The horizon was lightening, the deep blue giving way to violet, as Elizabeth stood atop the Palace roof. She had worried the families would miss her deadline, too afraid or too sceptical to risk such an obvious trap, but there they were, streaming through the streets towards her. No doubt they had spoken with Giorgie and, being reassured she was alone, decided this was the best chance they had to deal with her. Especially since they had no idea where to find her otherwise. She hadn’t gotten around to telling the worm about her safe house, thank the gods.
She searched the crowd until she spotted Luca, gagged and tied, being dragged by rope behind a particularly burly enforcer. Elizabeth’s face twisted into a snarl, and she mentally marked the bastard as he gave the rope a savage tug, pulling the girl off her feet. Her fingers curled into fists, clenched so tight the nails started biting through the skin of her palms, and she forced herself to close her eyes and breathe. Luca looked whole and unharmed. She could still be saved. That was the important thing here.
Francesca would have been relieved if she were here. Unfortunately for her, Elizabeth had forced her to stay back with the street performers, so she was probably still a wreck. The poor woman had been beside herself, worried the Famiglia would try to doublecross them, leave Luca behind, or worse, kill her in retaliation. Elizabeth had tried to allay her fears, with, admittedly not much success. But she had been certain they would bring Luca, if only to keep her in place until they could attack. They wouldn’t have risked hurting Luca beforehand either, not when the cost of vengeance was incurring Elizabeth’s wrath. They would wait until they had her trapped.
Or thought they had her trapped, at least.
She was absolutely sure they would renege on the deal. Unfortunately for them, she had prepared.
She turned away from the view and jumped through the window, streaking through the expansive building to the entrance hall dais. Planting her feet where Loudmouth had stood, she tried to suppress her panting as the door below her exploded inwards.
She clapped her hands together and smiled as enforcers streamed in.
“Welcome to my house!” she said as soon as she had the breath. “I hope you like it. I spent all night tidying up and getting ready for your arrival. No canapes, I’m afraid, but I still promise a party like you wouldn’t believe! Please present the guest of honour!”
The enforcers glanced around, confused by what she meant.
“Oh, for- where is Luca? The girl?”
There was movement in the crowd as Bastard pushed through, Luca still in tow. Once they were out in front, the girl looked up at Elizabeth, tears welling in her adorable puppy dog eyes.
“Don’t worry, darling. Auntie Elizabeth is going to get you out of here.”
“Not likely, whore,” Bastard said, stepping between them. “The patriarchs asked me to tell you, the deal is off.” The men in the crowd snickered behind him, drawing their weapons. Elizabeth snorted and rolled her eyes. “We’ve decided we’ll keep the girl. And kill- hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
“Just getting a run up,” Elizabeth called down as she backed away from the dais and adopted a sprinter’s stance.
“A run up? What are you- “
He trailed off as Elizabeth charged the railing, planted a boot on the carved marble and sailed into the air, a knife in each of her outstretched hands. She looked down, savouring the view and the open-mouthed shock on the faces of the enforcers. They probably thought she was suicidal or insane. But they were wrong.
Well, mostly wrong. At least on the first part,
She focussed on Bastard, his ugly, slack jawed face, and activated the pendant. Suddenly, they were face to face, the momentum from her leap of faith transferring with her as she re-materialised, the force punching a knife through the top of his skull. She rolled as she landed, snatched Luca, and activated the pendant again, transporting them both back to the dais.
There was a chorus of “Get her!” and “Gut the bitch!” from the ground floor as the mass of bodies charged the stairs while Elizabeth noisily emptied the contents of her stomach on the balcony. Strangely, Luca just stood there, waiting for Elizabeth to finish and seeming completely undisturbed by the teleportation.
“Probably too overwhelmed for her brain to register the nausea,” Elizabeth thought. When the heaving subsided, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and gave Luca a once over, checking for any obvious injuries. She seemed fine, if even more wide eyed than before, but the tears were gone. Elizabeth fancied the girl’s fear had been replaced with awe, and she gave the kid a reassuring wink. Satisfied she was alright, Elizabeth straightened back up, drew a pair of pistols, and sighted onto the grenades she had secured to the backs of the colonnades. She took a moment to confirm the shots, and pulled the triggers.
There was a roar, and a pressure wave that smashed out every window in the room as the bombs detonated in explosive balls of flame, snapping the marble pillars. The blossoming conflagration caught more grenades, adding their explosions to the surging chain reaction. The enforcers closest to the pillars disappeared, their screams engulfed by the roar of the fire, their brothers outside the grasp of the reaching flame scythed down by the shards of marble ricocheting around the room. After a few moments, the chaos died down, all but the central pillar demolished, the enforcers either dead or broken within the cloud of marble dust.
