Sirul stunk. The cool drizzle that moved in over the city of Kalt near midnight soaked through his ragged clothing. When not wearing the guise of a beggar, he was a strikingly handsome figure. Curly blond hair sat shortly cut atop a chiseled jaw that framed intense grey eyes against a backdrop of olive skin. The jagged scar that ran from his right cheek to the bottom of his face accentuated the perpetual stalking nature of his gaze.

Patiently, he began his vigil outside the shop owned and operated by his current target. It took immense discipline not to shiver while the growing puddle he was sitting in steadily drained precious body heat.

As the minutes became hours, Sirul wondered what the man inside had done to warrant sentencing. It was unlikely the man even knew he had committed a transgression worthy of death. Such was the price The Syndicate charged for steering the island towards the greater good. Shadows such as Sirul simply collected the payments. Not that he minded the slaying, far from it, he knew and enjoyed nothing more.

However, being told who to deliver to The Great Dream, and when to do so increasingly infuriated him. Sirul often followed his prey for days or weeks before receiving the execution order. It was a ravenous agony. He endlessly starved for the nourishment of fatality. The Syndicate too often and too long kept his meals tortuously out of reach, their sights and smells endlessly afflicting him while he obediently observed.

Despite his growing disgruntlement with his masters, he still found their professional title for him, The Needle, more than agreeable. It was surgical. Precise. His namesake implement was slightly longer than his outstretched hand, with two-finger loops on the bottom. Crossing his arms against the chill, he slipped his right hand in his left sleeve, hiding the weapon.

When the man inside eventually doused his candles, the street had been quiet for hours. Hungry with anticipation as Sirul was, the last few moments passed excruciatingly slowly. His target finally exited the shop and came down the steps to the muddy street. As he reached the ground, a cough from Sirul drew his attention. Once the man noticed him, Sirul muttered incoherently under his breath.

“What’s that?” the man asked, taking a step towards Sirul before bending down to hear him better.

Sirul’s left hand grabbed the man’s hair with impossible speed as his right plunged the needle into his ear, the pithing action immediately incapacitating the man. Sirul gorged on the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Killing seemed to be the only time he felt anything anymore.

Easing the paralyzed body to the ground, he cradled the head in his lap. Then, covering the nose and mouth, he stared fervidly into his victim’s unmoving eyes as their light faded. Sirul relished the brief reprieve he found in the instant of mortality before yielding back to the deliberate professional restraint that made him peerless amongst assassins.

“Another for The Sleeper and The Syndicate,” he said with a tinge of reverence. “Daybreak, forgive me,” he muttered as a pragmatic afterthought.

After checking for any witnesses, Sirul quickly dragged the corpse up the stairs to the shop and unlocked the door with the key from the man’s belt. Pulling the body inside and latching the door behind him, he removed all potentially identifying jewelry and placed it on his own hands and neck before switching clothes with the dead man. They were not the same build or quite the same height, but it would not matter. Putting the forged farewell letter on the desk at the entrance to the shop, he took a moment to look around at the gadgets and devices within it. He was unable to discern which, if any, had been the motivation for ending this man’s life and endeavors.

The rain let up, and he carried the body to the outhouse behind the shop in the early morning darkness. Propping it up inside, Sirul dumped the vial of acid he brought with him to disfigure the face beyond recognition. Lighting a candle from the shop, he dripped wax into the man’s ear as he removed his needle to prevent bleeding. After staging the corpse, he broke the latch on the outhouse door so that it would not freely reopen and headed back inside to wait the last hour or so before dawn. When someone walking past eventually smelled the rotting flesh, the remains would be unidentifiable.

As sunlight started spilling into the windows of the shop, Sirul put the dead man’s traveling cloak over his shoulders and pulled the hood low across his face. He took the man’s horse out of its stall next to the shop and saddled it. Riding north out of the city that morning, several people beginning their day and opening their shops waved. Sirul waved back and spurred the horse to a quick gallop.

*****

The cool rain of the night before may have subsided, but the humidity refused to relent, resulting in an abnormally hot Kalt summer afternoon. The late-day sun drew forth rum-scented sweat from Harpis’ neck and brow as the black and silver-haired man stepped from the railing of the Steady Wind. He felt the edge of the fishing boat dip with his weight and heard it rise behind him like a giant bobber as his boots landed fully on the dock.

