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It started as all things do in Dunwall – with a murder.
In the early hours of the morning, a green Hatter – barely an adult – had thought he had scored big. The personal courier of the Acting Vice Overseer had been caught alone, unaccompanied - on the wrong street, at the wrong time. His satchel had been stuffed to the brim with correspondence, though alas, the poor child could barely read a handful of words. Not one to be discouraged, he slung it back, body left to the canals, and booked it to the Draper’s Ward. He could almost taste the tangy taste of silver on the back of his tongue, when the Abbey would give in and ransom their precious mail back.
That was before Mike, an ancient man for a street thug, the mean cut of his jaw hiding a depth of intelligence, decided to rife his nose through the letters. Credible threats, he told the younger Hatter, are more likely to get the Abbey to believe them. He took the largest envelope of the stack, and tore into it, like a starving child into a hunk of bread.
But the excitement was short-lived, as elation turned into confusion and horror. In the depths of a Serkonan mine, everything changed.
The news spread faster than the Rat Plague, the chance of a payday forgotten in the face of world shifting revelations. First through the Hatters, then to the other gangs, eventually landing on the desk of the editor of the Dunwall Courier, before the rooster could even crow. The printing press, disregarding the oil shortages and the wear of their machines, pounded ink into paper, and the spark of the metal cogs grinding in synchronous tones set the whole city on fire.
The front page, uncharacteristically succinct for the paper, read only one thing – The Outsider Is Dead.
That is how Emily found herself, shaken awake by her father, his normally unflappable countenance turned to a mix of shock and disbelief. She only needed to take one glance at the object Corvo had thrust into her hands to break through the early-morning haze.
For once, the Dunwall Courier decided to not mince words or play to a side. There was but a single story, with no comments or witty remarks. No poorly placed ads for lubricant and jellied eels. Just the letter addressed to the Acting Vice Overseer Bloxham from the High Priestess Themis of the Oracular Order. Sixteen pages of tightly stacked sentences in a language bordering on clinical, describing changes in operational procedures, advising on controlling the narrative, justifying suppression of information.
A God was dead, yet the words read drier than the paper it was written on.
“Have you verified this information?” Emily asked, compartmentalizing the tempest in her mind under the smooth mask of the Empress. Her heart would have to wait.
Corvo shook his head. “I’ve sent a runner down to Holger Square as soon as this landed on my desk. That was five minutes ago.”
Emily sighed, fingers digging into her temples. The Overseers have cloistered themselves for months now, nary a sight of their music boxes on the Dunwall streets. In correspondence, they argued the sudden depletion of their ranks required further training for the ones left behind, as well as making the necessary preparations for the elections of the next High Overseer. She had the an inkling that had not been the whole truth.
“Take heart, Emily.” Corvo gripped her shoulder, the warmth of his hand reassuring against the chill of the morning hours. Emily gave him a small smile, but said nothing further, letting the silence buffer the in-coming chaos.
Corvo’s runner had come back sometime mid-morning, bearing everything but concrete answers.
The Office of the High Overseer had been in shambles, alarms barely concealing the sounds of gunshots and screams. The organization built on the principles of unity and brotherhood against the totality of an uncaring Cosmos had fractured like glass. The junior Overseers faced their older brethren at sword-point, while the upper echelon had scattered like rats on a ship. The Acting Vice Overseer had been found dead in his bed, stabbed through the meat of his abdomen.
The only person that could verify the validity of the letters, and he had the good grace to be killed in his sleep. Getting a message through to the High Oracle may be their second-best chance, however it would be weeks before they could get a response from Karnaca. Unless she succumbs to the same fate, Emily grimaced internally.
Then there had been the issue of the mob. Like blood in the waves, they had sensed an opportunity for their comeuppance – for the girls who carried token fish-bones, for the women who hid bone-charms under their corsets, for brothers and sisters taken by Overseers, and brought back in a box. The last thing Emily needed right now was a riot.
Emily lifted her hand, signalling the man to pause his retelling. She turned her sight towards the Captain of the Guard, anxiously gripping the handle of his sword.
