The stairwell amplified the sound of a guitar being tuned, carrying the noise to the ground floor like a feather to the earth. Billie could hear the sour twang of each string, the warped slide as each was tightened, loosed, and tightened again, until the owner found a true note.
It seemed unlikely that this would be the place, after all this time. Part of her wanted to turn back, deny that there was even some small chance that he would be here. Even if this was the last place. Even if she was almost certain he was living here, in this building.
"And if it's him, then what?"
She caught herself, biting her lip to silence her thoughts. Thinking out loud was a bad habit for an assassin, even one who spent the last decade and a half playing ship's captain across the Empire. On the open sea, it had filled the space that had once been filled by her awareness of the other Whalers, the reassuring presence of her master and companions nearby.
Her hand ached. Glancing down, she saw she was gripping the banister so tightly that splinters were digging into her palm, her knuckles pale from lack of blood.
"Walk up the damn stairs," she hissed. "Get it over with."
Still, she hesitated before releasing her grip, letting the pain seep into her like a lesson. A door opened, slammed shut as Billie started to ascend, and a young woman appeared on the landing. She eyed her suspiciously, but smiled slightly in response to a polite nod as they passed.
The second story smelled of cumin, pungent and warm as it drifted out of an open door. A little girl was sitting on the threshold, peeling potatoes into a copper pot. She stopped when she saw the woman standing in the hall, watching her with the unconcealed curiosity of the young for the strange.
Billie stole a glance behind the child, seeing only a stout matron bustling in front of a stove. Not there. Even if she could imagine him with a kid, a wife, the girl had the wrong coloring.
She walked on, wondering if her footsteps were as loud as they sounded to her own ears. He used to recognize her footfalls, even when she was at her quietest. The way she recognized his. When he couldn't sleep at night, and she heard him walking around, she would slip out of bed to sit silently, watch him read or pace, sharing the simple company of the restless until she dozed off on a chair or morning came.
Was he standing in the stairwell, far above, drawn out of some book or by the familiar cadence of her steps? Was he listening, wondering?
The doors on the next floor were both shut, but she could hear a young woman singing behind one of them.
Up in his palace, the good Duke resides
He spreads his riches, and the miners thrive—
She felt a small pang, remembering the last time she'd heard someone sing that tune. The young empress, slightly off key, singing as she haphazardly washed her clothes aboard the Wale. The words had been different, then; the darker, desperate song of a city covered in dust and neglected by the capital. The world had been different.
Billie— No, Meagan. The captain had let her finish singing before heaving herself out of her chair, telling Emily that she was a terrible laundress. She'd shown the girl how to do it the right way, making her take off the rest of her filthy clothes, take a bath, wear one of her shirts until her finery had dried out. You smell like a wet wolfhound, she'd told her. The empress had laughed, pretending to be offended as she splashed a handful of soapy water at Meagan.
Not this floor. No, he'd be higher up, likely the highest level, where he could get to the roof if trouble came to his door.
Maybe she was the trouble, this time. Maybe he would vanish. Maybe she was wrong all along, and he wouldn't be here at all.
Billie was used to being trouble, though. She'd been his trouble, in the end, but for years before that she'd been the trouble he'd harnessed, trained, given a purpose, a life. Her steps quickened, the thoughts giving her a small rush of confidence. Even if he wasn't here, she'd keep looking. She'd comb Morley, suffer the miserable weather, hope he hadn't strayed to the frozen waste of Tyvia.
A man was sweeping out an apartment on the fourth floor, carelessly flinging dust into the corridor with his broom. She sidestepped, covering her mouth against the debris and half-running up the next flight of stairs. Children's shoes. A miner's axe. The guitar was being tuned here, behind the door with the pickaxe, and she slowed as the owner began to strum, slow cascades of song in that style only heard on the streets of Karnaca.
There was only one door left. The top of the stairs, the last turn before the steps led to the rooftop.
Billie looked up to the skylight, steeling her nerves. One pane was propped open to let in the sea breeze, the blue of the sky seeping into shades of navy and orange and gold as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. A bird hopped along the glass, pecking at some insect or stone she couldn't see.
Fly away.
It did, with a flap of wings, some quarry held tightly in its beak.
Billie took the steps without a care for quiet, focusing on the willpower required to simply make it to the landing without turning back, walking away. She made it, but then she faltered— Let her hand hover in front of the door for a long moment as she tried to decide if she ought to knock, or not.
She could hear an audiograph inside, faint music, the sound of a whirring fan.
