Two cloth sacks clearly belonged to the brothers. They contained lanterns, ropes, knives, and flints—classic adventuring tools. There was nothing valuable. They weren’t careless enough to leave anything worth stealing in a place like this. Feeling slightly miffed, I continued with my preparations.
I took a rope, tied one end into a large loop, then tossed it up over the beam. Measuring the length carefully, I slipped the other end around my waist and made sure it was nice and snug. Then I moved a chair right next to the door and stood on top of it. All that was left was to wait for them to return.
As the sun went down and adventurers started returning from the dungeon bit by bit, I finally heard footsteps climbing the stairs of the Twin Golden Sheep. Peering through the crack in the door, I could see a stubbled man spit on the stairs, looking quite disgruntled. It was clearly the same man who had attacked me the day before. He was the one named Neil.
“Can’t believe the nonsense that pipsqueak dwarf was goin’ on about,” he grumbled.
So Dez had held him up, just like he’d promised he would. Thank you, old friend.
I hunched my neck, holding my breath and waiting for him to come in. I could hear a hand being placed on the knob.
“Hey, Nathan, let’s get a drink. We’ll call the guys over,” Neil said as he entered the room.
He came to a stop. There was a silver coin resting on the floor, right in the open. A little bait I’d left for him.
“What’s this?”
He bent down and reached for it. I placed the rope around his neck, and as soon as I saw it go around, I hopped off the chair I was standing on. A muffled sound ensued.
Behind me, Neil was floating off the ground. A success.
While I might be as weak as an insect, I still had a larger body than most and the weight that came with it. I didn’t know the exact figure, but I presumed I was twice as heavy as the princess knight.
All of that weight was now pulling upward on Neil’s neck. It was more than enough to strangle a person.
He gurgled wordlessly, prying at the space between the rope and his neck, kicking the air in search of a foothold. I pushed the door shut with my foot.
“Good evening. Do forgive the intrusion,” I said. Neil’s eyes were going bloodshot.
“You…shit!”
He tried to kick. I leaned backward to avoid it.
The extra force applied to the rope lifted Neil’s body further. He shrieked again.
“You don’t have much time. I’ll be brief,” I said.
Careful not to catch a boot from him, I made my way around Neil’s back, where I removed his knife from the sheath.
“Who ordered you to attack me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s not play silly games.”
I swiped Neil’s right thigh with the knife from behind. It was nice and sharp, so even with my meager strength, it was enough to cut him through his clothes.
A dark jet of blood spurted. It wasn’t that deep of a cut, but I must have hit a big vein, because the crimson spread lustily down his pants to drip on the floor.
“Help me! Someone!”
“Don’t bother.”
I already knew the inn was empty, aside from the old man who was hard of hearing.
On top of that, squabbles between adventurers were a daily occurrence in this city. About the only person who was meddlesome enough to get involved with a fight that promised no money was Her Highness.
“Pretty soon, you’re going to die from hanging or from blood loss. So why not spill your guts first? You don’t want to die, do you?” I said, peering around his side. Neil’s face was turning purple, either from rage or lack of oxygen.
“Should be obvious,” Neil snarled. “The princess knight. She’s sick of your ugly face and asked us to get rid of you.”
“Oh, I see,” I said piteously. “That’s a shame.”
I cut his left thigh this time. The blood stained his other trouser leg, if not quite as vigorously as the first time.
“Now you’ve got even less time to talk.”
“I’ll kill you!”
“Don’t you see the mess you’re leaving on the floor? All because you can’t simply be honest. And frankly, this still isn’t the worst that can happen. If you die from lack of air, you’ll shit yourself, too—did you know that? It’s hell to clean.”
“Kill…you…”
Neil continued to struggle. He wasn’t fighting back anymore, but he also didn’t have the strength to beg for his life. He was going to take the name of his employer to the grave, it seemed. Probably more out of spite toward me than loyalty to a client. Quite a plucky fellow.
“It’s not good to hold it in, you know. Look,” I said, pointing. Neil’s face blanched. There was a large bunch in the sheets of one of the two beds. The back of a head was visible buried in the pillow.
“N-Nathan?”
“I put him to sleep with a little medicine before you showed up. If you won’t tell me the answer, I’ll have to ask your big brother.” I made a gesture with the bloody knife, pretending to stab with it.
“You…demon.”
“If you want to do introductions, it’ll have to be another time.”
