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The rain that falls from the sky is muzzy and cold, causing a chill that creeps under even Piero's mask and makes his very bones shiver. The clouds are a solemn grey, lumbering through the heavy air like injured whales in the ocean. The gloom makes the entire city take on an oppressive air, and from above it has the appearance of a diseased scab that ravages the face of the earth. Corvo, when he spares the view a thought, finds that he doesn't really like it.
Like clockwork, the night Watch continues their patrols underneath him. He himself is perched on top of a narrow ledge, hands in between his knees to balance him, like a gargoyle. His mask certainly fits the archetype, he muses absently as he studies his targets' rounds intently. He almost hopes somebody would look up. The shriek of terror and garbled scriptures that follow would be a little amusing, at the least.
He shakes the thought off. Amusement is something that he doesn't have time for. He has to find Emily, wherever she's been taken, and until then whatever fuzzy little pleasures people still indulge in would wait. He's loafing, here on this tiny ledge at the edge of his world, and he needs to concentrate on the task at hand. Silently, he blames the rain for his distraction. It drizzles steadily in response to his voiceless accusation.
Below, the two guards cross paths again, stopping to grumble to each other about the miserable weather they've been stationed in. Piero must have done something to augment his hearing while he wears the mask that conceals his identity-- despite the rumors of who he may be-- because he can clearly hear both the guards chatting.
"Anton's got a bottle of whiskey we can share," one of the guards comments. He's a burly man, his uniform stretched tight across his chest because of his bulk. Corvo zooms in with the specs to watch him closer. The poor man is hunched at the shoulders, looking around despairingly while he shivers. The assassin makes a quick note to put him somewhere dry when he disposes of him. These men are not truly his enemies, he reminds himself; the Spy Master and Lord Regent had done a marvelous job at concealing their own treachery and pinning it on Corvo himself. The memory makes him tremble with rage, but it reminds him of who his anger is actually directed at.
The other guard is a weedy man, who shakes like a leaf as the wind blows noisily down the streets. His nose is ruddy in the lamp-light, his face pale and pock-marked. He shrugs at his companion. "The whiskey can wait, Harris. We haven't finished our shift yet." He huddles in on himself, crossing his arms against his chest and shuddering.
Harris's voice rumbles in his chest as he speaks. "It's a mess here outside, and colder than it's been for ages. The whiskey might warm us up, Pietro."
Pietro shakes his head. "It doesn't sit right with me," he says, his voice a squeak. He shivers again, and takes a few steps away from his friend. "We're supposed to be on watch, not having a party."
Harris is obviously unconvinced, but he doesn't press, instead mumbling something Corvo can't hear even with Piero's mask on. Then the two split up, cold and wet in the rain, and the assassin sees his opportunity to strike. Carefully standing up from his precarious perch on the ledge, Corvo sneaks his way towards the guard named Harris. The bulky man stops again, watching the streets and glaring at the houses and shops which are no doubt drier than outside at the moment. He's still grumbling something under his breath, cursing his luck at being picked to take watch this evening. Corvo scans the area around them rapidly, determines that no one is close enough to hear any noise, and Blinks.
Harris is still muttering when Corvo's arm slithers around his neck and begins to choke him.
When the struggles have stopped, Corvo checks for the man's pulse and swings him over his shoulder. Above them, the sky weeps, rain hitting cobblestone streets with a sharp rata-tat-tat.
The assassin once again checks his surroundings, and finding a dumpster, carefully deposits his load inside. It isn't much, but he'll be out of sight and out of the rain. Corvo takes the man's pouch for his troubles, counting out the coins and nodding to himself. Closing the bin, he Blinks back up to the ledge.
Pietro is still shivering in the street, his clothes hanging off of his thin frame like a bag. His back is facing Corvo.
The assassin clenches his fist to Blink, and lands square behind the tiny man. With a silent apology, he wraps his arm around the man's neck.
Pietro struggles, of course. They all do, but Corvo is strong, even stronger than he had been before his imprisonment. The guard's body soon slackens, and Corvo gently picks him up from where he sags, slinging him over his shoulder. He's checking for where to put the man's unconscious body-- hopefully not some dank corner like he's had to put some men-- when the door to a tavern a few buildings over swings open, and several guards of the Watch lurch out. Corvo feels himself freeze instinctively, then feels his body move without him, his fist flaring with gold and teal, and suddenly he's on a set of pipes, directly above the men he had just escaped notice from.
