Cameo the Assassin

by Dawn McCullough-White

  “I know,” Opal said.

  Bel laughed, “That dire ‘hmm’?”

  “And I need a drink. A strong drink.”

  “I know.”

  * * * * *

  Cameo peered over the amber bottle in front of her. Opal was sitting across from her, Bel and Kyrian to either side. She took in the smoky interior of the tavern, which was dark wood, polished with every ale that had spilled since the place had opened. The floor was littered with broken clay pipes, and the once-white ceiling was stained brown by smoke. It was midday, but the din within the tavern was surprisingly loud.

  “Here you are,” the innkeeper said as he set four bowls of stew down for them. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “Another glass,” Opal said, hefting the third glass of rum he had guzzled down.

  The innkeeper seemed a bit taken aback at the speed with which Opal had polished off the last three but didn’t question it.

  “Seems a bit noisy in here at this time of day,” Cameo said.

  “Yes. Is that typical? It’s midday after all.”

  The innkeeper picked up the empty glass and searched around behind the bar for another. “That lot are all waiting for the Quick Ferry. It takes people over to Shandow, and it’s late again,” he set the rum in front of Black Opal. “It’s always breaking down, that heap of—well, that thing’s cursed if you ask me, or haunted maybe by the ghosts of the Shandow rebellion. Maybe Bainbridge oughta invest in decent transport for the common folk, but no, we got the Quick Ferry.”

  “Well, that’s a real shame,” Bel said politely.

  “The boat across the canal is still running though, right?” Kyrian asked.

  The innkeep looked down at the young man. “Yeah, lad, it’s fine.”

  “That’s good,” Kyrian replied with a mouthful of stew.

  Opal drank down another mouthful, his hazel eye on the annoying lad sitting to his right.

  Cameo pulled a clay pipe from a wooden cup at the center of the table, “Are you going with us the rest of the way, Opal?”

  “Of course I am, my dear. What would stop me?”

  “Just don’t want you falling off the boat on the way.”

  The dandy sneered as he ran his finger around the rim of the glass, “Nonsense, I am tip-top!”

  “Tippy maybe,” Kyrian muttered as he forced some sort of stew gruel into his mouth.

  Cameo raised an eyebrow, packing the pipe with tobacco and looking for an extra chair for her feet.

  Bellamy met her eyes, then turned away and studied Kyrian and Opal. Opal was busily swallowing down his rum. “I hope you’re being paid a rather large sum to keep this boy safe,” Bel said harshly.

  “Hmm...yes, I am,” she said, exhaling pipe smoke. “I do hope it’s worth all this trouble.”

  Bel followed her eyes to Opal who was obviously feeling the effects of the alcohol now. He adjusted the ruffles on his sleeve fastidiously, then set it right down into a puddle of rum on the table.

  “Barkeep!” Opal called.

  Bellamy turned to Opal, “Why don’t you try to eat something, dear boy?”

  “I’m not as fond of gruel as this young lad here is,” Opal said as he pushed his bowl forcefully in Kyrian’s direction, “so have mine.”

  It crashed close to Kyrian.

  Bel picked it up and moved it down to Cameo.

  “Skip the glass this time, shall we? A bottle for me. A bottle for everyone in this dreary little tavern!” Opal bellowed.

  “What?” Bel rushed over to the innkeeper. “He’s drunk, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  The innkeeper handed Bel the bottle of rum. “You know, you look familiar to me somehow.”

  “I have...a familiar face. Everyone says so.”

  “And very dirty clothes. What have you been up to?”

  Bel glanced down at his muddy boots, pants, and long crimson coat. “Just walking; some of those roads are pretty muddy.”

  “Apparently,” the innkeeper said, “and what roads did you say those were exactly, sir?”

  “Um ...” he said as he snatched the rum, “I can’t really remember just now. Old age, I suspect.”

  A large man approached Bellamy.

  Cameo set the pipe down on the table.

  “You got a familiar face all right, just like the one on this poster,” the large man said.

  “What?” Bel was genuinely surprised when the man shoved the wanted poster at him.

