Chapter Text
I.
Now her letter of pardon seems to burn in his coat pocket on the right, opposite the Heart that he yet holds in his left coat pocket, and it feels like betrayal and not betrayal as he watches the sea pass him by, on his way to Serkonos on a fast ship, with Daud's apparent successor-via-default by his side. Life is infinitely ironic.
"The Whalers maintain a safehouse in Karnaca," Thomas says, his voice faintly indistinct through his full-faced gas mask, his glance at Corvo disconcerting through the opaque lenses. "We should start our search there."
"Should we? Serkonos is a large island and Daud has had a week's head start by your count. He might already have raided the place and left."
"Karnaca's safehouse is my suggestion, sir," Thomas' tone is mild, only faintly reproving, and Corvo falls silent, berating himself for his flash of temper.
"My apologies, Thomas. I've been sharp of late."
"We do understand your reluctance to proceed with your mission," Thomas inclines his head lightly. "Think nothing of it."
"I must confess," Corvo admits, now that they're a day's journey from Dunwall and the Flooded District, from the rest of Daud's old outfit of killers, "That I would have thought that all of you would have disbanded and left the Chamber of Commerce by the time I thought to inquire within it for Daud's location."
He had been expecting the Whalers' territory to be abandoned, and had only looked within it when he had run out of other leads, hoping perhaps to find some documents that had not been destroyed. When Thomas has greeted him at the fringe of the Flooded District, Corvo had almost attacked him out of sheer habit and surprise.
As it turned out, finding the Whalers hadn't been of particular help, after all. All that Daud had told them was that he was 'going home', a statement that had apparently caused quite a long argument between the remaining Whalers as to its meaning, until one of them had recalled that Daud had been born in Serkonos.
"Several of us did," Thomas agrees, with a self-deprecating wave, "But for those whom remained..." His tone trails off, for a moment, before he adds, "I suppose we did not truly believe that Daud would leave for ever."
"Despite his words?"
"Aye. You see, sir," Thomas begins earnestly, hesitates, then glances back over the waves, over the foam breaking against the iron hull of their oil-powered ship, "Several of us were... street children, orphaned and feral, before Daud took us in and trained us. The Whalers are all that we have known."
The Whaler lapses into silence, but Corvo understands the sentiment. To them, Daud had been more than the boss, more than their master and the source of their supernatural abilities - he was father, brother, friend. He relaxes, propping his elbows over the cold rail of the ship, and when seawater from its wake spits briefly over the mark on the back of his left hand, it seems to glow faintly.
"Thomas," Corvo says finally, "The letter I hold-"
"Contains a general pardon from the Empress Emily Kaldwin," Thomas interrupts, with a faint trace of humour in his tone, "Along with an invitation to attend her at the Tower to be named to the post of Royal Spymaster. One of the Whalers stole the letter from you while you were speaking to me, read it, and put it back into your pocket."
Corvo freezes, for a moment, then he lets out a rueful laugh. No wonder the Whalers had seemed so cooperative and anxious to please. "At least I didn't have to convince you of the authenticity of the letter or its sentiment. I thought that I would have to, given how Daud and I last parted."
"Oh, we supposed that it was only a matter of time before you found out about Delilah, despite what Daud thinks. He did blow up that slaughterhouse."
"What?" Corvo glances at Thomas, puzzled. "What slaughterhouse? Who is Delilah?"
It's Thomas' turn to look at him, surprise evident in the tension of his shoulders for a moment. "Ah, she - well," he lapses. "It is not a matter for me to discuss," he murmurs awkwardly, and then taps the back of his left hand meaningfully when Corvo opens his mouth to question him further.
Corvo should have known that the Outsider might have been behind Daud's seemingly abrupt change in character. His first memory and impression of Daud hadn't particularly placed the older assassin as one given to regret, even if his deeds involved the brutal murder of a mother before her daughter and then the kidnap of said daughter.
