Chapter Twenty-Three

Galen the Butcher was so very sick of the sight of blood. After long enough putting the blade to men, he was beginning to feel like the world’s greatest meat grocer for human flesh. This time, he wasn’t to mess this up. There had been enough unnecessary killing. No one needed to die but the target. After tonight, all that would be left was the high lord himself. And then, after that, he could finally be done, once and for all, and go home. That was, assuming he still even had a home left to go back to.

He pressed flat against the cool stucco of the garden wall, willing himself to blend with the shadows in the twilight as the second guard marched past the little alcove he was hiding in. Once he was convinced the guard was out of earshot, he slipped out of the alcove and dashed a dozen or so paces across the walkway to the other side, and ducked behind a statue as another pair of guardsmen rounded the corner of the small estate onto the walkway.

Ordinarily, a small country estate like this, occupied by a no-name foundling of a new house, would be barely guarded, if at all. After all, there was likely nothing of value that couldn’t be obtained more easily elsewhere, and no one of significance worth blackmailing or ransoming. And yet, the place was crawling with armed bodies on high alert, as if it expected an attack at any possible moment. The pair walking past his location this very moment brought the count to two dozen. Not even the banker had bothered with that many. Galen chuckled humorlessly. Word about what he’d done to the last two targets must have finally gotten to the rest.

After the next pair of guards passed, he stepped out of the statue’s shadow and glanced upwards at the side of the estate house. There were no windows on the first floor, which was not surprising. The only places typically considered safe enough to have them were the major cities, or the holdings of a high lord that could afford to house a veritable private army on the grounds. The second floor did, however, and drawing a bit of Thaumaturgy, he leapt up halfway up the side of the wall and scrambled the remaining ten or so feet to the wide window ledge of the nearest one before the next patrol circled around.

The window stood tall and narrow, not much wider than his shoulders, its shutters bolted from the inside. Pulling a thin shim of metal from his belt, he slid it between two of the slats and fished around until he found what he was looking for. With a jerk, the latch popped free and the shutters drifted open. Behind them, however, was a solid lead-glass window of the type not meant to be opened. Galen cursed softly under his breath. As if this needed to be any harder. He closed his eyes and rested his fingertips gently against it. He commanded the wood and glass to part with another bit of Thaumaturgy, and the window parted and folded inwards effortlessly as he stepped through it into the dark hallway beyond. With another command and a flourish, the window popped silently back into shape, leaving no trace it had ever been altered.

Galen looked down the hallway in each direction. Now, where would the master’s quarters be? Lacking a clear idea either way, he went left, towards the main bulk of the rest of the house. If this estate was laid out like most others, the lord’s suite would be on the top floor, likely near the center of the home. While he’d never actually thought about it until now, this was probably because it was the easiest room in the house to keep safe from the average burglar or ne’re-do-well.

Unless that person is me.

Galen was nearly to the end of the hallway when a light approached it. Thinking quickly, he found the nearest door and ducked inside it. The room he entered was clearly a child’s room. Moonlight lit a large four-poster bed set to one side and a large wardrobe on the other, and in the middle sat a large spiral-wound rug on which a rather large collection of wooden and metal toys lay scattered. The room was mercifully empty, the bed neatly made. Perhaps it was a guest room for one of lord’s family.

Galen waited quietly by the door, listening for whoever was approaching to make their way past so that he could continue on. To his horror, however, what he heard was a child’s voice drawing closer, accompanied by rhythmic agreements from the long-suffering voice of a man who had clearly been listening far past the point of exhaustion.

“...and Mamma says that when I get older, I will be able to go to Transel University and be a scholar if I’d like. Or…”

The latch on the door rattled and started to turn. Panicking, Galen looked around for a place to hide, finally settling on the nearby wardrobe. He dashed over and dove inside, barely managing to get it closed before the door opened. Utilizing a crack between the two wardrobe doors, Galen watched to see what was happening.

In walked a young boy, perhaps seven or eight, and a grown man in perhaps his mid-forties that Galen recognized immediately as the man he was looking for. He’d longer hair and a clean shaven face then, but there was no mistaking the scar on his cheek in the lamp light. The boy scrambled up onto the bed and under the covers. The man walked over and set the lumenite lamp down on the bedside table, then set about tucking the boy in.

“Can I have a story, papa?” The boy asked when the man finished.

“It’s well past your bedtime already, Tomas. You need to sleep.” He said, reaching for the lamp again.

“Pllleeeaaase? Just a short one? I promise I won’t ask for another!” The boy pleaded.

The man looked down at his son and sighed, a defeated smile on his face.

“Fine. But only one. I mean it.” He said.

He walked over to a bookshelf on the far wall and studied the volumes there for a long moment before pulling one free and settling down on the bed with it. He riffled through the pages until he found what he was looking for, then slid over so he was sitting next to the boy, the book poised between them.

“This is the story of the Boy and the Black Thresher....” The man began.