Elizabeth whooped and clapped her hands, then swept Luca up in an enthusiastic embrace, whirling the girl around. Shooting the grenades with her ordinary steel bullets wouldn’t have done much, but she had used special rounds she commissioned some time ago. They were mage killers, made from Resonance Ore. If the ore was left unsaturated, they would theoretically absorb the juice out of a battlemage’s magical shield, dissipating it as it passed through and giving them a nasty surprise on the other side.
But she had stumbled on a much more exciting concept when planning for this little shindig. By saturating them with magic beforehand, they could be used as a catalyst to overcharge her bomb’s enchantments, allowing activation from a distance. As she holstered her pistols and surveyed the damage, she decided the experiment was a resounding success.
There were some low moans and a grown man crying in the detritus below, but evidently her little set up had worked better than expected. The vast majority of enforcers were dead. Time to get Luca out of here, then get back to killing patriarchs.
“Come on, darling. Let’s get you back to your Mama.”
She untied Luca and pulled the gag from her mouth, then took her by the hand and gently guided her down the stairs.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you cleaned up, get some food into that cute little head of yours, and you’ll feel much better. In fact, I know this place that does amazing calamari- “
She stopped talking as she spotted movement at the entrance. A head poked in, looked around and, after spotting her, withdrew. Elizabeth strained her ears and could just make out a frantic conversation. First there were two voices arguing, then a third joined, and then more and more, until she lost count. It seemed, successful as her experiment was, she had failed to accurately gauge the starting parameters. There were far more enforcers than she had expected.
As she finished the thought, enforcers began streaming through the doorway with raised crossbows. Elizabeth swore and shielded Luca with her body, lifting the girl and sprinting up the stairs. Bolts clattered around them as she ran, but thankfully none hit home before they reached the relative safety of the second floor. The enforcers had been firing wildly, too scared to stand still long enough for aimed shots. Lucky for her and Luca, but her key dilemma remained: with the front door blocked, her primary evacuation route was gone. With the girl in tow, she couldn’t jump out a window like last time, either. Looked like it was time for Plan B.
She risked poking her head over the railing, watching the Famiglia streaming inside as she drew another pistol. When the floor was almost full, she shot the final grenade. The one strapped to the central pillar. It exploded, splintering the column and catching a few of the enforcers with shrapnel. One of them started screaming and clawing at his eyes, but most of them just turned back to Elizabeth. Some of them started back towards the stairs, while others brought crossbows to their shoulders, but Elizabeth stopped them all with a raised hand.
“Wait for it,” she said, her smile growing, pulling Luca tight against her.
And then the ceiling fell in.
*
Elizabeth sprinted down the hallway, Luca bouncing along over her shoulder. She vaulted a furniture barricade she had prepared earlier and, gently setting Luca down first, ripped open the duffelbag stashed behind it. Crossbow bolts flew overhead as she pulled a brace of pistols and set to work, trading shots with the bowmen.
It was a terrible trade deal; she was a much better shot.
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She downed two of them, replaced the pistols with fresh ones, and executed two more. The others ducked back out of sight, and Elizabeth took the chance to rub the sweat out of her eyes.
The entry hall had taken most of the second wave when it collapsed, but unfortunately, there had been a third wave. By her reckoning, she had chewed up several dozen enforcers so far, and they still kept on coming! The sweat kept trickling down her forehead, and she wiped it with the back of her hand with a frustrated groan.
She had planned for this contingency, of course, but hoped it wouldn’t be needed. If it had just been her? Now that would have been a different story, but having Luca beside her was making her nervous. Distracted. She kept taking her eyes off the fight to check the girl was alright and those lapses in concentration had almost gotten her killed a few times already. Honestly, why were these wankers still fighting? She would have expected them to have given up and gone home well and truly before now.
“Oi!” she called down the hallway. “What’s wrong with you all? Why don’t you give up?”
“You killed my brothers! All of them!” one shouted.
“You killed my father!” screamed another.
Right. Famiglia. Shit.
Being reminded of what it was they were fighting for, the enforcers recommenced their assault, streaming down the hallway, waving their knives and clubs and demanding her blood. She slotted four more thugs and abandoned the post; the enforcers shouldering past their fallen comrades and closing the gap.
She snatched Luca and ran, cursing her big mouth and inadvertently inspirational speech. That had been her last interior rampart. Even she had to admit, things were getting dire. She had used all her available grenades in the setup, and the pistols were great, but she only had so many shots. It was time for Plan D.
On the bright side, the people of Verduno would talk about this for generations!
On the not so bright side, she wasn’t entirely confident she and Luca would be around to hear it.