“I want to have guards and Walls of Light around the Holger Square and the surrounding districts.” Emily told the Captain. Corvo gave her a concerned glance, but said nothing. She continued. “I want every single altercation – small or big – reported back to me.” The Captain bowed his head, and stormed out of her office. Corvo’s runner followed shortly after, throwing a quick bow in the direction of Emily.
She dug her hands into her eye-sockets, feeling the on-set of a migraine building at the back of her head. The sudden silence of her office felt suffocating. “I am not doing this to protect the Abbey. They’ve caused enough grief to deserve what is coming for them.” she said, her frustration leaking through. “I’d rather stop the death of a handful of murderers if it ensures that Dunwall is not swallowed under a tide of vengeance.”
“I wasn’t going to accuse you of being sympathetic towards the Overseers, Sparrow.” Corvo said, gaze lingering on her gloved hand.
“I know, Father.” Her office had enough bone-charms to reconstruct the skeleton of a whale, not to mention her closeness to somebody she should have never had any association with. “I know.”
In the days of the Rat Plague, Emily had been sequestered in a tiny room, just beneath the tiled roof, away from the guests of the Golden Cat. On some days, when the officers visited the girls, they would smother the whole building in acrid cigar smoke. Emily could feel it drifting through the floor-boards and wall cracks, sticking to her lungs like tar and tainting her snow-white clothes gray.
She found that comparison insufficient as she watched the smoke on the streets below choke out the sky. Appropriate, considering whose death was being mourned. The altars of driftwood, stone and silk had filled the alleyways, their owners giving in to impropriety and displaying them with pride, before setting them on fire. A city full of heretics, rich and poor, and a thousand ceremonial pyres blazing tall on an unusually sunny day.
Emily seemed to have developed an unfortunate habit of missing the funerals of the people she loved. Madame Prudence had told her Jessamine’s funeral had been beautiful, before striking her across the cheek for daring to cry. Callista had been lost to the whims of the Sea, with no family to hold a wake or a body to lay in the family crypt. Alexi found her rest in a communal grave, dug by witches and overgrown with bloodbriar.
And now the Outsider, another name on an ever-growing list.
Emily unfastened her glove, thankful for the privacy of her safe room balcony. The Mark had not changed, it’s surface matte as a freshly done tattoo. The magic still came to her like a hound, eager and ready. She could still see every single electrical wire and misplaced coin beneath her feet as she used Dark Vision. She could hear the footsteps of a nearby guard, whistling some nonsense tune.
On some level, she was aware she was in denial. A part of her had wanted the entirety of the morning to be a farce, a city-wide delusion which would be broken by the word of the Overseers. Emily had half expected the Outsider to appear to her, all sea breeze and shadow, as if nothing had happened at all. A lark at her expense, as if one could ever bury a God.
Did he die the way of the knife, bleeding red like everybody else or had the Void finally swallowed him into the depths? Had he known his end was nearing? In their late night conversations, locked in her apartment rooms, he had the countenance of a bored lord, finding amusement in her imperial duties. He did not present a picture of a man who would be facing his demise.
Or had that been it? A handful of moments in the presence of a familiar soul, a breathing space to be before he wasn’t.
Emily struggled to remember the last conversation they had. It must have been some weeks ago, before she had been swallowed in the proceedings of her Parliament and meetings with industry leaders. He had shown her how to cleanse the corruption from a bone-charm, as they were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the carpeted floor of her safe room. He had given her a long look, Void-cursed eyes meeting her hazel stare bravely and unabashedly, as if he was glad he had been caught. As if he wanted her to know she had captured his attention.
If she had tilted her head, angling herself a breath away from a kiss, would he perceive it as another offering on one of his altars? Would she be just another crowned witch that have sought to trap him beneath her thighs? Or would he dive in, show her what it would be like to be at the mercy of a God?
But she had done nothing then, heart-ache and yearning hidden behind a tight-lipped smile. Emily could not demand affection from a man who existed outside of the world, untouched by humanity and its woes.
The blazes on the street burnt bright, enveloping the world below in smoke tinted with the scent of seaweed and salt. Emily could feel her eyes begin to water.
She would tell herself it was the smoke.
The weeks following have gone so slowly, Emily could have sworn time had stood still.
