Rain was splattering hard against the stained-glass window when Hideo finally returned to his chamber during the beginning hours of the night. It was a long day in the alchemy lab, yet he and Anastasia were no closer to finding a cure for the new plague brewing in the Shards. He was so vexed that he almost forgot his true objective. He had slain Nissaro, a small victory, but the others were still out there and the fact they had not made a move yet only made him more anxious. He was in no mood for any games or further complications. He just wanted to rest. A few hours of precious sleep before he would have to suit up and venture out into the night again in desperate search of answers.
He quickly lit a candle, which illuminated a hooded figure sitting in his armchair. He had recently purchased the furniture to give him at least some small comfort in this dismal apartment. Now someone had deprived him of that, too.
“You better not have left scratches on it,” he said curtly as he continued to light the candles on his desk. The dark room didn’t get much brighter, only the smell of sweet incense increased, but it was clear to Hideo, who was under the zaffre hood.
“What a nice way to greet one of your fellow fangs.”
The Archer in blue stood. She had the same dark war paint replicating a wildcat’s scratch marks across her face that covered the very real ghastly scars that laid beneath. Her sapphire bow dangled between her scarred fingertips. She wore a dark blue cloak that shrouded her right arm, the broach of a small sapphire fang pinning it to her zaffre jacket. She pulled her hood back to reveal shaggy hair that was as black as night and her usual unnerving smile that looked like she knew something he didn’t. “It hasn’t been the same in Darkfall since you left, Hideo,” she said with feigned longing. “We miss you terribly. How do you find being a boring alchemist again?”
Hideo frowned. Without asking permission, she opened the draw next to his unkempt bed and pulled out his black and sapphire mask and held it up to him. “You don’t hide your belongings very well. I could have been the maid.”
“This isn’t the kind of place that has chambermaids, Amaya,” he answered in irritation. “Did the Empress send you here?”
She tossed the mask to the floor. The sapphire side glowed in the dark corner. She stepped closer to the Alchemist. “She did. Although my reasoning for being here is different from yours.”
“Then why are you here?” Hideo asked impatiently.
“The Fraternity of Fangs have spoken, and the Empress has given me a new mark to end,” she said with an ominous grimace. There was an almost sick delight in her voice.
“I’m the first Night Fang to emerge in New Jade City. I find the coincidence that you happen to be doing your duty here too somewhat suspect. Even if you are in the city for someone else, why are you here specifically, sitting in my chair and eating my food?” Hideo pushed up his spectacles with his green-gloved hands and then indicated to the leftovers of mutton and carrot that were sat on his desk.
She walked up close and placed a scarred hand on his shoulder. It felt cold. “Would you believe me if I said I missed you and wanted to visit whilst I had the chance?” she asked warmly.
“No.”
Her feigned warmness cooled. She snatched her hand back like a retracting viper. “Fine. What I said was half true. If you help me with my quest, I’ll help you with yours. An assist for an assist.”
“Amaya,” Hideo said sternly, “if the Empress wanted us working together again, she would have ordered it so. She made it perfectly clear what a terrible example we were for each other.”
“Oh, come now, Hideo. She may be ancient, but she isn’t all-knowing. She never has to know about tonight.” She tilted her head. “Even after earning that fancy suit of yours, the thought of pissing her off still chills you to the bone, doesn’t it?”
Hideo gave her a nasty grin. “I’m trying not to dishonour my clan, fellow fang. Frankly, you’re the last person I need to be dealing with right now.”
Amaya gave a mocking look of pity as she hugged and cradled her sapphire bow. “Oh, is the task too hard for the poor little ninja? That assassin you fought in the garden didn’t give you too much of a booboo, did he?”
“So, you were watching me when that happened?” Hideo was already getting tired of her taunting. “If you wanted help, why didn’t you help me, then?”
Amaya shrugged indifferently. “You seemed to have it handled. I have to say, I was impressed.”
“Thank you. Who are you here for, Amaya?”
“A boar that thrives in the city that you are so drawn to,” she said in a melodious tone. “A supposed ‘noble’ lord that dapples in darker affairs during the cold nights. He’s not that different from your Gargoyle, except this boar isn’t so loud about it all. He resides in the Dorfchester borough, so we best get moving now while the moon shines brightly.”
