The Return of Daud Page 18

  Stilton twisted his arm out of Toberman’s grip and pushed the young man against the wall, sliding his arm up under Toberman’s chin and pinning his head back.

  “Now you look here, my young lad, whatever you think you’ve seen, you just forget it now. This was a marvelous evening of supernatural entertainment, nothing more. A show, my young lad, a show. Now, do you understand me?”

  “Please, Mr. Stilton, you’re hurting me.”

  Stilton hissed and leaned harder against Toberman. He wasn’t a strong man and Toberman was a good deal younger, but he had sheer bulk on his side. “Take fifty coin from my office and get rid of the bodies.”

  “I… what?”

  Stilton glanced back toward the stage. “And don’t worry about our friend Sokolov, I’ll handle him. Now go, get a move on.”

  He released Toberman, who collapsed, gasping for breath.

  That was when two red-jacketed officers of the Grand Guard appeared. Seeing Stilton and the puffing Toberman, they immediately headed toward them.

  “Good lad,” said Stilton, patting Toberman’s back. “Off you go.”

  Toberman shook his head, then headed off, squeezing past the guard officers as he ducked down a corridor.

  Stilton thrust his chest out and looped his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. As the guards got closer, he felt his hands shaking and his heart pounding in his chest. Sokolov’s experiment was a disaster. Two men were dead—and it was all his fault. If he hadn’t organized the event in the first place, hadn’t been so preoccupied with raising his standing among the elite of the city, none of this would have happened.

  He only hoped that one day he would be able to forgive himself.

  * * *

  Sitting at the back of the auditorium, the young man with the pencil moustache leaned back. He lifted his feet and placed them on the back of the chair in front of him, then leaned forward and brushed a speck of dirt from his brilliant white spats. In front of him, the empty seats had been thrown into disarray as the crowd had scampered for escape, while on the stage the curtain was now down, with a couple of stagehands standing in front of it as they spoke to a member of the Grand Guard.

  The man leaned back and placed his hands behind his head as he thought back over the evening’s events. Sokolov’s machine was remarkable, even seen from afar—the man was glad to have brought his telescopic opera glasses, a little invention of his own that improved upon those commonly available. As he had sat and watched the theatrics of the performance, he had begun to sketch a schematic of the machine on the back of an old envelope. Or, at least as much of it as he had been able to see over the heads of those seated in front of him—Stilton’s temporary theater was an impressive piece of dressing, but the Royal Conservatory’s grand entrance hall made for a poor auditorium.

  He regarded his sketch. Many of the core components were not, in and of themselves, especially exotic. But the machine was ingenious… no, it was more than that. It was… well, easy, that was the only word to describe it. He considered himself an inventor and an engineer, but what he did was hard work. He slaved over his devices. But the work was worth it.

  Sokolov’s machine, however? It had an elegance that could only come from years of experience, knowledge so finely honed as to become pure intuition.

  Of course, the machine was only part of it. Now, those crystals—what had he called them? Sokolites? Ha, of course he had. Now, they were interesting. A natural mineral formation that was able not just to conduct power but also transform it, without any apparent loss of energy. He knew a great deal about crystallography, but the properties of the minerals from Pandyssia were unique.

  The results were intriguing, certainly. But inconclusive. The hall was hardly a controlled environment, and while Sokolov had spoken with authority and confidence, the man knew—from attending Sokolov’s past lectures—that this was merely his natural demeanor. Ten years of work on the machine and there was a flaw to the design, a mere fraction of the unimaginable power of the crystals tapped to enact a simple parlor trick.

  Now, what if that power could be amplified? What if you could not just see what someone else saw—what if you could see and hear? What if you could do that not just across a room but across a country? Could the transmitter be in Tyvia and the receiver in Karnaca?

  And… what if you could reverse the process? Rather than merely observe through the senses of another, what if you could project your own thoughts into the mind of another.

  What if you could do it without the recipient even being aware of it?

  Now there was an interesting theory. The applications were limitless. It would herald a new era of natural philosophy, giving rise to a new age of espionage.

