Commerce Emperor

Chapter Fifty: Death's Spiral

Fior hadn’t been herself for many, many years.

Mersie had been her life for the last decade: the confident, social, lively girl who rose from humble beginnings to mingle with high society. Whenever she felt doubts or hesitated, Fior always asked herself what her playmate would have done. She played her role so perfectly that her face grew to fit the mask.

Fior had lived the life her friend would have enjoyed, and she would give her the revenge that she deserved.

Her knife flew at the same time as her enemy’s. She aimed at Chronius’ throat, and he at her weapon. The projectiles met in the middle of the bridge, steel kissing steel, and both fell to the ground together.

The Archer’s aim was impeccable. Fior couldn’t grasp why a heroic class could choose this monster for a vessel. But then again, the Assassin mark selected Fior in spite of the rivers of blood she had shed and all the lies she had spoken. It burned on her thigh, either because it relished the thought of fighting a fellow Hero or because it resented it. Fior didn’t care either way.

Chronius could have been the Fatebinder and she would still have hunted him down.

Fior raced across the bridge before her throwing knife landed, her body surging with superhuman strength and speed granted by her mark. Chronius immediately retreated towards the church while throwing another projectile over his shoulder. He didn’t even need to look at Fior to target her head and she barely drew a dagger in time to deflect it.

Fior had trained decades in the art of knife-fighting to one day kill the man the same way he had murdered her father, but the gulf in experience between them remained vast. She hoped her youth and determination would let her prevail.

She pursued Chronius, leaping over a well dug into the courtyard and chasing him inside. The building’s old doors crumbled with a single kick. A cloud of wood and stone dust filled her nostrils.

Chronius led her into an ancient hall of rotten benches and cracked columns. The fading sunset was soon replaced by serene moonlight, the Earthmoon’s orange glow refracting through broken stained glass and a hole in the ceiling. Four windows representing the Four Artifacts adorned the walls under twin balconies, with the Windsword and Firewand facing the Earthcoin and the Seacup. An unblemished statue of the Goddess Arcane stood tall at the end of the hall, her faceless visage hidden under a cowl.

Chronius hastily turned around, kicked a wooden bench at Fior, and threw another knife at her. Fior leaped over the former and deflected the latter in midair without slowing down. Her foe’s aim was pitch-perfect, but Fior’s reflexes let her block his moves in turn. She knew Chronius was trying to delay her long enough to reach an elevated position where he could snipe her at his leisure. He might have succeeded back in his prime, but age dulled his speed.

Both the Assassin and the Archer were the Rogue’s vassals, and complemented each other. Close-combat against long-range. The distance between them would determine this lethal game of tag’s outcome.

Chronius would die all the same once Fior caught him though. Only demons survived her touch because they had no soul to lose, but this murderer chose to retain his foul excuse of one. Fior would rather skewer Chronius the same way he murdered her father and watch him bleed to death for hours, but she would settle for instant death if he proved too troublesome.

“I won’t let you escape,” Fior warned him. She had worked too long for this. “No one will come to help you either.”

She had spent weeks planning this ambush and covered all the possibilities. Her butler Camilus would ensure that no one wandered near the church, including that girl, Erika. Fior briefly wondered if she was a cultist in disguise too, but locals attested that Chronius raised her from infancy. Neither could she find any hint of Knot activity in the Wisepeak area.

Strange as it sounded, Chronius appeared to have indeed retired from his cruel work.

“I’ve seen your ‘daughter.’” The very word made Fior want to puke. “Did you kill her parents too? Did you steal her from her crib with your bloodsoaked hands?”

The fact that this man could so easily set his weapons aside, clean his dirty hands, and then enjoy a quiet retirement like nothing ever happened viscerally disgusted Fior. This murderer built his happiness on the sorrow and regrets of countless innocents.

Chronius answered her questions by throwing two knives: one at her throat, the other at the ceiling. Fior hastily parried the former at the same time the second projectile hit a wooden beam. An ominous crack noise resonated across the church.

Realizing the danger, Fior hastily ducked to the left as half the roof collapsed upon her.

Tons of stone debris poured from above, crushing the benches and filling the hall with a cloud of sawdust. A few small stones hit Fior’s back as she ran, but she managed to take cover behind a somewhat intact pillar. She pulled up her scarf to breathe through the dust and waited for the collapse to end.

