“I will give you one chance to explain to me why the most feared assassin in Ionia failed to make the kill.”
Silco drilled that bad eye of his through the ivory mask staring back at him, and the man behind it replied,
“Meaning you couldn’t see him?” said Silco. That would explain what he’d heard from the underlings he’d sent to watch the operation covertly: when the mark appeared, the assassin Jhin hadn’t so much as taken the shot. Nothing had happened. Not quite living up to the legend of the Golden Demon, in Silco’s mind.
“No,” said Jhin. “The lighting was hideous. It was unworkable, simply unworkable, that’s the only way I can describe it to you.”
“What does…” Silco meant to finish the sentence off with something like ‘that have to do anything,’ but all he was capable of was repeating the word, “What?”
Jhin had left his seat by this point, apparently in order to free his hands and arms for some needlessly theatric gesticulations. “I assure you, I had full visual coverage of the area, and I know what I saw. Utterly atrocious. Not enough extras, too many props, and the lighting was so ugly, caught between an avant-garde chiaroscuro and a candid. Nothing was working. Nothing. It couldn’t have been any worse if I were trying to write a parody! And so I knew I could not kill the man.”
“And I didn’t,” he replied, flourishing those delicate fingers of his in a gesture that approached apologetic. “because I have standards.”
Judging by the sigh Silco gave, then, Jhin correctly surmised that he hadn’t read the script he’d given him. Even when he’d been so considerate as to get it to him two whole days before the performance, and afterwards resist the impulse to take it back for revisions. He’d sensed from the beginning that Silco would hardly be receptive to his vision, and had made these peace offerings to help him see the good work of killing from his more elevated perspective, but where had it gotten him? If only that scarred eye (on the left side, mind you!) bore literal symbolic value the way it ought to in a perfect world. If only the man’s personality were as good as his aesthetic.
“There are things I will tolerate,” began Silco, standing up from his desk chair. Jhin did love the way he monologued, and so he did not interrupt. “and there are things I will not. I have tolerated you. Your dress, your eccentricities, your exorbitant fee. All because you promised me Jaimison dead. He is not. I would call that incompetence. That I cannot—have never—tolerated.”
Jhin laughed. “You misunderstand me, I was correcting your grammar.”
Silco huffed through his nose and drew his lips to a line. He came towards him around the desk, and at that Jhin stepped around the vacant chair to circle him, as if they were rivals staking out the area for their duel. Silco’s glare didn’t sharpen but it did increase in density, like sediment settling to the bottom of a glass bottle. He saw that, and he knew what Jhin thought this conversation was, knew why this ridiculous man was folding his arms behind his back and puffing his chest like a pet bird. Was this all a game, to him? He stopped walking, and so did Jhin.
“Stop that.” Silco told him.
“Do you ever stop performing?” He waved at Jhin’s extravagant gilded costume. “It’s exhausting to watch you.”
“As it should be! Art should never be a passive experience.”
Silco pinched the bridge of his nose, because this man was a headache. When he opened his eyes to speak, Jhin, head tilted like a mannequin, was investigating a mug. It was lovingly decorated with an angry monkey face in fluorescent marker. His mug.
“Ah, the art of a child! So pure, so—”
By the time Silco barked “put that down” he’d already taken it back. He slammed it back on his desk. It was noisy, percussive. Jhin was talking,
“I do admire children, their closeness to sheer imagination. They have a deeper connection than we do, with that great unseen that surrounds us and moves us to artistic expression,” he was saying, making those inane gestures with his fingers again. “And I do believe that.”
“We’re not talking about her,” said Silco, and there was a growl to his voice. “We’re talking about you. I don’t think I ought to pay you.”
That did get Jhin to falter: nervous laughter. “Now, Silco, I hardly think that’s an appropriate situation to experiment with hyperbole, it doesn’t suit your aesthetic—”
A cool lift of the eyebrows. “It doesn’t seem fair, to you? You haven’t delivered. Why should I.” Going off of Jhin’s fluster Sevika hadn’t paid him yet. Lucky, that he’d guessed that correctly.
“I understand your concern,” Jhin said, bowing his head and extending his forearm in a concessatory gesture. “It’s never reassuring to have to reschedule. But our contract is still in effect: I promised you Jaimison, and so you will have him. Killed, as agreed upon.” He said the word like it was sweet on his lips.
“I can give you twelve hours,” said Silco. “Longer than that, and he’ll have done enough damage to my reputation not to be worth your bullet. I mean it, Jhin. I want him removed.”
“He’s as good as yours!” said Jhin with defensive hands.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Silco bit out, turning that bad eye on him. “I told you: he’s hiding out in the tenements two blocks down from Drop Street, sixteenth floor on the riverside corner of the building, and his sister works at the Freljord Maid. Find your ‘lighting’ in one of those settings and shoot him.” Why was this foreigner making it harder than it had to be? He thought he was demonstrating taste, no, all he was demonstrating was how little he understood of this world. People like him thought everyone had time to waste on making life look better than it was. Well, other people had work to get on with.
Unbeknownst to Silco, this man he’d employed was planning his death as well as Jaimison’s. Idly, of course, not with any intent to carry it out; who would be brave enough to commission him for the Eye of Zaun? Certainly no one, and so he let his imagination frolic. The scene must be bold. Extreme, almost. Dark, with sharp lighting for contrast, bring out those striking features of his. That false eye could be a better color than orange, but for such a compelling piece of the mise-en-scène he’d make do. And he couldn’t be caught dead with that cheap makeup, literally. The scar must be visible on his last day, it simply had to. Visually it practically wrote itself. Costuming, he guessed, taking a discreet look at Silco’s current composition, would be unnecessary.
Bringing such a stoic man into any kind of dramatic expression would be difficult, however…but the girl? Ah, yes! She could coax it out of him—
“Sparklers!” he burst. “I need sparklers!”
Silco waved his hand like he was backhanding someone. “Get out.”
And out he went, humming along with an orchestra no one could hear.
