Work Text:
Over the shriek of music from the Eyeless’s speakers, Daud heard voices. The Eyeless were alarmed but he couldn’t make out anything more than that. Since they had captured him—maybe a day before, it was hard to tell—he had tried to look for an opening; he needed to use this distraction to his advantage. But the restraints on the chair were too tight, and the music scraped like a butcher’s saw against his bones.
Above him, a cry cut off too quickly. A dark shape walked over the pit’s mesh ceiling. Then they dropped through the hatch, blade glinting red and silver before they sheathed it. Daud’s eyes wouldn’t focus and he couldn’t move, but he pulled against the restraints one more time. Going out like this would just be embarrassing.
“Hey. You lucid?” asked a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time.
Even though he shouldn’t have, Daud relaxed. “Better once you turn this off,” he said through gritted teeth. He knew Billie Lurk would find him eventually.
She undid his cuffs and clambered out of the cage while Daud tried to get the feeling back into his fingers. A moment later the music stopped and he could think again, breathe again, like the music was a physical weight lifted from his chest. He transversed out.
Billie’s eyes skimmed over him. “You don’t look as bad as I expected,” she blurted.
Daud raised an eyebrow. “Thanks.” Behind her, a woman with a shaved head lay unconscious on the tiles, and he couldn’t hear anyone else moving. The bathhouse was so still that the drip of water in the locker rooms echoed around the ring. She probably cleared the place before getting him out. Maybe that was why she looked so exhausted. She leaned hard against the control panel for the pit, keeping the weight off her right leg. “I knew you’d find me. I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Daud, listen—” she began, shaking her head.
But he didn’t need to hear apologies or reasons. She was here; that was enough. “We should get out of here. There’s more to the Eyeless than you know.”
At that, she smiled, and Daud realized he was missing something big. “I doubt that,” she said, and before Daud could argue she continued, “We’re not going to kill the Outsider. If he dies, the world ends.”
He’d covered his tracks looking for the knife, hadn’t left anything concrete, hadn’t breathed a word of what he planned to do—and the world ending? “How do you know?”
Billie sat on the floor and leaned back against the control stand. “Because I’ve seen it. I’d sit down for this one,” she added. “How long were you in that chair? Need anything—food, water, medicine?”
“Just a day. I’m fine.” Billie made a pleased noise, and Daud crossed his arms. The baths were no place for an explanation—another Eyeless could walk in at any moment, or one of the grand guard. But he needed to know what the fuck she was talking about too badly to protest. “What do you mean, you’ve seen it?”
“I mean time travel, Daud. This isn’t the first time I’ve saved you from the Eyeless. Last time you’d been their prisoner for longer; a few months, maybe. We teamed up to steal the twin-bladed knife and kill the Outsider. You died. I took him down.” Billie kept her voice matter-of-fact, precise, like she was giving a report for a job gone wrong. “After that these rifts into the Void started opening up. We tried to fix it, but they just kept spreading. Ate everything and everyone in their path. Turns out the Outsider sort of…anchors the Void, relative to the real world. Without him the Void was eating everything. He’d given me some powers before, and I figured out how to travel through time with the rifts. So I came back here, merged with my old self. And here we are.”
Daud stared at her for a moment. Then he sat down. “…That’s all?”
“There was some more weird shit, but…basically, yeah.” She slouched back and stared up at the board above the ring, the empty frame next to it. A roll of canvas was sticking out of her pack.
Coming from anyone else he would have thought it was bullshit. But this was Billie, appearing out of nowhere just after he was captured. She knew about his plan, the knife, the Eyeless. He hadn’t ruled out some kind of magical consequence for the bastard’s absence, either, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could research easily.
Daud wanted the Outsider dead because he thought it would fix things. The world shouldn’t have to live under the shadow of people like himself or Delilah. Ending the damn world was a new low even for him.
“Well,” Daud said slowly. “What now?”
Billie frowned but began to relax as she talked it out. “I ran my ship onto some rocks on the way here; it’s not safe to stay, even if it’s not completely underwater already.” She grimaced. “Aramis’ll put us up for a couple of nights. His place is a little flashy, but he doesn’t ask questions.”
It wasn’t what he meant, really, but trust Billie to solve the more immediate problem. “Stilton? You’ve made interesting friends.”
Shrugging, Billie said, “He knows me as Meagan. And he knows I’ve been looking for an old friend, but that’s all I’ve said about you.”
It sounded a lot better than Daud’s current accommodations. He rose to his feet, stiff muscles complaining at the movement, and offered her a hand up. After a moment of hesitation, she took it.
