Lia descended on her target as soon as she was in the clear, landing a strong right hook across his jaw that spun him around to face away from her. "I want this back," she growled, reaching over his shoulder, grabbing the shaft of the arrow she'd put into him, and ripping it free. Blood spattered the wall in front of the thug, and his scream of agony echoed as she replaced the arrow into her quiver. He dropped his crossbow, and didn't seem to have the presence of mind to reach for the knife openly sheathed at his hip. Lia eyed it a moment, then pulled it out herself, tucking the blade under her belt. Not a bad piece of work.
She was in a very bad mood, admittedly. This place was disgusting, she was filthy, the people here hated her, and she was working a difficult mission with little information to go on. She had burns on her right arm, and this shem attempted to put several bolts into her without a second thought.
With an angry little snarl she planted her free hand against the back of the thug's head and smashed his face into the sewer wall. There was an awful crunch of the nose breaking, and Lia seized him by the shoulder, hauling him back until he lost his balance and fell backwards to the ground. In an instant she descended on him Parshaara practically hissing in her hand like a dragon.
She straddled him, planted her elbow across his chest near the neck, and flipped the dagger backwards in her hand, letting the point hover near one of his eyes. Good to prevent sudden movements. "You might be the most worthless life this dagger has ever taken, you know." Her tone was dark, angry, but quiet and serious. "And there's a fair bit of competition for that. But if you spill something useful, I might let you go in time to get help before you bleed out."
The man's expression had shifted as she spoke, from something like indignation through a familiar spectrum that passed surprise, incredulity, and landed on a still-disbelieving sort of fear. It likely had something to do with the dissonance between the threat Lia seemed to present and the threat she actually was, like it was slow to get through his head that she was in fact pointing an enchanted dagger right at his eye.
He went completely still under it though, probably helped by the fact that he'd surely be able to feel the heat of the dragonbone blade at the distance—enough to be more than a little uncomfortable. "W-what the fuck d'you want?" he managed, not quite stammering, but near enough that the failing of his courage was audible as well as visible. Whether it would actually yield anything remained to be seen.
Her elbow was near enough to where she'd pulled the arrow out of him. Without letting her gaze waver she shifted it ever so slightly, and pressed. Subtle enough that it might look like she didn't even notice she was hurting him. "How many of your people are with Kotter?" she demanded to know. "How much further is he? Are there more traps ahead? I don't have time for games, and neither do you. And if you lie to me and I live through today, you'd better expect an arrow in the back of your skull sometime soon." She'd do it, too. Lia didn't need anyone's permission to hunt down a worthless thug that no one would miss.
A pained hiss left him; he squirmed under her hold, struggling to hold his head still under the knife. His eyes started to water. "Don't—don't know how far he's gotten." His throat worked as he tried to swallow, not entirely successfull from the way he choked as he continued to speak. "Rat's supposed to be holed up 'nother mile in or—nngh."
"And how many of you are there after him?" Vito remained at a fair distance, his expression quite neutral. It was a rather sharp contrast to the usual pleasant smile he wore.
"Uhh.." He clearly had to think a moment about this. "D-dozen? No traps of ours what I know about. Rat might have some?" His eyes shifted from where they'd moved to Vito back to Lia. He swallowed again, thickly but well enough that his next words came out slightly clearer. "You with M or somethin'?"
"Not in the slightest," Lia answered dismissively. She was inclined to hurt him more for having the gall to ask her a question, but if she was going to let him live, she didn't want even the false rumor going around that they were aligned with someone on Leta's side. Cast off or not.
Holding silent a moment longer, Lia decided that she'd heard enough. She pushed off of him and got clear a step, allowing him to get up if he was still capable of it. "Get out of here, then. Try not to kill yourself on a trap on the way out." His friends could sleep in the shit a while longer, for all Lia cared. From the sound it they didn't have time to deal with them any further.
The man looked rather surprised to actually be allowed to go, struggling to his feet immediately. The wound in his shoulder looked to be giving him some trouble, but between his other arm and his legs, he managed. "Uh... yeah." His brow furrowed for a moment when he considered the still bodies around him, but he must have reached the same conclusion she had about letting them come around on their own time.
He wasted no more of his own, beating a hasty shuffle back from the way they'd come.
Cor clicked his tongue against this teeth, arms crossed over his chest. "If it's only a mile they're probably there already," he noted, eyebrows furrowing. "I guess we're going to have to try anyway. Maybe they won't mind negotiating." He didn't sound especially hopeful about the prospect, but that he'd mentioned it at all was a fair expression of the optimism he at least tried to maintain most of the time.