"The Empress felt that she had to follow my example in sparing Daud's life, except in a grand fashion," Corvo finds himself explaining, instead. "I explained that the public might be quite aghast if the nature of Daud's original... introduction... to her ever was found out, but she was adamant. Still, if there was another reason...?"
Thomas, however, merely inclines his head and remains silent, refusing to be budged on the topic of Delilah, although he remains friendly enough on other topics, even candid, when Corvo asks probing questions about the Whalers. It makes for a frustrating day, and at the end of it, when Corvo curls up in his bunk, he can't sleep. Life has conspired to make him instinctively mistrust mysteries, of late.
On the second night, as he lies awake in bed, the world blurs in a now familiar touch of unreality, the gray hulls of the ship and the scent of metal and whale oil, the stolid hum of its engines, all floating into a vast, multihued green to blue to purple to indigo emptiness that fills the entirety of his vision, save for a floating scar of disintegrating floorboards and stone. Corvo recognises Daud's office - a corner of it, at least, floating like a sundered island of broken masonry in the void: he's standing beside one of the bookcases, and beside Daud's desk, arms folded, is the Outsider.
Corvo tries not to startle. He doesn't remember the last time the Outsider had appeared to him like this, without his presence and his voice filling the entirety of Corvo's meagre, mortal senses. Even when he had allowed Corvo to move about the void, when he did choose at last to appear, he would draw in all of Corvo's vision, like a whirlpool, until his reverberating aura was all that Corvo could know.
Standing by Daud's desk, albeit floating an inch above the ground, his slender frame and bone-white skin crowned with living darkness, the Outsider now seems... diminished, somehow. A touch less frightening.
At least, up until he looks full upon Corvo, with those purely black eyes, like pits dug out from even the unreality around them, and just as before, just as he always has, Corvo shivers a little before a God's attention. "You do not approve of Emily's decision, and yet you will carry out her orders to the extent of your abilities. Curious."
"It is a matter of duty and service," Corvo says finally, when the Outsider seems to wait for a response, to his surprise.
He has long learned that attempting any formalities of greeting or title only bored the Outsider, the one crime that the God cannot abide in his chosen. When the Outsider appears to Corvo, the conversation tends to be one-sided: the Outsider speaks, Corvo listens. This is the first time that they seem to be on level speaking terms, and he feels far more self-conscious than he has ever felt in his life.
"He will not accept the post, for he feels that he does not deserve it. Nor does Daud wish to return to Dunwall and its memories. But he will, after a fashion, if you insist - intelligently. For he does feel that he has yet an obligation."
"I know. I found his blade by the - by Empress Jessamine's grave." The blade in question lies wrapped in a chest in Corvo's cabin - Thomas had been loathe to even touch it. "Who is Delilah?"
"She was very interesting once upon a time."
"Another one who bears your mark?"
The Outsider smiles, thin, faint, and without humour or humanity. "Yes. Eight mortals bear my mark, and only three of them men: for the females of your kind tend to burn hotter in their passions, and longer, with a weave of far greater complexity."
"Thank you, I suppose," Corvo says dryly, "Though I do not envy what has become of Granny Rags, and I won't be surprised if the same has been wrought of Delilah."
"Decay is the fate of all your kind, my dear Corvo," the Outsider doesn't move an inch, but the boards of assassination targets beside Daud's desk rise slowly into the air, to hang askew and haphazardly over the rotting carpet. "But when it is your turn, at the very end, please do not be so mundane as to die old and weakened and sickly in your bed."
"I'll make sure to crawl into someone else's bed to die, then." The sardonic statement leaves his mouth before he can choke it down, and Corvo freezes, half expecting to be struck by lightning on the spot or something equally horrific, but the Outsider merely smiles his merciless smile, and vanishes.
1.0.
Where next, then? Cullero? Or another island - Tyvia, perhaps? Or leave the Isles completely? The latter thought stirs his interest briefly before it abates, and Daud hunches his shoulders briefly and tugs the gray hood he is wearing down over his eyes, avoiding the crowds by heading down a side street. No. He wouldn't be able to stand the boredom of a long sea voyage.
