Chapter 2

Vasha did not like rising early.

But the day was going to be a busy one, and rising early could save his life come the night.

He left The Virtuous Harlot at dawn, enjoying the relative lack of crowds in the mud-ridden, grey streets. In another hour or two, every single road would be filled to the brim with people. But now, in the early morning, the streets were simply dirty and ugly and disgusting. Vasha preferred the occasional chamber pot being emptied from above to crowds pressing into him from all sides, shit was much less annoying than people were.

Vasili doesn’t expect me to survive the night. But I’ve already accepted the contract. However, if Vasili is desperate enough to hire someone from Midcity, things must be pretty bad for him. I can probably wait until Yayim’s killed him, but people saw me going in there. And they saw me going up with Maria. If I don’t go through with the contract word is going to get out.

It was an hour after dawn when he arrived at his favourite tavern in Midcity. The place was his favourite because the owner’s daughter, Tabi, was pretty and always willing to fuck if he had the coin, and because they let him stay in one of the whore’s rooms in the back for cheap. It was a beneficial arrangement. Vasha got a room for a reasonable price and the whores got some protection from his name. People knew not to mess with whores around him.

Three Sunk Ships, the tavern, was located on the first floor of a seven story building. Like almost all other buildings in Midcity, it was made out of wood and leaning dangerously on its neighbouring structures, none of which looked too stable themselves.

Tabi was sweeping the floor when Vasha entered the common room. She looked up and frowned upon seeing him. “Look who’s come back. You didn’t think to tell anyone you’d spend the night whoring at some other place now, did you?”

Vasha frowned back at her. “I wasn’t whoring, Tabi. It was work.”

“Bullshit. I’ll suck on the Lady’s tit myself if that’s not a woman I smell on you.”

Her mother, Vel, who was standing behind the bar and counting coins, started at the curse. “Watch your tongue, girl. That’s blasphemy.”

Vasha waved ‘hello’ at Vel and returned his attention to her daughter. “Why do you care where I was? I’ve already paid my rent for the week.” He looked away and then turned back towards her. “Unless, of course, you miss me. If that’s the case, I have some time right now, and I’m sure your mother won’t mind if you take a short break.”

For half a second, Tabi looked like she was considering his offer, but Vel put a stop to any such thoughts. “I’ll mind her taking a break. She needs to clean this place and start the stew before the lunch crowd starts pouring in. She’s already behind schedule.”

There was a textile workshop on the second level of the building. Even though most of its workers lived in the floors above, they preferred to eat down here rather than in their homes. Vel and her daughter were marvellous cooks, and their food came surprisingly cheap. Cheap enough to make a pessimist think of bribes and even less legal things.

Vasha had once spent a week following Vel around every time she left the inn, to figure out how she could buy ingredients for so cheap. He’d come away from the experience no wiser than before. Except for the knowledge that Vel could shake a tail like no other man, or woman, he’d ever had the pleasure of following.

He grinned at Tabi to make her a little madder, and then turned to grin to her mother as well. As he walked towards the backrooms, he could hear Vel murmuring something about someone ‘settling down’.

He smiled, Vel had been trying to marry him off since the first time they’d met. She was that kind of woman.

Vasha went to his room and stripped. His leathers would draw undue attention in Braka. There, the best dressed people wore secondhand blankets. Most wore only rags. Vasha had rags of his own. Acting the beggar had been useful in the past, most men ignored them and being ignored was the best thing for an assassin. He wrapped his work clothes, tight cotton shirt and pants as well soft soled shoes, in a sealskin to keep them dry and stuffed the bundle under arm. He strapped his long knife to his leg and a two throwing knifes to each forearm and then put on his rags.

To warm up for what was to follow, Vasha sneaked out the front door. Neither Tabi nor Vel noticed his exit. It seems I’m still as good as I was last week. Who knew?

A miserable drizzle had started while he was inside. But the streets were still crowded. A few minutes after he left the inn, Vasha entered one of the side alleys to roll around on the mud in peace. It ensured he smelled and looked like a beggar, completing the disguise. After that, people in the streets cleared his way, none of them wanting their clothes dirtied. It helped him make quick time west, except for the times he had to dodge into side alleys to avoid Guard patrols – because the bastards were not nice to beggars or the poor.

He was near the edge of Braka by noon.

It was a testament to the true wealth and glory of Karanas that its poor could not afford to live on its land. Instead, they were banished to Braka, a graveyard of ships and barges and boats, a city within the city. It housed a hundred thousand people – whose lives mattered to none – protected, if you could call it that, from the fury of sea by natural reef outcrops. The Brakans were fishermen. From Braka came half Karanas’s food. To Braka went the city’s scum.

There were two kinds of floating craft on Karanas. Some boats and barges served as homes for people. They were distinguished by the hanging blankets and the occasional tent, protections against the constant rain and wind. Other craft were open to public. A few served as makeshift market stalls, the rest were too old and unstable for anyone to live on and were used as streets and alleys.

To enter Karanas without swimming through the dirty, almost black waters, one had to find someplace where one of the open vessels had drifted close to the shore. Vasha did not bother, he waded through the water to arrive at a busy public barge and then climbed aboard. No one batted an eye.

In Braka, most people were dirtier than him. The few that were clean were clean more by accident than intention. Certainly, no one paid any attention as he made his way through the crowd, even when his wet smelly rags pressed against people with somewhat cleaner rags.

