Chapter 1

A City of Towers

"How did it begin?"

The swarthy man sat relaxed, a stream of white smoke flowing from the corner of his mouth a counterpart to the cherry red tip of the cheroot held loosely in his hand. A small smile formed as some thought crossed his mind, though one couldn't really mistake the action as friendly, as it didn't quite reach his hooded eyes as he regarded me pensively.

"Why the hell not," he said after a long tense moment of silence, spreading his muscled arms in a shrug.

I should pause for a moment, to interject that I, Paulus Erdos, am an academic for House Cannith. As an adjunct to other research, I applied for, and was granted, an interview with a recent captor- one known in the records as Caine. He was an assassin from all accounts. Low level, but with a growing reputation. It seemed that he had been captured after being turned in by an associate. And seeing him, I had no doubts that if he ever had the chance to find this associate, he would no longer be numbered among the living. I doubt that this will happen, considering that justice, once put into motion, is usually swift, and final. This series of interviews should, however, give vital information in regards to the mind of one who kills for hire. I had decided to start with a fairly innocuous question, in regards to his background. The account now continues.

Taking another drag off of his cheroot, Caine sat back even further, putting his feet on the table that separated them, the clank of the chain on his ankle loud in the otherwise silent interrogation room.

"My name is Caine. Some call me the Blooded Blade. Some call me Jailo's Fist. Some classify me a vigilante. Some classify me an assassin- or even less graciously, a thug. There's truth to all of that. But like all stories, the truth is only the start."

"I'm a bastard- and not just in the usual sense that people refer to me in," he began without preamble. "My mom was some servant wench, my dad an esoteric," he said, adding after a moment, "an academic, like you."

"House Ianus was a small associate house, and was unusual in that it valued information as power," he continued. "And not to put too fine a point on it, my father was quite powerful. Almost to the level of nobility, though later he found that nobility born is quite different than nobility earned. His treatises brought much coin and prestige to the House, and he was well respected. As such, he needed an heir, and since she so conveniently provided one, and coin was enough to prize me from her grasp, I became that heir. I was in the best schools, and had the best opportunities." He sat up suddenly, and I must admit that I flinched, causing the two guards in the corners to raise their crossbows almost instantly. "But don't think that I'm saying that the reason that I am what I am is because of what happened next. The life of an esoteric was not for me, and no matter what, I think I would have become what I am."

He sat back, amusement playing across his features at the thought that even now they though him dangerous enough that shackled, he still had two guards in full plate with crossbows guarding him. And they were so nervous that their reactions were almost instantaneous at any movement.

"Where was I? Oh yes... my father." He took another drag off of his cheroot, blowing the smoke out in billowing clouds as he continued. "He was an intellectual, you see. And when his research led him to believe that the very nature of the House politics were to be its doom, he couldn't hold his mouth. And because he thought he was right, he wouldn't run. So they broke him."

"But he was correct in his assessments, as shown by history," I said, and immediately regret interrupting his retelling. For the first time a true emotion touched Caine's dark features as he looked on me with annoyance, and despite the guards in the room... despite the heavy iron manacle that held him to the table, a coldness like I'd never felt before invaded my bowels.

"If you already know that, then why would I even bother to say it? Do you want me to tell this story or not?"

I'm sure I looked suitably chastened as I lowered my eyes to look at the journal, dipping my quill precisely in the inkwell that sat next to me. "Yes, please," I said after a moment, before coughing a bit to clear the tightness in my throat. "Sorry. Continue."

"We were cast down from the heights of Sharn into the depths. My father became more and more erratic, so I started running the streets. Much better to get beat up by strangers than my father. It also helped me to provide for us- an education doesn't put food on the table in the depths. Running packages, messages- whatever worked."

"As I grew older, I graduated from running the streets to enforcing the rules of the streets. Survival of the fittest, that is. Taking beatings from my dad helped me to realize that the worst the street could give me was pain- and that was lessened if I gave it back. So I did, in spades."

As he grew more comfortable in his telling, I relaxed, and I felt the tension flow out of the room. The guards even stood a little less alert, their crossbows pointing downward instead of towards him. Indeed, I could see his father's teachings in the way that he spoke- there was sort of a cadence that pulled one into the story, as viscerally as if one were there. I drew myself back to my chronicling as he continued.

