“On a cold Sunday morning, the body of Lord Haytham Cutter was discovered floating by the Dorfchester docks. His throat had been slit so deep the bone was visible, ruling out an accidental drowning. The City Watch declined to comment, citing the usual platitudes of it being an ‘ongoing investigation’ and ‘too soon to make judgements.’ They all knew and failed to address the ghost in the room. Lord Haytham Cutter was a well-known made man in the criminal underworld. The Late Lord has been implicated in cases involving racketeering, extortion, and even rumours of human trafficking. This marks the second crime lord to die in the past weeks, shortly after Adrian Thorne’s (better known as the Gargoyle) demise which has been officially listed as an apparent suicide. One must wonder why these criminal overlords are dropping like flies and if something – or someone – is connected to it all.”
Jacklyn Jacobs – The Jade Herald. 1311.
Even under the daylight, the Dorfchester Arms appeared a most foreboding place for anyone who lacked experience in enduring stab wounds. The tavern was ostracised from the other city constructs as if the buildings of Dorfchester were capable of fear and reluctant to go near the beastly place. Mothers ushered their children along faster as they walked past, the rough rabble audible even from outside. Sometimes the sound of a smashing glass could be heard, roughly every hour or so, and the regulars that would hang around outside for the fresh air would scowl and glare at passing nobles and whistle and remark crude gestures at their wives.
So naturally, when Hideo approached the troubled tavern in his overtly extravagant doublet, bifocals that would constantly slip down his nose, and generally awkward demeanour, he knew he would perhaps attract a bad kind of attention at this establishment. However, what was one person’s hell was another’s paradise, and he knew he would most likely find her here. He passed a regular drinking grog from a rusted tankard. He goggled at the passing Alchemist with his misshapen face and spat in his general direction. Despite the secretive power and skills that he held, he still felt a certain palpable anxiety as he passed through the chipped and broken entrance.
Entering the Dorfchester Arms felt somewhat akin to entering a madhouse. Hideo wondered if he had been magically transported to Clayhold Asylum. Of course, there were some who were quietly drinking at their tables, minding their own business, and brooding in silence. However, there were also groups of rowdy drunkards trying to add some excitement with deadly games. Some were gathered around a man in a torn tunic, stabbing a butcher’s knife between each of his fingers, constantly chipping away at the oaken table faster and faster with every hit between each finger. Only when his hubris condemned him as he cut off the end of his thumb with a misjudged stab did they all cheer around him. The man shrieked and rocked back and forth as another took a burning hot iron to the newly formed bloody stump.
Over to the right of the bar, another rowdy group was playing a hearty game of darts. To make things more interesting, they had one burly man standing just in front of the board. If a dart impaled him and not the dart board’s outskirts, the thrower would lose thirty points. In total, each player scored negative ninety points and the burly man in front appeared as a hedgehog with metallic spikes down his belly. He was too drunk to notice or scream from the pain.
Hideo made his way across the tables and crowds, doing his best to ignore the cacophony as he searched for the difficult debtor. Amongst the rabble, he recognised faces from his nights as a Night Fang. He eyed a man who had been at the Green Goat the night he had gone after Nissaro. Thick bandages were wrapped around his arm.
There were a group of thugs in black and red jerkins drinking beside a wooden beam, each of them brandishing the broach of a white fish with gold stripes. The broach denoted their allegiance to The Goldfish, a crime lord and drug runner who resided in Drakelyn. Hideo had thought about investigating him to see if he had any connections to the Inferno Clan but then wondered if he had perhaps grown too paranoid if he suspected that every high criminal in the city was in league with an ancient assassin order. Hideo saw two men in russet leather armour and black hoods sat in a booth that he suspected were factotums to the King and Queen of Thieves. Seeing them made Hideo’s sides burn in pain again as he remembered his unsuccessful night at the Gargoyle’s tower. Ironically, he felt safer in his guise as Hideo Horio, where they would not recognise and attempt to steal his Night Fang blade as their king and queen were so eager to do.
He finally found her in a reclusive booth at the end of the tavern, drinking mead in isolation. She was ferociously cutting into one of half a dozen pork pies and chewing every piece with a fearsome velocity as if some flying predator would swoop down and steal her meal from her at any moment. He did not fault her for that. Growing up in the Shards, Hideo never fully enjoyed a meagre meal with the constant threat of it being stolen from some other urchin. She never disclosed much of her past to him. He always assumed it was not pretty. She was wearing a dark jerkin and grey breeches. It was strange to see her dressed as a civilian and not as the hooded assassin he knew. Hideo took a seat opposite her. She paid him no mind.
“You’re better than this place,” he said.
Amaya looked up at him. Without her war paint, Hideo could see every protruding red scar slashed across her face. There was a beauty behind the wounds, with her cornflower blue eyes and thick shaggy hair, but one had to look closely to see. “Where I spend my days is not for you to judge,” she retorted heatedly. “At least I don’t spend them buried in books and making liquids glow a pretty colour.”
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Out of nowhere, a drunkard slammed his rusty tankard into the centre of the table between them. Bubbling grog splashed everywhere and onto Hideo’s bifocals. The Drunkard closely scrutinised Amaya with bulging frog eyes, scratching his bald, rock-shaped head. The Drunkard’s face contorted into a look of disgust. “What’s up with your face, wench?” he slurred.
