New in Town

Lordarin looked up at the Salty Whore, a look of disgust carved into his face. In his experience, places that casually disparage sex workers were never the classiest of establishments. The building looked as if it were built out of random pieces of driftwood found floating in the harbor. Yet, a massive, neon, sign depicting a scantily-clad group of sex workers of all genders lounging in seductive poses contrasted the shabby exterior. A mix of sex workers and drunken sailors milled around the entrance; some smoking cigarettes and chatting, others fighting.

He walked toward the entrance and silently prayed that his time in Longshore would come to an end soon. Some of the sex workers eyed Lordarin as he walked by, giving him a smile and a wink.

"Hey there tall, dark and scary," one called out between drags of his cigarette. "Gimme 50, you'll never forget me."

"Not now, thanks," Lordarin said as he stepped through the door.

The inside was about as decrepit as the outside. The floor and bar were made of graying warped planks and hunks of wood that appeared to have been pried off of an unattended stretch of the pier. The tables in the bar were old shipping crates and wooden spools which once held telephone or telegraph wire. Lordarin walked toward the booths along the back wall of the smoke-filled room.

He sat on the bench of the third booth; the location of the drop. He searched the table for any signs his handler might have left. Just as saw a small arrow carved into the corner, a gruff voice interjected.

"Get you somethin'?" Lordarin looked up and saw an older woman, her face slathered with copious amounts of makeup. She had a lit cigarette clamped between her teeth and a circular serving tray pressed to her hip with one hand.

"Yeah, whiskey," Lordarin said. She grunted in response and left. He continued his search, looking under the table. Near the table's support, he saw a block of wood a slightly different shade of grayish-brown than the rest of the table. He grabbed the piece of wood and jerked it free.

He put the package on his lap and inspected it for any hinges or latching mechanisms. He found a groove in the side and slid a thumbnail into it. A faint click announced his success and a small roll of paper fell into his lap. He unrolled the paper and looked at the jumble of symbols written on it. A Zanali cipher, one that he was less familiar with. It took him a few seconds to work out the message, but when he did, he gasped.

"Get off me!" Lordarin heard the voice of a young woman yell. He dropped what he had found in the garbage pile behind the Hotel Martinius and raced into the adjoining alley. A teenage girl, about his age, was squaring off with a huge, old man.

"Get outta my box!" He shouted waving a rusted pipe around. The girl had a knife in her hand, and what sunlight made it between the tall buildings glinted off the blade.

"I already am. Do you not see me standing here, outside your box?" She asked, waving the knife in a semi-circle around her to illustrate that she was, in fact, not inside his box.

"Hey!" Lordarin shouted, running towards the two, getting between them. "Let's just calm down, before the cops come out." The city of Martinius's preferred method of dealing with the homeless and orphans was to beat them into unconsciousness and throw them out of town, so Lordarin's argument had the intended effect. The man and the girl eased their tension slightly.

"She was sleepin' in my box," the man said, the stench of liquor and unbrushed teeth nearly floored him.

"Yeah, I got that. Pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard." He turned to face the girl, who said unprompted, "I didn't know it was his."

"I'm sure she's really sorry about the mix-up. Aren't you?" He said to the girl, with a jerk of his head.

"Yeah, real sorry," the girl said, rolling her eyes.

The man grunted and climbed into the discarded shipping crate behind a pile of trash. Lordarin turned to the girl, who had started walking toward the street.

"Hey," he yelled. She stopped and turned. Thankfully she had put away her knife.

"Fuck do you want? My undying gratitude?" She said, staring at him. He felt her clear, green eyes bore into him.

"N-no, I just--," Lordarin stammered.

"Just what? Thought I was going to strip down and let you go to town on me for saving me." She said the last part with a mocking impression of Lordarin's voice.

"No! I have just never seen you before and thought you might need help. That's all."

The girl stared at him for a second longer. Her eyes flicked up and down, sizing him up. Finally, she sighed and the remaining tension left her body. "Ok, sorry. I've just had a rough few weeks."

Lordarin's tension released, and he held out his hand to her. "It's okay. I understand. This is a rough town. I'm Lordarin, by the way. But you can call me Lor."

She gripped it with her small, calloused hand. "Diandra."

After getting the note, and having a few stiff drinks to help process it, he eased himself into the task at hand. Despite doing these kinds of things for a living, he still couldn't believe what he had read.

Eliminate Diandra, the note had said after he decoded it. Lordarin didn't know how the Arsadi found her, but he knew their foul tentacles could reach everywhere.

