Warning: potentially-squicky murder scene. If you're read the series and liked it, I don't think you'll mind, but I thought I'd warn you anyway.


Existence
Murder has been done in a fit of rage

On the main street in broad daylight

Murder has been done with an icy calm

In the middle of the night

There aren't a lot of things eerier than being in a house around the tenth hour of the night, when everybody's sleeping and everything's quiet, except maybe being in a house around that same time, a knife in your hand, knowing that pretty soon no-one there was going to be breathing except you.

I got in through the fire escape. Even though this pad was in Gatehouse, it had one. The lock was purely shit though, and I didn't have no trouble picking it. Guess the person who built it had brains to plan for fire, but hadn't planned on cat burglars or murderers, which was just perfectly fine by me. I left my coat on the balcony so as to have something to wear that didn't have blood on it by the time I got through-- with four people to off, I was going to have some blood on me by the end, and no doubt about that.

The job tonight was Griselda Kilkenny and her three children. Keeper told me about it with a glint in her eye like she was trying to see if she could get me to say that I wasn't going to murder a pregnant woman and three kids, but you know, I just wasn't gonna. I was the best assassin in the city. Shit like this didn't make me squeamish. Anyway, up until about eight months ago, Griselda Kilkenny was the light of love of a flashie, but they had a huge row and now she was apparently milking the flashie dry for child support, and the fact that she was pregnant again I guess was what made him contact Keeper. He was gone for the winter in Hermione, but that just gave him a good alibi and besides, it wasn't like Keeper couldn't make deals long-distance.

I had a map of the house, and I hit the kids' bedroom first. She really was getting child support from the flashie, because it was all top-grade shit. I mean, silk duvets. Who the fuck gives children silk duvets? Same with the fancy woven carpet. Paintings on the walls, velvet curtains. And the beds were all nice. Keeper wouldn't have envied them, but a lot of people in the Lower City would've.

Did the girl first. She probably was a couple short of two septads, and also would've been real pretty if she'd've lived another few years, which wasn't going to happen. Then I crossed the room, got the little boy too. By the time they opened their eyes, they only had a couple of seconds of life left, and besides, they couldn't speak. They bled into their nice pillows quiet and neat-like, hardly made no fuss at all. The toddler I had to lift up out of the crib, and he was just beginning to wonder why the fuck his mommy had suddenly grown a scar and callouses when his throat got cut too.

Now, all this was the makings of a dream job. I was in a good mood, all things told, when I stepped out of the room into the hall and looked up and heard someone scream. Fucking bitch Griselda Kilkenny had gotten up for some reason-- I guess to get a drink of water or to check on her kids or whatever, I don't know, and that seriously pissed on my mood right then and there.

She turned and ran the other way, towards her own bedroom, and I chased after her. She wasn't real fast 'cause, like I said, she was hugely pregnant, but this was a big house, and she had a three septad foot head start on me. So I got to her door just as it slammed shut in my face. I heard the bar go across the door on the other side. So I couldn't pick it, and the door was a solid fucker.

For a second I just stood there and cussed in my head, because Keeper would have my balls on a fucking platter if I didn't get this done. Then I got into that nice cold place I always got to when stuff like this happened, and I grabbed a chair and jammed the door with it so she couldn't open it even if she wanted to. And you know, hiding behind the door would have been a smart thing if I wasn't also a cat burglar.

Good for me and sad for her, I was a cat burglar. I forced open the window in the hall, checked to make sure I could get a good hold on the bricks to climb over to one of her windows. Just about froze to fucking death in the process, but I managed. Her window was locked, no big surprise, so I smashed my fist into it. Bloodied three of my knuckles up, but that didn't matter too much.

She knew I was coming in as soon as she heard that glass shatter, and she let out a scream the likes of which I hope you've never heard in your life, because fuck it was ear-splitting. I mean, if Kethe Himself had come down to Melusine and played a horn in my ear, I don't think it could've been louder than this bitch.

