The Man-Butcher Prize

by Charles X Cross

  There had been no mention of Ojo’s strange turn at the assassination, so William had to assume that it was unrelated, perhaps owing to stress at the failure of the job, or maybe he had tripped and hit his head. Either way, he didn’t want to mention it and risk angering Ojo again. Besides, Ojo didn’t trouble himself with the matter; it was as if nothing had even happened. He could have such a level head when he wanted to, he just never did with William.

  ‘Did you win?’ Marilyn greeted William with a wide smile. She liked him, and though he secretly liked her mothering him he often pretended that he didn’t, which seemed to endear him to her all the more.

  ‘No.’ He pursed his lips.

  While Marilyn acted and spoke as any other barmaid, carefree and bright, there was a lot more to her than William had first suspected. She ran the outpost, dealing in all the guild’s affairs, managing contracts and distributing funds. She had even liaised with tenured killers when a few of the city guardsmen began to suspect their location for a guild-owned outpost. William admired that in one breath she could talk death and dealings, and in another she would be joking with a drunken patron. One day, he hoped to be as content with guild life as she was.

  ‘Never mind, eh?’ She smirked. ‘What’s the forfeit this time? Need to borrow my washboard again?’

  ‘No.’ William shuddered at the memory of washing his last challenger’s dirty linens. ‘Polishing boots.’

  Marilyn cackled as she opened a cabinet under the bar and started fingering through the items inside. ‘Well at least you’re picking up a few skills along the way – brown or black?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Ojo’s voice cut through the joviality like a knife. ‘He won’t be polishing anyone’s boots – William, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m here now.’ William made himself look even more abashed than he was, hopeful that the question would just go away. The last thing he wanted was for Ojo to forbid him from target practice. ‘What did you want me for?’

  Ojo held his gaze for a moment causing him to wonder if the man knew his letters had been read.

  ‘Come,’ Ojo said softly. ‘We need to talk.’

  The assassin led him away from the bar. The gentle meandering pace weighed dreadfully on William’s shoulders. This was it, the gloom that had been circling his mentor was about to come to the fore.

  ‘Sit.’ Ojo gestured to a wing-backed armchair beside the fireplace.

  William did as he was told. He felt lost in the vast chair, too hot at this proximity to the fire, and afraid of what the assassin might do to him if his rage bubbled over again.

  ‘I’m sorry this has to happen…’ Ojo spoke then paused a moment before starting again. ‘I’m sorry I took you for an apprentice.’

  The assassin leant one arm on the mantel, staring down into the undulating flames.

  ‘I shouldn’t have. It was wrong of me to take a boy so young without the ability to dedicate myself fully to your teachings.’ Ojo waved his hand, stopping William from interjecting, then pulled a fire poker from the stand and started to encourage the flame. ‘I had enough of a responsibility to my patron. I made a promise that I don’t intend to break, but I cannot afford to support him if I am to tutor you as well.’

  From the letters, William knew that the payment from their botched job would not be forthcoming and Ojo could not afford the doctor’s expedition any time soon. As such, there would be no ready supply of medicine for his father. He had suspected this might lead to a frantic string of killings to accrue the expedition funds in a desperately short amount of time.

  ‘I’m left with a choice: him or you.’ Ojo plunged the poker between two smouldering logs and twisted it. ‘And though I wish it were different, that promise I made… maybe fifteen years ago now, has me bound to side against you.’

  Ojo pulled the poker from the fire and turned to face William. It was hard to tell if his eyes were glassy from the sting of the smoke or from regret, but he held the poker with menace and squared his shoulders in determination. He might have said a quiet sorry in the brief moment between leaving the fireside and thrusting the searing iron into William’s arm, but the ensuing pain was enough to make William forget.

  Iron scorched flesh; Ojo’s knee pressed into William’s chest to hold back his writhing. The wings on the sides of the chair stopped him from rolling out, and all he could do was kick and scream. He could smell his own skin burning like meat in a pan, an odour that stirred up a natural revulsion and rolled his stomach inside his writhing belly.

