Wesley

Wesley probably would have minded house arrest more if it didn't actually represent a meteoric improvement in his circumstances. After the shit he'd been through in the last few days, having a room in the lord's keep to himself along with two square meals per day and access to clean water was pretty much bliss.

The only thing that bothered him was the knowledge of the executioner's sword hanging over his head, poised to fall on his neck at any moment. A sword with the name 'One-Eye' on it. He pretended it didn't exist.

Wesley had just begun to hope that maybe all the important people had forgotten about him when, one day, the Trader woman who had captured him and was now responsible for bringing his food came and told him that he was being moved.

"W-Where are we going?" Wesley asked, suddenly not in the mood for the plate of boiled potatoes and salted pork the woman had placed in front of him.

"Away," she replied tersely. Going by the name of Irene, she was a hard-eyed, sharp-featured woman in her middle years, maybe early forties. He didn't like her much, but at least she was better than that Ratcatcher brute.

"Am I allowed to ask where 'away' is?"

"You are."

"Any chance of an answer?"

Irene smirked. "The farm."

"What's 'the farm'?" It sounded ominous.

"The place you're going."

"Right. And who's at this farm I'm going to?"

"I think you already know."

Wesley swallowed. Whatever was left of his appetite had instantly evaporated. "Yeah," he croaked. "I guess I do."

One-Eye.

"And… Sam? Will she be there?" He hadn't gotten an opportunity to speak with her since being brought back to the keep, and was having a hard time deciding if that was a bad thing or not.

"She'll be there," Irene said. "A word of advice, though."

"Yeah?"

"One-Eye is sweet on Sam, but don't try to hide behind her to get out of trouble. Nothing's sure to piss him off faster."

Wesley swallowed hard. "Got it." Eyeing the rapidly cooling meal on the pewter plate in front of him, he felt like being sick.

Irene made him eat some of his food and finished the rest herself while he packed his few possessions into a burlap bag. She brought him out into the mustering yard before the keep. Wesley was about to ask why they were standing around when others started trickling in, joining them in a growing clump of people. Mongrel and his chimps showed up alongside a curly-haired woman much too beautiful for the funny little man. There were also two Artisans—one young man and one older woman—and a round-bellied Cook with great rosy cheeks. Lastly, there was a badly scarred Level 12 Laborer with wonky metal replacements for his right arm and left leg, shoulders hunched and suspiciously eyeing everyone around him while occasionally prodding at the soggy wad of tobacco stuffed under his top lip.

Wesley leaned in toward his captor and whispered: "What's with all the people?"

"One-Eye is throwing a party at his place tomorrow," Irene explained. "We're going early to help him set up. The farm is a ways outside the city, so it's safer to travel in a group."

"Right." Wesley decided to consider that good news. He figured the likelihood of getting murdered at a party had to be at least somewhat lower than if he just ran into One-Eye in a dark alley somewhere. "And what about that friend of yours? He's not coming?"

Irene chuckled. "Oh, yeah. Sorry to say, I made him up."

"You what?"

Looking over at the older woman, he was startled to find her enveloped in a fine web of shimmering light that drifted in lazy ripples across her body. When it faded, the middle-aged Trader was gone, and in her place stood a much younger woman. Though she wore the same drab travel wear, this one was raven-haired and gorgeous, her pale features an almost doll-like picture of still perfection. Additionally, this woman was not a Level 10 Trader at all, but a Level 7 Entertainer.

Something about her looked familiar. He was sure he'd seen her before—it would be difficult to forget beauty like that.

"Wait," he said. "You're…"

"Serene," the young woman said with a teasing little smile. "I'm sorry for leading you on, but I thought you'd be more pliable if I made a scary impression." Even her voice was different; smoother, almost musical.

"Then, Ratcatcher…"

"Doesn't exist."

"How…?" Wesley was tripping over his own tongue, struggling—and failing badly—not to stare at the Entertainer. Even in an unflattering outfit consisting of heavy trousers, hiking boots, and a thin jacket with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, she somehow pulled off the gray and brown fabrics like they were bespoke evening wear.

"I'm good at making people see what they want to see, that's all. No hard feelings for tricking you?"

"Sure," Wesley muttered as he rubbed at the back of his neck, annoyed at how hard he was finding it to stay angry while staring down someone so far out of his league. Even though he was completely sure that she was manipulating him, and at least reasonably confident that she was making fun of him, the animal part of his brain kept telling him to talk to her, impress her, make her smile.

It seemed as though everyone had arrived, because the group soon started moving, headed north from the keep as they left the walled-off military quarter behind. Wesley lugged his things in the sack over one shoulder, and occasionally stroked the revolver under his tunic to make sure it was still there, allowing the solid metal to offer him some measure of comfort.

