The walk back to The Brown Bar felt longer than usual, each step heavy with the echo of Kestrel's words.
Corvus Sharpe sends his regards.
I pushed the door open, the bell jingling a cheerful note that felt like a mockery.
A name I didn't know was a threat I couldn't see. And in my world, the unseen threats are the ones that kill you.
My sanctuary, once a fortress of my own making, now felt like a beautifully painted target.
"Arthur! You're back," Lily said, rushing over from where she was wiping down a table. Her eyes were wide with concern. "What was that about? What happened?"
I forced my shoulders to relax and offered her a small, tired smile. It was the most exhausting act of the day. "It's all fine, Lily. Just a misunderstanding. The man was... confused. I cleared it up." The lie tasted like ash, but it was necessary.
The truth was a weapon, and she was unarmed. Protecting her meant walling her off, another small penance in a life built from them.
She searched my face for a moment, a flicker of doubt in her kind eyes before she buried it. She wanted the simple story to be true. "If you say so."
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of forced normalcy. I poured drinks, made small talk, and polished glasses, all while my mind raced. CorvusSharpe.
Night fell quickly, and soon the last customer stumbled out into the dark. I flipped the sign to 'Closed' with a finality that felt far too real.
"Go on home, Lily. I'll finish up here," I said.
"You're sure?" she asked, already pulling on her shawl. The tavern without her felt incomplete, a stage after the lead actor has left.
"I'm sure. Get some rest."
Once she was gone, the bar was plunged into a deep silence. I started cleaning up, the routine motions a feeble attempt to calm the storm inside me.
The scent of lemon polish and stale beer usually grounded me. Now, it just smelled like a tomb I'd built with my own hands.
I ran a cloth over the wood, remembering the exact pressure I'd used to apply the varnish, the hope I'd foolishly mixed into it.
Every clean line of the tavern, every neatly stacked glass, was a prayer for a quiet life. Tonight, it felt like I was preparing my own altar.
A needlepoint of pressure settled between my shoulder blades. It was the primal awareness of a predator in the room. The air didn't move; it simply made space for her.
I turned.
Kestrel stood just inside the door, which I knew I had locked. She was out of her healer's robes, dressed in simple, dark traveler's clothes that did nothing to hide the lethal grace in her posture.
She offered no greeting, just a slow, appraising look that swept over the bar as if it were a midden heap. Her eyes, the color of a winter sky, finally settled on me, and in them, I saw the ghost of every bloody mile we'd crossed together.
"We're closed," I said, my voice carefully neutral, a dam holding back a river of history.
"I know. I'd like a cup of the best you have." A command, not a request. The game was starting, and she had chosen the opening move.
I held her gaze for a moment, then gave a curt nod. I turned to the special keg I kept for show, a prop for a role I was no longer sure I was playing. "The 'Elven Moon Ale," I said, pulling a clean glass. The name was as fake as my peace. "Twenty gold crowns."
Without a word, she brought out a single, unmarked gold coin and placed it on the bar. Then she snapped her fingers.
The air shimmered. One coin became two, then four, then a small, gleaming pile. When the light settled, twenty identical gold crowns sat neatly stacked where one had been.
She calmly picked up the original and pocketed it, leaving the twenty perfect copies. "Your payment."
I stared. Mirror-Mint Transmutation. An old trick of hers, creating temporary, flawless copies of small objects. They'd last a few hours at best. It was a test, a flare sent up to see if the man she remembered would react.
I felt the old pathways in my mind light up, automatically calculating the energy expenditure, the decay rate.
I forced them shut. You are Arthur Glass. You are surprised. You are annoyed.
I let my jaw go slack with feigned surprise, then hardened my expression into one of petty indignation. "You're cheating me. That's fake. An illusion."
"Are you sure?" she asked, a knowing glint in her winter-sky eyes. "Why don't you check? Use your KeenEye." She was baiting me, trying to get me to reveal myself, to confirm that the weapon was merely sheathed, not broken.
Instead, I grunted and turned to a shelf on the back wall. I brought over a small, clunky brass machine with a slot on top and a tray on the side. It was theater prop for this very performance. "No tricks in my bar," I muttered, playing the part of the suspicious, simple bartender.
I began slotting the coins in, one by one. The machine whirred and clunked, spitting each one out into the tray with a satisfying ping and a flash of green light. LEGIT.
Of course it did; the machine was a prop, its enchantment a simple light show I'd paid a journeyman mage a pittance to create. In my mind, I had already assessed them all with a glance I'd trained for a decade to master. All fakes. Duration: about six hours.
I returned the machine to its shelf. "Seems they're real," I said, my tone grudging, as if annoyed to be proven wrong. I poured the dark ale and pushed it toward her, the liquid a black mirror reflecting the dim lights overhead.
She took a slow sip, her eyes never leaving me, judging the vintage, judging the man. Then she placed the cup down with a sharp, final *click that echoed in the silent room like a gavel.
"Let's stop the games, Penance," she said, her voice flat and cold, all pretense gone. The name was a shiv, slipped between my ribs. "Not only is Corvus after you, so is Director Zero. He has given me orders to bring you."
She let the words hang in the air, watching me, a scientist observing a specimen's reaction to a toxin. I didn't move, but inside, the world tilted. Director Zero.
The name was a tombstone on a part of my life I'd buried deep. If he was active, if he was hunting, then the past wasn't just echoing; it was crashing through the door.
"But," she continued, a slow, ambitious smile spreading across her lips, "I've decided to write my own orders. Why should I drag the legendary Penance back to that old fool, Zero, just to watch him put you in a cage? When I could instead help you slit his throat?"
She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper that seemed to suck the warmth from the room.
"Help me become the new Director. Help me kill him. And once I'm sitting in his chair, your name will be cleansed from the Black Ledger. The bounty on your soul will be void. You will be a ghost to them, forever. No more looking over your shoulder, Penance."
I met her gaze, my face a mask of confused innocence I'd practiced in the mirror for a different, simpler life. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I think you have me mistaken for someone else. My name isn't Penance, it's Arthur. Arthur Glass."
She choked on her ale, the liquid bursting from her lips in a spray as her chuckle erupted into a full, helpless laugh. It was a harsh, grating sound, the laugh of someone who found cruelty funnier than humor.
"Arthur Glass?" she finally managed, wiping a tear from her eye. "You can call yourself whatever pathetic name you want."
Her smile vanished, replaced by a predator's stare that saw through the flesh and bone straight to the calcified sins beneath. "But we both know the man behind this bar is the same one who left a trail of bodies from here to the capital. You can't wash that off. The blood is in the grain of your hands, not just under your nails."
She stood, finished her ale in one last gulp, and walked to the door, the twenty fake coins already starting to feel less real, their existence fraying at the edges.
"Think about my offer," she said without looking back. "But don't think too long. Corvus won't wait forever, and neither will I."
The door clicked shut, leaving me alone in the silent bar. The hum of the cooler was gone. The crackle of the hearth was gone.
There was only the sound of my own heart and two names echoing in my head, a drumbeat of my past and a trumpet of my future closing in: Director Zero, a ghost from my past, and Corvus Sharpe, a kingpin who now knew I was alive.
The hunt was on, and I was the prize. And the only way out of the trap seemed to be a pact with a devil I knew.
I guess the role of patient hunter has been switched.