It had only been one minute since I left Adam’s safehouse – and the noises coming from the other side of the district grew more harrowing by the second. I could still hear the cries of combat and screams of pain as another poor bloke had his body bisected by whoever was responsible. They were after a bounty, I presumed. You had to be a special kind of fool to tangle with the average bounty hunter.

God damn it.

The commotion had caused every member of the gang to pour out into the streets, all running to where the carnage was occurring to try and help him out. I had run straight for the nearest exit out of the district, but things could never be that simple.

Vincent was already waiting for me, with goons-a-plenty by his side.

He was spitting mad, “So, this is how you pay us back eh? Getting muscle to come and toast some of our boys!?”

I had no idea what he was talking about; “Not me.”

“Oh yeah? You just happen to be around, snooping and thieving when someone’s causing trouble?”

I smirked, “Coincidences happen.”

“And what if I happened to see you leaving Adam’s house a few minutes ago?” Vincent smirked with an inappropriate level of satisfaction. If he thought that his witness statement was going to rattle me, he had another thing coming.

“I’d say that you saw nothing.”

“You think you can take me for an idiot, Ren? I’ve been playing this game my whole life – I make mistakes, but then I make sure to rectify them. You’re gonna’ hand over those papers and we’re gonna’ pretend this never happened.”

I scoffed, “You think you assholes can beat me in a fight?”

It was a totally empty threat on his part, but Vincent didn’t know how strong I really was. The knee I unleashed back at the fight night was simply a taster of what I could do to someone. I was holding back. Vincent crossed his arms and stood tall, “I fancy our chances, actually.”

Stigma glowered from inside my mind, “Slay these buffoons and be done with it, Master. At least their souls can serve as fitting nourishment for a superior life-form.”

I shook my head. William had told me to keep it clean. I wasn’t going to contradict his request for a few days’ worth of energy. I could beat them bare-handed if I needed to. “It’s business. Nothing more and nothing less. You can walk away and save yourself a few teeth.”

“Nah, there ain’t such a thing as impersonal business Ren. When you’re fucking a guy over – it’s always personal. How much money do you think we could have made off of William? Enough to fix up the orphanage, for sure. Does it make you feel like a hero to work for a scum sucking upper-class parasite like him?”

“Really? Because from where I’m standing it seems that a lot of that money goes straight into Adam’s pocket – he doesn’t even live around here anymore for goodness sake. Probably kicking back in a nice mansion while the rest of you wallow in a bunch of shit.”

I didn’t mention the gold bars I’d stolen from his safe.

“You think I’m gonna’ listen to you? You’re just trying to play us against each other. What the hell happened to you? You forgot what it means to have somebody else’s back, selling people out just for a quick bag of scraps.”

I shrugged, “It’s not my job to show you that Adam’s abusing that trust. You going to dip, or are we doing this the violent way? I don’t think your boys are doing too hot back there.”

“They can handle it. I’m going to deal with you. Get him!”

Vincent had brought five men with him, but that wasn’t going to be enough. I’d beaten the same numbers back in Pascen, and they had actual combat training. I stood my ground and made no motion to draw Stigma. None of them had weapons of any real threat, the man to the back left of their formation was wielding a stolen watchman’s club. They were otherwise unarmed for the time being.

The first man to reach me was a weedy little fellow in a bowler hat. By the virtue of his agility, he was therefore selected to be the first one to go down. My left arm shot out with speed that surprised even me, clocking him directly in the nose and sending him flying back. He flew several metres and landed into a muddy puddle, splashing water and blood everywhere. He was out cold, the distance he travelled was like something out of a corny martial arts movie.

The group slid to a halt in shock. I’d dispatched one of them in one blow. Vincent continued to egg them on from behind, “Don’t just stand there looking stupid! There’s four of you!” Even so, they didn’t like their odds after such a display of raw strength. The largest of the group regained his bravery first and charged at me with arms spread wide. He wanted to drag me to the ground and hold me down.

I wasn’t going to let him win with a basic strategy like that. His momentum was too great to stop on the slippery ground, I stepped aside and twisted my torso to jab him in the ribs. I heard something crack. He wailed out in pain and fell down to his knees, clutching the angry red mark that I’d left behind. I’d snapped one of his ribs with a glancing blow.

The world turned upside down as the man behind him ran into me full force and sent us tumbling over a nearby stall. I hurried to my feet and kicked him in the chest, sending him sliding back under the wooden construction. Leaping back over, I was met with the last two – who decided that standing and boxing me was a better idea.

It wasn’t, but they tried. Their punches were slow and weak, I could have stood there and taken them to the head without any risk of being knocked out. I danced back out of their range with the tricky footwork that William had taught me. “Is that the best you can do?” I taunted. I changed directions and moved in on the man on the left. He could get his hands up in time to block the one-two combination I battered him with from both sides. He fell to the ground unconscious.