Amaya smiled at the Drunkard with that unnerving smile that always put Hideo on edge. “At least I don’t look like something even a dog in heat would refuse to hump.”
The Drunkard’s frog eyes narrowed. “Whatya say, wench?” he hissed.
“Sir, believe me, you’re better off antagonising somebody else,” Hideo implored. “I say this not as a threat, but for your own safety.”
“You callin’ me ugly, wench?” Frog Eyes asked, ignoring Hideo. As the Drunkard reached his hand to grab her, the exchange was over in a heartbeat, ending with his arm having been twisted completely around, a cutlery knife fully embedded through the palm of his hand. He wailed and flailed about, drawing the attention of a heavyset landlady with a double chin.
“What did I tell you, Amaya!” the Landlady yelled so loudly that the thick round mole on the side of her cheek could have burst.
“Apologies, Darcy,” Amaya said in an unnaturally pleasant tone. “A simple misunderstanding. Nothing more.”
The Drunkard dragged himself back to his gang where his friends gave scornful looks at Amaya and the Alchemist. To Hideo’s relief, they did not approach the table to escalate things further. Yet at least. Now deprived of a knife, Amaya stuck her fork into the last remaining pie, using it as a skewer to gnaw with. “Did you read The Jade Herald?” she asked, taking another savage bite. “Haytham Cutter’s body was found floating by the docks.”
“That was not my doing,” Hideo said sternly. “Are you certain your friend left?”
“This will come as a shock to you, but not all murders are committed by mystical assassins.”
Hideo frowned. “He knew that world. He had a sisterhood assassin locked in his castle, after all.”
“You seem to care more about the dead crime lords than the dead Royalists, Hideo.” Amaya gave him a studying look as she took another bite from the skewer.
He slammed a fist on the table with a fury so unsettling a spark nearly escaped from one of his scarred fingertips. “Someone whom I worked closely with was poisoned by the Inferno,” Hideo hissed. “She died in my arms, and I was helpless to do anything. All I could do was be there whilst she choked and wheezed for mercy. Her and Haytham are the last kills they get to have.”
“What makes you think they were behind Haytham?” Amaya asked as she took another vicious bite on the pie, her jaw crunching violently.
“The Thieves Guild, the Gargoyle, this is what they do. They are infiltrating organised crime factions, using them all as scapegoats for their own racketeering and if any of the crime lords piss them off,” Hideo, without warning, and noticing Amaya’s attention already dwindling, snatched her fork from her hand and stabbed it into the chipped table. “They end up dead in a river or burnt to a crisp.”
“It’s all very fascinating, Hideo,” Amaya said with her mouth full whilst yanking her fork back out of the table. “But why are you interrupting my meal to tell me all this?”
“You made the blood debt with me.” He spoke officially. “I know their next move, and I require your services.”
“Of course. Where and when?”
“Tonight. In White Haven. Viscount Reynard Woodard is attending the opening of a new library. He will be outside the safety of the palace and his heavily guarded home. They would be foolish not to take the opportunity.”
“Very well,” she said after swallowing the last of the pork pie. “I shall be there the moment the moon rises above the library.”
Hideo was surprised by how easy the interaction was. He still lost his temper, but not nearly as much as he usually did when dealing with Amaya Kantanarro. As he slid from the booth and stood, Hideo was met by a giant stone wall of a man whose head barely fit within his tight coif hat. Two others then blocked him and Amaya from taking their leave, in stained, ripped shirts and dagger'd belts. Unsurprisingly, they were friends to the frog-eyed man that Amaya had injured and impaled moments ago. No matter what approach I take, it always ends in violence when dealing with this woman, Hideo thought solemnly before throwing a fist in the giant man’s direction. He knew his gloved knuckles would hurt something fierce from the blow, but couldn’t allow anyone to witness him use his charge. He was condemned to fight like a normal man, choosing to brawl rather than show any of the moves he had learned from his time at Darkfall.
The giant took a few steps back and wiped his now-bloody nose. In the booth, Hideo noticed Amaya downing the rest of her tankard in one swift gulp before using it as a blunt weapon on another attacker’s left cheek.
Hideo pushed the giant into a wooden beam and hit him twice and thrice before he was grabbed from behind. He kicked the grabber in the left shin with such a strength he heard a screeching shriek bellow deep into his ear. Amaya and Hideo continued to dance with and throw around the violent drunkards before they were interrupted by a crossbow bolt that soared across the tavern and shot past them into the booth window. Glass shards shattered and scattered the tables, enough to make everyone freeze in their steps. The shooter was the double-chinned Landlady who still had the giant iron crossbow aimed at his and Amaya’s direction. “All of you. Out.” Her words were iron, and they all heeded her.
The thugs did not attempt to continue the fight once they were all banished out into the Dorfchester streets. They were too beaten and fatigued to care anymore and swiftly vanished into the nearby crowds. Hideo felt great embarrassment as onlooking nobles and peasants alike watched their eviction. The Landlady was still bellowing threats and warnings by the tavern doors, advising them to never return in quite explicit phrases.
“This was fun,” Amaya said unperturbed. She leaned in close to Hideo and whispered into his ear which was bruised and sensitive from the fight. “See you tonight for more of it.” As she disappeared into the tide of onlookers and passing carriages, Hideo wondered if he had made an incredibly disastrous mistake. He would have to wait until nightfall to find out.