Tiberius is a Problem

Tiberius is a problem, Zaryndra thought to herself as she pondered her cup of ale, in more ways than one. A problem she would need to resolve if she were to keep her professional reputation intact.

It wasn’t a problem she was used to encountering. Normally, in her line of work, when you killed someone, they stayed dead. Two years ago, when she’d accepted the contract on the Pirate King, Morzan Pelagius, she’d had no concerns about him coming back. She’d had concerns about how to assassinate a pirate king when he rarely came off of his boat; she’d had concerns about how to escape when the deed was done. But she was a highly trained professional and she’d worked hard to ensure she’d be able to overcome those problems. Her order was known to be able to kill anyone, anywhere anytime; they had an almost supernatural reputation. She was only a young elf, newly released into field work after her long years of training, and she’d been determined to do it right.

And she thought she had.

She had frequented the taverns in the harbour towns of Telbion; she had learned the names of all the pirate captains and their ships. She had learned who was loyal to the Pirate King and who considered him to be a pretender to the throne of the Pirate Isles. She’d learned about the suspicious death of the previous King and why many captains thought Morzan to be responsible; probably why her order had been contacted and she’d been hired. She didn’t know who had made the contract with the Temple, but then she never did; anonymity was just as important for their clients as for their operatives. She’d learned the names of all of Morzan’s favourite whores and where they did business; she’d charted the Pirate King’s ship, the Dragon-Wing, from harbour to harbour several times, noting the pattern it made. Apparently he was a creature of habit. She’d learned the size of his crew, the types of men and women he kept around him. She’d learned which of them were fighters and which were cowards. She’d even learned to swim.

When the Black Poppy, one of the ships under the Pirate King’s command, was due to reach Bringh, she’d been there. One of the captain’s favourite whores had sadly met with an ‘accident’, so she’d stepped forward to replace her, as a young, fresh dark-elven maid. Exotic, they’d thought, and taken her on board. She’d done her job and left before the ship left port – or so they thought. In truth, she’d poisoned the captain with a sleeping draught before he’d so much as laid a finger on her, and hidden away in the cargo hold. She was good at hiding. She’d stowed away until they’d reached the Pirate Isles, where she’d disembarked and disguised herself as just another eager deckhand looking for work. She’d worked hard, established herself as reliable, and worked her way onto the Dragon-Wing. All this had taken her a year. But a job done properly cannot be rushed.

Finally she’d been working on Morzan’s ship. It hadn’t taken her long to mark him – he was an arrogant sort, and had made a speech to the entire crew shortly before they even set sail. Then she’d simply worked and waited. On several occasions she’d found him wandering the decks at night, alone and in various stages of drunkenness, staring out to sea with a kind of childish wistfulness. She’d waited. Finally, when the ship was in the perfect stage of its journey – the island of Xiat just out of sight over the horizon, by her calculations – he’d gone out again. This time, she’d followed, cloaked in the shadows cast by the almost full moon. He’d stood at the rail up near the wheel of the ship for almost an hour. The few crew who were still on deck gave him his privacy, she’d noticed. She waited for a brief moment when no one was about before she’d slipped up behind him and driven her long, wickedly sharp dagger through his back and into his heart. He’d made only a small sound, turning to see who had killed him, one grasping hand pushing her hood away from her face. She’d let him see – it didn’t matter now – before she had let him topple over the rail and into the waters of the Silverscale Sea. He’d made barely a splash.

She’d waited for another lull in the presence of crew on board before she’d jumped in herself, and struck out for Xiat to the West. It had been a long, cold swim, but once in Xiat she had been able to locate one of the hidden portals back to the Temple and report her success. Morzan, the Pirate King, was dead.

Until she’d tracked down her most recent prey – a shiftless tavern-hopper named Tiberius Black – and found herself looking at him once again.

Surfacing from her thoughts for a moment, she scowled down at the ale in front of her. She didn’t want it; she didn’t even like ale. But she was trying to keep in with the group she had joined up with – the group ‘Tiberius Black’ was going around with. A simple bunch of mercenaries, taking on odd jobs for coin, none of them even close to the standard she was trained to. She was sat, hooded and silent, at a table with them in this dingy, backroads tavern, while Tiberius span another ludicrous tale. Listening to him was the rest of the group – two humans, one a Rhienni paladin from the Church of the Hammer, an elven druid and another dark elf, though not from her lineage. They were all in their cups and enjoying the pirate’s every word. Zaryndra intended to stay sharp. She had a job to do.

But her was the problem; actually it was a series of problems. She had been contracted to kill Tiberius Black, a half-elven jack-of-all-trades. She didn’t know why; presumably he’d pissed off the wrong card shark or deflowered the wrong rich man’s daughter. She didn’t know, and she didn’t need to know. But the man she had tracked down – and she’d checked the path she’d traced and she knew she wasn’t wrong – this man was not Tiberius Black.

So he’d changed his name and left the seas after being almost assassinated to escape his enemies, and he’d gone and gotten another – coincidentally the same - assassin after him. It shouldn’t be a big deal. These things happen. Except they don’t happen to assassins from the Shadow Temple, because assassins from the Shadow Temple don’t fail. Ever. And neither had she. She’d killed Morzan Pelagius. She’d watched the life leave his eyes before she’d dropped him from that ship.

And yet still, here he was. She’d been with the group for a month, making sure, and yes, it was him. Not just someone who looked like him, not a long lost twin brother – it was him. Sometimes she caught him looking at her curiously, as if he was trying to place her. It was definitely him.

Alright, not a problem. Kill him again and both contracts are satisfied, no one needs to know the first one didn’t stick. Never mind how he did it, right?

Wrong. Zaryndra had only heard of a few individuals coming back from the dead, and they were all worshippers of Nydalont, the god of oblivion. The same god the Shadow Temple revered, and who all its initiates and assassins prayed to to guide their hands. Half of them had been in the order. Which meant that somehow, this idiotic half-elf was important. The fact that he didn’t seem to even know why he’d come back both infuriated and intrigued her. Why would Nydalont save him? And for what purpose? She couldn’t kill him until she knew that – but he wasn’t talking.

She tapped one nail against the wood of the table irritably. She ought to go to her order for advice. But that would mean admitting that she’d failed to kill the Pirate King. They’d see her failure to anticipate his return from the dead as a lack of research into his capabilities. And she couldn’t have that. No, she’d have to figure this out on her own. She needed to learn more – about Morzan’s past, and about Tiberius’s. Trace backwards through their stories and find the moment when he’d drawn the attention of the god of oblivion. Then she could figure out why he was important – and if she would still have to kill him. She didn’t know of any examples of contracts being refused or recalled by the Temple, but being touched by Nydalont would surely be a good reason?

She sighed heavily. The best way she could see of learning what she needed to know was by staying with the group for longer, earning his trust and getting him to open up. That in itself wasn’t a problem - unless he remembered who she was; she’d done as much many times before. You did what you had to to get the job done.

The problem was … and how she hated to admit it, even only to herself … was that she was starting to … feel things. For him. Tiberius or Morzan or whoever in the hells he was. That was a problem. Because if she had to stay, that was only going to get worse.

Someone said something, and Morzan – Tiberius – threw back his head and laughed. She looked up at him – his long. Curling black hair, his lightly tanned skin, his sparkling blue-grey eyes – and grimaced. Gods, he was so insufferably charming!

She looked down and noticed that, without thinking, she’d scratched an ‘M’ into the wood of the table with her nail.

My lord Nydalont, she thought in a silent prayer. I’m in trouble here.