…simply hide and wait for a time to strike.

Between the two options, the more cautious one prevails. Poison would **** a confrontation, which may end in blades against the survivor. You’re not confident enough wielding yours to strike without the advantage of surprise, or when backed into a corner. You only bought it in a shop a month ago for goodness sakes! There is a bed there; perhaps after her business, she will go to sleep and you can strike without fear. Gods, what if she returns to her ship to sleep!

After a moment spent reconsidering hiding under the bed, as well as the use of poison, you figure it doesn’t change the facts. You came here to kill Captain Washkin; you found her once, and if she doesn’t provide a good moment to strike, better to be alive to try again. It’s caution, not cowardice.

Returning to the wardrobe, its doors still standing open and inviting, your draw your blade and clamber inside. If she opens them during her negotiations then you’re done for, but turning to face the doors, you see that it only contains clothes. Why would she get out clothes during a negotiation? And even if she had urgent need to wear a large pink ball gown, or a button up man’s shirt tailored for a woman’s shape, or a simple looking village girl dress, or any of the other assorted garments dangling from hangers, why would she do so in the company of a man? From the pile of clothes, she certainly isn’t one to tidy up in the company of others either. However, the knife is a reassuring weight in your hand, and getting it out from its sheath while your legs are bent and squatting would be a difficult thing. Again, better safe than sorry.

You reach out and close the doors, coating you in an incomplete darkness. One of the doors contains a keyhole, though there’s no lock over it; the wooden wardrobe door simply has the odd shape drilled into it like an old scar, and it spills the rooms light onto your hand as you hold it up and feel the rough edges. Adding to that, there is a gap between the door and the frame where the hinges are, letting you see a vertical sliver to your left that shows some of the bed and the draw covered unit beside you. There is no sliver to the right as the wardrobe is too close to the wall.

After rearranging some of the piled material and navigating the silk curtain of a beautiful noble gown, you can put your full eye to the dead key hole, pressing varnished wood to your brow and cheekbone. It’s a narrow hole, which on some level you are thankful for, and gives a good view of the door and the table, and beyond that, the window and the fireplace.

Still hearing no one approaching, you put your blade down in rivulets of saffron and arrange a good spot for yourself; a little assassins nest. If the doors are opened or look like they will be, they will see a dress before seeing you, but if you need to slip out and attack, your way should be quietly unobstructed.

As though on cue for a bad play, the sound of muffled conversation begins to approach. Deep breath. You’ll be fine: you’re hidden and waiting for your moment.

“I’m telling you, you can’t do it. It just can’t be done.” The outer door opens, causing Captain Roland’s voice to jump in clarity.

“Again?” Captain Washkin, leading her guest back, sounds exasperated. It was the kind of ‘again’ a master would give a particularly dim-witted apprentice; tired of finding ways to rephrase simple instructions. Paper crumples and ruffles before being slapped hard against a wooden surface, speared and punctuated by the point of a finger.

“The currents turn here,” the finger shifts, tapping the page hard enough to be heard through the closed door, “and here are the rocks,” another tap “If the convoy is here,” you wince again for her finger bone, “then they will have to go here.” The final tap almost has a sense of victory to it, if a tap can possess such a thing; sure of the rightness its **** conveys.

“But the navy will be in a line escort, so they will get through! And I don’t see any rocks on this map.”

The thuds of her finger hammers out a rapid beat. “See? Right there!” The beat stops and you can almost see the fingerer boring its way through the table in frustration. “Damn it Roland, it’s clear as day!”

“Bah! Fine! But I’m right about the navy!” There’s something about ready the way the man responds that tells you he’s known how wrong he’s been for a while. The voice comes clear as the inner door opens, finally letting their words enter the bedroom unmuffled.

“No you’re not, because...” The shape of a woman, barely visible for the angle of the keyhole, slumps her shoulders and lets the door close, denied progress into her room by the anchoring intellect behind her. “They won’t _be _a problem.”

“Fifteen ships at once?”

The sigh that comes through the drifted door seems designed to antagonise. “Seven ships,” she says, “Four captains can be paid to run, three are captained by known cowards who will flee when the others do and one of them will mutiny, effectively removing it from the fight. Two of the remaining seven are transport ships, armed only for small raiders.”