  Then the pressure was released and the pain died to a white-hot throb in his arm. William curled himself up, panting. He looked at Ojo, eyes bright with terror, then braved a glance at his arm. Tacky, blotchy and crooked; William recognised the shape of his wound. He had been marked with the crest of the Assassins’ Guild.

  ‘I’m going to have to leave you.’ Ojo slipped the branding iron back into the stand with the fire-keeping tools. ‘I’ve spoken with Marilyn; she’ll keep you in the bar if you’d like, or you can take contracts if you’d prefer. Only the easy ones at first, you’re still a beginner, but I can tell you have potential.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ William choked; he teased at his arm a few inches away from the sore welt, wanting nothing more than to bathe it and bind it, but knew any contact would be far too painful. ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you believe in the afterlife?’ Ojo turned from the fire to face William. ‘Because you should; life as a killer is all the harder without it.’

  Ojo pulled his jacket straight and smoothed his black hair thoughtfully.

  ‘Everyone we kill, their essence isn’t extinguished. They just pass before the time nature had intended.’ Ojo swilled down the last of his liquor. ‘Even the non-believers’ thoughts and memories, their personalities, they all go to the other side. But… those who succumb to the fugue, their minds are lost in life, their very selves gone. They are the only ones who cannot go.’

  Ojo paced to William’s side and knelt to inspect the wound.

  ‘If I’d been stronger willed as a child, as you are, I could have killed my father and saved him from his fate.’ Ojo took the branded arm in his hands. William noted that he hadn’t bothered to say “his patron”, but didn’t let it show on his face. ‘Instead, I just watched everything that made him who he was sift away, until there was nought but a shell. Now, only the elixirs return his clarity, and it becomes more costly by the day – that doesn’t look too bad, it will heal well.’

  He stood and dipped his head.

  ‘I’m going to do something foolish. If I succeed, I’ll have enough money for that damned expedition. I won’t have to pay for my father’s elixirs anymore, and I’ll be able to come back to finish your training. If I fail, you’ll both be on your own.’

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’ William could feel a potent unease in his chest, a longing more fierce than homesickness.

  ‘You’re better off here.’ Ojo dug through his pockets and set all of his possessions on the little table between the armchairs. A few coins, a small vial of what looked like blood, and a folded piece of paper with an address written on it. ‘If word of my death reaches you, seek out my father and give him this treatment. When he seems most lucid, kill him.’

  Ojo turned away.

  ‘I’m leaving you everything except the horse. Good luck William.’

  1682

  ‘You might be right.’ William relented. There was no point insisting to Vesta that her brother was dead when they already suspected the contrary. ‘But we need to keep calm, we’re nearly done. There must be less than ten entrants now.’

  ‘And you think my brother’s still alive?’ She nodded to herself and worried her lip with a canine. The difference from moments ago when she thought her brother dead was stark. She needed him dead, she had pinned her entire future on it.

  ‘Yes, I think he might be.’

  ‘We should find him then. Kill him.’ Sh
e paused for a moment. ‘He’ll be hunting us too, we’re better off with him out of the picture.’

  Across the street, slates and rubble crashed to the cobbles reminding William of their latest conquest. A small boy and his mother had been crushed under that pile. It was a sorry situation, but for William, it was also a hopeful one. With Genevieve out of the contest his chances of success increased dramatically. As Red-face was likely one of the few surviving entrants, Vesta’s goal was not so distant from his own. They would kill her brother and whatever stragglers remained, then leave Blackbile victorious.

  ‘Alright.’ He nodded sombrely, and was about to add “don’t get reckless” when Vesta’s brother dashed from behind a riverside shack.

  His skin wasn’t any redder than usual, and though he limped and cradled his arm against his chest, Red-face didn’t appear to be in very bad shape at all. He certainly hadn’t fallen into the steaming river. The bridge footings had saved him as they had William, though he did appear to have lost his weapons in his mad dash to survive. He would have been put down easily if he was closer.

