The Return of Daud Read online

He sees a light.

  A blue light, shining, bright, as bright as the rising sun, as bright as—

  * * *

  Daud hit the floor with a heavy thud, waking him. He opened his eyes, blinking into the light of the lantern next to him, then rolled onto his side, bumping into the side of the red leather couch.

  A dream. It was just a dream, nothing more.

  He rolled again, his hand scrabbling for purchase as he pulled himself upright. The windows of the weird house were dark—night had fallen again.

  How long have I been asleep?

  Daud rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand. It felt stiff, but not sore—looking at it, the tracery of black lines was still there, but fainter. He was feeling better, too. Tired, certainly, but definitely better.

  Turning on the floor, he noticed something flash on the couch—the black mirror shard. From the angle on the floor, the shard should have been reflecting the strange, segmented ceiling of the room, but all Daud could see were gray clouds scudding across a dark expanse of nothingness.

  He looked up, but the ceiling was there, intact. Looking back in the mirror, the image—the image of the Void—had gone. The mirror was just a mirror once more.

  Daud pulled himself up on the couch and sank back into the soft leather.

  He closed his eyes.

  He slept.

  * * *

  When Daud woke again it was still dark. Was it the same night? He had no way of telling.

  Daud swung his feet to the floor, then pushed himself up. He stood for a moment, getting a sense of his condition, judging his current state of being. He felt stiff, but there was no pain or discomfort. Just a nagging tiredness—nothing much, but enough to remind him that he was now marked in a different way.

  Marked for death. How long he had, he didn’t know. He only hoped it was long enough.

  He lifted his hand again and stared at the Mark of the Outsider. He flexed his fingers and pulled on the power of the Void, just a little. Immediately the Mark grew warm, but… it felt different. He was still marked, and the Outsider’s brand allowed him to draw power from the Void, but it was, well, harder. It took more effort, and as Daud concentrated, closing his eyes, it almost felt like the power was erratic, less controllable, like his connection to the Void was slipping away.

  Daud opened his eyes. He looked at his hand again, then shook his head and picked up his discarded glove and pulled it back on.

  Time to leave.

  The room Billie had brought him to wasn’t the only one with strange angled panels; as he explored the building, searching for an exit, it felt like he was moving more through the inside of a machine than a house. Some doors led to other rooms and hallways. Others led to dead ends that were nothing but steel boxes, and in other rooms the floors were uneven, the panels stuck at odd angles, revealing more mechanisms beneath.

  The whole interior of the house was clearly designed to move, to be reconfigured. Why, Daud didn’t know, and he cared even less, but certainly the bizarre clockwork mansion of Kirin Jindosh was like nothing he had ever seen before.

  He moved on, his route to the main doors—or at least the direction of the main doors, going by what he could see out the windows—circuitous, thanks to the jammed machinery of the building blocking his way. As he walked, he noted the levers that were scattered all around the place, but he didn’t want to start toying with them, even if there was still power to shift the architecture. Without knowing what he was doing, there was more than a fair chance he would just trap himself—if he wasn’t crushed in the process.

  That was when he heard it—a loud clicking. Daud knew the sound—most recently from his time aboard the whaling ship that had brought him here. It was the sound of a gear wheel, the teeth spinning through a lever. And it sounded like it was coming from behind him—

  He turned and jumped through a doorway, just as the floor beneath him dropped away by more than a foot before lifting back up and rotating, the entire base of the room turning on a huge axle. Daud watched as the walls opened out and the ceiling lifted, the gaps in the structure exposing gears and motors as the room was rearranged.

  There was a clank. Daud saw one of the levers on the far side of the room flip, apparently by itself.

  Another clank—this time from in front of him. Daud turned, looking down the corridor. At the end, the open door led through to another large room, and in the middle of that room—in line with the open door—was another lever. It moved again, entirely of its own accord, and the room ahead began to reconfigure.

  The corridor in which he was standing began to disappear, the walls on either side lifting an inch and then sliding together. In just a few seconds, Daud would be crushed.

  Ahead, the door was still open, but a steel panel was sliding up as the next room was lifted into the air. Glancing over his shoulder, Daud saw the room he had just left had gone, the corridor now a dead end.

  As the walls of the corridor brushed Daud’s shoulders, he turned and sprinted for the rapidly closing gap at the top of the rising steel panel. He reached out and transversed forward, willing himself to slide through the gap even as he moved so he wasn’t cut in two.

  He made it, skidding across the floor of the next room, the heavy rug piling up in front of him as his body pushed against it.

  The clanking stopped, and the house was silent.

  Daud looked around. He was in a library, the room devoid of furniture but lined with bookcases, the shelves tightly packed with leather-bound volumes. The Mark of the Outsider burned on his hand, but he had managed to draw on its power well enough, even if it felt harder to do. Taking a breath, he stood up.