As they cut through Topside, Mongrel left with some of his chimps and returned as they neared the gates with a mule-drawn wagon that carried boxes of party supplies and long rolls of canvas. The group left the city and cut through partially ruined crop fields. Wesley found himself walking alongside Serene, but his attempts to start a conversation only resulted in short, terse responses. She looked vaguely amused by his efforts, but otherwise hardly seemed to register his existence as she kept her unreadable gaze on the winding dirt path ahead of them.

Wesley wasn't so stupid that he couldn't take a hint, but there didn't really seem to be anyone else so much as willing to share space with him. Mongrel refused to acknowledge him entirely, probably considering him a traitor of some sort, and the chimps all followed their father's lead unerringly aside from Number Three, who openly antagonized him with rude gestures and screeching hoots and bared teeth. The others seemed to pick up on the fact that Wesley was something of a pariah and made an obvious effort to steer clear of him.

This left him inevitably gravitating back to Serene's side. At least she didn't seem to mind having him around, even if she considered him too far beneath her to actually talk to.

"You're Sam's friend, aren't you?" Wesley asked as they were approaching an imposing pine forest on the eastern edge of the developed land that surrounded Sheerhome, finding he was working up too much nervous energy to stay quiet. "I remember seeing you around the keep a few times."

"How observant of you," Serene chuckled without glancing his way. "Yeah, Sam's a friend of mine."

"Then, you bringing me to this 'farm' place… that's you doing a favor for her?"

"Nope. She doesn't have anything to do with it. This is all One-Eye."

"So you're friends with him, too?"

Serene snorted. Even the way she did that was cute. "I don't think One-Eye has friends. He's a bit of a psychopath."

"Oh. Then…"

"I'm his… apprentice, I guess." Serene made a point of studying the trees while she said it, sounding almost embarrassed to say it out loud.

"Doing what, exactly?"

"He's an assassin. Sheerhome's resident boogeyman. I'm surprised you haven't heard any of the stories they tell about him by now. Although I guess a lot of people assumed he died in the Burning."

Wesley only got out a strangled grunt in response to that. He was about to be delivered into the hands of an assassin. That couldn't possibly bode well.

He didn't realize he'd been brooding until Serene speaking broke him out of his dark thoughts. "Want another piece of advice, actually?" she said.

"At this point, I'll take anything that's not a crisp 'fuck you'."

"Mmhmm. So, basically, don't call him One-Eye to his face. He's got all sorts of fun nicknames that people use behind his back—none of them particularly flattering—and he doesn't like any of them."

"What should I call him, then?"

"His real name is Will Greene, but I figure something like 'sir' might match the level of groveling you're aiming for."

"That sounds… prudent. Thank you."

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"No worries."

The forest was more than a little spooky, with shrieking cries echoing distantly, call-and-response, the creatures they belonged to appearing to be in communication. Mongrel's chimps loosed a few arrows from the treetops here and there to chase off potential attackers, but luckily they made it out the other end without any real close calls. Wesley had already gotten his fill of monsters and then some.

It was a bit past noon by the time they made it to the cluster of wooden buildings at the center of a large grassy meadow that made up the farm. The group scattered as folk went about their own business. Wesley followed behind Serene like a lost puppy, averting his gaze when she met with Sam to say hello.

Any vague hopes Wesley might have had of flying under the radar were quickly dashed as the big Laborer called out to him and wrapped him in a big hug.

"You came back!" she laughed as she put him at arm's distance, flushed with excitement. Looking into her earnest eyes was extremely difficult. "Glad to have you here, Oats. Thanks for sticking around."

"Uh, yeah," Wesley mumbled. "To be honest I was planning on skipping town, but it just didn't feel right, so I decided to come back in the end." He glanced over at Serene to see whether she was planning to sell him out, but she just watched him with an amused twinkle in her eye, arms crossed.

"That's great!" Sam said with a too-hard clap on Wesley's shoulder that made him flinch. "There's gonna be loads of prep to do for the party, so it would be awesome if you could help out here and there."

"Of course. Yeah. It's just…"

"Will wants a talk with this one first," Serene cut in. "After that, he's all yours."

"Oh, okay." The tall young woman scratched at her head, turning aside. "I think Will is out behind the house somewhere. Come back if you can't find him and I'll help you out."

They went to the place indicated. Wesley caught a strange, sickening smell while they were following the western wall of the farmhouse, and was wondering what it was when they rounded the corner.

Out in the backyard, a man in a tough leather apron had strung up a large four-legged animal—a deer, maybe?—from a wooden rack and was flaying off its hide with a thin knife by slicing and tugging.

