Shadows and Steel | ✓

chapter one

-1-

A biting wind tore through the side street and Eryan's dilapidated townhouses quivered.

The assassin slit the last man's throat. His body landed with a wet thump on the uneven ground like a sack of rotting potatoes. Sprawled around her lay bodies like butchered animals—mouths gaping and eyes glassed over. Breathing hard, she cleaned her dagger on the clothes he wouldn't need any longer. Most of his possessions would be gone by morning; items snatched up by street rats to be sold for some meagre value. Soon enough, he would be forgotten.

Elle didn't need light to see the streams of blood running in lazy rivers down the alley. Her hands were slippery with the stuff—crimson caked under her nails.

Time was seeping through her fingers.

Chewing her numb lip, she crouched by each fallen man and combed their pockets. Crystals of ice bejewelled her lashes as her pants clouded the air. Myndor's climate was unnecessarily cold this year.

It made her think that perhaps the gods were punishing them. The city thrived on underhand operations; careers and businesses built on nothing but artful lies and bought loyalties. Perhaps everyone in the rotting city deserved the gods' punishments.

Lustrous oil lamps burned on window ledges, throwing distorted shadows across the walls as the assassin worked. Hollers of drunks and the night women's cackles echoed around her.

Where was the damned thing?

Finally, her fingers seized an item—cold to the touch—in a deep pocket. Careful not to dirty herself further as a great bib of blood had spread across the man's chest. Unfurling her frozen fingers revealed a metallic disk.

Twisting it into the light, she squinted at the worn emblem on one side. Even damaged, a thing like that could earn her a nice price down at the market in the morning. She could perhaps buy another novel to add to her growing collection of leather-bound children. She imagined such a life. Having nothing to do all day but read until printed words swam before her eyes and her candles had burnt to a waxy stub. A bottomless well of money to spend as she pleased, and to answer to no one but herself.

Pocketing it, she released a small sigh. The golden trinket would be brought back to the Order and handed into Mikel's keeping. Another mysterious item she fetched for him to play with. Having worked away from Eryan for weeks, tracing someone only to have him lead her right back where she started, she would be glad to sink into her own bed once more instead of some grotty inn. 

Grunts and slurred talking sounded just outside where she stood, louder now.

Fishing into the last man's jacket pocket she found an old copper watch. Grinning, she held it up to her ear, listening to its steady tick. Tonight wasn't fruitless after all. Snatching her crosshair from the cobbled floor, she turned on her heels and scaled the alley's walls. The knife wound she had bound from an unfortunate altercation earlier throbbed with each movement.

As the city was dressed in Darkness' finest robes that night it made it all too easy for her to slip away.

Sliding onto her stomach, she looked over the edge of a building, blowing hair from her eyes. Enforcers were patrolling only a few passages away. Over the roofs and buildings far into the distance, she spied Deep Lake, where the machinery still worked at this hour, sifting and mining the stone to find the jewels Eryan was so renowned for.

Turning onto her back, Elle gazed upwards. The autumn sky was empty, void of stars. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that within those onyx whorls something deep-set into the universe was watching.

Thin houses of the slums blurred as she skidded over the rooftops, tendrils of dark hair hindering her vision. Her heart pumping in time with her footsteps as she raced home. Home happened to be within the notorious guild of assassins: the Order.

Their main base was hidden in plain sight, in a not-so-abandoned warehouse in an overlooked area of the slums. Made of stone, the building peeked out from behind the others like an insolent child. The edges of the city were reserved for those poorer areas, so ripe with crime the Enforcers had practically given up governing it.

In its entirety, the warehouse couldn't hold every seasoned killer of the Order. This base was reserved for the best of the best. Other holds were hidden throughout the city. Barring Geoff's base in the City of Smoke by the river, she had never been privy to their locations.

A soft light glowed from one of the windows, dark curtains dancing in the breeze.

Eyes glinting, the assassin wrapped her numbed fingers around a hanging line fixed across the street, feeling the rope bend to support her weight. Without another thought, she leapt, suppressing the whoop that almost broke from her lips.

Using her momentum, she knocked icicles to the ground, smiling as each one tinkled and shattered.

Judging her landing impeccably, she swung through the billowing curtains into Mikel's office. He had fallen asleep, head resting on a pile of stacked papers, right hand still grasping his ink-splattered pen. The oil lamp still burnt.

She had always hated this room. A desk, a bookshelf, a single chair for him. Behind, that grand self-portrait had been hung, depicting the cunning green eyes and face with fewer grey hairs and stress lines. The small plaque underneath reading 'Mikel Sionnyn. Head of the Order - Myndor.'

The assassin didn't hold her stare at his unnerving eyes. Too many years of his mentoring and personal training had taught her not to.

His office brimmed with painful shards of memory; rubbing glass sand into her eyes until she became temporarily blind. To become more aware of my surroundings. The bloodstain he could never quite rid his rug of. The first time she had disobeyed.

She rapped on his desk three times, snorting as he jerked awake.

"You're back."

"So I am. Did you really think I would run off?" She flicked up to meet his gaze.

He grunted in response. "Did you find it?"

She sighed, placing a hand on her hip. "What? No 'evening Elle, how shitty was the cold tonight?' To which I would reply, 'thank you for asking. My fingers are dead and my—'"

"Enough."

He held out his hand. She huffed and delved into her pocket, throwing the disk at him. Seconds of silence marched past as he stared, enthralled by the thing as he turned it over in his palm.

Elle found herself leaning closer. "I don't see its use—"

"You don't need to know such things. That is not your job."

And just like that, after months away, she was reminded of why she hated him so.

(edited)