"But I soon learned that nobody stayed independent on the streets. That's where I met Yorrick Amanatu. He's one of the faces for The Iron Reavers- a gang supposedly affiliated with the Sharn Syndicate. It seemed that they were one of the better of several bad alternatives. When I joined there, it was my last time going home. Amanatu took me under his wing, and I learned things. I mean I was pretty much a natural in fighting- I just really liked to hurt people. The athletic part was pretty easy too- running from anyone and everyone as a kid helped with that. But this was real training. Not just how to stick with a knife, but where to stick it. How to break someone's neck without them ever knowing you're behind them, or making a sound. Stuff like that. Then, after a lot of training, I was supposed to go through this ritual. They'd taught me a lot about how to see the breaking points of a person- it was like peeling away layers of an onion, or piercing through a veil surrounding a person. But this was supposed to go deeper."

"Once I found out how much deeper, I didn't think they were so benign anymore. The Iron Reavers were actually a front for one of the Cults of the Dragon Below, and the final ritual was to bind with it somehow- something that involved darkness like I had never seen before. So I split."

"They chased me for a while- it was touch and go. I didn't have anyone to turn to, and pretty much lived on the streets, trying not to draw attention to myself. That's when I met Jailo," he said, nodding to the unspoken question in his interviewer's eyes. "Yeah, that Jailo. Merk Jailo, so-called 'King of Undweld', leader of one of the largest gangs running the Depths. The Subjects of Undweld comprise some of the lowest of the lows in the Depths, but there's so many of them, and Majesty... well, he's good at making sure that people eat and are taken care of, which goes a long way when you've got nothing. The scams he runs are pretty much little stuff- snatching, grifting, running- none of the violent stuff. So it was the lesser of evils, I suppose, that got me in with them."

"But this stuff with the Iron Reavers- it was more than a little out of his weight range- especially when the Reavers got some of the other gangs in the Syndicate involved. I had to get far away from Sharn, and the middle of the war seemed like a good place to disappear." He shrugged at that, smiling more than a little deprecatingly. "What can I say- I was young, and still more than a little bit stupid."

"I learned just how stupid on those battlefields. Because of my speed and training, I was a courier, and saw many more battlegrounds than I ever would have wanted to in two lifetimes. I had the fortune to never have to develop ties- moving all over the place, I never got the chance to talk to anyone. Besides, the soldiers all had their little superstitions, and one of the most common was that the couriers were the harbingers of doom. Stay away, and don't socialize with them, and maybe you wouldn't see them arrive with one of the black missives that signaled a suicide mission. Who knows- maybe they were right. I buried more than enough people that I was passingly familiar with to not have doubts of my own at times."

"But I made it out, more or less intact. Not by any great skill of my own, but by that great leveler... luck. And I brought her home with me, because when I arrived back in Sharn, the price on my head had been recinded, and I was once again the nobody that I preferred. Just to make sure, I didn't align myself too closely with the Subjects after I returned, instead finding a good portion of my own jobs. That's when I discovered how much my skills lent themselves to more shadowy pursuits. I took a few contracts for Jailo- taking out a few people that he found to be more than a little bit of a thorn in his operations. And that, it seems, brings us to the present."

He stretched at that point, not a lazy stretch, but one like a tiger, loosening up while on a hunt. It's not a big distinction, but one that can be seen if one is looking, I found out later. And after that tale, the guards were definitely not paying attention, to their soon-to-be eternal regret.

"That's a good start," I added, most studiously. I remember looking around the table thoughtfully for a moment, wondering where I'd placed my smaller pencil I use when illuminating, then with a shrug, picking up another quill to finish the last touches to my manuscript. "How about something about your first adventure?" I asked, totally unaware that anything extraordinary was about to occur.

"Maybe later," Caine said, as he sat up from stretching his back. With a movement quicker than I had ever seen, the assassin backhanded the inkpot towards one guard, fouling his vision. The second guard began to pick up his crossbow from where it leaned against the wall, even as the chain that had been locked around Caine's ankle clanked loudly to the floor. The crossbow twanged with his hasty shot, missing the target by several feet. He tried to draw his blade, and actually cleared the scabbard before dropping it as his chest seemingly grew a crossbow bolt before his eyes. The first guard finally got his helm off, just in time to take a shorthanded swing of his own crossbow in the face, dropping him like a rock.

I hate to admit it, but during these few moments, at first I was held rigidly by the spectacle. Then I realized that nothing stood between he and I, and stammered as I backed up into the corner, my precious journal held up like a shield. As Caine approached, I felt a warmth running down my leg. As I looked down, I noted with a faint detachment the puddle forming on the stone floor. I looked back up into those dark eyes, my mind wanting to record these last few moments.

"Don't worry," Caine said, a dark smile on his face. "After all, we have to finish our interview, don't we?"

With that, he was gone.