Only Villains Do That

In a story, the thing that makes the protagonist snap always seems to be a thing. Some deeply personal trauma, readily identifiable as a tipping point and sufficiently over-the-top to impress the audience. And sure, I still believed there was truth to that; I’d seen firsthand the effects a traumatic experience could have on the mind. But I was also finding that the sheer accumulation of stress could do it just as well—and worse, you might not even see it coming.

By the time I realized something was broken inside me, it had been for a while, and I still couldn’t identify a single moment when it had happened.

All the way on the journey back to Gwyllthean, during the hour Aster had insisted we take to rest and recover from that hike before getting down to business, throughout all the careful steps and brutal violence which had ensued, I’d felt a seething nervous energy. It was a familiar yet new experience; not unlike the thrill of performing for an energetic and responsive crowd, reminiscent of the liberating surge of adrenaline except longer-lasting. Any time my thoughts touched on the reasons for our business here tonight I felt the lightheaded buzzing sensation swell in accompaniment of the resulting surge of rage, but embarrassingly, I failed to identify it until after our business at the counting house.

The whole time in there, I felt almost as if I were high on something. I’ve always tended to shoot my mouth off when discomfited, but now instead of insulting people or embarrassing the room by saying what everyone was thinking, I was spouting wisecracks as I ended human lives, like some sweaty squarejaw from an American action movie. And all the while, those two sensations continually rose. Vibrant, tingling giddiness, and the pulse-pounding rage I could feel clawing its way up the back of my throat.

I’d finally realized they were the same thing. I was all but literally drunk on chronic anger. All the fear, remorse, and grief that had driven me here was nothing but a stifled murmur at the bottom of my brain. At the forefront, there was only rage—and in a way I’d never experienced it before. When you gave yourself over to it completely, rage was liberating. Hell, it was fun.

Still, it was strange I couldn’t tie it to a trigger. Maybe this was just what I’d been building up to since arriving on Ephemera. Had my mind cracked in some fundamental way, or was I always like this and Lady Gray’s bullshit had just brought it finally to the forefront? That could explain…well, a lot. I wondered if it might be another Blessing of Wisdom thing, but that seemed unlikely as Biribo hadn’t said anything about it.

“He just dropped to street level, spent a second with a group of four people in that alley—two alleys up from here—and is now climbing back to the rooftops,” my familiar reported on the movement of the spy who’d been shadowing us from above street level since the counting house. He’d been too good to let us spot him, but not knowing who he was dealing with or what a familiar even was, his skill had ironically given him away. Biribo couldn’t differentiate a person hiding among a crowd but someone keeping pace with us along the rooftops was an easy target.

“Got it,” I said, feeling that sensation rising again. Bloodlust and euphoria. I was about to dispense some pain, and the anticipation fed my inner Dark Lord almost as well as actually doing it would.

The alley was dark; I couldn’t even see a hint of movement as I stepped in front of the girls to draw abreast of it. Not for the first split-second, anyway, before I cast Light Beam straight into it.

The four huddled shapes thus revealed reared back as they were blinded. Then a Windburst sent them hurtling away, bouncing them off the walls and tearing off shingles from the overhanging eaves to either side, the alley being too small to contain the miniature gale.

“Nice night for it, eh, lads?” I called out in a jolly tone as I stepped into their erstwhile ambush spot. Slimeshot, Slimeshot. Two of them were down just like that, at that range severely injured if not dead; neither produced a scream. One was scrambling away down the alley, having recovered faster, while a fourth nearer at hand was trying to struggle out from under the body of his companion, which had fallen half on top of him.

It made for an awkward angle; I had to step almost past him to fire a Slimeshot right into his neck. From less than a meter away. He was just a vague shape in the renewed darkness, but I suspected the wet splattering noise which resulted wasn’t entirely from the slime.

Speaking of vague shapes, the last one was getting away. I looked up to find he’d made it almost to the alley’s other exit point.

Immolate.

The screaming never ceased to be annoying, but at least this gave us some light to work with.

“Jadrin, you know what to do.”

“I do, Lord Seiji, but I can’t very well do it if you’re gonna be this thorough. These guys are all finished.”

“Aw. Well, don’t worry, we’ll find you some new toys to play with before long.”

“Ugh, do you have to encourage her?” Adelly groaned.

“Strictly speaking, I don’t have to do anything.”

