The Man-Butcher Prize

by Charles X Cross

  After almost an hour he saw his mentor emerge from the leafy pathway that led behind the target’s house. Perhaps Ojo had gotten bored of waiting and had completed the job for him. The thought was surprisingly calming.

  ‘I found a way in.’ Ojo sat back down. ‘Are you ready?’

  The assassin asked casually as if he were enquiring about supper, but the words set the boy on edge. Despite three days of mental preparation, William felt as though the job had been suddenly thrust upon him.

  ‘Be ready when the lamps go out.’

  Night crept in, and before long the top floor lighting was extinguished in the target’s house. Ojo pushed himself to his feet, startling William with his sudden movement. The feeling of unpreparedness swelled like a sickness in his stomach.

  William took the glass bottle of potent ether safely in both hands and stood. As soon as he was on his feet, Ojo whirled around and was away, striding out of the small park and across the wide slabbed street with all the confidence of one of its affluent inhabitants. He didn’t wait for William, or even pause a second, before taking the dark path through the buildings.

  William followed as quickly as he dared with the volatile liquid clamped between his fingers, only catching up to his mentor in the somehow brighter moonlight that bathed the rear garden of the townhouse.

  ‘Up there.’ Ojo pointed to a trellis that spanned the side of the building. William’s eyes followed the ivy and bramble that snaked up the wall until he found an open window, just in reach of the trellis for a confident climber – not something he would have ever considered himself. His fall into the ocean had dampened his enthusiasm for heights somewhat, but he couldn’t afford to let Ojo down, not when the assassin had pinned both their futures on the success of this one contract. Once this was done Ojo was a free man. His patron’s elixirs would be paid for, and they wouldn’t be beholden to the costs or the deadlines for murder they created.

  His mentor’s adage had been right; this boy had to die so that they might live. Even asserting it to himself in the moment, William did not feel entirely convinced without Ojo’s worldly timbre to bolster the sentiment. Without a word, he knotted the bottle neck to his belt and readied himself for the climb.

  ‘I’ll be right here,’ Ojo assured quietly as he unfurled a surprisingly clean handkerchief from his jacket. ‘Douse this and hold it over his mouth until the pulse stops. Shout if you need me, I’ll make my way in and get you.’

  The assassin didn’t need to continue, William understood there could be no mistakes. If the assassin did follow through with a rescue, every person in between would have the life choked from them.

  William balled the handkerchief and shoved it in his pocket, then set his hand on the trellis. His first foot left solid earth, then his second, making him feel too high, though he had not yet reached his mentor’s eye level. He turned his head upwards and started to climb. One hand after the next grasped the diagonal battens, bringing the open window closer. Terror leant him speed, and before it could set into his knees and make them tremor, he reached the sanctuary of the windowsill.

  Inside was dark. It seemed that the boy’s carers had retired to bed early. William was less likely to be seen, but people lying in bed awaiting sleep tended to have the sharpest hearing. He leaned across and opened the window to its fullest extent, pleased the gap between trellis and sill was closer than it had appeared from the ground. The recent oiling of the hinges was noted by their silence.

  He took a leap of faith and slipped cat-like into the building. He sank to his haunches in the gloom and allowed his eyes to adjust to the grey haze of the elegant hallway. After a moment he could see the darker outlines of the many doors ahead; at least one served as a bedroom from the faint snoring from within.

  Confident he had not been heard, he scuttled from under the window. At the far end of the corridor was a short landing serving two sets of stairs; one heading up, the other down. With a quick glance over the rail he could see right down to the ground floor, illuminated by a single lamp. Fearing the light was held by a night-owl butler, he pressed himself against the wall, heart thundering in his ears as he strained to listen. Thankfully, there was only the distant snore, and a gentle puff of wind through the eaves. As he peered over the rail again he saw the light had remained stationary, perhaps from a table lamp a maid had forgotten to extinguish.

  William crept from the scratchy carpet runner on the landing onto the highly-sheened hardwood of the first step. He expected it to creak, but it didn’t. According to Ojo’s observations, the target was on the next floor up.

