Masks of Anarchy, A Dishonored Fiction Options

[Colonel Mustard]

Yep, this is a Dishonored story. For those of you unfamiliar with Dishonored, I'll do my best to provide enough background for it as I write (also, seriously, play this game), but it'll also be departing from the main storyline at points. We'll see how it goes.

Finally, Liz, I just want you to know that this story is all your fault.


Masks of Anarchy

Chapter 1

One of the most fascinating things about life is, I find, beginnings. The 'what' may be the meat of the matter, but every what is preceded by a 'why'. Why is this so, and not that? Why did such events proceed in such a way?

The what that I speak of is an interesting one. Fascinating, in fact, a few short weeks of anarchy and revolution when an empire hung in the balance, when the fate of millions was held in the hands of just a few. But why this happened, where it started, is a question that is difficult to answer.

Perhaps, you might say, it began with the whales and with Esmond Roseburrow, with the oil that which made Dunwall's fortune and poisoned the city. Perhaps it started with Hiram Burrows' plot against the poor. Perhaps it started when a man outside Dunwall's designated infection zone grew sick with a fever, on the day that it passed when he wept blood and stumbled from his home without a mind. Maybe it was the day Jenny Aching first put on her mask and ran through the night streets of Dunwall with a smoking pistol in her hand and blade soaked in a watchman's blood. Or perhaps it began with a shot fired by Lucas Cornell, a shot that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

These are all small reasons why the momentous events of Dunwall's most tumultuous weeks began. Why the major players took to the stage. There was one moment when the alchemical formula of these events were poured into a catalyst, a day when it all came to a head, when the blood of an empress was spilled, when an oath of vengeance was taken, when conspiracy came to a head, that all of these small whys came together in that one moment where the lever tipped on the fulcrum and everything changed.

Sit back, dear reader, and let me tell you a tale.

The whaling ship was a predator just like its prey. Huge, unwieldy, slow, lumbering, yet dignified and majestic in spite of this. Coasting along the Wrenhaven Estuary, a dying leviathan trussed up in its slaughter-harness, butchers scurrying across its body like flies.

For Corvo Attano, there was no stronger reminder that he was back in Dunwall.

The engine of the small boat he was in puttered as it made its way towards Dunwall Tower, hull cutting through the water and the technicolour membrane of industrial scum that smothered the river. He ignored the chatter of the driver and ship's officer who shared the boat with him, focussing his gaze on the city on the far bank, the squalid sprawl of brick houses and factories, grubby and tight-packed as a rat's nest. Behind him, on the near shore, the fortification of white stone that was Dunwall Tower rose up high, gleaming in the weak morning sun and stark contrast to the rest of the city.

"Mind if I ask if you brought back any good news on the plague, Lord?" the driver asked. "Been all we've been talking about back here in Dunwall."

"Classified," Corvo replied, his hand touching the left side of his breast where the letter lay in the inner pocket of the indigo coat he wore. "Empress' eyes only."

"Yeah, thought so," the man shrugged, the epaulettes of his City Watch uniform rising and falling with the movement. "Can't blame a man for asking."

He cut the engine as the boat drew towards a tower in the side of fortress-palace, drifting through the doorway in its side, leading out to the water. As the boat came through, prow bumping against the far wall, Corvo scanned the waterline on instinct, looking for places where potential intruders might climb up and into the palace.

"Ho there!" the officer called up. "Bring us up!"

"Getting her ready!" someone else replied, hidden from view by the long square pit between the entrance and the rest of the building. "Turning on the pipes...and she's rising."

Water gushed from pipes and faucets in the walls, spray splashing up from other side and causing the boat's three occupants to raise their arms to protect themselves.

"I hate this damn system," the driver grumbled as they rose. "Couldn't they just use a winch or something? Gonna stink of riverwater for the rest of the day."

Corvo remained silent, blinking away the spray that had collected on his lashes as the water elevator came to a halt. The room he had entered into was one he did not recognise, nor indeed did he recognise the tower that they had scaled in scant moments, something between a boathouse and a pumping room. With disapproval, he noted the lack of spotlights on the water around the building's base, the absence of armed guards and the fact that no challenge had been given; laxity had grown in his absence. He would take it up with Jessamine later; he knew that her response would most likely be to laugh and tell him that he hadn't changed a bit, but she would implement his recommendations nonetheless.