It was brighter outside than Daud expected. The Eyeless had caught him at night; now it was afternoon, just shading to evening. There weren’t many people around so he took easily to the rooftops, half-expecting Billie to follow. She’d mentioned powers in her explanation, hadn’t she? But she hesitated, watching him, and then started to trudge down the street. Daud followed her from above and watched her limp grow more pronounced as they made their way to the Batista mining district.
Finally Daud transversed back down to join her. “What happened to the leg?”
Billie grimaced. “Forgot I couldn’t transverse after I got back,” she said sheepishly. “Ended up dropping about ten feet and tweaked something in my knee—it’s not broken or anything, I can still walk.”
She looked like she was about to topple over. “Or I could transverse with you,” he pointed out reasonably, and Billie’s shoulders hunched in.
“I can still walk,” she said again.
Stubborn as ever, but she wasn’t his lieutenant anymore, so he didn’t force the issue. And he didn’t say anything when she started wobbling and grabbed his arm to steady herself. In the daylight she looked even more exhausted. How long since she had the chance to rest?
But Stilton’s manor wasn’t far. The door guards gave Billie friendly nods as they walked in. Even when they had contacts in places this nice back in the day, they had snuck in through the window. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Billie never really had time for people.
Then again, it had been fifteen years. Maybe he didn’t really know her anymore.
She caught his surprise. “What?” She raised an eyebrow and almost smiled. “I can make friends.”
“Apparently.” Ahead of them, a doorman took note of their approach and ducked inside. Daud saw Stilton approach through one of the huge windows as they climbed the front stairs. Once past the wall, he noted, security was pretty pathetic. So much of the front of the house is glass, giving a clear shot in. Something about the manor set his teeth on edge, though; he couldn’t figure out what until he tried his dark vision. And got nothing for it but a headache.
“What?” Billie asked again when he stiffened, but Daud shook his head. They were too close to the door, and their host.
Daud hadn’t paid much attention to politics since Dunwall, but he had spent enough time in Serkonos to hear about Stilton’s rise. Back in the day there had been rumors about Stilton and the old duke; now he heard more about his involvement in stopping Delilah’s coup. Was that where Billie had met him?
“Meagan! I hadn’t heard you were back in town,” Stilton boomed, clapping her on the shoulder. Billie swayed and her hand on Daud’s arm tightened.
“Just made it in this morning. I found who I was looking for.”
Stilton pinned Daud with a shrewd look. Something about his solid bulk and mustache made Daud feel like he was being judged by a very smart walrus. “I see.” He offered a handshake. “Aramis Stilton.”
As if he needed an introduction. “Daud.” It was a common enough name among Serkonan men his age, and he hadn’t been active as a mercenary in a while; Daud never bothered adopting another identity.
Stilton didn’t seem to think the name was odd, either. “You both look half dead,” he said solemnly. “What do you need? I have a union meeting in a few minutes, so explanations will have to wait, but I can call a physician if you need one. And there’s food, of course.”
At Billie’s questioning glance, Daud shrugged. The Eyeless knocked him around when they captured him, but it was nothing too bad, and their drugs worked their way out of his system hours ago.
“We need a place to stay for a couple of days.” Billie grimaced. “My ship isn’t an option.”
If the imposition bothered him, Stilton didn’t show it; he stepped out of the doorway and motioned for them to come inside. “You’ll have to tell me the whole story later. But you know where the guest bedroom is, if you want to make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks, Aramis,” Billie said, and caught Daud’s look. “There’s only the one,” she added under her breath, and shrugged. They’d shared close quarters before, anyway.
She was obviously comfortable enough in the manor, and dragged Daud up the stairs. Once they got to the guest bedroom, she kicked off her boots and jacket, sprawled out on the bed, pulled a pillow against her chest, and was out in seconds.
There was more that he wanted to ask her, now that they were finally safe, but she obviously needed rest. After a moment of deliberation he pulled her pistol from its holster (she opened drowsy eyes but didn’t seem to take in anything), tucked it under the mattress, and decided to take advantage of Stilton’s bathroom. It had been a while since he’d been able to clean off in anything fancier than a hostel sink.
His magic still wasn’t working. Reaching for it felt like poking a bruise at the back of his skull, the familiar warning that his magical reserves have been drained. The bone charms he’d taken from the Eyeless still sang strong as ever, so his powers probably weren’t gone. At least nothing was attacking him yet. Maybe the Outsider couldn’t get to him in this dead zone. The thought was almost a relief. If Billie knew about the future, the Outsider might, too, and he couldn’t imagine the bastard would be happy with either of them.
When he left the bathroom, Billie had managed to burrow under the covers, and one of the servants had left out clean clothes. Daud pulled them on and was trying to put on his boots when he heard the covers shift.
“Come to bed,” Billie ordered blearily, propped on one elbow, eyes barely cracked open.