  Perhaps even a new generation of warfare.

  The man could see that there was work to be done. The machine was adequate, but Sokolov treated his crystals with kid gloves, afraid to tap their potential. Cutting them into polyhedra was a good first step, but the effect could be amplified—could be focused—if the minerals were sectioned, those sections then polished into lenses.

  Yes, lenses. That was good. That was interesting.

  He needed to speak to Sokolov about it. Fortunately, they were acquainted, despite the matter of their past disagreements. The man had once been Sokolov’s student at the academy in Dunwall—that is, until he was thrown out after that little accident. But that was history. Even if Sokolov remained the bad-tempered buffoon the man remembered him as, he also knew that the natural philosopher wouldn’t be able to resist discussing his research with someone who actually knew what he was talking about.

  As the Grand Guard moved around the stage, the red-jacketed officers having a heated conversation with Aramis Stilton on stage left, Kirin Jindosh lifted his feet from the chair and, gathering his fur shawl around his shoulders, made his exit.

  PART THREE

  THE HOMECOMING

  22

  THE BEAR OF TAMARAK, SAILING FROM POTTERSTEAD TO KARNACA

  5th to 22nd Day, Month of Harvest, 1852

  “Whale oil. Liquid power! How astonishing that within those beasts, inside the oil harvested along with their flesh, was enough power to see the Isles through these tumultuous years! And it all seemed limitless, but now the lights begin to dim. Our fisher folk say the great beasts are increasingly rare!

  Not all places will suffer this loss equally, fellow natural philosophers! Karnaca has a unique feature—the cleft in Shindaerey Peak, through which the winds are channeled and amplified.

  As whale oil begins to run short, with the cost of finding the remaining leviathans escalating beyond the worth of the oil itself, Karnaca will find itself ascendant among the Isles.”

  —THE SHINDAEREY GIFT

  A Study, by Emora Clipswitch

  The journey from southwestern Gristol to Serkonos aboard the Tyvian whaler Bear of Tamarak took eighteen days, and it was time Daud relished.

  Before leaving Morgengaard Castle in flames, he had searched Norcross’s private chambers and taken a set of maps. The moorland in which Morgengaard Castle was situated was many miles southeast of the port city of Potterstead. Daud knew that was his best bet—Dunwall was too far to travel, and the ports there were likely in lockdown thanks to the coup. If he was to get to Karnaca he needed fast transport. Potterstead was a good gamble, being a waypoint for Tyvian ships taking advantage of the favorable ocean currents down the western coast of the Isles. It was certainly a better option than returning to Porterfell. From Potterstead he wouldn’t have much trouble getting passage south.

  The journey to Potterstead had been long, as Daud was forced to make his way on foot, the two electric road coaches that had been parked in the courtyard of Norcross’s castle absent, perhaps stolen by the strange intruders to prevent any fast pursuit. Daud had traveled by both day and night, taking as direct a route as possible across the desolate, scrubby landscape, avoiding the roads and always ready to take cover in the rich purple heather should he need to hide
quickly.

  He needn’t have worried. He didn’t see anyone on his entire journey.

  Along the way, he thought back to the events at Norcross’s castle, his mind racing as he tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Who were the intruders? How had they known the Twin-bladed Knife was there? And why did they even want it? Did they know—as Daud did—what the Knife was capable of, the powers the artifact possessed?

  Questions without answers. They continued to plague Daud as, finally, he sought shelter the second night in an old farmstead, the slate buildings nothing more than empty shells leaning precariously against the side of a shallow cliff, the only inhabitants the rats that scurried quickly away from Daud’s footsteps as he searched the property. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he had an urge to look, the Mark of the Outsider a dull ache on the back of his hand.

  The shrine was in the back of the barn up on what was left of the hayloft. It was built out of a stack of flat slate blocks that had been salvaged from the collapsing structure of the main farmhouse. The stubby remains of ancient, rotten candles littered the haphazard construction, and on the largest slate block, which formed a sort of altar, there was the mummified remains of something organic—dried leaves and sticks and something else equally desiccated—and scratched into the dark surface of the stone was a refrain that brought memories rushing back to Daud’s mind.

