A little over a week later, found Elizabeth sitting outside a warehouse manager’s office.

Francesca’s office.

The waiting room was small and dingy, the smell of sea salt and packing straw drifting in from the warehouse floor behind her. She shifted in her seat, an uncomfortable hardwood affair that was simultaneously too small in places, too large in others, and far too straight backed.

“Any chance I could get a better chair?” she asked the giant Tok Risim man standing, arms crossed, by Francesca’s door. He didn’t reply, just kept staring with the intensely blank face of a professional bodyguard. “Guess not,” she said with a sniff.

She groaned and flopped back in the chair in feigned pain, and heard a quiet giggle behind her. She twisted around to look at the warehouse door, finding a small girl peeking through a crack, a big brown eye and a mess of dark unruly curls framing a round, tanned face. Elizabeth smiled and wiggled her fingers at the girl, who yelped and ducked back out of sight, the patter of little feet accompanying another giggle as the child fled back into the warehouse.

Elizabeth turned back to Tall, Dark and Stoic. “Cute kid. Yours?”

Still no reply.

“Well, this is boring.”

The man moved, cracking the office door and putting his ear to the slit, keeping his eyes on Elizabeth. He nodded and pushed the door open.

“Ma’am will see you now,” he said in a baritone that absolutely matched his build. Elizabeth jumped up and strolled across the room, patting him on the shoulder as she passed him.

“Thanks for the chat, mate.”

Francesca was writing at her desk, quill flying furiously across parchment as her eyes darted between a half dozen sheets laid out in front of her. Discussing her with the Master, Elizabeth had expected a matronly Tok Risim woman, middle-aged, perhaps a little frayed around the edges from a life climbing the bureaucratic ranks in the salt crusted Verduno docks. She had not expected one of the most ravishingly beautiful women she had ever seen.

The broker was middle-aged, it was true, but aside from some faint crow’s feet, it didn’t show. Her skin was smooth caramel, her features aristocratic and elegant, framed by a mess of thick, dark, curly hair tumbling past her shoulders. And that rack! But the thing that really blew Elizabeth away were her eyes. They were large and expressive, a deep chocolate brown that suggested vulnerability and warmth in equal measure, the promise of hot nights of passion and cool mornings embraced in silken sheets.

Then the eyes narrowed, and the vulnerability was replaced with a distinct, predatory vibe. “You’re two days late, guilder.”

“Wonderful to meet you too, Francesca,” Elizabeth replied, settling into the chair in front of the table. It was much nicer than the one outside. Had a cushion and everything. “Sorry about the delay.”

Elizabeth gave her a winning smile, but it faded as the broker kept glaring.

“What?”

“I’m waiting on the explanation as to why you are late.”

“Oh, that. Well, when my ship came in to port there was some sort of parade down in the Populani district, looked like fun, so I joined in! Apparently that was two days ago, but it’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. You guys have amazing wine here.”

Elizabeth didn’t mention falling in with a sibling pair of street performers, gymnasts from Emrinth. He had been tall and strong, and she had been incredibly limber. More importantly, they had, through the fortune of lucky patronage, a fairly large house in the Populani district with a spacious spare room she’d set up as a safe house.

“Bah,” Francesca said, going back to writing. “They have one of those parades every other week. Makes it impossible to get anything done in this damned city.”

“It was great fun, though!”

“I’m sure,” she said dryly. “Listen, guilder, I’m staking a lot on you. No one else is throwing their lot in with the Guild, and if you fail or if my involvement is discovered, we’re as good as dead.”

“We?”

Francesca didn’t reply, but her eyes flickered over Elizabeth’s shoulder, towards the warehouse, and she remembered the girl with the brown puppy dog eyes and unruly curls.

“Don’t worry, I won’t put your kid in danger.”

“If you do endanger Luca, Dominic out there will deal with you.”

Elizabeth clicked her tongue. “He can certainly try, but I think we’re getting off topic. I’m here on business.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“You’ve already cast your lot, Francesca. Just accept it and let’s move on. What can you do for me?”

