Black Fletching

The back room of the Broken Mast smelled like tar, stale beer, and that acrid stink of sweat. Oren Makk sat with his back to the wall, watching the door. Old habit. Good habit. The kind that kept you breathing.

The man across from him looked like every other Southmere merchant—soft hands, expensive coat, the kind of face that smiled while lying. He’d introduced himself as Siward Lenn, trader in grain and timber, a man looking to hire.

“I have a problem,” Lenn said, sliding a folded parchment across the table. “Imperial Trade Minister. Been sniffing around my warehouses for three months. Audits, inspections, asking questions I don’t care to answer.”

Oren didn’t touch the parchment. “And?”

“And I need the problem handled.” Lenn’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Quietly. Professionally.”

“That’ll cost you.”

“I’m aware.” Lenn produced a leather satchel and set it on the table with a heavy thud. “Five hundred marks. Half in Imperial silver, half in bearer notes drawn on the Southmere mint. Five hundred more on completion. Same arrangement—we meet here for final payment.”

Oren opened the satchel. A coin pouch sat atop folded parchments—bearer notes, each one stamped and sealed. Legitimate enough to cash at any moneylender. He pulled out the pouch and counted: two hundred fifty marks in Imperial silver, with a few wolf-marked Northmere coins mixed in. Reaver mint—the kind of silver that bought loyalty in the North and started wars in the South.

“You pay in dangerous coin,” Oren said, holding up one of the wolf-marked pieces.

“Silver's silver. Still spends the same.” Lenn’s expression didn’t change.

Oren dropped the coin back, cinched the pouch closed. “Tell me about him.”

Lenn unfolded the parchment—a detailed sketch of a man in his fifties, thin-faced, with the kind of eyes that noticed too much. “Corbett Druthe. Lives in the Upper Quarter, travels with two guards during the day. Takes bribes but never enough. The kind of man who thinks praying to Tharos and keeping his own ledgers clean makes him untouchable.”

“Family?”

“Wife. Two daughters. Don’t touch them.”

Oren nodded. He didn’t kill women or children. Not out of morality—just pragmatism. Those contracts drew the wrong kind of attention. Women and children brought priests, tribunals, and vendettas that didn’t end. “Timeline?”

“Soon as possible. He’s scheduled to testify before the Imperial customs tribunal next week. I’d prefer he didn’t make it.”

Oren stood and the chair scraped against the floor, loud in the small room. He tucked the satchel inside his coat. The weight settled against his ribs—half in metal, half in promises. Both worth dying for and enough to go home. “Three days,” he said.

Lenn smiled. “I knew you were the right man for this.”

Oren walked out of the Broken Mast and into the crooked streets of Southmere, Vareland’s grin on the sea—salt, bribes, and rope-burn. He disappeared like tidewater into a drain.

***

Corbett Druthe kept predictable hours.

Morning prayers at the Penitent's Hall, some drafty temple to Tharos. Midday at the customs house, reviewing manifests and signing seizure orders. Evenings at his home in the Upper Quarter—all narrow streets and expensive townhouses, lamplight glowing warm through leaded glass.

Oren watched from the roof across the street as Druthe closed his door behind him. A woman’s silhouette passed by the window to greet him—his wife, probably—and the faint, off-key sound of a lute drifted out into the cold evening air.

For a moment, Oren let himself remember.

His mother baking bread, humming under her breath as if the world couldn’t reach her in that kitchen.

His father’s workshop after—warm with the smell of sawdust and pitch, the rasp of a handsaw biting oak. Rough and strong hands guiding his when he was seven, teaching him to plane a board true.

His father’s letters had begged him to come back—to take up shipwright work, honest labor, a life that didn’t end with a noose or a blade in the dark.

His father had written three months ago. The letter lived in Oren’s pack, creased soft from being opened and shut like a wound that refused to seal.

