The Wigmaker began the walk back toward the stairs. A groaning lament followed as he passed.
When he was close enough to touch, Illario tensed—as if to lunge forward. Lucanis tightened his hold, his thumb finding the pressure point at the base of his wrist. The dagger fell from Illario’s grasp. Lucanis swiped it up before it clanged to the ground.
What are you doing? Illario mouthed. Again, Lucanis motioned him to stand down.
Once they heard Ambrose climb the stairs and close the door, Illario wrenched his arm free. “Have you lost your mind? We had him!”
“He doesn’t deserve a quick death.”
“Did you forget the mess you left upstairs? What do you think will happen when Ambrose finds his bodyguards slaughtered?”
“Hopefully he panics. I want him scared.”
“He’ll flee,” Illario asserted. “And this contract will be forfeit. Your life will be forfeit.”
“Ambrose would never leave his ‘creations.’” Lucanis appraised the brutality that surrounded them. “Don’t worry, cousin. He’ll die. But in the right way.”
Illario threw his hands up. “Death is death! There’s still time to chase Ambrose down. But we need to leave. Now. Magic isn’t my forte, but even I know red lyrium is bad news. It infects people’s minds. Lucanis!” Illario pressed. “We can’t help these people.”
Lucanis looked up at the caged globe. “No, but we can give them vengeance.”
After placing Illario’s dagger between his teeth, Lucanis jumped high to seize the bottom rungs of the cage. The chain swiveled from the added weight but held strong. He pulled himself up. There was just enough space between the bars to reach inside.
“What are you doing?” Illario called out.
Lucanis took the dagger from his mouth and positioned it over the artifact. “You’ll see.”
Illario groaned. “I really wish people would stop saying that.”
Breathing deep, Lucanis plunged the dagger into the globe. The strength of the stone ricocheted up through the joints of his arm. He watched the green light sputter and fizzle.
There was a moment of silence, then …
Madness.
* * *
“Seriously, what did you do?” Illario yelled as they raced up the stairs, a cacophony of twisting bones and snapping shackles at their heels.
“That globe was keeping the Veil intact,” Lucanis explained, taking two steps at a time.
“So, you stabbed it!?”
“You said yourself, vengeance was the best I could offer.”
“No!” Illario retorted, his breath heavy from exertion. “My exact words were: ‘We can’t help these people.’ I said nothing of vengeance. You’re the vengeancey one.”
They neared the top of the stairs. Lucanis used the railing to propel himself forward. “Trust me—to Ambrose, turning his creations against him is a fate worse than death.”
“I’m sorry—did the contract ask for ‘a fate worse than death’? Usually, it’s just death.”
“Illario—” But the other Crow wasn’t finished.
“I thought the plan was to have a few laughs, slit some throats—not release a demon swarm!”
“Plans change,” Lucanis replied. His gloved palm covered the door handle.
“Well, for the record, I preferred the other one.”
“Noted.” He went to yank the door open, then hesitated. “Do you hear that?”
Illario’s legs bounced impatiently. “The demons? Yes, I hear them.”
Lucanis shook his head. “There’s no alarm. Ambrose should’ve found the bodies by now.”
Illario tilted his head, then shrugged. “Don’t question the Maker’s miracles, cousin.”
Lucanis moved his ear closer to the door’s studded surface.
Swirling water. Soapsuds bubbled and popped. A loud slap echoed as drenched fabric hit marble.
A mop?
He opened the door. The hall was empty. Lucanis tossed Illario his dagger, then readied his own. Cautiously, they ventured forth.
With tense muscles, they rounded the corner. The guards’ corpses were gone. In their place, they found Effe cleaning the floor.
When she saw Lucanis, her knuckles turned white. “You said you’d kill him.”
Lucanis motioned Illario to lower his weapon. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not!” Her voice quavered. “Master just passed this way. If he finds out I helped you, he’ll—”
“He won’t,” Lucanis promised.
“Where are the bodies?” Illario asked.
Effe shrank into herself. “I moved them.”
“Not by yourself, you didn’t.” He turned to Lucanis, a smug sneer on his face. “I told you she’d talk.”