It didn't take him long to find out where exactly she was, considering how well he knew her. Just a couple of questions for the people hanging around some of the places she would likely be interested in and a few well-placed bribes to the local constabulary.

He tailed her for a couple of days, just to make sure it was her and to get her pattern down. But he was running out of time. He was due back in Kanard with a report in about a week and a half, and most of that would be eaten up by sailing from here to Viranai.

He sat in the darkness, watching her through the open window of the cafe, and wondered how long had it been since he'd seen her. 10 years? It felt like a breath and an eternity at the same time. She looked a lot more vibrant than the filthy, disheveled girl he had found on the streets of Martinius so long ago. Especially when compared to the hardened killer she had become after they met. Her skin was richer and almost seemed to glow a golden brown in the electric lights. But her eyes were still the same; pale, but clear, green with hints of blue.

She was having dinner with a man. Work acquaintance probably, Lordarin told himself, but Diandra's body language told a different story. The way she leaned toward him whenever he talked. The way she looked at him like he was the only person in the room. In the world. She's in love...

"So, you're just leaving?" Lordarin said, almost shouting. It had been three years since he met Diandra in that dreary alley in Martinius. That night, he had brought her back to the abandoned house that he and his gang had taken over. They had stayed up all night talking, forming a friendship. Over the next few months, that friendship blossomed into a romantic relationship. Lordarin's first. And that relationship had survived for these last few years. Through garbage picking, gang fights, and almost getting arrested for murder.

"Yeah, Lor," Diandra said, stuffing a handful of shirts and trousers into her pack. "The council assigned me to handle something."

"Handle what?" Lordarin asked, running his fingers through his mass of wavy, black hair.

"I can't answer that. You know the rules."

"But why can't we still be together?" He asked, wincing as the words came out sounding like a petulant child.

She stopped packing and stared at her open bag. "Because I'm not happy with you." He could feel her words thrust into him as she spoke. Like she had just stabbed him with that knife she was clutching back when they first met. "I haven't been for a long time. You're angry, possessive. For fuck's sake, you nearly beat someone to death because you didn't like the way they were looking at me." Diandra paused, took a breath, and continued packing. "You look at me and see that runaway girl you saved back in Martinius. But, you don't see that the girl can take care of herself. Always could."

Lordarin stared at the bag she was packing. The words were molten rock being poured over his head, burning away the last vestiges of his hope that he could convince her to stay with him.

"If that's the way you felt, then why didn't you leave before?" He finally mustered after eons of silence, only broken by the faint swish of clothes from Diandra's packing.

"I don't know," she said, hints of remorse coating her words. "I guess I thought we could still make it work." She punctuated her last sentence by cinching the drawstring on her pack and buckling the flap shut. "But, I realized that we can't."

"But, you're not even trying. You're just running away." His voice quivered a bit with the last word, and he took a deep breath.

"I have tried, for a while now." She lifted the pack off of the bed. "But I can't ever be who you want me to be."

Lordarin stood in the middle of the one room they shared in the dilapidated apartment building in Kanard, easily the asshole of the Arcaedian Republic. The room began to swirl around him.

Diandra walked until she was next to him and paused. She put her hand on his shoulder and raised up to kiss him on the cheek. "Goodbye, Lor."

Lordarin looked down at the lanky, sandy-haired man gagged and tied to a chair. They were in an abandoned warehouse near the docks. The man's hazel eyes radiated fear and hatred.

After Diandra's dinner, Lordarin followed the man as he walked home. Attacking Diandra directly was too dangerous. She was a formidable foe, even if she hasn't been training since her disappearance. So, he had taken this man captive.

When she comes to rescue him, then...

This was where Lordarin's plans broke down. It was one thing to kill some government pawn or industrialist causing problems for his employers. It was another to kill another Arsadi. Especially one he used to be in love with. Still in love, he thought.

The few still-working lights in the warehouse flickered and extinguished with a pop, washing everything in the blackness of night. Lordarin's training kicked in and his eyes adjusted in a second. "It's showtime, lover boy." Lordarin removed the gag.

"Dee, no! It's a trap!" The man shouted. Lordarin tuned the man's screams out and focused on the background noises. Outside, the rain drummed a staccato rhythm on the warehouse's roof. Gruff voices of the dock workers blasting profanities as they toiled on the docks filtered through the gaps in the walls. He heard a soft, muffled tap. Likely imperceptible to the average person. But not to him.