I stopped a meter away from the huddled inferno that was the last guy, patiently waiting. My three followers all drew up behind me, Adelly and Kastrin flanking me from both sides with their crossbows out, Jadrin presumably keeping watch back down the alley the way we’d come.

As usual, it took him a minute or so to stop burning. I conjured a Firelight as the illumination from the flames of torture faded, staring down at the whimpering mess of a man now curled into a fetal position. I’d been about to deliver the coup de grace, but looking at him now it seemed…unsporting, somehow.

“I guess we could let this one go,” I mused aloud. He peeked up from between his own arms.

“He’ll just run back to Lady Gray and we’ll have to kill him again later,” Adelly said in a tone devoid of pity. “Maybe after he hurts one of ours.”

“Either of you recognize him?”

“Meh.”

“They all look alike after a while,” Kastrin sneered.

“I won’t,” the man babbled, “I’ll leave the city! Swear on the Goddess!”

“Ah, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all part as friends,” I sighed, and turned my back. “Sadly, I don’t believe you. Kastrin, do you believe him?”

All I heard in reply was the twang of a crossbow and a hoarse gurgle.

That…should probably not have felt the way it did. It wasn’t fun; there was no joy in this. Not like facing down the guys from the counting house, who’d had a chance to fight back, however ineffectually. But a grim satisfaction, a sense of vindication, yes. This fucker had misspent his life preying on others in the rough streets of the Gutters, he’d been about to ambush and try to murder us, and now he was rapidly bleeding out on the floor of a filthy alley. A measure of balance was restored to the universe.

I was no longer as concerned about not being directly affected by the violence, but my concern at not being concerned had faded to almost nothing, and that probably wasn’t a good sign. Ah, well, I had more immediate things to worry about.

“Off we go, ladies!” I called in a cheery singsong, and we strolled back as we’d come, past the bodies to the street beyond.

“Our buddy’s still on the case,” Biribo reported quietly in my ear. “Along the left side…he’s circling around the back of that peaked roof to get an indirect view of you down the next alley!”

I flew into motion, stepping as quietly as I could while dashing across the width of the next building to place myself in full view of the alley, head tilted back to watch the rooftops. The weight of Immolate formed in the front of my brain, ready to be shoved forth into reality. Now it was the hunter who stepped into the trap.

Our persistent foe rounded the peak of the gabled roof fast, having rushed around it to get into place. Finding me already there instead of where he’d expected, and also looking right at him, he panicked, and froze.

So did I.

It was a Gutter Rat, not one of Gray’s gangsters. The kid was at most a year older than Gilder. He went deathly still as we locked eyes, and in the dim but clean Ephemeral starlight I had a clear view of the child’s face as he realized he was about to die.

Immolate vanished from my mind like a popped bubble. Then, so did everything else.

I’m not sure how long I would have stood there in the street, staring witlessly at the frozen boy who gaped back, but the spell was broken by pounding feet as my posse caught up. Following the direction of my gaze, Adelly muttered a curse and raised her crossbow.

I reached out and slapped it back down, as the sudden motion finally spurred the petrified Rat into action. Scrambling so frantically he nearly slipped off the roof, he managed to pivot and vanish back around the corner.

“I’m not sure I could’ve made that shot anyway,” Adelly said after a second, gently moving her weapon from under my hand.

“I could’ve,” Kastrin muttered.

“Yeah, yeah, we know, you’re a witch with crossbows,” Jadrin said with the particular tone of soft derision I was starting to recognize as what passed for affection from her. “More important, Lord Seiji could’ve made that shot first if he wanted it made. You gotta learn to follow the boss’s lead when you’re out on a job, girls.”

All three looked at me, waiting. I was still staring in silence at a distant section of the Gwyllthean battlements right where a moment before a child’s terrified face had blocked my view.

Suddenly, I wasn’t angry anymore. And that was…not great. It turned out all the anxiety and pain under it wasn’t gone, just suppressed while I was riding that high. It didn’t even have a chance to all come rushing back in, as I was currently standing there trying to process what I’d spent the last several minutes doing. Laughing, whistling, wisecracking, murdering. Like some cheap manga…

Villain.

“It’s tough, with the Rats,” Adelly said quietly, watching me. “They’re a nuisance and a downright menace sometimes, and they usually grow up to be the worst kind of people… The boys, anyway. A lot of the girls graduate to Cat Alley themselves. Sometimes you can’t help thinking you’d be saving everybody a lot of trouble, even them, if you just put one down. But then…it’s still just a kid. Makes you wonder if they might still have a chance to become something different. Better.”

