Zandor crouched down in front of the guard's corpse and stared into its eyes. Roughly fifteen minutes ago, it'd been alive, standing watch over the nearby Niafi marketplace that had lately been home to Jakonray and Sven, two of the Syndicate's newer initiates. As Zandor understood it, the pair wanted the guard dead, as there had been somewhat of a brewing dispute over whether or not they, as representatives of Ryolek's Syndicate, had exclusive rights to that particular section of the marketplace. Not that there was any objective value in having two low-tier fences controlling one portion of the market - after all, the guard would have allowed them to sell anyway - but Zandor found that these symbolic shows of power often played a stronger role in the minds of insecure youth than even money itself. Therefore, when the guard had appeared distracted, Jakonray found a way to coax him down an alley and then Sven had slit his throat and dragged him behind a mound of refuse left by a lower-class eating establishment; it was at this point that they covered him in garbage and left to find a higher ranking member of the Syndicate to advise them on what to do next. Hence, Zandor's presence at the scene.
"My opinion is that you two are inept, and deserve whatever punishment comes to you," said Zandor, standing up and turning to them. He read their expressions carefully: Sven seemed nervous and on edge, which usually prompted him to be aggressive, but Jakonray was genuinely scared, and tried to hide it by making an overly deliberate, forced attempt at stoicism. They exchanged glances, and then Sven spoke up.
"We are both deeply, deeply sorry sir. We thought it would help the Syndicate. That's the only reason we did it. But please, sir, we need your help."
Jakonray nodded but kept quiet, and Zandor stared at him until he looked down at the sand.
"May I ask why you two thought this particular location would be a good place to conduct your kill? Look around you. Think."
Zandor had to repress a grin while they glanced around the alley. He hoped that their stupidity would be obvious and shaming, for it truly was a pitifully chosen sight. They stood only fifty feet from the market; it was a miracle no one had seen Sven kill the guard, and since refuse was frequently picked over by the local starving and homeless, it wouldn't be more than a day before the body's discovery.
Jakonray spoke up first. "Sir, we thought that by killing him here we wouldn't be discovered immediately, and could finish our work quickly."
"So you thought this was discrete? Taking his life right next to one of the most populace marketplaces in the whole of Essryn?"
"Sir, we realize our mistake, but please, we must do something quickly before another guard arrives!" Sven said.
"Well then, what should we do?" This time Zandor was not completely able to hide a smirk as the pair gawked with terror.
"Aren't you supposed to know?" Asked Jakonray.
"You two brought this on yourself, and I would like to give you the chance to prove that you are not completely brainless before offering my aid. Now, what do you think you should do?"
Jakonray went silent and Sven looked panicked, but managed to squeeze out, "dump him in the sewer?"
"But wouldn't that undermine your plan of sending a message to the Niafi guards?"
"What?"
Zandor sighed. "You killed him to gain control of his turf. So why hide the body? Don't you want the guards to know this place is dangerous?"
The pair exchanged a final glance and remained silent as Zandor sighed again.
"Do I really have to spell this out for you?" He asked.
Sven perked up. "So... you're saying we should do nothing?"
"Correct," replied Zandor, heaping garbage back over the body. "We do nothing. Now leave."
The pair turned around and walked away, casting many sidelong glances at the lingering assassin. Zandor smiled; he had learned to enjoy the incredible stupidity of novice criminals, in much the same way that he enjoyed a poorly wrought play, or the bumbling ineffectiveness of untrained fighters. In truth he did not really care what low-ranking members of the Syndicate did to antagonize the guards. The interplay of their fences versus the city's law enforcement was an unfortunate and petty byproduct of being a criminal organization, and though members like Jakonray and Sven were indeed essential, their lives were cheap and meant almost nothing. So Zandor, the Syndicate's preeminent assassin, enjoyed the inevitable idiocy when he could, and on this particular occasion he elected to hang about the scene for a few minutes longer, in order to ensure that the body was not found too quickly. Also he was bored, and had always found the presence of the dead to be strangely relaxing.
Once upon a time Tamina would never have dared to walk these streets alone at night, not unless she was looking for a very specific type of customer.
But those days were long gone. She still kept a wary eye out as she made her way through the almost totally abandoned marketplace, snatching a few pastries from a closing stand when the proprietor's back was turned. Hey, once a street urchin, always a street urchin- and her quick fingers had come in handy in other aspects of her life on more than one occasion.
Honestly, she wasn't really sure why she was out. She should have been back at "the shop", as her employer referred to The Gilded Dancer, helping with the bookkeeping. But Darius had been in one of his moods, and he hadn't seemed to care much that she'd skipped out on work.
So she was just taking a walk, meandering her way through the delta toward the constant sound of the river. Suddenly though, a small chill ran up her back. It was a feeling she was familiar with, the sense of death that had permeated her younger years.
