“Alright,” Jack said, coughing awkwardly, “I understand w-why we’re doing a pub crawl, but should you really be drinking so much?”
“Gotta look the part!” Elizabeth slurred, gesturing at Jack with her pint, sloshing beer over the table and the thief. “Now drink up!”
He sighed and sipped at his goblet of wine, only partially succeeding in controlling a grimace at the taste. Elizabeth shook her head and tut tutted.
It had been surprisingly easy to convince Jack of her plan for gathering information. Trawl the pubs and taverns once more and let the rumour mill bring word back about the crack down. So far it had been going reasonably well. Based off the talk and Elizabeth’s estimation, about half of the haunts and safehouses in the city had been raided. Some underworld figures had been smart and hunkered down, hoping they would be missed. Many more had panicked, trying to slip out of the city. Their bodies hung from gallows scattered throughout the city.
It hadn’t been without cost though, more than a few Watch had fallen during the raids, either to sharp blades or traps, and there were reports of fighting in the streets as different factions within the Watch turned on each other. Elizabeth supposed it made sense, if the authorities knew the locations of so many hideouts, why hadn’t they done something about it before hand? The answer, as was so often the case, was corruption! Each of the local gangs had different Watch officers in their pockets, and now said officers were racing to arrest their compatriots before the finger could be pointed at them. She would need to keep an eye on who survived the purge, they would either be squeaky clean and therefore a target, or someone with a lot of influence within the city’s underbelly and therefore a valuable asset to turn. But those were problems for future Guild agents, right now she had a more pressing concern. She raised her drink and glared at Jack.
“You notice anyone else drinking wine in here? No! You should be drinking beer like the rest of us.” She paused to take a long slurp, belching as she plonked the pint back down. “You’ll blow our cover!”
“I th-think you’re going to do that for me,” Jack said, glancing around. Elizabeth followed his eyes and noticed a few patrons and a suddenly suspicious barmaid were staring at her. The patrons could go jump, but the barmaid was over six feet tall and built like a brick shithouse. Maybe she should settle down a little.
“Ooops. Bit loud am I?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not my fault! I’ve got a lot going on right now.”
“Like what?”
Elizabeth frowned down at her drink, swaying slightly as she spoke. “My best friend hit me.”
“Doesn’t sound like something a friend would do.”
“Well, he’s also my boss.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good employer. Does he physically assault all his employees? And why is he your best friend?”
“He’s also raised me since I was, I dunno, little. Veeerry little.”
“So, your boss, who is your best friend and parental figure assaulted you…”
“I wouldn’t call it assault, per se. I just made him angry so he slapped me. Hard.”
“That’s assault, Elizabeth.”
She looked up to find Jack staring at her, concern plastered across his face.
“Maybe. I was being a bit of a bitch, though.”
“Look, I’m no expert on these things, I never knew my father, but my mother was a loving woman. She never hit me, not matter how much I upset her.”
“Pussy,” Elizabeth mumbled into her drink.
“No, she was a good mother,” Jack replied sternly.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Fine. Whatever, your mum gets parent of the year. Huzzah for her. The Master isn’t that kind of mentor, though. He can be harsh, but he’s effective. He made me into the force of nature I am today.”
“The role of a parent isn’t to mould their children into weapons.”
Elizabeth stopped drinking, her eyes going wide even as she slipped, unwilling but unable to stop, deep into a memory. A memory of a tavern room, deep in a cold winter. A memory of a distraught, scared young girl who had just lost her mother, finding a moment’s respite in a colourful ribbon and the praise of her father. The father who wanted her to grow up happy and safe, an acrobat or a performer. Anything but what he had been.
Anything but an assassin.
She put her drink down, her happy buzz now as unwanted as the rest of the beer. A low drone filled her ears and she looked around, trying to find the source. Jack stared at her, his brows furrowed over sad eyes, confusion creeping into the mix at her erratic behaviour. Try as she might, she couldn’t spot the origins of the sound, even as it slowly resolved into the sound of someone laughing, far off. In harsh contrast to the merriment from the patrons around them, it had not a single shred of mirth in its essence. It was a cruel laugh, sadistic, like the mewling of a cat as it batted about a trapped mouse.
“Let’s go,” she said, placing her hands on the table to steady herself as she stood. “We aren’t going to get anything else from this place.”