Hideo avoided her gaze. Something about Amaya’s inquisitive eyes made him feel like he was a nervous novice back at Darkfall again, scared and alone. “I’m meant to be stopping the Inferno Clan from killing the Royalists. I can’t be distracted.”
“And you have done such sterling work avoiding distractions,” she said with more toxic mockery. “Yes, I distinctly remember the Empress ordering you to go to the tallest tower in the city and dangle an angry little bald man out of a window.”
“He was a crime lord connected to the Inferno Clan,” Hideo snapped back defensively, beginning to fiddle with the buttons on his green doublet. “They had him under his thumb. He was just a dangling puppet.”
The blue Archer’s lips curled. “What lord isn’t?”
“It’s worse than that. The man leading the Inferno has many assassins and has some sort of influence over the criminal underworld. He’s the Thane, Amaya. Nissaro told me before I…” Hideo didn’t finish the sentence, but Amaya finished it for him.
“Slit his throat? Don’t act so haunted, Hideo. I saw what happened. What else is supposed to happen at that point? You go to the ball together? You act as if you’ve never killed before. Need I remind you about your little outburst back at Star Snow?”
“The circumstances were much different then,” he said icily.
The blue Archer rolled her eyes and tutted. “Look, Hideo. We may chastise each other a lot and clearly, our time apart hasn’t changed that, but we are still friends, are we not? Help me tonight and then we can try to find out who is really behind this royal assassination plot together. Do we have a deal?”
Hideo looked up at her with reluctance. “One other rule,” Hideo sternly declared. “No one dies except your mark. The only blood I want shed is of those the Empress has ordered us to end. Is that clear?”
“As clear as the jade crystals in the city lakes, Hideo.” Amaya Kantanarro, named Arrowcat by the Night Fangs, donned her zaffre hood, shrouding her clawed face in shadow with only her devilish smile still visible.
They jumped from rooftop to rooftop, over statues and wooden constructs of unmanned watchtowers. The free-running journey over the city architecture was long, but it didn’t bother the Night Fang. He felt the wind’s swift, energising embrace and, on top of buildings, the city felt like his playground rather than the troubled town that he had grown up in. Amaya seemed to be enjoying herself just as much, somersaulting between buildings with ostentatious grace. They headed deeper into the Dorfchester borough, near the edge of the city alongside one of the rivers that ran through the districts. When jumping and spinning in the air, Hideo felt a rush that he could not get from anywhere else.
As they got close to the edge of the borough, the architecture became progressively smaller and sparse. The two Night Fangs had to manoeuvre in the shadows on ground level between thickets and abandoned dilapidated houses. One building stood out above them all, not just in height but just from appearing maintained. A small stone castle with the banners of Greenfire draped along the sides depicting the face of a short-faced bear wearing a jade crown engulfed in green flames.
Amaya led them into a small house adjacent to the castle that they thought was vacant. The wooden front door lacked a knob and instead had a giant hole to pry the entrance open with. Inside, furniture was toppled, and cobwebs hung from the walls and in the corners. Hideo suspected this was once a nobleman or noblewoman’s home, but as Dorfchester deteriorated and crime arose, the residents moved to Stone Sparkles and White Raven. Or perhaps the owner did not survive here. What took both Hideo and Amaya by surprise was that they were not alone in the ruins.
There was a burning and toxic smell and sat nearby on a broken armchair was a man in a torn tunic, his head hanging back, and his mouth gaped open as if he were asleep except his eyes were blinking in awe. Amaya inspected the catatonic individual. She knelt and observed the bronze syringe sticking out of his arm. A strange crimson liquid still lingered inside the glass tube. “Momentum,” the hooded assassin concluded. “Unpleasant stuff. But it works to our benefit. Even if he is conscious with us now, he won’t remember a thing in the morning.”
“Is your mark in the castle, Amaya?” the Night Fang echoed as he opened the front door slightly ajar to peer outside.
“He has quite the lavish home, doesn’t he?” she answered flippantly.
