Chapter III
Corvo skirted the edge of the grand salon, letting the music and laughter of the dancers wash over him. As he scanned the vast room, he took in the sharply-dressed musicians on the low stage, the wisplike, floating scyphic lamps with their undulating light, and the many guests in their jewelled finery. It was an impressive sight, to be sure, but Corvo was concerned only with locating the empress. It had been a foolish distraction - a wine fuelled disagreement between two minor lords. He'd separated the two of them, and palmed them off to servants bearing trays of strong Serkonan coffee. It had taken all of a few seconds, but when he tried to relocate Emily among the other guests, she had managed to slip away.
He sighed heavily as he side-stepped an over-enthusiastic young nobleman and his dance partner. Perhaps he'd taught Emily too well. It was one thing for her to be able to escape from danger, but quite another to be able to give her royal protector the slip. On a night like this, with wine flowing and so many bodies in close proximity, anything could happen. He sometimes hated that he had to think this way. It was a little too close to thinking like an assassin.
After searching the galleries and drawing rooms, where guests mingled away from the noise of the dance floor, Corvo eventually found Emily and her long-time beau, Wyman, huddled together on a balcony overlooking the gardens. Their heads were tilted together as if they were sharing a secret. Corvo couldn't hear what they were saying, but when Emily released a scyphic lamp from her cupped hands, their laughter floated through the glass panes of the door.
Still just a couple of lovestruck kids, he thought, easing the door open on its well-oiled hinges and silently crossing the balcony. Though maybe that's not such a bad thing.
"Next year, I'll commandeer a rail carriage. Have it waiting by the back of the tower," murmured Wyman. Their back was to Corvo, but he could picture their usual lopsided grin.
"Hardly an appropriate use of League of Protectors resources," Corvo remarked dryly, feeling a petty spark of satisfaction as the pair spun around guiltily, cheeks pink from the bottle of sparkling cider Emily surreptitiously shoved in a pot plant.
"Ah, Lord Corvo!" Wyman gave a bow that was only slightly wobbly. "Wonderful to see you, as always. I was just remarking upon how delightfully, er, colourful the parade was today." Beside them, Emily fought to keep a straight face as they ran a self-conscious hand through their short, reddish-blonde hair. "I suppose you didn't see all of it though, with that bit of extra excitement-"
"Wyman, my love," Emily interjected quickly, as Corvo's eyes narrowed, "we've run out of cider."
"Oh, cider! Yes, more cider for the birthday gir- empress. " Wyman kissed their beau's hand, beaming. "My lady, I shall return forthwith."
Corvo cleared his throat as the young noble squeezed past him. "Be careful not to get lost, Wyman. There are lots of forgotten corners in Dunwall Tower. Plenty of places where no one would find you." Wyman blinked rapidly, their gaze dropping to the discreet blade at Corvo's belt, then broke into a wide grin.
"Ha! Very funny, Lord Corvo." They chuckled appreciatively and winked, before disappearing from sight.
Emily nudged her father with a reproving elbow. "Be nice."
"I am being nice. I'll be even nicer when they propose."
"And if I intend to propose?" There was a pause as she let her words sink in.
"If that's what you want," Corvo said evenly. Emily gave a very un-empress-like snort.
"Don't pretend you're not thrilled." Her father turned his face away, looking out toward the gardens, before he allowed himself a private smile. He did like Wyman, with their easy-going, affable charm. Even if they did have a talent for getting Emily into trouble.
"So," Emily said, turning to lean on the balcony. "Are you going to tell me what happened earlier?"
Ah. Corvo knew the question had been coming. If he were anyone else, he would have been harshly disciplined for breaking protocol so spectacularly. As it was, everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells around him, convinced he had lost his mind. By the time he had returned to the royal viewing platform, Wyman and their League soldiers had calmly whisked Emily away with clockwork efficiency, and escorted her to a waiting rail carriage. It had barely been long enough for the crowd to notice anything was awry, let alone start to panic.
"I saw something suspicious," he said slowly, though he knew such a vague response would hardly satisfy Emily. She frowned up at him.
"You looked as if you'd seen a ghost," she pressed. Or an assassin . Or a monster.
"I saw a threat," Corvo said, his tone sharper than he intended. "I was doing my job." Emily drew back, looking stricken. In the silence that followed, there was a faint clink as the scyphic lamp bumped into the side of the tower, its tail floating behind it like a jellyfish's tendrils.
"What happened with Delilah wasn't your fault," she said softly. "It could just as easily have been me turned to stone."
They had talked about Delilah's coup, of course, and there had been endless debriefings and inquiries into Gristol's national security for months after the witch had been deposed. But they had never spoken aloud the thing that cut Corvo to his very core - that he had failed in his duty. The royal protector, caught in a trap, while the empress risked her life and dirtied her hands to save her empire.
