The Return of Daud

by Adam Christopher

  He was too late. It wasn’t here. Maybe it never had been. Maybe the stories were just that.

  That was when he heard it—a splash, boots slopping through water, someone clumsily entering the factory, thinking they were alone.

  Daud immediately crouched into a combat stance, years of training and a lifetime of experience guiding him almost without conscious thought. Still hidden in the dark he darted away from the rubble, toward a long rectangular depression cut into the factory floor to his right—a whale oil overflow tank, choked with debris and filled with water. But there was still enough space to crouch low and observe the intruder unseen.

  The light from a hooded lantern caught the wall on the other side of the factory, then swept around as the newcomer moved forward, out of the shadows near the street entrance and into a shaft of moonlight streaming in through the broken wall. The intruder wasn’t a guard of the City Watch, out on his patrol. The man belonged to another kind of order altogether—an order infinitely more capable and dangerous.

  The intruder wore black breeches underneath a long charcoal-gray tunic, belted at the waist and harnessed with narrower leather straps over the shoulders, the wide cuffs embellished with bold gold motifs woven into the cloth. His face was hidden behind a golden mask, the features molded into a scowling, twisted visage of anger, the forehead engraved with a symbol, a horizontal pitchfork passing through a large capital C.

  An Overseer, a member of the militarized faction of the Abbey of the Everyman. Brutal zealots, deployed only for very particular reasons, situations where black magic and witchcraft—heresies—were suspected.

  Now, that was interesting. An Overseer in the ruined factory. No wonder the authorities wanted to keep people away. Which meant…

  The stories were true. It had been here. And they were still looking for it.

  The Twin-bladed Knife was real.

  And he was getting closer.

  The Overseer strode across the factory floor, passing his lantern beam over the rubble, over the walls, making no attempt at stealth.

  Of course, it was no wonder the City Watch patrols had been so clearly disinterested in their duties that Daud had been able to practically walk straight past them. The City Watch and the Abbey of the Everyman had an uneasy, suspicious relationship—or at least they had, when he had last been in Dunwall. If the Overseers were here, then the Abbey was in charge. The City Watch would resent their authority and would resent being assigned to simple guard duty while the Overseers gave the orders.

  He hadn’t seen any other Overseers on his way in, but then again, he hadn’t exactly dawdled outside. With the cordon in place, his primary goal had been to get into the factory quickly. It had been sheer luck that he hadn’t run into them.

  And it was sheer luck that one had come in now, alone.

  The Overseer turned, facing away from the debris-filled whale oil tank.

  Now was his chance. Time to truly test himself, to see how much of the old ways he really did remember.

  Time for the Knife of Dunwall to come out of hiding.

  Daud raised himself up, fists clenched. He exhaled slowly, focusing his mind, drawing on a tether to somewhere else. A tether he’d grown increasingly reluctant to use. But Daud was nothing if not practical—if you had a tool, it was stupid not to use it. An opportunity like this wouldn’t present itself again, of that he was sure.

  As the Overseer moved away, Daud dashed forward, boots silent in the two inches of water on the factory floor. He reached out with his left hand, the Mark of the Outsider engraved into the back of it burning fiercely under his glove as he drew on the power that had been granted to him so many, many years ago.

  The Overseer had no idea what was coming as Daud leapt through the Void, transversing the fifty yards that separated them in a blink of an eye before grabbing the Overseer around the neck with a forearm and pulling backward, dragging him off balance. The Overseer grunted and dropped his lantern, his feet kicking in the water as Daud reached out again, transversing the pair of them up onto the top of one of the makeshift props that held up the wall opposite, then again, up over the crumbling wall of the factory and onto the moonlit rooftops of Dunwall, dragging the now unconscious Overseer with him.

  It was time to get some answers.