Before she could step away, she found Jack’s hand over one of hers. She blinked and looked up into his soft green eyes.
“Is the Guild really what you want?”
She gasped and pulled her hand away as though his touch burned.
“Don’t,” she said, the anger in her voice surprising even her.
“I-I-I j-just-” Jack started to sputter, but Elizabeth cut him off, slamming her hands on the table.
“I said don’t!” she screamed. She was breathing heavily, her eyes boring into his as a bloke at a nearby table snickered.
“What’s the matter, mon chéri?” he asked, reclining with his arm over his chair. “Your boyfriend not treating you right? Why don’t you come over here and I’ll show you what a real man can do.”
Elizabeth’s eyes shifted over to the drunk. He was big, almost as big as the barmaid, a labourer from the looks of him. His muscles didn’t exactly bulge, the layer of fat covering him put paid to that possibility, but beneath the slabs of excess meat and course body hair, she could tell there was a core of hard muscle. Two more men, looking for all the world like marginally smaller copies of the first, sat with him, a nasty twinkle in their eyes.
“Thanks, friend,” she said, turning her nose up at them. “But no thanks. I prefer my men to last more than a couple of pumps before running out of breath.” She stood and turned, striding towards the door. He shot to his feet and blocked her path.
“Oh, I can last all night, love. Trust me.”
“My father always told me not to trust strangers.”
“Then let’s get to know each other. Word is there’s a concert on tonight, why don’t I take you?”
“A concert?”
“Yeah, they’re dedicating it to that noble that got butchered. It’s going to be very fancy and refined like. Proper. And you seem like the kind of girl that could do with a bit of refinement. I can train you up, if you’d like.”
Elizabeth fixed him with a smile that was all teeth and no joy. “Given you smell like a wild dog, I doubt you could teach me anything about class. Come, Jack. We’re leaving.”
She tried to step around the brute but he snatched her arm, squeezing until it hurt.
Or he thought it would hurt anyway.
Elizabeth feigned a wince, glancing up at him with one eye while she kept the other squeezed shut. A broad grin split his face, exposing yellowed and rotting teeth. He sighed happily and his breath wafted over her, a mix of stale beer and spoiled food that was almost worse than the sewers.
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“That’s right girly. Your first lesson starts now,” he growled.
“Please, sir. No!” Elizabeth said, hamming up her act as she clenched her fist. The thug threw his head back and laughed, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Before she could smash it, however, Jack went and screwed everything up.
“Unhand her!” he shrieked as he charged, a stool held high above his head. The drunk saw him coming and had just enough time to raise his arm as the thief swung the improvised weapon at his face. The legs of the stool crashed against the forearm, each giving way under the force, one after the other. Free of its legs the seat continued on its path, glancing off the brute’s face. It had enough momentum behind it to break his nose, but unfortunately not enough momentum to actually incapacitate him. The thug roared as he released Elizabeth and snatched Jack by the throat, lifting him off the ground as the other two labourers rose from the table. Someone was shouting and banging somewhere by the bar, but it failed to restore order as patrons leapt to their feet, some trying to get away from the fight while others pressed closer, cheering their favoured party on.
“Bugger! Jack, keep him busy!”
Jack gurgled something unintelligible which Elizabeth chose to believe was an enthusiastic ‘sure thing!’ as she darted towards the two smaller cronies. She jumped and spun, lashing out with her boot at the closest opponent. Unfortunately for her, she had forgotten that she was quite drunk, and instead of neatly dislocating his jaw and knocking him out, her boot collided with the side of his temple. Also, she completely forgot to put her other foot down when landing, and she crashed to the ground at the same time as her target.
Stupid! How the fuck did I forget to land?
She got a quick glance at the thug’s unconscious face before a pair of rough hands grabbed her by the collar and hauled her to her feet.
“You miserable bitch!” the second cronie said as he punched her in the gut. Elizabeth buckled under the force, the bile rising in her throat as he hurled her back into the table she had been seated at a second ago. It tipped over as she crashed into it, her body folding in half around the rim, leaving her face to slam into the dirty floor while her legs dangled uselessly in the air.