“Those are Greenfire banners, Amaya,” the Night Fang pointedly echoed. “I want a name. Who are you assassinating?”
“Exercise calmness, Hideo,” the Archer said nonchalantly as she moved away from the momentum-addled vagrant. “He isn’t one of your precious Royalists. He’s just rich and supportive of the city’s monarchy.”
“Then who is he?” Behind his mask, Hideo was grinding his teeth. “Because I find your claim that this was on the Empress’ order thinner and thinner as the night goes on.”
Amaya rolled her eyes and pulled back her zaffre hood. Her shaggy hair tumbled out and the nearby candlelight illuminated the black claw marks across her face. “Fine. I’ll be truthful. I have learnt some rather upsetting news. It’s about a close friend of mine who I go profoundly far back with. We grew up in the same orphanage, in fact.” She prodded the stern Night Fang with the edge of her sapphire bow. “You know what that’s like. I digress. I have discovered that she has run into some bother, crossing that unsavoury Lord Haytham Cutter. He has her held in this pitifully small fortress. We’re freeing her and you’ll be home in time to go back to wallowing in your pit of an apartment.”
“Very well,” Hideo echoed in his ghostly voice through his mask. Amaya had a habit of taking advantage of those around her, even those closest to her, but Hideo would only feel more restless if he repudiated her request and indeed returned to wallow in his austere chambers. At least by seeing this through, he could keep a leash on her and mitigate the damage she would cause. “Did the Empress order Haytham’s death?” he asked.
“Not exactly-”
“Then he lives. We sneak in, free this friend of yours, and disappear into the night.”
Amaya rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she agreed, but as she opened the door for them to leave, she raised her scarred hand to stop him. “Oh, and Hideo, you don’t need to use that ridiculous voice when it’s just you and me. I already know who you are.”
They found the first guard patrolling around the back courtyard. To Hideo’s relief, they were not City Watch, nor palace guards, but the more he thought about it, the more disconcerting it became. He’s rich enough to have been offered the King’s royal guards, yet he has opted to pay for hired hands. What is he hiding in there? Perhaps Amaya was, for once, being truthful when it came to this Lord Haytham’s true nature.
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The guard wore all black, a mace strapped behind his jerkin. The Night Fang pounced from the fence and descended on the armed thug like a panther, wrapping one scarred hand around the thug’s mouth and putting the thug’s arm in a lock in the other. His hands pulsated and the thug started violently shaking. The shock lasted only a second and promptly stopped before the crook’s skin could begin to sizzle. One pulse of charge was enough to stun a man. Two more would cause scares that would never heal. Three more would leave catastrophic bodily damage. The fourth pulse would be the last a man would ever feel, a desperate last resort. He let go and the thug fell to the ground, out cold, the mace rolling across the muddy garden tiles.
“Oi!” The Night Fang turned to see another guard with a crossbow but before he could yell another word, a steel arrow with a sapphire head hurtled out of the night and through his leg. The embedded arrow sent out a pulse and blue sparks fluttered from behind his calf. The guard fell to the ground without making a sound. Amaya dropped down next to the fallen guard, turned to Hideo, and grinned under her hood. Whilst her method was far harsher than Hideo’s, she at least appeared to be keeping her promise. Whether the guard would fully heal from that arrow, however...
The back entrance was bolted shut with iron hinges. Amaya pulled a lock pick from her sleeve and elegantly tinkered with the lock until the satisfying sound of a clink was made. Anyone else who tried to open a bolted door like that would have made it creak, but Amaya opened it in such a way that it glided gracefully aside. She motioned for him to go ahead of her with that unhinged grin that always put Hideo on edge.
Unlike the courtyard, the level of security within the castle was a different tale. As they turned into a hallway, they were met with half a dozen of them. Hideo could have sworn that he recognised one of the guardsmen from The Green Goat back when he was going after Wes, the same black and white war paint dusted across his face. The others snatched clubs, blackjacks, and daggers from their belts. The two Night Fangs were left with no choice but to forgo stealth. It was all Hideo could do to hope that Amaya continued to keep her word to avoid pure bloodshed.