By the time the man had finished, the child was already fast asleep. The man rested the book quietly on the bedside table, pressed his lips to the boy’s forehead, and gingerly walked to the door, the extinguished lamp in his hands. He stepped out of the room, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

Once Galen was sure the man was well gone, he crept out of the wardrobe and made for the door. He was halfway to it when the wardrobe door abruptly snapped the rest of the way closed, loud enough to cause the boy to stir. Galen froze, holding his breath and mentally reciting a long list of the worst curses he could think of. The boy finally turned over, seeming to drift back to sleep, and Galen silently breathed a sigh of relief as he resumed his escape. He had just reached the doorknob when the boy shifted again, and this time sat up. Galen’s blood ran cold.

“...Papa?” The boy asked.

His heart pounding, Galen opened the door and ducked outside, closing it quickly and quietly behind him. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!

The boy called out again, but Galen was already too far to hear what was said. Based on the receding footsteps from the father a minute before, he’d already been heading in the right direction. He hadn’t heard any stairs either, which meant that it was quite likely the master suite was actually on this floor. He quietly rounded the corner to find himself staring at a wooden door where he’d expected a hallway to be. Confused, he leaned down and peered into the keyhole. Sure enough, this was the master suite, and there was the man sitting in a large bed of his own, reading something by lamplight. A woman lay beside him, curled into his chest.

Godsdammit, why does this have to keep getting more and more complicated?

He wasn’t going to get another chance at this. The man would be departing for halfway across the world at dawn on a trading expedition. Killing someone in the same country and area as you was hard enough as it was. But killing him once he left port would be all but impossible, assuming he could even be found at all. No, it had to be tonight. There was no other choice. And if that meant she had to die too, if she refused to let him die alone, so be it. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d have killed a target’s lover, he thought with grim disgust. Steeling himself for what was about to come, he took a deep breath and stepped through the door.

Both man and woman looked up at him in unison. The woman’s eyes grew wide in terror, and she opened her mouth to scream.

“Alert the guards, and both of you die, along with your son.” Galen said calmly, pulling his sword from its sheath. He gestured towards the man. “I’m only here for him. Stay quiet, and I will give him an honorable death and let the rest of you live.”

The woman looked at her husband, who nodded to her grimly. She protested quietly, but he silenced her with a gesture as he slid out of bed. To Galen’s surprise, he was still fully clothed. The man slid a hand into the bedframe and pulled out a gloss black scabbard.

“I’ve expected you, though perhaps not quite so soon.” The man said, pulling his blade from its sheath. “I hope you will forgive me for not just letting you kill me. I find myself quite attached to this life, and intend to keep it.”

“It’s a shame you couldn’t extend that courtesy to my family.” Galen said coldly.

The man sighed as he settled into a combat stance.

“It’s a shame your sense of justice has led you to doing the exact same thing to mine.” He said.

Their blades clashed with a hollow ring as they struck in unison. The ferocity of the man’s strikes and parries caught Galen off-guard. Each one of the men he’d hunted had been competent with their weapons, but this was something else entirely. His form as crisp and immaculate, his cuts and blocks precise as clockwork. On more than a few occasions it took all Galen had to keep from being outmanned, and he’d had to dose himself with Thamaturgic energy more than a few times to keep up.

The duel continued for several long moments without interruption, until Galen heard something that made his heart freeze as he swung his blade again.

“Papa?!”

What happened next seemed to all take an eternity, though it could not have taken more than a few seconds. The boy, seeming to have followed Galen from the bedroom, ran into the middle of their duel, and it was too late for Galen to stop his swing. He tried to pull his blow as the blade bit into the boy’s torso, but the damage was already done. The boy tumbled to the floor in a bloody heap, his eyes wide in shock, his mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.

The woman wailed, and the man’s eyes went wide, his attention momentarily diverted to the dying child at his feet. Unthinking, Galen brought his blade around and through the man’s neck in one clean motion. The body and head separated and both tumbled to the floor in a fountain of red. Galen looked down at the corpses at his feet, the boy’s face and limbs still twitching faintly, the man’s face forever frozen into a mask of horror, and then at his blood-covered hands.

...what… what have I done?

‘

He heard a click, and looked up through grief-stricken eyes to see the woman holding a flintlock pistol aimed at him. Her hands were shaking violently, and the look in her eyes told him that whatever sanity had been left in her mind was now and probably forever destroyed.

“Please… just don’t…” He said, holding out a blood-stained hand towards her as he called on even more Thaumaturgic energy. The ecstasy merged with the disgust and horror in his chest, burying them low enough that, for now, he could handle them. He slowly walked forward to take the pistol away from her before she fired, watching for even the slightest sign that she was about to.

“I don’t want to hurt you…” He said quietly, reaching his hand out for the gun. “Please, just… just put it down…”

He saw her finger tighten on the trigger a split second before it went off, and threw himself backwards to avoid the shot. He wasn’t fast enough. The ball tore a searing hot line of pain across his face that burned across his head and cheek. He landed on his back and scrambled to his feet. If there was any doubt the guards were coming before, there was none now. The woman dropped the pistol and lifted another from beside her.

She did not get to pull back the hammer before Galen’s blade found her heart. Her eyes, broken as they were, still managed to look betrayed as he pulled it free. As if he had somehow broken his word. He looked down at the blood-soaked blade in his hands and started weeping as he dashed for the nearest window.

Gods, Galen… what have you become?