A Practical Assassin

From Axalon RPG

Once upon a time, there was a practical assassin.

The late Lord Skagway's personal pet assassin was bound to an exclusive retainer. He (the Assassin) likened himself to an artist working in the mixed media of death, and was, for lack of a better word, prolific in his field. He had orchestrated a great many murders in a scant six year career, composing a veritable symphony in quietus; and, ruthless though he was, he was not without a heart, not without warmth, not insusceptible to that certain rush of blood to the head. "I'm a lover and a fighter," he had pronounced on one occasion.

"Shut up and come back to bed," had said the late Lord Skagway's then-wife, the Lady Milieu.

The Lady Milieu evidently thought little of her husband, and that little wasn't very good. The Assassin, on the other hand, had always liked the man. Mostly, it must be said, for his taste in women.

One fine winter morning in the castle, Lord Skagway was late for his breakfast. As it happened, he was similarly late for all his other appointments that day, the day after, and evermore from then on. He was late rather permanently, in the sense of being dead. The weight of evidence came to bear on the Assassin-- his affair with Lord Skagway’s now-widow complicated matters further, particularly when a hapless servant charged into the Assassin's abode with news. Thereafter the fellow was promptly inhumed by a flock of poisoned darts.

Obviously this was a (waste of a good) booby-trap, sprung by the servant's terribly unwise entrance. The Assassin came downstairs, huddled in his black velvet bedclothes, to investigate the truncated, "By authority of His Grace Lor--" WHUD, which had emanated from the bottom of the stairs. Down went the Assasin, spanning the stairs with exaggerated care, only to find a young man in Lord Skagway’s livery. It was the very man, in fact, whose credentials the assassin had been investigating only a week before.

"You were supposed to come highly recommended," the Assassin said, with some bitterness. At that moment, he spotted the wax-sealed vellum scroll. He picked it up, therein to read of His (former) Grace, Lord Callous Skagway, or, as the Assassin knew him, Cal for short. For, far more than employer-assassin, assassin-client, the two men had been friends. The Assassin's contract had been negotiated before birth; the two had grown up on the same estate, and had attended the same tutors until age nine, at which time one went to the Royal Officers’ Academy, and the other began his first descent into guild life.

Perhaps it would be wisest to retreat to that familiar hole, thought the Assassin, who knew that he would be the prime suspect in the murder. Only the Assassin could have the skill to bypass all his own traps and safeguards, after all. Had he not propounded as much to the house guards, in his attempts to assure them of their Lord's perfect safety? He surmised they would not be imaginative enough to doubt him. Back to the draconian deathtrap that was the Assassins’ Guild, then? The Assassin was a coward, after all, out of purely practical necessity. All this commotion would die down, sooner or later. Everything died down eventually, because necessarily, everything died.

Of course, there was still the Lady Milieu to be consider, upon whose exquisite lap all of this would then fall. He must leave quickly, but not without saying goodbye.

"You're leaving? Now?" she asked, incredulously.

The Assassin hesitated. Understandably, she would want someone to lean on, in her time of trial. As he expected, the death of her husband was secondary at best.

"Who's going to protect me?" she asked flatly, in the terms of someone who has paid for a service which she hitherto expects to get.

"Unh?" said the Assassin, articulately.

"My husband up and dies, not of natural causes, and now our captain of the guard tries to resign? I tell you I won't stand for it. You're still under contract. If someone intends to kill me next, you're my best hope. I don't see how you can think of leaving," said Milieu, turning to look out a frost-whorled windowpane.

"My services don't seem to have done Lord Skagway a whit of good, milady."

"Your services were otherwise being availed of, by myself." She looked at him, as he stood across the poster bed from her. Her eyes softened. "Stay," she said, still with authority, but with a hint of something else.

And so he did.

For the following week, the Assassin slinked through shadows, clung to ceilings, hid in drapes and under beds, scampered down chimneys and prowled slick icy ledges outside windows. He stalked servants below stairs, kept an eye on any guests above stairs hawkishly. Reading the lips of the guards from behind misted glass, he knew that they were still looking for him, just as he was looking for the true murderer. Neither he nor the guards seemed to be having much in the way of luck, the Assassin mused, eating roast pigeon, fresh-caught by his perch below the kitchen flue.

Each night, the Assassin would return through the chill, emerging from behind the bookshelf into the presence of Lady Milieu. She in turn would tell him what news. He learned that whoever had murdered Lord Skagway had known their business: had known it as well as any of the guards the Assassin had taken into his confidence, in fact had known it almost as intimately as the Assassin himself, a worrying notion to be sure.