Daud stared for a moment. With an invitation like that. He cleared his throat. “In a while.” Being tied to a chair for most of a day had left him restless, not to mention her wild story—he probably couldn’t sleep now if he tried. “It’s only sunset. Old lady.”
Billie barked out a laugh and flopped back down on the bed. Before he quite knew what he was doing Daud pushed her bangs from her forehead and left his hand there, fingers in her hair. Billie frowned, but didn’t brush him off. “I’m glad you found me.” Whatever had happened, whoever she was now—it was good to know she was still around. And that she still gave a damn about what happened to him. “I’ll try not to wake you up when I get back.”
The manor was large enough at first that Daud didn’t understand why there was only one guest room. More was dedicated to natural philosophy and curiosities than actual living space. Interesting, he supposed, but he had never been one to pursue knowledge for its own sake—one of many reasons he hadn’t lingered long at the academy. The servants didn’t bother to hide their chatting when he walked by, so Stilton wasn’t the type to insist on perfect decorum either.
He only realized how long he’d been wandering when he heard Stilton’s guests traipse back out through the main hall. Curiosity pulled him forward. He managed to round the corner to Stilton’s office just in time to see the last leave. Their farewells were friendly; even though they were obviously not as well-off as Stilton, they had the same roughness to their manners, and they obviously weren’t in awe of the place.
There wasn’t much of Billie in the manor, but he could see at least why she would like Stilton when she’d hated so many of the businessmen in Dunwall. It was still strange to feel such a disconnect. He knew more of what Billie got up to in the future than he did of her past. Was it just the end of the world that wore her out so thoroughly? He wanted to see how she had changed, hear what she’d done. She probably knew everything she needed to about him already.
Stilton caught him lingering in his peripheral vision, and shot him a questioning look.
“Meagan’s sleeping,” Daud said. Calling her by a fake name felt odd. Whalers rarely bothered with that kind of espionage. He wondered where she got it, if it meant anything or she just liked the sound. “Thought I’d look around.”
Stilton nodded. “Do you smoke?”
As it happened, the Eyeless had taken his cigars and he hadn’t picked up more yet. It seemed like bad form to steal from one of Billie’s friends before they’d gotten a chance to talk. Stilton offered him a cigarillo and led him outside, to one of the garden balconies. “How did you and Meagan meet?” Daud asked finally, when it didn’t seem like Stilton would talk on his own. “She’s never been the type to run in…exalted circles.” Though he supposed he could understand how her desire for infamy translated.
“When we met, she was making more money than me,” Stilton said with a snort. “I needed some materials that were difficult to acquire for an experimental mask filter. Meagan was the best smuggler I could afford, and we never lost touch.” He rubbed at his tattoo. They were still uncommon sights among the elite, though Daud had seen more and more respectable people with ink along the edge of their collars or sleeves in Karnaca recently. “And you?”
“What has she told you?”
Cagey as shit. Stilton shot him an amused look but let it pass. “Not much. We know Meagan’s from Dunwall, fell in with a bad crowd and had to leave. She just said she wanted to find a friend from those days.” His head tilted. “Figured you’d be one of Delilah’s.”
Daud snorted. “Not hardly.” He waited for the obvious question, but Stilton didn’t seem inclined to press. “What did she do during the coup?”
Sokolov’s name had come up on the empress’s side, along with Stilton’s and Alexandra Hypatia’s. A few weeks after Daud had heard about Delilah’s death, the news came through that Duke Abele’s body double had conspired with the empress to take the duke’s place while the man himself sat in an asylum. Emily had folded the double into the new Serkonan council and had the duke sentenced to death. Apparently Dunwall and Serkonos had fought over the right to execute him. All of it a nice, bloody story—but no one had said anything about a smuggler named Meagan.
“She and Anton discovered it,” said Stilton. Daud blinked. “They were in the harbor trying to get a message to Corvo when the Duke and Delilah attacked. They came back with the empress and…well, you know the rest, I’m sure.”
Add Sokolov to the list of Billie’s unexpected new friends. She’d done a damn good job getting those, apparently, and a better job keeping her name away from the story. “More or less.” He wanted to pry more, but it was the kind of thing he’d rather hear from Billie herself. “Thanks for letting us stay,” he said finally, stubbing out the cigarillo; it was getting dark and he’d walked off a lot of his restlessness.
“No trouble.” There was that shrewd look again. Stilton leaned forward, trailing smoke, eyes pinning Daud in place. “Whatever happened in Meagan’s past, she’s been a good friend for a long time now. If she gets into trouble…she doesn’t have to deal with it on her own.”
There was the piece he’d been missing. Billie had always held herself apart; still seemed to, in some ways. But… “I’m glad she has people on her side these days,” Daud said, and took his leave.
