Peace is a glass. You hold it carefully, you polish it until it shines, and you appreciate the simple, clear purpose of it. For the last six months, my peace has been this bar. The Brown Bar, I'd called it. Why? I don't know myself, maybe because it's a bar and it's covered in brown paint. A little joke for myself. The smell of aged oak and wood smoke was my new incense, the soft clink of tankards my new liturgy.
I was polishing one of those very glasses when the trouble walked in. Not the dramatic, door-splintering kind. The slow, simmering kind that smells of cheap ale and cheaper ambition.
He was a mountain of a man, all thick neck and knuckles that had seen too many shield walls. He swaggered up to the bar, ordered a top-shelf dwarven fire-whiskey he clearly didn't have the palate for, and knocked it back in one go. Then he tossed a single gold crown onto the polished wood.
It spun, a lazy disk under the warm lantern light.My Keen Eye, a passive skill honed from a lifetime of assessing threats and valuables, tracked its rotation. The weight was wrong. The sound it made was a dull thud instead of a bright ring. A forgery, and not even a good one.
I stopped the coin with a finger. "This is counterfeit. Plus, your fee is six gold crowns," I said, my voice flat. I pushed it back toward him.
His affable mask cracked. "The hell it is." His voice was a low growl, meant to intimidate.
"It is." I held his gaze, my own utterly calm. "You can pay with something else, or you can leave."
The crack widened into a snarl. "Get me another drink."
"Payment first."
His face flushed a blotchy red. "I'm not paying. You'll give me what I want, you little—"
"No," I said, simple and final. I went back to polishing my glass. The dismissal, the utter lack of fear, was the final spark.
He roared, a wordless sound of fury, and lunged towards me. A fist the size of a ham shot toward my face. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lily, my part-time barmaid, frozen in the stockroom doorway, her hand flying to her mouth. "No!" she screamed.
He didn't listen.
The punch landed. Or rather, his fist met my face.
There was a sound. Not the wet thwack of a connecting punch. This was a dry, sickening crunch, like gravel being compacted.
The mountain of a man let out a high-pitched shriek, clutching his ruined hand to his chest. His fingers were already starting to swell, bending at unnatural angles. He stared at me, his eyes wide with a pain that was rapidly being eclipsed by pure, unadulterated terror.
I hadn't moved. Not even flinched. The glass was still in my hand, held in a pristine white cloth. The blow hadn't even registered against my passive Cultivated Body.
I looked at him, then down at the faint smear of blood his knuckles had left on my cheek. I slowly raised my own hand and wiped it away.
Damn. The word was crisp and clear in the sudden silence. This is exactly what I left.
My peace, my carefully polished glass of a life, had just developed its first crack. And I had a terrible feeling it was about to shatter completely.
I sighed. It wasn't a sigh of frustration or anger, but of profound resignation. So much for a quiet life.
The big man was blubbering now, cradling his hand and stumbling back from the bar. The few other patrons in the place were frozen, their conversations dead. The only sound was the man's ragged breathing and the crackle of the hearth.
Lily rushed forward, her eyes wide. "Are you okay, Arthur? Your face... it's..."
"It's fine," I said, my voice still that same, flat calm. It was just a smear. The skin beneath wasn't even bruised. A pointless, messy display.
I looked past her, at the man. "You should go see a healer about that."
He didn't need telling twice. He scrambled for the door, fumbling with the handle with his good hand before stumbling out into the evening street. The silence he left behind was heavier than his presence had been.
Then I let a slow, easy smile touch my lips. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man settling a tab. "And you won't be getting a refund."
I I opened my hand. With a soft, musical clink, I began rolling the real gold crowns across the polished wood of the bar. One... two... three... A payment for the whiskey, plus a substantial "inconvenience fee." My fingers had been in his coin purse as he threw the punch. It had taken less effort than breathing. Four... five... six. My thumb brushed against a seventh.
An old habit, taking a little more to ensure the message was received. I let it fall with the others.