“Only to the other slaves! Please,” she pleaded to Lucanis. “I didn’t tell them what you looked like—only that you’re here. They wanted to help.” She squared her slight shoulders. “You promised to kill him.”
“And you promised to keep your mouth shut,” Illario chided.
Back down the hall, something wet slammed against the studded door.
Effe’s bravado crumbled. “What was that?”
“Take her,” Lucanis told Illario. “Find the others.”
“Other what?” His eyes darted to the elf. “Slaves? Absolutely not.”
Behind them, a second fleshy thud echoed, then a third, and a fourth.
Lucanis continued as if Illario had agreed, “There’s a statue with a passage—like the one we used before. It’s not far. You should be able to escape in the chaos.”
Illario blanched. “Did you not hear me? I said—”
“Athima will help you. She’s the elf we met earlier.”
“I don’t give a damn what her name is. I’m not—”
“Once Ambrose is dealt with, I’ll meet you at the docks.”
“Lucanis!” Illario shouted. “We are not revolutionaries.”
Lucanis inhaled, his nostrils flaring. Illario was right. The Antivan Crows were assassins not freedom fighters. Back home, people liked to romanticize, but Lucanis knew what he was.
Still, his fingers twitched. “They are not responsible for their master’s mistakes.”
He locked eyes with his cousin. Illario tried to remain resolute, but it was like touching hot steel. Sighing, he cursed and turned to Effe.
“Come on,” Illario snapped.
She glanced toward Lucanis. He gave her a reassuring nod. “My cousin may be a snob, but he’s true to his word.”
“Are you?” she asked, referring to his promise about Ambrose.
“The Wigmaker will die tonight,” Lucanis affirmed. “But you have to go. It’s about to become very dangerous.”
As if to prove his point, someone outside screamed.
* * *
The scene in the courtyard had changed dramatically, but if Lucanis was being honest, he preferred chaos to debauchery. It gave him satisfaction to watch drunken Vints trip over themselves, desperate to find an exit. Wine and blue blood spilled in equal measure as guests careened through an obstacle course of upturned chaise lounges and broken glass.
The demons had possessed the models first, the red lyrium–imbued wigs an enticing lure. Their bony bodies stretched into towering masses of contorted flesh. The transformation affected the wigs, too, giving the locks a serrated edge. Strands stuck out at odd angles, whipping wildly, cutting anyone who drew too close.
For mages, fear was an open invitation to demonic possession, and the alcohol the guests had consumed had dulled their defenses. One after another, the drunkest and most frightened among them fell prey to malicious spirits watching, waiting on the other side of the Veil.
Lucanis felt no sympathy. They were, all of them, Venatori supporters, who either knew what Ambrose was doing or chose to turn a blind eye to indulge their own vanity.
Ignorance is bliss, not innocence.
He spotted Ambrose Forfex at the center of the carnage, surrounded by a glea
ming pile of hair. The Wigmaker was shouting at Camille to cut his wigs off the abominations. Her painted arms were getting sliced to ribbons for her efforts.
Growing impatient, Ambrose snarled, “Get out of the way.” He shoved the guard captain. Her ankle, unaccustomed to heels, twisted and snapped. Camille fell forward, toward one of the abominations. An errant lock of hair caught her throat. The gash was thin but deep. With frantic fingers, she tried to apply pressure. She looked to Ambrose and extended a pleading hand.
The mage rolled his eyes. “Useless.”
Ambrose grabbed her wrist and pulled the pressure off her neck, allowing the blood to flow freely. “This, however…”
The guard captain collapsed at his feet. Employing Camille’s blood as a catalyst, the Wigmaker impaled the abomination with spikes of crimson energy. The monstrous corpse exploded when it hit the ground, but Ambrose had enough foresight to create a barrier, shielding himself from the gore. The Wigmaker leaned over to lift a stringy tangle of hair from the grisly pile.
Lucanis dropped onto the runway. His sword arm limber with anticipation, he stalked toward Ambrose. “Nothing a little soap can’t fix,” he offered.
Ambrose threw down the matted mess. “Lucanis Dellamorte, I presume?”