She had been barricaded in her own study, every day stuck arbitrating between whoever was still protective of the Abbey’s rotting corpse, and the people who have finally found their day in court. Packed between heated bodies, listening to the same old chords repeated over and over new names. Missing wives and daughters, kidnapped by the streets by masked men and gone for weeks after the alleged death of the Outsider, with no body to speak of. The defensive tone of the Overseers, begging for understanding of their ignorance of the magnanimous event.
Emily dug her hands into the pants of her trousers, holding herself back from dragging every single clergyman to Coldridge herself. At this point, she had no recourse but to storm Holger Square herself, if the Overseers continued to be this difficult.
Then there were the heretics, the true ones, which have crawled out of every crevice as soon as the sun had risen on the second day of a changed world. Suddenly, Emily had found herself finding it hard to not sympathize with their plight. In the wake of Abbey’s demise, with no need to hide their craft behind euphemisms, covens of witches and warlocks had demanded their work to be recognized like any other profession. Emily’s already overladen desk had started piling up with letters and petitions soaked in the scent of herbs.
She could not give into their demands, as ill as it sat on her conscience. The Abbey was still and cold as a corpse, but there had been enough parasites suckling off it’s rotten flesh to warrant caution. She did not wish to walk the halls of her Parliament until she was certain her Ministers and Lords had washed their hands of the blasted institution themselves. She did not wish to find her death to the shouts of “heretic.”
The Abbey, the people and the covens were not even the worst of her problems. The whales were. Or rather, the lack of them.
The slaughterhouses around the isles had not caught the sight of a whale in weeks, let alone capturing them. Cannery moguls and pioneers of the oil industry were breathing down her neck, demanding answers she could not give. The people would not starve, but they surely would freeze in the colder months.
And through the whole of this, her Empire crumbling like salt pillars, Emily couldn’t even show a single tiny crack. But the signs were there, if you dared to look.
Her seamstress had given her worried looks, as she stitched her garments tighter. Food crumbled to ash in Emily’s mouth, and she begun to refuse food; the cook had sought to make sure her tea had been laced with too much honey and ox milk. Whatever friends Emily still cultivated among the noble youth had been forgotten in favour of keeping the Empire from following the Abbey into the Void.
Wyman’s letters had stopped coming, and Emily felt another spanner thrown into the cogs of her heart.
She was not sure how long she had been staring into the heart of the candle-light when Corvo found her. At some point, she must have migrated from her quarters to the safe room, intent on making a dent in the letters she had been flooded with. Emily’s hands were stained with ink, her edge of her pristine white sleeve sporting deep blue stains. Her fingers have cramped hours ago, but she had learnt how to work through the discomfort. It was her duty.
He sat next to her, careful to not disturb the mountains of parchment, the leather of the sofa creaking under his weight. Gently, as if coaxing a stray cat with some food, Corvo wrapped her hand in his. Emily tore her eyes away from her work, finally acknowledging the presence of her father. He had almost startled her.
“Sparrow, when was the last time you slept?”
Last night, she had wanted to say, but caught herself remembering attending a meeting late into the hours of the morning. The night before had also been lost to answering letters. The days past that had been a blur, surely she must have caught some rest at some point, right?
Corvo sighed, rubbing meaningless patterns into her gloved hand. “You are going to find yourself in a grave at this rate.”
“It’s either me or the Empire.” Emily stifled memories of a similar conversation, with a man of shadow and smoke. “Euhorn had brothers, I’m sure there is somebody itching to fill my seat.”
“Emily,” Corvo chided her, voice raised by a breath over a whisper, “I know this is not about the Abbey, or the witches, or the Empire at all.” He paused, mulling over his words carefully. “You’ve faced crisis before, precariously stacked upon each-other and threatening to topple. You’ve been untangling Delilah’s web for months, but you were still you. Not one of Duke’s automatons which lives solely for the sake of her people.”
“It is my duty.” Emily snapped.
“Not at the cost of yourself.”
She said nothing, opting to stare into the far corner of the room. Emily had not felt chastised by her father since she had worn pinafores.
“You get this from me.” Corvo said. “This wild and reckless abandonment of self-preservation when we are overtaken by grief. Hoping we can leave something good behind as we race to follow the ones we cherish into the grave.”