The guards giggle drunkenly to themselves, swaying into each other with the cheerful playfulness that only several strong drinks can provide. They don't notice the lack of guards on the streets, which is a blessing, but Corvo is tense anyway, and remains so until they drift out of sight. Slowly, muscles rippling from the effort, he raises himself from a crouch and tries to relax his aching body. The cold seeping through his clothes is mercilessly, and he indulges in a simple curse, thrown carelessly at the apathetic sky.
In the end, it's the rain that causes Corvo's undoing. Repositioning his burden, he takes a single step forward-- and slips.
For a second, Corvo feels his entire world tip to the side as gravity rips him from his perch. With a hasty yelp of surprise and shock, he scrambles for balance. He doesn't even feel the man on his shoulder sliding until he falls off entirely, plummeting to the hard stone ground. The assassin's hand connects with the pipe, scrabbles for purchase, and finds nothing to hold on to.
With a choked cry, Corvo turns himself as he falls off of the pipe, making a desperate grab for Pietro, his left hand forming a fist as he looks for a place to Blink to. He has seconds to act if he wants to save their lives. Reaching out, he snatches the back of Pietro's jacket and feels the mark on his hand light up. With his heart in his throat, he Blinks.
As he moves to a small ledge, fast as light, Pietro tumbles out of his ill-fitting guard's jacket and hits the ground with a sickening thud.
Corvo lands hard on the ledge with a gasp, hand clutching an empty jacket and face pale underneath Piero's mask. Slowly, he turns to look at the street.
Blood is the first thing he sees. Blood running down thick in between the cobblestones, dark trickles that turn pink as they mix with water. He feels his heart seize with horror. Pietro is dead.
Corvo doesn't think about Blinking down to check. He knows the man is dead from that fall. His head is broken, caved in where he's struck the street. Corvo feels like he's going to retch. He's killed men before, of course. In self defense, in defense of the royal family. For good causes. But never an innocent. Never a man who had just been doing his job, minding his own business. After Jessamine's death, Corvo hadn't wanted to kill anyone again.
And now he has. An innocent man, someone who had just been telling his friend that they shouldn't drink while on the job. Someone who probably had a family, someone who had just been shivering in the cold and murky air, just another human like himself. Corvo feels sick.
When he does Blink down to retrieve Pietro, it's only because his rational mind has taken over, letting him know that it would be unwise if he left any evidence of his presence for another guard to see. The blood is already disappearing, washed away by the unrelenting rain and into the sewers.
Any hesitation to act vanishes when Corvo hears another patrol of the Watch begin to approach, and he gently lifts Pietro's limp body onto his shoulder once more before Blinking away to safety. The man's body is light, he notes absently. He had hardly fit into the standard Watch uniform in the first place. His family, if he had one, is probably hungry. Corvo resolves to find out. He feels ill, his stomach roiling as he remembers the crunch of Pietro's body hitting the ground. Flinching from the memory, Corvo forces himself to concentrate on the mission at hand. He has to hide the body, and then take care of Campbell. He can hate himself, and the blood on his hands, later.
When faced with how to dispose of the body, Corvo votes for simple. He gives Pietro's corpse to the rats.
Corvo had thought that seeing the High Overseer again would make him shake with rage, and he's right. He wants to slice the unconscious man's throat, watch him bleed into the cracks on the cold stone floor. He wants to choke him until his face turns black and his pulse goes dead. He wants nothing more than to kill the man who had helped kill his Empress.
But his seething anger is, in part, helpless. Killing the Overseer will not bring Jessamine back, nor will it help him and the Loyalists find Emily. There is no amount of blood, even from his enemies, that can make everything right again.
And there is a face that stops him from further violence. Pietro's skinny form drops to the far-away ground inside his mind, collapsing in the cobblestones and getting up, blood and brain matter dripping from his head as he glares accusingly at the assassin. Corvo feels himself shrinking from that hot gaze, and when he looks down at Campbell's unconscious form again, any thoughts of murder leave him. He will not kill another tonight, not intentionally. He's better than that.
Corvo casts his gaze around the room, considering his options. Every one of the guards inside are asleep or passed out, stashed in hidden corners and behind curtains. He has time to think up a creative way to bring the High Overseer to a sound downfall, one that he won't recover from.
As Corvo glances around the room, a thought springs into his mind, unbidden. With a slow smile, the assassin looks at Campbell's prone form. The smile, hidden underneath the gruesome mask, is nasty.
