The man winked, and then nodded at the view of the grounds.
“I said it’s a nice night, Corvo,” he said. “What’s the matter, you deaf, lad?”
Corvo smiled. “I can hear you just fine, Isaiah,” he said quietly. “And I suspect everyone in the garden can, too, so if you don’t mind?”
“All right, all right,” the man said, not lowering his voice in the slightest, before realizing his mistake and waving Corvo an apology. “And it’s ‘Azariah,’ not Isaiah,” he whispered. “How many times does a man have to say it to get it through that thick head of yours, eh? Too many knocks to the brow, that’s what it is.”
Corvo’s smile grew. “Sorry, Azariah.” He turned back to the window. A moment passed. “And less of the lad. I’m nearly as old as you are.”
Azariah snorted. “If that’s the case, then I want to buy your secret and bottle it for sale in my distillery.”
The Royal Protector snickered and shook his head, returning his gaze to the view of the gardens. The two men stood in silence for a while, listening to the croak of frogs and the slow chirp of nocturnal insects enjoying the overgrown state of the place.
Corvo pursed his lips. “Azariah,” he said slowly.
“Eh?”
Corvo smiled. “Just trying it out. Suits you, actually. A lot better than your old nickname, anyway.”
Azariah laughed, then waved an apology as Corvo gave him a stern look to keep quiet. “Ah, yes. Now there was a name for the ages, eh? But, I’ll tell ya, that man died a long, long time ago, and old Azariah Fillmore doesn’t know a thing about it.” He coughed, then repeated his name a few times, rolling his tongue around it thoughtfully. “Azariah Fillmore.” Then he nodded. “Azariah Fillmore. Aye, does the trick, my lad, does the trick.”
He stepped away from the window and took a fob watch from the pocket of his embroidered velvet waistcoat, holding it to catch the moonlight.
“But look, Corvo, time’s ticking on. How long have we been here now, eh?” He peered at the timepiece, then frowned and turned it to Corvo. “Bah. Help an old man out and feast your eyes on the dial, and tell me what secrets it tells you.”
Corvo glanced down at the watch with a shake of his head.
“What’s the matter, Isaiah? You got somewhere else to be?”
“Now look, Corvo,” the other said, “I’m helping you out here, letting you and your men march in and make themselves at home in my shrubbery. And more than that, too—I’ve had to take me own boys off the job and put them under the will of that young fella… what was his name?”
“Jameson.”
“Right. Jameson. Nice boy, too. But listen, I’m glad to help. And I’m glad for the help. I’ve spent hard-earned coin rebuilding this rotten pile, and I ain’t going to let no one take that off me, oh no sir.” The old man huffed in the night air.
“And,” he added, “it’s Azariah, not Isaiah. For pity’s sake, Corvo. I’ve got a cover to maintain here. No good you getting me name wrong all over the show. I’ve spent too many years turning the wheel of me ship around for you to come and run me aground, my lad.”
“And it sounds like you spent too long at sea, Azariah.” Corvo grinned, and now Azariah seemed to notice the expression. He huffed a second time, finally realizing his friend had, perhaps, been getting his name wrong deliberately, just to annoy him. Then Azariah’s face broke into a grin, as well.
“Ha! Maybe I did, Corvo, maybe I did—but I tell ya, that’s where I really belonged. I got the call, I did. That’s where I found meself, honestly and truly.”
Corvo’s gaze flicked across the night-shrouded estate. Still nothing.
“Two words I never thought I’d ever hear you say,” he said.
“Eh?”
Corvo glanced at his old acquaintance. “‘Honestly’ and ‘truly.’ I’m surprised they even feature in your vocabulary.”
“Well now, isn’t that nice?” Azariah said, taken aback. “I’ve been busy, Corvo, busy ever since you saved me from Granny Rag’s casserole. Changed me life, that did. Set me on a new path.” The man looked down at himself in the moonlight and pulled at the bottom of his waistcoat. “Where do you think all this came from, eh? And this?” He waved at the empty room. “Eh? Eh?” Then he rubbed the fingers of one hand in Corvo’s face. “Honest graft, that’s where. I’m not who I was, you know. You’re in the house of Azariah Fillmore, distiller of exotic liqueurs and exporter of the very same, and what’s more—”
Corvo held up a hand.