Her chest seized, the soft tissue of her lungs tight against her rib-cage. She could deny his implications, attempt to spin some sordid lie. But lying had never been her domain, and it would be quite pathetic to attempt at it’s mastery. Not in the face of her father.
“Did he tell you?” Emily was not sure she could use his name. Not anymore.
Corvo shook his head. “When Delilah removed my Mark, she did not fully server my connection to the Void. I can still hear the shrieking of the runes, and I can tell exactly how many bone-charms are on your person right now.” Emily broke a small smile. “I felt it, when the Outsider was around.”
Her heart squeezed. Please don’t say his name.
Emily fought through the tightness in her throat. “Yet you’ve made no comment on it.”
“Why should I? I’ve raised a woman that can fend herself, verbally and physically. If you wanted him gone, you would have found a way. And since I was alerted to his presence night by night, I had to make several assumptions.”
“Nothing happened, we just talked.” Somehow, the truth hurt.
“I trust you.”
She had not noticed her cheeks growing wetter. Corvo squeezed her hand, but did not comment on her tears.
“When Jessamine died, the torture they had put me through seemed to pale in comparison to my grief. But I held it off, for a very long time, and I have almost let it consume me.”
“And why did it not?” Emily’s voice felt ragged and torn, still holding back against the sea that threatened to swallow her.
Corvo let go of her hands, opting to gently cup her tear-stained cheeks. “There is an old wisdom amongst sailors – if you are stranded in a storm, with little hope for salvation, you start breaking the floor boards in the belly of the ships. Letting the water rush in, and out.” He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “Grief demands to be felt, like the currents of the storm. If you try to weather it out, you’ll find yourself sinking to the bottom of the sea.”
And for the first time in weeks, in the embrace of her father, Emily allowed herself to cry. Heaving ugly sobs broke like waves against the shore. She let herself grieve. Corvo pulled her closer, cradling her head against his shoulder. Her body shuddered, and he clutched her closer.
Silence trickled in, Emily quieting in the arms of Corvo, though he could still feel a trail of tears dripping down his neck. Eventually, she spoke, voice strained and quiet. “The Mark is sloughing off.” She took a lungful of air. “That’s how I know he is gone.”
She tried stripping the glove of, but the tremors of her fingers impeded the task. Corvo did not hesitate to still her hand in his, and slipped it gently off. The skin around the Mark looked red and angry, like a horrid sunburn. The matte black peeled like an old wallpaper.
“Does it hurt?” Corvo asked, tracing the edges of the swelled skin.
Emily shook her head, as she slipped the glove back on. Silence hung heavily over the room.
Time passed in jagged increments, some courses passing smoother than others.
The corpse of the Abbey was buried, both wings of the organization broken off into a handful of powerless cults. The High Priestess of the Oracular Order had not considered Emily worthy of response to the truth of the allegations in her exchange with the Office of the High Overseer. Instead, she threw herself off the Dead Man’s End in the bright daylight. The secret had died with the clergy, though Emily could not find a single ounce of pity.
At the vigil organized for the first anniversary of Delilah’s coup, Emily went gloveless in public, for the first time in a long while. Nothing marked her now, not even the imprint of a memory. In the dark of the night, she could swear she could feel electricity dancing where the edge of the Mark had been, like a phantom limb demanding to be used. But not a single spark of magic bent to her will.
Corvo still hovered, like worried fathers ought to, and Royal Protectors were bound to. Outside that single night in the safe room, he had not pressed her about what she and the Outsider had been discussing. Or whether her feelings have stretched beyond the confines of a friendship forged by witches. Though Emily knew he had his suspicions – one did not mourn someone so ardently if regrets had not been clouding her heart.
Dunwall was rebuilding, brick by brick. The Tower had almost been fit to receive guests again, although Emily had no desire to face the nobility. In the past, Emily had been insulated from the constant parades of young men, on the account of her long-standing relationship with Wyman. But that had been over, and living through a crisis must have reminded the up-and-coming Lords and Ladies that the Kaldwin line was poor in fresh blood.
Emily had almost throttled her Prime Minister when, apropos of nothing, he suggested bringing his son over for a luncheon. The boy was barely of age.