Francesca set her quill down and fixed Elizabeth with a hard stare. “I’ve got Giorgio. His location, at least.”

Elizabeth perked up. If old Giorgie was still alive, that would make her job much easier. He’d have the locations of all the safe houses, could rally the survivors, and actually plan the war. Which would leave Elizabeth free to do what she did best. After all, time spent planning an operation was time not spent putting bullets through faces. And she was still waiting for an opportunity to use her other toys. She was about to be a busy girl.

“That’s fantastic! Where is he? Is he here? Giorgio!” she called out as Francesca frantically shushed her.

“By the Pantheon, shut up, woman! There are workers just outside!”

“They don’t work for you?”

“Not in this. I’m an information broker, not a gang leader. I rely on discretion to do my job and survive.”

“Oh, you should have said that earlier.”

Francesca rubbed her face, looking tired. When her hand dropped away, she leaned back in her chair and stared at Elizabeth, the worry lines around her eyes deepening.

“You don’t seem like much of an assassin. Why on Telrus’ earth did the Guild Master send a crazy bitch like you?”

“Because, though you might not believe it, I’m the most devastatingly effective assassin he has. I’ve never failed a task before. In fact, this one time I literally levelled an entire castle to get at my target! Still got him, though.”

“I thought assassins were subtle? Sneaky?”

“Most of them. I’m a little showier, though. The clients appreciate it, usually. Contract and a show! No extra charge,” Elizabeth replied, giving Francesca the finger guns and a wink.

“That doesn’t reassure me, guilder.”

Elizabeth sighed and rolled her eyes. “Not my concern. You got the info? Or not?”

Francesca fixed Elizabeth with a hard stare, mouth set in a firm line, before she scribbled something on a piece of parchment and pushed it across the table. “This is the address of Giorgio’s safe house.”

“Brilliant, thank youuu!” Elizabeth sang as she snatched the scrap up, kissed it, and tucked it into a pouch on her belt as she stood to leave. “One last thing; can I just say you have the most amazing eyes.”

“Oh. Thank you?” Francesca blinked rapidly, thrown by the sudden change in subject.

“They’d look even more amazing between my thighs.” Elizabeth winked and wiggled her eyebrows.

Francesca’s eyes widened ever so slightly and her mouth dropped open. She regained her composure quickly, hiding her expression behind a hand. “Alright, get out of my office.”

Elizabeth blew her a kiss on the way out. The game had begun.

*

Elizabeth exited the warehouse, shading her eyes against the late afternoon sun, and took a moment to orientate herself before setting off. She was standing on the edge of the cliff overlooking The Gash, the canyon that ran from the edges of the island almost as far as the inland peak. It was a curious geographic anomaly, looking as though someone in ages past had chopped a wedge into the island with a god sized axe. Along both sides of the canyon, wooden walkways and pulley systems transferred expensive goods and important personnel from moorings along the base to warehouses in the Cittadini district, or directly to private estates at the higher altitudes in the Patrician district. But her destination was down where all the fun was.

The Populani ports.

She set off downhill, weaving through the mess of cobbled streets as her surroundings transitioned from the elegant brick housing compounds and utilitarian businesses, to simpler wooden buildings on stilts. The people changed as drastically as the architecture, the merchants in fine clothes disappearing, replaced by the great unwashed masses in their rough, unwashed peasant garb. Elizabeth smiled as she danced around a pair of drunks brawling in the street, then flicked a coin to a toothless beggar. Elizabeth giggled as the wizened old man blew her a kiss with a wink. These were her sort of people.

It didn’t take her long to reach the shoreline warehouse district, where the goods not worth running directly through The Gash were unloaded. She found the street she was after, and counted along the warehouses until she found it.

Giorgio’s safe house.

It looked decrepit compared to those around it, but it was large. No doubt it would conceal a jetty and a fast ship, the external façade carefully maintained to stop hopeful thieves poking around. The thieves themselves weren’t an issue, but when they ‘disappeared’ in large enough numbers, the local populace tended to get nervous. Safehouses were useless when everyone in the district started talking about it, specifically its body count.