The guards on duty, clad in their distinctive domed helmets and indigo uniforms much like his own, saluted Corvo as he passed them, the Lord Protector returning the gesture with a nod as he stepped onto the white stone bridge that connected the pump house with the rest of Dunwall Tower. He had no time for formality, no time for anything else, simply getting the message to Jessamine as quickly as possible. He knew that today would be a busy day, that there would be much planning for the days and weeks and months ahead and that he would be needed-

The young girl dressed in white who appeared at the far end of the bridge cut off that train of thought in a moment. Although he was not a man who smiled often, Corvo smiled as she ran into his open arms, lifting Emily Kaldwin up as if she weighed nothing, whirling her around him and pulling her close for an embrace. She kissed him on his cheek, ignoring the rough stubble that he had lacked the time to shave off that morning, hugging him close before Corvo finally set her down.

"I can't believe you're back!" Emily declared, smiling and bouncing on her feet. "What was your journey like? Did you see any whales? Were there pirates? What was Morley like, and Serkonos and Tyvia? Was there anyone with an eyepatch and a peg leg? Did you-"

Corvo held up a hand in an attempt to stem the flow of questions.

"Later, Emily," he said. "I promise I will answer all of your questions later."

"Right, right, of course," Emily nodded, enthusiasm barely dented. "I want to hear all about it, though. Can we play hide and seek, then?"

Corvo blinked; he had forgotten how Emily would sometimes jump from subject to subject with the same ease and swiftness as a veteran sailor clambering between ropes.

"Later," he said, the letter in his pocket like an anchor dragging him to duty. Emily's face fell.

"Promise?" she asked.

Corvo's finger traced an 'X' over his heart, and Emily smiled. In her eyes, that was as good a promise as an Overseer's oath taken in Holger Square, and with the reassurance that they could play her favourite game later, she took his hand.

"Come on," she said, hurrying along with Corvo in her wake. "Mother's in the garden, talking to that nasty old spymaster again."

It was a strange sight; a tall, olive-skinned Serkonan in the navy greatcoat of the Lord Protector, sword at his hip and an oil-lock pistol across his belt, being lead by the hand by a ten year-old girl in a white dress, towards the gardens of Dunwall Tower. There were a few guards that saluted him on his way, though they remained carefully expressionless at what they saw. Only one person on their route saw fit to address them.

"Corvo, back two days early, I see. This is certainly a surprise."

The countenance of the man who spoke was cruel, craggy features harsh and merciless as a sea gale, grand and intimidating in the crimson uniform of the High Overseer, leader of the Abbey of the Everyman and holiest man in Gristol. His likeness was taking shape on a canvas before him, formed by the brush of the bearded painter at work, the famed inventor and artist Anton Sokolov.

"Campbell," Corvo nodded. "My work was done ahead of schedule. There was no reason to delay."

"In any case," Campbell said. "Welcome back."

The words were insincere, formalities and nothing else; neither Campbell nor Corvo had any love for each other, and the Lord Protector couldn't help but wonder what the High Overseer was doing at the tower. Having his portrait taken, of course, but that could have been done anywhere.

"Stop moving, Campbell," Sokolov grumbled from his painting. "And Corvo, welcome back from wherever you've been."

"All across the Isles," Campbell said. "Begging the other nations for aid in dealing with Rat Plague."

"My elixir has that problem solved already," Sokolov said dismissively. "Now keep still, High Overseer."

"I'll leave you both to that," Corvo said as a farewell, letting Emily lead him on towards the garden.

"Is it just me?" she asked as they headed up the white steps. "Or does that painting not look much like Campbell?"

Any answer Corvo would have given died on his lips as they entered the small garden of Dunwall Tower. Beneath a domed pavilion supported by pillars of white stone, Empress Jessamine Kaldwin stood in argument with Hiram Burrows. As always, her attire was businesslike, a black jacket and white shirt, a high, ruffed-collar surrounding her neck, laced edges brushing the bun that her black hair was pulled into.

"They are sick people, not criminals," she was saying to her spymaster, a look of anger on her face.

"We have been over this before, your Majesty," Hiram said. "It moved past that point long ago."

"And what do you suggest?" Jessamine asked. "Besides, of course, mass murder of my people? That is not happening, Hiram; they are my citizens, and while there's hope of saving them there shall be no killing."

"Mother!" Emily called, hurrying to Jessamine's side. "Corvo is back!"

