Excerpt: A Mask of Shadow

There was a cut on his hand. It was thin, and small, perhaps an inch long across his palm. The blood had dried some time ago, leaving a hardened brown layer and a crusted outline. Ridiculous that he could not recall where he had gotten it. It did not matter. Not really. But it made him wonder. A gnat could not bite him without him knowing it. So how had the finite scrape come to be on his palm? He closed his fist and let it fall on the table. It did not matter. He had other things to focus on.
The man sitting across the room, hunched over an obscenely sized mug of beer, for one thing. He had been there for hours, and the time had not been kind to him. A filmy layer had formed over what had once been typically clean eyes. His speech, which at first had marked him as someone of decent wealth come to forget his troubles in the Molo, the district of the impoverished, now slurred and he might have been easily mistaken for the neighbor of any of the other men sitting around the small table in the corner. A heavy cloud of smoke hovered above them, drifting up in wispy tendrils from pipes and cigars, swirling with hand gestures and heavy breaths. The man’s clothing was the only thing that did not fit. Certainly dirt and aged grease stains were more than enough to mark him as one of the people of the Molo. But the embroidery was too new, and the lace at the cuffs and the sleeves in far too good repair. The colors were a bit too bright, and the fabric itself was too smooth. The Molo people’s clothing was wrinkled, more often than not, because often the clothing they were wearing was all they had. This man obviously did not belong here, but few others would notice.
He frowned to himself. He could not help but wonder what significance this man had. He shook his head. It was none of his affair, and truly he did not much care. Politics did not interest him. He did what he was told. Any involvement beyond that was... unnecessary. And dangerous.
There was another who pulled at his attention. A man who did belong in the Molo. Not a man he was watching- not openly, at any rate- but a man who was watching him. Black shifting eyes had hardly left him since he had sat down two hours ago. A mug of beer sat in front of him as well, but it was untouched. It had long since gone cold, and stale, but every time one of the tavern maids attempted to take it away, or replace it with another, he waved them off with a rough gesture and a crude word. Dull brown hair was cropped short, and was missing altogether above his left ear. In place of the hair, an old, gnarled scar twisted and warped the skin, and it spread out to damage his cheek. He looked to have been formerly of the military. He supposed it could be true. Men who were discharged usually ended up in the Molo. The military was not kind when releasing men on their terms. His clothing was disheveled and the faded colors were a result of the constant dust in the air. Tonight, there would be no dust. A steady rain had started in the beginning of the afternoon and it had persevered throughout the entire day.
He turned his attentions back to the first man. He still sat slumped in his chair, clutching his mug of beer as though he feared he would lose it if he let it go. Likely he would. He doubted the man would be able to touch his own nose on the first try, much less wrap his thin fingered hand around the handle of the mug once he turned it loose. This was far too easy. A child could have done this.
He tensed. It was slight, and no one would notice who was not trained to look for it. The man rocked back in the chair. His body moved through air he seemed to think was extremely thick, and he switched up leaning on the table for slouching down in his chair. His head rolled back, and with an effort and a grin at his fellow companions, he turned the mug up to his mouth and drank heavily. When the beer was gone, he slammed the mug back down on the table and wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. The others at the table laughed through grime covered faces and slapped him on the back. They had never met one another before this night, and they never would again. But over beer, men with sorrows cared nothing for familiarity. In fact, he was quite sure the company of strangers was preferred. He did not know. He kept no company. Quietly he rose from his chair and slipped out the door. The only one who noticed was the second man, the one who had been watching him. He kept his eyes well away from him as he brushed by, but he still felt the man’s body go stiff. A small smile quirked his lips. That was too easy as well.
Stepping out into the rain, he pulled his hood up and wrapped his cloak around himself. The black material covered his face and body, and made him all but invisible in the down pour. Street lights did little good here, especially on this night. A permanent layer of grime was smeared on the glass cases, and on top of that the rain dimmed them down to nothing but sickly pale balls of light, if it could truly be called light, that did not even reach the ground at the base of the post. At this time of night all windows were securely shut, with shutters closed. The exception was the occasional tavern that stayed open and lit all night. The Molo was a dangerous place to be at any time. Particularly for one who did not know its ways. Men had been mugged in broad day light, with a hundred onlookers besides. Yes. It was a dangerous place.
