15[22:30] Teyo Scow is one of the local Guild Factor's fixers; he's got connections among the local plantation owners, and in good times he spends his working days serving as the middleman between local sugarcane concerns and the high-turnover, high-paying traders that smuggle past the Imperial tribute quotas and take their chances on the pirate-infested high seas. He works hard, but he drinks 15[22:30] on the job. [22:31] 14Well there's a vector...Piu won't say out loud. The kill planning is all the kid's. [22:31] 14Besides, don't want to give the impression that Piu's that into poisonings. 15[22:32] He's friendly around town, as Tephen describes it — a euphemism Piu remembers from her earliest education before To started throwing around words like "whoremonger", "philanderer", and so forth. He's not well-liked by his colleagues, because of his ruthlessness, his ambition, and his tendency to cut corners whenever he thinks he can get away with it. Most infuriatingly, thus far he's 15[22:32] been proven right. 15[22:35] "What'd he do?" asks Caska. The girl doesn't look underfed, but she eats like she is. [22:35] 14If Piu was working this, the whore angle would be the easiest. Two-thump chump -- knees hitting the floor, then head. But that is the one angle she will be vetoing here if it comes up (she doesn't think it will). [22:36] 14Is that to Tephen or are the two of them alone? 15[22:39] Tephen's still there, briefing; he doesn't respond immediately, flicking between a few scraps of paper. [22:40] 14Then into the silence: "That is a question you should always know the answer to, but be careful asking." [22:40] "Some handlers take it quite personally when you ask them to justify themselves. Others simply lie. Some tell the truth and are honest dealers, and from them, you'll probably like the answer the least." 15[22:41] Caska looks at Tephen expectantly. [22:41] "But learning about your target and understanding the reason for the mission? This is proper preparation." 15[22:44] Tephen finishes whatever he was doing — likely playing for time until either Piu or Caska said something — and responds: "Nothing, really. But he's hungry and unreliable and that means he's a destabilizing element. Do you remember what that means?" 15[22:45] Caska sighs. "It means he's unpredictable, and what you can't predict you can't control, and what you can't control needs to be contained." 15[22:51] Tephen: "That's right. Good job." 15[22:51] "What's your plan?" 15[22:53] Caska: "If he works hard and nobody likes him, I bet he eats alone." [22:53] 14Good bet, kid. 15[22:55] Caska: "Watch him eat. He's going to get sleepy and drunk. Then I can rip his throat out." 15[22:55] Tephen purses his lips. 15[22:56] Caska: "What?" 15[22:56] "What did I say wrong?" 15[22:56] Tephen just looks calmly back. 15[22:57] Caska scowls. "Waiting that long is too risky? Watching him eat means someone could see me?" [22:59] 14Piu presumes Tephen's problem is the naked aggression and provocation of the plan, rather than any individual tactical element. [22:59] 14But hey, that kind of stuff has its place. Guild factors get their throats ripped out on these streets all the time~ 15[22:59] Tephen tilts his head a bit, but says nothing. Caska's getting agitated. "Well, what then? I only said three things. Watch him eat, he gets sleepy, rip his throat out. If it's not the first thing, and it's not the second thing... is it the third thing?" 15[23:00] Tephen: "Don't ask me. Sustain the thought. When you're doing this for real you're going to have to make these decisions on your own. No guidance. You need to know how to solve a problem using your wits and what you already know." 15[23:03] Caska chews her food so forcefully Piu can hear a bone crack between her teeth. She spits it out into the pond. 15[23:04] She wrinkles her nose at the way the fragments of bone scatter and cloud the water, settling slowly and gently to the bottom. The stain lingers for a long moment. "It's too messy. For a dinnertime hit. Like an animal attack. Like someone really hated him." [23:04] 14Piu won't intervene; this is a far better handling of teachable moments by this angry, squat fantasist everyone back home laughs at than she ever got. 15[23:05] "Let him isolate himself. Let him get sleepy. Then slit his throat. Clean. Like a professional." 15[23:06] Caska: "But don't we kill to send a message?" 