World of Terria

With a flick of the wrist the hidden gauntlet under my sleeve loads a cleverly balanced throwing knife into my ready fingertips, and whipping my arm out like a striking viper I send that blade tumbling through the air and into another man's throat. He has no time to scream. Only time to flail, and bleed, and die. He stumbles backwards out of the shadows of the bridge's awning, and before he falls completely off of the bridge, his mortified face is framed perfectly in moonlight. A dark river pours from his throat, spilling down his shirt and staining the stone he stumbles backwards across. His eyes turn towards the sky then, accusingly, before he falls backwards over the side of the bridge towards the dark and deserted streets of the city below.

I'm standing on a stone bridge suspended five stories above street level between two conjoining buildings. Two doors sit on either side of the bridge, and sturdy iron locks hang from the faces of both of them. The moon sits high and dominant in the sky, leaving the clouds to huddle on the horizon. Above the moon, the stars blaze brilliant, twinkling majestically over the face of the land. Apparently, they are oblivious of the deeds being committed there.

I spit off the side of the bridge that the man fell over, cursing the loss of one of my good knives, before the door at my back is thrown open, letting light spill over the blood stained flagstone at my feet. I quickly shift my position to cover the droplets of blood, bringing myself to a bow before the stunned looking man in the doorway. The muffled, yet unmistakable sounds of drunken laughter emanate from behind him, and he wears both the weight, and the apron of an Inn Keeper.

"What the devil's going on out here? One minute I'm enjoying a stout pint with the very lovely Miss O'louvelle, then the next, I get complaints about a ruckus a-happening on top of my roof! Now, would you like to explain yourself Mister…?"

"Nathaniel Jauffries, good sir. I'm an agent for the city's Night Watch," I hear myself saying as I nonchalantly retrieve my very "official" looking writ for conscription in order to pass in front of his face, "I was tracking a very…lively, cat burglar. He had been inspecting your security precautions for a full week on the mark of this evening, but luckily I was here tonight to put his depraved thieving spree to a halt before he could do any damage to your livelihood. Sorry to say, he didn't survive the fall he mistakenly took after I made my presence known…"

"Well, good riddance, I say!" The Inn Keeper did in fact say, before projecting his own saliva over the side of the bridge. "Will I expect any trouble from the guardsman tomorrow? Dead men are bad for business, you know! I could lose patrons over an ordeal like this!"

"I'll file my report the very instant I arrive at the barracks, which is my first destination after I leave your doors. Would you be so kind as to allow me to use them? It would expedite my departure in a great way." I say.

"Certainly, sir! Come this way! In fact," I felt a number of heavy coins being pressed into my hand as he led me through the door, "Take this as thanks, and as a token of my faith in the Night Watch. You boys are doing a righteous good job out there! Righteous, I tell you!"

"You wouldn't know the half of it…" I mumble more to myself than anyone else.

He offers me a drink from half of the alcoholic beverages in his cellar, and most of the "girls" in waiting on the fourth floor, before finally allowing me to escape. When outside, a beggar weakly mumbles towards me whilst holding out a dirty, chipped mug. I drop into it all three silver pieces the Inn Keeper handed to me. The hoarse yelps of the excited beggar follow me as I make my way through the dark and empty streets back to Mustanio's. My eyes find the sky, and as I gaze at the twinkling, oblivious stars, I wonder at the events that have conspired to leave me here, at this moment, as a political assassin.

And to think, a month ago I was nothing more than a musician on the run from the bondage of his privileged upbringing. How the tables do turn, indeed.