A Bitter Requiem

by JaneBeyre

They say pride comes before a fall and Zevran had climbed high enough that the plummet proved fatal. At least... almost fatal. Rated M for safety. A short story gone long!

It was an unremarkable shop in an unremarkable street, the sort where a genius could hide, unhindered by the sneers of his peers, and the snotty opinions of the guilds. A place where lunatics could ramble of their troubles, unnoticed, masked by other broken minds. Whether the alchemist was worth remark or merely another blightbrained fool remained to be seen and Zevran shifted, uncomfortable, in his presence. He reassured himself that the alchemist came highly recommended and was trusted by someone that he trusted. As much as he could trust anyone. It did little to soothe his concerns.

The alchemist took long sniffs of the formula, the stench wrinkling up his crooked nose and filling his watery eyes with disbelief. Quick fingers took a quill in hand, spilling the ink into a spidery list, twirling the feathers when he needed to think. "And the person who made it?"

"She's dead."

"She?"

Another twirl, another note and Zevran sensed more questions. Those same quick fingers plucked up the vial again, turning it in his hand, as though the bottle held answers that the scent did not.

"And where was this made?"

"Is that of importance?"

The alchemist put down his quill, those watery black eyes seeking his but only able to hold them for a second. Perhaps he saw something in those amber soul gates. Something shifting, not quite right, not quite sane.

The alchemist cleared his throat, every muscle and cord visible. He licked those fat worm lips, cracked and stained with wine. "It would help to identify the ingredients..."

"No," Zevran said and there was finality behind the syllable that should have ended such questions.

"But if you want..."

"No," he said again, this time punctuating the word with the faintest of movements, the rustle of his hand reaching to coil around a dagger.

"But ser, I must insist..."

Zevran tapped his fingers against the stained oak of the desk, staring straight through the alchemist, mustering the most intimidating stance he could, sat down and soaking wet as he was. Did the man not realise whom he pushed? Did he think that his shop was safe on this street, in this city? All those fragile glass vials, neatly arranged. Books and papers so crisp and dry that Zevran could almost smell the smoke that would come from them should his anger rise again.

Eventually he sighed, letting go of his dagger and pinching two calloused fingers against the bridge of his nose to ease the pressure building there. "It will not help you. She had access to anything she needed."

"I see," the Alchemist, oblivious to the force behind his costumer's eyes, or the long list of less useful alchemists that lay in his past, or even the bejewelled dagger resting at his hip, ploughed on like a blinkered ox. "Is there any information you'd care to share with me?"

He slammed his fist against the desk. Papers jumped and scattered to the floor. The vial tinkled. They stayed there for a heartbeat, one man newly terrified the other freshly agitated. It took him three blinks of an eye to calm the swell of anger that rose. It is not the Alchemist's fault, he is a pawn.

"Can you do it?" he asked eventually through gritted teeth. "Gold is not an issue."

Those wine crusted lips opened, hung for a second, a gaping hole to nowhere and then snapped suddenly shut. "I...err...I will certainly try."

Zevran leaned forward, close enough to smell the man and his fear. "You will do better than try."

Will you take me to Antiva?

City of fog and memory. Both dense at this hour. Both roiled in from the ocean, like ghosts in the night. He breathed the salt-tanged air, listening for any sound other than the wind rattling the rigging, or whipping round his deep set hood. A cold wind. From the south.

Will you take me to Antiva?

He fought for his hood and won, tugging it quick and sharp-like over his ears. The docks were deserted but the low roofs always made him twitchy. Anyone could be watching, anyone could hear.

Will you take me to Antiva?

She'd wanted to ask for a long time. Obvious by the way she blurted it out all at once, words tumbling over each other like acrobats on stage. And then her cheeks blushed with a shade of pink he only ever saw in bed. He didn't begrudge her asking. After everything she'd done, didn't he owe her that at least? He played it cool, gave her his oft-repeated smirk and smothered her question with his mouth. It stuck in his mind like the thousand other thorns of her. If only he had told her then. If only he had told her once.

She never asked again.

The distinct scrape of leather on stone jerked him from memory. A shadow appeared from the fog, wrapped up as he, but in greys not blacks. It stopped, no more than five paces away. "Are you lost?"