  Vesta had barely the time to finish an excited, revenge-fuelled cry before her pistol had been raised and fired. The bullet dropped from the air well before it had covered the distance. She set off in pursuit and fumbled cartridges as she ran, failing again and again to reload and take another shot in her desperate tremor.

  ‘No!’ William cried, ‘Vesta don’t!’

  He swore to himself and seethed. Hissing spitefully through gritted teeth, he set off running after his unruly sponsor.

  Red-face wasn’t as fast as his sister, and though Vesta gained ground, he leapt through the front door of a drab terrace and disappeared inside. Vesta drew away from William, and didn’t listen to any of his protests. She disappeared inside while he was still twenty yards behind.

  William was panting and exhausted. Though his limbs still functioned well enough through the lingering effect of Barber’s elixirs, he felt tremendously drained, as if the medicines were drawing from his own well of energy to keep him mobile. By the time he reached the door of the building, both his sponsor and Red-face were long gone.

  He almost fell inside, tripped by a displaced set of dusty floorboards. Despite the appearance on the outside, the whole row was derelict. The internal stud walls were cratered and plaster mouldered away in brackish swags. He could see through at least two more houses before remnants of walls obscured his view. Even the levels above were pot-holed and growing colourful lichen.

  Not knowing which way they had fled, he paused and closed his eyes to better tune his hearing. He rubbed his calves and pushed himself straight, though his back protested. He could feel his sponsor drawing further away with every laboured breath he took. Then, far down the terrace, he heard a gun blast.

  With a single throat-grating sigh, he set off. He clipped plaster and thin slats of wood as he progressed sloppily through partially demolished walls; they crumbled easily enough to his momentum. As he progressed through the houses they became more decrepit, holes appeared in the outer walls and the roofs were rimmed with black mould. A cold wind blew perpendicular through glassless windows and stirred ash in whirlpools at his feet.

  He stumbled on, clambering through a wall and over a broken hearth into the next house. The building after was just as empty, but there was far more debris and deeper shadows to hide in. Surreptitiously he checked his pistol. Yet before he could blunder into the next property, something stood out to him. There were splinters on the floor; fresh ones.

  The next gust of wind rattled a door in its frame; the lock clinked with a metallic retort. He peered through the intermittent gap at the street beyond, and swallowed. This door had been kicked inwards. Red-face and Vesta hadn’t gone this way; someone else had come in.

  He turned and pressed his back to the wall beside the doorway, half expecting an assassin to have been standing directly to his rear. There was nobody behind him.

  He could feel a pressure building. The longer he was separated from Vesta the more likely she was to die; that couldn’t happen.

  He took a moment to think. The front door could have been kicked-in at any point in the competition, even before it. Everywhere had its homeless folk and drug-abusers looking for somewhere quiet. There were so many possibilities that could have come through that particular door, that the chances of another assassin entering unseen in the last five minutes were incredibly slim. On the other hand, if it was an old break-in Vesta could have gone that way. He committed himself to a decision, praying he was making the right call to any saint that would listen.

  He set off through the remainder of the rotten houses. Splinters of light began to peek through walls as he drew towards the end of the terrace. The last house in the row had been destroyed entirely, perhaps by one of Ottilie’s stray bombs. He quickened his pace, squeezing out every last jot of energy from his legs, certain this was where Vesta would have followed her brother.

  Bricks, wood and shards of glass from the last house spilled into the one preceding it, forcing William to slow down. The floorboards bowed under the weight of the masonry and threatened to cave into the cellars. He took his time, but was bulled on by another gunshot, this one closer and crisper.

  When he reached the mass of rubble he dropped to all fours and clambered over the shifting detritus. The smell of sulphur, burnt hair, and dust was almost overwhelming. As he reached the crest, the same riverside roadway came into view, but he was further along and much closer to the VIP bleachers and winner’s podium. William scoured the scatter of purposefully placed carts and obstacles in the street, a frustrating technique of set-dressing that ensured the VIPs saw a more exciting shootout.