“Sì,” Lucanis answered, knowing even a single syllable of a foreign language would disgust the Wigmaker.
It had the desired effect—Ambrose recoiled as if he’d stepped in urine.
“Is this your handiwork?”
“Sì.”
The mage’s jaw pulsed. “You think you can come into my Imperium and act as judge and executioner?” Lucanis opened his mouth to respond, but Ambrose anticipated his answer. “Don’t say, ‘Sì!’”
That earned a genuine smile from Lucanis. “Normally, there’s no judgment—only a contract. But for you, Ambrose, I made an exception.”
The Wigmaker raised a brow. “Oh? What makes me so special?”
“You upset my delicate sensibilities.”
It was Ambrose’s turn to laugh. “I thought a Crow could stomach anything—for the right price.”
Lucanis leveled the Wigmaker with a pointed look. “Not red lyrium.”
“Morality is not static. Right and wrong are a matter of perspective.” Ambrose’s words were practiced and tired as if he had given the same reasoning a hundred times.
Lucanis continued his advance, refusing to engage in the Wigmaker’s rhetoric. Nothing irritated him more than self-righteous excuses. If you’re going to do something terrible, just own it.
The abominations from the workshop had joined the party. One of them seized a fleeing guard. He screamed as it wrapped him in a cocoon of razor-sharp hair. Blood oozed from the coiled strands.
Ambrose shot a quick glance at Camille’s corpse. The gesture lasted only a split second, but it was enough to prompt Lucanis to increase his pace. Close the distance. Don’t let him get a spell off.
Chanting under his breath, the Wigmaker began summoning a bloody mist from the guard captain’s remains. The lifeless skin paled and shriveled.
Lucanis broke into a run.
The mist sharpened into a thousand tiny needles. Ambrose raised his arm.
Not gonna make it, Lucanis thought, snatching a knife from his coat.
The needles vibrated eagerly. Just as the Wigmaker launched them forward, Lucanis threw his knife—taking off four of Ambrose’s fingers.
Without a mage to guide them, the needles transformed back into globules of blood and rained down on the catwalk.
Ambrose, clutching his ruined hand, crumbled to his knees.
“You should be more careful,” Lucanis said. “Fingers are a wigmaker’s tools, are they not?”
Hopelessness flooded the mage’s eyes. “One day, someone will turn your work against you. Only then will you have some semblance of the emptiness you’ve made me feel.” With his good hand, he gathered what was left of the wigs, hugging the locks to his chest.
Lucanis experienced a twinge of disappointment, kindling for rage. He expected more fight from a high-ranking Venatori. He thought of the Wigmaker’s workshop, of the prisoners, their bellies full of poison, hanging like butchered pigs in stale, suffocating darkness.
“Get up, Ambrose,” he growled. “You don’t get to do that—you don’t get to quit.”
The word quit sparked some life in the Wigmaker’s blank expression. “So, the crow thinks he can best the dragon?”
“The crow,” Lucanis mocked, “knows it.”
A cackle, distorted and unhinged, erupted from Ambrose’s lips. The hair in his fist glowed, and Lucanis swore he heard the strands whisper.
“I’ll make you eat those words!” Ambrose promised, his voice no longer his own.
Lucanis watched, repulsed, as the Wigmaker began shoving locks of hair into his mouth. The sharp edges shredded his tongue and gums, but he continued stuffing, chewing, and eating until the bottom half of his face was ground meat.
That’s one way to make a point, Lucanis thought, coming to a stop.
Gnarled cords of muscle ripped the seams of the Wigmaker’s clothing. Cartilage tore. Vertebrae popped. Ambrose held his pulsing, distended scalp. Strands of hair cut through the skin, lashing out like a sea monster. Lucanis had seen many abominations, but never one like this. It was almost arachnid in shape with eight segments of spiky hair forming the legs and Ambrose’s twisted, mutated body making up the abdomen.
“Thought you said dragon not spider!” Lucanis taunted, hoping to distract the beast while he searched for a route to higher ground.