15[23:07] Tephen: "We kill to send a lot of messages. Different ones to different people. So ask yourself: what is the message you want to send? Who do you want to send it to?" 15[23:10] Caska: "Gutting him says vengeance. Grudge. It says, he made an enemy you don't want to make. It says, notice me. Slitting his throat says efficiency. It says results first. It says just business. No hard feelings." [23:10] 14Piu nods. 15[23:11] "A clean kill points to a rival. A messy kill points to an enemy." 15[23:11] Tephen: "That's sharp." 15[23:11] Caska: "Hhh." 15[23:11] Tephen: "Heh." 15[23:12] "Get cleaned up. I doubt our man takes an early dinner but still. Time's a wasting." 15[23:12] Caska: "Okay." [23:13] 14When she's gone: "I like her already." [23:14] "I'll be in this get-up, so if worst comes to worst, you'll have a bunch of dead Guildsmen at the hands of a skull-faced killer to try to salvage something out of, but not a dead apprentice. [23:14] " 15[23:14] Tephen nods. "I feel a lot better knowing you're there with her." 15[23:17] Tephen'll pack up the remainer of the picnic and leave Piu and Caska alone to prepare. 15[23:17] How well does Piu remember her first kill? [23:18] 14Ever, or on the job? 15[23:18] Either. Both. [23:19] 14Her first kill ever was some poor blindfolded fuck with a bag over his head, drugged out of his mind, that To used to teach her how to efficiently use the garrote. [23:20] 14Her first job was a gormless patrician who bought her body for a night and died from his exertions, and a very careful dose of poison. [23:20] 14Her second job was slaughtering an entire remote trading outpost for secret reasons. [23:20] 14Frankly, much more interesting. [23:21] 14There were only twelve of them, but so many moving parts, trader schedules, and so on. 15[23:21] Twelve is still a lot of people to kill at once. [23:21] 14She fucked it up in the home stretch and had to kill the head guard and a watch rookie with her bare hands in combat. [23:22] 14Yep. Didn't do any more multi-target jobs until the Five Day Fight. [23:22] 14Difficult to work them around her schooling. [23:22] 14The formal schooling, that is, at Pasiap's Stair. 15[23:27] Caska's preparations seem to consist of calisthentics inside one of the pondside houses, with its swept-dirt floor and cool plaster walls. Once she's done with her routine she washes up quickly and then pulls a leather bundle from under what must be her bed. It's her work clothes: a dark buff jacket, boots, slacks, and jerkin to match, a simpler mask than Piu's of black and gold cloth... 15[23:27] and long, spindly tiger claws of what must be green jade. [23:27] 14Impressive. [23:28] 14Piu: "Gift, theft, or prize?" 14Given, stolen, or plundered? 15[23:31] "Tephen held them for me until I started training. He said they were my father's. Check this out, this is so cool—" She slips the claws on around her wrists, wriggles her knuckles experimentally, and breathes in. There's a slight hiss that Piu realizes is a gentle wince of pain. The claws stiffen and lock and begin to plunge backwards into her skin, sliding through the back of her 15[23:31] hand and up along her wrist and, Piu imagines, up into her forearms. The wounds they make close up behind them, and with a grunt Caska flexes her fingers again. All that visibly remains of the claws is a set of austere jade bangles. 15[23:33] With her face set, she holds up one hand, and the whole set of claws spring forth with a gentle clicking sound. "You can rip a throat out with this." She turns her wrist, and two of them retract, leaving one long, razor sharp jade blade coming out of the back of her hand. "You can slit a throat with this." [23:33] 14Piu: "That's...incredibly useful. And I assume really painful." 15[23:34] Caska: "The important thing is it hurts them more." [23:35] 14Piu nods. She raises her hand, with the Chain wrapped around it. "I've a moonsilver garrote. In a pinch, it can become a lash. So when I position myself, it'll be above and behind targets." 15[23:35] Caska nods somberly. "Let's go." 15[23:35] She masks up before heading out. [23:36] 14So they go. 15[23:39] For reasons unknown to any but the heavens themselves, the sun rides his chariot far more deliberately through the summer sky than the winter. So in summer, the days are longer, and sunset later, which means that instead of being well after dark, the sun is merely low and languid in the west, throwing honey-colored light and long, drowsy shadows. [23:39] 14Killing weather. [23:40] 14Marks are home safe in the dark. Bless the long sunsets. 