Jadrin snorted loudly.

“Yeah, I know,” Adelly sighed.

“He’s moving off in the other direction now,” Biribo reported from inside my hood, just loudly enough to be audible to them. “So, either way, we’re no longer being followed.”

“Then we’d better keep moving,” I said, hearing the dullness in my own voice.

Catching my mood, they followed me in silence the rest of the way back to the meeting point.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person involved in this by far, but I felt no need or prerogative to get judgmental with my followers. They’d lived under this system to which we were now taking a battleaxe at my instigation, suffering no end of misery and persecution from it. I was a recent transplant to this country, and had to acknowledge that much of my rage was the result of shock at being suddenly immersed in the bullshit that was Fflyr Dlemathlys. Theirs ran deep, and was well-earned.

Besides, the girls weren’t that bad, when it came down to it. They were surprisingly ruthless, and even mocking toward their former oppressors when pulling the trigger, but so far they showed an overall inclination to strike a clean deathblow at every opportunity. It wasn’t like they went out of their way to cause needless pain.

No, that was just me.

Fortunately I didn’t have much opportunity to be lost in my thoughts on the way back; my thoughts weren’t a pleasant place at that moment. We were stalking as quickly and quietly as we could through enemy territory, and had to pay attention for the counterattacks that we had just been out deliberately provoking, which might come at any time. But since we’d scared off our Gutter Rat stalker and crushed that one would-be ambush, we met no reprisal between the counting house and our own improvised field headquarters.

I had set us up in what I figured was the last place Lady Gray would look for her enemies: one of her own strongholds. We’d linked up with Minifrit’s bodyguards on the outskirts, had them direct us to one of the houses close to Cat Alley in which she’d based one of her gangs currently employed leaning on the women there, and cleaned it out.

That part was shockingly easy; after Kastrin sniped their lookout, Aster and I had barged in and demolished them. It turned out that fighting Blessed of our caliber in close quarters was a terrifying exercise in futility for the kinds of roughnecks Lady Gray mostly employed.

We filed silently past the “lookout,” who was leaning against the door of the house; it was the same guy who’d been there before. Getting him posed just right had been a real pain in the ass, but with his hat pulled down you had to get close to realize he was a corpse. Or, I supposed, be watching the place long enough to notice he never moved.

In theory, nobody should be observing it that closely. Our enemies shouldn’t know we’d taken it yet; that was the kind of thing they would inevitably discover before much time had passed, but we weren’t planning to be there long. The fact that the corpse was still posed there was the signal that Aster and the others still held the house. Had it been attacked and retaken, we would have retreated to the designated spot on the outskirts.

I went right to the door and slipped in unchallenged. My actual sentries were inside, on the second floor, watching through slits in the boarded windows.

“How’d it go?” Aster asked immediately upon my entry.

I waited until my three followers had filed inside and Adelly shut the door before answering. “Message sent. How about here? I see Sakin’s back; has the scouting paid off enough for us to move, or should I go rattle Gray’s cage again?”

“Oh, we have met with more success than I dared hope,” Sakin declared, grinning even more maniacally than usual. “I wish I could take credit, Lord Seiji, but the next few bits of good news were served up to us on a platter before I could even get my hands properly dirty.”

He paused for effect—which I clearly needed to make a rule against other people doing—and I was just opening my mouth to demand an explanation when the stroke of luck to which he was referring popped around the corner, wearing the usual shit-eating grin.

“Gilder!” For a moment, I forgot to keep my voice down.

“Hey, Lord Seiji!” the boy replied, beaming with good cheer. “I tolja I was on top of things! You can always count on Gilder to—oi! Hey, c’mon!”

He made a valorous attempt to evade me, but had realized a second too late that I wasn’t charging across the room for a hug. I managed to grab the kid’s collar as he tried to bolt, and a short scuffle later got him into a headlock, vigorously knuckling his hair with my free hand.

“Ow! Gettoff! Come on, this is the thanks I get?”

“You little shit! Do you know how worried I—Benit was? What’s the big idea, trying to tackle Lady Gray’s whole gang without support? How could anybody be that stupid?!”

“Oi, ain’t nobody that stupid, I wasn’t tacklin’ nothing! Gimme more credit than that, I was—will you let go of me?!”

