The droopy, wrinkly flaps on the bald man's chubby cheeks moved slightly when looked up abruptly from his paperwork, but he did not have to see the child crouched on his window to be aware of his presence. The early night's breeze ominously waltzed through the window, into the cavity between the child's bloodstained, cotton tunic and his scarred body, and blew out the only candle in the room.
The older gentleman searched in the dark for the fire starter and asked, "So, how did it go?"
Link hesitated before breaking the bad news. "He uh," he sighed, "He escaped the city."
"Hmph. Then let the bandits decide his fate. It saves the Crown from paying failures." Oscar's cutting remark bounced off Link's heavily scarred skin. Scratching of iron upon flint spewed sparks onto the wick. Once one of the flying sparks caught onto the wick, light returned to the room, and when it did, Oscar's weary brown eyes were deadlocked with Link's.
After two years of working for the bounty handler, there was still no way to read the scheming thoughts festering and colluding behind the stoic, passive face he was wearing. His tailored robe was made from a modest brown fabric, a cheap color to match a low ranking administrator's wealth. He wore no gaudy jewelry, just a slightly rusted iron chain.
Link avoided Oscar's piercing glare by looking at anything that did not resemble a pair of eyes, which was damn near impossible given all the profile drawings on the bounties plastered all over the walls. The organized arrangement of bounties upon the wall was characteristic of any good bureaucrat, but the way Oscar organized the wanted by gang affiliation showed that he knew more than most paper pushers like him normally did.
The intense glare was too much for Link to bear, so he broke the silence, "I um, I don't suppose you have another bounty ready for me?"
But all Link got was a delayed response. The administrator broke the staring contest and shifted through some unorganized piles of paperwork, "Unfortunately not at the moment."
Had Link not spent the last few years studying the art of reading subtleties, he would have missed the sly smirk creeping on Oscar's wrinkled face. But… Link wanted to say out loud in anticipation.
"But," Oscar paused to rummage through his messy mound of papers. Turning page after page, the handler finally retrieved a small envelope and walked to the window with the candle in his other hand, "The Judge personally requested me to find someone in the area to, discreetly, take care of an errand."
Subterfuge: something Link was good at but avoided altogether. Being on the wrong side of the law had far more risks, but if the request came from the law itself, maybe it would not be so complicated. "The old man delivered the request?" asked Link, making sure that the covert errand was indeed an errand from the Crown.
Oscar smiled reassuringly, "From Sir Mawar himself." Oscar's curled lips may have been hard to read, but at least he was an honest administrator.
If an old, retired Royal Guard, who currently sat at the highest seat in the Goddesses' court, personally wanted someone quietly killed, the bounty handler was the best man to approach. The sponsorship was all Link needed. "What's the pay?" he asked.
The administrator held out the envelope, "It's sealed. The condition is that unsealing it means you accept the task."
Link's heart sank. It was a job for the desperate, most likely an assassination, a bounty beneath the law. It must be. No other kind of assignment could be so important that the Judicial Maestro could not trust someone from his own branch with the details. No matter who or what branch of the Crown sponsored the bounty, this job was going to have serious repercussions. No matter how trivial the target was, these kinds of jobs were always full of complications.
After feeling the painful twist in his empty belly, Link grabbed the envelope. The light from the candle outlined the Royal crest firmly stamped onto the seal. It was as good as Sir Mawar's signature. He released the deep breath he had been holding in and then broke the seal open with his finger.
He pulled out a small parchment from the envelope.
Sabotage
302 Nayru Lane
"Wait, what's the pay?" Link asked, but before his eyes could search through the four written words and the blank space for the missing answer to his question, Oscar moved the candlelight forward and held it underneath the parchment. After one lick from the flame and an ill timed breeze, the very flammable instructions burst into flames.
The fire climbed up the dry parchment much more quickly than Link anticipated, but by the time he dropped it, he realized that the fire was transforming the burning parchment into an orange colored smoke that violently flew upwards into Link's face. Once he recognized the color and the distinct, herbal fragrance, there was no use covering his face by that point. Link's face instead frowned into a deathly glare into the bureaucrat's eyes as the orange wisps gently brushed against his cheeks and nostrils.
After the marking smoke had cleared, there was a long silence between Link and Oscar before Link finally punctuated his fury, "You. Bastard. Sonuva. Whore." Normally used as punishment for bounty hunters who killed a wanted-live target or innocent people unrelated to the target, marking smoke stayed in the lungs for many years and could be easily sniffed out by any one of the dogs in the bounty collections agencies.
Oscar returned to his seat, "'Tis but a temporary safeguard. To make sure you follow through."
"And what happens if I don't stay quiet?"
The threat did not waver Oscar at all, "Then I hope you can find a different career."
"HA!" Link forced laughter at the jokingly optimistic sentiment that assumed he would survive the immediate, subsequent attempts by the Crown to permanently silence him. Moreover, Sir Mawar's network of eyes reached every corner in every basement and even the sewers underneath. He knew everything.
Even though Oscar had no idea what the dirty deed was, the old man would know within the heartbeat when a building was put out of commission, so Link had no choice but to comply. The old man's official title, Nayru's Judge, meant that the sabotage was also part of a grander political scheme. Link cared not for the politics that transacted in rich people land because he just wanted to eat. It was hard enough getting food already. At the end of the day, bounty hunting was his profession. It was the only job that allowed him to work anonymously yet legally. The relationship between the bounty hunter and the Crown's bounty handler was simple: if one worked, one got paid, and there were almost no exceptions to that rule.
Well, Link just found one. Though it was not the first time he had gotten trapped into committing a crime unwillingly, this was the first time the law itself had made the arrangements. Curse his gullibility! Not once had the dozens of experiences of being tricked ever crossed his mind when the current scenario required caution. Sometimes his empty stomach hurt too much for his mind to work rationally.
There was nothing more Oscar needed to say to Link: the task was given, the old man knew not what the instructions were, and he would be notified by Sir Mawar once said task was done. Only then would Link's mark be cured.
The child growled lowly and plotted a thousand different revenges as he disappeared from the second story window and dropped down onto a ledge, climbing horizontally along the wall until his back was facing a tree. Swiftly like a monkey, he planted his feet and hopped off the wall, turned, and caught the branch, and then he climbed down and rejoined the rest of society.