The Nameless Assassins

Lyssa

Over the next week, I shadowed my new Crow friends so they could "show me the ropes," to use one of Noggs' nautical expressions. For the most part, we made the rounds of local businesses, both legal and illegal. As Noggs was a tall, burly fellow, Skinner usually assigned him to loom conspicuously in the background while the rest of us courteously requested the Crows' tithe. With him around, affairs stayed civil, so to speak.

Although his family had immigrated from the Dagger Isles generations ago and he didn't speak a word of their language (or maybe because of that), Noggs fancied himself a pirate in the tradition of his forebears. So when the mood struck, he swaggered around bellowing "Yar!" and "Avast me hearties!" while the rest of us groaned and pretended not to know him. ("Hey, who is that guy anyway?" "Who? Him? Never met him." "So...he isn't your enforcer?" "Nah, not if you hand over the tithe.")

Noggs also harbored for Lyssa the finest example of courtly love this side of the Cataclysm. After Stev helpfully arranged for a bed for me at their flophouse (which offered discount rates to Crows), I spent many happy evenings lolling on its front steps, listening to Noggs enumerate his fair lady's virtues. "She's undefeatable in single combat, you know," he sighed once while Stev, Skinner, and I rolled our eyes and passed a bottle of moonshine. "Give her a pistol and a dagger, and she can take anyone."

Leaning comfortably against Skinner's chest, Stev grinned and taunted, "I heard she used to be a noble."

At that, I twitched. What was it about Crow's Foot that attracted so many ex-nobles? Disingenuously, I protested, "Nobles don't fight, do they? Don't they have all those bodyguards to do the fighting for them?"

"Not in the Dagger Isles, they don't!" And off Noggs went on a dramatic tale of fierce pirate queens who adorned their stolen naval coats with medals pried off the cold, dead bodies of Imperial admirals they defeated in single combat. I rather thought that he and Faith would get along.

After his fairytale finally wound to its gory end, I asked innocently, "But isn't Lyssa Akorosian?" Before the lockdown, I'd seen her around Crow's Foot, and what I remembered was a brown-eyed, pale-skinned young woman with close-cropped brown hair.

It was Stev who confirmed in his quiet, gentle way, "Yes, she was born into one of the minor noble families. But she fell into disgrace and got disowned. She never talks about it."

At that point, Skinner stirred restlessly, glanced at the position of the moon, and reminded us, "Patrol duty in the morning. Get to bed, all of you."

From him, I had learned that the Crows normally maintained a strict division of labor. But with most of the gang holed up in the tower, the system had broken down quite thoroughly, and so the four of us also pulled shifts guarding the streets around the Crow's Nest. Frustratingly, none of us were ever allowed inside: Instead, Lyssa's lower-ranked lieutenants came into the courtyard to deliver our orders.

"Will I ever get to meet her?" I asked the others on a different evening. "Noggs makes her sound like a fairytale princess and an epic villain at the same time."

"But in the Dagger Isles, those are the same thing!" he joked.

One arm draped around Stev's shoulders, Skinner swigged from the whiskey bottle I'd swiped on our way home (I was subtly trying to expand their palates). "Of course you will," he promised. "As soon as things go back to normal, we'll take you to meet Lyssa and get you properly inducted."

"But not before that?" I pressed as hard as I dared.

"Unlikely," he replied flatly. "Lyssa's not taking any chances just now."

And there went any hope of wrangling a private audience in which I could broker a three-way peace deal or just convince Lyssa to flee Doskvol.