15[23:40] Caska takes to the rooftops to cross the city. Her movements are slower than Piu's would be — Piu judges this is borne of caution. But when she does move, she moves surely. [23:49] 14Piu's been across these rooftops three times now, and that's enough for familiarity to become mastery. 15[23:51] Brightwork continues to live and breathe, as the leavings of Moray's parade are swept away and the night's unrest is pacified, ever so briefly, by fuller bellies and pockets. No one's eyes on the rooftops catch the two masked figures leap between them, moving inexorably towards the far northeastern corner of the city, where the Guild keeps its custom, its ships moored and its wares 15[23:51] housed. [23:54] 14Ah, euphemism. The cousinfucker of deceit. [23:54] 14Careful not to rattle the slave pens; we're not here as liberators. 15[23:55] There are guards about, armed with pikes and javelins, but they merely pace the streets below. The expansive Guild compound, with its sturdy fences and big, balconied central building, seems almost a deliberate parody of the royal Inner City. There's a figure on the balcony, a preposterously small and round little woman soaking up the sun's last rays in swimming clothes, with a floppy 15[23:55] pink beret tipped over her eyes. She seems fast asleep, as broad-backed slaves fan her gently with ferns. 15[00:00] Caska holds her hand up, signaling to wait as the two of them duck behind a gaudy false parapet, watching. It takes several minutes, and the sun sinks noticeably lower, the slave whose sightline they'd be crossing turns away for a moment, and then the young Iselsi scion pounces, leaping neatly from the rooftop to the rim of the balcony and then up to the roof of the central building 15[00:00] itself in a clean one-two motion. [00:01] 14Piu is her shadow, larger and darker, following behind. 15[00:05] The two of them creep along the roof, around to an unguarded rear window, and cross the threshold of the open, palatial mansion the Guild uses for its most prestigious business. Each floor is a railed corridor ringing the perimeter of the building around a central atrium that runs from the foyer below to the roof above. From there it's just a matther of trawling until you find private 15[00:05] offices. [00:07] 14Piu pays careful attention to the ceilings, specifically how easy it would be to vault up into them and brace herself there in an emergency. [00:07] 14They generally don't look up until it's too late. [00:07] 14Dusk and Hedrin found that out. 15[00:07] Not only is there adequate bracing room, there are even rafters. Not the kind you can fight on, but the kind you can cling to. 15[00:08] They find the target in an office bearing his name on a placard outside. The wall his office door is set into has windows on all sides, fine tinted and frosted glass, which can be opened to let air circulate and closed for privacy. The one such open window is above the door, with one of the aforementioned crawling rafters running right up to it. [00:08] 14Does Caska want to go first? 15[00:12] She does. The man's voice is audible from up here. He seems fond of monologuing in his dry, smoky voice. Piu can't make out what he's saying. It sounds like some Thresholder tongue. Caska's just creeping up to the window when the second voice comes in — younger, higher, conveying a dubious uncertainty. That's a boy whose voice hasn't dropped yet. 15[00:12] She gets close enough to look down into the room below and freezes. [00:13] 14Does Piu have room to join her? 15[00:16] Yes. She sees a man fitting Tephen's description — rangy, thin, wild and prematurely gray hair, finely if unstylishly dressed. He's alternating sips of a foul cigar and something from a silver flask. The boy across his desk, sharing the meal but not the flask, is curly-headed and seems permanently seized up with some private anxiety. [00:18] 14Unfortunate. Either two bodies, or one witness. Well, kid, think on your feet. Piu makes a hand gesture -- she can take the boy. 15[00:18] Most of Caska's face is obscured, but Piu can see her brow knit beneath her bangs. She repeats one of the boy's words, almost subvocally, and then pairs it to a word of the Cant. "Athair." [00:18] 14Ah, shit. [00:19] 14Piu makes another handsign -- not their agreed-upon abort, but withdraw. They can talk this over on the roof. 15[00:27] Caska doesn't acknowledge Piu for most of a minute before doubling back along the rafter to get back onto the roof. [00:30] 14When they're somewhere with no sightlines: "So this is one of those hard choices the handler can't make for you, and indeed wants to offload onto your shoulders if they have to when it comes to reporting to the next uncle or auntie up the family tree." 15[00:32] Caska hisses, "Why?!" [00:35] 14Piu: "Because you're here and he's not. Unless you're asking why I pulled you out, in which case it's because we don't know each others' handsigns well enough to plan something like that fully on the fly without talking." 