Chapter 13
Part II
With cleaned hands and freshly changed clothes, Stannis hired another boat to take him back from his evening's prayers. He soon landed, then made his way by foot along the waterside, westward, heading for the Canal of Heroes.
The Canal of Heroes was a wealthy area, replete with statues of past Sealords and the manses of magisters and Iron Bank keyholders. Stannis was not dressed such as to blend in with such surroundings. But it was dark tonight, and at this hour of the morning, even fewer people were awake than there were at midnight. There were not many men or women walking the streets to disturb him.
A sleek shadow crept along the canal-side, avoiding the bright lights of barges wandering the lagoon on the rare occasions that they ever came. It hid itself in alleys and behind the corners of buildings, and with eagle eyes it watched from above, and it waited.
Four armed guardsmen in purple uniforms, badged with the Titan of Braavos, came walking through the street on patrol, as they had done a thousand times before. They chattered with each other as they turned a corner.
The killer sprang into motion. The guardsmen had no time to react; they scarcely knew he was here before he was upon them. He was small and unarmoured, but he moved blindingly fast, and by the time two of them had drawn their weapons, the other two were already dead. Seconds later, so were the remaining two. He felt no guilt for that. The facechangers held it a dishonour to kill any man other than the one whom they had been paid to kill, Stannis's host's memories taught him. For them to break that custom was unheard of. But in Stannis's regard the City Guard were men-at-arms in service of the enemy, so there was nothing wrong with killing them in war.
Stannis dragged one corpse into the shadow of a tall building whose palatial windows were not on that side. With the efficiency of a man who had done this many times before, he stripped the most intact uniform from its late wearer, and he took out a knife and started slicing.
Soon he held the skinned face of the guardsman in his hands.
The remainder of the faceless corpse was shoved into the water. Shuddering—for though his possessed host's memories held this to be common, the greater part of his self was repulsed—he treated the skin with a variety of concoctions that his possessed facechanger's memories had told him to take from the House of Black and White, each more vile than the last. By the end of it, the man's skin had turned into something that felt oddly like leather. Then he downed a cup of a drink which tasted queerly like lemon juice, cut his face, and let his blood mix with cold dead flesh to make it his own.
Stannis looked up at the sky and looked down at himself through an eagle's eyes. His face certainly looked like that of the Braavosi guardsman he had killed. He ran his fingers along the outline of the face. The match between sight and feel was perfect. He felt every bone and muscle. The facechangers' way worked more thoroughly than the weaving of light and shadows that he was more accustomed to, he had to admit, though he still considered it dreadfully inelegant.
After that, a bleeding watchman of the City Guard of Braavos came running to his captain to warn him of a matter that must be discussed in person—a matter implied to be related to treachery.
Thump. Thump.
The feet of the City Guard struck the ground in perfect unison.
Thump. Thump.
They marched over neat stone roads towards the glittering spires that rose up ahead.
Thump. Thump.
A man with an extravagant moustache stood among them. All of them knew him well. They saw the face of Calido Prestayn, nephew of Banero Prestayn whom Ferrego Antaryon had defeated in the previous contest to be Sealord, and Anno Nusaris's appointed High Captain of the City Guard.
"It's the High Captain! Present arms!"
The guardsmen at the front of the Sealord's Palace stood to attention. He gave them a gruff few words of assent, and of course they let him past.
Stannis Baratheon had to stop himself from smiling.
'Prestayn' and his escort were led up marble staircases and through great halls of tapestries and elaborate chandeliers. Stannis espied them with a jolt of resentment. He wondered how the Braavosi had ever been able to justify to themselves not paying the sellswords who had fought for them. From the look of it, he thought, selling the unnecessary luxuries in the Sealord's Palace alone would have been enough for much of it.
At length they drew near to a great white door, wrought of a single shining piece of white marble. This was guarded by more than any of the others—dozens of men with the hard stare of the battle-tested, well-armoured and ready for a fight. They were too many to confront, even for him.
The man who loathed their master walked straight up to them anyway, bold as brass, and said, "High Captain Calido Prestayn to see His Excellency the Sealord."
A tired voice called from inside. "Let him in."
The men of the City Guard parted. He heard the click of a key in the lock from the inside. And for the first time since the reception in the Sealord's Palace more than a year ago, Stannis Baratheon laid eyes upon Anno Nusaris, the Sealord of Braavos.
He was struck at once by the difference. The dark-haired, fashionably clad, youthful magister with an excitable bearing and a face alight with passion had become an older man with a lined face and hair streaked with grey, dressed in even more splendid robes, who walked stooped as if there were a great weight on his back.
"Calido," Nusaris said. "What word do you have for me?"
"Your Excellency, I believe it would be better kept between us."
Nusaris understood. Not doubting his old political ally for a moment, he gave a wave of his hand to the more than a dozen men keeping a wary eye on them. "You may go."
The guardsmen stepped out, bearing Stannis's fears with them.
Once the door was locked, Stannis and the Sealord proceeded into the latter's personal chambers. The rooms were cavernous, dwarfing the chambers of the Lord of Storm's End, and every surface shone with opulence: the walls teeming with exquisite tapestries, the ceilings bright with candelabras, the floor colourful with carpets that dazzled the eye. Strangely, in one patch of the marble floor the carpets had been removed, as if to clear the way for something. Wary of a trap, Stannis did not step on there. Elsewise he paid it little heed in his elation.