She kicked open the doors to the back garden and ran out, pushing through the trees towards the hedge maze. The maze itself was gone now, Elizabeth having taken the liberty of burning it down earlier. She had no patience for them at the best of times, and what she was really after was the multi-tiered ornate water fountain in the centre, emplaced at the foot of the cliff stretching to the island’s summit. Behind her, the Famiglia poured into the garden, spreading out and searching.
She climbed into the fountain, put Luca down, and gave her a reassuring pat on the cheek. Elizabeth must looked concerned, because Luca suddenly snatched her hand and gave it a squeeze, with a big, snotty, warm smile.
“It’ll be alright, miss.”
Elizabeth blinked back tears, the gravity of her responsibility to Luca hitting her like a physical force. This girl’s life was in her hands.
She would not let her down.
Elizabeth wiped her eyes, gave Luca a final smile and climbed onto the fountain’s rim, standing straight, hands clasped behind her back, a smile plastered to her face projecting a confidence she didn’t feel. It didn’t take long for the enforcers to find them. One of the bastards spotted her and raised the alarm, and the rest of the pack followed. It looked like there were around thirty or forty of them left. Not a lot considering how many came here tonight, but still more than she could handle in a straight fight. Despite this, they were cautious, the initial scramble to reach her petering out by the time they were close enough to actually attack. Probably because she looked creepy as fuck, smiling at them from the lip of the fountain, watching. Waiting.
“Hello again, gentlemen. I hope you’ve enjoyed this evening’s entertainment thus far.” She forced her smile wider. “Now, who’s ready for the final act?”
She stepped backwards into the fountain and snatched the rifle she’d stashed there earlier. It was one of a kind, an absolute beauty of a piece, three feet long, covered in elegant spiral silverwork and, most importantly, a tube full of tempered glass lenses that magnified distant objects when she looked through it. She spun, raised the rifle to her cheek, and fired a shot into the mountain behind her. The enforcers had started forward, but stopped when the rifle went off, looking at each other in nervous confusion.
The answer to their unspoken question came when a boom reverberated across the cliff face as the bullet struck the final net of grenades. It had taken a fair amount of time and effort, swinging on the end of a long rope, trying to set up her network of explosives along the fissure. Her efforts were rewarded, though, as explosions blossomed across the stone face like a field of roses in bloom. And much like a field of roses after blooming, the cliff fractured into hundreds of heavy, jagged chunks that started tumbling down the slope towards them, spurts of molten lava gushing out in fitful streams where the wall was now particularly thin.
Actually, the more she thought about it, the molten, rocky avalanche surging towards them was nothing like a rose garden.
“Good luck everybody else!” Elizabeth called to the enforcers as she took out her last device and dropped it at her feet. Unlike most of her other grenades, this one’s enchantment came from the magic school of earth. She had chosen the fountain for its theatrical benefits, of course, but the primary reason was because the particular type of marble was notoriously strong. So strong, in fact, only earth mages could manipulate it, common metal tools bending and breaking on the stone. Perfect shelter material for surviving an avalanche.
She wrapped Luca in a hug and shut her eyes as the grenade detonated. The fountain warped, wrapping around them in a protective bubble as the enforcers shouted outside. She felt the impact of the first boulder a scant second later, her shield holding, thank the gods, but the Famiglia outside had no such protection. Their shouts turned to screams before they were drowned completely by the surging wall of stone.
The noise was deafening as the fountain shuddered under the strain and fine marble dust rained down on them as it reached its limits. Luca sobbed In her arms, and Elizabeth gritted her teeth as the panic rose in her chest. She forced out a shaky ‘hush’ to calm the girl, as tears seeped between her eyelids. In the rumbling around them, she fancied she heard a voice, accusing her of being responsible for Luca’s death. She felt like throwing up, and this time, it had nothing to do with the pendant.
After the longest few seconds of her life, the cacophony finally subsided, with only a few muted thumps as stray boulders settled, their momentum spent.
The fountain had held.
They were alive.
She gave it a few minutes more, just to be sure, then fumbled around in the dark for the grenade. When she had it, she twisted the hemispheres in opposite directions, reversing the enchantment, and used it to open a hole through the marble. She ducked outside, gently pulling the crying Luca after her, to find a scene of utter devastation.
The once beautiful garden was a ruinous nightmare landscape, broken stone and broken bodies strewn about, pools of rapidly cooling lava hissing in the cool dawn air. Beyond her immediate surrounds, the ruins of the Doge’s Palace stood in stark relief against the glow of the rising sun. She heard a whimper and turned to find a lone enforcer standing amidst the wreckage. He was gazing around in shock, tears streaking down his grime covered cheeks.