  2

  A (VERY) HIGH ROOFTOP, TOWER DISTRICT, DUNWALL

  18th Day, Month of Earth, 1852

  “The last Overseer, no doubt consumed with terror at seeing his brothers fall so easily, sank to his knees and begged for mercy. Daud spoke a single word that made my entrails squirm in my belly upon hearing it. The Overseer shrieked like a madman until his mask split in two, as though struck by some hammer and chisel, and a stream of blood gushed forth from the crack, bathing Daud’s boots.

  I closed my eyes at that point, too overwhelmed to witness any further atrocity. I could only hope that if that foul heretic discovered me next, my life would end swiftly. But when I opened my eyes, Daud was nowhere to be seen. That was the last I ever saw of the Knife of Dunwall.”

  —THE KNIFE OF DUNWALL, A SURVIVOR’S TALE

  From a street pamphlet containing a sensationalized sighting of the assassin Daud

  Daud leaned back against the damp old brick of the gargantuan chimney, and watched as the sun rose over the city of Dunwall. The sky was clearing, but enough thick clouds lingered to turn the sky brilliant banded shades of yellow, orange, red, even purple, and in the growing morning heat the rain of the night was evaporating from the ocean of slate that made up the collected rooftops of the city, creating a thin mist that smelled of clean stone. From this altitude, standing on the high metal gantry that orbited the chimney at nearly its summit, the view was nothing short of spectacular. Stretched out all around, Dunwall glittered, as though the entire city had been scattered with diamonds.

  It was beautiful. Daud allowed himself a small smile as he finally admitted that fact. He’d been away so long that he’d forgotten the true splendor of the Empire’s capital, the largest, densest city in all the Isles. His memory, he realized, had been selective, his subconscious choosing to remind him only of the stench, of the rot and decay, of the violence and pain and death between narrow alleys of crumbling stone.

  Of course, those memories, along with the feelings they elicited, were genuine. Decades ago, Daud had made Dunwall his home, and here he had done terrible things under the cover of the city’s shadows. The side of the city that he knew—the side that had been his home, with all its danger and darkness—had been the underbelly.

  But there was another side to the city, one that, perhaps, Daud had not seen enough of. Up here, he at least had a glimpse of that splendor.

  Daud grunted a laugh, amused at the way his mind had wandered. It wasn’t like him to think this way, but then he had been away a long time, and he was older than he cared to admit and had perhaps changed over the years more than he realized. The city had changed too. His time as leader of the Whalers was so long ago, the activities of his group no doubt now just an unpleasant footnote to an unpleasant period of the Empire’s history. A period he had played a key role in. Not a day went by when he didn’t remember, and he knew he would carry those memories—memories that grew heavier and darker with each passing year—to his grave.

  He had tried to forget. Exiled from the city on pain of death at the hands of the Royal Protector, Corvo Attano, Daud had run. He’d got as far from Dunwall—from Gristol itself—as he could. He went to Morley, where he lasted a year in Caulkenny before getting tired of being around people. He went to Tyvia, settling not in Dabokva or Tamarak but heading inland, skirting the tundra and finally settling outside a village near Pradym, in the barren northern territories. There he built his own shack and spent the days harvesting lumber and the nights carving the endless cords of chopped wood into intricate animal forms: bears, wolves, owls. He was especially fond of carving owls.

  His hair and beard grew long and he spent six years avoiding the curious residents of the vi
llage as much as he could, until one night he saw them gathering with torches and he slipped away before they came to burn his cabin down, the more suspicious village leaders ready to accuse the strange hermit in the woods of witchcraft.

  He had walked north and had thought of nothing but Dunwall. It seemed that the farther he got from the city the more the place pulled at him, like he was tied to its very stones, in the same way that the Mark of the Outsider had tied him to the Void. Daud almost turned around, surrendering to his doom and the inevitable return to Dunwall, but once he reached Wei-Ghon, he felt a change come over him. He had never been one to give much thought to any kind of greater meaning in life, but in Wei-Ghon, at last, he began to wonder whether he could finally let go of his past—or if he could go further. Reinvent himself. Take a new name, start a new life. He even began to sleep again—properly sleep, not the semi-conscious doze his body was used to, his mind slumbering but ever alert for approaching danger.