The Outsider's mark on his left palm, beneath his gloves, pulses ice cold for a moment: so suddenly that Daud nearly trips over his feet coming to an abrupt halt in mid-stride. He glances about warily, resisting the impulse to use his void gaze. He had steadfastly gotten on with his new life without the trappings of the old: fully unarmed for the first time in his life, powers under wraps.
Still, one ignores the summons of a God - if that was what it was - to one's detriment, and Daud hurries back to the safehouse as quickly as he can walk. Karnaca is nothing like he remembers from his youth, and the sun-browned friendliness of the locals unnerves him. Plague hasn't touched its shores, the city guards are as friendly as the rest of the locals, and the city smells of spices and scented candles, cookfires and bakeries and perfumes.
He's never personally returned to Karnaca since he had left it as a starving child: all the contracts they received from such a place were fairly minor and could be dealt with by his Whalers without his supervision. Daud is glad that he had chosen to return, though. The port city's sun-warmed, lazy welter of general happiness and contentment would, Daud had thought, have been exactly the sort of sentiment that would keep the Outsider away out of sheer boredom.
Most of the Whalers' safehouses can be accessed by non-magical means, just in case, and this one is a large loft in an old, abandoned Abbey Overseer Ministry. It had been symbolic at best, since Serkonos was mostly under the wing of the Abbey's Oracular Order rather than the Overseers, and eventually, the Overseers had decided to let the building stay dormant and empty, just in case. Daud had liked the irony of it all, when he had dared give instructions that the Whalers were to set up the habitable floors as their Karnacan safehouse, and the Outsider had been amused.
He had been so much younger then.
Daud steps across the quieter streets, about to open the basement hatch of the safehouse, when his trained ears pick up the faint sound of floorboards creaking, high above. Narrowing his eyes, he glances back at the hatch, then up, to the balconies, and lets out a soft sigh. Just this once, then.
A transversal blurs him up to a carved protrusion from a neighbouring building, then further up to its thatched roof, even as Void Gaze shows him two warm bodies, walking about within the safehouse, the outline of one instantly familiar. A Whaler. But which? And why? Daud waits, irresolute, then he makes another transversal, this time to perch quietly on the balcony rail.
"-the bed's been slept in." Thomas' voice, brisk and efficient. "And the coin cache is gone."
"Find anything that indicates where he might have disappeared off to?"
It takes Daud a long, disbelieving moment to recognise Corvo's voice. Corvo! Had he changed his mind after all? Come all this way for Daud's life? Daud glances over his shoulder to the thatch roof, considering stealing away, just as Thomas adds, "We could leave a note on the bed, explaining our visit and your letter. That might be best. I don't think he'll react well to finding us here."
"Not even you?"
"Ah," Thomas notes wryly, "There was an incident with his last second-in-command. And the ones before that, actually. You see, it's a question of succession."
It's curious how naive Corvo still is - the man sounds surprised, of all things. "But your abilities come from Daud, don't they?"
"Well, yes, but he's taught us not to rely on them, to use them as a tool rather than as a crutch. He won't be around forever." Thomas' casual, earnest tone is what decides Daud. Thomas is a year younger than Billie, and normally, wouldn't have been Daud's choice for a Second, precocious as he was. He didn't quite have the personality for it.
In what he had known would be his last days with the Whalers, however, Daud had just wanted someone reliable, to see him to the end of the problem of Delilah and her troublesome witches. He hadn't wanted to have to watch another person for treachery and ambition, not when he was so close to the culmination of the Outsider's 'suggestion'. Now... if Thomas was here - it couldn't be a question of ensuring succession, or something similar: that wasn't in the boy's nature. Had something happened to Emily?
He steps quietly off the balcony rail, pulling up his hood and folding his arms, leaning a hip against the balcony archway: and he absolutely does not smirk when Corvo, turning to pick up a book, startles visibly at the sight of him.