She groaned and scrunched her eyes shut against the sudden headache as something cold and wet touched her face. She opened her eyes to see a puddle of wine from Jack’s spilled goblet spreading across the floor. She reached out to grab it as she heard the thug advancing on her. Her first attempt failed, her hand slapping painfully against the stones beside it. She grit her teeth and tried again, her hand wrapping around the top of the cup, the clay stem pressing against the webbing between her middle and ring finger as her opponent grabbed her by the back of her belt.
“Look at me, whore!” he hissed as he dragged her back over the table and spun her around. Elizabeth went with the movement, dashing the base of the goblet against the table as she did and snapping the cup halfway down the stem. The thug didn’t notice as he grabbed her by the collar and lifted her off the ground.
Elizabeth glared at him through an eye as the other swelled shut from faceplanting, her collar riding painfully up against the bottom of her chin and her underarms. She tried to spit in his face, but the weight of her own body pinned her mouth shut against her shirt, and all she managed was a thick glob of drool dribbling from her lips.
The thug laughed at her attempt. “You’ve got spirit. Good, we like that.”
“Yuuuwntlkths,” Elizabeth mumbled.
“What was that?” he asked, lowering her so that the tips of her toes could reach the ground. With the weight pinning her jaw relieved, Elizabeth found herself able to talk again.
“I said, you won’t like this,” she said, and stabbed the jagged goblet stem into the underside of his wrist. She dragged it across his forearm, ripping through skin and tearing a few tendons as he screamed. He let go, and Elizabeth seized the opportunity to shove her weapon up under his chin. He gave a panicked gurgle as he fell back, flopping onto the ground and writhing, his hands waving frantically just below his face. He kept trying to touch the cup sticking out of him, then thinking better of it and going back to panicked flailing. Unwilling to open his mouth for fear of making the wound worse, he just rolled around crying through clenched teeth.
“What- what was that?” Elizabeth asked, stalking over to him on unsteady feet and cupping a hand to her ear. “Actually, don’t worry about it. I don’t care.”
She booted him in the side of the head, stilling his struggles, then turned to check on Jack.
To his credit, the thief wasn’t dead yet. He had gotten free of the first thug’s grip at some point and was now trading blows with the bigger man, which was going about as well as could be expected. As she watched, Jack feinted a right hook, then lashed out with a sharp jab to the thug’s broken nose. The big man howled as his head rocked back, but he quickly regained his composure and charged, wrapping Jack in a bear hug and lifting him off the ground. He ran forward a few paces then slammed the thief onto a table, the old wood giving out under the blow and dropping Jack to the ground. He lay there, groaning, as the drunk stood over him, blocking a nostril off with a thumb and hawking a glob of congealed blood and snot onto the ground.
“Shoulda left well enough alone,” he said.
“Na,” Elizabeth called, “you shoulda. Mate.”
He turned, his face contorting in rage as he saw his fallen friends. Without a word he stalked towards her, cracking his knuckles. Elizabeth wobbled towards him, scooping up a steak knife from a table as she passed. He hesitated, just for a moment, his eyes flicking from her face to the knife and back again, before he charged.
She let him come, too battered and inebriated to do anything fancy, she waited for him to lunge for her then danced back, slashing the knife across his palms as she did so. He hissed and recoiled, cradling one wounded hand in the other, and she advanced. He tried to throw a punch and she stabbed him in the fist, the blade glancing off a knuckle before sliding in through a pair of metacarpals, and he shrieked, pulling his arm away and retreating. She didn’t give him room though, following him across the bar, stabbing him in the arms whenever he reached for her or tried to throw a punch. She harried him across the floor until finally his back was to the far wall, his arms ragged bleeding messes, hanging limp by his side. There was fear in his eyes as she ambled up to him, pressing the knife against his throat.
“Now, remind me, arsehole. What was it you said to me earlier?”
He whimpered but kept his mouth shut, and Elizabeth clenched her teeth, pressing the serrated edge of the blade harder against his skin until it split.
“I asked you a question,” she hissed.
The sharp smell of ammonia assaulted her nose and she glanced down to find the pathetic excuse for a man had wet himself. She crinkled her nose in disgust and looked back up to his face.
“Gross.”
She started to slide the knife along his neck but a hand on her arm stopped her. She snatched the wrist and bent it back, the owner yelping and falling to a knee as he contorted his body to alleviate the pain. She raised her knife in a reverse grip, ready to plunge it down into her attacker’s exposed throat when she realised it was Jack.