Jessamine glanced over her shoulder, and her face lit up as she saw Corvo, the Lord Protector bowing his head in acknowledgement.

"Spymaster, please leave us," she said. "And we shall not talk of this matter again."

"Of course, your Majesty, I suspect that we shall not," Hiram said, bowing low and stepping away. As he passed Corvo, he added; "Lord Protector."

"Spymaster."

With Hiram gone, Jessamine turned to the Lord Protector. There was eagerness in her eyes, tempered with a quiet, carefully concealed desperation, hope for a solution to the problem that was threatening to swallow Dunwall like a whale gulping down a shoal of hagfish. The look on Corvo's face as he handed her the letter quashed that hope even before she broke the seal.

Her expression darkened as she read, and after a moment, she let it drop on the floor.

"They're blockading us," she said. "They'll take no Gristol ships into their ports. They'll wait to see if we die of the plague or not, and they'll hasten the job by starving trade. I knew that this mission was a fool's hope."

She sighed a sigh that bubbled with frustration.

"Void take them," she said. "Every last one of the cowards."

"Mother, what's wrong?" Emily asked, tugging at the tail of Jessamine's jacket in worry. "Why are you sad?"

"I'm not, dear," Jessamine said. "I'm just...just tired after a busy morning, that's all."

The look on Emily's face showed that she believe that lie no more than she believed the sky to be pink, but she remained silent, resolved. Over the head of her daughter, Jessamine shot Corvo a despairing look, and the Lord Protector shrugged as if to say; "We'll work something out."

"Mother," Emily suddenly spoke, breaking out of her embrace with Jessamine and pointing to a rooftop. "Who's that, over there?"

In the distance, dark figures figures flitted over the tiles of Dunwall Tower's rooftops, moving from one place to another with unnatural speed. Every movement seemed swift and certain, potent with an undeniable malice, and Corvo's expression darkened as he saw the darting figures.

"Get behind me," he ordered, drawing blade and oil-lock. "Who in the Void are these-"

He was cut off when one of the figures appeared before him. Somehow the trespasser materialised from empty air, a figure in a gas mask and dark rain slicks arriving as if from the Void itself. Some men may have stopped at that moment, shocked by the impossible sight, but Corvo raised his pistol and fired the moment the attacker came into view. They reeled back in a cloud of black ash and from the side of his vision Corvo saw another enemy lunging for him.

Wheeling around, flipping the grip of his pistol in his hand so that he held the barrel, Corvo dodged the stab and smashed the firearm's butt into the throat of the assailant. They toppled to the floor, choking and wheezing, and Corvo ignored them as he turned to face a third, dodging a slash that would have taken his head from his shoulder. The Lord Protector grunted in pain as it scored a red line across his arm, parried the assassin's backswing and slammed his own blade into the man's gut.

Another stab sliced towards him from nowhere, Corvo whirling out of the way of the blade even as it sliced a red line across his side. His response was to slash across the attacker's throat, head flopping back with a spray of viscera as windpipe and tendons were severed.

No mortal force could have stopped Corvo Attano that day; even as fresh attackers appeared around the Lord Protector, he fought, blade weaving around him in an arc of graceful lethality. He was like a machine, a machine of terrifying precision and grace and fuelled a terrible determination to protect Emily and Jessamine with his life.

What stopped Corvo Attano was no mortal force.

Something grabbed him, an invisible hand that picked him up and pinned him to a pillar. He couldn't move, vainly attempting to struggle against the eldritch power humming in the hands of an assassin in a red coat. He couldn't even open his mouth as another figure, a killer without a gas mask, ripped out of thin air, blade in hand.

"Get back," Jessamine yelled, pushing Emily behind her. The assassin reached for Jessamine, and she slapped him away. The killer's free hand, encased in a glove of black leather, grabbed her wrist.

Blood spattered on the white stone floor of the gazebo as his blade stabbed into her midriff. Emily tried to break free but the killer who had Corvo pinned grabbed her around the waist, hoisting her up as the girl kicked and struggled.

"I've got her Daud, let's go!" the assailant said, a woman's voice audible even beneath the mask.

The man who had killed Jessamine glanced up at Corvo, and the Serkonan made a vow that the next time he looked upon that man's hard features, he would bury his blade in his heart. "Leave him."

