Dishonored--The Corroded Man Read online

  Besides which, Emily could look after herself in a tight spot.

  But this… this was different. Emily had seen the grave robbers and now, clearly, had got it into her head to investigate further, to solve the mystery and catch the miscreants. He didn’t blame her. She craved adventure. Being Empress of the Isles was both a curse and a blessing—she knew her duty, and embraced it.

  Her restoration to the throne had been a chance to honor her mother, Jessamine, and to undo the damage the Lord Regent had wrought, not just to the city of Dunwall, but to the Empire of the Isles. Emily’s foremost goal was to be a just, fair ruler. And to do this, to really understand her empire, and the people within it, she explored Dunwall.

  She had to do it on her own terms, in her own way, and Corvo approved. So long as he was there to keep an eye on her, Emily would be fine.

  But the grave robbers—they were more than just another gang who had discovered a new way of getting rich. Emily had only observed a part of the picture.

  Corvo had seen the rest.

  The man in the Whaler’s outfit—and with the Whaler’s power.

  The power of the Outsider.

  That made the situation far, far more dangerous—not just for Emily, but for everyone. And Whalers didn’t snatch bodies in the dead of night. Not without another reason.

  He could watch her, but only so much. He needed a little backup.

  Corvo rolled his neck, and gestured at the guard on the left side of the throne room door, his insignia marking him as a lieutenant in the City Watch, his companion only a corporal.

  “Lieutenant?”

  The young officer snapped to attention, his sword rattling in its scabbard as it knocked against his leg.

  “My Lord!”

  “I want a special watch kept on the Empress,” Corvo said. “She is not to be left alone, day or night. I’ll talk to the Captain of the Watch and make out an official order, but in the meantime, do you understand my command?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The officer lifted his chin just a little more. Corvo nodded, then turned and walked toward the terrace lift. Giving Emily an escort wouldn’t stop her going out at night, but it might slow her down a little. It might even make her think twice, especially if he doubled the guard around the Tower.

  It was ridiculous, really. Here he was, attempting to keep the Empress safely locked away in Dunwall Tower—an Empress who was on her way to someday being as skilled a combatant as he was.

  Nevertheless, he had a bad feeling about the grave robbers. Something strange was happening in Dunwall. And he had to find out what.

  * * *

  Corvo found the High Overseer waiting in the Spymaster’s office, admiring a painting. Khulan turned as the Royal Protector entered and shut the door behind him.

  “Corvo,” Khulan said, all trace of formality gone now they were out of Emily’s company. The High Overseer shook his head, his hands already reaching for the lapels of his coat. “A miserable business this. Disgusting. Quite disgusting.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Corvo said. He walked around to his desk, looked at it, but didn’t sit down. Instead he stood and pulled at his bottom lip.

  “I’m sensing trouble, Corvo,” Khulan said, raising an eyebrow. “What have you discovered that you don’t want the Empress to know about?”

  Corvo paused. He looked the High Overseer in the eye, then smiled. He tapped the desk with his fingernails.

  “Perceptive as ever, old friend.”

  Khulan’s mouth turned up at the corner. “All this cloak-and-dagger is your department, not mine. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. You know that, I hope.”

  “You’ll organize for the Overseers to help out the City Watch?”

  “As I said.”

  “Right,” Corvo said, lowering his voice. He could take no risks. “I also want Warfare Overseers equipped with Music Boxes.”

  Khulan blinked, a smile blooming across his broad face. “I’m sorry, Corvo, for a moment there I thought you said Music Boxes.”

  Corvo answered only with a steely look. The smile quickly vanished from Khulan’s face.

  “Music Boxes, Corvo? If you mean for the Ancient Music to be heard again, that can only be because…”

  Corvo just nodded.

  “But… sorcery?”

  “Yes, High Overseer. Black magic in Dunwall.”