“I’m not saying that we can’t take them but why attack with only three ships?”

“The others need to stay in reserve to funnel the fleeing merchant ships through the pass...here.”

No dispute comes from that tap of the map. Instead, only a greedy sounding question. “What’s her worth?”

You cannot see either of them, behind the door, standing in the room just outside with its big table, but your mind’s eye paints a wide smile on the woman’s face.

“I have the last manifest to give you an idea.” She opens draws and chests, shuffles paper and moves things aside, rummaging noisily amongst the clutter of the room. The smile must be faltering. “It must be in my room.”

The door opens again, this time to be used fully by the woman striding through it. You see blond hair on a tall frame, long booted legs striding towards you, the billow of a long red coat. You duck behind the skirt that falls about you, hiding yourself before you can see more. There are no papers in here, just clothes; there is no reason for her to open your door. You ready your blade.

Draws open and close in the unit beside you, and you have to suppress your sigh of relief lest she over hear it in her closeness. Were the wardrobe to disappear into mist, the woman you’re here to kill would be just out of arms reach.

“I know I have it here somewhere...” Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. Close. Open, “Here!” Paper in hand, she steps over to Roland, who had followed her into the room, and presents it to him. “Look at this cargo manifest, its last months. Since it was successful, other merchants are adding to the pot, so it will be much bigger next time.”

“Gods!” He’s either a fast reader, or the first few lines are impressive enough.

“I also have reliable sources that tell me the Grand Princes favoured niece will be finishing her Coronac visit at that time, so odds are good she will be on that ship as well. The ransom alone could match everything else on board!”

The plan peeks your interest, as it evidently does Roland’s. In the unlikely event that you walk out of this missing the chance to strike, it would no doubt pique the interest of the few contacts you have in naval intelligence as well. Lady Preda Pravean was quite the celebrity, and her trip the go to gossip for when there is nothing else to gossip about.

An impressed whistle comes from the man. “So it’s well worth it,” he concedes. “We take out five ships with our three and someone else intercepts the cargo ships?”

After taking back the manifest and closing the draw on it, she turn to Roland, saying “No. Here I’ll show you” before leading him out. They don’t close the door behind them, but after peeking out from under the shielding skirt and looking through the keyhole, it makes no difference.

“My ships will be here, here and here. When the others have fled, they sail around to these three locations, blocking all escape but here.”

“That’s the perfect escape! They’ll get away!”

Even you roll your eyes at that. He sounds like a child calling out to a bard, or telling an actor in a pantomime that the villain is definitely behind him.

“No because they will go right over the shallows, grounding them. That’s the trick. I don’t know how it works, it’s some trick of the light, but I’ve seen it myself. The water looks deep and safe but no ship can sail it safely.”

“Then that means we can’t get to them!”

You remember the frustration in Captain Washkins tapping finger. It was justified. How can someone so dense, so impatient, be the captain of a ship? ‘Can’t get to them’? Even you’ve heard of rowboats for goodness sake!

“We can in rowboats.” You blink, wondering if Captain Washkin had read your thoughts, or if your guess had actually been more useful navel advice than that given by an actual pirate captain. “Overwhelming ****, kill the crew, do some back and forth trips to our ships for the loot. This is what we need your experienced boarders and breakers for; to lead the attack. The cargo ships can’t move but turn into sea fortresses. No tactics possible, just overwhelming ****.” She pauses, letting the quiet add weight to her words, and changing her tone to one laden with hidden suggestion. “That is what you do best, right?”

Roland, for all his dim-witted simplicity, picks up on it. He’d have to be deaf not to, and while you cannot see her, you assume he’d have to be blind as well. No one would ever call you a seductress, and were you inclined to compete in such games, you’d have no clue where to begin, but you’re no fool. The soft purr Captain Washkin puts into her voice hums with a courtesans charms, growing fainter to your ear as it invites its listeners to come closer.

Roland responds with similar intimate quiet, “I can see why you need me an mine,” he moves, no doubt closing the distance to her, “but I _could _use some convincing.”

She laughs from the back of her throat, turning a hum into a chuckle. “Like last time?”