  Every step was silent and though there were three doors that opened onto the top floor landing, the first one he chose was into the bedroom of his target. A single taper flickered on the bedside table. Wan light made him pause, blinking against the unexpected brightness; it had looked so dark from street level.

  The boy was a little portly, and even in sleep his cheeks were blushing with large red blotches. His brown-haired bowl-cut was tousled from half an hour turning in bed before sleep. A slight whistle ebbed from his nose with each breath, and as much as William wouldn’t have liked to have noticed, his lips bore the faintest of smiles signifying a pleasant and peaceful dream.

  William’s arrival had been so unexpectedly effortless. Yet now he was here, watching the steady rise and fall of the boy’s chest, he found himself wishing that he was still downstairs, confronted with a late night maid or impassable stretch of creaky floorboards.

  Steady fingers unfastened the ether from its ties and placed it gently on the side table. The handkerchief was unfurled from his pocket and the creases flattened; he set it beside the bottle. He just needed to get the job done.

  Not knowing exactly how to go about dousing the pocket square, William uncorked the bottle and poured an oily stream of spirits onto the fabric. Excess liquid spilled down the front of the bedside table and patterned the floor. Over low breathing, the drips on the floorboards were positively deafening, but as fortunate as ever, the boy didn’t wake. Everything was ready.

  William didn’t want to touch the cloth. He worried his lip as he looked at the boy again, willing him to wake and fight him off, and perhaps even win. Panic fluttered in his chest. In this moment he realised one painful truth; he wasn’t meant to be an assassin, he wasn’t meant to kill indiscriminately. He hadn’t the stomach or the heart for it, but even as his mind was made up, his arm reached out and took the handkerchief.

  He felt like the driver of a carriage pulled by a crazed horse, unable to stop, charging towards the inevitable. His hand lowered over the boy’s mouth and nose, draping the cloth over his face, and then clamped hard.

  Maybe Ojo was right and one more kill was all it would take for this kind of life to click. Maybe he would change, become better at ignoring the heartlessness of his actions.

  His fingers tightened, squeezing the sour smelling solution in beads down the target’s face. The boy beneath the cloth awoke with a start, disturbed from his slumber and still not feeling the effects of the serum. All William had to do was hold on tight and wait, but he couldn’t. As soon as his fingers felt that visceral jerk of life, they retracted in fear and regret to his chest.

  The boy screamed and reeled out of his bed, coughing and retching. He tore the cloth from his face and tossed it away with his thin summer blankets, toppling the candle and snuffing the room to darkness. His arms flailed for the intruder, but William had already backed a few paces away in stunted shock. A dull thump preceded the ether smashing on the floor, filling the room with its foul stench in an instant. William prayed that it wasn’t potent enough to rend him unconscious from this distance.

  People clattered from downstairs. Feet stomped along the hallway on the floor beneath them, moving from one end of the building to the other at a frightening pace. William wanted to run to Ojo and the safety he had come to feel in the assassin’s presence, but couldn’t face becoming such a disappointment.

  The dark in th
e room brightened to a warm glow. The light didn’t peel across the room as it would if the boy’s carer had entered with a lantern, but instead welled from the top of the bedside table. A small flame built on the peak of the handkerchief where it draped over the candle and started to spread. Fire spilled across the cloth and wood like a liquid, glowing as fiercely as the gods’ nectar, and fell to the already sodden floorboards in incendiary droplets.

  William had only the briefest of moments to lock eyes with the boy, who in the warm light looked maybe two years his junior. His pyjamas were soaked in the flammable liquid, his pupils dilated and his face slackened as the suffocating fumes took hold. The moment the blaze began to lick around his toes, he toppled forwards with a wet slap, kicking out a fan of ever-advancing flame.

  When the door opened and the first adult found the fire and unconscious boy half-consumed, they had no time nor care to confront William, who barrelled past them through the doorway and down the stairs. A second servant failed to recognise he was out of place before he was beyond reach, and left him to run in favour of fighting the fire and the hopeless task of saving his master.