She glanced around the crowded street. People were everywhere, but almost to a man they were workers, hurrying about on whatever task they had, counting down the minutes until knock off and an ale on the way home. All except a trio of young men loitering by the entrance to an alleyway.

They were dressed to blend in, but failing spectacularly. You could throw mud on artisanally crafted leather dress shoes, but it didn’t change the fact they cost more than the average Populani worker made in a month. It just gave away that the wearer would rather ruin such an expensive pair of shoes than stoop so low as to wear commoner garb. The trio were members of a local crime family, scoping out the district for signs of the Guild. Elizabeth frowned. She couldn’t go into Giorgie’s safe house with those three standing right there.

Unfortunately, she realised she was frowning directly at them when one of them frowned back, said something to his friends, and pointed at her. She spun and hurried down the street. After a few paces, she shot a quick glance over her shoulder and saw they were following. They broke into a run, barging through people and toppling crates in their haste.

Elizabeth started running as well, no real destination in mind. She tore down the street, vaulting carts and weaving through the crowd as the Famiglia thugs shouted. More voices joined them as incognito enforcers appeared out of the woodwork, and in minutes Elizabeth had a whole posse pursuing her.

“Help!” she shouted. “Those men are after me!”

Her cries went unanswered, though a few men removed their caps as she shot past, eyes downcast and mouths down-turned. It seemed some people in this town at least had the decency to feel bad for her, but no one was brave or stupid enough to do anything about it.

Oh well.

She kept making a ruckus for a few more minutes, slowing down occasionally to let her pursuers catch up. When she felt she had led them far enough, she cut into a nearby warehouse as the sun set, casting the inside of the building into a deep gloom. She looked around, taking in a jungle of stacked crate towers, trolleys, and pulleys. She followed the rope from the pulleys up into the darkness above, barely able to make out the outline of an elaborate walkway.

This would do nicely. The Famiglia had declared war on the Guild, decimated their numbers and destroyed their hold on the city in a single day.

But they were about to learn what happens when they went to war with her.

*

Elizabeth stalked along a walkway, watching as the trio that started the chase crept between the stacks of crates. One of them tapped the leader on the shoulder.

“Vincent, maybe she gave us the slip? She might have doubled back and run out the door,” he whispered.

“Quiet!” Vincent hissed. “She’s in here, the Guild bitch. Marco and Lorenz are guarding the door. She won’t get out without raising the alarm.”

Elizabeth snorted and wiped off her knife. Marco and Lorenz were already stuffed in a crate, throats open from ear to ear, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t planning on running away. Twelve enforcers had entered the warehouse after her, splitting off into groups to search. None of them would be leaving.

She vaulted the walkway railing, landed silently atop a tower of crates, then flipped onto the straw matted floor behind the trio. She ran forward, knives drawn, and plunged one through the ribcage of the man on her left, and one into the other’s neck, ripping it out through his throat in a spray of blood. Vincent paused in front of them as blood spattered the back of his neck. He slowly raised a hand, feeling the wetness, and inspected it. His jaw opened to elicit a scream, just as Elizabeth put her knife through the notch where his spine entered his skull.

And then there were seven.

She scuttled back up the tower of crates, jumped and grabbed the walkway, then used her momentum to swing back up.

And Francesca said I wasn’t sneaky.

She heard a thump from deeper in the warehouse as a careless enforcer knocked something over in the dark. She grinned and swept along the walkway, finding another trio at the source of the noise. They were bickering over a toppled crate, broken pottery spilling out of the busted lid. Apparently, one of the louts had stumbled into it, and now they were worried the noise would draw Elizabeth. The fact their voices grew louder as their emotions heated seemed lost on them. The busted crate and the surrounding towers gave Elizabeth an idea, though.

She ran back and found a pulley hook, then dragged it along to the railing above the enforcers. She hauled the hook up and hefted it, testing its weight. It would have been a solid twenty kilos, definitely fit for the task.