He waited for a time, for her sauntering hips to reach where he stood clutching the rusty railings. "It seems I am found," he spoke the words, as Ignacio had told him.

She was slight, Ignacio's informant, slight and slim. The fabric at her hip billowed in a way to suggest a longsword rested there. I could take her, he thought, clenching and unclenching the old wound on his palm. The thought came tinged with sadness. Tonight would not be the night.

"Who told you to come?" Her voice purred in perfect Antivan but there was a lilt their too, something foreign, Dalish perhaps.

"The Third Talon," he snuck another glance at her, though he could distinguish no more entrenched as she was in that cloak.

She made a humming sound of approval. "Nice connections. What do you want to know?"

"How many crows fly this night?"

"Poetic one, eh?" She fumbled in her cloak, and Zevran's paranoia bristled until her gloved hand produced nothing more harmful than an apple. She buffed it against her woollen robe. "What is this? An inside cull?"

Zevran's fist tightened around the iron rail. Somewhere overhead a gull screeched into sudden life. She chucked the apple once, twice, before catching it and bursting the skin with a quick crunch. He willed his heart to beat slower. "He assured me there would be no questions."

"And he assured me you'd be an arrogant, self-serving son of a whore, likely to seduce me and then kill me," she took another bite, chewing as loud as a horse. "Can't always get what you want though."

"If this is a set up..." Zevran went instinctively for his stiletto, hidden in the folds of his robe. Too close for Starfang at his hip.

She scoffed, waved his worries away with a free palm. "Are you always this jumpy?"

"I'll be asking the questions," he snapped, not letting go of the palm sized hilt. The creeping up his spine begged him to look behind but he would not take his eyes from her, would not give her that chance.

The billows of her cloak rose and sank with her shoulders. "Fine," he sensed the eye-roll in the word though shadows hid her face. "Estaban Cell is out of town except for the Meccanti brothers who are running a show at The Blushing Maid-"

"What type of show?"

She tutted, leaned conspiratorially close, close enough for him to smell the fruit on her breath. "The kind that ends badly for rich men-"

"Who?"

She twirled the core of the apple by its wick and swung it over the rails and into the harbour waters. It sank with a plop, sending ripples between the row boats and setting the gull to crying again. "Does it matter? Some toff's son."

"Any others?"

"Gosh, you are right to business aren't you?" she sighed. "Don't fancy a drink?"

"If you're stalling for back-up then I would quit whilst you're ahead," it was he who craned closer now, smirking though she couldn't see. "You couldn't have killed me when I was ten summers young."

She scoffed and shrugged and said, "Piccanto Cell is out and about, I hear they've a racket in fake gems..."

"Anyone else?"

She sucked on her teeth before a pick appeared between her fingers and disappeared into the folds of her hood. He waited, impatience tapping his foot as his nails bit into the palm of his hand. Eventually she whistled out air, threw the toothpick into the harbour with her apple core and turned to him.

"I did hear this rumour... more gossip if you will..."

Zevran shrugged. "No smoke without fire..."

"And this is a bloody inferno..." she, perhaps simply for theatrics, glanced up the deserted habourside and down the winding street of sleeping shopfronts, then she brushed up against him, their arms touching through the thick spun cloth, her voice lowered to a murmur. "I heard The Black Fox is back."

Once, he'd have hired the penthouse at the Rio de Grande, slept in silk sheets with silk skin beside him, not caring for the bill or the paper trail or the stares of the men at the bar. He'd been the conspicuous type of assassin, avert and obvious, never to fall under suspicion. An act that could only take one so far. They say pride comes before a fall and Zevran had climbed high enough that the plummet proved fatal. At least... almost fatal.

Alone, in the four by four square of his rented room, more cupboard than room, more cobweb than walls, he lay on the pallet of straw with his cloak as a blanket. The cloak had been hers. Warden trappings, thick sable and too warm for his home but he wore it anyway. She'd caught him shivering in the Frostfangs and shrugged it off. Sometimes it still smelt of her.

The Rio de Grande stood on the other side of town. White marble instead of haphazard brickwork. But such a place was full of memory and the corpse of a man he'd become had no use for such fanciful times. That man had ended.