  “But… oh my, this is serious.” With one hand, Khulan reached to lean on the chair that sat in front of the Royal Spymaster’s desk, as though he needed support to stay standing. With his other hand he rubbed his forehead. “Magic,” he said again, shaking his head. “Who would open the bowels of the black worm and bring this heresy to Dunwall?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to find out,” Corvo said. “But can you do it?”

  The High Overseer hissed between his teeth. “Yes, but it will take time. We haven’t had need of such an enclave of Overseers for a long time. I will consult with my Vice Overseers and see what can be done. And we haven’t used Music Boxes since, well, since the days of the Lord Regent. I’ll need to order them out of the Abbey’s armory, but after all these years, they will need to be retuned, their suppression of magic tested.

  “That won’t be easy, especially as no one has had need to even look at them in all that time. Truth told, many of the younger Overseers scarcely believe the tales of those touched by the Outsider. Despite the whispers from our Sisters of the Oracular Order, who get glimmers from time to time, and despite the abandoned shrines we find in abandoned apartments and condemned buildings. But even these are often not proof enough. Most simply wave them off.”

  “Quite.” Corvo frowned. “Does that mean you can do it, or not?”

  The High Overseer nodded the affirmative, but his expression was far from pleased.

  “Okay,” Corvo said, “get them out and start work. Let me know how you progress. I need the boxes operational as quickly as possible.”

  “Very well, I will arrange it,” Khulan said. “But I fear the operational boxes may only be few in number.”

  “Raise what you can, and arm the rest of the Warfare Overseers with grenades and pistols. There should be ample supply in the Tower armories, if not at the Abbey. I want them all set and ready to go, at my command, should the need arise.”

  “It will take time, but we can do it.”

  “Thank you, Yul,” Corvo said. “And thank you for your discretion. Once we have more information, we can form a better plan, and then we can take it to the Empress. In the meantime, these are just precautions, trust me.”

  “Precautions, Corvo?” The High Overseer tutted. “It sounds more like preparation for war.”

  Corvo sighed.

  “I really hope it isn’t, Yul. I really hope it isn’t.”

  6

  GREAVES AUXILIARY WHALE SLAUGHTERHOUSE 5, SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROW, DUNWALL

  8th Day, Month of Darkness, 1851

  “I’ve known four people in my time who carried the Mark of the Outsider, but I’ve known dozens more who wanted it, who stood at night in stagnant ponds or begged with the dust blowing through graveyards. People who gutted farm animals or burned the flesh of men, thinking it would call forth the Void. I met a dying man once who had collected runes and charms for years. He crushed them all into powder, made a paste and ate them, thinking he could gain whatever magic was in the things. His death was long and painful.”

  — COBBLED BITS OF BONE

  Excerpt from a journal covering various occult artifacts

  Still kneeling on the wet factory floor, Galia stared at Zhukov’s hand, stared at the dark insignia burned into his blackened skin—the same mark that Daud had on his hand, only his had shone with a blue light that, even all these years later, still haunted her in her dreams.

  The Mark of the Outsider.

  Galia hadn’t believed Daud at first when he had told her, and even now, she had doubts. The Outsider was a myth, a story spread in the back
of taverns—a creation of the Overseers, most likely, part of some great conspiracy to keep the populace in check while allowing the Abbey of the Everyman their studies of forbidden arts—forbidden magics—for their own purposes.

  So some people said, anyway.

  But Galia had felt the power of the Outsider. Daud had given it to her—given it to all of the Whalers. It was what made them the greatest assassins in the world. Nobody and nothing could beat them, could stop them.

  Zhukov had given that power back to her. It felt different, yes, somehow, but Galia didn’t care. All she cared about was the fact that it had come back to her, and that this stranger, the man who said his name was Zhukov, who said he was a hero from a distant land, had promised her more.

  She took a step forward, her eyes locked on Zhukov’s hand. Then he turned his hand around, denying her, and he began to wind the stained bandage back in place.

  “You recognize the symbol,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

  Galia nodded. Then she ran her fingers through her greasy hair.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  The man laughed. “I told you. I am Zhukov, Hero of the State of Tyvia.”