Daud was quiet when he returned to the bedroom, and didn’t see Billie stir as he entered. He sat down to take off his boots, and after a moment she rolled over, closer to the edge of the bed instead of starfishing across it. It was big enough for two, but not two who would probably be better off ignoring each other through the night. Given everything else that had happened, Daud decided not to worry about it.
“You’re not as paranoid as you used to be,” he noted as he pulled off his overshirt, throwing it on the dresser along with his gloves and coat. As he still was, though he wasn’t as quick as he used to be either. He slid under the covers and his eyes began to fall shut of their own accord. Daud had thought he was only a little tired and stiff from being stuck in a chair all day—his body disagreed.
Billie made an irritated noise. “I lived on a boat for fifteen years,” she said, slurring a little. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t tell you before?”
She turned over to face him, a frown twisting her mouth in the low light. “No. Didn’t have much time to chat.”
Did he want to know the full story? Maybe someday; for now, he could guess the important parts. It wasn’t going to happen for him, anyway. “I spent a while traveling the isles—chasing down old contacts, that sort of thing. Went to Pandyssia once.” It had been awful. He hadn’t realized how much he preferred cities until he was an ocean away from them. Some of that must have showed in his tone, because Billie snorted. “Tried to settle down, got a few day jobs even, but they didn’t take.”
She grinned. “Bet you hated not being the boss.”
Well, she had him there. Daud shrugged. “There was a family down the street from me in this town a few miles out of Cullero. Father, grandmother, a couple of kids—the Vanacores. The mother had been this up-and-coming scholar. Town magistrate sponsored her trip to the Academy and everything.”
The name got no reaction. Not surprising; Maria Vanacore’s death hadn’t mattered much in the grand scheme of things. Killing her hadn’t toppled an empire. Daud hadn’t even killed her himself, just remembered the name crossing his desk after he heard the family’s story. From Billie’s frown, she knew where this was going anyway. “That’s when you started looking for a way to kill the Outsider.”
“Yeah. Maybe ten years ago.”
Billie nodded and fell quiet. Daud closed his eyes; sleep tugged at him, even in this unfamiliar environment. Then Billie took a deep, shuddering breath, and he was awake again. “It’s done,” she whispered. “Shit—it’s really not going to happen.”
Never, through years of training and fights and bloodshed, had Daud ever seen Billie Lurk cry. (Eyes watering from a broken nose or smoke bombs didn’t count.) She wasn’t then, either—but it seemed like a close thing.
At a loss for anything else to do, he reached for her shoulder. He’d seen a lot of crying people but that was usually after he killed someone. Fixing this was outside his expertise.
Billie seemed to take the touch as an invitation and rolled into his side. “Sorry,” she said, watery, and sniffed. When she spoke again her voice was clearer. “Fuck, I’m tired.”
He wrapped an arm around her. It felt easier than it should have been. Neither of them were exactly cuddlers, but they knew each other. Billie’s forehead rested against his collarbone and he traced the line of vertebrae in her neck. “No apologies,” he said, and she made a choked noise. “Job’s over. I’m done, Billie. We can be done.”
When Daud woke up from strange, fragmented dreams, Billie was already gone, her side of the bed gone cool. He spared a moment of pride that she could still move so quietly and then rolled out of bed himself. Coffee-scented air drifted up from the dining room downstairs, and in a manor this nice, it had to be good.
At the table, Stilton’s face was buried in a newspaper, and Billie was shoveling food into her mouth like she hadn’t eaten in days. When he took the third place setting Billie gave him a nod; he tried to ignore the feeling that it was oddly impersonal. The last time he’d seen her had been fifteen years ago when he told her to leave her home and never come back. Whatever had happened in her future, he shouldn’t want the lines between them to become too blurred.
“How’s our dear empress doing?” Billie asked Stilton between forkfuls of tortilla, less sarcastic than Daud expected.
Stilton snorted. “Making friends as always. She’s throwing her weight behind the domestic help union, and there’s talk of new requirements for parliament. Term limits, divesting from businesses, that sort of thing.”
Exactly the kind of politics Billie had never cared much about back in the day. “Hmm,” she said, but it sounded smug.
“Did you give her an earful?” Daud leaned back in his seat and raised an eyebrow over the rim of his coffee mug.
“Just a little talking-to.” Billie’s version of a little talking-to back in the day had left more than one novice crying. He had learned to save her brand of training for the toughest cases. “Guess she listens better than you did.”
Daud rolled his eyes but it was fond. With this Billie he felt like he was on familiar ground. “I listened, I just didn’t always do what you wanted.”
