…you try to sneak up and kill him.

There is no other way. It would take forever to move all the way around the building, and waiting could have you here all night! You made good time in getting here, which you don’t want to squander, and for all the risks, you have the drop on him.

The challenge of this, outside of killing him quietly and killing a fellow human being in general, will be not alerting him before you close the distance. He occupies the space a ways past the buildings corner, so much so that he was hidden by the rising slope of the roof as you approached. That means that you will have to get around the corner and approach him from the side, rather than the back. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem though as the corner holds many planks, rounding it out as they press against the slate and allowing you to get closer without needing to enter too much of his peripheral vision. With one hand steadying yourself on the wall, you draw your blade and take a step forward, willing the wood not to creak. For all the black paint on your stiletto, it still manages to gleam ominously in the moonlight.

You try to put your weight through your arm, into solid stone rather than the planks below, leaving your step light and your progress slow, until you leave it behind to round as little of the corner as you dare. Falling on the roof here looks like a sure way to enter the building straight through the ceiling. The man still stands, leaning on the low wall and looking outward with glazed eyes, deep in thought. If he’s contemplating the meaning of life then he’s probably not going to like your input. Your hand sweats on the dagger. Nervousness fills you step by step. You recall the surgeon’s books you studied and the crude diagrams within. There are, as you discovered in your grim but necessary research, no books on how to kill people; the closest you found was, perhaps ironically, a manual for a field surgeon, which had a section dealing with triage for soldiers, mainly focusing on crossbow wounds, as well as the usual stabbings and lacerations one might encounter in such a profession. Things like ‘if a person is stabbed here then they’re dead’ was quite morbidly illuminating. Beyond that, the book contained a lot of jargon you still don’t understand, but it did teach you something; why being stabbed in a particular place might kill you. It cost a small fortune to rent it, so you’re going to use it.

You remember all this as you silently wrestle with a problem; namely ‘should you stab him in the heart or the diaphragm’? Stilettos, as it happens, are not terribly good for throats, so they must be aimed for vital organs, and from what you gathered from the books, either would be a way to stop him from making noise. The heart, obviously, works, but you could see no reason why stabbing someone in the diaphragm wouldn’t halt their breath permanently, leaving them critically winded until a silent **** claimed them. It’s just a hunch though; it’s not like you could ask people.

After a moment’s consideration, you realise that you’re just distracting yourself. The situation is too important for anything but what you know will work. As you close the distance, the Gods show their favour as the man turns his head away from you, distracted by a distant bird taking flight from the islands woods. It’s all you need.

The board beneath your feet clunks loudly as you put your full weight on it, jolting it with your form and movement. It’s a necessity as you swing your arm, and the noise rings at the same moment the blade deflects jarringly between his ribs and buries itself between them. You swear you feel the last twitch of his heart shudder up the hilt and into your fingertips. He never saw it coming.

What follows is a macabre dance as the man, gasping and twitching in his final moments, both loses strength and flails himself as best he can, limply reaching for the spot in his back. He topples and you have to let go of the knife to grip him, stopping him from falling over the edge, dragging him instead to the boardwalk floor. You’ve read about deaths twitches, but his feeble gurgles and lame grasping hands last for too long and have you questioning your accuracy, as well as other things...

‘He’s a pirate’ you remind yourself ‘One serving under a captain that does not deal in mercy. How many men and women has this man murdered or defiled?’

His response to your unasked question is to gurgle wetly, mournfully. For all his evil, you can’t see him as anything other than a man in the throes of a painful ****. You reach down and pull out the blade, needing a foot placed in his lower back to free it completely. It grinds audibly on bone before his feeble movement stills; the plug finally pulled on his life.

The effort of it staggers you back and you take a moment to swallow and wipe your brow. That was...decidedly unpleasant, all told. You breathe deep, swallowing several more times as you let the gentlest of breezes play across your face. After a moment steadying yourself against the wall, nausea fades, and sense returns to survey ugly reality. Be it how exposed you are to the grounds below or the fact your leaning on the wall exactly like he was, a little paranoia creeps in; you find yourself looking around in all directions, hunching guiltily over the body of the man you killed. What if there is a change in shift? There’s nowhere to hide the body if anyone else walked the roof, is there?

One thing at a time. You move forward along the path, rounding the next corner of the building. There, a little ways down and sticking out like it’s nobody’s business, is a small hut affixed to the roof, looking decidedly out of place. As you approach it, it becomes clear that it’s made of different materials to the rest of the building; its ruddy brinks glued with pale mortar are clearly not as impressive as the great stone blocks that make up the rest. Perhaps it was some hasty addition. Perhaps, in light of the roofs own shoddy condition, the builders thought they could get away with it. Perhaps they were afraid of heights and wished the job done as quickly as possible, regardless of the end result. No matter the cause, the result was the same: an ugly little hut with a door that no doubt leads down into the mansion proper.

That just leaves your dance partner. Could you just leave him? He’d be discovered by anyone coming up to the roof, especially with the way inside so near. As you walk back, you peek over the low walls edge. Open grass lies below. Dropping him over, you realise, isn’t an option. Even if there were bushes, the thought of him crashing through them makes enough mental noise that you wince in response, and bushless, leaving his crumpled remains below would be worse than up here. You think for a moment. The walkway boards have been placed to make an angled roof -specifically the end of said roof which meets the low stone parapet wall- into a flat walkway. You take a closer look at them and find that most have some loose rock or brick or piece of wood under one side to eliminate the angle of the rooftop. They’re spaced quite evenly; enough to fit a body under, in places.

What follows is several minutes work as you find a good spot, lift the boards, drag, roll, and otherwise cajole the body into it, then put the boards back making sure the body is hidden. The thought of saying a few words at the faux funeral gives you a grim humoured snort, but it all otherwise passes as uneventfully.

You head to the rooftop shanty and press your ear against the door. Silence. It creaks as you slowly open it, and reveals a dark set of stairs heading down, as you knew it would. In a moment, you’re beyond the doors threshold, guiding it closed and tip-toeing on with your mission.

The stairway feel old and dry and is quite narrow, letting you steady yourself with your hands on the wall either side. Its poor mortaring provides ample grip in place of a handrail; the desiccated blotches squeezed out in the brickworks first laying act as suitable hand holds, for the most part; they crumble and breaks quite easily, and you have to place a few chunks gently on the stairs to stop them rattling their way down. The first corner comes quickly as the stairs travel down towards the outer side of the building, turning and spilling down again, revealing a light seeping under a doorway at their bottom: the buildings upper floor. You listen at it hear nothing. Nearby, the stairs continue down further, to the ground floor.

So...where to next? The captain is in this building, but you have no idea where. Would she be on the upper floor, or the lower? Even the buildings cellar is suspect. You’ll have to search the building, but that still leaves where to start.

It may be safer and quieter searching the upper floor; you can’t hear anyone walking about and a buildings ground floor is always busier. That said, the captain may be where the action is. The ground floor may be better as there would probably be people to listen to and leads to follow, not to mention it could leave you better placed if you really do have to search the cellar. Besides, if the captain has seen the state of the roof, she may consider being on the ground floor safer.