What Wesley had smelled was blood, and the stench only got more overpowering as they got closer until he could practically taste iron on his tongue.

"Did you hurt him?" the man asked into thin air. Though he did not look up or physically acknowledge their presence in any way, there wasn't anyone else around he could be talking to.

"No," Serene replied. "He came willingly. Ish."

"That's right," Wesley added quickly. Clearly, this was the One-Eye Serene had told him about.

"Good work, Serene," the man said in a neutral, drab tone. He kept on cutting, half the hide now hanging off the animal in one continuous floppy sheet. "For now, I'd like to speak with him alone. I'll call on you later."

Serene looked like she wanted to say something, but eventually snapped her mouth shut, turned on her heel, and walked briskly away without a word. Evidently, she was not too happy about her dismissal.

It took a few moments before Wesley registered that he was now alone with a professional killer—a Level 16 one, at that—currently holding what was evidently a very sharp knife and carving at a recently living thing with absolute dispassion.

"Wesley Dayton," One-Eye said, still without so much as glancing in Wesley's direction. "Serene wasn't too rough with you, I hope."

"Not at all," Wesley squeaked out, frozen on the spot some fifteen feet from the man. "She didn't hurt me."

One-Eye nodded to himself; tug, tug, tugged at the hide until the last of it came away. He laid the animal skin out over the grass a ways off and returned to cut the animal open down the middle, allowing him access to the squelching organs.

"Wait!" Wesley blurted once he realized what the killer had just told him. "How do you know my full name? I haven't told anyone that!"

"I know things," One-Eye replied. "That's my job."

"I thought your job was killing people."

One-Eye barked out a harsh, joyless laugh. "It's bad form to kill people you know nothing about. Liable to get all kinds of nasty surprises sprung on you that way. So really, about two thirds of my job is gathering intelligence. Take out all the other little pie slices that occupy my time, and only a little sliver at the end is actually devoted to the act of murdering folk. It is, after all, a fairly quick process if you know what you're doing."

The man finally turned to face Wesley. He was tall and lean, his head shaven with a red surgical scar on one side of his scalp as though he had been through a recent injury or illness. Both his eyes were closed, one eyelid looking as though it had been sutured shut. Strangely enough, the color of his arms did not match, as the right one was significantly paler than the rest of his body.

Aside from the strangeness of his stitched eye though, the man looked fairly normal. There wasn't anything specific about him that screamed 'killer'. Even though there was a bloody knife in his hand, he did not wield it in a threatening way—in fact, he kept it angled intentionally away from Wesley as though to put him at ease.

But there was just something about him. Something about the stench of blood that hung heavy off him, and his thin-lipped smile that was somehow colder than the steel in his hand.

Something about him that made Wesley's animal instincts scream at him to turn and run, as far as he possibly could, without looking back.

Even without eyes to see, he felt a strange presence all about him, like he was being intimately observed from every angle; every secret he had ever kept and every lie he had ever told laid plain like that deer carcass stripped clean layer by layer.

"You look a little queasy," One-Eye said, approaching with the deliberate slowness of a predator closing in on an exhausted prey animal. "Are you all right, Wesley?"

"I'm fine!" Wesley squeaked out.

"Does the sight of blood frighten you?"

"Uhhh…"

"I'm sorry; I wasn't thinking. You see, I recently lost my vision, so I didn't consider that my current activity might have left me looking a little messy."

"It's okay. It doesn't bother me, really! Uh, sir!"

"You can call me Will."

"Anything you say."

One-Eye came up close, turning his head this way and that like an owl; somehow observing Wesley closely without even looking at him. "I'm sorry for bringing you here so abruptly." He didn't sound particularly sorry. "I heard from Sam that you were there when she obtained that new necklace of hers."

Wesley was frozen on the spot, breathing sharply through his nose. "Yes. That's right."

One-Eye made slow circles around him. The hairs on Wesley's arms stood up, intimately aware of how close that knife was to him, how easy it would be for the killer to lean in and cut him open like that poor animal over there.

"Maybe you think I'm doing all this for my own sake. That I've brought you here because I'm concerned about you spilling secrets. Maybe you even think I'm being cruel. But really, I'm doing all this for you. I'm protecting you, Wesley. From yourself. From the world. From enemies you don't even know you have."

"Thank you," Wesley forced out, still unsure whether this conversation would end in his death and quickly withering under the weight of his uncertainty.

One-Eye stopped in front of him, hands folded behind his back. "Why are you thanking me? Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"I do. I mean, I think I do. I know something that would make trouble if other people found out. So you brought me here to… keep me under supervision, I guess." Or kill me.

"Very good—that's right. And from there, I'm sure you'll understand that it would have been far, far easier to just kill you."

