She knows she's finally found him when she feels the old, dark magic twisting within her again, that touch of the Void granted to her years ago in exchange for her loyalty. It had stayed with her for a short time after that loyalty had ended – long enough to get her safely and swiftly past watchmen and wolfhounds, out of the city and through the blockade – but as the distance grew, vast oceans opening up between her and the man who had shared these gifts, the powers eventually faded.
(Delilah's magic had left her in an instant, vanishing the moment she'd bowed her head and offered her blade to Daud. She was never sure if this reflected somehow on the natures of her two masters or simply on the twisted whimsy of the Outsider.)
Now she feels it again, humming through her bones and burning over her skin even in this bitter, northern cold, and her heart leaps with mingled elation and terror. She wants to scale the rigging above and fly from mast to mast in the blink of an eye like she's back on Dunwall rooftops. She wants to spin the wheel so fast the ship's railing dips into the water, flee and never come back this way again.
She does neither, planting her feet and keeping her heading. Too late to turn back now, waste of food and good oil to take such a long journey for nothing. She follows the thrum of power coursing through her body, absently fingers the handle of the old assassin's blade strapped to her hip, and wonders how she will greet the old man after all this time.
Daud wakes, not for the first nor likely the last time in his life, to the press of cold steel against his throat. Old reflexes snap back to him in an instant, and he snatches the attacker's wrist, roughly twisting the knife away, before even opening his eyes.
The face before him is familiar. Older, wearier, more scarred, but he recognizes her immediately. "Your new gang's not up to the old standards," she says. "I'd have had you dead in a minute, and none of them would know it 'til morning."
He doesn't bother explaining the obvious: that the standards have clearly changed and desperate, paranoid killers no longer fill his ranks. That Daud doesn't recruit people like her, people like himself, anymore. "You had your chance to kill me years ago," he says instead, easing his hold on her wrist. Her grip on the knife remains firm, but her hand trembles slightly beneath his, and she offers no resistance when he pushes her arm away so he can sit up. "I doubt you hunted me down now just to tell me you've changed your mind."
A flicker of a smile passes across her face. She stands up straight, pulling her arm back and letting the knife hang at her side, pointed to the ground. "Your guards are still shit."
He shakes his head and runs his fingers lightly across his neck to check for any bleeding nicks. They come away dry, of course. She's always been a steady hand with the blade. "Unfortunately," he says, rubbing fingers and thumb together, "not everyone I train can be Billie Lurk."
Her whole body tenses up, shoulders drawn in tight, but she smiles again, strange and sad. "It's been a damn long time since anyone's called me by that name."
She isn't exactly welcomed with open arms, but Daud doesn't immediately send her on her way either, which is about as much as she'd dared to hope for. She claims an empty bunk in the barracks beneath the disused guard tower serving as his base of operations, and she spends the first few nights trying to remember how to sleep on a bed that doesn't dip and roll with the motion of the waves.
And she tries to ignore all the staring.
If Daud's intention had been to leave Dunwall and live a quiet and solitary life, then he is doing a poor job of it. Billie had once spent a little time poking around the smaller Serkonan port towns, asking vague questions and looking for him without quite admitting it to herself, but she'd known even then it was a futile effort. Burn hot and burn up, he'd said. They'd both avoided that fate, but Daud was still never going to be the type to go back home and fade away. He has instead managed to once again gather a group of loyal followers, serving him in a new endeavor, and Billie is not at all surprised. He's always had a strange charisma, a natural sway that draws people to him effortlessly.
After all, here she is again.
So she supposes the staring from this new crew is understandable. Unlike Billie, Daud had never tried to slip into a new identity in his new life, maybe hadn't thought it necessary so far from the city where he built his reputation, but there must have been at least a few whispers carrying that name even this far north. Now here is someone who knows their mysterious boss, someone introduced to them, vaguely, as an 'old associate', and the curiosity surrounding her is almost tangible.
She watches, too, though less wide-eyed and obvious, taking the measure of the men and women who now work for the old Knife of Dunwall. They're not much like the ones she remembers from the old days. Daud trades in information instead of bodies now, and his people reflect that change. They sneak and talk and listen and slip away, avoiding the fight when they can. Half of them don't even sleep here, going home to respectable lives and families and then reporting back with high class gossip.
Billie watches a few of them feint at each other in the training yard and remembers vicious sparring on crumbling rooftops, sending overconfident novices away with bruised ribs and broken collarbones. She touches her blade again and frowns.
"You believe they're weak."