  The last stretch through the corridor and down the vines to the garden passed in less than a blur. When William’s foot touched solid ground he expected a tirade from Ojo, but as he turned around and scoured the small moonlit courtyard, his mentor was nowhere to be seen. His heart sank into his stomach and was tied in knots as he was presented with abandonment. Perhaps this failure had been one too many and he had been left at the mercy of the guard.

  William turned and ran for the side gate they had entered by, stomping along the flagstone pathway, hidden by tall foliage on one side and the shadow of the adjacent building. The pool of lamplight in the street made the shadows well darkly behind bushes, obscuring the path. His leg struck something large and he sprawled forwards, carried by his own momentum into a scuffed heap on the stones. He thrust himself up, terrified he’d found some sleeping guard dog, but faltered as the figure became clearer in the gloom.

  ‘Ojo, are you alright?’ William shook his mentor.

  The assassin was collapsed against rough brickwork, his legs stretched across the pathway. He wasn’t asleep or unconscious. Light glinted from open eyes, staring up to the bright moon.

  ‘Ojo?’ William shook him again, but there was no response. ‘Ojo!’

  He punched the assassin in the chest, fear quickly washing over him and compelling him to act. He didn’t even think of the consequences should he hurt the insensitive killer.

  ‘Ojo.’ He thumped again, took the man by his dusty lapels and shook him. He might have even struck the man’s head against the bricks in his worry and desperation, but the wide azure eyes shifted from the sky to William.

  ‘I feel drowned.’ Though Ojo’s words were clear, they seemed to come from far away. ‘What’s happening William?’

  ‘I don’t know, you fell, I guess.’ William pulled him up by the lapels to prop him upright again after the feeble beating. ‘You don’t look well, you were… gone; distant somewhere.’

  Ojo came around at that, his confusion steeling to rage.

  ‘Damn it boy, don’t tell such lies.’ Ojo slapped him across the face. Stinging the cold cheek and snapping his head around, a burning sensation swelled in pulled muscles. ‘I can’t abide liars. Have you been reading my letters?’

  ‘No. Get off.’ William struggled as the assassin attempted to grapple him, but the man’s grip was practiced and strong. Just as an arm slipped around William’s neck, cries from the house above seemed to startle Ojo again and his rage all but evaporated. He released William and looked about with a fresh fear.

  ‘What happened?’ He asked, his head tilted skyward, picking out the first trails of black smoke from the windows.

  ‘Fire,’ William uttered, ‘the boy’s dead. Two witnesses, not sure about them.’

  Ojo’s hands clamped tightly around William’s shoulders and he flinched ready for a beating. Then the assassin pulled him into a tight embrace.

  ‘I’m proud of you, William,’ the words came out softly; kind. ‘Things didn’t quite go according to plan, but you got the job done and that’s what matters. We’ll wait in the park and if anyone comes out I’ll despatch them. You get your rest; this was a big step for you.’

  William was confused and scared, but the praise seemed genuine and it was so rare that he ever got any. He buried his face deep into the soft fabric of his mentor’s jacket; the warmth and care of his guardian alleviated the sting of the night’s events.

  The assassin struggled to his feet, still clutching William tightly, lifting him in his arms and cradling him like a father might do a son.

  ‘Thank you,’ William whispered between sniffs and gasps. ‘Thank you.’

  1682

  William crouched in the hidden corner between the bridge and the upturned cart, wearing his misery as heavily as the sludge he was covered in. There was no feeling quite like being cold, wet, and unbearably close to the fetid stink of the Landslide swell. Of course, there was also the crippling anxiety that Vesta had already perished while he struggled out of the riverside muck.

  He waited, listening and shivering, until he could no longer hear Goldin, hoping that the riflewoman’s gaze had drifted from his hiding spot. He wasn’t afraid, he kept telling himself he wasn’t, so he couldn’t have been. Several more moments passed as he sat there, biding his time for as long as he dared.