When half the ceiling turned into a pile of debris burying most of the hall, Fior dared take a peek from behind the column. She saw a flash of steel shine in the dark and quickly took cover. A blade cut her left cheek open, and would have taken out her eye had she proved slower. Fior winced as she felt her blood drip down her jaw.

“What have you done to Erika?” she heard Chronius ask her from afar, his voice calm but laced with cold anger. “My daughter knows nothing of my crimes.”

Fior thought ambushing the Archer in a closed-in place with no exits would give her an advantage, but his power let him notice a tiny structural defect and target it. Small objects could become projectiles, and large ones moving hazards. Now he had her pinned between a pillar and a wall with little room to manoeuver.

Good thing she came prepared.

Fior checked the knife Chronius threw at her earlier. Its blade remained stuck in the wall opposing her from a diagonal position. Fior checked the wound on her cheek, then used the form of the cut and the projectile’s angle to calculate its trajectory. Chronius struck her from an elevated place to her left; most likely the balcony leading to the belfry.

Fior had memorized the church’s layout prior to this confrontation and could think of a way to reach it quickly. She managed to catch a peek of the room, locating the debris and noticing a peculiar object untouched by the collapse.

The statue, Fior figured out after as she drew one of her aces-in-the-hole: a small light runestone hardly bigger than her thumb. The Goddess rarely smiled on her, but tonight might prove the exception.

“I’m not a monster like you,” Fior replied after gathering her breath and preparing to sprint. “I don’t kill innocent women and children.”

She threw the stone to her left.

A knife immediately intercepted it right before Fior closed her eyes. She heard the runestone shatter in a blinding flash of light. Its essence became radiance itself, filling the hall in bright bottled sunlight.

Fior rushed out of her hiding spot with her eyes closed and followed her own mental map of the room. Her senses, honed through years of training, guided her feet. She sensed a projectile miss her hair by an inch, and another bouncing off a wall nearby.

Her plan was working. The Archer mark imbued Chronius with supernatural precision and reflexes, but he still needed to see. Fighting him in a long-range duel was a doomed effort, so why bother making it fair?

“When the game is rigged, cheat,” Robin used to tell her. She would have loved to thank him for the advice before all this.

When the light died down enough for Fior to see again, she found herself facing the Goddess’ statue. She quickly climbed up it in an instant with catlike grace and used it as a platform to jump towards the balcony. Most of it remained halfway intact, save a few holes in the walkway.

Chronius faced her on the other side of it, right next to the door leading to the belfry. One of his hands covered his remaining eye and the other threw a knife at Fior upon hearing her landing. She easily dodged and retaliated with her own projectile.

Her throwing knife nearly nailed Chronius in the forehead, but he managed to dodge at the last second. Her blade cut through the left side of his head right above the ear, slicing his eyepatch and the bone below. The cloth fell off alongside strands of hair, revealing a mass of scarred flesh adorned with the Archer’s silver mark.

Chronius fled through the belfry’s door with Fior hot on his tail. He ascended upward a flight of stairs while covering his wound to the best of his ability. He was out of shape compared to his pursuer though, and quickly lost ground.

“Do you only pick fights you are certain to win, you craven bastard?!” Fior snarled from behind. “You can’t run away from me forever!”

Chronius stopped halfway through his ascent.

His sudden change in behavior took Fior aback enough for her to halt her pursuit too. She drew a dagger in one hand and kept the other free to use her lethal touch. She prepared herself for another trap or surprise attack.

Instead, Chronius wiped away the blood from his wound and stared at it in silence.

“I see it now…” he muttered to himself. “It’s my own… which I always wanted to see.”

The madman licked the blood off his fingers.

Fior suppressed a surge of disgust, then continued to climb her way to Chronius. She hardly took a step up before her foe turned around to face her. Something in his gaze and posture sent chills down her spine. His dilated pupil reminded her of Chastel’s feline eyes, and his stoic scowl swiftly turned into a frothing snarl.

Chronius grabbed a longknife strapped to his chest and leaped at her with a bestial scream.

Her prey’s startling change of behavior shook Fior to the point that she could hardly raise her dagger to protect herself. Chronius shrieked and raged like a demon, wildly striking at Fior, with the violent clash of their steel nearly sending her tumbling down the stairs.

It was like the Archer had become an entirely different person. Even his body language had changed, turning from cool and calculated to frenzied and bestial.