She knocked her shoulder into his, telegraphing enough that he could avoid the blow if he wanted. Instead he elbowed her back. Billie smirked and he found himself returning it.
Stilton cleared his throat, and Daud hastily went back to his coffee. “Not that I mind having you here, Meagan, but what do you plan to do about your ship?”
Billie grimaced, its loss still clearly a sore spot. “Sell what I can. There’s some decent cargo that the water won’t have destroyed yet, and the rest of her might be good for scrap.” Then she turned her attention on Daud, raising an eyebrow.
Searching for a way to kill the Outsider had burned all his bridges over the last few years, and look where they had landed him. “I’m following your lead.” Billie gave a small, relieved nod. Had she not thought he would stay with her, now that the job was off? “What kind of ship was it?”
A frown pulled at the corners of her mouth. “Just a little cargo ship. Nothing special.” But her voice was too raw for that. Whatever the ship had been, it was obviously important to her.
“Saw a lot of history, though,” said Stilton, and sighed. “With all those adjustments Sokolov made…seems a shame the Dreadful Wale will never be in a museum.”
“Half of them didn’t work. The other half made it run worse.” Stilton shrugged as if this didn’t bother him. “Tell you what, there are a couple of personal things I wanted to salvage anyway. If one of Anton’s gadgets is retrievable, you can have it. Put it in one of your cases.” She waved her fork vaguely in the direction of the curio room, flicking bits of egg and potato into the air.
Nodding, Stilton folded his paper. Daud finished his first coffee and poured himself a refill. “How did you wreck, anyway? It’s not like you.”
She grimaced; Billie never had liked slights on her skills, no matter how well-intended. “I was in a hurry,” she said shortly, eyes darting over to Daud. Right. She had known he’d been captured. You don’t look as bad as I expected, she’d said. What had the Eyeless done to him the first time around?
“Want an extra set of hands?” he asked.
“It’ll be hard work for an old man,” Billie warned, half-serious.
He snorted. “I’m coming up on sixty, not eighty. Not exactly dying here.”
Poor choice of words, maybe, but she took it in stride and shoved a platter of toast towards him. “You’re still going to need more than coffee.”
By the time they ate and left the manor, the sun was getting higher in the sky, Karnacan heat intense as Daud remembered. He used to be able to deal with it longer. Too much time in Dunwall had spoiled him.
More importantly, once he passed through the manor’s gates, he could feel his magical reserves fill again. Daud grimaced, and Billie shot him a questioning look. “My abilities weren’t working inside the manor,” he said quietly. At this time of day there weren’t many people on the streets, and he didn’t want his words to carry. “Guess they’re not gone for good.” He wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not. The Outsider’s gifts were too useful to give up no matter how he felt about them. But the bastard was still keeping an eye on him, somewhere.
“Yeah, Emily said something about that,” Billie said. After a full night’s sleep and a decent meal she looked a lot better; even her limp had faded. She’d left her coat back at the manor, and seeing her in just shirtsleeves threw him. In Dunwall she had rarely been out of uniform.
Not, he reminded himself, that that was the important detail here. “Emily was Marked?” The Outsider just couldn’t leave her alone, apparently.
“She didn’t tell me about it, but she did leave her diary out.” Daud snorted. Billie ignored him. “Delilah was brought back to life at the manor through some kind of ritual that messed up the Void there—Emily saw it. There was time travel involved.” She pulled her left hand against her chest and flexed her fingers, frowning. Whatever had gone on, it bothered her, but she didn’t want to discuss it yet either.
So they walked to the ship’s resting place near the old Acantila repair station mostly in silence. As Billie had predicted, the Wale had slipped mostly underwater; the bow lay a few inches below the surface so that some of the cargo only sat in water rather than being immersed in it, and the top few decks with the pilot house and the wheel were clear. Billie stood on the rocks for a moment, shielding her eyes from the sun as she stared at the wreckage.
It was a shame, he thought, that he never got to see her captaining it. Then she took a deep breath, and they got to work.
Between his powers and Billie’s experience, it went by quickly. They pulled what cargo they could clear of the wreckage, first, and then moved on to the personal things. Somewhere along the way they started playing an old Whaler’s game—one person picked an object, the other had to explain how to kill someone with it.
All in all, not the worst way to pass a day.
The sun was nearly at the horizon by the time Billie declared they’d gotten all that was worth searching for. She hadn’t retrieved many personal things: a battered but legible diary from the pilot house, her old whaling mask, a pocketwatch Sokolov had made, another large Sokolov device Daud couldn’t begin to guess the purpose of, and a bottle of good whiskey.
“You drank most of this in the other timeline,” Billie said with a small smile, rubbing at the waterlogged and illegible label. “I never did manage to try it.”