He shook the memory away, the vivid landscapes of reds and purples fading to dull grey plaster. Sleep was a fickle thing at the best of times, night threw up a thousand things and in the blackness of his mind he turned over each sordid detail. Like a tongue finding a gap in a tooth he probed towards her. He saw her face in passing strangers, heard her voice in places she could never be and if he gave himself the chance to dream...

He shuddered, pushing off the cloak, slick with a cold sweat. Lurching towards his pack, always next to the door, he fumbled with the drawstring, half-forgetting to breathe. He pulled out bundles of clothes, two slim leather bound journals, pouches of ingredients harmless in this state but together a lethal contact poison, countless whetstones and oils, three daggers honed sharp as dragon's teeth, a silver locket which if opened would reveal a piece of paper lined with a foreign verse and a lock of hair whose colour would be indistinguishable in the moonlight. When all of these were spread about before him he cursed, truly sweating now, reaching for the nearest bundle of cloth. His fingers were useless sausages as he pulled at the fabric apart. Whispering mad things, promises he'd never keep, he manically unwrapped it.

When he felt the glass against his fingers he scrambled to his makeshift bed and pulled the cork, downing it in one swift glug.

The last one, he thought as the bitterness crept up his throat. That alchemist better know what he's doing.

Winter dawned as sharp as a pin prick, the wind seeking to rattle and shiver any flesh it could grasp, the sun high and far away. No warmth from her gracious rays. Zevran flexed his toes to keep the blood pumping to them and shifted his position at the shop front.

Mornings were the best time to attack. Before his target wiped the drool from his chin, or smelt the coffee scent that steamed up the Antivan streets or even opened sleep-stuck eyes to the cold, cold light pouring in from the outside. People often had misconceptions about assassins, that they worked best at night was one of the most fatal.

The Blushing Maid was exactly the sort of establishment one would expect from its name, though none of the ladies who worked there were maids and most could no longer blush without rouge. The brothel was silent and still at this hour. He'd watched as the last candle was extinguished, watched as the woman silhouetted there shuttered her windows against the fast approaching dawn, watched as slithers of sunlight caught in the glass. Watched and waited.

Timing was everything.

The Meccanti brothers were well known among the tawdry denizens of these particular streets. Hustlers and killers breathed their names with caution. Whores winced when told to service them. Landlords and Madams alike dared not shut their doors to them for fear of a fiery rebuke. The ashes of inns and taverns lay in their murky past. Subtle was hardly their way.

Men like that would talk to save their skin. Zevran knew well for he'd been that way once, before...before her.

Not now, he thought sternly as her face swam in front of his eyes. The waiting always added fuel to the fire. So much time they'd wasted in those hours before their grim work. His guts yanked with the grief of it. He pursed his lips against the sickness that rose. Not now.

"Psst."

The whisper found him half drawing his longsword. He'd dispensed with the engulfing sable cloak in exchange for his drakescale armour, easier to manoeuvre like a second skin. Pressing his back against the brickwork he glanced around the plaza, astute amber eyes seeing no more signs of life than the birds overhead.

"Psst."

His eyes vaulted upwards. A sash window gaped open, the same window he'd watched as dawn crept in. The woman no longer a silhouette, ribbons of sleep tousled hair cascading towards a prominent bust, her lithe arm beckoning him closer, a smile twitching up her lips.

"Don't recognise me without the cloak?" Propped up on her elbows, the sleeves of her thin nightdress pulled down exposing the delicate lines of her collarbone. In one hand an apple, red and lustrous. Ignacio's informant.

"You?" He hissed up at her, more surprised than angry.

"Come round the back," she exaggerated a wink. "I'll let you in."

Iron pots and pans crowded the slate tiled walls jostling for position with lace underwear, shimmering stockings and drying sprigs of rosemary and lavender. Terracotta side boards thronged with the treasures of last night, half-drunk tankards of mead, piles of grubby coppers, bowls and plates still half swimming with whatever slop served for dinner. A stove smoked silently in centre of the room surrounded by silks and satins hung on lengths of string, steaming as they dried.

She gave him a lascivious smile as he took this all in, eyes darting nervously, hands firmly gripping the hilts of his longswords.