The door’s always open, son. No matter how long you’ve been gone. You’ve got good hands—steady. You could make something with hands like that.

Oren snapped back and looked down at his own hands. Callused in the wrong places. Built for killing, not building.

One more job, he told himself. One more, and then home.

But after tonight, that could change.

***

Oren watched for two days, patient as stone.

Druthe was careful. Never alone. Two guards during the day, one at night. His wife and daughters inside the townhouse—collateral Oren wouldn’t touch. The customs house was too public. The shrine too exposed.

No clean approach. Not yet.

***

On the third day, the opportunity arrived.

Oren was perched on a rooftop across from the customs house when a courier arrived. He didn’t look like a courier. He handed Druthe a letter and left. He didn’t wait for a signed receipt, a seal, or any coin—just turned and went.

Oren shrugged it off. No matter.

Druthe opened it immediately.

Oren pulled the collapsible spyglass from his coat—Imperial naval issue, artificer-made, brass and precision glass, worth more than his bow, stolen. He extended it and focused it on Druthe.

The minister’s face went tight as he read. His eyes scanned the page twice, then he folded the letter carefully and tucked it inside his coat. He looked around—quick, nervous—then snapped a quiet order to his guards. They peeled off toward the gate while he walked away from the customs house alone, moving through the merchant’s district like he expected a knife in his back.

Oren let him go. He’d already seen enough. Through the spyglass, he’d caught fragments of the text:

…documents proving smuggling operation…

…Warehouse Three, south pier…

…retrieve before they’re moved…

…midnight…

…wait under the eaves—knock twice for the dock watchman…

…Come alone…

He collapsed the spyglass and slipped it back into his coat. He didn’t need to trail Druthe any longer. He had the place. He had the hour. And men like Druthe—drunk on righteousness, believing duty was armor enough—always went alone.

Perfect.

He had six hours to prepare.

***

Oren Makk didn’t believe in the afterlife, but he believed in patterns.

And the pattern said Corbett Druthe would die tonight.

He crouched on the warehouse roof, rain drumming against clay tiles and soaking through his cloak. Below, the docks of Southmere spread out like a carcass left to rot—crooked piers sagging into Vareland’s black water, ships creaking at their moorings, ropes groaning with each swell. The stink of fish guts and tar was so thick it clung to the back of his throat.

He checked his gear one last time. Recurve bow, composite horn and sinew, commissioned from a master bowyer in the border cities and worth more than most men earned in a year. Six arrows in the quiver at his hip, each one fletched in black and tipped with steel.

One arrow. One death. Clean and professional, the way it should be.

Midnight came. The rain grew heavier.

A figure appeared in the muddy yard below, cloaked and hooded, moving toward the warehouse. Druthe’s build. Druthe’s gait. Alone, just like Oren expected.

The man reached the warehouse and stopped beneath the overhang, just out of the worst of the rain. He stood there a moment, listening, head slightly bowed as if he expected a door to open—or a voice to call his name.

Then he shifted, turning to look back across the yard and the pier, checking the dark the way careful men did.

Oren’s pulse didn’t quicken. It never did. That was the trick—treat every kill like a job, not a sin. You didn’t think about the man. You thought about the mechanics. Wind speed. Distance. The way a body moved when the arrow hit.

He nocked the arrow, drew, and held.

The figure lifted a hand at last, half-turned as if to listen once more, ready to knock.

Oren exhaled slowly and released.

The arrow flew true, a black streak cutting through the heavy rain. It punched into the figure’s chest with a wet, heavy sound—meat and bone giving way.

The man staggered, one hand clawing uselessly at the shaft, then collapsed onto the cobbles.

Oren was already moving. He slung the bow across his back and dropped from the roof, boots hitting mud without a sound. Across the yard in silence, one hand on his knife, eyes scanning for movement.

Nothing. Just rain and darkness and the slow creak of ships at anchor.

He knelt beside the body and rolled it over.

The cloak fell away.