Is he possessed? Fior’s essence training didn’t detect any hint of demonic influence in the man. The change was entirely natural, the same way a peaceful dog might turn rabid when pushed into a corner.

Fior had heard of freak accidents where men developed different personalities after ingesting too much emotional-rich essence. Their mind splintered into many pieces, while the soul remained singular. These madmen were akin to actors, except their roles took on a life of their own.

Was this bloodthirsty beast Chronius’ true self rising to the surface once his mask of humanity slipped? It reminded Fior of Chastel in all the wrong ways, but the cat demon at least behaved more coyly. The killer facing her didn’t intend to play with his food.

He went straight for the kill.

The Assassin’s power could kill anyone in a blink, but it required direct skin contact to activate. The frenzied beast striking her didn’t give her any openings. Chronius struck and sliced and raged, his blade relentlessly slashing her. The fact he had the higher ground gave him the advantage, and Fior struggled to predict his wild movements.

Chronius had fought defensively in their previous clashes. He had tried to scare her away and tire her out rather than focus on pure offense, but the beast inside him didn’t bother with self-preservation. Fior clenched her teeth as she was forced to step down again and again by the relentless barrage of attacks, the clash of steel echoing louder than a bell’s toll.

Then she slipped.

Fior’s foot missed a step and Chronius’ knife slipped past her guard the moment she caught herself. A sharp blade struck her hip, its tip kissing her flesh and emerging from the other side. Then came the pain, sharp and intense. Fior bit her tongue to swallow a scream.

Her dagger struck Chronius in the chest somewhere below the ribs. The Archer’s blood felt so warm on her hand. She had almost forgotten its sensation since she became the Assassin; her power killed without a trace and spared her the need for bloodshed.

If Chronius felt any pain, he didn’t show it. His free hand grabbed Fior by the throat while trying to disembowel her with the other.

A fatal mistake.

Fior immediately sensed the moment their skin connected. She felt the pull of her power show her the golden thread binding a soul to its earthly vessel, the invisible fetter that allowed the Goddess to imbue living creatures with a spirit. Chronius’ own looked so thin to her, so fragile. She had killed old crooked men and vile young women, strong warriors and weaklings; in each and every case, the frontier between life and death proved to be a thin veil indeed.

Her mark burned on her thigh. Her power issued a warning that using it now would have terrible consequences, but Fior was long past caring.

She should have died fifteen years ago already.

Stripping a man of his soul usually took an instant, but Fior sensed her power rebelling when she tried to do the same with Chronius. Her mark and the Archer’s both glowed brighter than stars in the stairway’s darkness. The classes fought back against their wielders.

Kill us both! Fior pleaded with the Assassin’s mark, if it could hear her thoughts and prayers at all. Send me back to them!To Mersie, Father, Mother, everyone! Send me–

The stone step crumbled beneath Fior, and she stumbled.

The weight of Chronius pushed her down onto her back and her foe’s momentum sent him flying over her head. They both fell down the stairs, Chronius a bit more harshly than her. The sensation of her mark burning on her skin vanished, though the pain of the Archer’s knife stuck in her hip did not.

Fior’s fall ended halfway down the stairs while her foe rolled all the way to the bottom. His bestial scream turned silent with a loud crash as his head hit the ground. Fior gathered her breath, her body growing unbearably cold.

I’m losing blood. She tried to rise up without removing the knife stuck in her for fear of worsening the wound, but the pain paralyzed her. Her own legs had become weak, her elbows wading against a puddle of her own body fluids. Fior clenched her teeth and looked over her shoulder at Chronius.

Her father’s murderer lay in a puddle of blood too, one fed by the wound on his head and the dagger stuck in his chest. He looked comatose and stiffer than a corpse, but the Archer’s mark lingered nonetheless.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

He was still alive.

Fury stronger than the pain briefly surged through Fior. She tried to crawl towards Chronius to finish him off, only for a cramp to paralyze her. Her vision grew blurry.

No, no, no… Fior had given the kiss of death often enough to recognize the early signs of blood loss-induced shock. She struggled to remain awake. I’m so close…

But while her will was strong, her body had already given up. Dust covered her fading vision. She sensed something—someone—grab her shoulders and press a hand on her wound. Fior wheezed, her head struggling to peek at a form looming over her. A woman’s frame appeared cast by the moonlight.

“Mersie?” Fior whispered.