The buoying boat caused the ship’s captain to nearly stumble overboard.

“Damn it, Harpis,” he said after regaining some composure. “Consider this your severance!” he grumbled, throwing two silvers at the younger man.

After sluggishly catching the coins, Harpis turned his brown, bloodshot eyes on the captain in a dismal glare.

“This is only half a day’s wage, Emrae!” He shouted.

“And you deserve less than that.” Captain Emrae retorted. Wagging his finger, the shorter, pudgy, and balding man continued his berating. “You show up here every day this week still drunk from the night before. On your best day, you hardly put in work worth your pay. Today was by far the worst of it, so you know what, don’t bother showing up tomorrow.”

Harpis stared back blankly, offering no response.

Emrae huffed and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “The lads aren’t too happy at being overworked to make up for your abysmal effort today. Gods, if I tried to pay you for a full day, I think they would track you down and beat it out of you in compensation. I should have listened to the other captains’ warnings when I first hired you.”

Harpis didn’t even bother responding as he fingered the two silver coins in his palm. Then, dismissing Emrae with a glare, he turned toward the Kalt wharf. His eyes, aching from sunburn and sea salt, began searching for the nearest drinking establishment amongst the shops ringing the village-like sprawl of vendor tents and wagons that spread across the cobblestones.

His stomach growled in protest, reminding him that he had not eaten since snagging a half-eaten loaf of bread from a serving girl’s tray as she cleared the table next to him the night before. But, despite his belly’s complaints, his mind had other plans for his limited funds.

Trading the warmth of the setting sun for the stuffiness of the dim, candle-lit Squid’s Tavern, he plopped down at the empty chair nearest the exit and motioned to the bartender with one of his precious coins. “Two glasses of rum if you would.”

Downing them one after the other, he struggled to hold in a cough as the dark, spicy fire coated his throat. With no food to slow its progress, he soon felt the tingle of the alcohol creep into his thoughts and relax his body.

The two drinks were not enough to temper his daily self-loathing at eking out an existence as a deckhand, scarcely making enough each day to get him to the next. For nearly a year, he had unsuccessfully tried to drown his grief at losing his father in barely afforded rum. Unfortunately, with his stint on the Steady Wind abruptly ending, he had run out of potential employers at the Kalt docks.

Aside from working the railings of a fishing vessel, Harpis was not sure he had any other marketable skills. Young, relatively well-muscled, and an adept drunk, he did not have much to offer an employer.

Raising his last silver coin at the bartender, he requested two more drinks. He did not permit the bartender to set them on the bar. Instead, he took them from the man’s hands and tossed them both back, handing the empty glasses back with a wink.

Concern for Harpis’ pace showed in the green eyes of the pale brown-haired Kalt bartender before the man took the empty glasses and turned his attention to other patrons.

Maybe his father had been right, and he should get away from The Siren and her sea. After all, he was confident that he could stand watch as a member of a city militia just as readily as he could man the railing of a fishing boat. Better yet, posted at a street corner or gate, there wouldn’t be rolling waves to reveal the wobbliness of his legs from nightly imbibing. With a smile to himself at that thought and welcoming the fog beginning to take hold of his mind, he decided he did need more to drink.

“Two more, and then a break for a piss and some food!” he half-shouted to the bartender at the end of the bar, who nodded and fetched a bottle as Harpis pretended to reach for coins in his empty pockets.

The man deposited the two drinks before holding out his hand for payment. Harpis quickly snatched the drinks from the bar and downed them. Then, placing the empty glasses in front of him, he shrugged at the bartender apologetically and stood up to leave.

With a look from the bartender, the two large bouncers walked from the nearby door and grabbed Harpis, holding his arms and hands firmly behind his back. The bartender made his way around the counter to stand in front of Harpis.

“Care to pay for that last round?” He asked with his hands on his hips.

“You see, I would, but I am still waiting on payment from your mother for last night. So, if you wouldn’t mind keeping my tab open or fetching her to pay it while getting me another round, that would be perfect.”

Unimpressed by the drunken belligerence, the bartender shrugged at Harpis.

“I’ll be having those back then.”