  “You’re Bellamy, the leader of that Cameo gang.”

  “What?!” He read the wanted poster that was in his face. “Why that makes no sense. Besides the fact that I am innocent of this crime, why in the world would I be the leader of a gang named for someone else?!” He glanced back over his shoulder at Cameo.

  “I dunno,” the large man shoved him. “But you are, and I’d like that reward on your head.”

  Cameo pulled her pistol.

  “You guys are outlaws! You know Cameo?! This is amazing,” Kyrian exclaimed.

  The large man looked from Kyrian’s squealing voice to the pistol Cameo was now pointing at him.

  “Now, now,” Opal stood. “Let’s settle this like gentlemen, outside, in a duel. No need to get the innocent people injured, is there?”

  “What innocent people?”

  Opal motioned toward the gaggle of people in the background. “Those innocent travelers waiting for the ferry.”

  The large man glanced down at the table and the spilled rum and said, “I won’t go easy on you just because you’re drunk.”

  “Ha, ha!” Opal wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up. “Shall I lead you outside or can you find the door for yourself?”

  “Don’t make me laugh. I’m not interested in being stabbed in the back by some good-for-nothing like you.”

  “Oh, all right, so I’ll go first.” Opal half sauntered, half staggered weaving his way through the tavern.

  “He’s going to get himself killed,” Kyrian whispered loudly to Cameo.

  “Are you sure this is wise?” the assassin called lazily after Black Opal.

  He stopped mid-step and checked for his rapier. “All is well, my dear.”

  Bel was behind him instantly, but Cameo watched the people in the room cautiously for a few moments, a pistol still in hand. The others in the tavern seemed more interested in when the ferry was coming than in an argument between a pair of drunks.

  Kyrian was staring at her, mouth gaping. “Are you going out there?”

  She stood up. Her gray, filmy eyes moved over his young, naive features. “Yes, and so are you, and grab that rum.”

  Cameo moved through the crowd with one hand on her pistol, the other dragging Kyrian by the arm. Several patrons noticed her coming and parted to let her get out the door.

  She took a couple steps out onto the grass before she felt two pairs of hands grab her by the arm and pull her against the tavern wall. Opal and Bellamy yanked both her and Kyrian around the corner hastily and deftly. There was one hand on each of their mouths as the body of the large man that Opal was to duel came into view, bloody and dead around the corner of the Mermaid Inn.

  Cameo, whom Black Opal had in his arms, with one royal blue velvet glove pressed against her mouth, turned to meet his eye. He let his hand slip from her mouth when he noticed the dissatisfied expression on her rather gaunt face.

  “Don’t scream,” Bel said to Kyrian as he removed his hand from the lad’s mouth.

  Kyrian jerked away from the highwayman indignantly. “You killed a man.”

  “Yes, and now we need to go.”

  “That wasn’t a very gentlemanly way to kill a man either,” Cameo hissed.

  “Sorry to disappoint. I would be happy to give you a display of fine swordsmanship another time if you like, my dear,” Opal said.

  “It’s funny, you don’t sound drunk.”

  He smiled. “Neither do you.”

  “Should I?”

  The door to the in
n slammed, and both Cameo and Opal froze in place as the innkeeper rounded the corner with a blunderbuss in his hands. He had apparently determined that the bounty on their heads was far more enticing then the jovial conversation he had with them only moments earlier.

  Opal pushed Cameo out of his arms and behind him before he pulled the man with his left hand onto his bloody rapier, still ready from his last fight. The innkeeper’s eyes were full of shock as he slid off of Opal’s blade. He clutched the gun to his chest as he collapsed.

  Kyrian glanced at Black Opal in horror.

  Opal sheathed his rapier.

  Cameo moved toward the lad. There was a shade motioning her toward the boathouse, and she felt a need to move in that direction. As she moved, she saw a rowboat slip out from behind the boathouse, silently, like a black sliver in the water.

  “Kyrian!” Cameo threw the lad to the ground as the woman on the boat took a shot at him with her pistol. A cannon-like blast shook the air around them, and a plume of white smoke veiled her body.