“Boys,” Aster interjected firmly. “We are trying to be discreet, remember?”

I finally released him, giving his hair one last ruffle, which he ducked out from under, still grinning exuberantly.

“The boy’s actually done some damn fine work,” commented Olyc, who was leaning against the wall, watching all this unfold. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m with you, Lord Seiji; kid like him trying to deal with the gangs and the Rats, alone in the Gutters with no support? Fuckin’ crazy. Good thing he found us or I dunno how long he would’ve lasted. Still, he pulled off a real trick at the end there.”

“Hey, Gilder knows what he’s about!” Gilder proclaimed, puffing up his thin chest and jabbing his thumb into it. “I ain’t dumb enough to try to live that way, but for a couple days? No sweat. I knew Lord Seiji wouldn’t leave me twisting any longer’n that.”

“You’re goddamn lucky I was able to get back here with reinforcements that fast,” I lectured. “It is not a short jaunt from my base to town. There’s a reason you only saw me once a week!”

At that, Gilder’s expression finally sobered. “Are Benit and Radon okay? They found you, right? Was the trip too bad on ‘em?”

“They’re fine,” I assured him. “Yeah, it was kind of a rough journey, but they made it and were resting up at the castle when we left.”

“The castle?” He threw up his hands. “There’s a castle? You have a castle? Why is this the first I’m ever hearing about the castle?!”

“That’s where you’d be right now if you weren’t such a cocky little dumbass!”

Aster cleared her throat loudly. “Lord Seiji, you really might want to hold off boxing his ears until tonight’s work is done with. Not that they don’t need boxing, but Olyc’s right. Gilder pulled off some really good work while he was unsupervised in the Gutters the last couple days.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Let’s hear it, what’ve you got for me?”

“I got detailed info on Gray’s people around Cat Alley,” he said proudly. “How many there are, where they’re moving from, and what they been doing. Also sussed out the brothels where there’s more resistance ready to get moving.”

“It’s solid stuff,” said Sakin when I looked at him. “I haven’t been able to personally verify anything beyond this little patch of streets, but the boy’s apparently been living hereabouts for two days, keeping an eye on everything from cover. Aster and I already got all the details; I can give you my recommendations based on what he’s brought us.”

“Oh, so you can take credit for all my hard work?” Gilder huffed, folding his arms.

“Easy, kid,” Sakin said with a wink. “The people who gather the intel aren’t usually the ones who organize it into a plan. You did your job, lemme do mine.”

“That’s right,” I said firmly, leveling a finger at Gilder. “You did your job, now I want you to hang back and stay out of it, clear? Soon as we’re finished with this place, you’re coming back with us. If anybody here needs a break, boy, it’s you.”

“Oh, but you haven’t even seen the best part yet!” Gilder crowed, grinning hugely.

“Yeah, Olyc wasn’t kidding,” Aster agreed, giving me a wry little smile. “The boy’s brought us a real coup. Or at least, he was the middleman for one.”

Everybody turned to look pointedly at the room’s other interior door, the one Gilder hadn’t come through. That led to the room where we’d piled the bodies of the enemy street soldiers who’d been in this house before we took it over. Looking through it now, I could see the corpses against the wall where I’d left them, but also Donon, Kasser, Harold, and Thwyn, one of Minifrit’s other bouncers, holding crossbows trained on the other end of the room, which was out of view from here.

At Aster’s encouraging nod, I stepped over to the door and through it, then I had to stop and stare.

What was now one long room had originally been two; the wall between them was only partially knocked down, but the few planks and pillars remaining were too broken to provide much of an obstruction. The door on the other side was barricaded, making this one the only route in and out, and against the wall were nine living people. Six women and three men. Members of Gray’s gang, to judge by their attire and generally scruffy appearances. They’d all been disarmed, and were warily studying me and the crossbows aimed at them.

I looked at them, then at the fourteen corpses piled like driftwood on this side of the room and the bloodstains on the floor, then at Sakin.

“This arrangement was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“I like to think of myself as an artist at heart,” he preened. “I call this piece ‘The Two Fates of Those Who Fuck With My Boss.’”

“Yeah, point made,” said one of the women, stepping forward. She raised her hands peaceably as all four crossbows swiveled to point at her heart. “Lord…Healer? I’m Kadret. These are—”

“Never mind who you are,” I interrupted. “Who are you? I thought I left orders not to take prisoners.”

