The party glittered with majesty and false warmth as I stumbled in. Victory draped itself over the room like a heavy, gilded cloak—victory, opulence, the smug comfort of men who believed their fortunes were forever. Candles guttered in a faint orange haze. Laughter floated, cheap and bright, as though each joke polished the shine off some newly minted coin. Outside, the rain began to fall, and the wind found its voice in the darkening streets; the city lamps trembling in the wet light seemed suddenly small and fragile.
I smiled then, a slow thing that had nothing of joy in it. At last, I thought, it is time for them to feel my wrath.
The men beside me were ragged and dangerous, fickle, broken things who had tasted betrayal and had bound themselves together with rage. They were kin only by grievance: men who had bled for a fair wage and a fair day’s work and had been paid in contempt. The sea calls itself the great equalizer, they said; but there is no true equality among men, only among the damned and the dead.
A black mark burned against my palm, a living wound that glowed with an unearthly green. It smoked, a bitter perfume of rot and something almost divine, and it warmed my skin as if it had a pulse of its own. Around me, my crew shuffled, spectral shapes in leather and salt-stiff coats, hungry for the taste of retribution.
The door crashed open. My men spilled in behind me like tidebreaking breakers. Swords flashed, pistols rose; the room’s mirth turned to the paper-thin panic of thieves caught in the act. The guests clutched at their valuables as if hands could hide guilt, as if trinkets could ward off what was coming.
I let the moment stretch and drew a breath so slow it felt like it could drain the warmth from the hearth, the light from each candle. My boots, black as a moonless sea, tapped across the parquet, each step a growing drumbeat. Tapped. Tapped. Tapped. The sound filled the room, a metronome of doom. Food, once spread as an offering to greed, became an afterthought. I mounted the long table, mud and rain seeding the linen with dark, living stains.
There he was: Master Williams, the head of this motley court of smug degenerates. A balding man with a powdered wig arranged like a crown to hide his shame. His face labored under thick white powder that could not quite disguise the sweating fear beneath, smallpox scars and cowardice alike. The smell of his fear was a physical thing in my nostrils; it made my mouth sour.
I crouched until my face was within inches of his, close enough to see the tremor in his false complacency. His eyes were wet with panic. He looked like a man who had been surprised to find the ground removed from beneath him.
I smiled. “You thought I had forgotten, Master Williams?”
He swallowed. “I— I told you—”
“Quiet.” My voice rose only a fraction, but it was enough to slice the room. I plucked a smear of his powder between forefinger and thumb, tasted it, because cruelty, when you have the time, becomes a kind of ritual. The bitter dust scraped my tongue; I almost gagged. I did not pretend to be delicate. I turned, theatrically affronted. “I am bewildered by this…this… celebration that lacks any mention of my master. His brilliance, his mercy, his—” I let the sarcasm hang like a blade. “his generosity.”
He babbled again, buying words like a bankrupt tries to buy time. “I can assure you—”
“Ssh.” I placed a finger to my lips, then, with a deliberate childishness, tapped the powder against his cheek, soft as a parent’s slap meant to sting. “I am disappointed that a man from your station has been reduced to pleading for life.” I spun on him, pointing like an accuser. “Where is the honor you swore to? Where is the courage?”
The room watched. Pale faces, eyes hollowed by comfort and cowardice. The elders looked like men who had lived long enough to forget how to rage. Pathetic. Had courage been an option, they would have taken it, then retreated from the price.
“I need more time,” Williams babbled.
“SILENCE!” The word burst from me and the air closed in; even the windows shivered. My men seized the guests, forcing heads down on the table. The stink of terror was immediate, raw, everywhere.
I moved among them like a slow plague. A child whimpered near the servants’ table. I caught the sound and crouched, putting on the smallest, most calculated tenderness. “Do not worry, young one,” I cooed. The child shut his eyes as if that could make me vanish.
“Look at me,” I said softly. “Do I look like an honest man?”
He would not open his eyes. I waited a moment, then pressed my advantage. “Open them.”
The boy’s lids trembled. He obeyed like one handing over life… slow, and final in his eyes opening to be born again. When his eyes opened, they were blue, clean as polished sapphires. So young. So unspent. Perfect for seeing the storm.
“What do you see?” I asked, leaning in until the green of my mark painted his pupils. “Tell me.”
The mark flared. Shadows bent like fingers to show him everything I had to offer.
“You’re a monster,” he whispered.
I rolled my eyes. “Rude. I’m only asking politely.” He spat than right in my face.
I wiped it off with the back of my hand as if the child’s hatred could not even bruise me. “Very well. Children are often braver than their elders. Keep them then.” My voice was almost gentle as my men took the boys and girls, slinging them over shoulders like luggage. Their screams began small and then rose, pure, bright terror.
The Kind of terror that never got easier to listen to.
The adults clawed for whatever makeshift weapons they could: forks, knives, candlesticks. It would have been tedious if desperation didn’t make them so grotesquely righteous. Their struggles were loud and ugly, a sound I had heard and would hear a thousand more times.
I planted my boots on the floor and stared down Williams. He looked as if he might swallow a pistol rather than live in disgrace.
I would not grant him that mercy.
“You have robbed my master, of wealth, of blood, of slaves,” I said, teeth clicking in a sound hard as a lock snapping shut. “That will need to be repaid in blood.”
I stepped down from the table, the linen trailing behind me like a banner, and smiled, soft and satisfied. My boots leaving behind their muddy mark. “Kill them,” I ordered. “Bring me the master. Burn this place to the ground.”
The fire took at once, paper, drapes, oil from lamps. Flame licked eager and indiscriminate, swallowing gilt and glass. My men set to work: blades glinting, pistols barking, hands moving with the grim choreography of those who had done this before. The room filled with smoke, screams, the hot metallic stench of panic. Chairs overturned. Candlelight died into the hungry orange of real fire.
More screams. More blood. The city beyond the windows blinked at the sky as if nothing had happened, and yet the night would carry this sound and remember it in bones and stone.
I watched until the heat painted my face, the flames throwing fevered light across the room and turning every tremor into a slow-motion portrait of ruin. The green of the mark on my palm flared until it was almost a beacon, a promise carved in living fire that blinked and pulsed against my skin. Ash drifted like slow snow through the orange haze; the scent of burning varnish and expensive oil filled my throat and made the back of my tongue numb.
At last I turned away.
“Please… I just need more time!” Williams’ voice cracked, thin and useless against the roar. He crumpled to his knees before me, as if pleading were a kind of currency he still had to give. Everything about him was broken: his breath, his composure, his bargains. His choices had sharpened into a noose and now he was stepping through the loop.
“Don’t worry, Master Williams”
I let the words shape my mouth into a smile then spared him a single look. It was the glance of a man who had settled an account centuries in the making: precise, patient, and final. The smile did not soften as the world burned; it only made the flames read truer on the walls.
“You will have all the time in the world,” I said, my voice quiet enough that it might have been mercy if it had not been the last lie he could cling to. Then I turned fully away, my bloody work was done.