Curious despite herself, Tamina paused and tilted her head as though listening, pinpointing the feeling. Quietly, she slipped into the shadows and started gliding silently down the back alleys, following the feeling like a thin, glowing thread.
Zandor stood next to the hidden body for some time, enjoying the presence of death. The guard's fate amused him: murdered by two incompetents just for doing his job. That was a rough one, and the burial by garbage added insult to injury. Chuckling, Zandor turned towards the body, "you probably deserved better than this," he said. "Probably."
He inhaled deeply to clear his mind. Something was telling him to leave; whether or not it was genuine intuition or mere paranoia he could not tell, but there was no harm in caution. However, that did not mean he couldn't have some fun before making an exit. Cracking his knuckles, he squatted down and cleared the refuse from the guard's placid face. It had grown pale and waxy in the past few minutes, and looked unquestionably dead. Zandor adjusted the head so that it faced directly out upon the alley; anyone who passed by would surely notice it, and when they did their reaction would likely make the entire ordeal worth it.
Having arranged the morbid prank, Zandor stood up and began to scale the adjacent wall, picking his way along the scant handholds until he reached the top. Then he crouched in the shadows and peered down at the alley, satisfied with his handiwork and anticipating the next unfortunate pedestrian.
It didn't take Tamina long to find the source of that hair-raising feeling. A corpse, left buried in the garbage. Or possibly intentionally placed there.
She frowned an took a few steps forward to get a closer look, her nose crinkling at the smell of death.
A city guard. Wonderful. That probably meant she should report this to someone. She sighed and rocked back on her heels, running a hand through her hair.
Or...she could just leave and pretend she hadn't seen anything. Not the most moral course of action- but probably the easiest.
Zandor was disappointed; the woman's reaction had been anything but amusing. In fact, she seemed to have had some prior knowledge of the body's location, based on the surety and composure with which she found it. That probably meant that Sven and Jakonray's days were numbered, but Zandor had long since put them from his mind; this new interloper was much more interesting.
With a wave of his hand and a mumbled incantation, Zandor cast a magic detection spell, and then smirked as he saw her flesh become incandescent with demonic energy; it would seem she had a diverse ancestry, and that made her presence all the more intriguing. After a brief moment of reflection, Zandor decided to stay put and continue his surveillance; after all, he doubted her ability to detect him, and he felt confident in his sole weapon - an enchanted dagger that he'd stolen from and later used to kill a lich.
Tamina paused. her head snapped up and cocked to the side, animalistic. Someone was using magic- on her.
She frowned, looking around, but she couldn't see anyone. And the sense of death was so strong this close to a recent killing that she couldn't really use any of her other senses to detect a nearby presence.
"Who's there?" she called, sinking into a defensive crouch and backing up toward the pile the corpse had been buried in.
Zandor cursed himself; she had detected him, probably sensing his use of magic. He was angry. Discovery was necessarily a failure on his part, and even though the occasional slip up was inevitable, a single, minute mistake could spell his doom if it happened at the wrong time. But he let it pass. He had a situation to handle, and an interesting one at that.
Where he was sitting, there seemed to be two ways of dealing with the nosy pseudo-demon: he could either sneak attack, and potentially curtail any potential conflict; or engage with her, find out who she was, and avoid any need for violence. After a moment, he decided to talk with her, but not directly. Instead, he would use one of the most useful spells he'd yet encountered: ventriloquism, which allowed him to project his voice to an inhuman degree, giving it the appearance of originating from a different location. With some muttering and somatics, he felt the arcane energy surge into his throat, and then he spoke out; "your perception is impressive, few could've noted a spell as subtle as magic detection, even with your demonic ancestry."
A chill ran up Tamina's spine and she whirled, trying to pinpoint the origin of the voice but unable. Her lip curled back and she snarled quietly.
"Who the hell are you?" she hissed, backing up a step. "How do you know that?"
"Relax," replied Zandor, "as of now I don't mean you any harm, and I only know of your ancestry because of the spell you detected." He pondered just how much he was willing to reveal, before deciding on the bare minimum. "I'm not the murderer."
She was frozen, eyes flicking around. "But you know who is," she guessed after a few moments, eyes still searching the darkness. "And you haven't called the city guard. Which means you're involved, somehow."
Zander chuckled; she was good, and it occurred to him that her talents could be of some use to the Syndicate. But that was secondary. As it stood she could potentially prove dangerous, and he still didn't know what her business was with the corpse. "Perhaps you're correct," he began, "but you yourself seem to have had prior knowledge of the body's location. I don't know how or why that is, but you don't look like an affiliate of the guards. Who are you, then, to mind the occasional corpse?"