The windows were open. The breeze slipped beneath the door, cool air against the bare skin beneath her trousers.
No voices. No footsteps.
Now or never. It was him, or it wasn't. If it wasn't, she could find an inn and sleep- No. Get a drink, then sleep. Try to plan her next move.
Billie put her hand on the knob, turning it, pushing the door open carefully to make sure she wasn't about to encounter a tripwire. It wasn't locked, and there was no wire to trigger. She felt her breath catch in anticipation.
Nobody was inside.
One step over the threshold, and she was on a clean, wooden floor. There were books, stacked on the table, beside a chair. A pot simmered on the stove, as if the occupant had just gone out for a smoke.
She closed the door softly behind her, taking a slow breath and trying to ignore the part of her mind that recognized the simple presence of the space. Sentimentality and wishful thinking weren't proof, even if the books were stacked the way he'd always stacked them on his desks, even if it smelled like the cigarettes he'd always preferred—
Billie peered into the nook that served a bedroom, exhaling in relief when she saw it was unoccupied. The bed was perfectly made up. More books lay beside the bed, the nightstand, an audiograph winding through the music she'd heard before on a sidebar across the hall. Perhaps there would be a journal beneath the pillow, the mattress, some scrawled note in a margin that would mirror that familiar hand.
Quiet steps, the way she'd walked across many a rooftop in the dead of night. She slipped her arm beneath the pillows, then the mattress, feeling for a spine, a slip of paper. Billie was still kneeling beside the bed when she heard the audiograph fall silent, interrupted mid-stanza by an ominous click. Her hand went to her pocket, finding the hilt of her knife as she listened for footfalls.
There were only three steps. The deliberate pace, the creak as he shifted onto one foot— The sound of a sigh, so familiar even after all this time. She felt as if the breath had been torn out of her lungs.
"Are you here to try and kill me again, or have you just forgotten how to knock?"
The rough voice was quiet, impassive, but it felt like a punch in Billie's gut.
"… I wasn't sure if it was you." She let her hand drop to her side, slowly getting to her feet and composing her face before she turned to face him, palm out, showing herself unarmed.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his broad chest, looking her over as if measuring the same scrawny urchin that had crept into his hideout so many years ago.
"You took the stairs like an ox. Sounded like you had some certainty."
Billie felt the heat of shame rising to her cheeks, but she didn't look away. He'd taken her to task like this many times before, when she was a novice. Back then, she'd stared at the floor, trying to hide her shame at her failing.
"I've been looking for you." Billie paused, weighing her words. "A few of us were."
"I know." As if it were nothing to him, managing to elude half a dozen professional assassins that he'd raised and trained, then abandoned without a word, for fifteen years. "Yet you're the only one I've found in my bedroom."
She'd been his second in command for a reason.
"I watched. Listened. The way you taught me to." As if he were a mark, like the targets he'd always trusted her to scout out before they carried out a job. "You covered your tracks, but there's always rumors. Then I saw you. Thought I saw you, at least, from a distance."
"And then you searched every tenement in Karnaca?"
"I doubted you'd be in Batista, but I looked anyways." Yes, nearly all of them. "You wouldn't be mining. I didn't think you'd have kids, or a lady, either. It narrowed it down."
"You were looking for the man you left in Dunwall," he observed, as though this was a fatal mistake.
Billie looked away, at last. Around the room, the apartment; at the books, the neatly made bed, the spent cigarettes on the table, the whiskey on the shelf.
"You haven't changed that much."
She didn't have to say it out loud, but the statement somehow evened the field in this awkward battle of words.
The assassins stood there, looking at one another, as if tallying up the new marks and wrinkles, the changes to the way they held themselves. Daud looked out of place in a room like this, without walls threatening to fall apart; with the scent of the sea on the air instead of the stale, foul scent of the Flooded District; without his coat, the worn red leather bright against his sun-worn Serkonan complexion. It had always reminded her of an adder, when she'd seen it against the faded rooftops of Dunwall. A flash of scarlet, warning others to stay away, lest they feel the bite of a blade.
"So."
He broke the silence, at last, leaving the word hanging. Explain yourself. The way he'd wait when she left out an undesirable piece of news from a brief, hesitated to tell him some failing. The music downstairs had started again, faint chords floating into the space between them, a surreal contrast to their last encounter.