Lia would've been more optimistic, if their position had been more advantageous. Criminal leaders were rarely zealots in the way the cults she'd fought were. They lacked ideologies that would lead them to throw their lives away even when it was unnecessary, instead seeking survival at all costs, and profit after that. But if this was going to play out how Lia expected, it wasn't Kotter's group that would need to negotiate for survival. They were four, in their enemy's territory, and they were very likely too slow to get what they wanted.
They pressed on another half-mile, a little more recklessly than before, but the thug Lia interrogated proved to be good to his word, and there were no more deadly traps they needed to navigate around. Instead she could focus on the trail, and before long it became quite fresh. They were getting close.
"No one draw first blood," she suggested, sheathing Parshaara. "We're not here to bring down the gang, just for the Venatori."
"Mhm," Evie agreed quietly. The estoc remained perched on her back, and her shortsword hadn't budged from her side. The same thought that crossed Lia's mind must've crossed Evie's as well, and though the mask still obscured much of her face, her body language wasn't that of a relaxed individual. "Think this'll work?" she asked aloud for the others. Her own tone was rather uncertain however.
"No." Vito's reply was rather solid; he offered a small shrug and an apologetic smile. "Doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, however. Gangs like this are often committed to their own senses of justice and fair reprisal for misdeeds, but they're fundamentally pragmatic, at least. Shouldn't try knifing us in the guts unless we're too disrespectful to tolerate. Or try to press the point too hard."
They were definitely getting close now—there were raised voices ahead, just loud enough to hear as they approached.
"Just kill me then, if that's why we're all here!"
The plea came from a young man, his accent plainly Tevinter. They rounded the corner into a convergence of the sewerlines, a large rounded chamber lit mostly by torches, though some natural light filtered down from a grate above, where a steady drip came through and plinked against the stones underfoot. The torchlight belonged to the Untouchables, who were gathered here in force and armed to the teeth, all surrounding their dwarven leader and his bound and bloodied captive.
There were no less than twenty of them, and Lia was sure more would be in the shadows or on watch down the other paths. Kotter, the leader, would be a difficult fight on his own. He'd fled from a previous encounter, but here he had the advantage, and he had a fearsome maul and the strength to wield it. With twenty of his best, including his blood mage, a fight wasn't an option here. They were good, but Lia guessed they could only take half of them in these tight quarters before they were overwhelmed and killed.
No few of them reacted in surprise to their arrival, and the rather unstealthy manner in which they made their entrance. There were shouts to get Kotter's attention, and he stepped back from his prisoner to face them. The prisoner had to be this 'M' they wanted; he looked as much a Vint as he sounded, even without the telltale white robes of his cult.
"I remember you," the tattooed dwarf remarked, gesturing with the head of his maul towards Cor. "One of the mercs that crashed the meeting with that Castle-town tin can." He tilted his head a little, as if trying to see past him into the blackness beyond. "You lot kill any of my people getting here?"
Cor, who'd stowed his blade like the rest of them but kept his shield on his arm, shook his head. "Not unless someone got really unlucky." It could be hard to gauge exactly the amount of force required to knock someone out, and Lia knew he'd had a few odd mishaps recently hitting much harder than he'd intended to, but unless there'd been an accident, it was pretty obvious that no one should be dead.
His eyes flickered to the young Vint, brow furrowing faintly. He didn't look like he'd been having a great time of things, from the blooming black eye and the smears of blood visible on his clothes and skin. It didn't seem to be that in particular that perturbed Cor, though. Maybe it had more to do with what it meant for their chances of getting M out of here alive. "I'd uh... really prefer it if no one was dead at the end of all this, actually." He tried for his customary good-natured smile, which looked rather natural on his face despite the circumstances. It might've even been strange if she'd not known him beforehand.
He looked for all the world like an elf expecting a positive answer, though he surely wasn't.
"You might be surprised to hear that I'd prefer the same," said the dwarf. His accent, like most surface dwarves, was still thickly that of Orzammar, and he made no efforts to hide his origins there, his brands and tattoos identifying him as both former Casteless and former Carta. "I try not to kill too often. Takes the enjoyment out of it. So I really only kill when I have to, and today is one of those days. I've waited quite a while to get my hands on this Vint piece of nugshit."
"We're not here to save him," Lia assured him. "He's as much our enemy as yours, but we need him alive. He's no head of his organization, but he could help us get to them. We'd be more than willing to take the fight to your enemy for you, in that case."
