Amateurs.
He did not change his course, but he kept to the main street, that looked more like a canal made of dirt than a proper thoroughfare.
When he’d docked the Black Storm at harbor that morning, Darrowden appeared as a giant anthill that rose out of flat sea. A city carved into the natural sandstone mounds of the small island, its hovels and homes all worn down and rounded by centuries of wind, their doors no more than holes cut into the yielding rock.
Like black mouths in chubby, eyeless faces.
The streets were not the open walkways of other, more civilized islands but winding, high-walled paths carved around and through the mounds. The citizens of Darrowden shuffled along these paths, corralled on both sides by yellow stone.
The assassin didn’t know what his pursuers could be after. His boots, maybe, though they were in need of patching. His scimitars were plain, sturdy steel but he guessed they’d fetch a kroon or two apiece at the flea-ridden market at the docks. His flintlock was also simple and in good working order, but it was tucked into his belt at the small of his back, hidden beneath his leather coat. It was likely his long black leather coat they wanted. It was worn at the shoulders from years of salt and spray, but still in good shape. It was damnably hot on this dust-choked isle, but he wore it anyway. He wore it always.
These street rats don’t know what they’re getting themselves into.
If they had known the assassin they trailed was named Sebastian Vaas, they would have turned tail and run.
The path wound upwards, and grew steeper with every bend. Few people paid him a glance. They kept their heads down, their eyes on the street. There was no chatter, no laughter. No brays of the drunk or angry echoing in the buildings around him. The soft stone path swallowed sound, and the oppressive heat burnt away the will to speak. Small children sat in clusters on doorsteps, playing games of chance with sticks and rocks. They wore sparse clothing and did not laugh. The adults wore plain spun tunics of wool over skirts or breeches, all the same dun color.
The uniform of misery.
Sebastian smelled piss and dust when he wanted to smell the sea. He walked on and his two pursuers followed. Brushing a lock of dark hair from his eyes, he studied the sandstone wall. An easy height to scale. Easy to slip down to the other side, into the warrens of the city. And if I become lost in this gods forsaken shit hole? I have an appointment to keep.
Sebastian’s destination lay ahead—a rundown structure atop a hill, with a path that snaked its way up. The fortress was no grander than any other structure on Isle Kabak, but larger. Adjacent to it, was what appeared to be a prison. To him, it looked like a lump of dough with iron bars set into the windows.
A prison made of sandstone?
Sebastian recalled a half-season spent inside harder walls than sandstone. Half a season locked away from the sea, away from his ship, suffocating on dry air. He brushed the thought away; it irritated him further, as did the men who dogged him now. The world was too full of fools who thought they could take something away from him.
Old Darrowden, the last section of city before he reached the fortress, showed signs of wealth now abandoned and gone to ruin. The homes were of limestone instead of sandstone, weathered and crumbling, fronted by courtyards overrun with weeds and half-dead cacti. They sat high above the rest of the city, and Sebastian could see the Crushing Sea stretch out across the horizon behind them. His ship was at anchor there. Waiting.
One last job. One more. Do this, and then you’ll be free.
A nervous snicker called his attention back to his pursuers. The streets here were empty; the small sound carried loudly in the flat air, and it was obvious they no longer cared for stealth.
Sebastian spat a curse and turned his steps through the rotted iron gate of one manor ringed by hall walls. He pressed himself against the wall to one side. The pursuers were either stupid, desperate, or both as the two men blundered inside after him.
As they passed under the rusted arch, Sebastian knocked the club out of the nearest man’s hands, wrapped his arm around his neck, and laid a dagger to his pulsing jugular. The vagrant was rank with old sweat and piss, and Sebastian grimaced at the grimy hair that brushed his cheek. The second man, young and scrawny like the first, stopped short.
“He dies,” Sebastian said, testing.
The free man, a dented dagger in his own hands, scoffed. “Yer coat’ll fit me better than him.”
The man in Sebastian’s grip was like a rabbit in a snare: tense with fear and too frightened to struggle. The other licked his lips and danced from one foot to the other, brandishing his old dagger in what he thought was a menacing display of skill. Instead, Sebastian saw where his balance could be thrown, how his fingers held the dagger like a dinner fork—easily knocked aside; how a quick duck and a sweeping kick would be enough to completely baffle the man who thought a blade alone was enough to appear dangerous. Neither stood a chance at besting Sebastian, even on their best day.
Scare them off. No bloodshed.
Sebastian shoved the one man toward the other, and while they fumbled and staggered and tried to regroup, Sebastian’s knife slipped back up his sleeve and he threw the sides of his long coat behind his hips. He unsheathed the two scimitars from their scabbards and brandished them lazily. Or so it appeared. The twin blades caught the sunlight; a nice flourish to his display.
“You want my coat, do you?” Sebastian mused. The two men were frozen. They stared at the assassin with wide eyes, as if even blinking would be a lapse in caution. “Well, you can’t have it. It wouldn’t be much good to you, anyway, seeing as I’ll slice your arms off if you make a try for it.”
One man looked ready to cry. Sebastian Vaas of five years ago would have laughed and cut them to ribbons for their audacity. Sebastian Vaas of seven years ago would have kept one alive to watch the other lose body parts one by one. And the one left alive to watch—pissing himself with terror—would have realized he was in the presence of Bloody Bastian, or Bastian the Bastard, or the Black Star of Eastern Edge as the assassin was variously known, and that he was going to die as Bloody Bastian never left witnesses. Never.
The two men were young and underfed and the Sebastian Vaas of this day was merely disgusted.
“Go,” he told them. “Before I spill your guts over your own feet.”
The men dashed out of the courtyard before his last word was uttered; he could hear one curse the other for selling him out as they ran.