The facts of the case were simple. Someone, whom no one had seen enter or exit or suspected in the slightest degree had, at some point, stolen their personage within the Lord Skagway's room. Therewith, utilizing the utmost care, they had gone on to poison the bedsheets, quite thoroughly indeed.

It was a powerful toxin that had dried quickly. The residue was scarcely noticeable, except for one trained as an Assassin - or else trained by one, as, for example, His Lordship’s personal physician had been. The physician's notes bore witness that the poison had seeped into his Lordship’s skin while the man slept, in a dose sufficient to stop his breathing. It was much as the Assassin would have planned it himself, truly. Even Milieu reluctantly recalled to him a short-lived discussion of his methods, which they had had one evening when first they met, wherein he had mentioned the very poison used. It was an exotic, a rarity outside the distant East. Her ladyship, too, was well aware of his preference for poison, a certain...civilized way of doing things. Of course he had also on that first evening gone on to mention the ornate knife in his boot was just for show (ordinarily), as he preferred greater finesse than a routine stab in the dark.

On the Assassin’s seventh consecutive night of this subterfuge, he met the Lady Milieu in the guest room where she was staying. She was visibly upset when she saw him, but kept her calm composure even so.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"It's this murder," she shook her head. "It's getting harder and harder to deny your involvement."

The Assassin had to concede this much. "But I wasn’t involved," he pointed out.

"And how, pray, is His Grace's wife meant to know that?" Milieu retorted in short order. "It is a growing case of 'methinks thou dost protest too much.' If I continue to insist upon your innocence, sooner or later they're going to suspect us *both*."

"But I'm not involved," the Assassin repeated in protest, a rather different tone of voice from before-- almost plaintive.

"That's not what the evidence staring us in the face is suggesting," said Milieu scathingly.

The Assassin’s lips parted, framing a reply as he turned to face her. That was when she hit him.

The blow took him hard across the back of his neck, the black iron poker from the fireside. Blackness followed.

When the Assassin woke, it was inside a cell that could not be decently described without at least one use of the word 'dank'. Far-off torches shone, casting long stripes of shadow through the iron bars of the dungeon. They lent the hall a greasy, flickering light. At first, the Assassin was annoyed that they had not posted the armed guards that he must surely warrant. He was also disappointed-- he had thought he had trained the house staff to know better. Here was a skilled assassin, and they hadn’t even stripped him fully, he thought ruefully, scratching his bare, taut stomach idly as he worked a tiny, thin wire of a lockpick out from under the skin below his eyebrow. It seemed like they could use some remedial lessons.

Minutes, spent scrutinizing his cage for weaknesses, gave way to fruitless hours, and the Assassin began to wonder if he oughtn’t be heading back to the guild classroom himself. The cell, for all its simple design, had him confounded. It seemed impregnable by any means currently at his disposal. Once again, it seemed someone had done their homework. At this point, the assassin had formulated a pretty good guess as to who that was. Not that solving the murder was exactly of prime importance to him. Presently, making good his escape felt the more relevant of the two priorities. He spent the better part of an hour testing a lock. The remnant was spent with the startling realization that he couldn’t hope to break it.

The hours went on, and the torches burned down. Under the anemic half-light that reflected off the glistening walls, the Assassin saw the hours turn into days; days, and freezing nights, which he spent struggling to stay warm under the tick-infested quilt they had left him. Days became weeks. The Assassin was eventually reduced to a diet of captured rats, drinking the melted snow which dribbled through a crack in the wall. Days became weeks. All thought of escape dwindled, as simple survival took the fore.

Time multiplied -- exponentially, like the dungeon’s many rats. Out of winter’s chill womb, spring was born. One week begat two: two was soon eight: eight eventually turned into sixteen, and so on. Weeks were now months. Soon counting the hours gave up all meaning. Even as the days grew longer, his cell warmer, the descendant rats grew cleverer and more cautious of him. The Assassin grew thinner. The weapon of his body rusted. All the years the Guild spent honing him to the peak of physical perfection, wasting away in the dark.

At some point, the months became years. It would all end in shadow, he thought. Somehow, the Assassin had always known it would.