"I've got nothing for you, or any Argent Lion," spat M, with disdain. "Little more than lapdogs of the Inquisition."
"He called me worse," Kotter said, apparently amused. "But you see? Fucker wants to die. He's been cut loose and he knows it. I've already pried at him, gently by my standards. Nothing. Even trudging around in the sewers you lot look too clean and shiny to do worse. He's useless to you."
"You don't know me very well," Lia said, her tone almost a warning. She didn't look like a torturer, and maybe she wasn't, but her years and her experiences had given her a will and resolve to do what she had to. Especially where the Venatori were concerned.
"You're right, I don't," Kotter conceded. "I also don't know who sent you. You are fancy sellswords, right? Is it true what the Vint says? Inquisition pulls your strings? Or is this personal?"
Cor raised a hand, tipping it back and forth in a 'so-so' motion. "Fancy sellswords, yes. Bit of both on the other part," he admitted freely. Nodding at M, he explained a bit more. "This blighter's with the Venatori, and the Inquisition has quite a lot of reason to want to root that sort out, you understand. But uh... we're none too pleased with his most recent side project, either. Riot in the Alienage; I'm sure you heard about it?" Given their reason for the first confrontation with dwarf, it was all but a certainty that this would connect several dots for him.
It wasn't uncommon for Cor to walk this particular line. Everything he said was true, but he also left enough out that the elements most likely to irritate Kotter—in this case, the Guard connection—were absent from the explanation entirely. Lia knew he wasn't fond of doing it, but he was also very good at it, and tended at least to let people do most of the work of filling in the gaps themselves, letting them reach an incomplete or slightly-off understanding that he seldom corrected.
Nevertheless the dwarf did seem a little irritated, or perhaps just tired of speaking with the unwanted guests. "Too smooth by half, you are. I'll tell you straight who sent me and mine here: the people. The people of the Bends." He nonchalantly allowed his maul's head to fall to the ground, and it just so happened to smash the Venatori's toes, eliciting a pained groan. "The people found this fucker out for me, and the people have demanded a corpse. I intend to deliver, because I prefer having the people on my side. I made a mistake before, one that gets rectified right here."
Lia grimaced. This wasn't going particularly well, and they were probably lucky Kotter didn't feel like attacking on sight. Safe bet he didn't want to lose the people it would take to bring down the likes of them, though he had the numbers to do it.
"Here's the compromise," Kotter continued. "If one of you wants to kill the Vint and make it quick, go right ahead. Otherwise piss off and leave me to it. The people want one corpse today, not five."
They were going to move him from this, it seemed. Tactically it was a nightmare. The Untouchables stood ready with arrows nocked and crossbows loaded, knives and axes held in steady hands. Lia had an arrow already free of the quiver herself, but didn't dare nock it yet. "Not sure there's a choice," she said to her allies. "I can do it, I'll make it clean. None of this is worth dying for." There were times not to give ground, but this wasn't one of them. She waited only to see if there were any objections.
"About as good as it's going to get, I suppose." Vito didn't seem especially perturbed by this, and actually went as far as to offer Kotter the slightest nod, as if in acknowledgment of something. The bargain, perhaps.
Cor looked markedly less satisfied, but it was obvious enough that there was no getting anything better out of the deal than that, and a merciful death was probably better than whatever M was going to get at Kotter's hands. He met Lia's eyes, and gave her a tiny nod.
That was all she needed, but Lia still lifted a hand before she thought of lifting her bow. "Might want to take a step back, Kotter. Don't want anyone to think I'm about to shoot you."
The dwarf obliged, though he gestured to her hip with his maul. "I like the look of your dagger. Sure you wouldn't rather use that?There's something so impersonal about the distance an arrow provides." He wasn't wrong about that, but Lia figured it was for the best. Killing a defenseless prisoner wasn't something she'd done before. Even if he was Venatori, her enemy. Even if it was mercy.
M never broke eye contact with her, even as she pulled the arrow back until her breath touched the fletching. Only when it whistled into his heart did he flinch, and then his head did lower, and his eyes closed. There had been no look of thanks there, just the steady burning gaze of an enemy to the last. Lia lowered her bow.
Kotter approached the body to confirm the kill. "Seems that concludes our business here. I'd prefer if we didn't have business again but... somehow I doubt that. Until next time, then."
He didn't have to tell her twice. The dwarf probably considered this a good day, with the Venatori dead, a prize to deliver to the poor and outraged of the city. He was a bad man, there was no doubt about that, but Lia wondered if it wasn't for the best. He was no friend to their enemies, and while he had power their enemies would find it difficult to regain a foothold in Riverbend. Not what the guard captain wanted, exactly, but she and Kotter could battle it out another day.
