A Most Dangerous Weapon

Chapter 28: Hits Keep Coming

I was completely out of breath by the time we made it to the house. It was tucked away deep in the poverty stricken area of Antigo, run down and broken like all the buildings on the street. There were very few people around, probably because they all went to the marketplaces in the morning to beg for food and money. The handful of people that remained all looked too weak and sickly to move, and they avoided eye contact with us as we approached. This certainly was a place that the rest of Antigo wished didn't exist; a plague on their otherwise magnificent city.

I took a step towards the house wearily, unsure of what I was about to find. There was a muffled voice carried through the tattered window covering. I carefully peeked through a small hole in the fabric to gage the situation within.

What I saw instantly brought a tear to my eye and rage into my heart.

Two cloaked figures stood in the barren, dirty room. One was standing as far away as possible, mumbling under his breath, as the second stood over three broken and bloody bodies, cleaning his sword of the crimson liquid.

We were too late.

"You're supposed to wait until nightfall to-..." The man by the wall speaks in aggressive, hushed tones. He gestures to the bodies, trying to reason with the man before him. "You're orders were just to kill the royal bastard. You're making too much of a mess here, killing entire families! Why can't you go about things in a more civilized manner?! You could have interrogated the families discreetly to find the boy, but instead you just round them up and torture the truth out of them, leaving yourself with no choice but to silence them in the end."

The assassin placed his now clean blade in its sheath. He spoke in a low growl. "Doesn't matter how I go about things."

That wasn't Marcus' voice!

I almost scream with glee at the notion, thankful that it wasn't my brother who had just assassinated eight families to find Phoebus. This monster was a different assassin under Gaius' rule. My brother was innocent of these crimes!

But then it dawns on me that I was still miles away from finding him. He must have been sent to find one of the other two remaining bastards. I prayed to Hannibal that I would find him in time before he did something as shameful as this.

"It does matter! You could have gotten caught... why are you suddenly so impatient?!"

"What's done is done."

"I have to clean up your mess once you leave! The Romallian people aren't just going to accept that the murderer just disappeared. How am I supposed to explain this?" The man by the wall exclaims.

"If you do your job correctly, this place will soon be under Galacian rule anyways and you won't have to explain this." The assassin drawls.

The man seems to give up on reasoning with the assassin, letting out a heavy sigh as he rubs his temples in frustration. "Now that you've found your mark, where are you off to next?"

I glance at the young boy who was lying beside his father and mother. My heart sinks into my stomach as the man's words confirm that this wasn't just another unjust casualty, but actually the royal bastard we were all looking for.

This was Maximus' son.

I had no idea if the woman by his side was the boy's real mother or if he was just given to a random family. Nor did I know how long this child had lived his life in poverty. I didn't know if Antigo was always his home. And I wondered how much the boy knew about his royal blood and the life he could have had if his father had accepted him.

I knew nothing about this boy... only that he was now dead, leaving me with one less option for the Romallian throne.

The assassin looked down on his handy work before responding. "Octain Port to check in."