  It didn’t matter; the assassin could see through the smoke. Cameo’s dagger met the woman’s stomach before she ever saw it coming.

  Cameo scrambled to pull the vessel to shore as the young woman slid under the black water of the canal.

  “You all right, lad?” Bel heaved Kyrian up by one arm.

  The young man looked at him in the eyes, then looked over at Cameo, stunned.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here before someone else decides to take a shot at us,” Bel said.

  Opal pried the blunderbuss from the innkeeper’s hands and then ran toward the boat.

  * * * * *

  The little party set foot on shore across the canal, twenty feet from where the last fight had taken place. A small crowd of travelers was examining the innkeeper’s body, yelling and shaking their fists at them.

  As Cameo hoisted herself out of the boat and onto land, she noticed several wanted posters pinned to a nearby tree.

  Kyrian wandered over to the weatherworn papers and examined them solemnly. The wanted posters of Bellamy, Clovis Gail DePell, Black Opal, and Cameo fluttered in the brisk breeze.

  A woman and her two small children passed them on the path on other side. Their black dresses and white bonnets were crisp and dour, caught on the wind. The woman had seemed calm as she passed by until she got to the Avon and saw the dinghy empty and floating away.

  Cameo met her wary expression as she glanced back at the four of them, then hurried her children down the canal path as if that had been her intention all along.

  “She knew us,” the assassin stated matter-of-factly.

  Opal was cleaning his rapier on a rag.

  “She has children!” Bel sounded alarmed.

  Cameo gave him a dismissive gesture. “I don’t want to kill them. I just think we should avoid the town.”

  “Well then, how are we supposed to get rid of, I mean, take the lad to his temple?” He gestured at the lad in agitation.

  She looked over at Kyrian, then started moving forward into Kings Basin. “Take him at night. For now, though, I think it would be wise to find someplace to lay low.” She called out to the boy ahead of her, “Kyrian!”

  The lad startled a bit. He could feel the older woman coming up behind him.

  “Where’s that rum?”

  Kyrian pulled a stray lock of hair over one ear as he turned from the wanted posters. “Uhh...I dropped it.”

  She looked beyond the lad, to the posters on the tree where her own face was staring back at her, then peered down at Kyrian. He was staring at a dry leaf as it bounded down the path, caught in the wind.

  “Well then,” she smiled softly at him. “Now you know all of my secrets.”

  He lifted his eyes to look at her shocked at the warmth in her tone. “You are Cameo?”

  She smiled at him, the same caring smile she had gifted him with a moment earlier.

  “My parents used to tell me stories about you when I was a little boy. Well, a rhyme really about how you killed children who didn’t go to bed on time.”

  Cameo smirked. “Well, that’s not true... at least, not all the time, you know? I did have to work for a living.”

  He cracked a smile.

  “I think Black Opal knows that rhyme, don’t you Opal?”

  Opal glowered back at the two of them.

  “Perhaps you might indulge us with a couple lines?” She turned as he passed by, “I believe you mentioned it was a song about me living in cemeteries or something?”

  “We’re all going to be living in a cemetery if we don’t move out of this area,” Bel quipped as he followed Opal.

  “You can’t really live in a cemetery!” Kyrian charged after them.

  The dandy glanced around at Cameo.

  She ripped down those posters. The price on her head was surprisingly steep, and this roused her a bit. Now she had a couple more people hanging around her who were innocent of the crime of killing Leon, and then there was Kyrian, a completely guiltless boy whom she had to get to his destination before someone saw them together. She didn’t want to wreck his life simply by associating with her.

  “That artist is spot-on too! He really nailed that portrait of Black Opal!” Kyrian said.

  “That old thing?! It looks nothing like me at all.”

  Kyrian’s eyes met Bel’s quizzically. “Well, maybe not now. You look really debonair in that picture, though.”

  Opal shot him a murderous look.

  Bel rolled his eyes, “Jealousy is so unflattering, dear boy.”

  “What?! Jealousy?!” His hazel eye met with Bel’s. Opal straightened the black duster that he was wearing, “Certainly not.”

  Cameo walked past the two of them.