The bartender answered Harpis’ questioningly raised eyebrow with a punch to his gut, causing him to double over and deposit the evening’s indulgences onto the tavern floor. Then, still choking on rum flowing from his belly instead of into it, he was thrown out onto the street.

Staggering to his feet, he brushed off his white cloth pants and leather tunic before resignedly gazing around the wharf. Walking away from the Squid’s Tavern, he paused mid-step to turn and spit at the establishment. His half-hearted retribution was interrupted when he nearly collided with a young boy running and peering back over his shoulder as if being pursued.

Harpis’ drunkenly executed dodge caused his self-righteous spittle to dribble down his chin and tunic instead of being slung vehemently at the tavern.

The boy stopped a few paces away and judgingly looked Harpis up and down.

“Watch what you’re doing, ya drunk oaf!” the child yelled accusingly.

Putting his hands on his hips to steady himself, Harpis narrowed his eyes at the adolescent.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed? Where are your parents, you little miscreant?” he asked indignantly.

The boy scoffed and laughed from his belly, “I have no need for parents!” Then, crossing his arms, he spoke in a feigned parental tone, “shouldn’t you take a bath? Being a homeless beggar is no excuse for sitting there covered in your own slobber and bile. Especially when the harbor waters are right there to bathe in.”

Throwing his hands frustratingly in the air, Harpis yelled after the child who had already fled, “I am not homeless and no beggar!”

With the youth’s laughter receding around the tavern, Harpis frowned to himself at the realization that he was, in fact, out of money and no longer welcome to sleep in the hammocks hanging within the Steady Wind.

While daylight and its warmth faded, the typical chill of a southern summer night swept in with the darkening evening sky. He began wandering the wharf in a swerving saunter, lamentingly noting ship after ship that had banned, dismissed, or evicted him. After a while, he found himself passing by an unrecognized vessel. His focus on the unknown boat caused him to stray into a dock post which he shot a long indicting glare before looking back at the oddly named Sea Goat.

“It’s a bit early to be so drunk, isn’t it, lad?” a weathered and greying man asked from the ship’s gangplank.

Harpis shrugged in response.

“The name is Captain Fynhar. Where you headed?” the older man asked.

“Nowhere,” Harpis answered with a forlorn look at the Kalt wharf and harbor.

“Well, that much is obvious, I suppose,” Fynhar stated flatly. “And who might you be to seek so lofty a destination?” he asked

Harpis paused before responding. Given his well-earned and distinguished reputation, he wasn’t sure about giving the surly captain his real name, but he decided he was too tired and drunk to care.

“Harpis, Harpis Akkeri,” he answered.

“Well, Harpis, for a few silvers, I can take you somewhere, and by the looks of you, anywhere is better than nowhere,” Fynhar offered.

“And where is somewhere?” Harpis asked suspiciously, noticing the Ravnice flag fluttering above the ship’s mast.

“A few small villages to drop off and pick up goods, but ultimately we will arrive in Ravnice harbor the morning after tomorrow,” Fynhar said.

The thought of abandoning his familiar cage was disconcerting, but perhaps fleeing from his torment was better than hiding from it in the bottom of a bottle. Staring up at Fynhar, he decided that if he was going to end up drinking away his days, at least he could do it somewhere warmer. Somewhere that wasn’t Kalt.

“I can’t pay, but I can work for the passage if you’re willing to let me,” he said with a hopeful look.

Captain Fynhar tapped his fingernails against his teeth for a moment.

“I do not need an extra worker, especially one who looks like they’d more than likely just get in the way, but that will get you the passage you seek,” Fynhar said, pointing at the necklace hanging around Harpis’ neck.

Harpis’ immediate reaction was to scowl at the captain. Instinctively reaching for the talisman, he ran a finger over the blue lapis lazuli cut in the shape of a raindrop and the silver mermaid visage of The Siren which held it.

The necklace was the only thing remaining in his possession from his father. He’d had it around his neck for as long as he could remember.

Somehow it had survived the storm where the boat and his father had not. When he woke on the beach, his first memory was of wanting to throw the necklace into the sea.

It was part desperation, part depression, and part rum reduced inhibition that led to his decision. He begrudgingly tore the necklace from his chest, snapping the chain, before handing it to the captain. Fynhar snorted at the brash display. “Go on then, pass out where you like, but we won’t wait for you, so you’d be wise to do it on the ship.”