And Oren eyed the coat underneath. Wool. Patched at the elbows. The kind a shipwright wore.

Then the hands. Rough and familiar.

The smell hit him before the face did—pine pitch and old sawdust under rain.

Then the face. It wasn’t Minister Corbett Druthe staring up at him.

It was his father, his eyes wide and confused, still holding a flicker of life.

“No.” The word came out broken, a sound Oren hadn’t made in years. His hands moved without thought, pressing against the wound even though he knew—knew—it was already too late. Blood pulsed hot between his fingers, mixing with rain and mud.

“Oren?” The voice was a wet rasp, fading even as he spoke. “I... I got your letter...”

His father’s hand fumbled at his coat, pulled out a folded piece of parchment. Blood smeared across it as he pressed it into Oren’s hand.

“You said... you wanted to see me...” His father’s breath hitched. “Said you were ready... to come home...”

Oren unfolded the letter with shaking hands. It read:

Father,

I’m ready to stop running. Meet me at Warehouse Three, south pier, midnight. I want to come home.

—Oren

“Why?” his father whispered, staring up at him with dying eyes that still held hope, still held love.

Then the light went out.

Oren knelt there in the rain, the letter clutched in his bloody hand, and for the first time in ten years he didn’t know what to do.

They’d been estranged for most of that decade. He hadn’t answered the last letter. Hadn’t answered any of them.

Sentiment was a liability in his line of work—looking back got you killed.

The only reply he’d ever sent was an arrow.

Now his father was dead, and Oren had killed him.

Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate.

He looked up.

Men stepped out of the warehouse—six of them, armed with cudgels and blades. Not dock workers. Not guards. Hired muscle.

And walking behind them, calm as a man taking an evening stroll, was Siward Lenn.

Oren surged to his feet, hand going to his knife. “What the fuck is this, Lenn? What did you do?”

Lenn’s face was blank. Professional. “I did my job, Makk.”

“This isn’t Druthe!” Oren’s voice cracked. He held up the blood-smeared letter. “This—someone sent my father here! Someone tricked—”

“I know.” Lenn’s voice was flat.

Another figure stepped out of the shadows behind him.

Older. Gray-haired. The kind of face that had learned to smile while signing death warrants.

“Oren Makk,” the man said, his voice calm and pleasant. “My name is Lord Cullis Brame.”

One of the cudgel-men drifted wide and slid in behind Oren, quiet as a dock shadow, cutting off the roofline and the street in the same move.

Brame gestured toward the man by his side. “And Siward Lenn here is not a merchant. He’s my associate. Has been for two decades.”

Oren’s mind reeled. The contract. The tavern. The coin. All of it—

“You set this up.”

Lenn wouldn’t meet his eyes; he rubbed his fingers together like he was trying to wipe ink off skin that wouldn’t come clean.

“Of course I did.” Brame stepped closer, hands folded behind his back. “But I needed to be certain I had the right man first.”

He nodded to his men.

Behind Brame, someone unhooked a yard lantern from its nail and let it swing lower; the light thinned, and the rain took what was left.

Two others disappeared into the warehouse. When they returned, they were dragging someone between them.

His face was a ruin—split lip, blackened eyes, nose broken and crusted with blood. His hands were bound, and when they shoved him forward he collapsed to his knees on the muddy cobblestone.

One of them hooked a fist in the beaten man’s hair and held his head up, forcing Oren to look.

Somewhere beyond the docks, a whistle sounded—short, answered a heartbeat later—then went quiet again under the rain.

“Do you recognize my competitor here?” Brame asked, gesturing at the man. “His name is Jesper Roan. Three years ago, the noble lord hired you to kill someone. My son. A business dispute, he told you. Needed to send me a message.”

Oren remembered. The merchant’s boy. Soft. Stupid. An alley. Quick work.

