darkness and said, “No.”
The Master considered this, then said, “Such a shame, Skir. You know, I can hear your heart, all the way from here. I hear the song of your blood through my hemomancy. It tells me you’re lying. A shame. You could have been very useful to me in the future. However, I cannot have someone working for me who won’t trust me with the truth. Consider your contract terminated.”
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Skir squinted into the darkness. “What do you mean-” The thug cut off mid-sentence, clutching his hands to his chest in a spasm of bewildering pain. “I…I…,” he started to say before his face contorted in agony and he fell to the ground, instantly dead.
Geth looked from the fallen body of his crew’s leader to their mysterious employer in the shadows beyond. “What did you do to him?” Geth blurted out, then clamped his mouth shut, eyes bulging with fear.
“What I will do to you, if you don’t listen very, very carefully to what I am going to say next,” the Master told him serenely. “From now on, Geth, you lead the Plague Rats. Gerok has been disposed of, and no one else at present suspects what we have begun here. Now, the only thing standing between me and the throne - and between you and a fortune the likes of which you probably can’t even begin to imagine - is some children, half-trained in the art of healing. Find those children and make absolutely sure they are dead. I want proof, Geth. Oh, and bring me whatever evidence Gerok left them. I am quite intrigued to see exactly how much of my plan he thought he had uncovered.” Geth nodded frantically to show that he understood everything that the Master had told him. “Good. Now, do this for me, and I will pay you the fortune I promised dearly departed Skir. Fail, and you will find that there are much more agonizing means of death than a mere heart attack.”
Involuntarily, Geth’s eyes were drawn back to the corpse at his feet. He swallowed, eyes roving the darkness for any sign of the speaker but saw none. “Whatever you say, Master,” he finished weakly.
The Master chuckled wetly, before coughing once more. “Good. Now, get out of my sight, and don’t return until you have the heads of those children.”
Not daring to wait even a single second, Geth turned and bolted up the staircase as quickly as he could, leaping over several steps at a time until he burst out onto the street above. From the darkness below, he could hear the Master’s mocking laughter echo up, chasing after him. Stopping only once he stood outside on the street, Geth breathed a little more steadily, his head cleared by the fresh air. Straightening up once more, Geth walked into the mist-wrapped streets, looking for the rest of his crew. They had work to do.
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Far away, at the opposite end of the city, atop the roof of one of the city’s many fish mongers, a man wearing a full suit of armor crouched along the building’s edge, watching the streets below patiently. The man’s armor, the kind that the Empress’ knights wore, had a bulky, elongated helmet, with an extended front like a muzzle. Around his waist he wore a leather belt, in which hung several pockets of various material, as well as a pair of long scabbards of the type that carried double-handed swords. Despite the weight of his armor and equipment, the figure moved as smoothly and swiftly as if he wore nothing but the lightest of clothes.
Through much of the night, the figure crouched along the roof’s edge without moving so much as a muscle, its face hidden beneath the plate as it watched the odd straggler wandering through the streets of Varin in darkness. After a long, patient vigil, however, the figure finally found what he was looking for: a fisherman and his apprentice returning long after the sun had set, discussing the events of the day as they unloaded their last catch from their nets into waiting barrels they could then roll down to the fishmongers for the morning sale. Despite his distance from the pair, the man could hear everything they said with perfect clarity.
“Did you hear about the fire last night? It took the town guard almost an hour to put it out,” the fisherman’s apprentice told his master.
“Really?” the fisherman said, clucking his tongue with disappointment as he did so. “A shame, that. An accident?”
“I think so,” the apprentice responded. “At least, I don’t know why anyone would set the fire.”
“Whose house burned?” the fisherman asked idly.
“Gerok, the old hemomancer,” the apprentice supplied.
At this, the figure on the roof perked up, raising its helmet slightly to look directly at the two. With one limber motion, the figure vaulted off the edge of the roof, landing on the wharf with enough force to nearly shatter the wood beneath its feet. Both fishermen stopped talking, staring at the approaching figure with a mixture of confusion and dread. Standing up slowly from where it had landed, the figure walked over to them, each step of its metal-shod feet clanking, the sound magnified in the hush of the night. The figure walked until it stood directly in front of the pair of fishermen, who watched it mutely as it raised a hand and pointed a gauntleted figure at their faces.
“You have a hemomancer in this town?” he asked, his voice low and gravely.
“Had,” the fisherman’s apprentice said, laughing hollowly. “He died in the fire. I saw them take his body away.”
“This hemomancer, describe him,” the figure demanded.
“Older, stooped back, wore spectacles most of the time,” the apprentice said, bewildered.
The helmeted figure considered this information. “Did he have a daughter?” he asked at last.
Both fishermen stared at the figure in confusion at that. “What? Old Gerok? Most certainly not,” the older fisherman said with a snort. “A more distinguished bachelor there never was than Gerok.”