  For the first time in years, Daud dared to wonder if he had found a life he could actually live.

  And then the dreams started.

  They were all the same. He was a Whaler, holding a bloody knife as he stood over the body of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. The city of Dunwall was crawling with an infinite swarm of rats. They raced up his legs, covering his body, crawling behind his mask, clawing at his eyes, eating his face. And through the bloody ruin of his eyes, Daud saw the Outsider standing before him, arms folded, silent, watchful, the corner of his mouth turned up in an evil, knowing smirk. And then the Outsider turned, gesturing the landscape around them, and Daud’s final dying vision was not of Dunwall but of Karnaca—the city of his birth, a city he had not seen in more than twenty years—on fire. The air filled not with smoke but endless black clouds of bloodflies, the beating of their wings the sound of the end of the world.

  Daud woke up screaming the first night. The screams became less frequent over the days and weeks that followed, but only because he found himself afraid to sleep. But the night terrors didn’t stop when he was awake, because all he could see when he closed his eyes was the Outsider’s face. His black eyes; his black smile.

  Daud left Wei-Ghon and headed south to Karnaca, the capital city of Serkonos and the southernmost country of the Empire of the Isles.

  His home.

  The journey had been long, but Daud had used the time well. He had come up with a plan that would free him from his past, once and for all. He gave himself one last task that he hoped would atone for his lifetime of anger and hate and violence and deceit. One final mission that would release him, forever.

  And not just him—if he was successful, he would free the whole world from the grip of the interfering black-eyed bastard.

  Daud was going to kill the Outsider.

  The only question was how? The answer eluded Daud for a long time—until he began to hear rumors of something that sounded like the solution. It started with a story whispered in a back-alley drinking hole, a story that had taken Daud six weeks just to get one complete, vaguely linear version of.

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough—and Daud took the fact that the rumor had reached him just as his nightmares reached their peak as a sign. From where, he didn’t care to speculate—his own addled mind, probably. But now Daud knew his self-declared mission wasn’t just the product of an aging and bored mind fighting against an empty and directionless life.

  The mission was real. More than that, it was possible. The Outsider would die by his hand, and he knew exactly how to do it—and with what. Because the rumors told of an artifact, an object straight out of myth and legend. A relic of another time, another place. A weapon—a bronze knife with twinned blades.

  The knife that had created the Outsider.

  It was real, and it had reappeared in the world. Or so the rumor went, the story fueled not by some cultish interest in the heresies of the Outsider but speculation as to how much such an object would be worth on the black market. There was a small, secretive trade in magical artifacts; Daud knew that well enough. And the Twin-bladed Knife would be the most sought-after relic of them all.

  And as the Twin-bladed Knife had brought the Outsider into being, it was—so the legend went—the only weapon in existence that could end him.

  That was good enough for Daud. And now his mission had a concrete objective, because to fulfill it—to kill the Outsider, to free himself and the world from that malign influence—he had to find the knife.

  His search began where the rumors ended. In Dunwall, at the ruined factory.

  “Urghhh…”

  Daud’s reverie was interrupted by the moan from the body at his feet. The Overseer lay on his back on the gantry, mask still in place and reflecting the growing dawn light. As he began to stir, Daud nudged his head with the toe of his boot. The Overseer jerked awake.

  “Where am I?”

  Daud swung his leg over the Overseer and stood astride him. The Overseer jerked again, sucking a lungful of air in through his mask before coughing violently. He lifted himself up onto one elbow and leaned over to spit a rope of watery mucus through the mask’s grimacing mouth.

  Daud lifted one boot and planted it on the Overseer’s chest, shoving the man back onto the platform. The Overseer’s fingers clawed at Daud’s calf as the assassin pushed down, hard.

  “Please! What are… you… doing…?”

