Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Three

 Notes: On with the story! Have some retrospective and revenge.

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Three

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Chapter Three

 

There are no buses at this time of night. Ciro walks home with his hands in his pockets. He only pulls them out once, to check his phone and make sure his videos have been delivered. Payment is speedy, and he smiles with satisfaction as he sees the money appear in his account. Fifteen thousand dollars will keep him going for a long time—it’s a pittance compared to what he used to make, but he lives more simply now.

Once I made fifty thousand dollars for proving a politician was sleeping with his opponent’s wife.

He walks for almost two hours before he finally makes it to his current slice of paradise, a third-story walk up that smells like mildew. There’s a lock on the front door of the building, but it’s just for show, and when he walks in he sees two men talking furtively in the corner. They’re doing some sort of drug deal, and one of them puts a hand on the knife at his hip as he makes eye contact with Ciro. Ciro just shakes his head and starts climbing the stairs, leaving them whispering to each other down below.

Once I made a hundred thousand dollars for proving a vegan cosmetics company was using animal products in their signature line.

Ciro’s door does have a lock, which yields quickly to his key. He tries not to use magic now when he can help it. It always leaves his fingers numb, and he’s already practically lost feeling in his hands after the stunt he pulled in the warehouse. He lets himself in, closes the door, and leans against it for a moment with a sigh. His feet hurt.

Someone taps on the window. Ciro smiles, then heads over to the single-pane glass and pushes it up. The frame screams from years of rot and swelling, but the window rises nonetheless, and then his ravens are hopping inside. One of them caws.

“Quiet,” he says. “Jesus, there’s five of you? Shut up before you draw attention to yourselves.” Five is more than he’s allowed around him at once since he first went on the run thirteen months ago, but he can’t bring himself to drive them away. Having them so close is a comfort, and his hands are already starting to tingle now that he’s surrounded with his own power.

It’s a nice feeling. Comforting. Decadent, even, after so long apart.

Once I made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for following a man to a secret rendezvous with a foreign agent.

One of the birds pecks his hand, and Ciro waves it off. “I’m fine.”

Peck.

“Knock it off.”

Peck-peck.

“Fine. Fuck, you’re worse than Mom.” He swallows around the lump in his throat and goes to the tiny fridge in the corner—it’s a studio apartment, so no separate kitchen. He gets out the remnants of a smoothie he bought a few days ago and chugs it. Hydration and nutrition, all in one go. He throws the empty bottle in the trash, then looks at his birds. “Happy now?” There’s a mutinous light in their eyes, but no one does any more pecking. Instead, they set up a preening chain, working on each other’s feathers with a single-minded devotion that sends simple pleasure reverberating through Ciro’s body. He groans as he falls back onto his futon—ugly as sin and lumpy as hell, but it came with the place—and finally lets himself relax.

It’s hard, living on his own like this. It’s only getting harder. Not making a living so much, he’s got that handled, but even there he’s got to be careful about drawing the wrong kind of attention. But just…the solitude. The loneliness. He misses his family, even though so many of them are objectively awful. He wishes he could see his mother again, not that she’s capable of recognizing him anymore.

Once I made half a million dollars for finding a man who was looking for a new life. I found him, I gave his new identification over to the people who were searching for him, and I looked away. When I looked back, he was gone.

Ciro tries not to feel sorry for himself. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. The way he grew up, so privileged and powerful, so sure of his own superiority for so long, he knows better than anyone just how little he deserved pity, much less compassion. He was used by his family, sure, but he’s not an idiot. It took a damn long time for him to discover his own personal breaking point, and many lives were ruined by his work before that. Even knowing what he does about the last job he did, he still might not have run if it weren’t for the decision they forced on him.

“Nephele will be a perfectly acceptable match,” his father said from behind his desk, not even meeting his son’s eyes.

“She’s a psychopath!” Ciro burst out as he paced. He’s been unable to sit, and frankly couldn’t understand how his father could be so calm either. “She tried to murder Annette!”

“That was regrettable behavior,” his father allowed, “but she didn’t succeed.”

“Annette is still dead.”

“An unfortunate accident.” At least his father did look genuinely regretful about that. “She would have been the ideal partner for you, obviously, but…”

Ciro whirled so fast he dislodged his bird from his shoulder. “Nephele is my first cousin.”

“Cousin marriages were common in much of the world across most of history.”

So were fucked up babies, not that his father would care. Ciro tried a different tactic. “She hates me.”

His father had smiled. “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. If she hated you, she’d have tried to murder you, not Annette. Nephele loves you very much, and you can turn that to your advantage.”

“I can’t.” He’d shaken his head. “I just…I can’t marry her.” When he thought about touching Nephele, about being forced into a relationship where they’d be expected to procreate, his stomach nearly turned itself inside out. “Father, please, don’t make me do this.”

Double growls started up behind him. Ciro didn’t have to look to know that his father’s Dobermans were on their feet now, ears pricked as they readied themselves to punish him. Ciro flinched. He’d been punished by his father’s dogs before, hard enough that he still had scars.

“Ciro.” His father got to his feet and came around the desk to him. He framed Ciro’s face in his hands, leaned in close, and said, “This is your only option. You need to make the best of it.”

“But—”

A sharp nip to the back of his calf almost sent him to his knees, but his father’s grip on his head was suddenly unbreakable. “There is no ‘but,’” his father had told him. “No ‘or.’ You will do this, for the sake of the family.” He’d patted Ciro’s cheek, hard, then let him go. Ciro had staggered so hard he almost fell then, and his raven cawed with concern.

“You should have chosen crows,” his father said as he went back to his desk. “They’re so much more maneuverable. Hopefully your children will do better, with someone like Nephele as a model.” He’d raised his eyes toward Ciro once last time, and they were as devoid of emotion as he’d ever seen. “Now get out.”

Ciro’s drawn out of his memories by the sound of footsteps in the hallway. He sharpens his hearing—two sets of footsteps, and a familiar whisper of voices. The idiots from downstairs. He can smell the knife—freshly oiled, well cared for. He can smell the alcohol on their breath, the liquid courage they used to come after him. All because, what, he saw them doing a drug deal? Paranoid fuckers.

They stop outside his door. Count down from three. Ciro lazily lolls his head in that direction. His ravens stop preening, going from fluffed to sleek, and—

The door slams open—slams, but makes no noise when it hits the wall. Two birds fly into their faces as they charge into the room, beaks precise, wings brutal. It takes fewer than five seconds for both of them to lose the ability to see. One of them screams something in another language—Polish, maybe? and tried to grab and slice, but the raven is like smoke, melting away the second his fingers touch it. They peck and beat until they’re half the size they were when they started and the men have dropped their weapons, hands up and quivering as they try to protect their brutalized faces.

Two more birds fly straight at them—and into them. Straight into their chests. A moment later, the men stop screaming. They stand up and lower their hands, and Ciro stares with satisfaction at the pure black of their eyes.

“Take them for a long walk,” he says, and his magic obeys him, turning the men around and sending them back the way they came. They’ll wander through the night and into the day until his magic finally runs out, and when they finally revive they won’t know where they are or how they ended up there.

They certainly won’t remember Ciro.

They leave, and the door shuts behind them. The two diminished birds merge into a single large one, and the fifth raven comes over to perch on Ciro’s shoulder and begin to preen his hair. It’s pure comfort, and he smiles even as his hands go numb once more.

Once I made fifteen thousand dollars exposing a fraud who was tormenting his brother in exchange for power.

Now that…that’s a good night’s work.