"I know you're capable of taking care of yourself," said Corvo gruffly. Emily smiled and threaded her arm through his.
"You really do worry too much."
"One day you'll have a child of your own to protect, and you'll realise I worry exactly the right amount."
"Let's not count our seagulls, father."
They stood in companionable silence for a while, enjoying the cool night air as the scyphic lamp floated overhead. Emily trailed her fingers absently through its wispy tail.
"You don't have to come with me to the Academy tomorrow," she murmured. "I know how much you hate it."
"I think of it more as having a complicated relationship with Natural Philosophy."
Emily chuckled softly. "Of course you do." She reached into the pot plant and withdrew the bottle of cider, handing it to him. "At least try to enjoy the rest of the party." Corvo grimaced and made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, but Emily seemed to take it as an agreement.
"I'm going to find Wyman," she told him, then shook her head as his mouth slowly turned up at the corners. "Oh, no. Don't even think about it."
"Hello, Going To Find Wyman-"
"That's it, I'm leaving." She pulled away and headed for the balcony door.
"I'm Cor-"
"Goodnight, father," Emily said firmly, and shut the door behind her.
•:•:•:•:•:•
The Boy's new 'friends' seemed to tolerate Billie's presence after their little reunion. She wouldn't go as far as to say they trusted her. They were an oddly mismatched crew. Not a gang, exactly, although they seemed to respect Abigail Ames' authority. Among them was a sulky-looking girl formerly of The Golden Cat, a chemist from the Academy with nasty burns on his hands, and two circus performers from Tyvia. The man with the wolfhound was a former overseer, as Billie had expected. She made a mental note to give him and his hound a wide berth.
"Everyone here works for me in some capacity," Ames explained, after she made Jennie give Billie's pistol back. "I fight for the working women and men whose blood fuels this city."
"So you're an agitator," Billie said flatly.
"I prefer the term 'collective bargainer'."
"Mhm. And who is bankrolling this little operation, I wonder?"
"Careful, Ms. Foster." Ames' smile was as brittle as broken glass. "Mind your own business, and I'll mind mine."
Later, as Billie followed The Boy up to the roof, she couldn't help but ask, "Since when do you care about the plight of the working man, Storyteller?" He returned her sideways look, and tilted a shoulder in what might have been a shrug.
"Since Ames offered to pay me for information."
"You're spying for her?"
The Boy reached the doorway to the roof and emerged into the chilly night air.
"You forget, I once watched this city through the eyes of the people who lived here." He looked out at the smudges of light in the distance, the city laid out before him. "I know every forgotten corner, every secret passage, and every dirty secret."
He turned away and led Billie across a makeshift walkway of scavenged planks that bridged the gap to the next building. Together, they made their way through an abandoned office with crumbling brickwork and creaking floorboards. It wasn't unlike the ruins in the Flooded District where Billie and the Whalers had lived, but she felt a pang of guilt as she took it all in.
I shouldn't have left him here. Her practical side knew she'd had little choice. Their misadventure in Cullero had proven that. But it still didn't seem right - he'd risked his freedom to save her from the Abbey's zealots, and what had she done? Given him a handful of Coin, a pat on the back, and left him to build a new life out of nothing.
The Boy pulled aside what Billie had mistaken for a strip of peeling wallpaper, and unlocked the door hidden behind it. Then he moved aside and gestured for her to enter. She stepped into a surprisingly cosy room, with a low cot below a window overlooking the rooftops and a wooden pallet that held a stack of half-coin novels. In front of an iron stove, the floorboards were sanded and layered with rugs, and a patched-up trunk held a jumble of odds and ends. Billie realised the room reminded her of his cabin on the Knife of Dunwall.
The Boy flipped the lid of the trunk closed so Billie could sit, and lit some candles against the encroaching dark. He, or someone else, had painted the ceiling a deep midnight blue and speckled it with white stars. If Billie squinted she could make out constellations - the Serpent, the Flowing Cup - marked out in a steady hand, with cobweb-thin lines.
"You can't always see the stars in Dunwall," said The Boy, following her gaze. "The weather and the smog get in the way."
"Did you do this?"
"Jennie helped."
"The half-feral kid?"
"She's better when she has something to do with her hands." Billie recalled the way the girl had caressed her crossbow.
"Does that mean you won't tell me a story tonight?" Jennie had complained as they were leaving. The Boy had kindly shaken his head, crouching to her eye-level.
"I will tomorrow," he'd promised, and they had solemnly shaken hands.
"I'm glad you came back," said The Boy as he piled kindling into the stove. He didn't look up, but he sounded like he meant it.