The Outsider had always loved Daud's fey - and sometimes cruel - streak of black humour. "Unexpected visitors? How nice. Should I set the kettle up, or bring out the knives?"
Corvo narrows his eyes, his lips thinned. For all that the man has regained the position of Lord Protector, possibly one of the highest political ranks in the Empire, he wears emotion far too visibly. No mask now hides his handsome face, and his rich walnut hair falls uncut to his shoulders, over the rich navy and gold brocaded coat, his marked, uncovered hand twitching briefly into a fist.
Thomas, on the other hand, greets him with relief and joy. "Daud! I thought that you might be here, sir."
"Stop calling me 'sir'," Daud says gruffly. "What are you doing here? Did something happen?"
"Not really," Thomas begins, but then he falls silent as Corvo steps over, a hand going into his coat pocket and coming back out with a letter, which he thrusts rather ungraciously in Daud's direction.
"For you, from the Empress."
"She had to send her Lord Protector across the sea to act as her messenger to an old man?" Daud inquires, though he takes the letter, opening it.
"I've got Eamon, Mikhel and Ezekiel watching her, just in case," Thomas says promptly, and adds hastily, when Corvo glances at him, narrow-eyed, "Very unobtrusively."
The letter was most certainly written by the Empress Emily - it had the breathless rambling rush of an very young girl, with an occasional disregard for proper sentencing or grammar. Its content surprises Daud, but he's careful not to show it. A pardon and an invitation to take up the post of Royal Spymaster, indeed! "Couldn't you have found the Empress a proper tutor?"
"Callista tries her best," Corvo says automatically and defensively, then scowls. "What is your answer?"
Daud carefully folds the letter. "In short? Thank you, but no. Although, if you could see fit to word a more gracious reply-"
"Who is Delilah?" Corvo cuts in, his tone quiet now, his stare flat and intense.
Daud blinks, glancing over to Thomas, who looks away quickly. So the slip up had been on Thomas' end, then, but only a little. "None of your business. You may go," he adds dryly, when Corvo doesn't move. "I've said 'no'. That should be a relief to you, shouldn't it? You obviously don't approve."
"The Empress' will is unquestionable."
"Oh really? She's a child. I suppose you let her do - and study - whatever she likes, then?"
Corvo's tone is sharp when irritated. "Maybe you should have borne her tender years in mind when you murdered her mother before her eyes."
Daud is about to reply, to say something about amends, but the gleam in Corvo's eyes warns him off. He smiles lazily, instead, and lifts a shoulder into a shrug. "That's a matter for my personal conscience."
"Also," Corvo adds flatly, "The Outsider appeared to me. So now I am here."
Now this - Daud hesitates before he speaks, blinking slowly. "A vision?"
"A dream. We were in your office, in the Chamber of Commerce. It was sundered, floating in the void. I don't believe that he's finished with the both of us as yet."
"No, I suppose it was too much to hope for," Daud agrees wearily. An Empress' summon he could hope to evade, but not the Outsider's. If anything, to the Outsider, he still had an unbreakable obligation. "Very well. I'll return. Although I do recall," he drawls, "That the last Royal Spymaster was arrested in disgrace."
"See that you do not repeat his mistakes," Corvo retorts shortly, and steps over to the balcony. "I'll meet the both of you back on the ship," he adds, before he blinks away to the thatch roof, then away, out of sight.
Daud folds the letter into his pocket, even as he snorts. "The beginnings of a fine working relationship."
"I'm sure that it'll improve, sir," Thomas says, if doubtfully.
"Don't call me-" Daud hesitates. "Are all of you boys interested in the proposition? Coming back under my command? Taking up the Empress' coin?"
"The Tower is as fine a place for you to retire as any, sir," Thomas notes innocently, and Daud glowers at him for a moment before he barks out a laugh.
"We'll see. Well then, make yourself useful. Get those maps and the journals."