Who was really worse in this scenario, me or a man who would kill a total stranger for money? Neil gritted his teeth, eyes fully red. He still refused to talk. At this point, he must’ve assumed I wouldn’t hold up my end of the deal, even if he spilled his secrets.
“You don’t have much time to consider.”
The blood was pooling on the floor under his legs. He’d die of blood loss in the time I could count to a thousand.
“……”
“Don’t worry. If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll leave the room. I won’t touch your brother. And because I have no friends, you don’t have to worry about someone else coming along and finishing you off in my stead,” I said.
My sincere, heartfelt comment actually moved him. Neil opened his mouth to speak at last.
“I thought so,” I replied. It was the name I’d expected to hear. “Your honesty is appreciated.”
No doubt the correct choice would’ve been to let my tongue flicker out and say, Fool, now I no longer have any need of you, and finish him off. But I hesitated to do that.
Instead, I used the knife to cut the rope around my waist. Neil fell heavily to the floor. He’d lost too much blood to stay on his feet; instead, he rolled in the pool of his own blood.
“I don’t think you’re going to make it,” I said. His resistance would be his downfall. He tried to tie up the wounds to staunch the bleeding, but his hands weren’t working properly; he didn’t have the strength to stand anymore.
“N-Nathan,” he moaned, crawling across the floor and reaching out with a bloody hand.
“Ah, I forgot to mention,” I said, pulling back the sheet for him. The little man was dead, eyes rolled back in his head. There were fresh rope marks around his neck. “I didn’t quite know how much force to use. When I strangled him like I did you, it just snapped his neck instead. But at least it was a quick, painless death. That’s a relief, isn’t it?”
Neil’s pale face twisted into despair.
“G-go to hell.”
“Uh-huh.” I opened the window and rang a little bell I’d pulled from my pocket. “Well, you can go first and wait for me there. It should only take another, what, hundred years or so?”
After a few moments, there was a soft rapping at the door. I opened it to reveal a man dressed in black with a wide-brimmed hat.
“Ah, there you are, Bradley.”
I laid six silver coins into his black-gloved hand. Bradley inclined his head without a word and laid down a long, narrow white linen cloth next to Nathan. He placed the body on top of it, then he used the ends to wrap it up and tie them together with a rope.
This was not a legitimate business, of course. His official profession was coffin maker, but his side gig was much more lucrative. Bradley took the bodies of the poor and passersby and dumped them in the Millennium of Midnight Sun. There were no graves here. There was a tacit understanding that if the powers that be wanted a graveyard, it would be more profitable to build another gambling den or brothel instead.
The abandoned bodies would eventually vanish, leaving only their clothes behind. Dungeons like the Millennium of Midnight Sun were, in fact, vast monsters in their own right, and they devoured the dead for sustenance.
Few people bothered with building coffins, therefore, and thus Bradley started his corpse-removal business. He would show up anywhere in the city and take any bodies, whether from suicide or homicide, that needed to be discarded in the dungeon. Because he was not an adventurer, he wasn’t subject to the guild’s rules.
There was considerable demand for his services. Many outlaws lived here, and the town had a way of producing inconvenient bodies on a daily basis. His business earned him the nickname Gravedigger. As long as you paid him, there was no problem and no concern that he would talk. He was mute.
Once he’d packed up Nathan, he laid down another sheet next to Neil. Unperturbed by the red seeping into the cloth, he lifted the man and started to move him, when he heard groaning. Neil was still alive.
Bradley pulled one of his hands free, reached behind his back for a knife, then jabbed it into Neil’s heart, twice. Once the man was no longer moving, he cast a baleful glance in my direction.
“Fine, fine. You’ll get extra.”
After another two silvers had changed hands, he nodded and silently resumed his task. His dedication to his work was both his best and worst trait.
When the process was done, Bradley hauled a body over each shoulder and walked out. There was a carriage outside, which he would drive to the dungeon. There were guards at the entrance at all hours, but this was just another source of pocket money for them.
“But the problem isn’t solved.”
These two had just been pawns. Once their failure was clear, a second and third round of assassins would come after them. I needed to strike before it came to that.
It would require a bit of a war fund. Fortunately, I had just received a very generous donation from a conscientious third party, so that issue was taken care of. I could pay for a funeral for the brothers and still have change left over. I closed the door, with the last image of the inn room a pair of empty purses slowly being stained red on the floor.