  The floor dropped away, turning on a pivot. Daud cried out in surprise and found himself falling. Below him was a steel chamber, the walls lined with geared mechanisms—and directly underneath, a large motor with spinning flywheels.

  Daud transversed downwards, angling himself to land beside the motor, out of the way of the rotating wheels. He hit the floor with a thud, the energy of the impact surprising him. He pushed himself up, shaking his head.

  The room moved again. Daud spun around, saw a larger control panel—the controls on it moving of their own accord—and made for it, only for the wall to which it was attached to shoot upwards as the reconfiguration continued.

  Here, somewhere in the heart of the machine-house, Daud could see into multiple levels and rooms as everything moved around him, the entire house changing shape. If he was going to get out, he had to move quickly.

  Looking up, he judged a gap between two rooms as their walls swung away from each other. He reached forward and transversed, finding himself in another wood-paneled chamber. But again, as with the steel box below, he slammed into the wall, the force of the impact knocking him off his feet.

  The room shifted, pulling apart at the seams. Daud turned, picked his spot and moved again.

  And found himself in a dead end.

  He turned. The wall behind him was moving away, exposing another gap in the structure on the left.

  He focused. He transversed—but the wall moved toward him, as though his power had tethered it and was pulling it in.

  The wall hit him, knocking him back. He fell against the panel behind him.

  He turned. Another gap, another chance.

  He transversed.

  And he cracked his nose against the wood, his power once again not having moved him anywhere, but brought the wall to him.

  It was impossible. That wasn’t how his powers worked, he knew that. Maybe it was something to do with his sickness, his connection to the Void unpredictable and slipping out of his control.

  He thought back to his dream. Was the Outsider watching him? Playing with him? Turning the Mark on his hand against him?

  The walls closed in. Daud spun on his heel as the light faded. There was nothing around him but wood and steel.

  He yelled in anger, his voice deafening in the tiny box that continued to shrink. He curled in
on himself, the walls pressing ever closer.

  He was trapped.

  31

  THE (FORMER) RESIDENCE OF KIRIN JINDOSH, UPPER AVENTA DISTRICT, KARNACA

  24th Day, Month of Harvest, 1852

  “The most elegant approach to warfare is to never fight at all. If you can subdue the enemy without a single strike, then you shall know the purity of victory.”

  —A BETTER WAY TO DIE

  Surviving fragment of an assassin’s treatise, author unknown

  Daud stood at the top of the sweeping flight of shallow stairs that led up to the grand entrance of Kirin Jindosh’s hillside mansion. The door behind him was open.

  He stood with his back as straight as a rod, his arms stretched out at his sides. He shuddered, like he was touching the live terminal of a whale oil battery. His chin was up, his eyes open, staring into the milky-blue haze that connected him to the dead man standing in front of him.

  Challis’s body mirrored Daud’s, his back straighter than it had been in years, his skeletal arms rigid as they poked out from his tattered cloak. His body, like Daud’s, shook, trembling with arcane energy as it poured between them. His face was missing from forehead to chin—in its place was an oval of blueish glass, an Oraculum lens, jammed into his skull, the bottom wedged against the witch servant’s broken jaw, the top scooped under the flap of scalp that remained on the dead man’s head.

  Smoke-like tendrils of energy coursed from the Oraculum lens, pouring into Daud’s staring eyes.

  Caitlin peered as close as she dared at Daud. She almost wanted to reach out and poke him with a finger, to see if he would just fall over. He probably would—but she didn’t want to interrupt the spell. To be able to mesmerize a victim like this, holding them as though in a clenched fist… this was a rare spell indeed for a witch.

  Lucinda stepped out from behind Challis, joining her sister.

  “It worked!” said Caitlin. “The trap worked!” She paused, one finger pulling playfully on her lower lip. “I wonder where he thinks he is?”

  Lucinda looked into Daud’s face, her already bleached skin looking almost translucent in the blue glow of power. The morning air was warming, but already she was soaked with sweat. It ran out of her hair, down her face, dripping from her fingers.

  “Inside the house,” said Lucinda. “Forever running, trying to free himself as the walls close in around him. The ultimate nightmare.”

  Caitlin clapped and danced on her toes. “But it worked! We have him! We have him!”

  Lucinda nodded, a smile breaking across her tired features, the effort to sustain the unusual witchcraft—a mix of true magic and natural philosophy, the last remnants of power inherited from her mistress, Breanna Ashworth, channeled through the Oraculum lens and the dead mind of her servant, Challis—now showing.

  “We have him,” said Lucinda. “Daud is finally ours.”

  EPILOGUE

  The world turns, and the Outsider watches, and waits.

  The Outsider is patient.

  But a change is coming. The Outsider knows it—he has seen it. And he is ready for it.

  So the world turns, and the Outsider waits, and he watches.

  He sees:

  In Karnaca, the Duke fell and in his place rose up a man of the people. Paolo had come into the world with nothing and knew the lives of the least privileged.

