The same day the Horizon Chaser set out for Montport, a number of people were arriving there. Among them was a tall, thin woman with long, clever-looking fingers and scales the color of rust. She was dressed all in black. On her narrow hip, she wore a long sword with a decorated ivory hilt, sheathed in a round scabbard that was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Taken as a whole, the scabbarded sword had more an appearance of being an ornate staff or scepter than anything else.
Her black leather travel gear was scuffed, her silk cape was worn and frayed around the bottom, and her battered leather hat was adorned with a single drooping feather, but the sword and its sheath were both in immaculate condition. There were some parts of the world where openly carrying a long blade was prohibited, but Montport was not one of them. Local custom required weapons be peace-tied before entering a tavern, and she abided by this, affixing the sword to its sheath and to her belt with an elaborate series of red bows that stood in stark contrast to the simple sailors’ knots that others used.
When she spotted the man in the brown cloak entering from the back of the tavern, she tossed back the rest of the glass of wine she’d been sipping, tossed a couple of Elakebassian tetrae on the counter, and began to head towards the door as she slipped the wide-brimmed leather hat onto her high-peaked head.
She’d seen the man on the last three islands she’d visited. The first time, on the island of Far Tyral, she’d been ready to move on anyway, and the sight of him made the back of her neck tingle in a bad way. When he showed up in port twice less than a week after her, she’d known it wasn’t a coincidence. The gap had closed each time, and now here he was on Montport the same day she’d arrived.
Everything about the cloaked man bespoke menace. He was clearly a skilled tracker and a skilled killer… a hunter, an assassin. His angular face had a pronounced snout capped off with sensitive-looking whiskers and a wet, pink nose that flared noticeably each time he drew nearer to her. His hands, which he normally kept concealed within his cloak, had long fingers that ended in wicked curving claws with razor-edged metal extensions affixed to them.
The woman had loathed him on sight, and not just because she suspected from the start that he’d been sent to kill or collect her. He appeared brutal and unrefined. His long teeth were crooked and stained, his cloak threadbare and filthy. The woman’s clothes were starting to show their age, but they were all well-made and had been well-cared for for years. She’d taken to keeping her finer things packed away so she’d be ready to travel by road or by sea at a moment’s notice, but even the faded glory of her travel gear was still a kind of glory.
The little man in the cloak… who seemed even shorter because of his habit of walking bent over almost double… began sidling towards the exit. The woman walked more quickly, not quite running. She was obliged to slip and sidestep her way through the crowd, though, while the patrons couldn’t seem to move out of the man’s way quickly enough. He stepped in front of her right before she reached the door, allowing his cloak to slip open and expose his cruel claws.
“Iskondra Devallion,” he said as the nearest part of the crowd backed away and a hush made its way through the rest of the building. “House of Hulgar bid hello.”
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