Woolgathering

Tonight Elzio of the Quatronne family was stationed on Hickory Street. His short but muscled frame was terse beneath his trench coat as he melded with the city's grime. This was easier said than done in the southern half of Ghileswick where only the wealthiest Ashlanders dwelt, isolated from the extorted hell they'd furbished in the northern Shidaran half. Oh, the weightier crimes and high stakes criminals eventually trickled down to this, the seat of legislation, and they'd left their mark in the gritty residue that dampened the prosperous neighborhood's streets, fulgid and ghoulish in the lamplight. However, it couldn't compare to the hair-raising adventure that was a stroll through the northern docks.

  Elzio had begun his career as a petty thief, though. He preferred the simpler, more prevalent filth of the Shidarans, with whom his family's drug and arms trade resided. Easier to blend with the shadows when the people themselves had arranged their tenements in a manner befitting a guard's worst nightmare, when there was a cloak and dagger in every crag and crevice, a crime for every issue of the daily news. The south end of the city featured a different breed of man, a finer, more artistic touch at the craft of murder and finance. Men here broke in not with crowbars, but with faux smiles and pretty words. They enveloped their victims in a diaphanous web of lies before they sunk their fangs in, made it so no one heard their screams... Ah, but such was life. While Elzio's task this night was easy enough, he supposed it, too, was the catalyst to something even the most sadistic and tasteful of villains could appreciate. He would do as he was instructed, he would receive his pay, and his position in the Quatronne family would be secure. It was as painless as that.

  The Quatronne family. What posturing, what a misnomer that was! But he digressed— his target had finally emerged from his rounds in the high end pubs that most Ashlander's frequented, and like a good little copper he hadn't dawdled for food, drink, or bribe. Such was to be expected of the straight-laced man with his regulation black uniform, the great cloak drawn close beneath the silver badged deerstalker. The hats were a nice touch, Elzio allowed. They cast an ominous shade over the visages of the officials who donned them, even if they were a tad dehumanizing.

  This particular official paused outside the gilded door to the Silken Parlor, sniffing not at the dirt-encrusted street without, at the darkness or the faint stench of humanity lingering about the place since the drainage systems had been remodeled. No, he sniffed at the frivolity within. Elzio could relate. Still, he was tense as his target's gaze swept over the grungy, lamp-lit cobblestones, the brick-and-mortar shops... the compact figure hidden in plain sight against one of those silly iron streetlamps. As the official's eyes reached him Elzio's breath hitched, but his target's scrutiny seemed to glide over him indifferently— a streak of luck.

  Or perhaps no, he corrected as the official turned unexpectedly into the close darkness of a yet narrower ally. It was a place in which his vulnerable back would seem wider, in which confrontation was an inevitability, and a painless one for the villain in question.

  'You're a justiciar from another age,' Elzio praised his target. 'But little good will it do you tonight.'

  Ambling across the street, he pulled his bowler hat low over his grim, steady features and slipped into the snare his prey had wandered down. Said prey had lighted a lantern and waited with his back to a dead end. He seemed to invite, which was quite a feat in light of the black pockets and garish sallow hues that danced predatorily over his features. The lantern swung back and forth like a pendulum in his cool grasp. It was so affecting that even with the firm bite of metal in Elzio's hand, a guarantee of safety, he could not but hesitate at the sight of that dark extension of the law suspended in a halo of refulgence that had somehow conquered even the ancient obsidian fold of a Ghileswickian night.

  Fortunately, Elzio was as brave as he was ruthless. He took quiet, steady strides toward the officer, and it was the officer who spoke first in a voice crisp and weighed, certain.

  "Followed me all night, have you? You have fair stealth. Is it a bribe you seek, fool? I arrest men merely for making the attempt."

  "I've more important business, this night," replied Elzio, drawing ever closer.

  The officer was not phased, nor convinced. "Do you now?"

  His pursuer gave an enigmatic smile; it cut through his broad, shaven features like the tear of a knife through granite. He turned his silver weapon over and over in his hand, in his pocket.

  "Yes indeed," he affirmed. "To pass something along."

  "And what is that?" the officer wondered aloud, gruffly. He hadn't moved, hadn't shifted, but suddenly he was primed for action, suddenly he was dangerous as a trap.

  Elzio advanced a step farther, and the officer sprung, but a glint of silver flashed through the lantern-light, and he crashed into it as though it was a wall of steel, his eyes wide and fixed with a kind of spasmodic dread on the medallion that dangled from Elzio's outstretched hand.

  The emissary of the Quatronne family smirked at his target as he shuttered, then collapsed, the fire in his eyes and the lantern expelled once more by the insidious, sprawling nighttime fog.

  "I think you know," Elzio whispered belatedly and, satisfied, he turned to leave.

  One thing was for certain: Tonight he had murdered Thomas Worthingson, just as he'd been ordered to.