Somehow Lia suspected the Argent Lions would end up in the middle on that day, too.
She was in a very bad mood, admittedly. This place was disgusting, she was filthy, the people here hated her, and she was working a difficult mission with little information to go on. She had burns on her right arm, and this shem attempted to put several bolts into her without a second thought.
With an angry little snarl she planted her free hand against the back of the thug's head and smashed his face into the sewer wall. There was an awful crunch of the nose breaking, and Lia seized him by the shoulder, hauling him back until he lost his balance and fell backwards to the ground. In an instant she descended on him Parshaara practically hissing in her hand like a dragon.
She straddled him, planted her elbow across his chest near the neck, and flipped the dagger backwards in her hand, letting the point hover near one of his eyes. Good to prevent sudden movements. "You might be the most worthless life this dagger has ever taken, you know." Her tone was dark, angry, but quiet and serious. "And there's a fair bit of competition for that. But if you spill something useful, I might let you go in time to get help before you bleed out."
The man's expression had shifted as she spoke, from something like indignation through a familiar spectrum that passed surprise, incredulity, and landed on a still-disbelieving sort of fear. It likely had something to do with the dissonance between the threat Lia seemed to present and the threat she actually was, like it was slow to get through his head that she was in fact pointing an enchanted dagger right at his eye.
He went completely still under it though, probably helped by the fact that he'd surely be able to feel the heat of the dragonbone blade at the distance—enough to be more than a little uncomfortable. "W-what the fuck d'you want?" he managed, not quite stammering, but near enough that the failing of his courage was audible as well as visible. Whether it would actually yield anything remained to be seen.
Her elbow was near enough to where she'd pulled the arrow out of him. Without letting her gaze waver she shifted it ever so slightly, and pressed. Subtle enough that it might look like she didn't even notice she was hurting him. "How many of your people are with Kotter?" she demanded to know. "How much further is he? Are there more traps ahead? I don't have time for games, and neither do you. And if you lie to me and I live through today, you'd better expect an arrow in the back of your skull sometime soon." She'd do it, too. Lia didn't need anyone's permission to hunt down a worthless thug that no one would miss.
A pained hiss left him; he squirmed under her hold, struggling to hold his head still under the knife. His eyes started to water. "Don't—don't know how far he's gotten." His throat worked as he tried to swallow, not entirely successfull from the way he choked as he continued to speak. "Rat's supposed to be holed up 'nother mile in or—nngh."
"And how many of you are there after him?" Vito remained at a fair distance, his expression quite neutral. It was a rather sharp contrast to the usual pleasant smile he wore.
"Uhh.." He clearly had to think a moment about this. "D-dozen? No traps of ours what I know about. Rat might have some?" His eyes shifted from where they'd moved to Vito back to Lia. He swallowed again, thickly but well enough that his next words came out slightly clearer. "You with M or somethin'?"
"Not in the slightest," Lia answered dismissively. She was inclined to hurt him more for having the gall to ask her a question, but if she was going to let him live, she didn't want even the false rumor going around that they were aligned with someone on Leta's side. Cast off or not.
Holding silent a moment longer, Lia decided that she'd heard enough. She pushed off of him and got clear a step, allowing him to get up if he was still capable of it. "Get out of here, then. Try not to kill yourself on a trap on the way out." His friends could sleep in the shit a while longer, for all Lia cared. From the sound it they didn't have time to deal with them any further.
The man looked rather surprised to actually be allowed to go, struggling to his feet immediately. The wound in his shoulder looked to be giving him some trouble, but between his other arm and his legs, he managed. "Uh... yeah." His brow furrowed for a moment when he considered the still bodies around him, but he must have reached the same conclusion she had about letting them come around on their own time.
He wasted no more of his own, beating a hasty shuffle back from the way they'd come.
Cor clicked his tongue against this teeth, arms crossed over his chest. "If it's only a mile they're probably there already," he noted, eyebrows furrowing. "I guess we're going to have to try anyway. Maybe they won't mind negotiating." He didn't sound especially hopeful about the prospect, but that he'd mentioned it at all was a fair expression of the optimism he at least tried to maintain most of the time.