Hanging off the window, I yelled at her, "Kethe's black-hearted mercy, will you shut the fuck up?"

I didn't think that was an unreasonable thing to ask, but she apparently did. While I climbed in the window, which I had to do slow along of not wanting to cut myself on the glass, she kept screaming bloody fucking murder while trying to push her door open. But Gatehouse is almost entirely stone buildings, and her house stood a good bit far away from the others, so I didn't need to worry about the sound carrying. It was just really annoying.

I came out into her bedroom and pulled my knife out of my boot. After that, it was easy cake. She had a good will to live, though. I have to hand her that. When I started coming towards her, she grabbed a coat-rack from the corner and tried to beat me upside the head with it, and even when I'd wrenched it out of her hands and thrown it behind me, she kept looking for something else to hit me with, and when she didn't find nothing, she actually ran towards the window. She was barefoot, and she cut her feet all to pieces, and I didn't have no trouble to catch her and get her face to the wall and her arms behind her back. I tried not to press her belly too much but they were both going to be dead in like the next ten fucking seconds so I don't know why I bothered.

And the horrible little noises just would not fucking stop. She kept on whispering shit like "Please" and "I'm pregnant" like she thought that'd make some kind of difference in what I was fixing to do. Which I'm used to, the begging and everything, but it never really stops getting annoying, you know? If I didn't take 'em by surprise, they never just quieted down and let me get it over with.

I shut her up for good with an ear-to-ear necktie, wiped my bloody hands on her nightshirt, and went right back out the same way I came in. Took my coat, looked for Dogs, vaulted over to the next building. After a while, I'd made it near to the Ivory Gate, and I didn't have to be so damn paranoid, 'cause that's the Lower City sure enough and I could already see Britomart's lights in the distance. Keeper. I needed to get back to Keeper, tell her I'd done what she wanted.

Someone in Gatehouse'd be getting a pretty nasty surprise today, but that wasn't no problem of mine. I'd done my job.

As soon as I got back to Keeper, we fucked. I mean, right as soon as I knocked on her door, she practically dragged me into her room and threw me on the bed, which would've been a scene in a lot of peoples' wet dreams, but I wasn't into it. I know that sounds crazy, since every guy with two septads and two is supposed to be constantly ready to go. But the whole while I felt like I was wrapped in this gray haze or that I was going to be sick or something, lack of sleep probably. She came twice, so she didn't mind, if she noticed at all.

I fell asleep after we did it, her all tangled up around me the way she liked to. It made her feel like she owned me. Which she did. We slept together, actually sleeping I mean, and she was warm and soft and when she woke me up, I was starting to think it would maybe be a good day. But then I realized two things: I was still tired as an old racing dog, and she had that tone in her voice that meant she wanted something. More especially, that she wanted something from me.

"Darling, it's eleven o'clock. Don't you think that you should perhaps get up?"

The sun was always bright in her room, and today it came in through the big picture windows on her north wall like it was being paid to do it. She had these fancy-ass red silk curtains which didn't do real good at blocking out the light even when they were pulled shut, which they weren't. The sunlight reflected off of them and gave the room this weird red glow that I was only partly sure wasn't my imagination.

I blinked, realized she'd actually spoke, and then did the math. We'd fucked until maybe the second hour of the morning. That made four hours of sleep over the course of two and a half days. Not much at all, in other words. I looked at Keeper.

She was still naked, which meant she hadn't gone nowhere, and which also meant that what she wanted was from me was sex. Again. There were two ways I could take that get up, and neither of them I liked too good right then, but it was Keeper and when Keeper wanted something she got it. Usually she'd pretend to be nice about it, but she could play hardball real fucking well and I figured I knew that better than anyone. The saying an iron fist in a velvet glove seemed like it was made for her.

"I'm tired," I said, which was true. But I needed to wake up because I had those plans with Zephyr and she said it was the sixth hour of the day and-- fuck.