No, it couldn’t be. Mersie’s hair was blond, not black, and she was long dead, her future stolen. Could it be the Goddess Herself, coming to take her chosen Assassin to the Soulforge to be reborn anew? Or did she come to punish Fior for shedding blood in her sacred house?

Fior’s mind soon faded into the darkness. Shadows drowned the moonlight until she couldn’t see anything.

Her ears heard many things though. She heard Mersie’s screams and the gnashing noise of Chastel’s teeth closing on her bones, the screams of her mother, the droplets of her father’s blood hitting the floor, the wails of her cousins and so many others. Their voices haunted her nightmares for years; and now they followed her fall into the dark, into a deep abyss of numbness beyond life’s warmth.

She thought they would fall silent with Chronius’ death, that his murder would finally buy her the silence she craved. She hoped that her loved ones would find peace. Their ghosts instead continued to haunt her like they did for so many years.

They dragged her down into the cold.

Is this death? It had been Fior’s companion for so many years, almost like a friend. She had shared it freely and without remorse. It is so frightening…

It would have been better if Fior were to perish alone, free, and with a clear mind. Death was crueler because it refused to lift her burden. Her regrets and sorrow continued to cling to her, denying her peace and satisfaction.

Fior was used to it. She had only felt happiness once since that awful night she stepped out of the secret passage and wadded her way through an ocean of corpses. Only once.

With him.

And even then, she didn’t stray from her path. She hesitated and her commitment wavered, but she still chose to avenge the dead over honoring the living. Why would she choose otherwise? Fior should have died with them that day.

Her life had been nothing more than a brief dream.

A light pierced through the darkness. Her eyelids felt heavier than stones, her flesh numb to pain and pleasure alike. She sensed cotton underneath her fingers and linen against her back. Air struggled to enter her lungs, but the dead had no need to breathe.

Was she… alive?

Fior’s eyes struggled to open. The sunlight burned them until they managed to acclimate to it. When they did, she saw someone sitting on the other side of a long bed, with crimson hair and eyes bluer than her own. She thought he was a ghost until she heard him sigh in concern.

She recognized him instantly.

“Robin?”

What a mess.

I still couldn’t believe how close we had been to losing both of them. Had Eris not teleported to the church in time—and had we lacked the foresight of trading her emergency medical skills in case this turned ugly—then these two would have perished in a pool of their own blood.

Even then, it had been an uphill battle to keep them alive. Eris managed to stabilize them long enough for Mirokald to guide our airship to their location after burning through most of our runestone supply to power the engines, but unconscious people couldn’t consent to life-saving trades.

I thanked the Goddess for Wisepeak hosting an apothecary’s academy. The good doctors and their witchcrafting treatments saved two lives today.

For now.

I could see the anger written all over Mersie’s face. Once the shock of seeing me passed, her eyes immediately burned with seething hatred. We only managed to postpone the bloodbath.

“Where is Chronius?” Mersie asked me. I wouldn’t have minded a few more pleasantries first, such as ‘how are you?’ or ‘how long have you been since Snowdrift?’ but only one subject occupied her vengeful mind. “Did he survive?”

“He’s in the next room over,” I replied. “Wounded, but alive.”

Mersie’s expression twisted into a dark scowl. She attempted to rise up, only for the shackles binding her hands and legs to the bed to stop her. My ex-lover stared at me in disbelief. “You’ve chained me?”

“We chained you both,” I replied. I wished I didn’t have to resort to this. “This takes us back, doesn’t it? We were dating the last time this happened.”

My attempts at easing the mood with nostalgia fell flat. “Unchain me, Robin!”

“No,” I replied, kindly but firmly. “That pointless fight of yours is over.”

“That man is a murderer!” She all but started screaming at me. “He’s a cultist, a beast in human skin!”

“And he’s still a Hero at the end of the day.” If we had given a second chance to the likes of Cortaner and Eris—who had more blood on her hand than the rest of our generation put together—then I had to give Chronius the benefit of the doubt. “Besides, I can’t have you kill him under a hospital’s roof.”

“It’s not your father he murdered!” she snarled at me. Her words gnawed at my resolve, but I hid my doubts behind a mask of composure. “He’s the last of them! Once he’s gone–”

“Then what?” I asked her with all the composure I could muster. Couldn’t she see two steps ahead? “You will let his daughter kill you to complete the circle? Assuming your butler won’t take revenge on your behalf? What am I supposed to do, Mersie, let you kill each other? When does this end?”

