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Another five pence on dinner at the Kevin bar. Afterward, Ryan used the surface of the Tasok River beside the docks to get his first real look at his own face.
It wasn't as imposing as he'd expected. Just an ordinary face with no strong defining features. The hair and beard were unkempt from long neglect — rough and coarse. What genuinely threw him off was the eyes. The big idiot's hair was the black he was used to, but the eyes were blue. Not unheard of in this world, but still something he had to adjust to.
Once the sun had fully set, he made his way back to the building that housed the gang.
The sunlight that would have hindered him was gone. He focused his attention and listened carefully. As expected, someone was keeping watch — guarding against slum residents who might try their luck under cover of darkness.
The building had no windows or balcony, but several large holes that the occupants had probably knocked out themselves. At night, these were blocked with ragged blankets. No one was awake near them — and at a height a normal person could realistically climb, they weren't the only way in.
The guards talked in low voices, exchanging topics of no real significance, making jokes they thought were funny but couldn't laugh at too loudly. Most of the building was asleep — the majority on the first and third floors. The fourth floor was completely silent. The fifth, highest floor had exactly one sound: snoring.
After listening for a while without picking up anything useful, he did two circuits around the building. Besides the sizeable hole in the third-floor walkway he'd spotted during the day, he found a large opening on the back side of the fifth floor — apparently used for ventilation, and left unblocked.
With Shadow Concealment eliminating the noise of movement, and the slums having no oil lamps to light anything, infiltrating was as easy as walking into his own home. He slipped through the third-floor opening without effort.
"No wonder they block it — it's cold." He pulled himself inward and noted it.
He was actually a little disappointed. Aside from not entering through the front door, this felt nothing like sneaking into anywhere. No need to tread carefully, no need to be on constant alert. In this absolute darkness, he could stand directly in front of the guards and they'd see nothing.
He scanned the doors along the corridor — cloth stuffed into the gaps at the bottom. Given the cold draft in the hallway, he didn't try any of them. Even if pushing them open made no sound, the cold air would be enough to wake whoever slept on the other side.
He moved down to the second floor and had a look around. He couldn't quite identify the feeling. He was wandering freely — everyone and everything in the building fully visible to him — while the guards, including "Rat," remained completely oblivious, carrying on their conversation without pause. If he didn't have to be careful not to touch anyone, the whole scene might have given him the impression he was already dead, drifting through as a ghost.
"Pity I can't walk through walls or float. The ghost experience isn't quite complete." He kept the thought to himself.
Featherfall was micro-gravity reduction — not the effortless levitation of a proper haunting.
The first floor was noticeably more populated. Apart from the main entrance, every other door was open. Every stretch of floor large enough to hold a body was occupied — corridors included.
"No wonder they blocked the holes and don't post more guards — they don't need to." He understood it completely.
None of this was an obstacle for an Assassin.
He took a careful look around. Though the general squalor and smell were the same as the floors above, the blankets on these people were measurably thicker, and the bodies beneath them measurably less gaunt. The two people he'd seen earlier in the day had been the thinnest in this group by some margin.
"They've come into money recently. But they've held back — haven't spent it." He made a mental note with a small question mark.
From the outside, a complete rabble. You'd never notice anything off without looking this closely.
"Oddly disciplined, for the type." He thought quietly.
"Here's hoping they have a clever head running things." He added the prayer.
Because the alternative was that someone had applied pressure — forced this crew to keep a low profile. And money that had visibly improved their circumstances this much, whether a down payment or a reward, suggested whatever they'd been hired for was not small.
"Let's hope my luck isn't that bad." He grimaced slightly.
He was already being more cautious than he'd planned. He'd originally thought about staying to watch the gang after taking what he came for, see if he could find a lead to the next target. Now he was considering whether to find a way to quietly tip off the police or the church instead.
It all came down to what the gang's leader was being cautious about.
Fourth floor. The doors here showed obvious signs of age, so he didn't try them — only peering through gaps where they hadn't quite closed. Two of the rooms had blankets and bread stored inside: winter supplies.
Fifth floor. At the end of the corridor, faint moonlight filtered in through the large forced opening. The conditions here were noticeably better — at least the doors weren't rotting. He tested the one farthest from the occupied room — a little friction against the floor, nothing else. Manageable.