Letting a little rope play out through her hands, she swung the hook in circles, building momentum before hurling it over the edge. When the rope had uncoiled a little, she stomped on it, the line snapping taught and the heavy hook on the end swinging back under the walkway, smashing into the side of the crate tower. The enforcers yelled as they scrambled, but they were too slow, disappearing under an avalanche of heavy ceramic goods as the air filled with dust and shrieks of pain.

The rest of the enforcers came running, swearing and digging through the debris as their brothers screamed. Elizabeth decided it was time to finish up.

She pulled a brassy sphere from inside her cloak and gave it an affectionate pat.

“Time to see what you can do,” she whispered, then activated the enchantment with a thought and tossed it into the press of bodies. The grenade erupted in an explosion of flame, a wall of super-heated air slamming into her and almost blowing her off the walkway as the men below were torn apart, either by the terrific force of the explosion, or shards of jagged ceramic.

For a moment Elizabeth just stood, eyes fixed on the devastation below. And then she cracked a grin.

“That was fucking incredible!”

She dusted off her hands and turned to leave, when she heard someone cough inside the cloud of settling dust.

“Fuck…” they groaned, “Viggi? Luigi?”

“I’m here, brother, but the others…”

Elizabeth scowled. Her aim must have been off; that grenade should have done for all of them. Growling, she grabbed the pulley rope and vaulted the railing, sliding down its length and landing on an enforcer. He went down hard under the impact, something breaking with a loud crack as he struggled. Curiously, though, only his arms seemed to respond. Elizabeth slit his throat, then set to work on the other. He had survived the explosion, but his legs were a lacerated mass of pulped flesh, and he couldn’t do much more than scream obscenities before she punched her knife through his temple. She cleaned her blades off on his body and then, satisfied her work was done, turned to leave the warehouse. Her rumbling belly stopped her, again.

She sucked her teeth, then bent down by the corpse, and went through his pockets until she found what she was looking for.

A very full money purse.

Smiling, she hefted it, enjoying the sound of the thick coins clinking, and made for the door, stepping out into the cool evening air and wandering off in search of a tavern.

*

After a few hours, a couple of roast chickens, a mixing bowl of calamari (a local delicacy) and a bottle or two of wine, she stumbled off the bright, gaslit street into Giorgio’s safe house, her hands cupped over her swollen belly.

“Honey, I’m home,” she called into the darkness. She was met with silence. She ambled cautiously in, acutely aware she wouldn’t be able to see shit for the next few minutes. Not to mention she was very full, and sudden movements would probably result in her projectile vomiting all of that delicious squid. No one better jump out at her. She had spent the enforcer’s hard earned money on that food, and she’d be pissed if Giorgio made her waste it. Fortunately for him, he opted for the stealthy approach, and she sensed him stalking up behind her. She didn’t outwardly react when he pressed a knife against the small of her back.

“This is a very poor reception,” she said.

“Who are you, and how did you find me?”

“I’m serious. Lights are out, no food on the table, and where’s my damn recliner?”

“No, guttersnipe, I’m serious. Answer the question or I’ll excavate your kidneys.”

“For fuck’s sake, Giorgio. I’ll blow a hole through your gut before you so much as break the skin.”

“By the gods… Elizabeth?”

He pulled the knife away from her and stepped back, noticing for the first time the pistol muzzle pointing at him from under her armpit.

“Good to see you again, old timer. How’s business?”

Giorgio chuckled and sheathed the knife. “I haven’t seen you in, well, years. You were knee high to a grasshopper last I saw you. But if you’re here, I’m guessing you know how business is going.” Giorgio sighed and shook his head, then smiled and embraced her. “Words cannot adequately describe how glad I am to see you, Elizabeth,” he said as he squeezed her. “How did you find me, though?”

“Francesca found you. Cut a deal with the boss to provide the info in exchange for pride of place in the city when we break the Famiglias.

“Damn. If she can find me, the families can too.”