*****

Wren had taken up his position on the rooftop across from the Kalt governor’s office just after dusk. A century earlier, he would have stayed crouched painfully at the very edge of the roof, gladly enduring cramped and burning muscles. He would have remained there tirelessly, glued in excitement to his perch, desperate to observe the espionage taking place at the hands of his fellow Syndicate agent.

Those days were far behind him. The old gnome’s joints and bones had decades ago begun to groan and ache to the point that they prevented the adequate stealth necessary for sneaking about. However, the diminutive stature of his race, made concealment easy enough as he was barely the size of a human toddler. Clad in his wool-lined black leathers and resting with his back against chimney bricks halfway up the roofline, he was just a slightly darker shade within the shadows that grew in the fading light.

Wren casually plucked a twig from a long-deserted bird’s nest wedged beneath the chimney crown and nonchalantly picked his teeth with it while keeping an eye on the governor’s office window.

The peaceful silence was disturbed by a nasally voice near his right ear.

“How long is that young dimwit going to take delivering the letter? Don’t you have to board the Water Donkey by morning?”

“Sea Goat,” Wren corrected as the owner of the voice, a tiny undead fire sprite floated from his shoulder down to the roof tiles in front of him. She stretched her red, demon-like wings and ashen-skinned limbs as if she was some feral alley cat before putting her hand provocatively on her bare hip. Flipping her purplish hair out of her face she raised a questioning eyebrow at the old gnome.

Taking his gaze off the distant window for a moment, he crossed his arms and gave the barely one-foot-tall fire sprite a look of mild exasperation.

“Sweet Xissay, you make me think I should have pursued the undead company of a kinder woodland faerie. Maybe they would be less quarrelsome,” he stated.

“I think you mean less interesting,” Xissay replied with a snort as they both looked across the street at the still motionless office.

Pretending to ignore her, Wren shifted to alleviate an aching tailbone.

“I don’t even know why we are here in this dreary five-forsaken southern city,” Wren said. He briefly stared up at the cloud front moving in with the evening before continuing.

“The Syndicate Hand and Eye in Kalt should be taking care of this,” he grumbled.

Narrowing her eyes, Xissay tried focusing her vision on the building across the road. After a moment, she shook her head, lavender hair tumbling around her shoulders like dripping flames.

“What’s this, your fourth Eye in the century or so you have been their Hand in Ravnice?” she asked.

Wren sent his gaze skyward in thought for a moment. “The fifth actually, and I am about fed up with the Navigators sending me short-lived humans to train.”

Xissay laid seductively with her elbows on the clay tiles and her chin in her palms, staring up at Wren.

“Maybe if you were better at training them, they would live longer,” she said accusingly.

“Bah,” he responded, “the first two retired of old age, as did the fourth. The third happened to be incompetent, and his early death was unsurprising and his own doing.”

“What of this one then?” she asked as they both strained their eyes in the near-complete blackness of a cloudy Kalt evening.

“He is young and overeager,” Wren said.

Suddenly the office across the street was bathed in golden candlelight as the door to the hallway was thrown open by what appeared to be one of the mansion guards and a late-night female companion. Wren sat up straight, and Xissay returned to her original position floating over his shoulder.

The Syndicate agent stood frozen behind the Kalt governor’s desk as the light silhouetted him. The figure in the doorway shoved the feminine companion aside and unceremoniously skewered the unarmed intruder.

“Damn! The Sleeper keep the poor fool,” Wren said bitterly as the guard killed his colleague.

“Hey, I know you left your robes on the ship but come on necromancer, why don’t you just ask your sleeping goddess to let you reanimate yonder corpse so that the human can prove somewhat useful in completing the task at hand?” Xissay asked enthusiastically.

“I think we’ve caused enough of a scene here already, thank you very much. I am not doing that, and you are not going over there either,” Wren answered with a stern look.

The gnome grimaced, but professionalism quickly buried the guilt he felt at the young agent’s fate and at not being with him as he left the living to join the dead in The Great Dream. With a quick prayer, Wren pulled his necromancer scythe from the realm of the dead as if from thin air.