The power holding Corvo in place abated, and he collapsed to the ground as the killers disappeared. Scrambling on his hands and knees, he hurried to where Jessamine was fallen, scooping her up in his arms, fingers scrabbling for a pulse as he muttered barely-audible denials. There, a beat, faint and feeling transient as a summer snowflake. She lived, she breathed. There was hope.

"Corvo," she managed to breathe, eyelids fluttering open. "Corvo, you need to...need to find Emily. Keep her safe. You're the only one who can...help her. Please."

Her eyes closed, the final beats of her pulse fading. Corvo tried to speak. He tried to form words, tried to say something, anything, make some final farewell.

The man who had been duelling with the skill and lethality of something born of the Void mere moments before, hadn't a single word to say.

When he looked up, he stared down the barrel of a musket. He blinked in surprise, at the Watchman who held the weapon and the platoon of his comrades who had fanned out around him, the maws of their pistols and muskets all gaping at Corvo like hungry predators. There were two more officers of the watch behind him, pistols in one hand, swords in the other, and behind them, Thaddeus Campbell and Hiram Burrows.

"He...he killed the Empress!" Burrows exclaimed, the tone on the Spymaster's voice so shocked that it could have been genuine.

"Her own bodyguard as well," Campbell added. "Ironic."

"Arrest him! Arrest him at once!" Hiram ordered. "Take him to Coldridge, immediately!"

Perhaps Corvo could have made it out of that situation. He was a seasoned killer, a veteran of combat, swift and lethal as an elyctric bolt from an arc pylon. Perhaps he could have fought his way free, dodged and rolled and evaded the bullets and blades, made his escape into the intestinal tangle of Dunwall's streets. A Corvo Attano who was not numb with shock, who had not seen his world crashing down around him in a single cataclysmic moment, might have achieved this. The Corvo Attano who lay on his knees, steeped in the blood of himself, assassins and the Empress, was not this man.

The hilt of a sword crashed against his temple, and darkness swallowed him like the Void.

[Colonel Mustard]

There's even more! I'm actually writing at a consistent and steady pace! Wow!

King Coin: I always find it's nice to come back to a fic and discover there's been more than one chapter arrived.

On your question about the mask, it gives extra strength and dexterity, but aside from the night vision power Jenny doesn't have anywhere near as extensive a supernatural arsenal as Corvo and Daud have. It's powerful in it's own, more obtuse way, however, but saying more would be spoilers.

Thin Lizzie: Yeah, Tallboys are toughies. Nasty pieces of work, definitely.

The Whale Oil was definitely one of the most interesting parts of Dishonored, and I liked how well Arkane wove it into the world; it made it much more interesting, especially with the game's implied links between whales and the Outsider.

Jack Cloudy: Yep, Red Jenny is walking a thin, dangerous line at points. She knows (or rather, she thinks she knows) what side she's on, but it's certainly something ambiguous, and she's a High Chaos type, make no bones about that.

Dunwall and Dishonored do have a very creepy vibe to them, yeah, a very gothic one; one of the reasons why I like the game so much, I think.

McB: Thanks very much!

On the whole perspective jump thing, I considered having an actual delineation between the scenes, but the issue with those is that it generally implies that the scene after the break is set either a significant time later than or a significant distance away from the scene before, whereas in this case Jenny and Lucas were both in the same place at the same time; I figured that making it clear where the perspective had changed to would be clearer for the reader than an actual break.


Chapter 5

This is the story of three people, two masks, and one city.

At this moment in time, you might be forgiven for thinking that is only a story of two people. It is true that the lives of Jenny Aching and Lucas Cornell become linked together far earlier than whey they are conjoined with that of Corvo Attano, but rest assured that he shall enter our narrative very soon. For now, the man who is thought by the world as the killer of an empress is in Coldridge Prison, tortured and unyielding. The man who really killed Jessamine Kaldwin dreams uneasy, fitful dreams of what he did. Right now, he is bloodying his blade for me one last time, but that is a story for another day.

For now, we must focus once more on Jenny Aching. This scene is set just under six months after the death of Empress Kaldwin, and at this moment in time Red Jenny and her fellow anarchists are about to meet. This is a time of many clandestine meetings in shadowy places, but this one is important, so important that it cannot go without mentioning. If it had never taken place then, I suspect, things would have gone far, far differently for Dunwall.