Her hands went down my back, tracing my muscles, and that would've told me all I needed to know, even if I hadn't been able to feel her pussy soaking wet on my thighs. She wanted sex more than she wanted me to get to go meet one of my friends, so it seemed like I was going to have to stand Zephyr up. I couldn't argue with her when she got horny like this, and it didn't even seem worth it to try.

I didn't mean to sigh. I really, really didn't. It was quiet, but somehow she caught it. She leaned down on top of me, her soft tits pressed against my chest, her elbows on my ribs, and cupped my cheeks in her hands. I couldn't feel her right one, the one on my scar.

"Darling dearest Milly-Fox," she said, "what is it that's bothering you? You know I can always tell when you're preoccupied."

"I..." Might as well say it. "I um, I and we... I mean, um, I had, uh, plans."

"What? I didn't catch a word of that. I tell you time and time again, don't mumble." She was using her fingers now to shape my mouth as she sounded out the words. "I can't un-der-stand what you mean when you don't e-nun-ci-ate your words. Try again, honey."

So I took a breath. I didn't want to get mad and if I got her mad she'd never give me what I wanted. Not that it was likely anyway. "Me and Zephyr," I said, trying hard to make that side of my face move, "had plans to eat lunch today. At the septad-day. To catch up."

"You and Zephyr Woolsey, sweetheart?" She tilted her head and her long black hair, shiny and smooth and silky, tickled my side. "You aren't going molly on me, are you? You met Cardenio six days ago, and you weren't in any kind of... mood when you returned..."

"Keeper," I said, and my voice was pathetic. Powers and blessed saints, it was just plain pathetic. "I ain't no mol..."

"Are you sure, darling?" Her hand traced around one of my nipples, pressed flat against my pec. Her other was doing things up and down my thigh, then around my lats and abs, that I really don't feel like explaining because fuck, I didn't want it. I mean, I would have at any normal time I guess, but I was tired and I'd crossed half the fucking city twice in one night and we'd fucked once already that morning.

I couldn't get up. She was doing these things to me that would've had any other guy my age howling with envyif I told them about it and fuck me sideways, I just couldn't do it, which in a way was worse than when I didn't want to do it and she made me get hard anyway. Finally, she looked down at me from her straddle on my hips and said, "Is it me, Milly-Fox? Is that what it is?"

She knew it wasn't her and she was just saying it to be mean. She did that sometimes. "No. It's not you. I guess I'm just a shit-head good-for-nothing."

"Oh," she said, "you're good for something." Her index finger traced my scar. "You made me a lot of money last night, Milly-Fox. And you're going to be leaving tonight with Marcus Illycios for Kekropia."

"I am?" News to me if I was.

"Of course you are." She squeezed my biceps. "You're my muscle, darling, and I think perhaps Marcus needs reminder of that. He doesn't seem to grasp that my shipment of spiderweb is my shipment of spiderweb, and that his percentage is not to exceed one-fifth. I know you aren't too terribly good at math, but even you can understand that. So you will go, and you will watch, and you will... oh, why don't you tell me what I mean, Milly-Fox?"

"You want me to whale the hell out of him if he doesn't do what you said?"

Her smile was beautiful. She was always beautiful. "Yes. I'll explain to you in further detail later. And if you want to meet Zephyr by noon, well, you really had better get moving, hadn't you?"

She was giving me permission, and if I had any kind of brains at all, I'd take advantage of it. "Thank you, Keeper." And I made to sit up. As I did, she kissed me real hard, and said, "Oh, darling, I'm sure you'll find a way to repay me somehow." Just the way she said that made me shiver. Keeper never let debts go unpaid. Hell, I'd even been sent to collect debts a time or two, or to enforce favors for her. Like I said, I knew better than anyone just how hard she could play.

I got up and dressed-- clean clothes, no blood on them. She watched me the entire time, so I made sure not to go fast, because that'd show her just how fucking bad I wanted to get away.

From behind me, she said, "Make sure to wear a coat. I don't want you to get the Winter Fever. I love you, Milly-Fox."