"Where are they?" he grunted.

"You're not doing it here," she shook her head, filling the narrow doorway to the rest of the inn with her wiry frame. "Too messy."

He stalked towards her, as threatening as he could stomach with her eyes so wide. Green eyes, he realised suddenly and his mind recoiled at the thought. She raised her chin, jaw set in determination, meeting his thunder with a cool breeze.

"Not here," she hissed. "We'll take them somewhere nearby."

"Is it we already?"

"Yes," she pushed him away with a strength that her thin arms shouldn't have managed. Not scared to meet his gaze with one as fierce as his own.

Somewhere above them a bed groaned and the soft pad of a foot scuffing the floor made them silent. Both their eyes swivelled to the brown-stained ceiling, breaths held in their throats. Three footsteps and it was done. No more sound but the softly cracking fire encased in its iron prison.

"Let me past," he glowered over her but she budged not an inch. "You do not know who you're screwing with, little girl."

"Oh, don't I?" her thin arm darted out, quick as a lunging viper, fingers like knives finding and prodding the flesh between his armour. "Zevran Arainai."

He took half a step back more concerned with his name on this stranger's lips than the pain burning up his chest. His eyes swept her up and down, desperately rummaging through the old box of memory trying to place her and finding nothing. "Who...?"

"It doesn't matter," she pushed him again, stepping into his reach. She smelt of smoke. "We need to act quickly. I can lure them to the warehouse district but you'll need to take it from there."

"I am not one for trusting those who refuse to trust me," he squared his shoulders, hating the taste of his next words but knowing he had to use them. "If you won't move I'll not lose sleep over your corpse."

She opened her mouth to rebut him, a snarl forming over perfect white teeth, when a faint sound came from the room behind her.

Before he could react she was in his arms, that snarl curled mouth insistently bruising against his. His hands left the hilt of his swords, found her shoulders, thinking to pry her off. The force of her sent him stumbling backwards but her arms clung to him like pincers, tugging his head down to meet hers, nails digging into his scalp.

"Vena! What have I told you about business in the cookroom?!" A scolding voice hissed like rain on a fire.

As sudden as she'd kissed him she was gone, leaving the sharp taste of apples on his lips. Before he could gather his senses, before his anger could swarm, she grabbed him by the hand and was tugging him past a hair-netted woman with sleep glazed eyes and a thunderous expression.

"Sorry, Elsa," she called over her shoulder as she pulled him through the dimly lit bar and pushed him into the stairwell. "You know what these morning types are like..."

"Just don't wake the whole bleeding house this time," the woman muttered as Zevran, seemingly without options, was elbowed and shoved up the stairs.

It was not until they were in the safety of her room, three flights up the red brick town house and down a wonky corridor, that he let loose on his rage.

"Do not presume to..."

A sudden sting jolted his face to the left. Blood rushed his cheek and he pressed a hand to the sore flesh. It took two blinks to realise she'd slapped him. His anger became guttural sounds of shock. He stared at her.

The hand that had hit him fell to her side. She had that fierce expression again, one used to hard-knocks and sharp insults, completely at odds with her bare feet, the exposed skin of her throat where he could see her pulse quicken. "Are you done wallowing? Because we have serious business to attend."

"Wallowing..." he repeated, dumbstruck.

"For Makers sake," she threw those lithe arms in the air. "You think people don't know?" Her shoulders slumped as her voice softened. "The story is cried from Gwaren to Konnt-arr..."

"Enough..." he muttered, fixing his attention on the spiralling patterns of the rug, the loose ends of thread that longed to be picked.

Zevran didn't expect her to stop. Even though she was a stranger he could see the iron rod of her will; unbent, unbroken, unyielding. She had the stamina to break him, he saw that too, in the determined lines of her jaw and brow, in the straight cold stroke of her apple-scented lips, in her stance, straight and proud as an arrow.

"Is Vena even your real name?" He asked eventually, more to fill the silence. He knew it wouldn't be. Someone like her wasn't foolhardy enough to leave a trail like a true name.

She shook her raven tousled head. "You can call me it though, if you like."