Lily stared at the seven coins, then at me, her confusion warring with her fear. "How did you...?"
"The men on table three look like they need a refill, please attend to them," I said, the smile fading as I looked at the small fortune on the bar. Sixwouldhavebeenfair. It would have covered the drink. I had taken seven. It was an old habit, taking a little more to ensure the message was received—you are out of your depth.
But that wasn't the code of the bartender. That was the arithmetic of the Penance, a shadow I had buried a long time ago.
Sloppy.
The cold knot of realization tightened in my stomach. The flare had been lit with the punch, but this? This was a second, smaller signal. A signature within a signature. The kind of petty, perfect theft that would make certain people nod and say, "Yes, that's him."
I looked at the seventh coin, gleaming under the lantern light. A peace offering to my own conscience.
"Lily," I said, my voice soft. "Can you watch the bar for a moment?"
She blinked. "What? Where are you going?"
I picked up the single, excess gold crown, feeling its weight. The weight of a mistake. "I have to return something," I said as I rushed off.
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The healer hospice was a place of flickering candlelight and the smell of pungent healing herbs, a stark contrast to the warm gloom of The Brown Bar. I moved through the corridors with a purpose, my steps silent on the stone floors. It wasn't hard to find him. He was in a curtained alcove, his booming cries of pain replaced by the low, pathetic whimpering of a man coming down from shock.
He didn't see me as I slipped past the curtain. A healer was there, her back to me, splinting his hand with wood and linen.
"...lucky it's not a compound fracture," she was saying, her voice calm and professional, yet carrying a strange, flat undertone. "The bones were cleanly shattered, though. Almost like he punched a solid steel beam."
"The guy didn't even move!" the man whined. "He just stood there! My hand just... crunched!"
"I believe you," the healer said, and there was something in the way she said it that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It wasn't soothing pity. It was cold, clinical interest.
She finished tying off the bandage and turned to make a note on his parchment chart. That's when I saw her profile. Sharp jawline, eyes the color of a winter sky, and a small, almost invisible scar bisecting her left eyebrow. A sigil was pinned to her robes.
Kestrel.
My breath hitched. Of all the ghosts from my past, she was one of the few I'd actually respected. An extraction specialist, known for her efficiency and her chilling lack of bedside manner.
She looked up, her gaze sweeping past the patient and landing directly on me, standing in the shadow of the curtain. Her quill stilled. For a single, suspended second, the professional mask of the healer slipped, and the predator I knew looked out. Her eyes widened a fraction, then narrowed.
The big man in the bed followed her gaze. He saw me and flinched, trying to shrink into his pillows. "You! Stay away from me!"
I ignored him, my focus entirely on Kestrel. I held up the single gold crown between my thumb and forefinger.
"I believe this is yours," I said, my voice carefully neutral. "You overpaid."
I tossed it towards him. It spun through the air, a gleaming arc in the candlelight. She caught it without looking, her hand snapping out with reflexes that had nothing to do with healing.
"We try to avoid overcharging," she said, her voice a low purr. She pocketed the coin. "But you of all people should know. Some debts can't be paid with gold."
She looked me in the eye. The threat in her words was veiled, but it was there. She knew. She knew exactly who I was, and what had happened.
She looked from my unmarked face to the man's heavily bandaged hand, and a tiny, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. It was the same smile she'd get after a perfectly executed mission.
Then she turned back to her patient, the professional mask firmly back in place. "The priest will be in to see you shortly to give you a potion for the pain." She picked up the chart and walked towards the curtain where I stood.
She stopped right in front of me, so close I could smell the healing herbs on her robes and the faint, familiar scent of blight-root and mage-smith embers underneath.
She didn't look at me. She looked straight ahead, at the busy corridor beyond.
"We meet again," she murmured, her voice so low only I could hear it. "Corvus Sharpe sends his regards."
Then she brushed past me and was gone, leaving me frozen in the silent, hallowed air, the name of a man I'd never heard echoing in my head.