  William couldn’t see Vesta from his vantage, but he could see Red-face. He was crouched behind a divan that had been hauled from one of the still-occupied houses. It looked as if he was trying to get as close as possible to the VIP bleacher. Only an attention-seeking despot would want an audience at his sister’s death.

  Perhaps that was it! The zealot wanted to slaughter Vesta under the watchful eye of his superior. Red-face hadn’t been on the run at all; he had led Vesta here with a sick purpose. Desperately then, William searched the crowds for more Lambs.

  Vesta leapt from behind a pallet of spices and took a shot for her brother, puncturing the fabric of the divan, but missing her target. Her brother loosed an equally poor shot into a sack of turmeric, the garish colour clouding the drab air.

  William cursed; he didn’t know where Red-face found the gun. It was probably part of the elaborate ploy to get Vesta here. Holding his breath, he steadied his aim; he was still a little too far away, but certainly the best shot out of the three of them. The sight of his pistol lined up with the small and distant cultist, and his finger flexed on the trigger.

  At the same moment, the air whispered behind him and agony erupted in his calf. It was as bad as a bullet wound, but there had been no other gunshot except his. He tumbled over from the searing pain in his leg; whatever had struck him was protruding from the wound and dragging in the rubble and grit. An arrow. He swore; no-one used a bow and arrow these days. Gods damn it the pain was excruciating. He gritted his teeth and tried desperately to cram a fresh cartridge into his flintlock.

  As he lay on his back looking up into the ruptured house, William spotted his attacker in the gloom. Crouched on the edge of the first floor, on splintered boards, was his old mentor. There was no warmth or familiarity in Ojo’s face. William wondered if there ever had been.

  Stony-eyed, Ojo hopped down to the mass of rubble, spry despite his years. Though he looped his arm through the empty bow and slung it over his shoulder, there was no denying the murderous intent of the former champion. William pushed the cartridge into his pistol with a panicked thumb, tearing it and spilling the powder across his shirt. The fastening mechanism caught on the stray paper and refused to close.

  Ojo sneered at the feeble attempt to fight back and snatched at the arrow sk
ewered through his leg. One twist of the shaft was all it took to send William writhing in agony. His pistol flew free from grasping fingers.

  Keeping one fist on the arrow, and the other around William’s foot, Ojo dragged him screaming from his discarded weapon and into the dilapidated terrace. Words spilled from William’s mouth amidst the shrieks, but everything came out overlapped and incomprehensible.

  ‘Ojo please…’ he managed to splutter in the brief moment between his leg being released and his throat being clamped tight in the assassin’s hands.

  Despite his age, Ojo’s grip still had all the strength it ever had. The fingers clamped tight and William’s windpipe crimped closed. For the second time, he was at his mentor’s mercy, and this time he was certain Ojo would not relent. There was no lesson to be taught and nothing but animosity between them now. The assassin hadn’t even bothered to exchange pleasantries before killing him.

  William’s eyes rolled into his skull and his arms and legs flailed aimlessly, feebly, under the mass of the determined assassin. Sleep beckoned him, and beyond that, death. He could feel the energy seeping from him, more serenely than before.

  Memories flickered through his mind, even things he thought had been long forgotten. His mother’s face. His father’s strong grip and one milky eye that, as a child, William had never realised was out of place. He could feel the satisfaction in killing the callous pawnbroker, the shame in burning the young boy, regret and humiliation from killing the mayor of Fairshore in a spectacular blunder. His initial distaste for Goldin and his early fondness for Genevieve. He had been wrong about so much in his life, some things little, some too big to even comprehend. There was a lot he would change, but it seemed his lot had been had.

  Just as all hope had been abandoned, air plunged down his throat as William was released from his mentor’s grip. His pulse throbbed in his ears and his eyes rolled in near unconsciousness. He gasped and clawed in the dirt and choked on his own spittle. Incapable of protecting himself should the onslaught begin again, he hadn’t the wits to scramble for safety. All he could do was lay still and wait for clarity to return.