  Bellamy turned to observe Opal as he watched her saunter down the hill behind the lad.

  “Mmm hmm,” Bellamy said rolling his eyes.

  Chapter Five

  “THIS IS A LOVELY SETUP,” Opal bemoaned as he slid onto a roughly hewn stool.

  His voice amused Bel, who looked up from the half-stupor he had been in. “Yes, it’s a bit dreary. I suppose that’s what one gets when he goes looking for abandoned buildings to hold up in.”

  Opal pulled the ribbon from his hair and ran a hand through his ashen locks. “Where did Cameo go?”

  “Oh, I think she’s upstairs.”

  “With that little letch I suppose?” Opal said.

  Bellamy gnawed on the end of a pencil for a moment. “Of course. At least he’s not down here bothering us with his incessant questions.”

  “What...questions?”

  “Oh, how many people have you killed, Bel? If Cameo and Black Opal had a duel, who would win? Is that really Opal’s hair or some sort of cheap wig? You know, the usual.”

  Opal fixed him with exasperated look.

  Bel ran the pencil through his hair as if he finally had a good verse and was longing to write it out.

  “Cheap wig indeed,” Opal muttered. “If I ever needed a wig it certainly would not be inexpensive.”

  Bellamy continued to run the pencil through his hair, hoping whatever it was he had been about to write would come back and hoping if he continued to run that pencil through his hair, Opal would stop talking so he could concentrate.

  “Why didn’t she just find someplace that was fully furnished? Someplace with food for goodness sake?” He ran a finger over the rickety table that they were seated at and came up with brown dust. “She is an assassin after all.”

  “I suspect she wanted to slip into Kings Basin quietly, and not with guns blaring.”

  Opal stood up and wandered about the pantry, looking for something to eat again. “How are we supposed to keep up our strength?” He set his hands on his hips.

  “Opal, have I told you I’m working on a play?” Bel asked.

  The dandy overturned several more dishes.

  “You are in it.”

  “Oh, really? Well then, it must be marvelous. When do I get to hear it?
”

  “When you shut up and let me write it.”

  “If you haven’t written it, then why do you get my hopes up? What am I supposed to do in here with nothing to eat, nothing to do? I was rather hoping to read your delightful tale of Black Opal.”

  Bel glanced up at him blurry-eyed, “Yes, well...I think I shall try to get some sleep.”

  Opal touched Bel’s crimson sleeve, “So early, dear boy? Wouldn’t you rather...uhh, read me some of your poetry?”

  Bellamy could see the clear distaste in Opal’s eye as he suggested it. “Tempting, Opal, but I did escape from an assassin prior to running into you lot, so I think I really need some sleep.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s true.” Opal said grudgingly.

  “Why don’t you get some rest yourself?”

  “Ah ...” he lifted his gaze to the ceiling, “I think I’ll bid you goodnight.”

  * * * * *

  “I win.”

  “Hmm,” Kyrian looked at his cards despairingly. “I don’t think I’ve got the rules straight.”

  Cameo raised an eyebrow, collected her deck, and said, “We could play something else. There’s always dice or perhaps drinking games.” She checked her flask, which was empty. “Well, perhaps another time when I have some alcohol.”

  “I don’t know any games for dice either,” he said, a bit bewildered. “How did you learn to play all these games?”

  She smiled knowingly.

  “Hang out in enough taverns,” Opal interrupted as he mounted the last couple steps.

  Both Cameo and Kyrian turned to look at him.

  “Oh, so you must know even more diversions than Cameo does,” Kyrian said.

  Opal met her eyes. “No other diversions lately.”

  The second floor was a loft, empty except for one bed filled with moldy straw. Opal glanced over at it, then back at her intensely.

  Cameo met his expression, irritated, then turned to Kyrian again and said, “We should probably get a couple hours of rest before we take you over to your temple.”

  “Of course,” Kyrian smiled, standing up. “Well, you’re the lady here, so you should have the bed. I’ll go downstairs and find something comfortable.” He turned to leave, then stopped as if he had forgotten something. “Oh, and goodnight to you, too, Opal.”