Billie manages not to jump, even though it's been quite some time since she's been around anyone who could sneak up on her. "No," she says, turning slightly as Daud comes to stand beside her. "I know they don't have to do what we did." But she glances out over the yard again and knows he is right. A part of her – the part that still evaluates every high-walled building she sees for entry points and clean exits – still judges people as potential threats before anything else, and it has already dismissed these as unworthy of her concern.
"Try not to break any bones if you convince one of them to spar with you. They do still have to work tomorrow."
She snorts a laugh, surprised, and shakes her head. "I wouldn't trust myself to keep that promise. Holding back isn't really something you taught me." She's been keeping her head down for years, and her body aches to fight all out like it used to. She rolls her shoulders and gives him a sidelong glance. "Could maybe take you on, though."
Daud considers her for a moment, raised eyebrow tugging at his old scar. "No," he says bluntly.
An unexpectedly indignant flare of anger lights in her chest, and suddenly she's back on the streets of Dunwall, young and reckless and desperately craving acknowledgment. "Why? Not worth your time anymore, old man?" she challenges.
A muscle twitches at the edge of his jaw, flattening out his grim frown for a few brief seconds. On anyone else, it would hardly count as a smile, but on Daud… "Because I'm not sure who would win," he finally says, turning to walk away, "and I'm not one for gambling these days."
The anger evaporates immediately, and something that isn't quite pride – something she'd rather not examine too closely – takes its place.
The lamps are still burning in the top floor rooms, and a tall shadow moves on the balcony, accompanied by the red glow of a lit cigar. Billie watches for a while, then shifts her attention to the eaves above and decides now is as good a time as any to try. She concentrates, frowning deeply, closes her eyes, clenches her fist, and –
And then she is throwing out an arm for balance as her boots slide against rain-slicked roof tiles. The laugh slips from her unbidden, an easy delight she hasn't felt in ages. She crouches into a steady, familiar stance and peers out over the quiet city.
"Interesting." Daud is looking at her from below, neck craned. "I was never sure if those gifts would stay with you when you left."
He says 'left' so easily, like it was decision freely made between them.
The smoke curls up from his hand, and she wrinkles her nose. Same cheap brand he's always favored, quick-burning and dropping dark ash everywhere. He could clearly afford better now, but she really has no room to criticize. She always used to snag one from his desk when they discussed targets and plans together, leaning back in his chair and trying to blow smoke rings toward the ruined ceiling while he pinned his maps and portraits to the board. Later on, if her ship was running smoothly and her ledgers were solidly in the black, she would sometimes slip a box in with the necessary supply purchases.
She shakes her head. "They didn't. I lost them for years, but I could feel it again when I got close to you. That was my first transversal since I left Dunwall." She hops gracefully from the roof to the balcony and leans back against the railing in front of him. "Which is a real shame. I could've used a couple of those skills a few months ago."
"The coup?" he asks quietly.
She looks down, scuffs her heel across the metal grating beneath her. "Yeah," she says, just as quietly. "You hear much about it all the way up here?"
"A few rumors. Seems it was nearly over by the time any real news reached this far."
"Well, whatever story sounded most ridiculous was probably closest to the truth." She lifts her chin to catch his eye, holds it steady for a few long seconds. "I thought you took care of Delilah," she says, barely above a whisper.
Daud looks away and lets out a weary sigh, filling the air in front of him with smoke. "So did I. If I'd known…" The thought trails off unfinished, and he turns toward her again. "It sounds like you were in the thick of this, so I trust she's met a more permanent end this time."
"She won't be a problem anymore," Billie says with a sharp smile. "Wasn't me who did it, though. I just took Emily where she needed to go."
A pause, and Daud leans forward, resting his arms on the railing beside her. "Emily Kaldwin?"
She smirks a little and gives him a nod. "The Empress herself was a passenger on my little ship, and I brought her to Karnaca and back while she fought for her throne." She looks up, gazing at the roof and the stars beyond. "I liked her. She's a good-hearted kid. Smart. Looks just like her mother." At her elbow, Daud's free hand tightens briefly on the railing, the leather of his glove creaking under the strain, and Billie watches this reaction with interest. "So, now we've both worked to kill one empress and save another," she adds, her tone carefully light and neutral. "Wonder how that all balances out in the end?"
Daud straightens up and taps his cigar with more force than necessary, knocking all the ash from its tip. "You know there's no answer for that," he says roughly, taking a step back and away from her.
He falls silent then, and Billie almost regrets her prodding. She'd paid some pretty coin for the old audiograph that black market scavenger had managed to dig out of the Flooded District ruins, and she listened to it more often over the last few years than she cares to admit. Being able to hear Daud's low, rumbling voice again, without the echoes and crackling distortions inherent in the aged recording, is something she's already grown used to.