It had a black wooden handle upon which sat a blade of obsidian protruding from an eagle skull fashioned of pure silver. Inlay along the blade’s edge depicted the nude sleeping goddess he worshiped.

Continuing the ritual words while holding his scythe to focus his gift, the world before him greyed and discolored. He saw the wispy white form of one of The Sleeper’s handmaidens floating to the dead man’s side.

The feminine form bent beside the corpse for a moment, and Wren whispered to himself the words he knew the handmaiden was reciting. Then as quickly as the apparition appeared, it floated away and dissipated with the man’s soul in tow.

As Wren let go of his focus, the grey vision faded away. He calmly observed the commotion as more guards quickly searched the mansion grounds. Before long, the house grew quiet again. The number of guards visibly doubled around the mansion’s exterior before the lights inside were blown out or subdued.

“Late night romantic rendezvous will be the undoing of us all,” Wren stated matter-of-factly.

Xissay shot him a look of concern from under arching eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be finding out what happened to the fabricated letter yonder dead man was supposed to have placed?” she asked.

Turning and stretching his head to each side, Wren was rewarded with satisfying cracks from his neck. “The letter’s discovery could indeed unravel years of work by The Syndicate. If it is destroyed, The Syndicate will simply find another way. Eventually,” Wren said in acknowledgment.

After a long moment and a determined look at the mansion, the gnome spoke again. “However, if I could see it placed as intended, neither need to happen, and the mission will be a success. At least as far as the Navigators are concerned,” he stated flatly.

“It will be fun listening to your archaic bones creak, click, and pop as you sneak your way over there to fix this mess,” Xissay said with a bemused look on her face.

Her humor turned to dejection as she faded into a sulfuric smoke when Wren dismissed her before heading to the street below.

Despite the increased guard presence outside the mansion, the men had no hope of spotting the barely two-foot-tall, black leather-clad gnome with decades of experience at not being seen. He made his way silently up a downspout and across a gutter. Landing quietly on one of the windowsills to the governor’s office, he quickly unlatched it.

Creeping behind the desk, he spotted the letter he had forged earlier that day, crumpled into a ball, and thrown into the corner of the room. Wren spared a thankful thought for the Eye adhering to some semblance of tradecraft even while facing certain death.

He uncreased the parchment and gave it a disconcerting look. It would raise suspicion for a battered document to be sent from the governor. Using the governor’s chair as a stool, he grabbed an inkwell, quill, and parchment. With the governor’s own writing implements, he reforged the same letter.

Even with the enhanced night vision of his largely subterranean race, it was difficult to compose in the near blackness of the office. He finished the letter and returned the tools to their original place. Spotting the governor’s seal, he dumped some ink on the crumpled letter from before. Dipping the seal in the pool, he stamped the newly forged letter, blew it dry, and placed it with the outgoing correspondence.

He folded the ink-covered, wrinkled forgery from earlier to ensure the words were obscured and crushed it into a ball again, tossing it in with the governor’s trash.

Wren shook his head at the irony of creating a more convincing forgery due to the unfortunate events that had transpired. However, he derived solace from the fact that the mission was more likely to succeed despite what had happened. As the subdued light of pre-dawn illuminated Kalt under overcast skies, Wren made his way hastily to the Sea Goat and passage home.

*****

Enky nervously paced his tiny, windowless one-room abode with the short strides of a small childish frame. His body was that of a human boy of six or seven and did not reveal his forty thousand years of existence across the better part of two ages. He stopped for a moment in thought and plopped down into his cushioned comfy chair, peering around at the dozens of picture frames that hung crooked and uneven in every shape and size. They almost completely covered the two walls that were not dominated by bookshelves or what looked to be a dormant stone-filled portal.

In each frame, a scene played, showing various beings and goings-on. Most were of the living realm, but some showed happenings on the other planes as well. Enky’s gaze settled on the one that sat propped up on his tiny writing desk. Standing again, he took two steps and was before the desk where he reached and reverently picked up the frame from its top.

“My marionette is set in motion, the commencement of my commotion,” he whispered to the view of a beleaguered man in Kalt city.

Setting the odd wooden frame back down, he reached into one of his vest’s many pockets and pulled out a coin which he then flicked into a spin across the desk.