“Gerok,” the figure said slowly, pronouncing the name slowly and deliberately. He clenched his gauntleted fists at his side, then turned his helmet away from the pair of fishermen. “Did this…Gerok have any apprentices?”
“Yes,” the older fishman said. “He had some twins. I forget their names.”
“Zaphyr and Zull,” the younger fisherman supplied.
The older fishman snapped his fingers. “That’d be it.”
“Did they survive the fire?” the figure asked.
The younger fisherman shook his head. “Who knows? Nobody has seen them since.”
“How talented of hemomancers would you have said they were?” the figure asked.
The fishermen considered this question, the older one scratching idly at his beard. “I would have said they showed a fair amount of talent, at least, Old Gerok always said they did,” the older fisherman said after a long pause. “But were they as good as Gerok? Certainly not. Not even within the same league. Still mostly untrained, as it were. Hemomancy is a complicated art, so I hear.”
The figure let out a low, throaty growl of irritation at that, which made the fishermen back away in surprise, palms raised in a warding gesture. “Woah, easy there, stranger,” the older fisherman said. “We didn’t mean you any harm or offense.”
The figure took a deep, steady breath, then said, “No offense was taken, good Sirs. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Only to stay off the streets at night. This part of the city is practically run by the Plague Rats, and they don’t take kindly to strangers walking through their territory between sundown and sunrise.” He looked the stranger over again, noting for the first time the swords at his side. “Of course, in your case you seem to be well-equipped to defend yourself.”
“I think that I will manage,” the helmeted figure said. Reaching into one of his belt’s pouches, he pulled out a golden crown, then flipped it towards the older fisherman, who caught the coin eagerly. The helmeted figure then gave a slight bow to the fishermen. “Thank you for your information,” he said. Turning away from the two of them, he walked slowly down the wharf, becoming enveloped in the mists and disappearing altogether from their sights. The fishermen looked at each other, then with a shrug, returned to their work, promptly pushing the helmeted figure from their minds altogether as they got back into their accustomed routine.
The figure walked through the city, following a trail only he could sense, retracing the steps of the twins back to their home, now a charred wreck surrounded by the half-burned remains of the surrounding buildings. He stood there for a moment, helmet swinging back and forth, before with a sudden burst of speed he started down another street, unerringly following the path of the twin’s flight.
Carefully, over the next few minutes, the helmeted figure retracted every step of the twin’s initial escape from the Plague Rats, their flight through the maze of streets, and finally, their confrontation at the back wall of the nameless alley. Like the twins, he found himself looking at a dead end, before slowly looking up. Without a moment’s hesitation, he leaped upwards, twice as high as a normal human could have, his fingers just barely grasping the edge of the wall. With superhuman effort, he pulled himself up and over the wall, vaulting down the other side and finding himself standing before an open doorway.
He stood stock still for a moment, and a faint sniffing sound could be heard, before his head suddenly whipped to stare at the door, before instead marching down the alley and out into the adjoining street. He marched over to the small stain of blood where Zull had deceived the Plague Rats and, kneeling next to it, touched the dried blood with his gauntlet, then held the gauntlet up to his mask as if to smell it. Upon doing so, he stopped for a moment, turning to stare in the direction of the city’s bay. It would be dawn soon, and with the dawn would come better visibility.
“Soon,” he whispered to himself. “Have patience. You have waited this long. Soon.” With that assurance, the figure moved once more with uncanny agility and strength as it effortlessly scaled the wall of a nearby tavern and, perched on its roof and out of the line of sight of the average passerby, waited patiently for the coming of the dawn.
Once the sun had arisen, the helmeted figure leaped down behind the tavern and, carefully working his away back around to the entrance, entered through the doors properly. Inside the small establishment, the figure noted that there were only three tables, all of which were already full despite the tavern opening only a few minutes before. Walking past to the far end of the room, he approached the tavern-keeper, a tall man with veiny hands.
“Greetings, M’lord,” the tavern-keeper said, mistaking the figure for a visiting noble. “We rarely get gentleman of your quality in this establishment. What can I do for you?”
“One ale, and some fish, if you have it,” the figure said. “No. Not fish. A leg of mutton. Am I understood?”
“Of course, M’lord,” the tavern-keeper said, clasping his hands as he quickly signaled to his cook to bring the required foods. Once he had done so, the figure handled him the required charges, then took the food on a large pewter plate. “If I may be so bold as to ask, what will M’lord be doing here in Varin?” the tavern-keeper said. Ignoring him, the armored figure took the food off the pewter plate and, clutching the mug in one hand and the mutton in the other, turned around and left the inn without another word.
Still clutching his food, the figure watched the growing crowds around him, as people were beginning to arise for the day, going about their daily tasks. Ignoring the curious stares of those around him, the figure walked down the street, still holding the mug and the mutton. For the moment, he was content to wait.