"I'd rather know what's in this for you," he crossed his arms, meeting those painfully green eyes, almost the same shade as the ghost's that haunted him. "Are you a crow? A double agent? A spy?"

Again the shake of her head, again a silence filled only with her sighs. Zevran took the chance to glance about her room, searching for clues and finding only bare neatness, the mess of blankets on the sad single mattress the only sign of an occupant, even the closet stood open and empty. This is not her usual abode.

"I am one of many," she said and he had to snap his head towards her and mull over her words before he understood. "And we are all one."

"The resistance..." he choked out as her eyes became slits of snake-like anger.

"We do not name ourselves, do not paint ourselves as anything more than soldiers in a war fought behind closed doors..."

He felt the faint buzz of amusement building in his stomach and wondered how long it had been since he'd truly let loose and laughed. Along time, before his life had turned ash in his hands. "And what is your aim, call-me Vena?"

"Don't mock me." The delicate cords of her neck stood stark with her collarbone. "You have no idea what I've been through to get this far."

He shrugged. The world was full of sob-stories and they were as thick as flies in Antiva. The impoverished had to fight the slavers, the forceful madams, the pushers of bark and booze on every street corner. The wealthy had their own wars, the up and coming thieves guild, the conniving politicians; bit players who would sell their own children to climb the ladder of power and worse of all, at the top of the pecking order, running the show from shadowy corners and secret rooms fluttered the ever-present Guild of Crows.

What did she want from him? To cry because some stranger with familiar eyes had a life not worth living. She should join the ranks of the unhappy, queue like the rest of them, waiting for the end.

"I don't need you," he said anyway, pushing her to see how hard she'd push back.

She stood her ground, match-stick arms tense with the fury of one a thousand times her size, mouth tight, defensive as a shield wall, tough and strong and ready to fight. He was forced to admire her grit. She lurched forward, held her head high and proud, contempt curling the corner of her mouth. "Has working as a lone wolf turned out so well for you?" she hissed, then dropped her voice so he had to strain to hear. "You will not destroy the Crows by yourself, Zevran. Come in from the cold, let us help you..."

He snorted his derision. "You want me to join you? A group of children and lack-wits whose only thrust against the power is to paint witty slogans in the plazas?" He huffed a laugh, a false one. "I work better alone, I don't need to trip over your idiots whilst I do so..."

"We aren't like that!" She squared up to him like a warrior would. "Once, perhaps, but now it's serious business..."

"Truly?" he couldn't help the smile creeping up his cheek. "What have you done that's so serious, my dear?"

"We killed the Second Talon."

That made him stop and blink. But only for a heartbeat. "The Second Talon fell from his horse whilst drunk, my dear..."

"And who fortified the wine?" Her grin dripped with smugness, a proud one she, and not afraid of showing it. "Who loosed the straps of his saddle? Who cried they'd seen the fox and drove his horse into lather?"

Zevran let her fury settle and it was his turn to feel the burning of contempt. "You have just proven why I cannot work with you."

"What are you talking about?"

"So easily admitting to such an act is insensible."

"Oh, really?" her voice rose in pitch if not volume. "Last time I checked you were a fine one for boasting of your deeds..."

He had to grant her a touch, a well executed one at that. Part of him niggled that she knew too much, but it was gossip any dockside whore would tell you. Zevran Arainai had once been an arrogant man. Babes in the cradle could tell you as much. So why did it unnerve him that she knew?

"I'm sorry," she said in a way that sounded anything but. "I'm not going to force you to let me help you but please... at least think... about it." Anger deflated she looked to her feet. "We are...in need of a bold leader," she said, as though with a mouthful of thorns.

This time the laughter erupted before he had a chance to smother it. Great whoops surged from his lungs and he cackled like a fishwife on bark. To her credit she took it as she took his anger, with a poise and dignity far beyond her years. He caught glimpses of her between his splutters, stern faced as a statue.

Eventually he stammered to a halt, cheeks flushed and eyes wincing with mirth. "I am not a leader, little girl. I am half a man."

"No," she whispered, stepping into his reach again. "You're the best of us, of all the defectors, of all the double agents we have none with your expertise...your experience...what you did in Ferelden..."

"I didn't do alone."