  Daud moved swiftly, dropping down onto one knee, the impact winding the man beneath him. Daud grabbed a handful of his coat at the collar, pulling the man up from the gantry as much as he could. Daud leaned down until the tip of his beard touched the metal chin of the Overseer’s mask. His voice was a low growl. “You’ll speak only to answer my questions. If you ask any of your own, you die. If your answers are not to my satisfaction, you die. If you tell me any lies, I’ll know, and you die.” He tightened his grip on the tunic. “Do we have an understanding?”

  The Overseer breathed hard. This close, Daud could see the man’s eyes through the mask. They were very blue, very wide, and very wet.

  Daud took a deep draw of the cool morning air. He could smell the sharp electric tang of the metal platform beneath him as it warmed in the sun. He could smell the earthy scent of the Wrenhaven River. But there, faint now but growing stronger, the acrid, sour stink of fear wafting from the Overseer beneath him.

  Now that was the Dunwall he remembered.

  “Nod if you understand,” he said. At this the Overseer nodded quickly. A whimper sounded from behind the mask. Daud paused. Was the man… was he crying? Daud snarled and yanked the mask off. He frowned. Daud wasn’t sure what he expected to see underneath, but part of him was surprised.

  Daud was older than he cared to admit, and he had been away from Dunwall for a long time. But he honestly didn’t remember Overseers being this young. His captive looked like a boy, surely not even in his eighteenth year? His clean-shaven face was round and still filled with baby fat, his skin red and flushed and wet with the tears that continued to stream from the boy’s big blue eyes—eyes that stared at Daud’s face in pure, wide terror.

  At least Daud knew he wouldn’t be recognized—his beard was long, the black whiskers streaked with white. And the Overseer was just too young to know who he was anyway. The boy—the man, Daud corrected himself—would have been a child during the rat plague, when the Whalers had stalked the streets of the city. Back then, Daud’s face had been plastered everywhere: posters offering a reward for his kill or capture appeared in almost every tavern and every alley in every district of the city.

  Daud opened his mouth to ask his first question, but it was the Overseer who spoke first, despite his captor’s threats.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?”

  Daud froze. The Overseer squeezed his eyes shut tight and held his breath, his lips pressed together until they were almost white.

  “You don’t know me, boy,” Daud said through clenched teeth. He paused, considering his options. The boy was terrified—but hopefully still able
to answer Daud’s questions. “What’s your name?”

  “Woodrow,” said the Overseer. “Hayward Woodrow.”

  Daud snarled and slid his knee off the Overseer’s chest, then leaned back, pulling the Overseer up with him by the neck. “Listen to me, Woodrow—”

  “The Knife of Dunwall. You’re him, aren’t you?”

  Somehow, after all this time, despite his own changed appearance, this Overseer—this boy—knew who he was. Knew—or guessed. Daud considered. Maybe it didn’t matter. He was surprised, yes, but he also knew it wasn’t really him that the boy was babbling about. It was his legend.

  Woodrow swallowed. “It’s only… I mean… I’m sorry.” He stammered, looking for the words. “Only… the Knife of Dunwall, we still talk about him and what he did. Before my time, of course. I’m only a First Initiate. I mean, I never… he’s just a legend. The older ones… I mean, the more senior members of the Abbey, they mention him. That’s all. A story to remind us of the past and what happened to the city. Of what could happen. So we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  Daud tightened his grip on the Overseer’s neck and pushed the young initiate back, slamming him onto the gantry. Woodrow cried out in surprise as he realized, finally, where he was.

  “What… How did we get up here? How did we—”

  “Listen to me, Woodrow,” said Daud, his beard once more brushing his captive’s face. “We are going to get along just fine. We will become great friends and we will talk and sing long into the night, and the day you met the Knife of Dunwall will be the greatest day in your entire life. Because if you answer my questions truthfully and you give me the information I require, I will let you live, and for the rest of your days you will be thankful for every breath of air you take.”

  The Overseer whimpered and tried to nod his head as best he could.

  “And if you don’t,” said Daud, “I will throw you off this platform and the Abbey of the Everyman will be less one initiate.”