  THE OUTSIDER WALKS AMONG US!

  Daud spent the night in front of the altar. At first he kneeled in front of it, then, realizing what he was doing, he turned his back on the shrine and sat on some of the slate stacks. As the hours slowly slipped by, Daud found himself calling into the night, asking the bastard Outsider to show himself and admit what he had done.

  If the Outsider heard him, there was no reply.

  After another hour, Daud took the shard of black mirror from his tunic and, taking a deep breath, turned and balanced it on the altar. He stared into the glass, willing the Outsider to show himself, but all he saw was his own reflection in the moonlight that shone in through the barn’s broken roof.

  Daud pocketed the mirror, destroyed the altar, and left before dawn.

  Arriving in Potterstead, he first went to one of his caches, long hidden in the years spent wandering the Isles aimlessly after Corvo had exiled him from Dunwall. The cache, secreted in a bricked-up culvert underneath a bridge, had remained undetected, and included another pouch of Overseer platinum ingots, twelve in total. It was a lot of money to carry, but he wanted to make sure that nobody asked him any questions about the next part of his journey.

  Then he scouted Potterstead harbor, and saw it—a huge whaling ship of the kind that he had thought retired years ago. It was an expensive hulk, a relic from the earlier days of the whale trade. It had been patched up, and the crew was still in the process of cleaning and repair when Daud found the captain discussing business with the harbormaster. The ship had been exhumed from dry dock in the Tyvian city of Tamarak and had set off from the northern isles to hunt whales off the Pandyssian Continent. But first it was scheduled for a shakedown run, which included the maintenance stop at Potterstead after the first leg of the journey, and another stop at Karnaca, where it would pick up more crew.

  Daud paid the captain one ingot, and the harbormaster another—probably a half- or even a full-year’s wages for each, Daud thought. Neither asked any questions after that, and the Bear of Tamarak steamed out of Potterstead harbor that afternoon, with one extra crewman whose name didn’t appear on the roster.

  During the nearly three-week journey south, Daud worked alongside the others. There were seven crew plus the captain, the bare minimum required to pilot the ship and begin the laborious task of cleaning and repairing the tools of the ship’s primary function—the harpoon guns, the winches, the whale frames and their complex crane and gantry systems. Daud and the crew worked hard, stripping chain and cable, disassembling mechanisms and reassembling them. It was laborious, but Daud felt invigorated, alive with his purpose, his determination to complete his mission more acute than ever.

  While the crew slept, Daud trained. The ship was gigantic, and with a skeleton crew working mostly on deck, the vast innards of the vessel became Daud’s private domain. In one of the cargo holds he began to build a gymnasium for himself out of scrap and bits of broken machinery removed during the repairs. He built four makeshift mannequins, with multiple arms and panels Daud could punch and kick, the combat practice sharpening his already formidable skills. He built multilevel scaffolds and platforms, towering frames holding horizontal bars. At night he leapt, and ran, swinging from poles and bars, jumping, rolling, jumping again from platform to platform.

  The sound of his training echoed in the huge hollow chambers of the Bear of Tamarak. Once—just once—he saw the captain appear through a bulkhead door high up in the wall of the cargo hold, watching him work. When Daud stopped and looked up at him, the captain nodded, and then disappeared.

  When he wasn’t training or working, Daud spent much of his time in the cabin the captain had allocated him, an officer’s room, away from the bunks of the main crew. Here Daud slept deeply, his body tired from his work aboard the ship, or he practiced various meditation techniques he had learned across the Isles, focusing his mind, readying himself for the tasks ahead.

  It was all time well spent. As the ship neared its destination, Daud felt calm and rested, despite his exertions.