The chuckle ends in a wet sound and deep breaths being taken through the nose; an unseen kiss telling its tale through rising moans and shifting feet and the crackle wet lips crashing back and forth.

After an uncomfortable moments listening, a quiet voice in the back of your mind asks a hesitant question; ‘they’re not planning on doing…what you think they’re planning on doing, are they?’ With you squatting nearby; a dagger wielding assassin -the fear of all tyrants- poised to strike, you should feel righteous, excited, nervous, even scared (perhaps especially so), but not…awkward. Please don’t let this get awkward.

They walk back into the room, clear to your keyhole. The blond haired captain gives a soft surprised whoop as she hops forward, propelled by the open palmed strike of her buttocks by the man lagging behind. And what a reason to lag behind: you watch knowingly as he picks up the remaining tankard and drains it in one gulp, putting it down as the woman turns and pulls him gently on by the collar of his shirt. What would happen if it was poisoned? Who can say?

She pulls him to the bed and out of your keyhole sight, forcing you to move to the doors hinge crack.

"You just lie down and I’ll show you why I’m right."

Her words see Roland to his back, lying on the soft feather mattress with his legs bent and hanging over its edge by the knees. She takes off her belt, her sword still in its sheath, and tosses it towards one of the piles of clothes. It thumps softly, evidently hitting its mark.

"Mmmm,” she purrs, leaning over him, “this is always the best bit of our little talks."

The red coat slips from her arms and is tossed away before her hands move to the hem of his trousers, unbuckling and pulling them down in short order. Her bowed head moves between his legs.

Heat creeps into your face; what have you gotten yourself into? You can stand being an assassin, but a peeper? Maybe you should cough loudly, or walk out, or just close your eyes for gods’ sakes!

She leans back after only a short sojourn to his member, leaving it lying wetly on his belly, turned up by its fullness. She stands, turning her back on him, and you watch the smile flicker where he cannot see it, fake humour leaving her eyes as she puts her fingers under the hem of her tight trousers with an ostentatious flourish. Bending at the waist (and presenting an ample eye full to him in the process), she pulls down her trousers to just above her knees, stopped by the leather boots still wrapping the rest of her legs, and then she stands straight. What you see as she does gives you pause.

Between her legs, at the crotch, a blank expanse, empty of the curl of hairs. You’ve never seen the like, though you’ve lacked cause to look, and have heard whores do such things to appeal to their clients. Then again, it’s been a while since you last used a public bath; for all you know it could be the height of fashion, though you doubt it. Who’d be willing to faff with a razor in such a place? The thought of it leaves you shuddering.

With a flirtatious look back, she grabs the bedposts either side and lowers herself back and down, to sit on his lap where he is kind enough to present himself, propped up and angled with one hand. Her wide hips swallow the sight of him just before they embrace him in truth.

"Ahhhh! Ohhhh. It’s so, mmmm, big..."

After a short and feigned adjustment where she caches her breath and fans herself with one hand, she begins to move her hips back and forth, grinding at him with the aid of the bedposts.

You look away, the darkness hiding your embarrassment. Why this? You suppose she’s an ex-whore (and not so ex as you thought it seems) and such people have their ways. The question you thought was more a despairing castigation of the universe than any real curiosity, but it’s an adequate enough distraction from the moaning coitus you’re party to. Does she want to do it with him? From her expression, she likely sees his attentions as a chore, yet she instigated this, more or less. You glance back at her, seeing her expression both focused and idle, like a smith making his millionth knife. Is it just second nature to her? And why does she speak like that and moan like that? Why do they all -courtesans and whores both (if there is a difference)- put such effort into it? Do men pay more for that? In your experience, most men of Captain Roland’s apparent character would have sex with a dog if it asked them politely, or even impolitely. Saying that he’s ‘big’, or pretending to enjoy it, or otherwise stroking his ego seems irrelevant next to all else he’s receiving; a quickly discarded ribbon on a present already being devoured.

Then again, you’re not a whore and never will be, so perhaps you should give such professionals the benefit of the doubt. You aren’t even terribly embarrassed, with most of the hot shame you feel simply rote empathy, coming automatically from an honest upbringing. Considering the blood still on you, and all the…unpleasantness that came before, what they are doing is quite tame.