“It ends when he dies,” Mersie insisted with a baleful glare.

“And what will happen next, assuming you survive the attempt?” I shook my head in frustration. There was no way my group could allow a Hero to murder another. “Camilus told me how you ordered him to keep that girl Erika away from the battle site, but she’s in the same building now. What are you going to tell her when you walk out of her father’s room with his blood on your hands?”

She clenched her teeth. “That the monster deserved it.”

“And what will you do when she comes for your head because she feels that you deserve death?” I pushed. “Let her kill you? Murder her too? Or will you offer her your life in penance?”

Mersie’s guilty silence was an answer in itself.

She saw the similarities between her and Erika. She knew where that grudge would lead, as did I. Their conflict would continue to spiral further and further. Only the actors would change.

“If I must,” Mersie replied, so low I almost didn’t catch it.

I blinked in disbelief. I prayed I’d misheard. “What?”

“I will offer my life,” she said, a bit more firmly. “If I must…”

I suddenly realized my mistake. Mersie did consider her quest’s aftermath. Whether she defeated Chronius or not, she never intended to survive the battle.

Mersie had a death wish. No wonder she blew off any chance at a normal life.

I cursed myself for not noticing it sooner. Was she trying to atone for her crimes in some twisted way? Or join her dead family after completing her mission? Whatever the case, I couldn’t let my oldest friend throw away her life like this.

I had to consider my words very carefully. Every sentence counted.

“Mersie, dying won’t bring you redemption–”

“She’s still trapped in my house, Robin,” she interrupted me, her voice filled with sorrow and despair. My old lover looked down at her bedsheet, her gaze devoid of hope. “Along with the others. Their souls haunt its blighted walls and won’t pass on. When I close my eyes, I hear them calling out to me…”

My hands clenched into fists. I learned from my visit to the Deadgate that souls didn’t work that way. Only powers like mine could shackle them. The mirages haunting House Salvadoreen were nothing more than echoes and memories, the same as the illusory remnants that we met in the north.

I knew Mersie wouldn’t listen to a rational argument. The ghosts tormenting her existed as much inside her own head as those inside the long-sealed Salvadoreen Manor.

“They will never rest until I avenge them, Robin,” Mersie said, her hands trembling. “I must do it. For their sake.”

“Those ghosts will fail to find peace even if you succeed, Mersie,” I countered. “Blights only disappear when drowned in hopes and dreams. You can’t pour blood on an open wound and expect it to close. What would you do if you kill Chronius and find that the curse lingers nonetheless?”

Mersie didn’t respond. Maybe she had considered the question once, but found herself afraid of facing the answer. She had to know deep down that her crusade wouldn’t let her find peace.

Mersie had spent decades focusing on tracking down her family’s murderers without giving thought to how she would rebuild her life afterward. Chronius’ death would give her no more sense of closure than Chastel’s. Hence she would rather take death as the easy way out.

I took her hand into my own. Mersie could kill with a single touch, but her grip was awfully weak and her skin so terribly cold. She felt like a corpse lingering on the Deadgate’s threshold.

“Mersie?” When she failed to answer me, I gathered my breath. “Fiorella?”

Hearing her true name seemed to jolt her back to the land of the living. I guessed it had been years since someone called her this way. Her own butler stuck to ‘Milady,’ and so few knew the woman hiding behind the Mersie mask.

“We can destroy the Blight haunting your home without killing anyone,” I promised her. “We’ve succeeded in Snowdrift. We can do the same with Goldport.”

“I can’t forgive that man, Robin,” she whispered, though she didn’t pull her hand away. “Ever.”

“I never asked you to.” I had no right to demand that of her, and I fully empathized with her desire for payback. I hadn’t forgiven Florence of Arcadia for unleashing the Purple Plague that slew my parents either. “But death isn’t the only punishment available. Sometimes, life is crueler.”

Colmar and I had left Florence alive so she would bear the weight of failure for the rest of her miserable existence. Belgoroth probably wished he was dead too, trapped in his broken sword for the Goddess knew how long it would take to purify his mark too.

I wasn’t willing to let Mersie kill Chronius, but I couldn’t let him go free either.

“My powers offer other options than perpetuating a cycle of murders,” I insisted. “You’ve already tried settling this feud the Assassin way, Fior. Will you let me try to do it the Merchant way?”