Lia would've been more optimistic, if their position had been more advantageous. Criminal leaders were rarely zealots in the way the cults she'd fought were. They lacked ideologies that would lead them to throw their lives away even when it was unnecessary, instead seeking survival at all costs, and profit after that. But if this was going to play out how Lia expected, it wasn't Kotter's group that would need to negotiate for survival. They were four, in their enemy's territory, and they were very likely too slow to get what they wanted.
They pressed on another half-mile, a little more recklessly than before, but the thug Lia interrogated proved to be good to his word, and there were no more deadly traps they needed to navigate around. Instead she could focus on the trail, and before long it became quite fresh. They were getting close.
"No one draw first blood," she suggested, sheathing Parshaara. "We're not here to bring down the gang, just for the Venatori."
"Mhm," Evie agreed quietly. The estoc remained perched on her back, and her shortsword hadn't budged from her side. The same thought that crossed Lia's mind must've crossed Evie's as well, and though the mask still obscured much of her face, her body language wasn't that of a relaxed individual. "Think this'll work?" she asked aloud for the others. Her own tone was rather uncertain however.
"No." Vito's reply was rather solid; he offered a small shrug and an apologetic smile. "Doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, however. Gangs like this are often committed to their own senses of justice and fair reprisal for misdeeds, but they're fundamentally pragmatic, at least. Shouldn't try knifing us in the guts unless we're too disrespectful to tolerate. Or try to press the point too hard."
They were definitely getting close now—there were raised voices ahead, just loud enough to hear as they approached.
"Just kill me then, if that's why we're all here!"
The plea came from a young man, his accent plainly Tevinter. They rounded the corner into a convergence of the sewerlines, a large rounded chamber lit mostly by torches, though some natural light filtered down from a grate above, where a steady drip came through and plinked against the stones underfoot. The torchlight belonged to the Untouchables, who were gathered here in force and armed to the teeth, all surrounding their dwarven leader and his bound and bloodied captive.
There were no less than twenty of them, and Lia was sure more would be in the shadows or on watch down the other paths. Kotter, the leader, would be a difficult fight on his own. He'd fled from a previous encounter, but here he had the advantage, and he had a fearsome maul and the strength to wield it. With twenty of his best, including his blood mage, a fight wasn't an option here. They were good, but Lia guessed they could only take half of them in these tight quarters before they were overwhelmed and killed.
No few of them reacted in surprise to their arrival, and the rather unstealthy manner in which they made their entrance. There were shouts to get Kotter's attention, and he stepped back from his prisoner to face them. The prisoner had to be this 'M' they wanted; he looked as much a Vint as he sounded, even without the telltale white robes of his cult.
"I remember you," the tattooed dwarf remarked, gesturing with the head of his maul towards Cor. "One of the mercs that crashed the meeting with that Castle-town tin can." He tilted his head a little, as if trying to see past him into the blackness beyond. "You lot kill any of my people getting here?"
Cor, who'd stowed his blade like the rest of them but kept his shield on his arm, shook his head. "Not unless someone got really unlucky." It could be hard to gauge exactly the amount of force required to knock someone out, and Lia knew he'd had a few odd mishaps recently hitting much harder than he'd intended to, but unless there'd been an accident, it was pretty obvious that no one should be dead.
His eyes flickered to the young Vint, brow furrowing faintly. He didn't look like he'd been having a great time of things, from the blooming black eye and the smears of blood visible on his clothes and skin. It didn't seem to be that in particular that perturbed Cor, though. Maybe it had more to do with what it meant for their chances of getting M out of here alive. "I'd uh... really prefer it if no one was dead at the end of all this, actually." He tried for his customary good-natured smile, which looked rather natural on his face despite the circumstances. It might've even been strange if she'd not known him beforehand.
He looked for all the world like an elf expecting a positive answer, though he surely wasn't.
"You might be surprised to hear that I'd prefer the same," said the dwarf. His accent, like most surface dwarves, was still thickly that of Orzammar, and he made no efforts to hide his origins there, his brands and tattoos identifying him as both former Casteless and former Carta. "I try not to kill too often. Takes the enjoyment out of it. So I really only kill when I have to, and today is one of those days. I've waited quite a while to get my hands on this Vint piece of nugshit."
"We're not here to save him," Lia assured him. "He's as much our enemy as yours, but we need him alive. He's no head of his organization, but he could help us get to them. We'd be more than willing to take the fight to your enemy for you, in that case."
"I've got nothing for you, or any Argent Lion," spat M, with disdain. "Little more than lapdogs of the Inquisition."
"He called me worse," Kotter said, apparently amused. "But you see? Fucker wants to die. He's been cut loose and he knows it. I've already pried at him, gently by my standards. Nothing. Even trudging around in the sewers you lot look too clean and shiny to do worse. He's useless to you."