The invitation was too obvious. Daud gestured toward where the rocks flattened out toward the shore. “I haven’t tried it yet, either,” he reminded her.
They were both dripping seawater as they took their seats near where they’d left their boots, weapons, and most of their layers out in a sunny patch. (One of Billie’s old bone charms was water-repellent, and they’d passed it back and forth all day, but it had given up around hour three.) Every now and then a breeze off the sea rippled through, leaving them both trying not to shiver despite the baking heat. Whiskey seemed like a good antidote to the damp chill before they had to start moving again.
“Going to get another ship?” Daud asked while Billie pried the bottle open. He wasn’t sure if she even could. He had no idea what ships cost, just that it was probably a lot.
Billie took a drink and swilled it around while she considered. “Nah.” She slouched back on her elbows, waterlogged shirt sticking to her skin. “It was kind of a kid’s dream, you know? Glad I got to do it, but it’s time to move on.”
Daud snorted. Being an assassin and a time-traveler seemed slightly more unrealistic. “What’s your big dream now, then?”
It felt like a simple question when he asked it, but Billie was quiet for a while. “I’d want to…make up for everything, somehow. Can’t fix it, but…”
“You know there’s no point trying to balance the scales,” he said, too blunt, too flat.
“What was killing the Outsider, then?” Billie rolled her eyes. “You want the same damn thing.”
Was that what she thought? The Outsider should die for the violence and death he’d put into the world, toying with lives, driving people mad with his shrines and charms, throwing them in the path of people like Delilah. People like him and even Billie. They should never have been able to do the things he let them do. He’d wanted justice, not penance.
For people like him, it amounted to the same thing. He leaned over, stole the bottle from her lap, and took a swig.
“Well…look how that turned out. Maybe the best we can do is not make anything worse.”
Billie made a face, as if she agreed with him but wasn’t happy about it. Though before he’d dragged her back into the mess, she’d done fine for herself, mixing with some of the most powerful people in the city if not the empire. Without her, maybe the empress never would have escaped Dunwall. Maybe she’d be better off if he left again, let her do what she wanted without a relic dragging her into his fights.
He’d already told her to leave once, though. That had been enough.
“I could fence,” she said suddenly, and Daud frowned as he tried to pick up the thread of conversation. “Run a black market, maybe. I’ve got the contacts for it. And I miss knowing one city really well.”
They were never going to get out of crime, apparently. Daud didn’t mind. If he wasn’t a criminal he’d never know what was going on. “Where would you want to go?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. Gristol and Serkonos are getting old, though.”
“Couple of the old crew set up in Morley…”
“Ugh, not Morley. It’s got Void shit, or it did last time I was there.” A hank of hair dripped onto her nose. With an impatient huff, she shoved it to the side. “What about Dabovka? I know a few people that way. And it’s not so hot.”
Sokolov had set up his studio there, if Daud remembered right. “You could’ve just said you wanted to go to Dabovka.” Good place to be a fence, though. Tyvia’s laws were so strict smuggling was the only way to get anything. And prison camps wouldn’t be a problem for either of them—security at those places was alright, but Billie would be better even without powers.
He could see it, was the thing: the two of them connected to the city’s underworld but out of the violent side of things. It was as close to a retirement plan as he was likely to get. And if Billie got bored of it eventually, moving on to something bigger would be simple enough.
She glanced at the setting sun and rolled to her feet in a fluid motion. He’d forgotten she could move like that, all easy grace, in the rush of the last couple of days. “Better talk to some of my contacts about getting this shit sold,” she said, gesturing to the wreckage. It took him a beat longer than it should have to get up, and she turned to offer him a hand.
Billie hesitated and for a moment he thought she was going to do—something. But then she relaxed and moved her grip from his hand to his elbow, tugging him up to the trolley.
She only had to find a a few people—salvagers to take care of the wreckage and legitimate cargo, a fence for the less-legitimate haul. No one he’d worked with before. He’d avoided coming back to Karnaca before following the Eyeless there, so this was Billie’s show.
A rune sang from one of the fence’s back shelves. Daud left Billie with her to haggle while he followed the song to a row of whalebone carvings. The rune was the only actually magical one, even though a few charms lay beside it—not fully engraved, maybe, or otherwise defective. He’d never learned to make charms himself, so he couldn’t tell. Daud ran his finger along the rough edge of the Outsider’s carved mark. It had been a while since he’d seen a rune; they seemed to be running thin in Serkonos. But he wasn’t sure if he was ready to draw the bastard’s attention again.
He was still trying to decide when Billie stalked back to find him. She did a short double-take at the sight of the rune. But he didn’t ask, just followed her out of the shop.