"And you're not alone this time." Those eyes, so uncanny in their resemblance, went wide with beseeching. She clutched his arm with a desperate grip that he barely felt under his leathers. "Please... Zev. We can take them together."

He shirked her off. Too much, those eyes and those words, too familiar. He opened his mouth to refuse and found her helpless and desperate, pushing back the building tears with her palms and clasping her mouth around a sob.

"Maker help me," he shook his head. "Fine. But just once."

Noontime at dockside Antiva stunk of the morning's fresh catch turning bad. It stank of the scum from the Brown Quay, flotsam and jetsam sinking slowly on the sluggish waters. It stank of the sick-inducing scent of the tanners, of fresh spilled blood of the butchers, of onions rotting in the heat. It stank of home and Zevran breathed it in deep. No city in Thedas could boast such a scent, all tied together with the rush of saltspray.

He moved through the familiar streets like a shadow, people oblivious to his presence as he sidled past, snatching up mutters of conversation, noting the disaffection of the hard at work. Once, when he was too young to know better, he had dreamed of a life as a fisherman. The apparent loneliness of the sea an enticing draw for an orphan who'd never know the meaning of privacy. Having since been aboard a ship for months on end his youthful folly was realised. A fisherman's life was all hard graft and sleepless nights, stinking guts, large risk for poor reward. And it was far from lonely, cooped up at sea with your shipmates like sardines in a jar.

Killing people was easier. High risk, high reward. A better strategy. Not that he'd much of a choice.

Lingering around the warehouse district he was not out of place. Men milled and loitered, dressed in ragged aprons, some even blood splattered. He'd get no odd looks here in his shabby shirt and worn out breeches. Starfang was wrapped under lock and key at his safe house, swapped for a plain steel longsword and two rustic looking daggers. No-one gave him a second glance.

Why had he agreed to this madness? The girl had hooked him with the skill of a seamstress. It was those damnable eyes, he was sure. Those intent orbs the colour of spring grass, drawing out memories like poison from a wound.

I found these in her pack, child. She'd have wanted you to have them.

Two slim volumes. Red leather, thick vellum, a neat hand. A feather fell as he opened them, black, a remnant of the quill she always used. He caught it, pressed it back between the pages. They smelled of her, of ink and frost. He fingered the looping lines and fell asleep with her words on his lips, muttered like a prayer.

That night he had dreamt of her...

Voices, shouting, broke him from his revere. He opened his eyes, not realising they'd been closed, chiding himself for delving into the ocean of her whilst he was supposed to be alert.

He stepped from shadows, following the distant echoes of argument sounding off the high rough-hewn walls. Other faces peaked curiously from their work, the sounds of hammering and heaving stopping as he passed. Louder the shouts grew, more voices joining the choir of discontent, gruff masculine baritones. He sped up, hands gripping the cheap leather of his hilt, cursing himself for believing in that damned little girl. He rounded the corner.

The brothers Meccanti. If you saw them both together you'd wonder about their mother's fidelity. Zevran had made a comment to that effect, much to his jaw's dismay. Broad Meccanti, so the saying goes, was too stupid to remember his own name. He remembered his fists though, so mention of this was usually whispered, especially after Zevran's five week recovery in the Crow infirmary. They'd been no older than twelve summers. He still had a faint scar.

That thrashing ball of muscle had grown disfigured in his hugeness. Even from this distance Zevran saw the veins that stood, marring like bank broken rivers on pale earth. Hands that could crush a man's skull clenched around two hatchets as hard-used and brutal as the man himself.

Felco Meccanti was as whip-quick as his brother was ox-slow. Eyes that missed nothing set in a tight, pointed, fox-like face, pock-marked and craterous. He hid behind a veneer of vanity, all close fitting velvet brocade, the delicate chain of a pocket watch winking at his breast. He peered over the mountain that was his brother, sneering and scowling.

Between them stood Vena, proud in her grey cloak, her hood pulled down so her hair flew in the breeze. A rose among mutated and monstrous thorns. Her voice carried to where he waited, clear and calm as a summer's day.

"We have business here, foreman, I advise you let us past."