Wesley didn't know what to say. He fumbled over his words, but didn't manage anything coherent.

"Here."

Wesley looked down and found One-Eye offering out his knife, handle-first. Wesley glanced multiple times between the blade and its owner, unsure if this was a test or something and even more unsure what the answer was supposed to be.

In the end, he took it.

"Good," One-Eye said, and pointed to the side of his throat. "Now, place it against my neck."

"W-What?"

"Do it now. Go ahead."

There was no room for disobedience in the command. Wesley placed the knife blade flush with One-Eye's neck just like he'd been asked. He was shaking so badly he worried he might accidentally slice the man open.

"Do you think you could kill me?" One-Eye asked, eerily calm. "The two of us standing here like this."

Wesley licked his lips, palms suddenly sweaty. He wanted so badly to touch Justice for reassurance, and his free hand was halfway to his waist before he realized what he was doing and stopped himself. "No," he said, and meant it. There was something about the man's demeanor that said he was even sharper, even deadlier, than the weapon he'd been holding. That even with a knife to his throat, he was the one with the upper hand.

"If you ran from me, do you think you could escape?" Will asked.

"No," Wesley said, voice almost a whisper.

"If you ducked away in the night while everyone was asleep, do you think you could evade my notice?"

"No."

"Good. I'm glad you understand your situation." One-Eye reached up and softly patted Wesley's knife hand. "You can keep that one. I have others."

Wesley lowered the weapon with a shaky release of breath. He wanted to drop it, toss it aside. In the end, he just kept clutching it awkwardly.

"Has anyone told you about the group known as the Omen Bearers?" One-Eye asked, refolding his hands behind him.

"No, sir."

One-Eye looked like he was about to correct the honorific, then shrugged and let it be. "I see. Well, you'll learn more about them tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say that they are enemies of mine. And enemies of yours as well, because they would undoubtedly like to learn what you know very badly, and they wouldn't be as polite as me in getting what they want. If the Omen Bearers ever get a whiff of what you know, without my protection they would track you down and do unspeakable things to squeeze out everything you know about that necklace and the woman it belonged to. And trust me, they would find out about you eventually, even if you try to hide. They have people everywhere. Eyes watching. Ears listening."

"I… understand."

The killer smiled a thin, joyless smile. "What do you understand, Wesley?"

"Without you, I'm a dead man."

"Good. I'm glad you agree. Which leads me into my next point." He poked a finger, very softly, into the middle of Wesley's forehead. He screwed his eyes shut and endured the cold touch. One-Eye went on, saying: "You need me if you want to survive. That means your fate is entirely in my hands. You're my creature now, Wesley Dayton. You'll do exactly as I say without a thought of betrayal, and you'd better be glad for the privilege."

Wesley wanted to cry. "Yes, sir." He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to acknowledge the cruel world around him.

"Excellent. Now that we're both on the same page, let me give you your first instructions." The killer took his finger off of Wesley's forehead, and it felt as though the barrel of a loaded gun had been removed. "Look at me, Wesley."

Wesley forced himself to squint fearfully at the hard-faced man, his own eyes closed in perfect tranquility. "Sorry."

"For your first task," One-Eye said, smiling, "I would like you to go and help with the preparations. Tomorrow, you will enjoy yourself a modest amount, and you will show Sam just how happy you are to be here. You will drink only lightly, because I'm not sure if you can be trusted to keep your mouth shut while drunk. If anyone asks about this conversation, I was simply introducing myself to you. You will not detail the specifics of our arrangements to anyone—not even Serene—unless I'm present to confirm it. Clear enough?"

"Very," Wesley croaked out.

"Then go. I'm done with you for now."

One-Eye turned as though Wesley had ceased to exist and returned to his butchering, producing a new knife from somewhere with a flourish that was too quick to follow.

For some reason, Wesley found himself still rooted in place even though what he wanted most in the world was to run away and never see the man named Will Greene again. But to his horror, not only did he stay, but he also found words forming on his tongue, demanding a release.

"Is this what you did to Serene, too?" Wesley found himself asking with entirely too much defiance in his voice. "Did you blackmail her into working for you?"

"Not really," Will said without turning. "I'd say I was a little more civil with her. She's actually useful—unlike you—and a good friend to Sam as far as I can tell—again, unlike you. Do you know what that means, Wesley?"

"I…"

"That means you'll have to try a lot harder to prove you are a worthwhile investment—that I should continue taking the risk of leaving you alive."

Wesley's mouth snapped shut, and he deflated as the last of his courage leaked out of him with all the dignity of a flaccid fart. He fled, still holding the bloody knife One-Eye had given him but feeling more disarmed than he had in his two lives.

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