  Her eyes narrowed “Hero?” She didn’t know much about how Tyvia worked, only that it was a very different place to Gristol. Didn’t it have princes, or some kind of council? She wasn’t sure. “You don’t look much like a hero.”

  Zhukov paused as he wrapped the bandage, then resumed again in silence. When he was done he picked his glove up off the wet floor and slipped it back on.

  “I was betrayed,” he said. “But they cannot take my status away from me. A Hero of Tyvia I remain, no matter what they did to me.”

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

  “To be named a Hero of the State is the highest honor of my country. Do you know Tyvia? It is a beautiful land, full of wonder, but it is also a strange, difficult place, a country ruled by its people, but not always for its people. A people I was sworn to help, fighting for their rights, for their way of life. Where there was injustice, I fought it—even when the authorities turned a blind eye. I took my struggles to every city of the country—Tamarak, Caltan, Dabokva… even Samara and Yaro in the north. And the people loved me.”

  “You said you were betrayed?”

  Zhukov inclined his head. “I was. I said Tyvia was a strange place, and it is the truth. Once ruled by princes, there is now a council, assembled from representatives, elected by the citizens from every region. That council is itself governed by a triumvirate—the High Judges, the head of which commands all.

  “It was for the High Judges that I was working, in secret. As a Hero of the State I was merely a tool. My purpose was to maintain balance. To keep the citizens happy, thinking that there was someone who existed outside of the system, fighting for them, making things right—and, maybe one day, my struggles would lead to the return of the Princes of Tyvia. Whatever thoughts kept the people happy… and kept them in check. But everything I did, I did for the High Judges.”

  “And, what, they turned against you?”

  Zhukov paused again, and he nodded slowly. “My usefulness had come to an end. I was their tool—and their property. With my task complete, I was an inconvenient fiction. They could not allow me to remain among the people, so they removed me—they sent me to their camp, at Utyrka, in the frozen heart of the country.”

  Galia felt a smile appearing on her lips. She folded her arms and cocked her head at the stranger.

  “You’re saying they sent you to prison? In Tyvia?”

  Zhukov nodded.

  Galia’s mouth curled up at the corner—she couldn’t help it. “But that’s not possible. Everybody knows that nobody has ever escaped from a Tyvian prison. The prisons are in the middle of the tundra, in the middle of all that snow and ice. Nobody gets out. Everybody knows that.”

  “And yet,” Zhukov said, spreading his hands, “I am here.”

  Galia lifted an eyebrow. “Then you’re lying.”

  Now it was Zhukov’s turn to cock his head. He lifted the hand he had bared to her, covered again by the thick black leather glove.

  “Am I lying about this?” he asked. “About the mark I possess? About the powers I have granted to you?”

  Galia felt her nerve waver, even at the slightest mention of the powers. She bit her bottom lip, and gave a slight nod.

  “So you’re the first—and only—man to ever escape Tyvia,” she said. “How did you do it?”

  Zhukov turned his hand, looking at the back of it—although it was impossible to tell for sure, with the large red goggles still in place. Slowly he lowered it.

  “The labor camp at Utyrka was a cruel place,” he said. “There were guards—military personnel, stationed there to run the camp. They were not called guards, of course. We did not need them, or even walls. The snow and the ice were our jailers.”

  Galia glanced down, watched Zhukov’s rippling reflection in the puddles of water on the slaughterhouse floor.

  “The work was crushing,” Zhukov continued. “It was… lethal. You are right to say that no one had ever escaped. None have ever been released, either—not from Utyrka. Even the shortest sentence there is one of death. The work will kill you before your time is due.

  “But at night, I dreamed,” he continued. “I saw stars that spun, shining with a blue light. I dreamed every night. As the years went by that blue light changed, darkened. It became yellow, then orange, then red—it was a fire, a vision of a great burning. And—”

  “Wait, the Great Burning?” Galia’s eyes widened.