With his back to Zevran stood a man more brave than smart. He barely trembled in the wake of the brothers, unmoved by Vena's demands and, perhaps most stupidly of all, had impeded their progress up the street with his unarmoured self and without a weapon within reach. His arms formed a barrier as though to repel the brothers, and gestured as though to push them back. Futile, Zevran knew, and quite possibly a death sentence.

Zevran couldn't hear his words but he heard their intent. Other workman clustered in groups, pointing and frowning, tools that could easily turn to weapons within grasp. Zevran cursed his lack of a hood and kept his head down as he walked into the storm.

"Foreman, be reasonable," he heard Vena take on a note of desperation as she saw him, held his gaze for an imperceptible heartbeat over the foreman's shoulder. "We've shown you our slips now let us through."

"Them two is barred," the foreman said in his gruff city speak. "Aint wanting no trouble, do you understand?"

"Trouble," Broad's voice rumbled the one word deep enough for the foreman to take a considerable step back.

The plan was leaking like a sinking ship and Zevran was no honour-bound captain, he refused to go down with it. Death's embrace, he'd yearned for it, but not here in this stinking slum at the hands of two men so far beneath what he intended to achieve. He glanced at Vena, close enough that he could see the tiny hints of fear in her. He tucked his chin to his chest, willing himself invisible. Walk past and keep on walking. She'll come to no harm if I just leave. No point in this now.

"You!"

He knew the moment she screeched what she'd done. Slowly, like a man drawing his last breath, he raised his head. Her rough-spun cloak fell to reveal her outstretched, sun-kissed arm, a long delicate finger pointed in accusation. Pointed at him.

The Foreman whirled on the spot, the crunch of his booted foot on the gravel the only sound. Felco's twitchy rodent eyes blinked at him in confusion. Broad moved quicker than anyone.

"TROUBLE!" His delighted war cry, as he raised his machete high enough that it winked in the noon sun, only for a second.

Until he buried it in the foreman's shoulder.

The seconds drew out like an eternity. Vena's hand still raised, but her shell-shocked face abandoned Zevran, gaping at the Broad's gleeful giggling back as he swung the weapon up again.

Zevran sighed and went to work.

Daggers found their home in his palm and he lunged forward, mind focused on his target. Time shrunk to this moment, to the end of his weapons, nothing else mattered. Battle calm settled over him like a well worn cloak and he smiled.

Felco Meccanti had spent his whole life a Crow. Raised from a squalling toddler in the unloving wings of assassins. Endured their training and their tests. Endured starvation and solitude. Dragged under by the tide but still coming up for air every time.

None of this prepared him for Zevran Arainai.

The basket of his rapier caught in the straps of his belt buckle. He stumbled backwards, the thin blade half drawn, his hideous face cramped in utter fear. The scrape of metal as he half-drew his sword. Where it would remain, useless in his slack grip.

Zevran danced out of the spray, leaving his dagger behind, buried in Felco Meccanti's throat.

When a man has a cut throat he generally has the dignity to die quick. Gurgling and grasping, of course, but usually just long enough for their mind to catch up with their body. Seconds, usually.

Felco Meccanti did not survive all he'd lived through to die without a fight.

As his brother carried on butchering the thoroughly dead foreman, giggling manically all the while, Felco Meccanti flopped onto his front like a landed fish and stumbled to his feet.

Zevran raised an eyebrow as the should-be-dead man swayed, his broke fountain of a neck spurting blood, his useless hands grasping at him then slapping into the hilt of the dagger, too slick to get a good grip.

"Trouble!" Broad still smiled as he turned. A red faced grin that fell as he watched his brother sink to the ground, finally and undoubtedly dead.

The plan to take one of them alive sunk by the second. Zevran was left holding the driftwood, given only a handful of heartbeats to account for Broad's simple mind engaging his very unsimple machete skills.

Zevran had seen the bull fights staged in the plaza del armes, the matadors and the whip of their cloaks, the press and urgency of the crowd and of course the hulking, unthinking mass of the bull. Men trained their whole lives to face its horns, its stampeding hooves, its unlikely speed. Much as Zevran had trained for this task, to be quick and agile in the face of brute strength, to feint and flip like an over-worked acrobat, to use that colossus mountain of muscle against itself.