“Took me over two years to confirm Roan ordered the kill,” Brame said. “Another year interrogating every gutter-snipe and middleman until I found the bastard who was hired to draw the knife. Good assassins are shadows, my friend, but sometimes the invisible may be seen by observant spectators. Eventually I got a description. Eventually I found you.” He smiled, cold. “But I needed to be sure.”

He gestured at Roan’s ruined face. “So three nights ago, I finally played my hand. I grabbed him. Beat him until he confessed and agreed to help point you out. Then we set the trap—Lenn hires an assassin at the Broken Mast. Roan watches from upstairs, half-dead, and confirms: yes, that’s the man.” Brame’s smile widened. “Only then did I know that I was setting up the right man. Or should I say, the right killer.”

Oren felt the ground shift. The hiring. The tavern. Roan had been there the whole time.

“Once I confirmed it was you,” Brame continued, “the rest was simple. Lenn gave you a target—the illustrious Minister of Trade.” He laughed softly. “There is no Minister Corbett Druthe. Never was. Just an actor I hired—along with half the customs office I already own. Every routine you watched, every guard, every player. Even the letter you have in your hand—all theater. When you have magistrates and dock clerks on payroll, staging a minister for three days is easy work.”

He gestured at the ground by Oren, at his father’s body. “And your dear father? A heartfelt note from a homesick son with the promise of returning to the nest. He came here tonight thinking he’d get his son back.” Brame’s voice went quiet. “Instead, his son put an arrow through his heart.”

Oren stared at the body. His father. The letter. The perfect shot.

“You took my son from me,” Brame said. “So I took your father from you. Quite simple.”

One of Brame’s men handed him a blade. Oren’s blade, lifted from his belt while he’d knelt beside his father’s body.

“I could let you run,” Brame said thoughtfully, testing the weight of the knife. “Let you live with the guilt. That would be a prison worse than any cell, wouldn’t it? Spending the rest of your life knowing you murdered your own father.”

He walked over to Roan, who was trembling, eyes wide with terror.

“But I think I’d rather watch you hang.”

He drove the blade into Roan’s throat.

The man choked, blood spraying across the rain-soaked stone. He clawed at the wound, gurgled, then collapsed face-first into the muck.

Brame walked over to Oren and wiped the blade on the assassin's cloak and tossed it onto the ground beside the dead.

“Two murders,” Brame said. “Both with your weapons. The arrow in his chest and the bow on your shoulder. Your bloody blade by Roan’s body. And my men here will swear they saw you kill them both.”

He gestured to the shadows. “The city guard will be here shortly. Word’s already been sent. A tragic scene—a notorious assassin, finally caught.”

The henchmen stepped back, forming a loose circle. Waiting.

In the distance, Oren heard boots on cobblestone. Shouts. Torches flickering through the rain.

The city guard, right on schedule.

Oren looked down at the blood on his hands. At the arrow—black fletching, perfect shot.

He’d spent ten years being good at one thing: killing people for money. No attachments. No sentiment. No mistakes.

And the only mistake he’d ever made was the one that mattered.

Brame turned and walked away, his men following. Lenn lingered for a moment, then slipped into the shadows.

Oren looked down at the blade lying in the mud. He could pick it up and throw it. He could still fight. Could take three, maybe four of Brame’s men before they brought him down. Could run for the roofline.

His weight shifted toward the first step of a run—old habit tugging hard.

He stayed and let the roofline go.

One last look at his father’s face—still holding that fleeting trace of hope, of forgiveness—and he let the blade lie.

The guards arrived—eight of them, swords drawn, torches blazing.

They found Oren Makk kneeling beside two bodies. A black-fletched arrow in one. A bloody blade beside the other.

They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t need to.

By dawn, the gallows were ready.

And Oren Makk, who’d killed thirty-seven men in ten years and never once felt guilt, finally understood the only truth that mattered.

That’ll cost you, his father used to say.

Some prices were paid in coin.

Others were paid in blood.