15[00:35] "Did he know? Did you?" [00:36] "Nope. If I'd known, I'd have mysteriously made us practice our handsigns more. Now that we're out here, we can abort." [00:37] "If that's what you want." 15[00:39] Caska: "...no." [00:41] 14Piu: "Alright. So the boy's off the table?" [00:41] "As in, can't even be present." 15[00:43] Caska: "He has to be the one who finds the body. So he needs to be gone but not far. He shouldn't be out for more than half a minute. A minute at most." 15[00:44] The emotion in Caska's voice has all bled away. She sounds centered, or hollow. [00:46] 14Piu: "I don't speak the language, so I'm less than useful as a distraction. Not really dressed to be bait. What did you notice about the boy? Did anything about him imply his station, his duties, what might best peel him away from the room while leaving the target there?" 15[00:48] Caska: "The boy waits on his father. Fetches him things. And he's jumpy. A noise would pull him out." [00:50] 14Piu nods. "A noise will also alert the father, but it might be the best we can do on short notice." [00:51] "I am thinking I find something to knock over, then loudly swear as if I've merely bumped into it and broken it. Or dropped a tray of food. Should provide both the need to investigate and the familiarity to not send them immediately to the horns." 15[00:52] Caska: "Okay. That's good. Let's get back into position." [00:53] 14Piu nods. As they make their way back in, she'll be looking for targets of opportunity here -- anything suitable in the hallway that she wouldn't have to move far? 15[00:54] There are vases places around, and a drinks cart half-in half-out of an empty, darkened office, with decanters of wines and brandies and rums alongside crystal goblets. 15[00:54] *placed around [00:55] 14Cart sounds good. How's the placement? Can she knock it over, curse with annoyance, then smoothly wall-jump up into the rafters? 15[00:56] She definitely can. It'd require kind of a tricky angle, but nothing she hasn't done before. [00:56] 14Then she'll set up the timing with Caska and get in position. 15[00:57] Caska's up on the rafters, face in the window. Piu, whose attention is on the trigonometry, can only feel her shudder. [01:00] 14When the sign comes, Piu's down on the floor, gives the drink cart a swift mule kick sending it careening away from the office into the far wall, and then in one fluid motion moving back up -- hup hup -- and melting behind a rafter. She slithers across it as Caska vacates her position to enter the office, getting into a better support position. 15[01:09] Piu's back in position in time to see the boy opening the door and checking on the noise. A guard calls up but the boy waves his hands — a gesture the guard cannot possibly see — and calls down something that must mollify the guard, who doesn't inquire further or ascend the stairs. Caska glides into the room, hopping gingerly from the rafter to the top of the light fixture and then 15[01:09] descending gracefully to land behind the man's high-backed chair. 15[01:11] The now-swinging ceiling lamp throws a twisting shadow of the chair back on the wall behind. The twists left, and the silence is punctuated only by the man's unguarded belch. The shadow twists right, and with it a delicate hand sprouting a single delicate law whips out from behind the chair like a scorpion's tail. By the time the man's eyes focus on the movement it's already in his 15[01:11] throat, and Caska's behind him, on top of him, holding his face into the table as his throat gurgles out. [01:11] 14Time to go. [01:11] 14This went off without a hitch and the timing still is gonna be tight-- 15[01:12] "Cuir a 'choire air fein." 15[01:12] "Cuir a 'choire... air Nèamh." 15[01:12] "Cuir a 'choire air cinneadh Iselsi." [01:12] 14There's no word in the Cant for 'attagirl,' at least not one Piu knows. 15[01:13] The claw glides smoothly back into Caska's wrist, bringing a few drops of the man's dying blood with it. They stain the back of her hand like a birthmark as she leaps, kicking off the wall to swing off the chandelier and back onto the rafters where Piu awaits. 