When he speaks again, it is not until after the cigar has burned down nearly to his knuckles. "You came here on your own ship?" he asks.
"Yeah," Billie says, looking at him curiously. She's not surprised at the shift in topic, but she wonders at the question itself. "It's just an old cargo hauler, but she's been prettied up for sea travel. Not a fast journey, but she got me here."
Daud nods. He leans forward again to put his hand back on the railing, and he taps two fingers steadily against the metal as his frown deepens. It's been over a decade since the days when Billie studied his every move and expression, searching first for lessons to be learned and then for signs of weakness, but she can read his indecision now as clearly as she could the guilt after Dunwall Tower. Eventually, he shakes his head and turns to face her. "There's a job upriver that I could use a ship and captain for," he tells her, slipping right into the flat, brisk tone he uses to talk business. "It would be easy work for someone like you, and you'd get an even cut of the pay when it's done."
The immediate rush of excitement catches her off-guard, something straight from the old days. The pride of being chosen to head up a big hit, the thrill of planning out the perfect path, the satisfaction of a target's life ending exactly as envisioned – it all comes back to her in the space of a few words uttered by the boss. She has to forcibly remind herself that they don't live in that world anymore, and she tries to pretend the feeling that follows isn't disappointment.
Daud seems to take her silence for reluctance. When she doesn't answer right away, he looks out over the rooftops and adds, "I can find another way to get it done. You don't owe me anything here."
It's an out Billie knows she should probably take – keep herself out of trouble and living something resembling a peaceful life – but then she's never been one to follow the more sensible path. If she were, she would never have sought him out again in the first place.
"What's the job?"
The job is this: Daud has been working to untangle a particularly twisted web of political intrigue and shady business practices at the request of multiple desperate clients for the better part of a year. He'd recently tracked down the center point where all the threads seem to lead – an extremely unpleasant man by the name of Pajari who has his fingers in a truly impressive number of pies. He's managed to keep all his legitimate business nice and clean, but back alley rumors connect him to some more questionable trade up and down the river that could easily be his undoing if it comes to light. Now someone just needs to slip in and find the evidence to tear that web apart.
Daud is right – an easy job for someone like Billie Lurk.
He assigns a handful of his people to assist her in the work, thankfully from the more rough-and-tumble set rather than any of his upper crust informants, and the level of discipline isn't quite what she remembers from her time with the Whalers. Orders are carried out well enough, but not with the same sharp immediacy that was expected back then, and there is constant quiet laughter and casual conversation that would never have been allowed during an active mission. Still, they readily accept her authority as captain, and a few of them even seem to know their way around a ship. The Dreadful Wale is a small enough vessel with enough Sokolov tweaks that Billie can run her on her own when she has to, but it's nice to have an actual crew once in a while. They reach their destination – a large warehouse right on the waterfront – much quicker than she would have alone.
From there, Billie is fully in her element. Docking near the warehouse is simple enough. Every port in the Isles is the same, and she's been through enough of them to know how that system works. The Wale has all the paperwork of a legitimate cargo transport; it's just a matter of finding the right pocket to slip a few coins into to keep the nosier port officers from looking too closely. Getting into the building is easy as well. She keeps most of the crew on board with some forged shipping orders, ready to bluff any warehouse guards who want to know what their business here is, and she slips around back to the low outbuildings and the wide windows she can reach from those sloped roofs.
She takes just one of Daud's people along to watch her back, a young man who had been one of the few to impress her in the training yard. He's got the classic Morley look, tall and fair-haired with a smattering of freckles across the nose, but he'd been surprisingly good at disappearing despite his distinctive features. There's an old pickpocket's brand on his inner wrist, but he still has all of his fingers, which means he only got caught the once. It's a better record than most street kids can boast, so she figures he'll have a keen enough eye to spot any trouble she might miss. (His name is Liam, and she has to keep reminding herself of that. Between his looks and his solemn attitude, she finds herself biting down on the urge to call him Thomas when she snaps out her orders. That one had disappeared even more thoroughly than Daud, and she can only hope he didn't go the way of Fennick and so many of the others.)
It turns out even one lookout is overkill, as the infiltration goes entirely smoothly. A wide awning gives her easy access to a broken window high in the warehouse, and an office key is easily snatched from the belt of a napping guard. Shipping ledgers full of contraband items and even a suggestion of slave trade are found beneath the false bottom of a locked desk drawer, and further paperwork connecting the business to Pajari is in a safe that takes her little time to crack. She has one close call with a wandering worker and slightly overestimates her ability to vault through an open window as cleanly as she once could, resulting in a gash across her palm from the jagged glass, but otherwise she is in and out without issue, evidence tucked safely in her coat.