She was the first one to move. She twirled like a ballet dancer, the sapphire bow glowing under the torchlights as its edge hit the first guard in the centre of the nose. He wobbled back against the wall, cupping his gushing nostrils whilst the blue archer swung the bow across the forehead of the next attacker, hooded and brandishing an iron mace. She made quick work of him, kicking him back whilst pulling another sapphire arrow from her quiver. Instead of hitching it to her bow, she opted to stab the sapphire arrowhead into his shoulder, starry blue sparks flying from her scarred hand. The hooded thug shook and spasmed uncontrollably before sliding down against the damp stone wall.
The remaining four warily stepped back in their defensive stances, most likely wondering how effective their clubs and rusted blades would really be against this intruder. The fear was plain on their faces, and why wouldn’t they be afraid? They were the first Night Fangs in New Jade City. They never would have seen their kind, what Amaya could do, or the power she just demonstrated. She turned to look back at Hideo with wicked joy on her face. “Feel free to chime in at any moment,” she commented before pulling another arrow from her quiver.
The Night Fang ran ahead of her while she aimed and spun into the remaining four henchmen, kicking, deflecting, and striking between them. The larger of the guards grabbed the Night Fang from behind, but the Sapphire Assassin kicked the two guards in front of them hard enough to launch the grappling guard back against the wall. He heard the guard’s back crack against the sharp stones. The beast’s grip did not loosen, and Hideo could feel the air escaping from him. He was being left with little choice. He braced himself for the pain and felt the veins in his wrists burning. A sapphire arrow flew inches past his mask. The large thug followed it with his eyes as it embedded into a hanging portrait of Lord Haytham directly where his face was painted. The arrow left the guard in such a trance that he did not see her descending on him like a blue wraith. Hideo was finally released, and sweet air returned to him.
When he stood. He could see that the large guard was already on the floor, his body twitching from Amaya’s touch. He was hardly armoured, in just a green tunic and hood. His shaking boots were ripped down the side. He saw the damage they had left in their wake. Some of the men were no longer conscience whilst two others were moaning on the floor, struggling to accept their wounds. Amaya forcefully pulled the arrow from Lord Haytham’s oil painting and spat on the fine artwork. “I do hope he didn’t pay much for it.”
“Remember what I said,” he reminded her in his ghostly voice.
“Yes, yes, it would be very discourteous of me to rid the city of a corrupt criminal. What we’re looking for should be behind that door.” She indicated towards the chamber doors on their left with the point of her bow.
The Night Fang expected to see a dungeon instead, he saw drapes of velvet purple, ruby red cushions, and scarlet silk rugs. The ladies of the night jumped from their beds and couches, some grabbed silks and blankets for modesty, others screamed when they saw them. The clients they were atop of fled out another entrance, most of them as naked as plucked chickens. “My mistake,” the Archer casually admitted. “It must be the other door.”
They retraced their steps back into the hallway where the guards still lay. Hideo promptly kicked the right door. What lay behind was a darker picture. There were iron doors on each side of the hallway, some were swinging open and bashed against the stone walls in the draft whilst others were bolted shut. “How many people does he hold here?” the Night Fang echoed with a tinge of dread in his ghostly voice.
“Who can say?” Amaya said, seemingly unfazed. “How many people have crossed Lord Haytham or learnt something they shouldn’t have?”
Hideo went to the first door and kicked it down, no longer caring who heard. Every guard and strumpet in the castle now knew of their presence, regardless. He found someone who seemed to be dressed as a merchant or at least was before the mud and webs got to him. His overgrown goatee had manky crumbs and dust scattered on it. He groaned as he adjusted to the light. The Night Fang lifted him to his feet. As the merchant’s vision cleared, he turned pale at the sight of him. “Leave while you can,” Hideo echoed through his mask. “Through the back.” The imprisoned Merchant hesitated to move until the Night Fang slammed his sapphire gauntlet into the iron door that he had just kicked open. The clang echoed down the hallway. “NOW!”
The Prisoner went scrambling out the door.
“You may be surprised to know that he wasn’t who I was looking for,” Amaya commented.