"Very well, then," Nusaris said. "What is it, to come at this hour?"
"Recently, I was approached by a Faceless Man of the House of Black and White."
The Sealord inhaled sharply. "I see. Am I to take it, then, that it is done?"
"You are not," said Stannis. "It hasn't been done. Handtaker is still alive."
Anno Nusaris looked stunned. "The Faceless Men do not fail."
"Apparently, they do."
"Oh Moon above I need a drink." Nusaris tottered over to his bed, almost a hundred feet away. He almost flung himself down on it, next to the bedside window. He poured two glasses, one for 'Calido', one for himself. "They should have told us. They demanded so much—so much. Coin that could have helped so many people. And—from me—" He choked. "I'm so sorry. Gods, I shouldn't have believed the stories about them, I shouldn't have given them so much of the wealth of the city when the people need it so desperately."
"No, you shouldn't have," Stannis agreed, unsympathetic. Nusaris's eyes flashed with anger, though the Sealord said naught of it.
"Well, then, Calido, how did it happen?"
"Their killer met a sorcerer called Stannis Baratheon. They have magic, perhaps, to help them kill so easily, but only a little, only one trick, one droplet in the ocean that is power. They met someone better than them at their own game."
Nusaris was looking up at him with widening eyes. Belatedly, Stannis realised that the real Calido Prestayn would not have spoken like that.
It did not matter. Deception and charm had never been his greatest talents in any case.
He surged forward, knife in hand. Nusaris tried to cry out, but Stannis shoved a hand over his mouth. The Sealord drew a common eating-knife; Stannis knocked it from his hand with disdainful ease and shoved Nusaris himself to his own floor.
"You shouldn't have tried to cheat us," Stannis hissed, while the Sealord of Braavos struggled beneath him. "You shouldn't have broken your vow to us. I cannot abide oathbreakers. A greedy, grasping, upjumped merchant is all that you magisters are, no matter how oft you pretend to be gentlemen. Braavos might know nothing of the sort, but in my land, when greedy merchants steal from their lords, we—do—them—justice."
He brought the knife down.
Anno Nusaris, Sealord of Braavos, head of what used to be one of the most powerful countries in the world, screamed a high-pitched shaking scream that echoed through his cavernous chambers. There were bangs on the door from the men of the City Guard. Stannis had taken one hand from the Sealord's mouth and was now holding down the Sealord's hand with that one hand, while the other—the other—
—the other chopped.
A finger fell from the Sealord's hand. Stannis wore a deep scowl as Anno Nusaris screamed. "Know what you are," he snarled. "This is your rightful place. This is your punishment."
The Sealord was wailing at his mutilation. Stannis chopped off another finger with a heavy-handed slash of the knife. The doors gave way before the guardsmen, and they ran in… but it was an immense set of rooms, due to the absurdly luxurious Sealord's chambers. That still left them hundreds of yards away.
Stannis chopped thrice more, causing Nusaris to redouble his screams. He looked up. The guards were getting closer. "That was for the theft, but you are worse than a thief. This is for the betrayal of the men who died for you."
He drove the knife into Anno Nusaris's heart. The Sealord went still.
Stannis stood, still at the Sealord's bedside, as the enraged guardsmen raced towards him. "Good riddance," he said, spitting on the corpse. "And farewell."
He swung out of the bedside window.
Agony! Shards of shattered glass dug into his skin. His arms were bleeding, his legs, his back, his neck, they were bleeding. Was anything not bleeding? If so, he did not know it.
Stannis forced himself on, despite the pain. He would not die here, to the guardsmen of the man he had just killed. He was too powerful. He was too important. He gripped the rough stone surface on the wall, finding slight handholds and footholds, and lowered himself down.
Thwung.
A sharp pain burst into being in his lower stomach.
Stannis tried to move. Every movement felt like fire. A crossbow bolt had gone all the way through. Bad luck, yes, but he would escape, he must escape…
Thwung.
Another. The Sealord's guardsmen on the walls did not wait a moment. They saw a man scaling the walls—no matter up or down—and they let loose at him.
Thwung.
More pain, bright and hot and cruel…
Stannis fled.
The man wearing Calido Prestayn's face lost his grip on the balcony.
He fell long, long through the air. He had once been a man who did not have a name. Now he was not even that. His mouth drooled and foamed, he lost control of his bowels, he screeched and writhed and clawed at himself, even in the air as he fell. There was no thought, no connection of concepts, no memory, no being—only fear and grief and a pervasive, incomprehensible sense of I am not I am not I am not I am not I am not I am not
When he smashed against the ground, the embrace of the starless dark was merciful.
That was the end of the last Faceless Man in the world, spellbound by a power beyond his comprehension. It was not the end of his possessor.
The consciousness of Stannis Baratheon cast aside the dying Faceless Man, careless with contempt. He fled back to the other forms in which he dwelt. Presently those forms were nine golden eagles, flying in and above Braavos, and one other.
Miles away, a great broad-shouldered figure stalked through the shadows cast by high rickety buildings on either side of him. He was pale of face, yet black of hair and black of cloak and black of heart. He paused in his long stride for just a moment, gasping from the remembered pain of the guardsmen's crossbow bolts that had struck another man's body. Then he went on walking.
For, in truth, not a single body of Stannis Baratheon had stepped off that raft and set foot on Braavosi soil.
There had been two.