“Bloody Pit, Jack! What is wrong with you? I almost killed you!… Again.”
“W-w-wait!” he gasped, “d-don’t kill him.”
“Why?”
The thief’s brows shot together and his mouth dropped open as he stared at her. “B-because you don’t n-need to?”
“And?”
“And that’s wr-wrong?”
“You’re talking crazy now, did you hit your head?”
“H-he’s a creep but he doesn’t deserve to die.”
“Really? He picked on me this time, but what about the next? Is his next victim going to be able to fight him off?”
“You don’t need to kill him, the others will sort it.”
“The others?”
His eyes flicked past her and she turned to find a small posse of patrons, all armed with stools and other such improvised weapons, clustered behind the giant barwoman. The angry matron was wielding a truncheon with a complex look on her face. Her twisted snarl and flashing eyes spoke to a deep, burning rage when she looked at the ruined thug, but the expression died a little when she glanced at Elizabeth, the set of her eyes turning wary as her posture shifted, as though she couldn’t decide whether Elizabeth or the thug was going to be receiving a lymphatic facial massage with the club.
Elizabeth recoiled at the expression, her face burning, first from embarrassment, then indignant anger.
“Don’t you look at me like that! I didn’t see you helping out!”
“I wasn’t keen to get shivved, girl. You almost stabbed your own boyfriend for gods’ sake,” the woman replied. “Didn’t you hear me yelling to break it up?”
Did she? Usually she was perfectly capable of absorbing all external stimuli during a fight. She prided herself on not suffering the auditory and visual exclusion that was so common even among some experienced fighters. So how had she missed a small armed mob shouting at her to stop? She started as she realised the woman was speaking again.
“Sorry, what was that?”
“I said, leave him and his cronies to us. But you need to get the Pit out of my establishment. And Jack? Don’t come back if this is the company you’re going to keep.”
The thief tentatively grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and dragged her outside before she could recover from her shock enough to start lambasting the woman. They made it about twenty metres down the road before the effect wore off.
“Who the Pit does she think she is?”
“She’s just a tavern proprietor who very nearly had a patron’s throat slit in front of all her customers. I would have been concerned about my business too. Not to mention my own safety.”
“No! This is bullshit! I was the victimised party!”
“Oh, really?” Jack asked, letting go of her hand and whirling on her. “You knew exactly what you were doing. He deserved to be hurt, badly. But just because he’s a scum bag doesn’t mean you were in the right.”
“I was defending myself.”
“You had decided to kill him before he ever put a hand on you.”
Elizabeth started to shout back, but realised she didn’t have anything to say to that. She had been intending to kill him, and had deliberately goaded the prick. But so what?
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person,” she mumbled.
“But that’s the thing, Elizabeth. Just because he was a bad person doesn’t mean you can just cut him down in the middle of town.”
“It’s like you’re talking a completely different language to me right now.”
“Eliza,” he said, taking her hands in his and clasping them beneath his chin. “This is what I was talking about. How this ‘Master’ raised you, it’s not normal. Let me guess, you don’t know anyone outside the Guild, right?”
“Incorrect! I happen to be very good friends with a mother and daughter out in Verduno. We exchange letters all the time.”
“And they aren’t in the Guild?” Jack asked, deflating a little at the revelation.
“Technically, no. She’s the independent underworld empress of Verduno, she’s helping us expand throughout Tok Risim.”
“So she’s not part of the Guild, but she works for the Guild?”
Elizabeth gasped and shushed him. “Not so loud! She would be pissed if she heard you say that. No, she works with the Guild. It’s an important distinction!”
Jack shook his head and squeezed her hands tighter. “Elizabeth, the Guild isn’t good for you. The Master has made you into a weapon to be wielded, not a daughter or even an employee.”
“You’re wrong!” she said, pulling her hands free. “He found me and cared for me when I had no one. He cares for me now! I would die for him, and he for me. Now, I’m done with this conversation. You can come with me and help, or you can leave.”
“Where are you going?” he asked, exasperated as she strode off down the street.
“My room, the rest of my kit is there and I haven’t got long to prepare.”
“Prepare for what?”
He jogged after her, catching up and falling into step beside her. Despite her anger, she felt a little kernel of warmth take root in her chest.
“I’ve got a concert performance tonight!”