The other tried to take advantage of his friend’s failure – though that was no better a strategy than any of the others. He flinched away from me, and in a strange way that was a better evasive manoeuvre than any of them had shown me so far.

Stigma yelled into my ear, “Behind you!”

Whap!

Suddenly my legs turned to jelly, and a searing heat grew outwards from the back of my skull. One of the men had found a wooden plank and struck me with it while I was distracted. Darrin’s explanation about how KO’s worked suddenly rang in my head. Why did he have to run his big mouth and let them know? Just one wasn’t enough to put me out, but I was at a serious disadvantage. I grunted as he came down on the back of my neck. That really hurt.

“See? You can’t win against six people,” Vincent gloated – even though he hadn’t contributed to the fight one bit; “Check his pockets!”

The man who had dodged me before hesitantly moved next to my kneeling form and reached out to slip his hand into the pocket where William’s papers were hidden. I wasn’t about to let them get one over on me. I struck quickly, I grabbed his fingers in mine and squeezed as hard as I could. I could feel the fragile bones snapping and grinding as I mauled his hand with the strength of my grip. He cried and wailed, backing away and clutching the mangled limb with tears in his eyes.

“Piss off!”

Wham! He hit me again. This was bad. I was about to pass out for real.

I’d planned for this. While I still had the wherewithal to do so, I opened one of the pouches on my belt and sneakily retrieved a match. William wanted to see evidence of the papers being gone – what they showed me meant that I could execute plan B. I needed to keep Vincent talking. “You’re a real piece of shit,” I coughed, “Too much of a coward to fight me alone.”

Vincent decided to finish the job himself. His hand retrieved a small metal dagger. “Don’t try to sell me that crap. Rogues are all about doing what ‘needs to be done,’ since when did you start caring about what’s fair or not?”

I laughed and took William’s note, laying it out onto the muddy ground in front of me. I could barely coordinate my own body. The blows had stolen so much of my faculties. I held the match backwards against my palm and struck it against the edge of my metal plating. It spurted to life and I smirked.

“I don’t. I just wanted to do this.”

I flipped it around and laid it against the old parchment. One property of this yellowed paper used by the Sull military was that it burned really nice. It was like flash paper. A single spark could cause the whole thing to go up in smoke. And it did. Vincent couldn’t react in time – the paper burst into a violent bundle of flames until it was nothing more than a pile of charcoal. Only the red wax seal remained.

“You prick,” he seethed, “You just destroy everything around you, don’t you? Have to drag everyone else down with you!”

Adam’s plan was in tatters now, and Vincent intended to make me pay in full. He held the knife aloft and prepared his last blow. I heard the sound of something whistling through the air. We both scrambled back as a large wooden arrow embedded itself into the dirt in front of us. I turned to face the culprit, who was standing atop one of the buildings with her clothes fluttering in the wind.

“Tahar?”

I didn’t know why she was here, or where she came from, but it was a stroke of luck all the same. The momentary distraction was all I needed. I scrambled over to Vincent and cleaned his clock with a left-handed haymaker. Spittle and blood (and a few teeth) flew from his maw as his face deformed with the force of the punch. As he went down I grabbed the dagger from his loose grip so that he couldn’t use it on me.

“And stay down, you twat!”

I spun on my heel and threw it. It flew through the air and struck the board wielding grunt in the shoulder, forcing him to drop his blunt weapon. With ranged support and Vincent pushing up daisies, those who could still move did. They all ran in the opposite direction down the road. I took a moment to comprehend the sudden and violent conclusion to the job. When I looked back to the building where Tahar had fired from, I discovered that she was missing.

“Ha. Thanks, Tahar…”

There was a dry kind of humour in the whole ordeal. I reached out and retrieved the wax seal. Hopefully it was enough to convince William that I had done as he asked. Stigma materialised next to Vincent’s body and glared daggers into him from above. “Why do you not end this bastard?” she demanded of me, “He tried to kill you, Master.”

“Not worth the effort,” I offered plainly. Perhaps Vincent had wormed his way into my cold, black, deadened heart. Or maybe I was still trying to stick to the brief that William had given me. He didn’t want anyone to die for his sake. Though some of the injuries I had inflicted on the gang members would take some serious work to fix. Not my problem; they had plenty of healing potions to deal with it now anyway.

I wanted to get paid and get rid. The fighting had seemingly ended. I couldn’t hear any noises of agony or clashing steel coming from across the district now. I reached out and pulled on Stigma’s imaginary shoulder, “Job’s done. I can drill Tahar on what she was doing later.”

Without a second glance at Vincent’s bloodied snout, I departed for the eastern side of the city and William’s home.