  He peered over the handcart. There wasn’t much to see. There were no visible entrants except for those gunned down by Genevieve. The whole place seemed desolate, too quiet, like the lull before an ambush; but William was confident there weren’t any other entrants remaining. The crowds – that had huddled in alleyways to watch the fight – had used another bridge to get back to the town-side of the river to catch a glimpse of the final kill.

  It was now or never.

  Prompted by a distant explosion, he took up Goldin’s blunderbuss, pressed the stock to his shoulder and moved out from behind the handcart. Heavy steam curled over the bridge obscuring the other side, hiding him from any entrants beyond, the riflewoman included. He dashed ahead.

  His feet thumped on the stone slabs and he quickly lost his breath. Slightly too late, he realised that running wasn’t the easiest of tasks in clothes weighted with soaked-in water and mud. He kept running despite his building fatigue, more willing to chafe his throat with heavy breaths than catch a stray bullet.

  The smell in the fog was horrendous, sulphurous and burnt. His vision was obscured by the steam, making his eyes run; he choked down every swallow of air. Though the warm breeze at least helped to alleviate the cold from his sodden clothes.

  Hearing a rifle clap some way ahead, he ducked behind a market stall and peered out. He could only have been halfway across the bridge, trapped on both sides by the scalding waters and funnelled directly towards Genevieve – somewhere unseen in a dark window.

  As a thick choking cloud gusted out of the river, he dashed for the next market stall and hid. He waited a moment for the rotten fog to clear, breathing through his shirt, then peered out again. The buildings at the far edge of the riverside road were beginning to pick themselves out faintly, and closer, he could see Red-face crouched similarly behind another stall. The man was injured, blood slick down one arm, coating it almost entirely, save for the streaks cleared by a generous splash of some elixir. He was almost finished bandaging the wound, and appeared to have not heard William’s spluttering approach over the torrent of the river.

  A lance of fear pierced William as he realised that Red-face had preceded Vesta. Barely drawing breath, he looked more closely at the scattered corpses on the bridge, and only exhaled when he saw she was not amongst them. A relief, but it didn’t make him any less nervous; his target, albeit injured, was so very close.

  Quietly, he set down the blunderbuss; it would be no use over the range between him and the cultist, and he didn’t much feel like running over there.
The man had been shot, perhaps by Vesta, but more likely by Genevieve. It wasn’t worth getting a quick shot off if it meant he would be picked off at a distance by another.

  He pulled his pistol from under his belt. With a well-placed shot, he could complete his contract without any risk to himself. He sighted the cultist through a crack between two boards and measured the distance. Taking a breath he thrust himself up, both hands on the pistol to steady his aim.

  In that moment, the cloud that had emanated from the river dissipated, allowing a better view of the bridge and road ahead. Vesta was hunkered down behind a stone bollard at the very end, hiding – as Red-face was – from the overlooking riflewoman. She had a pistol ready and pointed towards where her brother had hidden himself to administer aid, but couldn’t get to him to finish the job. William wondered exactly how long they had been stuck in this stalemate, but was glad that he could put an end to it all.

  A flare of white light scorched through the sky. It was too bright against the fog hanging overhead. Buildings at the far end of the bridge burst in a torrent of fire and scattering bricks. William’s finger jerked against his trigger, wasting a bullet inches from the cultist’s head.

  ‘Vesta!’ William bawled her name at the top of his lungs. He prayed she would hear him despite her proximity to the deafening blast. ‘Vesta, run!’

  One of the buildings had been levelled, perhaps killing Genevieve. The oppressive force of a watching markswoman was immediately alleviated, and like greyhounds out of traps, everyone on the bridge began to move. William hurtled for Red-face, praying he could reach him before he took his aim at Vesta.

  Red-face had gained his feet, rounded on William and was ready to fight. The pair collided in a flurry of fists. William struck the cultist’s wounded arm prompting a scream, and tackled him to the floor. They skidded across the flagstones, Red-face wailing as his ruined arm was mangled further. It seemed Barber only spared his best numbing agents for those that he favoured.