Mersie stared at me for a good while, her hand squeezing mine. Though we were no longer together, our bond remained stronger than an ancient oak. I was her closest friend, and she trusted me enough to tell me of her true identity back in Snowdrift.

More than anything, she knew that I always fulfilled my promises.

“What do you have in mind?” she finally asked, albeit tentatively.

I suppressed a sigh of relief. Mersie was willing to leave the door unlocked. It was now up to me to open it.

“A settlement,” I said. “Backed by a contract.”

I exited her bedroom a good hour later, gently closing the door behind me. Soraseo stood watch over the hallway outside alongside four inquisitors, though they were mostly there to keep the two patients away from each other. My fellow Hero met my gaze without a word. By now, I could tell what she thought without the use of words.

“There’s hope,” I said, my gaze facing the bedroom left of Mersie’s. “If he’s willing to listen.”

Soraseo nodded sagely. “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.”

I accepted the subtle encouragement, pat Soraseo on her shoulder, and then entered Chronius’ room.

When our classes were first assigned, a childhood spent reading tales of the Glorious Generation’s tales made me picture the Archer as a dashing rogue living in the woods, robbing the rich to give to the poor. The bed-chained man in front of me couldn’t be farther apart from this mental image. He was way too old for a start, and traded any charm he might have for stoic composure. Few men would sit so calmly when chained to a bed with more bandages than skin in the presence of an unknown individual, even one as charming as dashing as myself.

Hard to believe he once filled graveyards on the Lord of Wrath’s behalf.

We both assessed one another in an instant. The Archer’s right eye stared at me with calm acceptance, the mark on the other side glowing slightly. His power likely picked up on each of my body language’s details.

I can’t deceive this one. I recognized Chronius’ serene predisposition not for the calm confidence of a man in control, but the grim acceptance of a condemned criminal facing the noose. He thinks he’s already doomed.

“I’m not here to kill you, Mister Chronius,” I reassured him after sitting on a chair near the bed. “My name is Robin Waybright.”

“You are the Merchant.” Chronius’ gaze lingered on my hand’s mark. “I’ve heard of you.”

“In a good way, I hope.” Interesting. Either Eris mentioned me when she visited the Archer, or he liked to keep an ear to the ground. I considered the latter likely considering his former Knot membership. “You don’t strike me as a man of pleasantries, so I’ll skip straight to the chase. Do you want to die?”

Chronius considered my question for a few seconds before answering, “No.”

“You took longer than most to decide.”

“I do not fear death,” Chronius replied flatly. “But I have someone to live for.”

“Your adoptive daughter, I assume?” An easy guess. I’d met Erika a few hours earlier—quite the friendly gal—and she looked nothing like Chronius. “Eris is entertaining her downstairs. We told her you had an accident near the church and that you required medical treatment before we could allow for a visit.”

Chronius’ eyebrow arched ever so slightly. So he could be surprised.

“Will you let her?” he asked, his voice laced with disbelief. “Visit me?”

“Of course. You aren’t a prisoner.” I glanced at the shackles. “These chains are for your own safety.”

Chronius briefly studied me, his power no doubt trying to decipher if I meant what I said. The Archer couldn’t force the truth out of someone like the Inquisitor, but I doubt anyone could lie to his face without getting caught.

“You visited the Assassin first,” Chronius guessed.

I didn’t deny it. “I wonder what gave it away.”

“Your fingers,” he replied. “You held her hand.”

“You have a sharp eye.” I crossed my legs and opened up the negotiations. “I’m here to settle the feud that opposes the two of you. Mersie agreed to bury the hatchet and let you keep your head on your shoulders, for a price.”

Chronius straightened up. He hadn’t expected a peaceful settlement. “What kind?”

“You owe her for the loss of her family, so she is willing to let you go if you can return them back to life.”

“I can’t do that.” Chronius looked away. The guilt and sorrow on his face didn’t strike me as fake. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

I assumed as much, but this helped clarify the feud’s root and context.

“In that case, since you owe her a life, she’s willing to spare yours if you dedicate it to her,” I said. “Your indentured servitude will begin with helping her clean the Blight haunting her family’s home and then extend to however long she sees fit. A magical contract drafted by yours truly will ensure that you cannot disobey her, nor free yourself from your servitude until either Mersie grants you back your freedom or fifteen years have passed.”

