M.Spencer Illustration

It was magic. One moment she was alone in the night and in the next he crouched only a few feet away. Billie blinked. The figure was gone in a black flutter only to reappear over the balcony down the street. Her jaw dropped. So did the assassin. The three men on the lower balcony didn’t stand a chance. The nobleman leaning on the wrought iron rail cushioned the man’s fall, taking a knife in the throat in the process. His guards, alarmed by the sudden appearance of an armed stranger reached for their weapons. But their movements were cut as short as their attempts to shout by the long blade slitting their throats in one fluid motion. Billie couldn’t get a clear glimpse of the assassin. His dark hair mingled with the flicker of black as he moved on. A long scar was running down the side of his face and Billie was certain he had seen her. He confirmed her suspicion with a wink and turned his back, vanishing in another scattering of black shadow. A second later, he appeared on the street below. The silence of the seconds sped up again and Billie found that she had hoisted herself over the balustrade of her hiding place hanging on to the outward curve almost awkwardly. Billie let go and dropped to the cobbles to give pursuit. The silver cigar case flashed up in her mind. Good money on that, weeks of food. But the image was drowned out by the curve of a slender blade cutting down three men in the blink of an eye. Three men. In complete silence. In seconds. Maybe Deirdre would still be alive if only she had been that skilled. Faster, more precise, silent as the fall of night. Billie followed the assassin through Dunwall. Who was he? And where did he belong? Where did people like him belong? Who were people like him? Following him wasn’t even a conscious decision. Her only fear was that of losing him in the night. The assassin disappeared repeatedly only to reappear in impossible places, up on roof tops, on ducts, on broken stairways. That made it very difficult to predict his movements. To her relief, he did not vanish completely. Any time he dissolved into black air she managed to spot him before he disappeared. Seeing him and following were two very different things though. Billie could not scale buildings in the blink of an eye. She had to scramble up ladders, cling to thin ledges leading around the corners of buildings only to see her prey vanish into another dead end. And she was good. Billie had grown up in Dunwall. Without somebody to cage her and many reasons to not be at home, she knew the city like the back of her hand. Even the posh parts. Still he was taking routes she had never considered before, doubling up on his path and leading her in circles. It was only on average that they kept going south. (Continue)