"It's funny, you didn't seem surprised to see me." Billie hadn't forgotten how breathless he'd been, as if he had just run up two flights of stairs. And did he hesitate for a fraction of a second before he swung the stove hatch shut, or was she just imagining it?
"I heard you were making the voyage to Dunwall."
"Oh? And how does a ragamuffin in the Cracked Bowl hear something like that?"
"By paying attention."
Billie snorted. "Oh, good, you're still a smartass. I was worried you'd learned some manners while I was gone."
The Boy brewed a pot of bitter tea for them both, and made them both a surprisingly decent meal of fried greygull eggs on dense black bread. He seemed rather pleased with himself. It explained why he no longer looked like a half-starved stray, Billie thought as she dug in, suddenly realising how hungry she was.
"What will you do now?" he ventured, when they had finished eating. His voice was measured, and Billie was struck by a sudden sense of Déjà vu.
You're leaving. They'd been sitting in a room not unlike this one in Karnaca, and he'd looked at her with something like fear in his eyes, afraid of her answer. Afraid she would set sail and never look back, leaving him alone. Now, his expression was mildly curious, though he had gone very still.
"I don't have the coin to go anywhere, unless I take on some new jobs," she said, scratching her cheek. If she didn't find work soon, she would have no means to refuel the Knife of Dunwall , and then she would be a smuggler without a ship. "But I haven't forgotten what you said to me in Karnaca, about seeing the world. If you still want to." By the Void, she sounded soft. I'm still not his damn mother. "The ship's easier to sail with another pair of hands," she added brusquely.
The Boy nodded slowly, and when he smiled, the expression didn't look nearly as alien on his face as it used to.
"I'd like that."
•:•:•:•:•:•
When Watch Captain Cole Sweeney saw the electrified wall of light set up at the end of Hearthstone Way, a heavy feeling settled in his gut. Even in times of peace, murders weren't uncommon in a city the size of Dunwall, but that knowledge did nothing to ease the sense of dread that had settled over him. He sighed and approached the technical officer on duty, who registered him so that he could pass.
Sweeney was barely eighteen when the Rat Plague swept through Dunwall. The City Watch had taken him on, despite his physical shortcomings, simply to replace the men they had lost to the plague. He'd hauled himself up their ranks by doing the thankless grunt work no-one else wanted to do - overnight shifts patrolling the docks, even counting the dead for a time. Anything to keep the bigger, meaner watchmen off his back. He'd lived through Delilah's reign, too, though it had been a close thing. Sweeney was living proof that, with half a brain in his head, even a nobody from the Draper's Ward with chronic arthritis could survive this Void-forsaken city.
Arthritis. An old man's disease, but Cole Sweeney had suffered from it for most of his life. On most days, the pain was a murmur in the background of his life, but on nights as cold as this he felt his joints protesting with every step.
"Captain!" one of the lower guardsmen came trotting over as soon as he'd passed through the wall of light. A lantern swung from his hand. Their supply of Whale oil was too low to waste on floodlights. "The body's this way, sir." He had the bright eyes of a schoolboy looking forward to the Fugue Feast. Sweeney frowned at him.
"Have you seen it?" he asked.
"No, sir. Officer Levitt won't let anyone else get closer until you arrive." Sweeney recognised a spark of disappointment, and stopped dead in the middle of the road. He knew boys like this well. They joined up for the bragging rights, and little else. He'd fought against some of them after they defected to the false empress' side.
It took the lad a couple of seconds to realise he was no longer following him. "Sir?"
"Go and report back to the Watch-house." When the guardsman opened his mouth to protest, Sweeney closed the gap between them and leaned in, his voice dangerously low. "That's an order. "
He waited to make sure the watchman did as he was told, and continued on towards the barriers surrounding the house near the end of the street. On the far side was another wall of light.
"Evening, Sweeney." Watch Officer Levitt tilted his helmet. The glow from his lantern gave his skin a ghostly pallor. "Glad it's you they sent for and not those miserable ghouls from Kaldwin's Bridge." The set of his jaw was grim, his lips a thin line. Levitt was one of the few decent men who had made it through the chaos of Delilah's reign in one piece. For that, Sweeney respected him. "The old biddy who lives here found the body. Said she heard a woman scream. She's… understandably upset."
"Not as upset as the poor wretch who got murdered, I'd bet. How bad is it?"
"Pretty bad. Oh, and watch your step."
Sweeney had seen more than his fair share of death. He'd hauled the bodies of countless plague victims onto barges. He'd watched as men he'd thought he had known turned their weapons on one another. He'd seen a weeper run straight into a wall of light, reduced to a pile of greasy ashes in the blink of an eye. The smell of charred flesh had clung to him for days afterward. He understood that bodies were basically sacks of meat, temporary shells balanced precariously between this life and the Void - which was how he had the presence of mind to lean over the barrier before he splattered the cobblestones with the remains of his dinner.