One of the men cleared his throat. “Uh, the idea was that we’re recruits, not prisoners.”

“Oh?”

“If you listen as good as Gilder does,” Gilder said, poking his head in, “you learn stuff you weren’t even listening for! Like, f’rinstance, which of Lady Gray’s people are sick of her shit and willing to switch teams.”

“So you brought them here?” I grated.

“I brought them,” Aster interjected firmly. “Gilder told us where to find the two groups. Both were close and accessible; Sakin and I agreed it was worth the risk.”

“I figured, worst case, we can just kill ‘em,” Sakin said with a casual shrug.

“They let us take their weapons and haven’t given us a peep of trouble, Lord Seiji,” Donon added.

“Two groups, hm?” I said, turning back to study the new arrivals.

“They aren’t with us,” Kadret said, grimacing at the three men, who were standing a bit apart.

The fellow who’d spoken before stepped forward, also raising his hands when weapons were pointed his way. “You can call me Craed, Lord…Seiji, was it? I won’t mince words: my boys and I here are purely self-interested fellows. We’re professionals, see? We go where the work is steadiest and most profitable. You aren’t the first time Lady Gray’s had competition, but you’ve lasted longer and done her more damage than any of the others, and just the fact of the kind of spells you’ve got… Well, the average run of street trash we tend to work with probably don’t realize it, but I know when a new player’s moved in with a caliber of firepower that Lady Gray straight up cannot match.”

“Sicellit and the girls are upstairs keeping watch,” Kasser added in a low tone, “but they said these three are…okay.”

“I know them,” Adelly added, having slipped in behind me. “They’re all King’s Guild rejects who fell in with Gray for lack of better options. Decent enough johns. No rough stuff, or even rudeness, really. No quibbling over prices, either.”

“Hey, Adelly,” said one of Craed’s companions, grinning. “Good to see you made it outta there okay!”

“I’m better than you’ve ever seen me, Smin,” she replied sweetly. “And you will never touch me again.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said, still apparently cheerful. “Still glad you’re okay, though.”

“All right,” I said with a sigh, turning back to the women. “And what’s your story, then?”

“We’re suckers,” Kadret said sourly. “Lady Gray knows how to manipulate people, Lord Healer. Me and the girls threw in with her because she promised us a chance at a better life. Played the female solidarity card. Then she never did fuckall to back it up; once she had us signed up, we just got used as warm bodies and kept in line through fear like all the other trash she has working for her. It’s barely better than whoring. Meanwhile, you came along and have been doing all the shit she promised us, apparently for free.”

“You were all Alley cats?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know them,” Jadrin said from behind me. “Story checks out.”

“Is that Jadrin?” Kadret demanded. “You miserable cunt, I thought you were dead!”

“You wish,” Jadrin grinned, sticking her head through the door.

“Fuck yeah, I do. Hey, Adelly, glad to see you safe.”

“You see how much more popular I am?” Adelly said to Jadrin. “That’s a little trick I like to call ‘not being an asshole to everybody.’”

“We don’t all have the skills to make it as a whore, Adelly.”

“Enough!” I barked. Silence descended; I had perfected the trick of projecting an edge to my tone that suddenly reminded everyone I was the guy who set people on fire with his brain. I took advantage of the sudden quiet to think.

My previous conversation with Sakin back at North Watch inevitably came to mind. This wasn’t like Jadrin and Jakkin, acquisitions of opportunity under circumstances they couldn’t possibly have predicted. However Gilder had found them… The fact remained, this group had approached me, deliberately, with an offer to switch sides in the middle of the war. That had inevitable implications.

“Well, I am certainly interested in acquiring new talent,” I said, then raised my voice to cut off the four of them who opened their mouths to answer. “However. I trust I don’t need to explain my obvious reservations.”

“Sure, you don’t know if you can trust us,” Craed said immediately. “That’s a fair cop, Lord Seiji. Everybody’s gotta prove themselves.”

Kadret nodded once. “We came here expecting that. My friends and I are committed, Lord…Seiji. Just name what you want us to do.”

Well, shit, it would’ve been really nice if I had a plan for this eventuality, but it was not something I’d expected. I studied each of them in turn, then glanced at Sakin. Under my gaze, his customary tiny smile broadened slightly, and he winked.

And I suddenly had a thought.

“All right, then,” I said aloud. “For your first assignment as my followers, I want you to betray me.”