It makes her uneasy at first. So little in Billie's life has ever gone right that she's always wary when something does. Her very first job for Daud had gone off without a hitch, and she'd spent the evening afterward pacing like an agitated hound, waiting for the inevitable disaster to follow, until Daud had snapped at her to sit down and shoved a glass of cheap whiskey into her hands. "You did good," he said. "You won't always, so save the panic for when something actually goes wrong."
Billie had saved an empress, got Anton back alive, found a man who couldn't be found, and now this. Maybe that old bad luck is finally changing. "You did good," she mutters to herself, and jumps down from the roof to meet up with Liam.
The wariness fades rapidly as the ship moves further down the river, away from the warehouse and closer to their base. The good spirits of the rest of the crew eventually get her to join in some of their idle chatter, and by the time the guard tower is in view, they've managed to prod her into a few stories – of unusual passengers she's ferried, of close encounters from her smuggling days, and even one deliberately vague tale of her time working for Daud.
By the time they've docked and disembarked and she is on her way up the stairs to deliver the information to Daud, she is feeling downright cheerful. She taps her knuckles on the door to his office and opens it without waiting for an invitation.
He looks up at her with a long-suffering expression but makes no comment, and Billie grins. She was always barging into his space in the old days, one of the few who could get away with it, and he had given up on scolding her early on. Sometimes she didn't even bother to use the door. She pulls Pajari's incriminating paperwork from her coat and holds it out. "I think we've got what you need here," she tells him.
Daud takes the papers from her and begins skimming through the information. "Excellent," he says, looking up from the file. "With everything else we have, this will see him ruined. Good work."
"Seems like a lot of trouble compared to a blade to the neck."
"This way has its own benefits. Seeing a man like Pajari long for death is even better than hearing him beg for his life."
She shrugs. "I don't know. I like the begging."
Daud makes a short, quiet choking sound, and it takes her a moment to recognize it as a laugh. She'd only ever made him laugh a handful of times before, catching him off-guard with some sharp remark on a particularly vexing target or client, and it always filled her with nearly as much pride as his curt praise over a job well done. She can feel herself fighting off another grin even as he recovers himself and shakes his head. "Yes, you always did," he says drily. He sets the papers aside and crosses his arms. "Were there any problems getting it done?"
Confidence bolstered by his approval, Billie waves the question off carelessly. "No. Easy work, like you said."
He reaches out quickly and catches her wrist on the way down, holding it in a firm, steady grip. His hands are bare here in the privacy of his office, and the warm, callused touch of his fingers causes her heartbeat to stutter in an unsettlingly familiar way. Then he pulls her fingers back, stretching her hand open, and the stinging across her palm as the congealed blood there cracks and exposes the forgotten cut to the air again makes her suck in a sharp breath.
"What's this?" he asks, brushing his thumb near the edge of the wound.
She stays very still to keep from wincing or jerking her hand back. "Stumbled a little over a broken window on the escape. Sloppy, but I still got out clean." She swallows and gives half a shrug with her free arm. "I am a little out of practice."
"I'm not doubting that you succeeded," Daud murmurs, eyes still fixed on her palm. He presses down with his thumb, and a little blood wells up and trickles over her skin and his fingertips. He watches this for a moment, then abruptly lets go and takes a step back. "Make sure to wash that well. We don't need you losing a hand over that mistake."
Billie frowns, curling her hand into a loose fist. She tries to ignore the way it now throbs in time with her quickened pulse. "Right," she says. "Did you need anything else from me?" Her teeth click together after the last word, biting down on the instinct to end her sentence with sir.
Daud opens his mouth to respond but shuts it again without speaking. The hand with her blood on it goes to the sword at his belt, clutching impulsively at the hilt. It is not the same whaling blade from so many years ago, and Billie has not asked what happened to it. He gives a brisk shake of his head. "No," he says curtly, then, "Good work," again, a clear dismissal this time.
She nods and makes her exit with quick, silent steps.
Later, hunched over the sink, Billie scrubs at her palm, flaking off dried blood and dirt until the cut is clean and aching and bleeding once more. She watches the pink water flow down the drain and thinks about what exactly she is doing here.
Falling back into old habits, apparently.
She knew that was a risk when she accepted the job from Daud, had known it even when she first decided to track him down. She had forgotten about this part of it, though, those moments when Daud's rough praise and casual contact would make her shudder from head to toe with something entirely separate from pride. Back then, she would do her best to ignore it. She would volunteer for a long reconnaissance job, something that let her disappear into the city for a while, and maybe take a lover for a night or two while she was away, someone sweet and pretty who reminded her of Deirdre, because a little heartache was easier to deal with than this.