“Shh!”
He leaned out the window, looking around.
On the far side of the gardens was a large, long stone building, the pitched roof supported by a ring of white columns that glowed in the moonlight. The old Brigmore mausoleum. And, as far as his agents had been able to discover, the target of the raid tonight.
There was a flash from the trees in the far distance, then closer, two more. Then another, all of them directed toward the house. Signals from Corvo’s spies, stationed out in the gardens. The enemy had been sighted.
Corvo stood and turned to Azariah.
“This is it,” he said. “They’re coming. Go downstairs and get your men ready.”
Azariah stood tall and gave a mock salute. “As the Royal Protector commands.” He paused and added, “Or should that be Royal Spymaster now?”
Corvo rolled his eyes and waved the old man away. Azariah frowned, then turned and headed for the stairs. When he reached them, he stopped and turned back around. In the moonlight streaming through the windows he gave Corvo a wink, his smile flashing under his huge mustache.
“Hey, Corvo, just like old times, eh?”
Corvo allowed himself a small smile, but there was no time to waste.
“Come on, Slackjaw, go. Go!”
“Okay, I’m going, I’m going,” the old man said. “And it’s Azariah Fillmore, you bleedin’ idiot. Honestly, how many times…”
12
BRIGMORE MANOR, MUTCHERHAVEN DISTRICT
12th Day, Month of Darkness, 1851
“As a coddled generation has grown more accepting of heresy, even taking delight in the tales of witchcraft found in lurid adventure stories, this is the result: Now even those with no real connection to the Void are attempting to devise their own disgusting rituals and talismans. Such corrupted bonecharms and fractured runes could be even more dangerous than the original artifacts, as impossible as that might seem.”
— WARNING ON CORRUPTED CHARMS
Excerpt from an Overseer’s report on
black-market occult artifacts
It had taken a couple of hours to reach their destination, the old Brigmore Manor, north of Dunwall, beyond the city walls. The estate was itself surrounded by a huge stone wall that was at least partially ruined, the main gates completely missing. The information the Whalers had was correct—the estate was deserted, and, Emily imagined, probably had been ever since the Rat Plague.
Or at least it seemed deserted. She knew otherwise. Corvo’s agents were near, watching the place. Emily was ready to keep her head down and make a quick escape if things turned… difficult. She couldn’t risk having her presence discovered—not by the Whalers she now found herself a part of, and not by any Imperial agents, either.
The Whalers, masks in place, approached the estate through the undergrowth that skirted the main drive, hidden by the night and by the thick fingers of fog that seeped out of the swampy, mossy woodland that surrounded them. The whole place was overgrown and tangled, the air full of a rich, earthy, wet smell. When they got to the gates, the gang stopped and split into their two pre-assigned groups, Rinaldo leading one and the red-coated Whaler—Galia, their leader—taking the other. The two groups, each consisting of twelve Whalers, headed along the outside of the walls of the estate, going in opposite directions.
Emily had been assigned to Galia’s group, and she followed at the back, creeping along with the others in silence over the rough terrain. The Whalers were good, very capable
in the art of stealth, and she was grateful she possessed at least a similar set of skills.
They walked for probably twenty minutes, skirting the crumbling wall, until they reached a portion which had partially collapsed, its demise hastened by the huge fallen bough of an ancient tree, the cradle of roots sitting perpendicular to the ground on the other side of the wall. Galia led the way through the breach, picking a careful path over the rubble. Emily followed after the others.
Once through she could see the house, just, the clouds clearing enough to cast the estate in pale silver moonlight. It looked as if they were around the back of the estate, the main block of the mansion far ahead, one rear corner closest to them. From here they would have to pass the remains of a formal garden, the fountain dry and choked with debris and weeds, and on one side, the vast iron skeleton of what must have been an impressive glasshouse, the hundreds of panes long gone.