How the fuck did he survive?
“You!” Elizabeth called, dragging the man’s attention to her, “are you the only survivor?”
He nodded, face screwed up like a child’s before they collapse into a full blown break down.
“Well, shit. You must be the luckiest man alive,” she said, drawing her stiletto as she let go of Luca’s hand and advanced on him. “Or maybe not.”
*
Elizabeth fanned herself and swatted at a mosquito as it landed on her arm. She fucking hated Marduk. Why on Telrus’ green earth did that Giorgie prick decide to hide here, of all places? She sighed and pushed open the shack door, inviting herself in with a “knock knock”. The traitor shot to his feet from where he had been squatting, tending to a stew bubbling in a pot.
“How did you find me?” he asked, eyes darting around the room, scoping every shadow, obstacle and exit route. Not that it would do him any good.
“Giorgie boy, when you betrayed the boss, Verduno became the only safe place in this world for you. Until I took that away as well.”
“I heard the rumours…” he said, sighing and collapsing into a rickety chair. “How? I knew you were good, Elizabeth, but… over a hundred enforcers? The Doge’s Palace?”
“Aww shucks, I think I’m gonna blush. Besides, it was only his holiday house,” she said, standing across the shack from him with a pipe levelled at his chest. “Want to know the rest of the story?”
“I suppose, if it keeps me alive for a few more minutes…”
“Not even that long, I’m afraid. But I’ll indulge you anyway, mostly because it’s indulging me, too. The Guild is set up in town and we brought in a new Chapter Master. Francesca is her primary advisor, working out of a fancy arse place up in the Patrician district, and we’ve got a family defector laying the groundwork to take over most of their businesses.”
“You turned one of the Famiglia?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Eh, he was the only survivor from the palace. I was going to execute him, but then he started bawling and snot was coming out of his nose and it was so gross and pathetic I couldn’t bring myself to finish the job.”
“And the Patriarchs just let that happen?”
“They were all dead by sunset. It was easy when I didn’t need to contend with enforcer guards. The first few I just walked in and cut them up, and after that I hung around the docks and caught the others as they tried to flee.”
Giorgio scoffed, the chuckle building into a full belly laugh until tears were streaming down his cheeks. “You know, they called me ‘Old Fox’. I had aged, slowed down, but I still kept making contracts, still kept the Guildhouse running in a hostile city. Because I was cunning, smart. Played the long game.” He pulled up a stool and sat, staring at the pot. “You know,” he continued, staring into the fire, “the Famiglia didn’t even turn me, I went to them. Figured I was old enough to get out of the game, and their retirement package is so much better than ours. I had it all figured out.”
“And what about this is so funny?”
“Because I didn’t account for you, young Elizabeth,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “It’s like planning to defeat a hurricane, or a tidal wave, or a raging forest fire. I should have known you couldn’t fight a force of nature and win. And here my story ends. I suppose it’s as fitting an end as any, dead by your hand for my transgressions.”
“Oh, no Giorgie. I’m not going to kill you,” she said, holstering the pistol with a flourish. “He wanted the privilege himself.”
Giorgio’s eyes widened, and he leapt to his feet as a cloaked figure darkened the doorway. The Guild Master had decreed this quarry was his and his alone. Of course, he still made Elizabeth do the legwork of tracking him down, but she guessed that was a perk of being the boss.
“Hello, old friend,” the Guild Master said, his voice like gravel feeding through a mincing machine.
Giorgio spun towards Elizabeth. “Please, no, you don’t know what he’ll do to me. Just put a bullet in me now!”
“Interesting offer. Counter offer: go fuck yourself, traitor.”
Elizabeth went to leave, giving the boss a ‘sup nod as she slipped past him, but he stopped her with a hand out, holding an envelope.
“This came for you, from your new friend.”
“Thanks, boss!” she said, her face splitting into a smile as she skipped out the doorway, opening the envelope and pulling out a couple of parchment sheets as the screaming started behind her. It was a letter from Francesca, saying thanks for all the help, gushing about how amazing their new house was and a bit of shop talk. Elizabeth went all warm and gooey inside, and she only became more congealed when she checked the second sheet of parchment to find a drawing from Luca. It showed a stick figure Elizabeth slaughtering Famiglia enforcers while the palace burned in the background. That last bit wasn’t strictly accurate, but thematically, she kind of liked it better.
She folded the letter and the picture and tucked them into a belt pouch as she headed back toward port. She had initially planned to return with the Master, but he had advised her not to wait up. Besides, there was a contract half finished and a noble in Ader who needed to catch a bullet. She slammed a fist into her palm. Perot would be avenged!