It doesn't take long to get Campbell set up in the interrogation room. Corvo is glad he has a mask to hide the expression on his face; he's feeling a vicious sense of justice as he readies the heretic brand. Almost cheerfully, he grabs the High Overseer's face, and with a grace that reminds him of a certain whale-god, he drives the hot iron into the man's cheek.
With a scream, Campbell jerks awake, howling in pain as he tries to lift his hands to protect his face. When he realizes his hands are bound to the chair, Campbell lets out a broken, panicked noise and begins to struggle, tears streaming down his injured face. Corvo calmly sits the implement down where it won't burn anything, and then turns to face the man who has, until now, been the High Overseer.
Campbell lets out a high-pitched wail of pain, slumps over, and passes out again. Corvo smiles grimly. Justice has been served. Turning, he heads back to Samuel, and back to the Hounds Pit Pub.
The talk with the Loyalists is brief, and Corvo elects to head off to his room to sleep. He's exhausted, both in mind and body, and he feels utterly drained. The memory of Pietro still haunts him, the shaky little man pointing up at him furiously as he falls from Corvo's grip. The assassin's steps tremble as he walks.
When he reaches his room, Corvo sits down heavily on the bed. His mind is numb, filled with a gray buzzing that makes his limbs drag like lead. He turns his hands over, staring at the callouses. He has long since washed Pietro's blood from them, scrubbing his hands until they were raw and cracked, but it makes no difference. To him, they are stained with red. He can't possibly wash it out. Slowly, he turns his hands back over again, resting them in his lap, stilling them as if they were dangerous. They are.
The black mark on his hand draws his attention, and Corvo remembers something that he hadn't seen the significance of at the moment. The Outsider's powers had saved him today, he realized. If he had fallen, he too would have shared Pietro's fate. Corvo feels his lips tug upwards in a bitter smile, one that carries no joy, only a touch of relief and gratefulness as he reflects on that. The Outsider had saved him, in a way.
Unconsciously, he begins to trace the mark, his fingers trailing over each curved black line. He lets his thoughts drift, pours out his grief over Pietro's needless death into the minute motions of his fingers. When he feels his body grow heavy, he lets himself tilt sideways until his body flops onto the bed, still tracing the mark. He falls asleep that way, hand cradled to his chest and covered by his fingers.
When Corvo wakes, he knows something is wrong.
Perhaps not wrong, he thinks, simply different. Rising from the tangle of sheets on his bed, he looks out the nearby window.
It's about midnight. The rain has abated for the moment, and the stars are out, gently twinkling in the dark sky. What a gift it must be, Corvo thinks absently, to be so removed from the earth. From the pain and suffering of those who scurried around this wretched city. The assassin turns back to his bed, preparing to catch up on some much needed rest, and stops short, confronted with a bewildering image.
The Outsider is perched comfortably on his bed, legs crossed and shadows writhing gently around him. He seems to almost blend into the background, his features blurry and twisted in the dark. His face is serene as he studies the recent subject of his Mark.
"You surprise me, Corvo," he says finally, when the assassin remains silent. "You could have easily killed Campbell, and yet you spared him in a moment of mercy. How very strange."
Corvo shifts. "Is that meant to be criticism?" He asks bluntly, watching the god warily.
"Hardly. I simply find your methods amusing." The deity waves his hand languidly, like oil on the ocean.
"Amusing?" Corvo asks roughly, taking a step forward. "Amusing?" He asks again, and he hears his voice taking on an incredulous pitch. "I had a man killed by my actions tonight, and you find my methods amusing."
The Outsider watches him impassively, and for a moment Corvo almost hates him, feels the emotion sear his ribcage in boiling fury, red whitecaps on the ocean. The shadows around him deepen as he glares at the Outsider.
The deity considers him. "You are most fascinating," he says finally, a note of satisfaction in his rolling voice. "If it comforts you, that man's fate was more or less sealed as soon as you escaped from Coldridge Prison. He could not have escaped his death as much as you could have."
Corvo slides a shaky hand through his ragged hair, and when he breathes out he can see white mist lingering in front of him. He hadn't felt the temperature drop at first, but now he feels the cold biting at him, as if in mockery of the other night.
"Are you saying that fate is unavoidable?" He asks harshly. "Set in stone? Was there truly no way I could have spared that man?"