"By the Outsider," he muttered, and spat to get the taste out of his mouth. A coppery tang hung in the air, his boots slippery with blood. It had run thick and dark among the cobblestones, staining them almost black. He pulled his handkerchief from the pocket of his uniform.
"-no shame in it, you're the third man to throw up tonight," Levitt was saying.
"You could have warned me," grumbled Sweeney.
"I did say 'watch your step'."
Levitt raised his lantern to give him more light, and Sweeney clapped his handkerchief over his mouth and nose and tried not to retch again. The body lay crumpled at the bottom of the steps to the house, looking more like a bundle of rags than anything else. Sweeney couldn't be sure, but from here it looked as if it had been rent like paper.
He forced himself closer, until his old instincts finally kicked in and he could look at the body with a kind of detachment, as if it were a morbid painting rather than a human being.
Scraps of paper lay at his feet, sticky with blood. He bent to pick one up, ignoring his throbbing spine, and held it up, glad to be wearing gloves. Bold letters on it read '-PORT THE STRIKERS'.
He'd seen the work of strikebreakers - they left their victims bloody and bruised, more often than not with a broken rib or three. He'd never seen an agitator eviscerated before. Who or what did this? he thought, his skin prickling all over.
When he'd seen enough, he picked his way back to Levitt, and beckoned one of the lower watchmen over. His boots squelched, and he pressed his handkerchief tighter over his mouth.
"Fetch Anna Zoborik from the Academy of Natural Philosophy," he said thickly. "Now," he barked, when the watchman hesitated. "And tell her to bring her machine."
An hour later, the watchman reappeared, wheeling a heavy-looking steamer trunk with the ferrety, bespectacled First Imperial Engineer in tow. Red-eyed, with her curly dark hair swept off her face and tied with a scarf, she looked as if they had roused her from her bed. Given the hour, they probably had. Sweeney and Levitt met them at the barrier.
"Can you capture your images before dawn? We need to get the street cleared before every man and his hound wants to get through here for their morning shift."
"I can try," Zoborik said dubiously, in her guttural Tyvian accent. She glanced at the body with an appraising eye, and then her gaze snapped back to Sweeney. If she was taken aback by the grisly scene, she didn't show it. Her disinterest gave him the shivers. "You know this light is not ideal, but if I adjust the shutter speed…" She shrugged and turned to unlock the steamer chest, muttering to herself as she lifted out pieces of machinery and set them on the ground.
Assembled, her invention looked somewhat like a camera, although Sweeney was pretty sure cameras weren't usually made from Whale bone and the mysterious greyish material that made up much of Zoborik's device. If he hadn't known better, he would have said it resembled a broken camera obscura set into jagged hunk of rock. The First Imperial Engineer placed the device carefully on its tripod and fiddled with a set of thick, coloured lenses, slotting them into the machine one by one and checking the view through a brass eyepiece.
"You will have to shut off the walls of light," she ordered. "The device interferes with them. Things will get messy."
"Things are already messy," said Levitt under his breath, even as he strode off down the street to do as she said. A few moments later the walls fizzled out, and Zoborik ducked under a heavy black cloth, her face pressed against the eyepiece of her machine.
For the longest time, nothing happened. Zoborik shifted beneath her cloth, and the wind carried the stench of blood along the street. Then the air began to take on a charge, as if there was a thunderstorm brewing. Sweeney's ears popped as the pressure changed, as a prickling ache crawled up and down his legs and in his teeth. His lungs felt heavy. There was a pressure at the back of his head, too, like someone had taken his skull between their hands and was squeezing…
The feeling suddenly lifted, and he felt as though he could breathe freely again. The other watchmen were muttering to each other, looking unsettled. They're not the only ones, Sweeney thought, wiping sweat from his brow.
"It is done," announced Zoborik as she emerged from behind her device. "I must now return to my laboratory to develop these images."
"How long will that take, exactly?" said Levitt impatiently, though Sweeney knew there was no rushing Zoborik. "Someone did this, and the sooner we find out who-"
"These things take time," interrupted the First Engineer. "I would explain to you the process, but you wouldn't understand. Also, I must meet with the empress in…" she made a show of checking her pocket watch. "...five hours, and I will not do so smelling of an abattoir." Sweeney sighed, defeated.
"Fine. But send for me as soon as you have something."
"Do not worry, Cole," said Zoborik, flashing a sly smile when he blinked at her use of his first name. "You always give me the most interesting projects. I will be in touch, I assure you."
•:•:•:•:•:•
A/N: Now, I'm not saying I'd write a Dishonored murder mystery spinoff series featuring DCI Sweeney... but I wouldn't not write a Dishonored murdery mystery spinoff series featuring DCI Sweeney. Just so you know.