He kept careful track of the likely-leader's breathing: unchanged snoring, no sign of awareness. He worked through the remaining rooms one by one. Aside from one that had been set up as a rough meeting room, the rest were empty — whether they hadn't decided what to use them for yet, or hadn't gotten around to it, he couldn't say.
He eased them all shut again, then positioned himself outside the last door — the leader's room. As a precaution, he used his own jacket to fill the gap between the door and the floor where it was closest, then slowly, carefully pushed the door open.
"Now this feels a little more like breaking in."
Fortunately, whoever was inside gave him nothing to work with — no sound except snoring, right up until Ryan was fully inside with the door closed quietly behind him.
He surveyed the room. It didn't look like a slum. He could practically see small stacks of banknotes waving at him. Setting the furnishings aside, the man was sleeping in an actual bed — humble as it was. He checked drawers and the wardrobe carefully and found no immediate surprises, though a shoulder holster in the wardrobe added a note of anticipation to what he might find in the cabinets.
"Locked away in here, then." His eyes settled on what he was mentally calling treasure chests.
With night vision, picking locks was trivial. The technique was already there — the potion had included it.
Yes — the Assassin potion's knowledge base included lockpicking. He'd only realized it this afternoon while eating and thinking through the possibility of encountering a lock.
Actually, he'd been mildly puzzled before about how the potion's knowledge covered things like firearm operation — skills that seemed too recent. But given his already thoroughly unreasonable supernatural abilities, he'd decided not to overthink it.
The simple locks here were no match for an Assassin. Noise wasn't a concern either — the man's snoring was louder than any lock mechanism.
He opened the first cabinet carefully. Looking at the contents — all five-pound notes — his worry about a wasted trip dissolved.
Ruen's paper currency came in three denominations: one pound, five pounds, and ten pounds.
This was not money that a small-time slum gang should be anywhere near — let alone accompanied by a revolver and a substantial supply of ammunition. The notes in what was a decently-sized cabinet — twenty or so in total — looked sparse against all that space, but he reminded himself: this wasn't his world. One five-pound note represented roughly five weeks of an ordinary worker's wages.
He turned to the other two cabinets. One held an account book — daily income and expenses — but he couldn't find a record of the large sum. The other contained a collection of higher-value goods: portable in principle, but not something he could easily slip into his jacket.
He relocked those two and counted the money in the first: twenty notes. One hundred pounds. Two years of income for an ordinary worker who didn't spend a thing — and this was what remained.
"Pity there's no trace of where it came from." He'd have liked to know — not to get involved, but to pass the information to someone who could use it.
He picked up the revolver. His form immediately became visible to himself as he held it.
Simple interactions — pushing a door, working a lock — didn't break Shadow Concealment. But picking up an object to actively use it did, as it did now. Unless the object was very small. A revolver was not.
To use something in concealment, it had to already be in hand when Shadow Concealment was activated, and it had to be carried flush against the body. A staff the length of a person, held out in front: can't be concealed. Tucked along your side with the length flat against the body: can be. As long as the vast majority of the object stayed in contact with you throughout, it wouldn't break the concealment.
He checked the revolver — nothing distinctive, a plain model. Tested Shadow Concealment while holding it, confirmed that the portion of the barrel not pressed to his body didn't interfere with the ability.
"All of it's coming with me." He made the decision cheerfully.
He locked the empty cabinet, slid the shoulder holster from the wardrobe, and slowly backed out of the room. He closed the door politely behind him and disappeared into the faint moonlight.
He hadn't helped himself to any of the occupants on the way out — not because of squeamishness, but because killing them would change nothing, and a body count large enough to attract a church Extraordinary's attention was the last thing he needed. Doing a good thing and then immediately torching the goodwill wasn't a trade worth making.
"Wonder if they'll notice tomorrow." He walked back with a small flicker of anticipation.
Both because he wanted to see the chaos, and because if they tried to take it out on someone else, he'd have an excuse to test a few more of the Assassin's capabilities.
"Hm?"
Just as he finished securing the shoulder holster and settled the new revolver into place, he caught something on the street below: faint footsteps.
"Three people. Moving fast, heading opposite to me."
"Who's out at this hour?" He stopped.