(She's always been pickier with her men than her women, and if she's honest with herself now, she knows it's because she has a different point of comparison in mind for them. Cities like Dunwall churn out plenty of sad, stubborn beauties like Deirdre, but for good or ill, there aren't many men like Daud in the world.)
Billie dries off her hands and wraps a clean bandage across her palm, scowling as she pulls it tight. She's too old now for any of that bullshit. She'll have to deal with it or she'll have to leave, and she's come too far for that to be an option.
Daud wakes, once again, to the touch of Billie's hand at his throat, and he thinks, tiredly, that it is a good thing she has never truly tried to kill him. Talented Billie Lurk, who was always so good at slipping in where she didn't belong and finding secrets she shouldn't know. He'd have been dead ages ago if she'd acted alone instead of being drawn into Delilah's plot. He taught her too well.
He curls his fingers carefully around her wrist. Her hand is free of sharp metal this time, but the look in her eyes is dangerous enough on its own, grim determination over a hint of fear. "What are you doing?" he asks.
Billie flexes her hand in his grip and shakes her head. "Looking for the answer to a question I never got around to asking."
"And what question is that?"
"You know what it is."
He does. He'd had an inkling of it even back in Dunwall, when Billie would sometimes become strange and fidgety after a night spent poring over maps and notes together, talking in low voices with their heads bent close until the sun was beginning to creep over the horizon. Those nights before she would suddenly disappear, leaving only a brief note on the job she was working and then coming home days or weeks later with reams of observations on their next target. He'd always been half afraid she would leave for good one of those times, and so he'd never addressed it when she returned, never even considered how he would address it. And now…
The mattress dips slightly as Billie settles more of her weight onto it.
Now is a very different time.
He lets go of her wrist.
Daud fucks the way he used to kill, focused and thorough and oddly detached. He's got her gasping and digging her nails into his back in moments with little more reaction on his part than a smug upturn of the corner of his mouth. She has to tangle her legs with his and flip their positions to get anything more out of him, and she savors that first hitch of his breath as she pins his shoulders to the mattress.
Even afterward, as she lies sated across his chest and drifts just at the edge of sleep, she can tell the brush of his hands running up and down her body is a calculated movement rather than any sort of idle affection. He methodically finds all the scars on her body, lingering over the newer marks and skimming briskly over the old ones. He would remember those, of course. He'd given her several of them himself and had stitched up most of the others. She could just as easily find her own handiwork on his body if she tried, those rare times he hadn't got out clean and had eventually relented to her aggressive concern enough to peel away the blood-soaked clothes and let her take a look.
His fingers stall over the large, strangely-shaped scar between her shoulder blades, tracing repeatedly along its jagged edges, and she knows he is comparing it against all the different weapons he knows and trying to determine what could have possibly left such a wound. She smiles against his neck, amused, and says, "It was half a butcher's saw nailed to piece of wood. I got caught up in a workers riot by the docks a few years back."
His hand stops moving, and he lets out a breath that ruffles through her hair. "You get yourself into interesting places."
"You're one to talk, old man."
She can feel the quiet laugh rumbling from his chest, and she grins. That teasing title was always an old joke between them, though it's probably less of one now. Daud's once dark hair is shot through with gray, and the lines on his face are creased much deeper than she remembers. Billie doesn't mind; she hasn't felt very young herself in quite a while. She can already feel the ache she'll have in her neck if she actually falls asleep like this.
With a sigh, she pushes herself up onto her knees and stretches, Daud's hands sliding from her hips as she rises, and her eyes fall on the box of cigars sitting open on the bedside table. She leans across quickly to grab one, and Daud reaches for again, making a half-hearted attempt to stop her, but she twists easily away from his grasp. She settles down beside him a few moments later, lit cigar dangling from her fingers.
"You're going to get ash everywhere," he grumbles.
She shrugs, tilts her head back, and blows a perfect smoke ring up toward the ceiling. "Don't buy such shitty cigars."
He gives her a sharp look but is appeased when she offers the cigar to him. He takes a draw and hands it back, and for a while they lie in silence, watching the smoke curl and coil in the dim light of the room. Then Daud says, suddenly and without looking at her, "If you're going to stay for much longer, you should find somewhere upriver to dock your ship. The storms in the Month of Ice are vicious on the coast."
She can read the invitation implied in those words easily enough. She smiles and closes her eyes. "I'll look into it."