My throat was all closed up, but I had to speak. Speak. Say something, you stupid fuck.

"I love you too, Keeper." I slid my coat on, let her kiss me again. Went out the door cussing myself out in my head. Mad at herfor saying it, and I was mad at me for saying it back. But you know what the sad part was, the part that pissed me off the most? It was that I couldn't even tell myself it was a lie.

I glared the hell out of all of the rest of the kids on the way out to the street. They knew what Keeper and me did, and they were all staring at me with eyes as big as bell-wheels. And yeah, they didn't deserve another person being mean to them, but the way I reasoned it out was that I wasn't being mean to them so much as daring them to try to piss me off so I could be mean to them. No-one took me up on that dare, which proved that even if I was one of the stupidest fucking people to have ever walked the face of the planet, at least the rest of Keeper's kids weren't as dumb as me.

I met Zephyr at a little café in Dragonteeth, actually not too far from Richard's Park, which was where Zephyr went to communicate with nature or some shit. It was a nice place, not flash or nothing, but the tables were all clean and so was the food, which was more than you could say about a lot of the other eating establishments in the Lower City.

My head still hadn't unfogged, and I didn't even pay attention to what I was ordering-- I wasn't hungry and really didn't give a fuck whether the man behind the counter understood what I was saying. I let the scar do what it wanted. Zephyr was the only one who I cared to have listen to me at the moment anyway, and he could hear through the slur.

We paid for our food in advance, then kind-of mosied around over to a table by the window. I chose the seat against the wall. You know, just in case. Margot would've rolled her eyes at me and told me to stop being paranoid, and Cardenio would have reminded me that no-one would really be waiting to jump out of the corner to stab me in the back, but Zephyr just acted like he didn't notice, or that he did notice and that it was completely normal. And it was normal. For me, anyway.

After a while, a girl brought our food around. Sure enough, the guy had fucked up my order, but I didn't care. I mostly just watched Zephyr eat. He had this weird lamb thing with apples sautéed in sugar, and also a crusty green blob of something that I figured was a vegetable but couldn't be quite sure about. So I asked him.

"This?" he said, and raised his eyebrows. "This, my friend, is something that even I am unable to identify." He took a bite. "It tastes splendid, though."

I laughed again, but it was more like a wheeze. Fuck it, I was tired. I rubbed my temples with my hand. "Sorry," I said to him. "I been up since the night before yesterday."

"Yeah," he nodded, "that'll do it." But his face had kinda gone white.

"I ain't no sissy, though, and I ain't gonna be passing out on you or nothing."

I watched his face, watched him try to figure out what to say, figured out myself that he wasn't worried about me getting my beauty sleep. "No, Mildmay, you, um, you..." He blushed like a tomato. "Um. Your, um, your hands, they..."

I looked at my hands, first the backs and then front. They seemed fine at first-- I mean, yeah, there were a few cuts on my knuckles from busting out that window, which was what I'd thought at first he'd meant. But that wasn't a new thing,and I was just about to ask him what he was talking about when I realized. It was -- I'd gotten used to it or something. and it took me a while to notice. And I don't even care to try to come to terms with how fucked-up that is.

My fingernails were all dirty as a whore's underwear, and not with dirt. It was blood. Blood. Blood all up around my cuticles and in the hangnails and up underneath and everything. There was even some of it dried along the lines on my palms. It looked like I'd just gotten done slaughtering a septad-worth of chickens or, you know, maybe a human. Four humans. My hands crept under the table and laid down in my lap, real slow, like they thought they were being all sneaky or something.

If you can't be good, be clean, Keeper always said, and I don't guess I was particularly clean or particularly good right then. Not that I ever was.

"Oh," I said, and really, what the fuck else could I say? It was a busy night last night? I had to chase some cunt all around her house after killing her kids because she didn't have the common fucking courtesy to just die? I didn't get in until the first hour of the morning and then Keeper was way too interested in other things on my body to bitch about me washing my hands? Yeah, none of that shit would fly, but that was the truth.