In response, the creature rose to its full height, then slashed at the Crow with its serrated limbs. Lucanis dove sideways, mere seconds before the monster’s front legs pierced the runway. This is why you don’t talk during a fight, Lucanis scolded himself. Zigging and zagging to avoid the spiked appendages, he sped toward the arched columns. He ducked under another abomination’s swiping claws and inhaled a chestful of air before scrambling up the first column, then the second. His fingers had just grazed the final ledge, when a searing pain shot through his right shoulder. Lucanis tried to pull away, but he could feel the hair wrap around his clavicle, yanking him back from the inside.
He lost his grip.
The abomination hurled Lucanis skyward. More legs perforated his hip, bicep, and thigh. Steeling himself against the pain, Lucanis flipped backward and severed the hairy limbs.
He heard an inhuman shriek, and then he was falling.
Lucanis hit the roof with a smack powerful enough to fracture the clay tiles and two of his ribs.
Make that three, he noted, rolling onto his back.
Below, the abomination let out a high-pitched wail. Lucanis gritted his teeth and forced himself to peer over the side.
With four of its legs now too short to support its body, the creature struggled to stand. Sensing its weakness and spurred on by the demons of vengeance within, the other abominations began to surround it.
That’s it. Lucanis smiled encouragingly. Good little demons. Turning his sword over in his palm, he cut across the roof.
The smaller abominations pushed the larger beast into a corner. The creature reared back to swipe at the encroaching swarm, exposing Ambrose’s distorted frame. One of the slashed legs constricted around an attacking abomination. Ambrose’s mouth opened wide, unhooking its maimed jaw, to swallow the abomination whole.
The legs began to grow back before Lucanis’s eyes.
“No, you don’t!” he shouted.
Raising his sword overhead, Lucanis leapt off the roof. He could hear the clamoring horde below, but he kept his focus on the creature’s underbelly. Too late, it tried to protect itself. Hundreds of wiry strands whipped through the air, catching only the wind. Lucanis plunged his sword into Ambrose’s mangled sternum. He dragged the blade down in one long, clean cut until he ran out of flesh.
For a moment, the abomination wobbled. The fissure in its core festered with inky spume. Then, slowly, the visc
ous halves split, folding outward. A putrid vapor infected the atmosphere. The locks of hair composing the creature’s legs disjoined and frizzed with static.
Panting heavily, Lucanis regarded the creature’s collapse without joy or anger. A vermilion fire engulfed the carcass, leaving nothing but a brittle husk.
The other abominations stirred.
“You have your vengeance,” Lucanis rasped.
But his words did not reach them. They stared, snarling and ready. He squeezed the grip of his sword, preparing for another fight—then the pressure behind his skull eased. Without the Wigmaker, the demons had no anchor in the waking world. Gradually, the abominations disintegrated into ash. With the source of their anger gone, the spirits of vengeance returned to the Fade, allowing the dead to rest.
Only then did Lucanis exhale and let relief wash over him.
“Contract complete.”
* * *
Lucanis reached the docks just before dawn. Knowing Illario as he did, he passed their ship’s allotted berth to check the nearby taverns. After a quick glance up and down the harbor, Lucanis settled on the Nug Queen purely because it was the cleanest establishment of the lot.
When he entered, limping and bloody, the barkeep glowered. “Walk out the way you came,” the dwarf instructed. He had a tawny mustache that was twirled and waxed at both ends.
“I’m looking for my cousin,” Lucanis explained.
“Don’t care,” the dwarf replied. “I know trouble when I see it. Even if it’s not bleeding on my floorboards.”
Lucanis scanned the room for Illario. The barkeep’s attitude aside, the tavern was inviting with its pristine white walls and peacock-blue cushions. A brass nug, wearing a little crown, reigned over the bar’s sparse patrons. Most had turned in for the night, but a few sleepy, sullen customers remained, staring into their pints for answers or comfort. Not seeing his cousin among them, Lucanis prepared to leave—then he heard Illario’s silvery voice flattering one of the waiters.
“Oy!” the dwarf called out as Lucanis staggered toward the row of booths lining the left side of the tavern. “Exit’s that way!”
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 30