Chronius scoffed, his bandages straining against his lean frame. “You offer me slavery over death?”

“Indentured servitude,” I insisted, both to Chronius and to myself. This settlement left a sore taste in my mouth as well. “Believe me, you can’t fathom how much I argued to tone down your punishment and how much I dislike it.”

I often commuted harsh sentences into community service back when I assisted Alaire in doling out justice, but this went far beyond it. Chronius was right, it did approach slavery. This outcome gnawed at my principles, both as the Merchant or as a human being.

My bargaining position was unfortunately slim. Whatever good deeds he had done over the last years, this man did help murder Mersie’s parents, friends, and other loved ones without paying for it. My former lover wouldn’t settle for anything less than a harsh punishment. We also couldn’t let the Archer rot in jail for years either.

Complex problems lacked easy solutions.

“The contract will include clauses that will prevent Mersie from abusing her position, such as sending you to certain death, inflicting harm on you, or denying you your basic rights,” I explained. “You will enjoy the same perks and protection as a valued employee and bodyguard, but unfortunately for you, that’s the best you’ll get. You’d already be dead or in a cell if not for your class. The list of your crimes is frighteningly long.”

Chronius snorted at the offer. “I’ve served so many masters,” he said. “It always ends in blood and tears. My… my sickness will see to that.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” I replied. “Your daughter informed me that you had a condition requiring heavy medication, though she didn’t give me the details. I can use my power to strip you of it for good.”

“You can’t remove the urge,” Chronius said with fatalism. “I’ve tried everything. The best I could do was bury it.”

“I’ve stripped a Demon Ancestor of all the world’s hatred and cured countless of the Purple Plague. I can deal with your illness…” I leaned in his direction to better face him. “If you want to be cured, that is.”

A glimmer of hope shone in Chronius’ skeptical gaze. It was brief, like a shooting star in the night sky of his own doubts and denial, but I caught it nonetheless.

I didn’t have all the details about Chronius’ condition, but the potions that he took according to his daughter fit treatments used for asylum patients. His former Knot of Wrath membership led me to assume he suffered from mood swings or violent episodes.

I felt some sympathy for this man in spite of his crimes. I could survive my body betraying me, but my own mind? My own sense of reality? It would make me doubt everything.

“Mersie is also willing to provide a generous financial settlement for Erika’s education,” I added to ease his burden. “She’ll be taken care of.”

Chronius pondered my words in silence for a while. I couldn’t blame him for his thoughtfulness. The deal I proposed wasn’t exactly ideal, even if it let him keep his head and gain a cure for his condition. He would spend his last years serving another rather than raise his daughter in peace. Chronius enjoyed his current life enough to fight the Assassin over it.

“What’s the alternative?” he asked me, tentatively.

Do you really want me to say it?

“Easy.” I shrugged my shoulders. “You and Mersie will both die.”

Mersie refused any outcome where Chronius wouldn’t pay a heavy price for his crimes, and his adoptive daughter wouldn’t agree to let her father’s murderer step away. If both parties insisted on pursuing their feud to its logical conclusion, then I could only see one way to end this spiral.

“The Fatebinder will recall both of your marks, executing you in the process, then have every party sign a magical contract compelling them to surrender their right to take revenge on either party’s behalf,” I explained. “Your daughter will be orphaned and Mersie’s butler left jobless, but they’ll be free to resume their lives without fear of retaliation. This feud will be settled at last and everyone will be worse for it.”

As much as I loved Mersie from our past history, I was fully willing to go through with this option if she and Chronius proved unreasonable enough to settle for this. I couldn’t exactly save people who refused the chances I gave them.

This ghastly deal was the best alternative option I could come up with. Eris informed me that Lady Alexios was unwilling to let a Hero slay another. While she would rather keep both the current Archer and Assassin alive if possible, she feared establishing a dangerous precedent more.

Chronius didn’t appear surprised by my counteroffer. He must have guessed that he would likely end up hanged in a noose one day or another. The peaceful life he’d enjoyed for so many years had been purchased with the blood of innocents, and his time had come for him to pay it back with interest.

I was a Merchant. I could only offer compromises.

“If you can think of a better alternative, I can draft a new proposal and present it to Mersie,” I told Chronius. His bargaining position was slim, but I was willing to entertain other options.

“That won’t be necessary, Lord Merchant.” Chronius gathered his breath. “I… I accept your terms.”