Jenny Aching’s eyes flickered open, and she pushed herself up into a sitting position in the bed. Beside her, still asleep, Delman muttered something indecipherable at the disturbance and shifted, tugging at the sheet.

On the cabinet by the bed the two lovers shared, in one of the side rooms of their publishing house-come-headquarters, the hands of the clock atop it showed it was half past six. It was time to get up, greet the day and work out where and what to strike next.

She let Delman sleep a while longer, pulling on clothes; a shirt, a long skirt, a waistcoat of cheap brown cloth and a strip of material to pull her hair back, completely unremarkable garb that left her looking like nobody at all.

Someone had put an audiograph on, a pianist’s take on a lilting tavern song echoing through the main warehouse instead of usual thumping beat of the press. Right now, the printing device was inert, and Jenny fancied it as a huge sleeping beast, curled up on itself, soon to wake once more and roar forth a cry of ink and paper and rebellion.

“Anyone around?” Jenny called.

“Over here,” came a reply. The speaker was obscured by the bulk of the press, but Jenny recognised it as Taldin’s. The former watchman was on the other side, loading a small tank of whale-oil gas into a portable stove at the warehouse’s small communal area, and Kannis was at the table, reading one of the books she read near constantly.

Kannis and Taldin had been with Jenny from the beginning, when she had been nothing more than a malcontent with a mask. Taldin had deserted the watch after one too many shifts keeping Weepers from breaking out of the Flooded District, enraged and disillusioned by the massacre of sick people and the Lord Regent’s apathy towards them. His knowledge of the Watch had proved essential, key to evading and outwitting patrols, and it had been him who trained Jenny’s small squad of revolutionary fighters in how to use weapons effectively.

Kannis was a different matter. She claimed to be a witch, a disgraced member of a coven, banished for an indiscretion that she would not disclose. Her magic lay in street spells, the woman working as an urban mystic who found hidden byways and nooks in alleyways and buildings, traversing Dunwall swiftly and silently; her claims of magical ability had been mocked at first by other members of the group, but such derision had ended on the day when she had killed three Watchmen through arcane butchery, the strange rose-and-thorn tattoos covering her arms whipping out with barbed vines to lacerate and strangle the lawmen. The question of how she had found Jenny’s band and why she had run to her had been answered cryptically; ‘Aside from you, there is only one other in this city who has the power to protect me from the woman in charge of my coven, and I know that he will not help me.’ She was fascinated by the mask Jenny wore.

“You want some eggs?” Taldin asked. “I was just going to fry some up for breakfast.”

“If you’re cooking some, then yes please,” Jenny said, taking a seat near the small whale oil generator that powered everything in the base but the press; the condemned neighbour of the Distillery District they were set up in had had yletric power cut off from it long ago when the plague had moved in, and instead the warehouse was lit and heated by a portable generator and pilfered tanks of whale oil. The press, appetite for energy too huge to be sated by the small generator, was fuelled with oil casks that were plugged directly into the machine.

“Are we having a distribution run today?” Taldin asked.

“We always have a distribution run on Songdays,” Kannis said, not looking up from her book. “Why would today be any different?”

“I was just asking,” Taldin said. “If we’re doing this then we should probably get going soon; we’ll want to get the Voice out before Outcry hits the streets.”

“For the last time, Taldin,” Jenny said. “Outcry aren’t our rivals. We’re both on the same side.”

“Yeah, but we were here first,” Taldin protested. “They’re just copying us.”

“Considering our circulation is easily ten times larger than theirs, I don’t think that that’s a big problem,” Kannis said. “Besides, Outcry are good for getting the middle classes more stirred up over things; they’re more moderate, after all.”

“Lacking commitment, more like,” Jenny said.

Outcry was one of half a dozen pamphlets that had begun circulation in Dunwall over the past few months. The Voice was, far and away, the most popular one in the city, distributed for free through clandestine means of dead-drops, code words and a network of suppliers to whom information was fed carefully and with immense scrutiny. With rising discontent of the Lord Regent’s increasingly tyrannical rule and the conversion of newspapers into nothing more than propaganda for his regime, an underground publishing ring of renegade journals and anti-authoritarian pamphlets had been born. There were others; the union-focussed Unity, Sanctifier, which believed that Hiram Burrows’ reign was in breach of the Seven Strictures and was printed by dissidents of the Abbey of the Everyman and Sledgehammer, a ganger and street ruffian piece that advocated violent rebellion straight away. Of all the non-Voice pamphlets, Jenny liked that one the best; their Ten Ways to Gut a Watch Pig article had been an entertaining read.