He shifted slightly and pressed his back against the building. Rough, worn down plaster was chipped away to reveal brown red brick underneath. The rougher edges caught his cloak in feeble grasps. It only took a slight movement to free his self.
The rain would make the streets nearly impossible to use. His boots sank into the mud up to his ankles, and pulling them free was more of an effort than he cared to put out. But he had his orders. He would wait for the man to come out.
He listened. The sound of a chair scraping back on a wooden floor reached him easily where he was. The windows were cracked and the sealing was practically nonexistent. Not that he needed that to know what was going on inside. He sensed everything; the bar maid falling asleep behind the bar, the tavern master shifting his feet nervously for reasons only he knew, the men around the table lifting their mugs to drink and setting them back down, and the man pushing himself up on unsteady legs, wobbling, and stumbling for the door. He stopped breathing when the door opened and the man all but fell off the low porch. He saved himself only by catching his fingers on a splintered rail. His body swung like a pendulum while his hand clutched the rail. When he finally stopped, he pushed himself back to his feet and staggered through the mud. He passed less than a pace in front of him. The smell of the tavern, of stale beer and low quality pipe weed stank on him despite the rain. He never saw him, never even looked his way. Smiling to himself, he stepped away from the building and followed.
He should have done it then and had it done with, but something about the man amused him. He fell at every third step and every now and then his voice would rise to belt out a few notes of what was supposed to be a song. A few notes, however, was all he seemed able to remember, because he trailed off and grumbled something under his breath about his bad memory, and sometimes about the bad song. But that was not what amused him. It was something else. Something… He barely held back a laugh when it hit him. The fool was lost! There was a smithy just ahead at the corner of two cross roads. They had passed that smithy on the cross street not five minutes before. It would be a mercy now to be finished with it. He increased his pace. The rain masked the irritating sound of mud bubbling around his feet. The idiot would not have heard anyway. Not until it was too late. There was an alley ahead. He could see the black gaping hole in the wall. By the time they came up on it he was close enough to the man again to smell his sweat mixed in with rain and pipe smoke. The dagger was in his hand in an instant, and in the next he had slid it easily in between the man’s ribs. The man sagged in his arms. He threw himself against the body to force him into the alley, and there he let him drop. Blood stained the fine embroidered shirt and cloak already, and could not be removed by any amount of rain. His eyes were covered with a different film now, a film that would not go away with time and sleep. His jaw hung limp in a permanent gape.
He squatted down next to the body. Easy. He wiped the dagger on the man’s bloodied shirt and dug through his pockets with his other hand. Tied to his belt was a small pouch of coin. He didn’t have to look to know there was hardly anything in it. No one, even an idiot, would bring a large amount of money into the Molo. There was a signet ring tucked in a pocket on the inside of his coat. So. A Minor Lord. Hardly surprising. They were not known for their caution. He slipped it into the pouch without looking at it too closely. He didn’t care which House he had belonged to. He would be replaced by tomorrow evening as it was. That was the way of the Lords of Vezintine.
Tucking the thin blade back up his sleeve he stood and left the man where he had fallen. He had his orders. It was supposed to look like a mugging. In the Molo, that was more than common, and it would take someone truly suspicious to point the finger at another Lord. With that finger came countless other accusations, and even more revelations about the one assigning the blame. Murmured rumors and theories would circulate, and they would eventually be traced back to the careless. The careless never lasted long in Vezintine’s society. But the Lords would never openly accuse one another, no matter how careless they were. One Lord accusing another was as good as wearing a sign that said I’m sending someone for you. He grimaced. As much as he detested politics, he understood them better than most. Possibly better than the Lords. His life was not ideal, but given the alternative- growing up as Vech Vorgassi, a Mid Lord’s son, faced daily with manipulation, deceit, and reading volumes behind a glance- he knew which one he would have chosen, had the choice ever been given. Killing was simple. Taking a life was straightforward.
The rain came harder now. Vech saw no one on the streets, and no one would have seen him. Even in broad daylight he could be invisible. It was a simple matter of making people see what he wanted them to see, and to be blind to what he didn’t.