Galia led the group forward to a low, semicircular wall that surrounded a large raised area, in the center of which was the old fountain. Abruptly she waved them down, and they all ducked out of sight quickly.
Then Emily saw it—a flash of light, a reflection of the moon on something, in the darkness on the far side of the formal garden. Someone was there.
Corvo’s agents.
The group sat in their huddle for a few minutes, listening for any movement. When none came, Galia carefully scouted farther along the wall, vanishing out of sight for a few moments. Then she crawled back to the others.
“The crypt is on the other side of the old hothouse,” she whispered through her mask. “I’ll let you in—you know what you’re looking for, so grab it and get out. Don’t waste time looking for anything else. There’s nothing in there but bones. Those are what we want, and as many as possible.”
The others nodded and shuffled their positions.
“But it looks like we have company,” Galia continued. “Hard to know who it might be. Jaxon, Clem, head east. There’s a couple of lookouts in the trees. Take them out before they can get word to the main house. When we get to the crypt, I’ll let you in, then Devon, Finn, you’re coming with me up to the mansion.”
Emily couldn’t help herself. “I thought you said the estate was empty?”
The others turned to look at her. Galia didn’t answer at once.
“There was always a chance it wasn’t,” she said finally. “Weren’t you listening back at the factory… what was your name again?”
Emily thought fast. “Lela,” she said.
“Well, Lela,” she said, “we’ve got the city after us, so we have to be prepared for anything.” Then she paused. “You’re coming with Devon and Finn.”
“I… what?”
“If there are more at the house, I’ll need help to clear a path, so I can get in and get out cleanly.”
“You’re going into the house?” Emily asked.
“Are you up to the task, Lela?” Galia tilted her head, her respirator exaggerating the movement. “You seem to have been asleep when instructions were given.”
“Ah… no, no, I’m fine, really. I’m fine.”
Galia grunted. “You’d better be.” Then she lifted herself up and peered over the wall. “Okay. Jaxon, Clem, go. The rest, with me.”
The pair of Whalers split off, heading east. Galia scooted around the rest and led them east.
Toward the ruin of the old hothouse.
Toward the crypt.
* * *
The crypt was smaller than Emily had imagined, its white stone catching the moonlight where it wasn’t encrusted with moss. With Galia at the head, the group quickly passed from the undergrowth that surrounded the building to the columned frontage that concealed a flight of wide stone stairs that led from the surface down to a subterranean door.
Of course, Emily thought, that was why the building seemed small. It was merely a folly to be admired from the house. The crypt itself was an underground vault, probably much larger than the footprint of the building above.
As they moved closer, she saw that the door to the vault wasn’t a door at all. It was a solid block of stone, carved merely to look like a door, complete with inset paneling and even a stone-carved doorknob with escutcheon. Emily wasn’t sure how they were supposed to get inside. The vault seemed well and truly sealed.
Galia ran her hands over the fake door while the others pressed themselves against the cool walls of the sunken stairwell, staying in the shadows and out of the shaft of moonlight that illuminated half of the space with surprising brightness.
Then Galia placed the flat of both hands against the stone and stood with her legs apart, as if she was going to just push the giant block out of the way. She glanced over her shoulder.
“Two minutes,” she said. The others nodded. They seemed to know what was going on, even if Emily didn’t.
Galia turned back to the block and bowed her head. She might have been whispering something, but Emily wasn’t sure, as just then a stiff wind sprang out of nowhere, twisting into a strong eddy that whipped around the stairwell, dragging in dead leaves and dust.
Emily heard—or perhaps she felt—a click, and a tingling sensation. She watched as Galia lifted her head and…
She was gone, the space where she had been occupied for just a second by a swirling, inky-black substance that looked like smoke, but which was gone in an instant, seemingly dispersed by the wind—which just as suddenly died to nothing.