"Not at all," the Outsider says, looking unconcerned at the heat in his Marked's voice. "There are a few choices that would have led to Pietro Ferran's survival, but the weather is unpredictable, and runs on no one's agenda. Had it not rained, you most likely would not have slipped, and Pietro would have lived another day." The Outsider's black eyes narrow, cold as the abyss. "But at what price, Corvo? Would he have lived, only to be killed by the plague? By hunger? War, famine, too much drink?"
Corvo feels like he's going to vomit right here, in this old ratty room. Trembling, he slides down against the wall, closes his eyes and tries not to see Pietro's face, ravaged by blood. Broken by the plague. When he opens them, the Outsider is sitting in front of him, a curious expression on his face. It's the first time he hasn't looked cooly indifferent, Corvo thinks distantly, as he watches those ichor-colored eyes bore into his.
Corvo raises his chin, watching the Outsider heavily. "Perhaps," he rasps, "but his death is still on me. On my hands. I killed him, however much of an accident it may have been. Maybe he would have died of the plague, or war, or a million other mundane things, but at least he would have lived another day. He would have been able to see the ones he loved one last time."
The Outsider listens to him, shadows lapping at his figure, and frowns, a tiny downturn of his bowed lips. "You humans," he sighs eventually, lifting a hand to rest his chin on. "You all cling to life like an ant to its food. How terribly boring." But the Outsider is tilting his head, looking at Corvo in obvious interest. "Tell me Corvo," he says quietly, "do you also cling to life in this way?"
Corvo snorts, an indelicate sound. "All men do," he replies, staring at the whale deity. The Outsider sniffs disdainfully at his answer.
"You are hardly all men." He reproves.
Corvo raises an eyebrow. "Is that why I fascinate you?" He asks a bit boldly. He has no idea how this conversation turned to him, but he'll play along if it gets him answers.
The Outsider tilts his head again, studying the assassin intently. "You fascinate me, Corvo Attano, because you kill without hesitation for your Empress and her heir, but you refuse to take revenge on those who murdered her and kidnapped her daughter. You mourn the life of a man whom you did not even know, whom you most likely never would have known. You complicate things mightily for yourself only to spare others death or pain, even those who are your enemies. You do not use the powers bestowed upon you to take a highly deserved revenge, but instead sneak around the city you once had free reign over, never showing your face, forever on your guard. You fascinate me," he said, and his face was suddenly very close to Corvo's, "because you are unlike nearly ever human I have ever observed. And I have observed all of them, from the beginning of time."
Corvo doesn't know what to say to that. It's terrifying, he thinks, to be the singularly unyielding subject of a deity. He wonders if he'll go insane from staring into the Outsider's eyes for too long. Abruptly, the air in the room becomes cold and thick, oppressive in its weight. There's a current going through the air, Corvo thinks, and he's suddenly all too aware of how close the Outsider's face is to his own.
Corvo leans back from that smooth, unlined expression, and closes his eyes, breathing in deeply to dispel the sudden urge to slam their mouths together, to close the distance between them in a rush of movement. Compliments from a deity, even if he is a whale, are no small matter, and if he's honest with himself, Corvo hasn't felt this flattered (in a very strange, almost scared way) in a long time. Certainly not since Jessamine.
The air lightens, and Corvo once again opens his eyes to see the Outsider leaning back from him, staring at him in a way that he finds both unnerving and strangely satisfying. The shadows around the Outsider squirm like snakes, curving around him as he floats cross-legged a few inches from the ground. The god watches him for a few more moments, before speaking again.
"Pietro Ferran had a sixteen year old daughter. Her name is Sharon. She works as a maid for a nobleman named Lord Novalsky. If you wish to honor Pietro and his remaining family, going to her would be advisable."
Without a sound, the Outsider vanishes, leaving Corvo with a sense of whiplash from his sudden disappearance. He gets up from his seat against the wall slowly, staring in befuddlement at the spot where the whale-god had hovered only seconds before. He waits for a minute, to see if the capricious deity will come back, and when it's apparent that their unexpected conversation is at an end, he makes his way back to the bed.
Laying down on his side, Corvo contemplates what the Outsider had said, about Pietro's daughter and his death. Again, he traces the coal-dark symbol on his left hand, feeling the raised skin in each curve and line, as if it were a scar. He feels at peace, he realizes. His thoughts, like the churning of a storm-ridden sea just hours ago, have calmed, glass smooth in their stillness. He indulges himself in a smile, a little curve of his lips as he sinks into the cold mattress. As he falls asleep, he imagines that he hears whalesong, and smells brine on his bedsheets.
He dreams of the ocean, and Pietro does not haunt him.