Tamina scoffed. "A citizen of the city," she snipped back. "Can't have corpses turning up all over the place, people will panic."
Zandor rolled his eyes; civic duty was a concept that had never held any moral weight for him, and unfortunately, the strange woman below did not seem to share his view. That probably meant she wasn't recruitment material, but regardless, he still did not know what had brought her to the corpse. Initially, he suspected that she had some kind of criminal stake in the guard's death, but if that was the case, she probably wouldn't have chalked up her interest in the corpse to her being "a citizen of the city," unless she was lying, which wasn't unlikely. Even still, for the sake of caution, Zandor wanted to know how and why she'd found the body. "So that was your reason for rooting out the poor, dead guard? For the sake of the city and its laws?"
She shrugged. "Not exactly. I was curious." She glanced toward the dead guard. "And I meant what I said- can't have people panicking with corpses popping up all over the place. Makes it harder for those of us who do our job with subtlety," Tamina said pointedly.
Zandor laughed. She did have a point: life in any given city was usually better when random bodies weren't regularly showing up buried beneath garbage. "Alright," he said, "I will admit this isn't one of my affiliates' proudest moments. But I think that the people of this city deserve an occasional murder. I mean, what makes them so great? There are so many crooked, deceitful wretches living here. Who's to mind?" He paused a moment. "And you mention having a job. You don't seem like the average tradeswoman or housewife to me. So, what is it you do to earn your keep?"
"I have no issue with the occasional murder, long as it's done nice and quiet so the guards don't crack down on us," she said with an arched eyebrow. Then she shook her head with a short bark of laughter. "Uh-uh. You wanna know who I am, first you have to tell me who you are."
Zandor frowned. They were at an informational stalemate; it was very unlikely he'd get anything more from this person, and his reasons for sticking around were dwindling. On the upside, it didn't seem like Jakonray or Sven were in any danger, but he guessed they'd get themselves killed soon, anyway. "No problem with murder, hm? Well, I hope you'll understand if I remain anonymous. Makes things easier. Now, unless you have any objections, I would like to take my leave of this scene, as it is somewhat dangerous and there's no real reason for my continued presence."
"Oh no." Tamina raised a hand and frowned. "You can't expect me to deal with a body your idiots left lying around by myself. Help me get him to the river, plenty of the dead get dumped there, at least it'll be less suspicious."
"No one is asking you to deal with the guard's remains," said Zandor. "Leave it, and if its presence instigates a judicial crackdown, then those of us not skilled enough to evade detection will be killed. Such is the price of ineptitude."
Tamina rolled her eyes and bent to grab the body under the arms. "Fine. Do as you will, I'll take care of it myself."
"Wait, seriously?" Zandor was amused. He didn't want to sacrifice his vantage point, but he admired the girl's concern for discretion, even though he considered it unnecessary for such a paltry kill. "Admirable, a more dignified burial then I gave him." He paused for a moment, thinking. "I feel like somewhat of an ass, doing nothing while you clean up after my grunts. If I come down there to help, you won't stab me now, will you?" He was throwing caution to the wind; the situation was simply too intriguing.
"I won't if you keep your hands to yourself," she grunted as she hefted the body out of the pile of refuse.
Zandor shrugged; "good enough," he said, leaping from the roof. For a second, at the zenith of his plummet, everything froze. Then started to move again. Very, very fast.
He smiled. Falling from mortal heights was a lovely activity, in his estimation; it made one feel alive, conscious, free. But more important than the fall was the forward roll that must be executed upon hitting the ground. And Zandor had that perfected. With his eyes closed, he focused intently on the tips of his toes, and when he felt the ground, he relaxed his legs and threw himself forward and rolled on his shoulders and hopped to his feet. He now stood directly in front of Tamina, hands outstretched nonthreateningly. He gave her a moment to size him up - after all, she hadn't seen him yet - and then said, "so, the river?"
She fought the instinct to skitter back and instead held her ground, arching an eyebrow at him in an effort to put on an air of being thoroughly unimpressed.
"Right. The river."
Zandor grabbed the guard's ankles and hefted him up. "Once we get out of this alley we should probably take some measures to cover this poor sap. But for now we should be okay." He paused for a moment. Hiding the guard effectively removed the scare tactic he had earlier sought to employ. Though this was a safer course, he wanted to get some more utility out of following the girl's lead. That utility, he decided, would come in the form of attaining a new ally, and possibly friend. "So, what's your name? I'm Zandor, principle assassin of a fledgling criminal syndicate lead by a battlemage named Ryolek. You may have heard of us."
"Mhm. Very impressive," she grunted as she hefted her end of the corpse. After a moment, she added almost grudgingly, "Tamina. I wish I could say it's a pleasure, but..."
She quirked an eyebrow and nodded at the body.