Two pinpoints of green light, spaced close together, moved in the darkness. He heard a muffled gunshot and saw a bullet coming towards him, throwing off green waves of light as it cut through the air. Lordarin sprang to the left, putting his body out of the path of the oncoming bullet. He heard another shot immediately after, and a second bullet embedded itself into the meat of his shoulder. He focused, suppressing the burning pain radiating from his shoulder, across his chest, and down his arm. He smiled.

"Looks like I misjudged how out of practice you would be," he called out to the darkness.

Diandra emerged from the darkness, almost floating. Green light flowed from her body as she got closer. Her eyes burned with a green fire of hatred. "You always go left, Lor."

Lordarin chuckled. He fired his suppressed pistol at her. A flash of green light, and she was gone. The bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the concrete. In the corner of his right eye, he saw another flash. He felt the impact of Diandra's foot in his chest, knocking the wind out of him and throwing his body onto a stack of discarded shipping crates. He rolled just as Diandra slashed down with a green-tinged short sword. It clanged against the concrete, throwing off sparks and green tendrils of light.

Lordarin held out his own hand and a silver-gray sword of his own appeared from nothing. He slashed at her as she moved, and the tip of the blade grazed her shoulder, cutting a thin, red stripe through her jacket. She recovered and conjured a flash of greenish-white light, blinding him.

He closed and opened his eyes, trying to get his vision back. He heard a shuffling sound, but before he could react, Diandra thrust her sword. He felt the tip of the blade burn into his left eye. He jerked away and dislodged the blade before it could penetrate into his brain.

This last wound ended him though. His focus dissolved, and excruciating pain gripped his face while the gunshot wound burned through his upper body. He crumpled to the concrete floor. So this is how it ends, he mused, waiting for Diandra's finishing blow.

Lordarin felt his body lift up off the ground and slam into the back wall of the warehouse and heavy crates followed, pinning him to the wall. He was helpless. Diandra snapped her fingers and some of the lights turned on, carving part of the warehouse out of the black. Diandra untied the ropes binding her lover to his chair. Once free, she held his head in her hand and gave him a deep, passionate kiss. She brushed his sandy locks out of his face, worry burned across her face. So, this is what it looks like when she's happy.

The man was shaking as he stared at Diandra with a look of wonder. And fear. He didn't know.

"Why are you here, Lor?" She said, pulling the man up from the chair.

"Your old masters sent me," he gasped. His breath still hadn't returned. "They found out you were alive."

For the first time since he'd met her, Lordarin saw fear on Diandra's face. Not fear for herself. Fear of losing this man. Fear of losing the life she was trying to build for herself.

"What happens now?" He asked, but he knew the answer. He felt a sense of peace wash over his body. Would he finally be free?

She took a few steps towards him, still supporting her lover. "It ends. Tonight. You go back and tell them you completed the job." Disappointment swept away the relief. "I disappear, and I never see any of you again."

Diandra and the man limped down the darkened path towards the exit. Lordarin heard the outside door to the warehouse slammed, and the heavy crates pinning him to the wall loosened. His body crumpled to the floor.

Lordarin sat in the passenger seat of a car parked in a dimly lit side street in Kanard. Particles of dust floated through the lights. Probably a dust storm in the central wastes. His handler had just said something, and Lordarin's attention returned.

"Huh?" He turned to look at the man sitting in the passenger seat.

"I said it looks like she put up quite the fight," his handler said, inspecting the blackened hole where his left eye used to be.

"She did," Lordarin said. "But she won't be a problem anymore."

"Good, the council will be pleased. No, I need something to show to them..."

Before he could finish, Lordarin pulled out a small jewelry box from his coat pocket. The kind used to hold rings and such.

His handler took it from him and opened it. Inside was an eye, pale, clear green with hints of blue around the pupil. Lordarin marveled at how much it looked like Diandra's eye. Definitely worth the thousands of imperials he paid to get it.

The handler chuckled as he looked at it "You've always had a sense for drama," he said, closing the box and putting it in his own pocket.

"So, what now?"

"Nothing. We don't have any jobs right now. Just go back home. Relax. Find a girl, or boy. Have some fun."

Lordarin nodded and opened the door. He put one foot out of the car door before his handler added. "Also, if you're looking to get your eye fixed, I know a guy." He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it to Lordarin. An address in Arcaeda.

"Thanks," he said, stuffing the paper in his pocket. He shut the car door and down the street, toward the train station. The wind was starting to pick up, cold and dry, carrying even more dust and whatever else was in the vast desert in the middle of the continent. They'll never find out. He told himself, to no avail. They'd find out eventually, and his life would be forfeit. There wasn't anywhere their foul tentacles couldn't reach.