“You two sleep alright?” Jenny said, noting the dark circles under Kannis’ eyes.

“Like a log,” Taldin said.

“I didn’t,” Kannis answered. “Strange dreams, bad ones. Something happened at my old coven, or is about to happen, and the Outsider is laughing at them all.”

Taldin shot her a strange look, but Kannis didn’t seem to notice.

“Anything that might affect us?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t know,” Kannis said. “Perhaps, perhaps not; it’s beyond my ability to tell.”

“Just keep me informed,” Jenny said. “I mean, hopefully it won’t be a problem for us, but if it is then-”

“Hey, Jenny!”

The shout came from the upstairs balcony, from the warehouse’s street entrance, and Jenny stood to see Stanner up there. Next to him was a dark-skinned woman in a deep crimson rain-slick, a sword at her belt and some kind of strange device on her left wrist.

“Who’s that?” Jenny asked, as Stanner and his companion made their way down the stairs. “Why in the void are you bringing some stranger here?!”

“Jenny, Jenny, calm down,” Stanner said, raising his hands. “Listen, this is an old friend of mine, I can vouch for her. Just listen to her, trust me on this.”

“Explain yourself,” Jenny demanded of the newcomer.

“My name is Billie Lurk,” the woman said. “And I’ve got some information you might want to hear.”

#

They met in what had been dubbed ‘The War Room’. In reality, it was nothing more than an old storage room, but the small group under the command of Red Jenny had converted it into a meeting space and planning area. Maps of Dunwall and plans for attacking and undermining the Lord Regent were dominant here, pinned to the walls or to wheeled chalkboards. Mounted on the wall above the head of the table, in pride of place above where Jenny’s space, was a compound bow taken from a felled Tallboy.

Including Jenny and the newcomer, there were a dozen of them around the table; Delman, Stanner, Kannis and Taldin, with them others. Hollison, a former ganger with enough fight for three men in him, eternally loyal to Jenny after she had broken him out of a Watch station. There was Mercin, a skinny academic from the Academy of Natural Philosophy who had studied under Anton Sokolov, but had turned his mechanical expertise to undermining the Lord Regent instead of supporting him as his tutor had. There was Kroma, a Morleyan who fought for Red Jenny less because she cared for Dunwall but more because of her hatred of Gristol’s government and her desire to refight the battles of the Morley Insurrection. Palna and Rolda, siblings who had found the group while seeking revenge for their sister being disappeared by the Watch and Trevali, a Serkonan-descended man who may have been a pirate or may have been a Naval Marine and who was a marksman without peer, with a great disinclination towards speech.

They were the core of the movement, a squad that had half-jokingly dubbed themselves ‘The Jennies’ and wore crimson masks. There were others, of course, but the people gathered here were the most trusted, the only ones who knew about the warehouse. It was they who, under Jenny’s leadership, had orchestrated a dozen acts of sabotage against the Lord Regent. The Fenside Raid, where the distraction of three simultaneous riots across the Wrenhaven’s north shore had given the Jennies cover to raid and loot a Watch armoury and come away with a veritable arsenal of stolen weapons, including muskets, explosives, mortars and even an Arc Gun; a bullet from Trevali’s rifle had taken out a Watch Commander when the rest of the Jennies had fallen on his railcar and bodyguard and forced him into the sniper’s sights; the Dimcreek Strikes, where strikers had been protected by Watch brutality by the intervention of Red Jenny and her crew. More than once, Dunwall had been rocked by the blasts of their hand-made bombs.

With the one exception of Delman, the propagandist who was held back by his malformed foot, every one of the Jennies knew how to kill, were deadly and determined. They were an intimidating audience, especially with Jenny Aching herself at their head, but the newcomer, Lurk, was unbowed.

“So this is the newcomer, then?” Hollison asked, the ganger’s arms folded in an expression of how unimpressed he was. “The one Stanner thought would be a good idea to bring?”

“Yes, she is,” Jenny said. “Alright, Lurk, you’ve got one chance to convince that shooting you for knowing too much is a bad idea. One chance, so make the most of it.”

Surprisingly, that got her a derisive snort.

