He slips out of the night like a cloak falling from his shoulders, stepping into the boat beside you, and you start the motor.
It used to be that the two of you would chatter and share news on the way to and from missions. No more. He brings death wherever he walks, and you can almost see the weight of the world on his shoulders. He's become silent, grim.
He pulls his mask off of his face, and you can see the shadows in his eyes, lines of weariness and pain unline them and you can see what recent days have done to the Lord Protector.
In the night, all that can be heard is the low hum of the motor, and the occasional shattering of glass or a single, solitary scream howling at the moon. That's the worst part of the Plague: The Silence. As the Chaos rose, there would be screaming and fights, gangs shouting tehir battle cries and guardsmen firing their pistols.
Now there's no one left to make any noise.
The Plague has virtually wiped Dunwall out, and now there's nothing left but the Weppers in the Laneways sitting atop their thrones of Rats.
"It's over." He says in a gravelly, old voice that doesn't sound like him anymore. "Burrows is dead." There's an edge to his voice, sharper than his blade.
"I figured." You mutter. When the screams and the clashing of blades and gunfire sounded from the tower, you knew what was happening. Just like when you heard the fighting at Lady Boyle's party. And the Academy of Natural Philosophy before that. And The Golden Cat before that...
He shakes his head, hanging it in shame and sorrow. "He didn't die like I thought he would." His eyes are lidded closed, and you can almost see the gears of guilt turning in his head. "I stabbed him, and he dropped to his knees without making a sound." He sighs. "Not a sound."
Again, the silence.
"You must think I'm a monster." His voice is depressed and saddened, and you weren't sure he could cry before now.
And something in you does. He's killed more people than he's had to, gone out of his way to be brutal, and there were other ways to take care of the targets as well, but he never took them. Just killed them all.
But something even deeper inside of you knows that he's not to blame. He's a father protecting his child, and a grieving man who's been stripped of his lover. And Dunwall took those men, forced him to send them to the afterlife. There's no good way out of a Plague like this, and it will make a sinner out of all the survivors, one way or another.
"You do what you have to." You say shortly, and that's the end of it.
The boat pulls up to the Hound Pits, and he steps out, one hand on his gun, leaving you behind. You sit and watch the waves, feeling them rocking the boat.
Another scream off in the distance. They carry very well across the river, now. Can be heard for half a league out sometime, now that there's nothing else making noise. Everyone I Dunwall is dead now, and someday they'll remember that a boatman named Samuel was a part of it all.
You cough hard, and blood seeps from your eyes.