Movement catches your eye, but it’s just Roland’s bundled up coated sailing to the floor, followed by his shirt. Should you attack them now? As much as you’d feel better doing that than watching them -which, gods, yes, you were doing again- you dismiss the idea as foolishness. They are less armed and…distracted, but you doubt you could kill both quick enough. As much as you hate the thought, you’re going to have to ride it out.

Captain Washkin slows to pull up her shirt, rolling it up her torso and over her head before giving her partner a few more rolls of her hips. Her ample chest rocks with her, in fine form for her age and profession. Most women would be complaining of sag, and while hers have weight to them-

You’re looking again.

Frustration stains your face; but there is not much else to look at! You remember the outhouse runner when you were fourteen, or the inn keepers pervert son when you were nineteen. In both cases you felt horrible for being spied on, and even the punishment the latter received didn’t stop you skipping one or two hot baths in the years since, and you love hot baths! With a mental apology (and a mental self-admonishment of how pointless such an apology is), you return to the sight of your pray, and while you’re at it you put any thoughts of comparison out of your mind as well. You’ve never wanted a chest like that anyway, or her hips, or thighs, or admittedly her makeup sculpted face, or blond hair; who’d want to look like a teenage boys dream.

You ignore the cutting retort about looking like a teenage boy instead, provided by your ill-timed wit and its backwards aim. Instead you focus back on her breasts, or more accurately, the dangling blue stone between them. It moves with her, hovering ever so slightly each time a back turns to a forth, and glitters with light captured from one of the rooms many candles. The Amulet of Amulet: proof of her **** and key to her outrageous bounty. It stills as she stops her movement, leaning over to pull down her boots and cast them aside, before standing proudly, nearly naked in the room before the two of you.

Her confidence you wouldn’t mind having, were you back to butchering her qualities.

Once more she leans down to him, but this time she only pulls off his boots and trousers, leaving him in a similar state of undress before climbing aboard her bed and his body. She crawls up him, sinking the feather bed with her hands and knees, until he’s straddled and kissed, and she sits up her body to rest her weight where their hips meet. She reaches down a hand to him, lifts herself up with her knees, then, with him aimed, sinks back down. The rocking hips and heavy breath resumes.

Do people really make love like that?

You watch her bare bottom grind above his hairy legs and hastily remove the word ‘love’ from the question. There is no love here, save perhaps the love of the act. The whole thing is surely base hedonism on his part, and manipulation on hers. Is there anything to even learn from observing such things? Is there a future where you, with some unknown future husband, do the same? Do you want there to be?

You’ve wanted a family in the past, you recall. You were never one for dolls and homemaking, but a future with a husband and a full belly seemed an inevitable reality. It was even arranged by your parents at one point. The informal betrothal fell through of course, and he was there that day, watching as your virginity was taken.

Your expression turns. No, you don’t think husbands and babies are in your future for a long while yet. Maybe never. But what else? Should you successfully kill the woman currently having her amble bosom fondled, claiming fortune enough to retire, do you become a spinster? Become an old maid before you even leave your twenties? That seems kind of…sad.

“Ooooohh ffuuck!”

You roll your eyes at captain Roland’s suggested alternative. ‘No thank you’ you respond mentally.

He and his partner roll in the loose sheets, turning their order around and wrapping themselves in cream coloured cotton. The thin material saves you from the sight of his humping behind, though not its shape or the sound of skin hitting skin. Captain Washkin moans as well, lying on her back and being taken in a manner that seems more traditional.

Perhaps you should visit a public bath house more often; it was there you last overheard the sordid gossip of a gaggle of women, comparing the bedroom antics of their much maligned husbands. Not that you want to, or need to, know about such things, but watching the two writhing bodies, you feel a little…inexperienced? Certainly unequipped in knowledge, should you and a man ever join consensually. You wonder what it would be like to-

“Ugh. Ahh! Oh fuck! Oh Fuck!”

“Cum with me Roland! Cum with me!”

Roland’s humping slows as they cry out together, turning grindstone regularity into spasming penetration. Well-muscled calves wrap about his hips, pulling them in and holding them in place as he moans his release, and in short order, nothing but heavy breathing can be heard from the both of them.