  Zhukov paused, then continued, apparently content to ignore Galia’s exclamation.

  “And from that fire stepped a man. He spoke to me and I listened. He told me many things, secrets out of time, the secrets on which our world was built. That night, when I awoke, I had the mark.”

  He held up his hand again.

  “This mark is power, Galia. It was my escape. It allowed me to cross the tundra and the great fields of blue ice as clear as glass. It was here I discovered how to use my ability—I could transpose myself with my own reflection, then project that reflection into another, and another, and another. I could cross the ice, stepping between reflections. Then I was free.”

  He turned back around to Galia. Her eyes moved from the reflection in the water to her own reflection in his goggles.

  “But you aren’t in Tyvia now,” she said, unable to tear her eyes from his face. “You still wear the clothes from the camp? The snow goggles, the coat—”

  Zhukov’s laugh, a low bass echoing from his broad chest, was muffled beneath his scarf.

  “It was the ice of the Tyvian glaciers. They are famous throughout the empire, a wonder of the world. But their depths are not perfect—far from it. And the reflections within were likewise fractured. The more I traveled, the more I became fractured. Corroded.”

  Galia lifted her chin. “Show yourself. I want to see your face.”

  Zhukov laughed again.

  “I am a shadow of my former self—my blood burns in my veins, but I cannot bear the cold and the light of Dunwall. You will forgive my attire, but I feel as though my very soul is corroded. Every moment is a painful reminder of my betrayal.”

  Galia found her fingers floating near to the knife on her belt.

  “I asked you to show yourself.”

  “My face is not the face of the hero I once was, Galia.”

  Then she stood, moving in one swift movement, balancing on her toes as she looked up at Zhukov. Finally she lowered herself, stepped back, and folded her arms, trying to control her frustration.

  Trying to keep the knife out of her hand.

  “So this… dream you had?” she asked. “You think that was the Outsider, come to say hello?”

  “Perhaps. I cannot remember the vision clearly, but I have been marked. Nothing else matters.”

  “Nothing else matters? Why would the Outsider appear to you
? What did he want? Why give you his mark?”

  Zhukov didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  “Answer me!” Galia felt the blood rise in her face, her temper flaring.

  “The Outsider’s plan and his reasons are his own,” Zhukov said. “He is not a man. How he thinks, how he operates—these are beyond our understanding. All that matters is that I now have his power, which I used first to escape from Utyrka, and then from Tyvia.” He took a step toward her.

  Galia refused to move, instead lifting her chin higher as Zhukov bore down on her.

  “I have traveled the Isles for months,” Zhukov said. “Once out of Tyvia, I traveled to Morley, to Karnaca—I even saw the shores of Pandyssia. I was gathering intelligence, information. I was following a light, and finally that light led me to Gristol—to Dunwall, and to you, Galia Fleet.”

  “But what for? You have to tell me. What are you saving the world from?”

  “From itself, Galia. My betrayal was just the start of something much, much larger—a great unbalancing—not just of Tyvia, but of the world.”

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

  “Then maybe you can understand this. I was betrayed by Tyvia, and I will get my revenge. I plan to go back, and take what is mine by right.”

  “But how?” Galia sighed and flapped her arms against her sides. “What do you need all this for? What do you need me for?”

  Zhukov spun on his heel and walked across the slaughterhouse floor. He paused, turned, and gestured for Galia to follow him.

  “Come with me. I will show you.”

  * * *

  Rinaldo slid out of the shadows up on the iron gallery by the control room, and watched as the black-coated wraith they were now calling the “Boss” led his old friend Galia across to the other side of the slaughterhouse, where there was a railed stone stairway against the wall, leading down into the bowels of the factory.

  Rinaldo let out a breath he’d been holding for a long time. Galia and the Boss hadn’t heard or seen him up here, he was sure of that, but it had been close, the damn rusting stairwell and platforms creaking and rattling with the slightest movement. Rinaldo’s calves ached from balancing on his toes in the shadows, frozen in place so he could listen in.