  Sometimes power shouts, and sometimes it whispers.

  He sees:

  In Dunwall, without ever realizing it, Delilah passed into an imagined world where her father’s promises were fulfilled and her subjects would love her forever, as she sailed the ocean with a great fleet and trekked across the Pandyssian wastes.

  While in the true capital, Emily the Just—Emily the Clever—ruled for decades over a prosperous, mended empire with Corvo Attano by her side.

  He sees:

  In his day, Anton Sokolov fired the engines of industry, hurtling the Empire into a more sophisticated age. He dallied with nobles, wayward artists, and great inventors alike, drinking in all that life could offer. Leaving Dunwall for the last time, he headed to the cold north, contented at last, on a final voyage to take him home…

  He sees:

  Her.

  There are things that never change, no matter how hard you try, questions you must answer. As Meagan Foster faded from the world, Billie Lurk stepped from her shadow, setting out to discover her truest self, and seeking the closest thing she’d ever known to family.

  The world turns and the Outsider watches.

  And he waits.

  And he is ready for what is to come.

  ALBARCA BATHS, KARNACA

  18th Day, Month of Nets, 1852

  “My lords and ladies, gentlemen and scoundrels alike!”

  The chamber is large and rectangular, the ceiling high, the walls covered in acres of patterned tiles now stained and cracked, if they have even remained on the walls at all. The floor is tiled too, as though the whole chamber was designed to be wet. The hard surfaces reflect the voice of the fight announcer loudly as he paces the boxing ring, arms raised as he addresses those assembled. The crowd is sparse, but they are all here for a singular purpose.

  They are all here to fight.

  “You know the rules. You are here of your own free will. The choice you make is yours and yours alone. Don’t go crying to Jeanette if things don’t go how you want them.”

  Some of the assembled snicker. Others remain silent, focused on loosening their muscles, adjusting the bandage wraps around their fists.

  The ring in which the announcer stands is a makeshift thing, a high stage of wood built over the back half of the deep rectangular depression that otherwise dominates the chamber—an old swimming pool, the sides stained, the top covered with a heavy mesh grille. The fight announcer walks to the edge of the boxing ring and looks down at the man strapped to the chair that is bolted to the bottom of the empty pool.

  The man is motionless, his head slumped forward on his chest. On the walls around the chair are fastened mechanical devices that hum and spit and the air around the man shimmers and cracks with power.

  The announcer grins. Leaning on the ropes, he signals to the other end of the chamber. By the edge of the pool is a stand and on the stand is a box. Cables drop off the back of the box and fall down into the pool, spidering across the cracked walls to the arcane devices.

  There is a woman by the box. Like the others in the chamber, her hair is short, her skin is scarred, and below her collarbone she displays a tattoo—a hollow triangle and a cross, the brand like an arrowhead on her flesh.

  Like the others in the chamber, she is a member of the Eyeless.

  At the announcer’s signal, the woman pulls a key from her belt. She unlocks the front panel of the control box, swings it open, then pulls down on the lever within. Immediately the hum of power ceases, and the yellowish sparking from the empty pool dies away.

  The assembled brace themselves, backing away from the mesh, as the man in the chair snaps his head up, casting his gaze around them.

  The announcer gestures to the cage.

  “Is there anyone here tonight brave enough to fight the Black Magic Brute?”

  The man in the pool rises from his chair. He snarls and flexes his muscles, the tendons in his neck sticking out like cables as he balls his fists.

  As the announcer repeats the challenge again, Daud grinds his teeth and stares up at the gang.

  Another night at the underground boxing ring, another night where he must fight for his life.

  Daud lets the anger grow inside him, fueling him. He will survive. He knows it. He must survive.

  Because he still has a mission to accomplish.

  The Outsider must die.

  The Outsider will die.

  And then the first fight begins.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Adam Christopher is a novelist, comic book writer, and award-winning editor. The author of Seven Wonders, The Age Atomic, and Hang Wire, and co-write
r of The Shield for Dark Circle Comics, Adam has also written novels based on the hit CBS television show Elementary for Titan Books. His debut novel, Empire State, was SciFiNow’s Book of the Year and a Financial Times Book of the Year for 2012. Born in New Zealand, Adam has lived in Great Britain since 2006.

  Find him online at www.adamchristopher.ac and on Twitter as @ghostfinder.

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  ADAM CHRISTOPHER

  Empress Emily Kaldwin leads a dual life, fulfilling her duties as empress while training with her father, Corvo Attano, mastering the arts of stealth, combat, and assassination. A strange, shrouded figure appears in Dunwall, seeming to possess powers once wielded by the assassin known as Daud. Faced with the possibility that their deadliest foe has returned, Emily and Corvo plunge headlong into a life-and-death race against time. If they fail to learn the truth about this mysterious enemy, the result could be destruction on an unimaginable scale.

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