"Here," he said, pushing his glass of water across the table towards me. He smiled at me the way I'd never be able to smile at anybody-- just plain kindness, friendship, sweetness. "You don't want anyone else to notice, do you?"

I got what he meant, and I looked around to make sure no-one would see me washing my hands at a table in a fucking restaurant, but this wasn't no flash place, and besides there wasn't anyone eating besides us. So I took my handkerchief out of my pocket --I didn't use the cloth restaurant napkins because I didn't want to be leaving bloodstains on 'em-- and started scrubbing my fingers. I still felt like a lunatic, but I guessed I'd look like more of a lunatic wandering around with blood all over my hands for the rest of the day.

I was about done, and Kethe, I could feel my face burning, like it was going to set on fire, when he said, "Mildmay, I'm worried about you."

… What the fuck?

I kept my head down, but I didn't shoot down what he said right away. Because fuck me. I didn't know what to say. Again. Some of my hair had come loose out of my queue and I was glad as it meant he maybe wouldn't be able to see my eyes. I just kept on scrubbing and I knew he knew I'd heard him, because he didn't try again.

So I finally had to look up and because I couldn't think of nothing better, I asked, "Why?" Also because it kept me from actually having to fucking think about a reply. Keeper and me and Zephyr and the powers and saints above all knew I wasn't too good at that. No, I was good at killing people, and robbing them blind, and climbing shit. Not much else.

"I think you know," and that was Zephyr for you. He'd never let you get away with acting stupid, even when you actually were, like me. Stupid me. Can't even remember to clean up after a job. "But if you really require clarification, I guess I can start with what your keeper's having you do." His eyes were sharp and bright and thoughtful.

"I been doing it for two indictions." I was muttering to my not-bloody hands. And I asked another question for the same reasons I'd asked the first. "Why now?"

"Because it's getting worse. Have you lookedat yourself lately? There are bags under your eyes the size of Ver-Istenna's gargoyles. How many jobs have you had in the past decad? No, don't answer... not that you would. I just want you to think. Think it through." Kethe, see? He always was trying to get you to be smarter. "She's going to run you into the ground, Mildmay. Don't make the mistake of believing that she cares--"

I said, real quick, "She does care. She loves me."

"Yeah, I'm positive she does." He put his fork into the whatever-the-fuck-he-was-eating like he really wanted to be puitting it something -someone- else. "Last decad you had a sprained wrist. How can you be sure that next decad it won't be a broken neck?"

"I'm too good." It was true, even if it made me sound like a cocky bastard. I was the best in the entire city. There wasn't no-one who could beat me one-on-one. Keeper had put paid to that. She didn't want no second-best doing her jobs.

"I'm sure you are," he said, "but I wasn't talking about Rindelshin and his ilk. I was talking about Scaffelgreen."

Oh, no he fucking didn't. "Yeah? Well, you seem funnily concerned about me when the stake has your name in its fucking appointment book." His face fell, and right after I said it, I felt guilty. Sick-guilty, all the way down to my bones, the way I never did about a job. "Damn me. Sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean that."

"I know you didn't," he said sadly.

We got up and left, and going down the Rue de blanc, almost over the Sim, he said, "Has she sent you to kill another wizard yet?"

I just about jumped three feet up in the air and five foot sideways. I looked around us quick, but no-one gave a fuck even if they were listening. "What the fuck kind of question is that?" I hissed. He just raised his eyebrows at me, and I said, "No. No. Not yet."

"I know that you know that you can't allow them to speak." I nodded. Keeper had told me that. "Good. But listen. If she ever makes you assassinate a blood wizard, don't let them bleed. And don't let them make you bleed. If that happens, they'll kill you. That's why they're called blood wizards."

