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Death walks invisible tonight, though she dresses in her best to respect the ones she comes for.
The crow across her front is drawn in deepest blue and purple highlights--the black of the feathers is the black of her shirt, the blood red of the eye a drop of her own blood, a homage and a dedication to a goddess she cannot feel in this city, in this world. It's an uncomfortable feeling, that the goddess is too far away to cloak her back with feathers, to watch the blind spots she is only now becoming aware of.
She spares a moment to wonder if she herself will become something else if she stays away too long, then sets it aside as irrelevant to the task at hand.
She can see herself if she looks down, though she doesn’t cast a shadow or a reflection, and her footsteps strike her as eerily silent, though she knows that there are spells layered there, too.
The slip of blade from sheathe to hand is honestly silent, the diffuse glow on the blade far more familiar than the building and the guard she approaches.
The thread holding the man's soul to his body is a deep blue--he's young, far younger than she would have ever bothered with at home, there's little challenge in a child who cannot see her even without the spells--that parts gently under a caress of the pale light arcing from her blade.
He falls, not a mark on him, across the threshold of the building, and she steps over the body, flicking the blade in a silent salute.
The redheads have done their work, checked backgrounds and given her faces to match. It is not the leader of this gang who needs to die, but the third in command, who is smart enough to know he will not inherit without bloodshed, and who is also stupid enough to talk about it where there are ears to hear.
And further stupid enough to keep lists of the names of those who have sworn to help him, and who he thinks will not.
So she walks through the rooms full of sleeping men, parting threads of lives with a blade that gradually grows closer to white in its glow, and bright enough that if she were not hidden it would cast her shadow on the walls.
The dead men’s leader sleeps upstairs, among the other higher-ranking members of the gang, in a room by himself.
His thread is not cut outright, but coaxed out from the arteries in his throat and spun around her fingers like a length of yarn. He needs to stay breathing, his heart beating, and she is not cruel. The lesson to be learned here is for those who will find him, and the others.
She draws a breath she does not need to keep herself alive, and blows gently on the thread of his soul, sends him on his way painlessly.
Then she sheathes the sickle, draws the borrowed knife at her waist, and opens the first of his veins, flicking the spurt up onto the pillow by his head.
By the time his heart stops beating, and the last breath hitches in his throat, she is crimson to the elbows, and her boots leave bright-bloody prints halfway down the stairs as she leaves the room. The knife is left on the pillow next to his head. There are many others.
She returns to the first sleepers, to the first body she killed for the dead man upstairs’ stupidity, and pulls the paintbrush from the top of her boot. A swipe of the brush through the blood on her forearm, then she leans over the body.
Three horizontal bars in the space just above and between the eyebrows, a precise tap on the jar of ashes pulled from the other boot, then a gentle blowing away of the excess. A gold coin placed just below the notch of the collarbone, glued into place with their leader’s blood.
She works her way back to the body in the bed, in order, and goes out the window of his room.
The boy across the threshold she leaves untouched. He was merely unlucky enough to have pulled guard duty tonight.
She knows the four-armed dancing god impressed on the metal coins will have no meaning here--he is not a god known here, just as her namesake is not--but word will spread.
Some will laugh. She knows this. After all, he’s denied the name, for all he answered a call for help with it attached.
Some will dismiss, for the same reason they dismiss her. After all, she has no gift for strategy.
But one or two will wonder, after they hear.
The crow across her front is drawn in deepest blue and purple highlights--the black of the feathers is the black of her shirt, the blood red of the eye a drop of her own blood, a homage and a dedication to a goddess she cannot feel in this city, in this world. It's an uncomfortable feeling, that the goddess is too far away to cloak her back with feathers, to watch the blind spots she is only now becoming aware of.
She spares a moment to wonder if she herself will become something else if she stays away too long, then sets it aside as irrelevant to the task at hand.
She can see herself if she looks down, though she doesn’t cast a shadow or a reflection, and her footsteps strike her as eerily silent, though she knows that there are spells layered there, too.
The slip of blade from sheathe to hand is honestly silent, the diffuse glow on the blade far more familiar than the building and the guard she approaches.
The thread holding the man's soul to his body is a deep blue--he's young, far younger than she would have ever bothered with at home, there's little challenge in a child who cannot see her even without the spells--that parts gently under a caress of the pale light arcing from her blade.
He falls, not a mark on him, across the threshold of the building, and she steps over the body, flicking the blade in a silent salute.
The redheads have done their work, checked backgrounds and given her faces to match. It is not the leader of this gang who needs to die, but the third in command, who is smart enough to know he will not inherit without bloodshed, and who is also stupid enough to talk about it where there are ears to hear.
And further stupid enough to keep lists of the names of those who have sworn to help him, and who he thinks will not.
So she walks through the rooms full of sleeping men, parting threads of lives with a blade that gradually grows closer to white in its glow, and bright enough that if she were not hidden it would cast her shadow on the walls.
The dead men’s leader sleeps upstairs, among the other higher-ranking members of the gang, in a room by himself.
His thread is not cut outright, but coaxed out from the arteries in his throat and spun around her fingers like a length of yarn. He needs to stay breathing, his heart beating, and she is not cruel. The lesson to be learned here is for those who will find him, and the others.
She draws a breath she does not need to keep herself alive, and blows gently on the thread of his soul, sends him on his way painlessly.
Then she sheathes the sickle, draws the borrowed knife at her waist, and opens the first of his veins, flicking the spurt up onto the pillow by his head.
By the time his heart stops beating, and the last breath hitches in his throat, she is crimson to the elbows, and her boots leave bright-bloody prints halfway down the stairs as she leaves the room. The knife is left on the pillow next to his head. There are many others.
She returns to the first sleepers, to the first body she killed for the dead man upstairs’ stupidity, and pulls the paintbrush from the top of her boot. A swipe of the brush through the blood on her forearm, then she leans over the body.
Three horizontal bars in the space just above and between the eyebrows, a precise tap on the jar of ashes pulled from the other boot, then a gentle blowing away of the excess. A gold coin placed just below the notch of the collarbone, glued into place with their leader’s blood.
She works her way back to the body in the bed, in order, and goes out the window of his room.
The boy across the threshold she leaves untouched. He was merely unlucky enough to have pulled guard duty tonight.
She knows the four-armed dancing god impressed on the metal coins will have no meaning here--he is not a god known here, just as her namesake is not--but word will spread.
Some will laugh. She knows this. After all, he’s denied the name, for all he answered a call for help with it attached.
Some will dismiss, for the same reason they dismiss her. After all, she has no gift for strategy.
But one or two will wonder, after they hear.