"You don't know me very well," Lia said, her tone almost a warning. She didn't look like a torturer, and maybe she wasn't, but her years and her experiences had given her a will and resolve to do what she had to. Especially where the Venatori were concerned.
"You're right, I don't," Kotter conceded. "I also don't know who sent you. You are fancy sellswords, right? Is it true what the Vint says? Inquisition pulls your strings? Or is this personal?"
Cor raised a hand, tipping it back and forth in a 'so-so' motion. "Fancy sellswords, yes. Bit of both on the other part," he admitted freely. Nodding at M, he explained a bit more. "This blighter's with the Venatori, and the Inquisition has quite a lot of reason to want to root that sort out, you understand. But uh... we're none too pleased with his most recent side project, either. Riot in the Alienage; I'm sure you heard about it?" Given their reason for the first confrontation with dwarf, it was all but a certainty that this would connect several dots for him.
It wasn't uncommon for Cor to walk this particular line. Everything he said was true, but he also left enough out that the elements most likely to irritate Kotter—in this case, the Guard connection—were absent from the explanation entirely. Lia knew he wasn't fond of doing it, but he was also very good at it, and tended at least to let people do most of the work of filling in the gaps themselves, letting them reach an incomplete or slightly-off understanding that he seldom corrected.
Nevertheless the dwarf did seem a little irritated, or perhaps just tired of speaking with the unwanted guests. "Too smooth by half, you are. I'll tell you straight who sent me and mine here: the people. The people of the Bends." He nonchalantly allowed his maul's head to fall to the ground, and it just so happened to smash the Venatori's toes, eliciting a pained groan. "The people found this fucker out for me, and the people have demanded a corpse. I intend to deliver, because I prefer having the people on my side. I made a mistake before, one that gets rectified right here."
Lia grimaced. This wasn't going particularly well, and they were probably lucky Kotter didn't feel like attacking on sight. Safe bet he didn't want to lose the people it would take to bring down the likes of them, though he had the numbers to do it.
"Here's the compromise," Kotter continued. "If one of you wants to kill the Vint and make it quick, go right ahead. Otherwise piss off and leave me to it. The people want one corpse today, not five."
They were going to move him from this, it seemed. Tactically it was a nightmare. The Untouchables stood ready with arrows nocked and crossbows loaded, knives and axes held in steady hands. Lia had an arrow already free of the quiver herself, but didn't dare nock it yet. "Not sure there's a choice," she said to her allies. "I can do it, I'll make it clean. None of this is worth dying for." There were times not to give ground, but this wasn't one of them. She waited only to see if there were any objections.
"About as good as it's going to get, I suppose." Vito didn't seem especially perturbed by this, and actually went as far as to offer Kotter the slightest nod, as if in acknowledgment of something. The bargain, perhaps.
Cor looked markedly less satisfied, but it was obvious enough that there was no getting anything better out of the deal than that, and a merciful death was probably better than whatever M was going to get at Kotter's hands. He met Lia's eyes, and gave her a tiny nod.
That was all she needed, but Lia still lifted a hand before she thought of lifting her bow. "Might want to take a step back, Kotter. Don't want anyone to think I'm about to shoot you."
The dwarf obliged, though he gestured to her hip with his maul. "I like the look of your dagger. Sure you wouldn't rather use that?There's something so impersonal about the distance an arrow provides." He wasn't wrong about that, but Lia figured it was for the best. Killing a defenseless prisoner wasn't something she'd done before. Even if he was Venatori, her enemy. Even if it was mercy.
M never broke eye contact with her, even as she pulled the arrow back until her breath touched the fletching. Only when it whistled into his heart did he flinch, and then his head did lower, and his eyes closed. There had been no look of thanks there, just the steady burning gaze of an enemy to the last. Lia lowered her bow.
Kotter approached the body to confirm the kill. "Seems that concludes our business here. I'd prefer if we didn't have business again but... somehow I doubt that. Until next time, then."
He didn't have to tell her twice. The dwarf probably considered this a good day, with the Venatori dead, a prize to deliver to the poor and outraged of the city. He was a bad man, there was no doubt about that, but Lia wondered if it wasn't for the best. He was no friend to their enemies, and while he had power their enemies would find it difficult to regain a foothold in Riverbend. Not what the guard captain wanted, exactly, but she and Kotter could battle it out another day.
Somehow Lia suspected the Argent Lions would end up in the middle on that day, too.