Manslayer

Excerpt V - The Plague Doctor

I only went to the city at night now, where most were in bed. But I was awake restlessly, memories haunting my mind. And I broke into homes, stealing what I could without bringing attention so I could afford food. I found a thieves guild hidden in the lower city, and they were impressed to see me infiltrate their base, and welcomed me among them, knowing me a street boy. They knew a surprising amount about me, from my crimes to my origins. They knew I was the poor boy who lived with a thief family in the outskirts, and apparently my father was a friend of theirs. And they knew my mother as a bar maid in her younger days. The one who knew me most was a man dressed in solid black with a beak. He was strange, and was very tall compared to other grown men. He told me about my parents and their life before my birth, and proceeded to check me for wounds and such. He said a plague was hitting the Capital, and it was caused by all the rubbage in the streets. It sounded absurd to me, and I couldn't help but not believe him. He called himself the plague doctor, and was actually the leader of the thieves guild. They told me I belonged here, and should be raised here. But... I wasn't sure I could trust people anymore. I mean, could I? After everything? They got me to stay a couple nights after telling me they were also enemies of the knights, and then on the last day I stayed in the lower reaches of the guild, the Plague Doctor told me some things. Some things that apparently if you knew, people would try to kill you if they knew you knew. He told me the King was a tyrant who steals from the people, and only cares for himself. And then he said that most of his actual knights died from the Kings various mistakes, and in order to keep the people calm he released prisoners and turned them into knights to keep his body counts up. But in this time, he released criminals with no morals, ready to do anything they wanted just like the king. This was information that I held close to me, and it made me realize why the world was so wicked. The King was the root of the Shiny men, so he is the evil of my world. That night, I snuck away from the guild, knowing that I would never get the revenge I needed by being a common thief like my parents. I saw a mountain of stone not far from the city, and decided to head there.