I looked at his face. It was dark and a little angry, but I knew he wasn't mad at me. "Um. Alright. Thanks, Zephyr. I'll remember that." And because I was desperate as fuck to change the damn subject, I said, "Hey, did you ever find out that thing that I asked you last time? You know, about, um..." Fuck. I was so scatterbrained that I couldn't even remember something I'd said ten fucking days ago.

And he helped me out. I don't need to tell you how grateful I was to him for it. 'Cause he could have not done. He could have kept on going. Could have kept badmouthing Keeper. But he didn't. And that, I guess, was why he was my friend. "You mean about whether August Raphenius actually was Augustina Raphenia?"

"Yeah. So, did you?"

We spent the next quarter-hour talking about how August-- you know, he was the younger twin of Mark Raphenius way back in the day, but there was a lot of rumor even back then about whether he was really the younger twin, or whether he was actually a girl but the older or what. 'Cause supposedly he was girly looking. Zephyr told me that they even mentioned how feminine he was in the house records for the Raphenii, and just how fucking sissy do you got to act to have them put that down in something like that? Either he made the person who wrote them things mad enough to spit fire or he was as limp-wristed as Shannon Teverius.

Before either of us knew it, we'd gotten to his shop on the Rue de écu. And we just stood there for a while, both of us watching the sun glint off the rooftops of all the buildings around us. Then the bells of Ver-Istenna's chimed the ninth hour of the day, and I thought, Shit. "Hey," I said, bumping his shoulder. "I gotta go, and I ain't gonna be around the next couple of decads." Smuggling job to Kekropia, duh. But I didn't want to say it and he didn't want to know it.

He looked at me sideways, and for once it was someone else who had the unreadable expression. "But you'll be back."

"Yeah. Yeah, 'course I'll be back."

"Alright," he said. "See you, Mildmay. Be safe." Then he was gone inside his shop, with its little windows and herbal tonics on the display front and all. When I turned and started walking towards Keeper's warehouse in Britomart, I could practically feel his stare burning holes in my back, and all I could think was, Please don't worry about me, but I couldn't say it. Couldn't deny, now that I had the time to think about it, that someone needed to worry, because it looked like I sure as fuck wasn't going to bother.

It's a weird feeling, knowing someone's worrying about you, and for all the fuck-lot of good it did me, I was careful during that smuggling trip. Real careful. And I got to thinking, Does Cardenio feel the same way? What about Margot? And I was sure they did, but they were my age and worrying about themselves besides. Zephyr was older and I guess it made him sad to see me doing the things I did.

I made a promise to myself to, I don't know, try to stop worrying them as much as I could. It even seemed like I might be able to manage it, in some crazy part of my head, but it turned out that Zephyr was the one who needed to have been more careful, because by the time I got back he was in the Kennel and fixing to be burned at the stake.

If this were a fairy tale I was telling you all, it would have gone down like this: I would've broken into the Kennel and saved him and we'd've go on to convince the other hocuses that witch-hunts aren't a great fucking idea, and then no-one would be killed that way no more. And we'd've saved all the kept-thieves while we were at it. It'd have been one big happy ending for everyone.

But this isn't no damn fairy tale, and what you get is that I couldn't save him, and I watched him burn to death 'cause that was all I could do, and a couples of months after that the hit order came in for Cerberus Cresset. I knifed him in the chest real smooth like the fox people always called me, and I kept on killing and I didn't have no-one to worry about me any more. Don't guess I deserved it.

There's your happy ending for you.

I hope I didn't freak anyone out with the murder scene. I mean, I'm obviously not an assassin or a murderer, and I apologize if it offended any of you. It's just, Mildmay does tell Felix that he did some "really horrible things", and that "what (he) did to Griselda Kilkenny should have made (him) stop and think about what (he) was doing". This feels really dry to me, but then, I am a beginning writer, and I tried to get across Mildmay's depression, which he said he was during the last few years he was with Kolkhis. Still not sure I did a good job. I'd appreciate concrit. :D

Anyway, will you please review and give me your opinion on this fic? I'd really like it! :)