Billie took a breath, a few steps forward. It was impulsive, but words didn't seem to fit. He watched, not betraying any emotion as she knelt before him— Humbling herself to dirt, as she had the last time he'd seen her face, the night he'd cast her out. There was no sword in her hands, this time, however. Instead, she bowed her head, cropped hair falling forward as she put her fist against her chest in that an old, familiar salute. A gesture that spoke louder than any number of words.
The fan on the wall whirred softly, making the minutes feel like years as he stared down at her, as she kept her eyes on the floor. The last light of the sunset faded away, leaving them posed in a room of shadows, dancing with the flames of the stove.
Daud shifted his weight from the wall, at last, reaching down to catch her chin, making her look up and into his face. There were no tears, no defiance in her expression, though she was tense. He let his fingers move to her cheek, resting it on the melted skin- Not drawing back when she flinched.
"What happened here?"
Billie released her breath, a sound between a sigh of relief and a laugh.
"I messed up," she confessed, letting her arm fall to her side.
He made a disapproving noise, the same grunt she'd heard so many times when she'd fumbled in training, or on a job. "You're supposed to throw the grenade," he chastised, straightening, fingers falling away from the scars. "Not hold onto it."
"I know." She's cursed her stupidity, her bad timing, for years. "I bit off more than I could chew."
Daud turned away, walking toward the stove and turning off the burner as if he'd just remembered his dinner. She waited for a moment, watching him stir the stew, before climbing to her feet. He went about his cooking, however, tossing a bit of salt into the pot as if she wasn't there. Billie cleared her throat quietly, finding her voice.
"What now?"
It felt like a stupid question to ask, but as the reality of the situation began to sink in, Billie realized that she hadn't planned for anything beyond this moment. She'd spent so long hunting for her master, hitting dead ends, that she hadn't stopped to think about what would happen if she actually managed to find him.
He glanced in her direction, ladling stew into a bowl. "Supper, unless you want it cold." He picked up a second bowl from the counter, as if he fed two all the time. As if he'd been expecting company. "A bath, if you're going to sit on my sofa."
"I washed up—" She began to protest, but he deposited one of the bowls of stew into her hand, dropping a spoon in before moving to push the books to one side of the table.
"Sit," he commanded, as if she didn't need permission to sit at the table of the man she'd betrayed, as if this were perfectly normal. He sat heavily and started eating, apparently keeping his eyes on his food.
After a moment, Billie did as she was told, spooning stew into her mouth with the careful motions of someone used to eating on a rocking ship. They ate in silence, until he was sipping the broth from his bowl and she was licking the last of the meat from her spoon.
"Your cooking's improved." It felt bold, but it was the comfortable sort of humor she'd always given him. Sarcastic, a bit brazen, the sort of snide commentary that would have earned most other kids a slap at the wrong time or place. Sure, she'd been given grunt duty for more than a couple impertinent remarks, but he'd never struck her outside of training. Not the way her mum had, before she ran away.
"I've had time to practice." It was a short reply, but not an angry one. He had never been one for mealtime conversation.
Billie carefully picked up her own bowl, sipping at the broth and pretending not to notice that he was examining her. Watching the way she handled herself, with only one arm, only one eye. She'd had time to practice, too.
He rose and began washing his dishes before she was finished. The sound of running water seemed to dull the awkwardness of their silence, even as she rose and followed him, standing uncomfortably to one side. His bowl and spoon clicked on the counter, and he reached out for hers, raising his brows when she stepped back in protest.
"I can clean up after myself."
"I didn't ask what you could or couldn't do. I told you to take a bath"
Billie resisted, attempting to stare him down until he just leaned over and forcibly plucked the bowl and spoon from her hand.
"Wash up," he ordered. There wasn't any room for argument in his tone, and Billie found herself skulking down the hallway to where she assumed the bath would be. It was just like being a novice again, but with bizarrely mundane exchanges. Wash up. Eat. Sit down. She lit the washroom before closing the door, leaning against it and letting out a long exhale.
What in the void was going to happen now?
In the kitchen, she could still hear the water running— Running without interference, without splashes, directly into the drain. For a moment, she pictured Daud as she'd seen him over the years: Hands braced on either side of a desk, a sink, a map, head bowed, concentrating as he tried to plan out his next move.
She turned on the tap with an almost cautious speed, plugging the drain and slipping her fingers beneath the water to gauge the temperature.
What now? What now? What now?
The assassins, the fugitives, were finally separated by a wall, rather than a thousand miles.
Together, they closed their eyes, unsteady exhales passing their lips as they tried to quiet the chaos of their thoughts.