“Might not need to worry about that, for a little while at least. I got rid of the enforcers casing the district.”

“What? All of them?”

“There was only a dozen.”

Giorgio stared at her for a second, his eyebrows creeping up his forehead. “You’ve grown into a scary young woman, Elizabeth.”

She gave him a sweet smile, cupping her cheeks on the backs of her hands as she curtseyed.

Giorgio scoffed. “So… is he angry?”

“The boss? Na, at least I don’t think so. He said he hoped you were still alive.”

“That could just be so he can kill me himself.”

“You honestly think he’d do that to you? After all these years?”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, Elizabeth. He once killed an agent who assassinated five high-risk targets in one night because he did so three days late. He doesn’t react well to failure, perceived or otherwise.”

“I guess you better not fail him then.”

“You don’t think that ship has sailed?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “We’re at war. You’ve taken casualties, and you’re losing, but you haven’t lost yet, right? We just need to rally the troops, hit back hard, and win this fight!” she said, pumping a fist in the air.

“Right. Rally the troops,” he said, his shoulders drooping as his gaze drifted to the floor. “Let’s go into my office, it’s safe to have light in there. We have a few things to discuss.”

*

Elizabeth sat in an, admittedly, fairly comfortable leatherback chair, hands folded over her belly and a deep frown on her face. Giorgio sat across from her in his own chair, her expression mirrored in his by the light of the candles scattered around the room. He had aged since she last saw him, far more than she would have expected in the intervening years. The skin on his face resembled sun beaten leather, deep lines crossing his face like crevasses, crowding around watery, pale brown eyes. His once black hair had gone grey, vacating the top of his head in the process, leaving a ring of wispy, scraggly wire from his temples to his nape. His build still befitted an assassin, though, a thin, hard frame discernible beneath his ragged Guild robes.

He had just finished summarising the state of Guild forces in the city, which was to say, there were none. Despite keeping an eye out, hoping some of his agents might have survived and found the safe house, no one had arrived. He was the last man standing.

“As you can see, the situation is quite hopeless,” Giorgio said, startling Elizabeth from her thoughts.

She smiled at him. “Not hopeless, old timer. We may be at a slight tactical disadvantage right now, but we’re far from helpless.”

“They have an army, Elizabeth. We have us two.”

“That still sounds like an army to me! One of the most feared and experienced assassins in all the nations of this world, not to mention a force of nature. Death made manifest!”

Giorgio stared at her, the frown lessening slightly on his face. “I’m the… feared and experienced one?”

“No, I’m both of them, depending on my mood. You’re the dottery old fool who lost Verduno to a bunch of overdressed dandies.”

“Ah.”

“I’ll put in a good word with the boss when we’re done here, though, don’t worry,” she said with a wink.

“Thanks, I think. So, how are we going to win this war, then?”

“What about the city guard? Can we use them for some muscle? They mustn’t be fond of the families, right?”

“Elizabeth, this is Verduno. There is no city guard.”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous. Every city needs policing.”

“Not Verduno. The wealthy have bodyguards on retainer, the very wealthy have small armies, but there’s no formal police force.”

“How in the Pantheon does that even work?”

Giorgio shrugged. “The Famiglia have been a facet of Verduno society since it was first settled. The Patricians and Cittadini handle the above board trade, the Famiglia handle everything below. Profits get shared and everyone comes out ahead. Except for the poor Populani bastards who do all the actual work, of course.”

Elizabeth crossed her arms and sank back in the chair, brow furrowed in thought. If they couldn’t grow their numbers, they needed another way to balance the scales. But, she thought, she might have another option after all. She despised elaborate plans under most circumstances, but she had picked up a rumour at dinner that was playing on her mind. Word was, all the family leaders were going to be at a big soiree in a few days’ time. On one level, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to go after the Famiglia heads all at once. More important than that, though? It was at a masquerade ball!

“I’m going to need an invitation, a sparkly ball gown, a fairly large tote bag, and a masque,” she said, grinning at Giorgio’s confused look.