Fucking Braka. I should’ve never accepted this contract. Even if I can kill Yayim, and that’s not a sure bet at all, Vasili will kill me afterwards. He likes the girl, he’s never going to give her to me. Abyss take my luck.

There was a tiny stretch of land somewhere in the centre of Braka. It had been a source of conflict for the competing gangs in the floating city for as long as the city had existed. The first thing Yayim did in his campaign of subjugation was securing that land. Now, it was said, a wooden keep stood on the island. With Yayim’s men patrolling the grounds and Yayim living in a house inside. Vasha intended to observe the keep until nightfall, and he hoped to see Yayim either going inside or leaving the place. Otherwise, Vasha would be clueless about the target’s location and this contract would be his most embarrassing failure to date.

Vasha the Red, the man who bathes in the blood of innocents for fun, failing to the kill his target because he didn’t know where the target was. Yes, that’s going to help my rates. Vel will kick me out of her inn out of sheer embarrassment even if I somehow keep making enough money to pay my rent.

It took an hour and a half to walk to Yayim’s compound, where the descriptions he’d heard of the place proved to be woeful understatements; which was a true marvel, men normally exaggerated the crime lord’s deeds.

He stood on the edge of a barge which seemed to serve as a square, neighbouring four or five other half-sunk vessels used for travelling, and observed the place in wonder.

The wooden walls he’d heard about stretched twenty-five yards into the air, enough to rival a three-story building. And there were watchtowers on all four corners. To make matters worse, he could see a group of three or four men patrolling the shore and another group lounging in front of the gateway. In the two watchtowers he could see, there were watchers. They would surely raise the alarm if anything unexpected was to happen.

And I have to get past all of these people without killing anyone. Because if I’m discovered before I get to Yayim he’ll just run or hide and I’ll fail. Lady have mercy on me.

He looked around to find a good hiding spot, somewhere he could observe the keep from without being seen. There were some homes nearby, barges and boats with cloth hanging around them to create a feeling of privacy. He could go inside one, kill any residents, and then use their home to observe Yayim’s castle. The other option was using the water. With the mud concealing his red hair and blackened face, he could simply go into the sea and observe the place from the shadow of a boat. There was little chance anyone would check under the boat for an assassin.

Vasha was not fond of murdering innocents for his comfort. So, after making sure the sealskin bundle containing his clothes was tightly bound, he silently slipped into the water on the far side of the barge. No one noticed as he swam around to settle in another boat’s shadow, holding on to a rope hanging from its side for comfort. He’d assumed he could stand on the seafloor, but the water was deeper than expected.

The situation was relatively comfortable at first, but slowly the cold seeped into his bones, and half an hour later he was shivering. Small fish kept swirling around his body, and Vasha was sure they were nibbling on his flesh, but the few times he checked his toes they seemed intact, if a little bit too colourless and cold. He’d heard of toes freezing and then falling off and suspected that something similar was happening to him. Even though the rational part of his brain noted the water was nowhere near cold enough for ice to form. Well, my toes are made of flesh, and flesh freezes faster than water. Wait, does it? Maybe I should get out and go kill a few orphans for their homes. It’s not like I haven’t done worse before.

The patrol of four men walking around the building was one of the more useless security measures Vasha had ever seen. He suspected the four men were meant to stop beggars setting foot on Yayim’s island. A primal expression of territoriality rather than anything rational. Regardless, they were completely predictable, bypassing them would be easy.

The few men around the front gateway were unimportant too. They seemed to be preoccupied with a dice game and ale, their gathering more of a social event than a protective measure.

The main issue with scaling the wall would be the two watchers who had line of sight on all four keep walls. And Vasha was not looking forward to the change of guards that was sure to accompany sundown. If It was me, I’d double the number of people in each watchtower and have a few men walk the walls as well. And this Yayim is smarter than me, if anything. This contract will be the end of me. Abyss take Vasili and his sweet-arsed Maria. Hmm, I wonder how Maria’s ass taste.

He shook his head to clear away the intrusive images. But thoughts of biting Maria in the plumb, soft-yet-firm ass kept plaguing his mind. The slavegirl is too pretty for her own good. Way too pretty.

By sundown, there was no trace of Yayim either leaving or going into the building. The shifts did indeed change, and even though the number of watchers on the towers did not double, patrols did start walking the high walls. Vasha was pissed at the development, until Yayim’s guards did something so incredibly naive, so utterly stupid, Vasha could not believe his luck for an entire minute. Jester pulls out of my arse after fucking me for an entire day and night. Bless him.

The idiots lit torches along the walls and on their watchtower.

The easiest way to make your watchers and guards useless in face of an experienced operator was to give them light. Because with light came a ruined night vision and shadows for the assassin to use. Light distracted the guards’ attention, made them look where they shouldn’t be looking and ignore what was right in front of them. Vasha loved well lit places, because in his experience, no place could ever have enough lights. There were always pockets of darkness. Better yet, the light gave away every guard’s position. It yelled, “Here are the people who’d kill you if you get caught. Please stay away.”

Yayim could be anywhere. He could be inside the keep, or he could be in another continent. Vasha simply had no way of knowing. But his best, no, his only, chance was to enter the compound, find the man’s bedroom, and stick a knife in his neck before anyone figured out what was going on.

So Vasha stood neck-deep in water, his teeth chattering in chilling nightwinds, and observed. Infiltrating at the start of a shift would be stupid. For one thing, the guards would still be awake.

There did not exist a single guard in the entire city of Karanas who would not sleep during a night shift. Infiltration was just a matter of waiting until enough guards were asleep. Patience was key.