They started winding their way down Karnaca’s narrow streets; Daud was about to press when Billie blurted out, “The Outsider wasn’t dead.”
“What?”
Billie nodded shortly, mouth set into a line. “We turned him human again.” Before he could even process that it was even possible, much less that he’d apparently helped, Billie added, “You were dead by then, so you had to be the one to do it. That’s when the world started ending.”
“And you didn’t tell me.” She kept secrets, she had always had her secrets—but somehow he’d expected that to change even when so much about her hadn’t. “Then we could still finish the—”
“No.” Billie whirled into his path and jabbed her finger into his chest, trying to force him to back up against the wall. “No, we can’t! Why would killing him work any better? I’m not letting it happen again—”
“You think you could stop me?” he snarled.
She drew in a sharp breath; he hadn’t backed up, could still feel it on his face. “Yeah.” Not the brash confidence he remembered; as if it was a simple fact.
He wanted to fight, or throw something, or grab her hand. Instead he sidestepped away and turned down the street.
Maybe she was even right, that killing the Outsider would have the same effect as whatever the fuck they’d managed to do. He didn’t know. But he’d believed everything she’d said, trusted her; he didn’t know what he was doing next, but he couldn’t go back to the manor just now.
“Daud.” He stopped in his tracks. “Don’t make me come find you again.”
In answer, he waved. Then he transversed to the nearest rooftop, where she couldn’t follow fast enough.
Finding himself at a shrine a few hours later felt inevitable, somehow. It was in an old apartment, surrounded by signs warning about its imminent demolition. They were so deep into Howler territory Daud doubted he needed to worry about it. And there weren’t any deranged cultists or bodies around. Felt like as good a place as any to stop.
“Gonna talk?” Daud asked, rapping his knuckles against the rune. No response, of course. Why should the Outsider take notice of him now? Daud had been trying to kill him for years, had almost succeeded. Still hadn’t heard from the bastard since he’d trapped Delilah in the Void.
So he was a little surprised when he stepped away from the shrine and the world faded to deep, dizzying black. And just as quickly was replaced by white as glaring as snow hit by the sun.
Shielding his watering eyes, Daud tried to make sense of his surroundings. Once the initial shock had faded he realized he was part of a crowd on a balcony; the other members looked noble but vague, somehow, their faces blurred. They took no notice of him; their bodies gave off no heat. Flowers scented the air sickly-sweet. The smell threw him back to Brigmore manor, ghost hounds around every corner and an Overseer pleading for death.
There was another balcony across the way, and above the crowd he saw a painting. Too far away for him to make out the details, but the colors…Daud pushed through to stand at the railing. No one bothered him. They were all focused on Delilah, sitting on a copy of Dunwall’s royal throne. She spoke to someone standing just below her platform, leaning elegantly on one hand, the words inaudible from so far away.
“She called this painting The World As It Should Be,” said the Outsider, appearing beside Daud. He didn’t jump, but it was a close thing. The Outsider gave one of his not-smiles. “I’m not in this one, either.”
“Why is she here at all?” Who would have been dumb enough to trap Delilah in the Void for a second time, once she’d already clawed her way out?
Maybe his imagination, but the Outsider bristled. “Emily Kaldwin’s sense of mercy is not so different from her father’s. And yours, it seems.” He disappeared and reappeared on Daud’s other side, this time sitting on the railing. “Though you’ve lost your touch lately.”
Daud didn’t think before he spoke; if he did, the Outsider would only keep monologuing. “You wanted someone to kill you.”
The Outsider lifted himself neatly to stand on the railing, in defiance of everything Daud knew about balance and gravity but still somehow more human than he ever remembered the bastard being. “Three thousand years I’ve watched humanity become more and more predictable. More and more petty.” He glanced back at the scene taking place behind him. Delilah didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, too engrossed in her fantasy world. “I’m ready to be done. Whether it happened a few months or a few decades in the future.”
Unfortunately, for the first time, Daud understood him perfectly. “But you can’t without the world ending.” He wondered if he even cared, as long as he got his break.
“Unless the Void chose someone else to take my place.” He paced a few steps; Daud backed up, the better to keep an eye on him. “For a few decades, maybe even a few centuries, my replacement might remember what it was like to be one of you. Might care.” He disappeared again. “Would Delilah do a better job than me, do you think?” Daud whirled, finally spotting him on top of the nearest painting. It was of Billie, he realized—Billie fifteen years ago, in swirls of too-saturated color. The Outsider propped his chin on his hand. “Would you?”
And the world turned black before the Void spat him back out in front of the shrine. He swore, staggering as the real world took hold of him again, and yanked the rune from its place of honor. Part of him just wanted to break it—but then he’d already dealt with the Outsider’s bullshit. He wasn’t going to waste whatever power it could give him. Daud stuck it in his belt and swore again as he managed to nick his hand on one jagged edge.