Emily gasped. She’d seen that before. Fifteen years ago, the terrible day her mother was killed. The Whalers—the assassins—had appeared out of nowhere, blinking in and out of view as they raided the gazebo and murdered Empress Jessamine Kaldwin.
The others in the group didn’t move or show any sign of surprise. Of course they wouldn’t.
Two minutes passed, Emily counting the seconds in her head. It felt like forever, but eventually there was a hollow scraping sound, and then the giant stone block tilted back at the top and forward at the bottom, the whole thing pivoting on a spindle at the middle. Beyond lay darkness, but in that darkness she could see Galia standing near, pulling on a chain which went up to a pulley, allowing the vault to be opened.
Only from the inside, of course.
With the slab open, Galia held the chain and motioned for the others to enter.
“Yeah, I don’t think so, somehow.”
The others turned, looking up the stairwell. At the top, silhouetted in the moonlight, were three men aiming pistols at the Whalers. One of the men motioned with his weapon.
“Come on, up,” he said, “and lift them hands up too, while you’re about it. I wouldn’t like to see you try anything you might regret.”
The gang shuffled. They were effectively trapped in the stairwell, cornered with nowhere to run. And at the wrong end of three pistols, fight was impossible. So they obliged, holding their hands up. Emily joined them, moving up the steps with the others and then stepping out into the moonlight. At the top, she turned around, following the twitching gestures of the gun barrels.
The men weren’t City Watch or Overseers. They might have been Corvo’s agents in disguise, but Emily wasn’t sure. They were dressed like laborers—dirty and scuffed leather jerkins and pants, shirts with billowing sleeves that, a very long time ago, would have been the purest white. The man giving the orders was bald and had a big beard that reached halfway down his chest. The other two were younger, a man with close-cropped hair and stubble on his cheeks, a red kerchief tied around his neck, and the third with long blond hair crammed under an old top hat.
They looked like members of a street gang—the blond from the Hatters, the others perhaps from… the Bottle Street Gang? Emily frowned behind her mask, her hands in the air as the two younger men waved their pistols again, signaling the group to move away from the crypt.
There were still gangs in Dunwall. Emily knew that—she was frequently updated by Captain Ramsey—but things had changed from the days of the Rat Plague, when whole areas of the city had
been under control of the gangs. They had carved Dunwall up between them into separate fiefdoms, driving citizens out from areas that weren’t already overrun with the rodents.
Organized crime and gang warfare were still a problem, of course, but now the gangs were fewer both in number and membership, with a large proportion now serving their time in Coldridge Prison. Those who evaded capture had moved on to legitimate employment, mostly around the docks and wharves, or had left Dunwall, even Gristol, altogether.
So what were members of the old Bottle Street Gang and the Hatters doing here, on the grounds of an old, crumbling estate outside of the city? Emily’s thoughts were interrupted by the big man with the beard.
“Hey you, get your ass up here, nice and easy.”
He was standing at the top of the stairs, waving his gun at Galia, who Emily could just see was still standing in the doorway of the tomb, holding the stone portal open by the chain.
“Unless,” the man with the beard continued, “you feel like joining the crypt’s residents in what you might call a permanent arrangement?”
The Whaler next to Emily stiffened. The pistol-waving gangsters didn’t notice, too busy chuckling at the sparkling wit of their boss.
“I think I’ll take my chances,” Galia said.
She let go of the chain.
“Bloody cheek!” the bearded man said. As the stone portal crashed down, he fired his gun, the bullet ricocheting in a shower of sparks from the stonework.
That was all it took. His men were distracted, and the Whalers were ready.
They moved in silence, and at speed. The bearded man was the first to die, his side filleted by a long knife even as he cursed at the closed vault door. The blond in the tall hat wheeled around as two Whalers jumped toward him—he got a shot off, but it flew wide, and by the time he had cocked the hammer of his gun for a second, he was tackled by the two assailants, his neck severed to the spine by another assassin’s blade.
Dishonored--The Corroded Man Page 14