Languishing in the obscurity of confinement, the memory plays tricks, as the Assassin was forced to recall one day. Had the Assassin not seen men weaker than himself crack, after only a few days’ stalking? They spoke to themselves, became subject to crazed hallucinations, pervasive delusions and assorted flights of fancy. He was well aware of how fragile the human psyche could be, under strain. At that, there could be no doubt whatsoever that the Assassin had been under strain.

“You’ve gotten lazy,” said the late Lord Skagway, standing in the hall, on the opposite side of the bars.

Furthermore, what other explanation could there be for this apparition?

“...Hello? I say, are you even listening, old boy?” said Lord Skagway, waggling the fingers on one dainty hand. The knuckles were heavy with gold and jewels, rings jingling as he waved. “I beg your pardon, but one happens to be speaking to you.’

The Assassin glanced up. Lord Skagway grinned whitely. The man bore the same facile, obscenely perfect little grin that had served him so well in life. “Forgive me, old friend, but...you look terrible,” Lord Skagway observed, brushing a speck of imaginary dust off his long silken coat. Ruffles and lace, cravats and stickpins fairly spilled out over his sleeves and lapels.

The Assassin cleared his throat, with some difficulty. He spat in corner, and licked his parched lips. When he spoke, it was in a voice rough with disuse. “That’s strange. You’re exactly as I remember.”

The grin was back.

The Assassin furrowed his brow. “Look,” he croaked, “s'good to see you back an' all, at long last, sir, might I add, but before we go any furver, there are a few fings I’d like to get straightened out.”

Lord Skagway raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes. First of all, in case your lovely wife neglected to inform you, your deadness, your contract wiff the Guild, and 'ence, me, 'as been terminated."

"Oh?"

"Ee-yes, sir. Wiff an iron poker.”

Lord Skagway was unimpressed. “Is that so? My, my, someone has been busy. Not you, obviously,” he waved offhandedly. “Even so. She had no right. The matter shall be corrected--”

“Secondly, even were that not the case, I quit.”

“...Ah.”

“You, old friend,” the Assassin went on, “are not real. You're only a figment, a hallucinatory manifestation of my pent-up feelings of guilt, stemming from a sordid past rife with murder and betrayal. Now, then,” the Assassin pointed mistrustfully at the translucent figure, “go away, Cal.”

“Really?” said the ghost of Lord Callous Skagway. Cal, for short. “Ah.”

The Assassin folded his skinny arms smugly.

The ghost rubbed its lightly glowing chin. “Hmm. An interesting tack on the idea. You know, I honestly hadn't thought of that,” it said, nodding thoughtfully. “...But wait. I do know you, old friend, and you've never felt so much as a twinge of remorse in your whole life. Why, knowing you as I do, I'd say you're quite the, ah, heartless bastard? Yes? Ha ha. No offense meant, of course. I’d take it as a compliment, if it were me. No, the only thing about all this is, and don't think this comes as any less of a shock to me,” the ghost did look quite shocked indeed, transparent blue eyes stretched open wide, “you didn’t actually kill me.”

The Assassin froze.

“Always were exceptionally loyal in that respect, weren't you, Craven?” said the ghost, laughing.

The Assassin’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Go bloody *away*, you damnable phantom.”

The late Lord Skagway pursed his spectral lips. He seemed to be in a forgiving mood. “Even if a little slow on the uptake, at times. I’m a ghost, Craven. Dead,” he shrugged, “and the living have no hold on me. I do what I like, when I like, where I like, and the consequences be damned.”

Craven, the Assassin, snorted. This was no change from when Cal was alive, as near as he could tell. “At least my imagination 'as a sense of 'umour.”

“Oh, yes. Quite unlike yourself,” said the ghost of Lord Skagway. “You really must learn to lighten up one of these days, Craven. Regardless. To business.”

“Business!” The Assassin laughed out loud. He wondered if anyone could hear him, if perhaps there were guards listening, shaking their heads with pity and wonder at the onset of his inevitable madness. The notion amused him further. Pity! Him! An Assassin! He laughed again.

“You are making rather a fool of yourself,” said the ghost impassively. “Not that it matters terribly. Craven, listen to me. I want you to avenge me, that is to say my murder, and between the pair of us, we shall not have rest until you do. I assure you, it does not matter very much to me if you must operate under the mistaken belief that you are insane in order to do so. You will kill my killer, along with any and all accomplices, if you’ll excuse the alliteration. Totally unintentional.” The grin flashed again. “Now then. Do I make myself quite understood?”

TO BE CONCLUDED...SOMEDAY, MAYBE