No, he wouldn’t have been any better with the Outsider’s power than the Outsider had been. The bastard had given him a fraction, a taste, and look what Daud had done with it.
Once he’d managed to claw himself up to something better. Once he’d understood he was actually responsible for his crimes. The Outsider had expected him to wreak havoc, maybe. But Daud had used them.
When had he forgotten that? How many sleepless nights had it taken for him to start blaming someone else?
He’d been worse than an idiot; he’d been a hypocrite. One of the self-deluding fools he used to scoff at. Bad as Delilah, thinking he could force the world into the shape he wanted it.
He and the Outsider both had to live with their fates, he supposed.
For now, it was time to go home.
Stilton’s guards let him in without trouble. Billie’s weapons were in the guest room, but Billie wasn’t. Finally he found her in the garden, fiddling with her Sokolov watch at one of the tiny corner tables.
As he approached, she asked, “You done?”
Billie always could condescend with the best of them. He liked to think she’d learned it from him.
“Don’t hide things like that from me again,” he told her. She stiffened—it sounded too much like an order—and made a noncommittal noise. Not exactly the way he wanted to begin this conversation. “Talked to the Outsider. He showed me where Emily trapped Delilah in the Void.”
Billie’s eyebrows rose, and she scoffed. “That bitch better not break out again.”
“If she does…”
“I’ll put her down myself, since everyone keeps chickening out.” She rolled her eyes, and pulled a gear loose from its housing. She shoved it at Daud. “Hold this,” she ordered, and he waited as she unscrewed another piece so she could wipe sand from its grooves.
She’d never been particularly handy back when he knew her, but apparently years running a ship and working with Sokolov had taught her a few things. It took a few minutes, but she finally put everything back in place. She screwed the back on and flicked a switch, biting her lip in anticipation—the screen slowly began to glow and the minute hand ticked. Then the whole operation ground to a halt. Billie shoved it back into her jacket with an exasperated sigh.
Say something, he thought. You have to say something.
“I was jealous of Delilah for a while.”
Maybe not that.
Billie did a sharp double take. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged and tried to look relaxed. “You didn’t need her. Could’ve tipped off the Overseers on your own if you really wanted, but you didn’t need them either. More of the Whalers would have rallied to your side if you hadn’t gotten so many killed that day. I couldn’t make sense of her appeal to you.” Delilah was hardly Billie’s type, either; she’d never had much patience for people who aspired to nobility. Wanting wealth and power she had understood, but she’d disdained the trappings of it. He hadn’t thought that was a front.
Awkwardly Billie shrugged. “She just…convinced me to act. I’d been planning on challenging you for a while, but I kept putting it off. Delilah’s offer gave me the last push.”
It did make a certain amount of sense. And it shouldn’t have been so reassuring. “Alright.”
With a rueful grin she added, “I did sleep with her once. It was awful, though. She mentioned entrails more than I would’ve liked…and she was too bossy.”
“I imagine most people would be too bossy for you,” he said, before he could think better of it.
Of course Billie didn’t let that go by. Her eyes narrowed, considering and wary, like she couldn’t quite believe they were finally starting to have this conversation. “Imagine anything else about me?”
“I was actually your boss,” he said, voice as flat as he could make it. They were both adults; he shouldn’t be so damn nervous about this. “And that book got one thing right. Sex for its own sake never interested me. But—”
There was no word for what he wanted for or from Billie. Daud had spent decades fueling the trash fire that was Dunwall, profiting from the city’s chaos. Billie was supposed to be his legacy: a bright, brilliant assassin no matter where her loyalties lay. If she’d killed him he would have called her a job well done. Instead she had grown into the kind of person who could save the world, and then save him even though he was the reason it ended. And she still, somehow, seemed to want him around.
“If you’re trying to let me down easy…” she began, coiled tight in her seat. If she could still transverse, he thought, she’d have already been gone by now.
“No,” Daud snapped. Shit, he was bad at this. He leaned forward, hand skimming up the back of her neck. “You know you’re the only person left alive I give a damn about.”
“Well. Good,” Billie said, voice warm and possessive and dangerous. Then she hooked her fingers into his collar and pulled him down. It was so easy—he didn’t know why he expected otherwise; their bodies had always been in sync no matter what else is happening between them. When they broke apart she added, “Twenty years, Daud.”
Sixteen years ago Billie had tried to kill him. If that hadn’t been enough to cut ties, he couldn’t imagine why he’d leave her now. “Good thing you’re stuck with me.”
The house they buy in Tyvia only has one bedroom. Sokolov asks about it five minutes after he walks in the door.