  The ship skirted the west coast of Serkonos, riding the fast ocean current that arced around the southernmost landmass of the Empire of the Isles, and as the city of Karnaca came into distant view, Daud deemed himself ready to face the Outsider. He wondered if the Outsider felt it too, if he was watching him and somehow nudging events toward their conclusion. In moments of doubt, it felt as though Daud had no free will but was merely following the contours of the universe, his life hurtling with inevitable finality toward the ultimate confrontation.

  In his cabin, Daud cut his hair with a cut-throat razor and slicked it back with a smear of grease made of beeswax and Tyvian bear fat, taken from one of the harpoon guns on deck. Then he shaved his beard, slowly revealing a face he hadn’t seen in years, a face that felt like it belonged not just to another person, but another world. When he was finished he washed his face and stood in front of the small mirror, staring at an old man with an old scar running down the right side of his face from temple to jaw.

  He got dressed in a long-sleeved undershirt, then a pale, long-sleeved tunic with a high buttoned collar. On top of that, a protective brown leather jerkin, and then, finally, a short-sleeved red coat that fell to mid-thigh. He fastened a heavy brown belt around his waist, then pulled on a long coat he had liberated from one of the crewmen, a fine garment with a deep hood, crafted for the climate of Tyvia.

  Then he turned and looked in the mirror again, and he didn’t seem himself. He saw a man he thought was dead. A man exiled from Dunwall fifteen years ago, never to return to the life of violence and darkness he’d left behind.

  When the Bear of Tamarak docked in Karnaca, Daud, former leader of the Whalers, master assassin, the Knife of Dunwall—and puppet of the Outsider—slipped from the vessel silently and vanished into the city.

  23

  CAMPO SETA DOCKYARDS, KARNACA

  22nd Day, Month of Harvest, 1852

  “Hush-a-bye, and don’t be affright,

  Mama will sing through all the night,

  Many an hour before morning sun,

  Don’t dream of horror yet to come.”

  —TRADITIONAL SERKONAN SONGS

  Extract from a popular melody

  The two witches watched the Bear of Tamarak as it sat out in the harbor, the hulk dominating the view, larger than most of the buildings that crowded this part of Karnaca’s shoreline. The pair sat high up on top of a billboard, their legs dangling in the air, the advertisement beneath them having long since faded to a shadowy palimpsest of indistinct images.

  Lucinda cocked her head, her eye
s on the horizon. “He has returned. As our mistress foresaw.”

  Her companion, Caitlin, frowned. The warm evening breeze ruffled her shorn black hair, and she ran a hand over her scalp.

  “We can’t expect the plan to continue, can we?”

  Lucinda smiled. “And why not, oh sister of mine?” She shrugged. “All is prepared. We need but the last items from the Royal Conservatory. Then the trap will be set. All we need is for our quarry to walk into it.”

  “But Breanna is powerless, she—”

  Lucinda pushed Caitlin’s shoulder, forcing the witch to grab hold of the top of the billboard to stop herself from losing her balance. “Breanna has no magic, but she is far from powerless.”

  Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  Lucinda leaned in toward her companion, and as Caitlin watched, her eyes turned black, becoming two deep pools. Caitlin gasped.

  “You still have power? But how?”

  Lucinda’s eyes returned to normal. “Our mistress was cut off from the Void, but some of her magic remained in the world. Her black bonecharms still sing. And some of that power remained in me, and a few of the others. See?” She slipped her shirt down to reveal an ink-covered shoulder. The lines of the tattoo swam as Caitlin studied it. “This, one of her last special undertakings, a final experiment, persists, though even now I can feel it fading. But there is enough. The plan proceeds as before. Breanna needs us now more than ever.”

  Caitlin turned back to watch the Bear of Tamarak. She felt breathless, excited—exhilarated. So it was not over, not yet. The grand plan, the one Lucinda had hatched as soon as she had learned that Daud still walked the world, would go ahead. Originally, they had planned to present Daud to their mistress, Breanna, to curry favor—Breanna was powerful, untouchable, and Lucinda had wanted to share more of her power, using the gift to demonstrate their worthiness to her.