Hideo ignored her and went to kick open the other remaining doors down the sides of the damp, dark hallway. He found no one else but shuddered when his mind imagined who could have been down here previously and for how long. “No sign of this friend of yours,” the Night Fang echoed.
“They won’t be keeping her here,” Amaya said pointedly. “She’s too dangerous.”
“You said you knew her from an orphanage?”
“It was one.” She shrugged. “Of sorts.”
“Amaya…”
“You really wish to bicker here whilst Haytham is sending reinforcements?”
The hallways turned into a maze the more they explored them. It wasn’t until they found a descending stone stairway that led them to a cold chamber down into the bowels of the castle. At the bottom of the spiral stairs, they found an iron door, one with multiple hinges bolted down. Hinge by hinge, the blue Archer knocked them down with the edge of her sapphire bow with a ferocity that Hideo had once seen before, and it worried him greatly.
The door swung open, and Hideo found Amaya’s supposed friend to not appear as anyone of this city. She did not look like a noblewoman, a beggar, a maid, a mummer or even City Watch. The pads of scarlet armour around her pale arms that were held up with dozens of chains, the array of empty leather sheaths attached to a scarlet silk belt, the red headband under straw-coloured hair and the scarlet arrowheads painted across her eyes that she opened wearily. None of this was normal, even for a visitor to the city. Hideo began to realise the kind of person they were rescuing, and it made his chest tighten.
Amaya pulled her zaffre hood back and delicately lifted the captive’s chin with her scarred fingertips. “Neoma,” the Archer whispered in a tone that Hideo had never heard Before. She cupped the captive's pale face with her hands. As Haytham Cutter’s captive started to awaken, Hideo saw something sharp and restless in her eyes, something that reminded him greatly of another also in the room.
“You’re blue,” the Captive said with soft and dazed warmth.
Amaya leaned in to kiss her, which seemed to pass some life into the hanging woman. The chains rattled as she tried to break free from them to embrace the Archer.
The Night Fang watched them silently, a small fury building within him. What have we done?
A rumbling came from above them. Amaya turned back to him. Her face was as cold as ice. “Go hold them off while I cut her down,” she ordered.
The rumbling above got louder. The Night Fang heeded Amaya’s order and ascended upstairs. There were five more of them standing at the end of the first hallway he returned to. Haytham Cutter stood behind them, a beet-red face of rage under a long brown peruke. His red cloak flopped around as he yelled to his henchmen. “There he is!” he barked incessantly. “I want him brought to me. Why are you not moving?”
“Did you see what he did to the others, M’Lord?” one hired hand in a torn coif and dark jerkin barked back whilst pointing his blackjack at the Night Fang with a trembling hand. “He’s… he’s not human-”
“He’s an intruder!” Haytham bellowed. “Do your duty or it will be your heads!”
They did as the pompous fool commanded and charged. Normally being outnumbered by small-time criminals was of little concern to the Night Fang, but it was a narrow hallway without much room to move. He even found himself taking a step back before realising how cowardly he must have looked and pushed himself forward. They all tried to tackle him at once. The Night Fang kicked one of them back with his zaffre boot and spun into another, inflicting a knife hand strike against his warty neck.
The remaining three began to overpower him. One grappled his pudgy arm around the Night Fang’s neck whilst another slashed a blackjack against his black and sapphire breastplate, a clang echoing off the silver horned tiger emblem.
Amaya broke her promise with the next arrow that flew from the darkness and impaled itself through the neck of the blackjack-wielder. Hideo cursed behind his mask. He heard Haytham Cutter shrieking from across the hall and the following cry behind him as another arrow hit the leg of the guard grappling him from behind. The Night Fang pulled his arm and twisted it. The thug lurched away and slid down the wall, cradling the broken limb. As the Night Fang stood, he saw Amaya aiming her sapphire bow and arrow at the crime lord, the Captive they had aided in freeing, staggering behind her.
The last thug had already fled down the hall past Haytham. The Crime Lord stood, too frozen from fear to move. The Night Fang could not tell if Haytham Cutter had pissed himself, but the look on his face suggested it was highly plausible.