"Brother?" Broad did not charge, those empty black eyes wide with wonder at the sight of his collapsed brother and the lake of blood gurgling from him.

Zevran sliced the air with speed. Tearing his sword from its sheath, vaulting the slickened ground, heart pounding like a bust cloak. He swung, the double edged blade hungry for gut flesh. Broad yelped away and the point grazed uselessly off his breastplate.

Zevran skidded to a halt, not stopping to catch his breath. He lunged and Broad stumbled backwards to avoid the point piercing his groin. Zevran didn't miss a beat, the rhythm of warfare humming through him. As his blade retreated his dagger advanced, slicing the space in front of him sending Broad ducking and diving for safety.

Then, in a whirl of metal, Broad roared upwards. Zevran lost his footing, flailed to the floor, nearly impaling himself on his own sword as he rolled. Adrenaline saw him to his feet, darting the way he'd rolled, circling Broad as the bull of a man careened to a halt.

This time he stopped to pant back his breath.

And he realised he was bleeding.

In a fair fight first blood meant a lot. Usually the first man hit was the first man dead, but Zevran had the endurance of the sun. He would die, and soon he hoped, but the small knick to his bicep was not enough to tear him from his life.

As Broad began to turn, the pommel of Zevran's dagger was speeding towards his head. The force of the blow numbed Zevran's hands but did more damage to the fleshy bridge of the hulking Crow's nose. Broad lashed out blindly with his twin machetes, missing Zevran as he skirted and slid backwards. Zevran tried to keep one eye on the ground behind him and one eye on the glinting fury of the machete. It was asking for trouble, backing up like that and with Zevran's luck, trouble was what he'd find.

He stumbled over something. Flipping over as he fell he saw the protruding boot of Felco Meccanti, poking into the sky. The dirt floor whirled up to meet him. Justice had a sour sense of humour, he thought as grit slapped against his cheek, as a thud reverberated up his wrist, jarring his bones to the shoulder, numbing his hand, no longer tight around his longsword.

He scrambled to his feet in time for Broad Meccanti's machete to slam him back down.

He groaned, rolled over in attempt to escape, felt the pressure of a steel boot against his spine, struggled and spat out grit. The air whooped from his lungs as Broad buried his foot into his stomach. Palms flat against the floor he tried to right himself, drooling blood and spit and dirt. He scurried away on his elbows, slithering like a snake towards his fallen sword.

Instinct flipped him over, his ears detecting the faint hum of the machete. He blinked as the weapon kicked up dust where a moment before his head had been. Broad grunted, heaved the machete high above his head. A formidable move, but a stupid one.

Zevran took his chance. Ignoring the pain searing across his chest, shaking the lights from his eyes, he slapped for his last dagger hidden in his boot. Broad spat with fury, a roar to shake rocks snarling from his blood flecked mouth. Zevran grunted, sprang to his feet, as agile as his aches would allow, business end of the blade poised and ready.

It's no easy task to stab a man through the heart. Not only does it take the right angle, the right blade, the right thrust but an inordinate amount of strength to tear through skin, bone and muscle. Zevran grasped the hilt two handed, yanking his arms over his shoulder and then suddenly, precisely and deadly rammed it forwards with all the force he could muster.

The blade scraped between Broad's ribs. And stuck there. Zevran had half a heartbeat to let go of the flesh-buried blade as the giant's hand plummeted. It scraped Zevran's ungloved hand, sending blood flinging in an arch as he careened backwards. He barely found his footing, boot sliding backwards, eyes watering with pain.

Broad hacked mindlessly forward, unhinged by the dagger in his chest. Zevran barely had time to register his lack of weapon before the machete sliced a great arch through the air, taking another chunk of his torso with it. He hissed, resisting the urge to cover the wound as the left-hand hatchet fell to finish the job.

He tumbled under the decapitating blow, reeled to his feet, stumbling in the vague direction of his longsword as Broad fell to his knees.

Zevran sucked in the air as he grasped the blade in his good hand. Panting, shirt stuck to him, wounds still gushing, eyes and nose burning with grit, he took a stumbling step forward.

The last thing he remembered was an ear-splitting shriek, a blinding pain in his skull and the faint scent of apples as he slammed forwards into the waiting arms of blackness.