“Alright then,” Lurk said. “If you want to have a good reason as to why I won’t go running to tell the Lord Regent about you, then let me give you one; I’m a Whaler, and he’d have me killed.”

“A whaler?” Mercin asked. “One of the assassins? Those are just a myth.”

“They’re not,” Kannis said. “My old coven has clashed with them before, more than once.” She saw the look Lurk gave her. “I’m not with them anymore. And I’m guessing from the fact that you’re here, you’re not with the Whalers either.”

“Not anymore,” Lurk shook her head. “I had a...disagreement with the man who is in charge of them and I was exiled. I needed one of two things, a way out of the city or some coin, so I contacted some people. Stanner hinted that he might be able to get me in touch with someone who could help me, and eventually he led me here.”

“How do you two know each other then?” Jenny asked, nodding at Lurk and Stanner.

“We knew each other when we was kids,” Stanner answered. “Kept in touch; I gave Billie information when she needed it, that sort of thing.”

“Stanner was the best ear I had on the streets,” Lurk added.

“He still is,” Jenny said. “That’s why we keep him around. So, what do you want from us?”

“Coin, and a place to lay low,” Lurk said. “In return, I can give you the skills I learnt as a Whaler.”

“Useful,” Jenny nodded. “But to be honest, that doesn’t make you invaluable.”

“Anyway,” Delman said. “If it’s true about you being an outcast of this order of elite killers, why would you stay in the city? If I were in your position, I’d be getting out of the city.”

“Don’t want to leave,” Lurk replied. “Dunwall is my home; I grew up here, and right now I’m seeing it die around me. Feels wrong to abandon it now. Besides, the Whalers are running out of time, have been ever since we took out the Empress; that moment changed everything, my old master especially.”

“Your people killed the Empress?” Taldin demanded, the former Watchman grabbing the sword at his belt. The burly man stepped forwards before the others could react, weapon raised. “You [censored] bitch! So it’s your damn fault the entire city’s gone to-”

Lurk moved. Exactly what she did was hard to tell, but one moment she standing before the table, and the next she was standing by Taldin, the revolutionary on his knees. His sword clattered from nerveless fingers from where Lurk held him in an arm lock of some kind, Taldin cursing in pain and impotent fury. The barrels of half a dozen pistols were aimed at her, and she felt the pressure of a barrel pressing into the back of her head from the weapon Jenny had pulled from its holster.

“Ah,” Lurk said.

“Lower your weapons, everyone,” Jenny ordered. There was a moment’s hesitation. “Lower them.”

The barrels of the pistols crept down, slow and cautious.

“Now, Billie, I’m going to ask you to let Taldin go in a moment,” Jenny said. “And when that happen, Taldin, step away from her, and leave your sword where it is.”

“But she...she killed the Empress!” Taldin managed to protest, voice halfway to a pained, unintelligible grunt.

“Taldin, do as I say,” Jenny said.

“And if I don’t let him go?” Lurk asked.

“Then I shoot you in the head,” Jenny replied. Her voice was flat and smooth as a puddle of spilled whale oil. “This is something I don’t particularly want to do, because Stanner brought you here and while he can sometimes be thicker than an inbred hagfish, I still trust his judgement. He thinks you’re valuable and can be useful, and I want to see if he’s right. So let Taldin go, and Taldin, please don’t do anything stupid.”

Lurk’s grip was released, and Taldin half-stumbled, half-crawled back, cursing quietly and rubbing his injured hand, helped up by Rolda and Mercin. Jenny’s pistol lowered.

“You’ve got a good ‘holding people at gunpoint’ voice, you know,” Lurk remarked, taking a step away from Jenny and turning to face her. “I like that.”

“I’ve had practise,” Jenny shrugged, holstering the weapon. “Now, you mentioned information. What is this?”

Stanner grinned and rubbed his hands together in glee.

“Tell ‘er, Billie,” he said.

“Yes, please do,” Jenny added.

“As well as killing the Empress-” Lurk began. Taldin spat at her feet, an action which earned him a glare. “As well as killing the Empress, the Whalers also abducted Emily Kaldwin. We handed her over Morgan and Custis Pendleton, who took her to a location that they decided not to disclose to us. Of course, the Whalers knew that she was a potential bargaining chip, so my master had me follow them as they went on their way.”

She smiled at them all.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know where Emily Kaldwin is, and I am willing to help you take her from the Lord Regent.”