Unshackled by her legs, Roland rolls to his back, lying next to her to catch his breath. You see the black tuft of curled hair at his hips, his glistening manhood shrivelling in the light, and revaluate the sincerity of her noises; it looks big, despite its rapid diminishment, though you only have few to compare it too by sight (and fewer still by feel). The drunk man that walked naked down the street on your first day in Losh, claiming to ‘have the biggest dick in the whole of the world!’ was smaller, finally being proven wrong after all these years. Captain Roland may have just topped the very small list in your head, comprised of sights unasked for yet somehow burned in there. Come to think of it, he may be the first sober entry as well. No, wait; there was the man chased by his angry wife, though you barely saw anything of note that time anyway. He ran too fast to be drunk though.

You shake the thought from your head, though the laughter of the crowd was infectious enough to make you smile, even now. The two catch their breath, with Captain Washkin resting her head on her partner’s matted hairy chest, and he lies staring at the ceiling.

“I hope we can do this again after the raid is over.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’ll be there? The Conjack constellation, on the 15th?

“Yeah.”

“Oh Roland! We’ll make it just like the Rojourn straight.”

“Yeah. Wait, what?”

“Thank you Roland!” She leans up to plant a calculated deep kiss onto his lips, wiping away the confusion from his face, and you can’t help but feel both you and he have missed something.

When the kiss ends, Roland silently stands and takes a few sleepy steps to his clothes, picking them up and putting them on with lethargic slowness.

Captain Washkin, the purring wendigo, moans with a sad hunger. “Not one for pillow talk are you?”

He only dresses in response, mechanically buttoning his britches and shirt, as though each one fresh armour against her wiles. He leaves it until his garish ugly coat is back on before daring to react.

“Maybe I’ll arrive a day early. Take my time.” He leans down, kissing her roughly on the lips, his other hand snaking between her legs. You watch as his fingers enter her.

“Mmmm!” Her hand slips to the back of his head, clearly kissing him back. Her knees draw up, then fall apart, spreading like a book and inviting the fingers that act as false manhood to dig deeper. They don’t oblige.

As their lips part, he mutters a growl to her, “I’ll have you screaming into your damned pillow,” before wiping his fingers on her belly and walking away.

“Oh Roland!” she chases him with an overly sensual exclamation, simpering weak hungry expression on her face, “I look forward to it.”

The door closes.

In the second that follows, her features change completely, dropping all pretence of an act. She looks bored, briefly drumming her fingers on her chest, sitting there naked and spread like the very definition of shameless. Roland’s footsteps leave as traced through the door by both you and her, and a silence descends onto the room.

Could this be it? She’s alone and naked; surely no better time will come to strike. But she doesn’t look distracted anymore. She lies on her back while looking at the door, a considering expression on her face, and her fingers continue to drum just above the slope of her bosom. If you charged at her now, could you get to her before she reaches her sword? The distance didn’t look long before, but now it stretches far in your mind.

As if reading your intentions, she swings her legs off the bed’s far side, standing within a dives reach of her discarded blade. What she does after is in the blank between, where the wardrobes sideward slit and its view of the bed ends, and the keyhole that shows the door and the table begins, but when she reappears in sight of the latter she wears a dressing gown of a light blue flowing material, and strides toward the door unarmed.

Before exiting, she stands by the door, one hand on the frame and the other holding some rag of cloth which she uses to wipe between her legs. Now is the perfect time. She’s away from the bed and the sword, and you could jump out and be on her in a moment. She’s also about to slip from the room and through your fingers, through from her dress it’s not for good. There is also the door she could jump through, escaping or running for aid. A million more excuses well up in your mind, but attacking was always going to have a risk to it. You have a knife, and the element of surprise. She is near and unarmed and alone. Must she tie herself up before you dare act?

The alternative, or course, is to not act, though if you stay, you’re probably going to stay until she sleeps, or dresses to leave. You cannot picture a scenario where you can have a better ambush, save her opening the wardrobe blindly and alone for some reason. If she sleeps here then it would be safer to sneak out and do the deed, but she may not, and every moment you wait increases the slim but ever present odds of discovery. Indeed, it’s accurate to say that one sneeze could kill you, and she could smell the blood on your hands, or someone could find the bodies, or...

Don’t think. With her nearing as clean as she’ll ever be,