“Arrowcat,” the Night Fang echoed, “the deal.”
Amaya sighed and released the bow’s finely tuned string. The arrow hit the peruke, revealing a bald and warty scalp atop Lord Haytham’s head. The Lord waddled out into the hallway as fast as he could.
As they emerged out into the courtyard, Hideo was hit with a cold air that reminded him of Arkovia’s snows. Amaya had the Captive’s arm slung over her shoulder. The strange woman with red arrowheads painted over her eyes remained silent until a surviving underling of Lord Haytham’s ran from the back entrance and tackled her to the ground, knocking Amaya out of the way.
The Night Fang was about to pull him off her but before he could react or Amaya could get back to her feet, the Captive flung the back of her head into the thug’s nose and twirled her body around. She contorted it in such an unnatural way that she was on top of him within seconds.
In a freighting fluid motion, the straw-haired woman pulled the dagger from the guard’s belt and slashed it across his throat. Hideo would go on to hear the gargling sound the man made during restless nights and nightmares.
He waited until they found safety on the rooftop of a cathedral to admonish his former ally. Amaya pulled out a silver flask. “Drink,” she insisted to the woman they had just rescued. The Captive downed it with ease and slouched against a stone gargoyle and started cackling. “Rescued by Night Fangs. What is becoming of this world?” She appeared to have regained her bearings. After some swigs, the Captive asked, “Is this why you left us, Amaya? To live with kittens?”
“I’m sorry,” the Archer said with remorse as she knelt beside her. “I left them. I never wanted to leave you.”
“Amaya,” the Night Fang echoed coldly. “A word.”
He did not wait for them to be out of the Captive’s earshot before unveiling his fury. “If the Empress finds out what we did, it’s over for both of us. Deceiving people is in your blood, but this has crossed a line you’re not coming back from.”
“We just rescued a poor woman from captivity,” she lied, with her usual feigned innocence.
“Don’t bullshit me, Amaya. She’s from the Sisterhood of Bows. You’re not even trying to hide it.”
“And whatever gave you that notion?”
“The red arrowheads on her face, the way in which she killed that guard, and the amount of security Haytham had around her.”
“My, you are perceptive.”
“You swore your allegiance to the Empress and to the Night Fangs, but you couldn’t keep yourself away from them-”
“I couldn’t let someone dear to me rot in Lord Haytham’s shitty castle, Hideo,” she cut in defiantly.
“Don’t say that name with her here,” the Night Fang snarled in his ghostly voice.
“Apologies, Titan Tiger.” She uttered the title as if it were a venomous insult.
“What happens then?” the straw-haired assassin asked from afar. She was still resting against the back of a horned gargoyle, stone wings spread wide and stained with bird shit. She looked like a bloody scarecrow capable of frightening away nearby ravens. “You going to kill me then, Night Fang?” she asked tauntingly.
“Yes ‘Titan Tiger, do what the Empress would have you do,” Amaya mocked with fiery eyes. “Kill Neoma. Let this entire night be a waste.”
The Night Fang pushed Amaya aside and pointed at the sisterhood assassin with a dagger'd finger. “You’re going to leave this city and never come back,” he ordered. “You’re going to tell the sisterhood you escaped captivity yourself. We are not to be included in the tale. You have one day to recover from your misadventure and then you’re gone. Do you understand me?”
“And what about Haytham?” Neoma protested. The red arrowheads painted across her eyes seemed to burn. “Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?”
“We don’t serve your Queen and our Empress hasn’t ordered Haytham’s end,” the Night Fang sternly answered for her. “Therefore he lives, no matter how repugnant he may be.” He then turned back to Amaya, his blue eyes flaring like lightning bolts. “We’re done here. Make sure she leaves the city by next nightfall, and then I want you gone, too.”
That unsettling grimace crept over Amaya’s face again, but she did not retort.
“Amaya,” the sisterhood assassin called out as she tried to level herself to her feet. Her legs shook and wobbled from months of misuse. “What happened to your face?” she asked. “Who disfigured you so?”
Amaya turned her gaze to the Night Fang and smiled. “He’s standing on this roof with us.”