Blackmouth prowled along the crimson travertine panels,

a glaucous shadow pressed against the exterior wall of the palazzo. This was his favorite part of the thing, when he knew he was nearly upon his quarry. He moved naturally, brushing the façade with his shoulder occasionally. So many killers were undone by their own minds, their own racing thoughts, when they got so close. The key now was flow. No thinking. Doing.

The Duke had passed sentence on these people for the crime of fomenting rebellion. Others would be made into examples, brought in front of the Mammoth and tortured until they were dead or useless. But for these particular traitors, financiers rather than participants, the judgement was quiet assassination; the family was to be annihilated excepting the very youngest member, who would be brought to the Duke and converted, made into a tool of his will, a fanatic to be unleashed on the rebels of the future just as Blackmouth was the Duke’s weapon of choice today.

He turned the corner of the carmine palazzo and continued along to the frame of the exterior door. The sword made a sibilant whisper as it slid out of the scabbard. He tried the handle. It opened smoothly.

Clearly the men inside had not truly been expecting trouble. As the first turned towards him he brought his blade down, sundering the man’s face. It disintegrated in a tangled spray of blood and hair that mixed with the russet striations of the walls and floor, red against red.

The second had gone for his own weapon and was pulling it free when Blackmouth thrust the tip of the sword just under the xiphoid process at the base of the man’s sternum. His would-be opponent bent in agony, his sword clattering to the floor as he clasped his hands to his chest. Blackmouth reversed his grip, holding the blade like an oar, and let the edge ride against the bottom of the ribcage through the liver, kidney, spleen, and intestines, ripping the sword out through the man’s side in a shower of gore.

He scanned the foyer. Doorways on either side and straight ahead. He took a moment to intuit where she might be in the house and then he moved directly towards the door at the opposite end of the room and slipped through. He was in a hallway which led towards the back of the house and had a staircase going up. He cupped his free hand to his mouth and called up the stairs.

“Come quick! Solitude Spire has sent assassins!”

He strode to the back of the staircase, positioned such that those descending the staircase would do so with their backs to him. Her father charged down, a pistol in one hand and a dagger in the other. Predictable. Blackmouth took the man’s head off as he rounded the newel post, the stump of his neck spraying blood in arcing pulses as his beheaded body stumbled blindly about and his heart continued to beat for a few seconds. The man’s head had rolled face up and he beheld his own lurching form taking jerky steps for a moment or two before the decapitated thing sunk suddenly to its knees and the eyes in its separated skull glazed over, like grapes suddenly covered with bloom: dusty, frigid, and vacant.

Blackmouth paused for a beat to see if any others were coming, and when it was clear they were not, he ascended the staircase quickly and took the door to his right.

Her mother stood in front of her, a karambit in each hand, point down and edge out, eyes wide and expression solemn. Blackmouth smiled kindly at her and accelerated toward her, giving her mixed signals and no time to think. She managed to deflect his first two blows, not blocking but using the hooked knives to redirect his attacks away, and she sidestepped a thrust. After the sidestep, she was at his left. She almost caught his throat with a pulling slash which split the skin on his neck and shoulder, opening a long cut that was only superficial because it had bounced off his clavicle. Somewhere along the way, she’d flipped one of the knives to a point-up, edge-in position and he hadn’t even seen it. The cut was so fine it took a moment before the skin opened and the blood welled out. He felt the heat of it and it made his heart sing with joy. Even as the blood began to trickle down his breast she aimed a blow at his throat, leading with the steel ring on the karambit around her index finger.

He managed to tuck his chin in just in time to protect his vulnerable neck. Had her fist landed cleanly it would have crushed his windpipe, he had no doubt. As it was, she split the skin again and the blow rocked his brain so he saw small white sparks streak randomly before his eyes. He broke to his rear, arching his spine and bending backward at the knees in an improbable angle to avoid the follow-through slash to the face he knew must come after the punch.

He hadn't been wounded in months. With newfound respect, he resolved to end the fight as quickly as possible. Now he understood the order; this woman moved beautifully, filled with the casual grace of a feral feline.  If the girl had her mother's reflexes, she would be quite formidable.

His backward dodge has taken his spine to within a foot of the floor and it took all the strength he had to force himself upward and forward, fighting gravity the whole way to regain a standing position, and use the momentum to feint a downward cut at a forty-five degree angle to his opponent’s knee.  When she brought her leg up and out of the way, he abruptly changed the direction of his blade and brought it ascending in a huge sweeping movement, a gross motion so totally out of character with the economy he had displayed in the fight so far that she wouldn’t believe it was real. It worked – the edge was delivered into her groin. The blade slid effortlessly upward through her flesh, through the pelvis and vertebrae, splitting the stomach, slicing through the sternum and into the throat, turning her scream into a ghastly gurgle, and still it rose, halving the mandible and maxilla, crushing and displacing teeth, dividing the eyes, and finally exploding out of the top of her skull.

The two pieces of her fell away from each other, fully bisected, disgorging their contents on the polished stone floor.

The girl who had stood behind her, perhaps five years old, was shaking and covered in her mother’s cruor. Blackmouth knelt down so that he was eye level with her, laid his blade on the ground, and extended his hand. He smiled gently and gestured for her to come to him.

“Ah, little one, bathed once again in your mother’s blood. You are being born a second time. It is painful to be born, I know. Pay it no mind,” He said softly.

She hesitated, then crossed the room to place her tiny hand in his, stepping over the corpse as she did so. She did not cry; perhaps the lack of tears was simple shock, but Blackmouth’s intuition told him otherwise.  The girl's eyes were clear.

Formidable indeed, he thought.