That bridge would have to be crossed, she knew. The duty of the throne could not be discarded at the whims of a cold universe, which sought to suck all semblance of warmth into the Void. But not now – not while the wound still bled through the sutures.
Strangely, the people which would have burnt on the Overseer’s fire had flourished in the wake of their deity's demise. Warlocks and witches had no need to offer their practice beneath layers of riddles and puzzles. The Dunwall Courier had certainly not been shy to take their coin, and advertise Scryer Sally’s services, or the ones of her brethren. Emily had no doubt that most their abilities have been smoke and mirrors, with maybe a handful of practitioners owning any kind of magical apparatus. As long as they did not skin their patrons, and paid their fair share of taxes, she couldn’t find fault with them.
That is, until she met the Crone.
She was an older woman, sparse stark-white wisps of hair barely covering her heavily tattooed head. The Crone went by no name, though whispers on the street suggested she had been the disowned daughter of a rich Tyvian merchant, though Corvo couldn’t verify the rumours. In conversation, her cadence was clipped, her tongue would roll over Rs and trip over long vowels. Her back was ramrod straight as she stood, her walking cane encrusted with more gems than a family’s fortune in gold.
The Crone wore no gloves, yet she exuded magic; the leader of the Witches’ Coven – a trade union, of all things. In private, Corvo confessed that she had reminded him of Granny Rags, though Emily had but a handful hazy recollections of the ancient witch.
They met, every couple of months – though Emily could never tell whether the visits were social or purposeful. The Crone would propose legislative changes in the same breath as inquiring for the health of her maid. She would write complex explanations of how some archaic law impacted her workers on a piece of fine silk napkin, before wiping a droplet of tea of the edge of her mouth with the ink-stained cloth.
This meeting had not been any different. Personal questions interspersed by political matters. Until the Crone sought to make her leave.
“Has his Highness returned from his travels yet? I am eager to finally meet him.” she asked, as she casually buttoned her peculiar feathered coat.
Emily frowned. She had been certain she had introduced the Crone to her father. “The Lord Protector has not left Dunwall since the coup, Lady Crone.” she said, carefully. The woman seemed sharp as ever, it was unlikely her age was finally catching up to her.
“I’m not talking about Lord Attano.”
“I am afraid you have me quite lost.”
The Crone paused, leaning into her walking cane. “With all due respect, your Imperial Majesty, you must know I’m talking about your groom. Has he sent word yet?”
Groom? Emily’s eyes creased in confusion. “I believe you have caught the tail end of a horrid rumour. I’ve no intention to hold a wedding any time soon.”
“You must know I have no need for trading rumours, Lady Emily. My information is perfectly sound.” A mischievous glint passed through the Crone’s eyes. “Dear Vera had called him her black-eyed groom, but we both know that is not the case any more, is it?”
What?
Before Emily could properly process the old woman’s words, the door of her office swung open wildly. Corvo barrelled in with no regard for Emily’s guest, clutching something close to his chest. “I need to speak with you immediately.” The urgency of his voice broke no argument.
In the depths of the safe room, under the vanishing sunlight, she read a letter in the cramped handwriting of a man reborn. Under any circumstances, this should have been a practical joke. But the details were too precise – Megan’s real name, a beating mother’s heart, a witches desire for the world – to be anyone but who he claimed to be. And the Mark, painted in a handful of precise strokes of ink, where the signature would be.
“When was this delivered?” Emily demanded, adrenaline-filled hope burning in her veins.
“Today. The runner swears he had never seen the person who handed him this letter before.”
“Is he in Dunwall? I need to talk to him. I nee-”
Has he sent word yet?
Had the Crone known something? Emily rushed out of the safe room, Corvo’s voice trailing behind her, calling her name.
Dismissing all her father’s teachings, she ran through the hallways heel first, each step striking loudly against the wooden floor of her quarters. But no matter where she looked, she could not find the woman.
Turning the corner and running through the gardens, she caught the edge of a black feathered coat, breaking into a murder of crows with shiny gem-encrusted eyes. The bird’s crackle resembled the laugh of the Crone too much to have been a coincidence.
Has he sent word yet?
Emily had lost her powers, but she still found herself being surrounded by clairvoyant witches.
In her hand, a crinkled letter fluttered against the currents of the wind.