…Hiding has worked pretty well so far; let’s keep doing that.

All things considered, money isn’t worth very much if you are too dead to spend it. Settled on staying until he’s gone, you gently move your hands until you can rest you chin on your forarm; if you’re staying, you may as well be comfortable.

The man clicks his picks and curses to himself, having little luck with the lock, and you turn your mind to your upcoming escape. The island may be on fire, but you should be able to get through to woods and to the back of the island. If you can, your boatman should be waiting a short swim away, ready to earn the silvers you’ve already given him. If the woods cannot be traversed, you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it. You suppose you could find some place to lay low and let the fire burn out, but then escape becomes far more challenging, especially if it takes a while.

Speaking of things taking a while, you look to the man again, still planted firmly before the gutted furniture and its hidden safe. The scraping of picks rattling at the lock goes on and on, past mere difficulty and into stubborn incompetence. Perhaps you could do a better job, having never picked a lock before; you could hardly do worse. He curses again, another pick snapping audibly. There’s shouting outside.

The twin awareness of time begins to creep in, dwelling both on the dragging minutes and knowing they drag all the more brutally for your need to hurry away. You can smell the smoke wafting in from the trees, and even begin to hear the distant sounds of mighty cracks; old trees splitting and popping their boiling sap into the dull tunnel roar of well-fed flames. You see in your mind’s eye the path to escape closing off, feeling the moment pessimism turns to practical consideration. The wooden legs of the ransacked unit wobble, its looter turned to banging and shaking things with frustration before returning to the mechanism.

Click.

The sound is as sweet for you as it is for him, though you refrain from muttering the long satisfied ‘yes’ that crosses his lips, hissing for a solid ten seconds while he gleefully fills the last space in the bag. He lifts it and mutters to himself.

“Thank fuck.”

You couldn’t agree more.

The door opens with a bang, making both you and him jump in fright.

“What the FUCK!”

A man stands in the doorway, a shock of white and red colour on his clothes and the same running across his face as he sees his captain and the man standing over her. He’s tall, and lean muscled, with brown hair and several earrings vying to catch the light. More pressingly, he carries a wooden bat made for two hands.

“I-I can explain!”

The sandaled locksmith puts out a warding hand, backing up and lowering his ill-gotten pack, but you can see the newcomer is in no mood to talk. The bat hefts to his shoulder and he trots forward lightly, staying on the balls of his feet,

“NOO!”

-and he swings, faster than you can follow, ignoring the man’s cry. The jolt runs through them both, impact joining them through the bat, and linking intent to temple, dropping the man with a clear and heavy crack that turns to the haphazard clatter of a limp body’s landing.

Breathing: the attackers and yours, ragged and smothered respectively. You can’t tell if the fallen man is still breathing. You doubt it.

From walking through the door, one man had struck the other in all of five seconds, with no time for talking or explaining his presence. It leaves you acutely aware of the need to leave as he’d no doubt extend you the same brevity in his dealings. He takes a half step towards the captain, stopping and looking at her for a solitary second, and after, he takes the remaining steps to the downed man, levelling the bat to his head.

It rises and it falls.

Quick arch’s narrowly avoid the ceiling as he hefts the bat back and forth, swinging its tip from his lower back to the thief’s head, mining his way to the wet brain matter inside and splattering it violently across the floor. You hear the thuds, the wet, the crunch. When he misses, it’s the snap of a collar bone or the drum of broken ribs. Your hand, still upon your mouth to stifle your breathing, becomes gripped for another reason, and you close your eyes, forcing yourself to breath steady and swallow the sudden rush of spit and rising bile. If he wasn’t dead before, he definitely is now.

Panting, the man steps back, and with a last look at his captains fallen form, he darts from the room, barging through the doors and thundering his footfalls down a set of stairs. You expected a raise of alarm, but perhaps Captain Roland didn’t leave anyone to alarm, and a few seconds of silence confirm it. No one comes rushing to see for themselves the great change that will soon sweep the archipelago.

You wait as long as you dare before slithering out from under the wardrobe, scraping your back in the process. The sight of the man is not one you rush to take in, satisfied with an unmoving red smear in the corner of your eye. The bag of loot he dropped though bares more investigation. There is little time to be counting its coins or other contents here though, so you sling it across your back, heading for the open window by which you entered.

You step around the captain in the process; the necklace about her neck may be lost to you, but the expensive clink that comes from the bag makes you a little more confident in your choice. It feels an ill-timed move to smile so soon after seeing (or hearing) a man’s brutal execution, and while you’re still in the jaws of **** should the bat wielding man, or any other, come to the room, but it flickers briefly across your lips non the less. It vanishes completely as another sight brings a grim reality to the fore, laid out just beyond the window as you reach it.

The woods are ablaze, and where they are not they soon will be. The treeline you once waited in, just across the unkempt grass, is untouched for the moment, but it stands like prison bars before the bright glow of the flames rushing to embrace them. Climbing out onto the short roof below the window lets you stand and see, and though the trees are as tall as the house and the upper floor gives little sight over them, the plumes of smoke rise all around like towers reaching for the sky. You see that the woods elsewhere look traversable at their front, yet beyond, smoke and rising embers warn against falling for their benign exterior, lest the fire and smoke overtake you. Already, you feel your eyes sting with it.

What to do, what to do. Traveling the woods looks to be a suicide, and while the night had always been a still one, the fire needs no wind to travel quickly. Fortunately, even squinting through inexperienced eyes at a distant sight, you do agree with the captains opinion that the mansion house is probably safe. The grassy lawn had yellowed in a few places, but otherwise it looks a healthy wet green, and while it had been unkempt for a long time, it is of a consistent short type, lacking the reedy long grass found in most other such open spaces. You doubt the fire will travel the full way across it. Slate roof and stone walls should be bar enough for falling embers, but you don’t need the sight of a spilled mind to remind you of other dangers lurking inside. You look up, wondering if the roof guard will come and look down at the window again, but you remember his voice and the last time you heard it, which was gurgling and falling after Roland’s exit and encounter. You should be safe for now, but you stand closer to the wall anyway.

The question is, what to do next? The woods are no escape, which means your guide, who is likely watching the fires from the nearby island, will be gone by the time they die down. Could you get to him some other way? The Captain herself said that that main path would remain traversable for a time, and as it stands, it’s probably the only way to and from the mansion. That it’s only for a time though would suggest it can and will be overrun by the flames: A closing corridor, travelled by anyone running too or from the mansion, with nowhere to hide except the inferno looking to swallow it. It’s far from a pleasant prospect. And then, beyond that, are the likely crowded docks the path would lead to. Even so, if you could navigate it all and get back to the coast, you could maybe swim the long way around to the island with your guide, if he still waits for you.

The alternative would be to wait here. The fires should burn out by morning, or at least be much reduced, and you could travel without fear of being burned alive. You’d have to get passage on another ship though, however… You look back, into the room. If you were to stay, you’d have time to search for a disguise, which would help get down the path in daylight and onto a ship without the questions your assassins garb cannot answer. You could also take the heavy bag with you right off, which you could not do if you were swimming. Of course, you’d need to spend some of its coin on the journey, and you could always hide or bury the bag if you plan on taking advantage of the chaos. Hopefully it would still be wherever you leave it on your return, which you would then have to do at a later date.

Slow and measured patience or a sprint to the finish?