15[01:14] They're almost outside by the time they hear the boy's scream. They're off the premises by the time anyone else sees what happened. [01:15] 14Now that was a rush. No time to get unprofessional, though. They'll celebrate when they're home. [01:15] 14Well, her home. 15[01:16] They return in twilight, the night's first and bravest stars dotting the patches of sky visible behind the cloud cover. 15[01:18] Tephen is nowhere to be seen. Caska doesn't seem put out by that. It must have been what she expected. [01:20] 14Piu: "I'm proud of you. Perfect adjustment, perfect execution. Excellent first kill." 15[01:22] Caska doesn't respond immediately. She's trying to catch her breath still. When she forces herself to breath slow Piu can hear her heart pounding in the growing dark. 15[01:25] Finally: "It was such a little thing. All that training... all that trouble... all that fear... so a rude old man could dribble on my hand. That's my souvenir." 15[01:26] "But I can't stop shaking." [01:26] 14Piu: "It--" 14She stops herself from saying 'gets better.' "Gets easier." [01:27] "The monks can debate the morality of it, but it's a blessing given that we have to do it either way." 15[01:31] Caska: "When my mother died, the assassin didn't sneak at all. He just walked up to her like they knew each other and put his hand in her chest. He whispered to her and he pulled out her heart. Like plucking an apple off a tree." [01:32] "...One of the family?" 15[01:33] Caska nods. "I didn't know at the time. I didn't know about the family. I was so mad and scared and helpless. I jumped at him. But I was too small. He picked me up with his clean hand. Held me by the neck like a puppy." [01:33] "Was it Tephen?" 15[01:33] "No. I didn't meet Tephen until later." [01:34] 14She nods. "Then you're luckier than some." 15[01:34] "He told me something, and Tephen asked me never to repeat it to anyone. But I don't know why. I'm going to tell you. You can get me in trouble if you want." [01:35] 14Piu: "I've no interest in doing so." 15[01:35] "He said, 'Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.'" 15[01:35] "Then he knocked me out." [01:36] 14She narrows her eyes. "Just because it's self-serving doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true." 15[01:37] Caska sighs. She tilts her blood-spotted hand back and forth. "Maybe." [01:37] "That said...you'll meet a number of killers in this world. Many of the most dangerous walk the path of the ascetic. Some truly find it rewarding. Others find it the only way to maintain control. And you never really know which is which until they're the ones in the corner." 15[01:39] Caska: "Maybe. All I know is, if I ever see him again, I'm going to kill him. Or make him kill me." 15[01:39] "Just another old man." [01:40] 14Piu: "That's how these things usually go. I'd say you might feel different, then. And you might. But what use are those words now?" [01:41] "Until then...as goals go...it's better than most in this household." 15[01:41] Caska: "Do you like this work? Does it make you happy?" [01:43] 14Piu: "It makes me satisfied to do it. It makes me happy to be good at something. It has brought me closer to people I've grown to love, and feel kinship with, and it's given me the skills to be useful to them. But to answer your question directly: No. It is inevitable work, and it is sometimes necessary work, and every so often -- more often now out here, among the true wolves -- [01:43] it can be righteous work." [01:43] "But I don't enjoy doing it. And the act of doing it was repulsive to me, until one day it wasn't." [01:44] "Some people shovel shit for a living, though." 15[01:46] Caska: "When Tephen comes home with his back all red and bloody from the lash, he always looks at me and says, 'Beats working'." She does a pretty good impression of his weird crackly voice. [01:47] 14Piu: "You -- and me, and Tephen -- we're all going to get to have a different perspective on this, I think, than scions from earlier days. We're getting to live through the fall of the Realm. Maybe, the end of the Vendetta. Maybe there's some way forward, after that." [01:48] 14Piu: "And I think that, more than anything, is what keeps me going and engaged. It's something to hold onto. Not much. Might be a lie. Might be a doom. But it's something nonetheless." [01:49] 14She'll sit with the girl until it's time for her to leave, and when she does, she'll vanish standing-still into the night.