Daud lowered the eyepiece and shrank back a little from the edge of the gantry. He frowned. He didn’t knowwhat was going on, and he didn’t care. It couldn’t be him they were after—true enough, the unexplained absence of Overseer Hayward Woodrow would probably have been noted by now, but they were on the other side of the city from Slaughterhouse Row. Whatever was happening was centered on Dunwall Tower itself.
He looked through the eyepiece again. There were more guards now, the officer with the pistol apparently trying to organize a more structured search.
A search for what?
Daud twisted the eyepiece, adjusting the focus and range as he scanned the district.
And then he saw it—the unmistakable form of someone running across a sharply angled rooftop to the west of Dunwall Tower before vanishing into the shadows. The figure was three hundred yards, three-fifty maybe, from Daud’s position.
Daud fixed the eyepiece on the rooftops near the Tower. The shadows were black and there was no movement at all, for nearly a minute.
And then the figure broke cover and ran.
They were good. Daud watched as they kept to the morning shadows, the busy, crowded stone architecture of the city’s skyline providing plenty of hiding spots as the figure fled.
Daud turned the eyepiece back to the streets. The City Watch hadn’t fired a gun in a few minutes, having clearly lost whoever it was they were trying to track. They were gathering in growing numbers, spreading out from the square, but down at street level they had no hope of finding their quarry, not when that quarry was so able, so adept.
Daud wondered just who in all the Isles it could possibly be.
From his position, Daud had a perfect view of the fugitive as they leapt from one building to the next, soaring across the narrow alleyways, flying directly over the heads of the guards looking for them.
Daud watched, fascinated. The figure was small. Lithe. A child perhaps—no, older. Teenage. A runaway? Or perhaps, given their skills, a thief or a young gang pledge on the run after encountering the City Watch, proving their worth to the underworld boss they hoped to impress. Once, Daud thought, that might have been me. But now—
Daud felt the breath leave his body. He lowered his eyepiece, as though he could see better over the distance with his naked eye, then raised it again, refocusing, twisting the barrel to zoom in and get a closer look. He struggled to follow the figure smoothly at that level of magnification.
It couldn’t be, could it? Daud watched as the figure jumped and ran, then scaled a vertical wall, the difficulty of the task not slowing them by a second.
Slowing her. Because the escaping figure was no teenage runaway or would-be gang cutthroat. It was a young woman, dressed in fine clothes—a black trouser suit with a flash of white at the collar.
Daud recognized her at once. Her portrait hung in every city in the Isles, her silhouette stamped into every coin of the realm.
Emily Kaldwin: the Empress of the Isles herself.
On the run.
It had been fifteen years since he had last seen her in person. Daud began to laugh, quietly at first, but soon the low rumble in his chest grew and grew. He shook his head in disbelief and watched as the Empress vanished from sight over a rooftop.
No wonder the City Watch was a flurry of activity. The Empress had, for some mysterious reason, fled her tower, and was clearly running for… what? Her life? It certainly looked that way, if her own City Watch were after her.
But the reason for her flight would have to remain a mystery. Daud wasn’t about to get involved with anything—anything—that wasn’t connected with his mission. And besides, Emily would never accept his help, even if he was inclined to offer it.
The Empress was out of sight now, but she had moved with considerable skill and grace. It was obvious that her athleticism as she escaped across the rooftops was down to more than twice-weekly fencing lessons.
She had to have been trained.
Daud laughed again. Of course. Corvo Attano. Royal Protector and Emily’s father. The pair had been busy in the last decade and a half, the Empress perhaps convincing her father to train her to defend herself if ever the Royal Protector could not. And after the murder of her mother, Empress Jessamine, and her kidnapping, Daud didn’t blame her.
He blinked, his mind flashing back to that day fifteen years ago. To the assassination and the reckoning with Corvo Attano. The fight that had ended with Corvo banishing Daud from Dunwall.
Daud didn’t know how Corvo had found the strength to spare him. He should be dead. And perhaps he wished that Corvo had been… what? Stronger? Weaker? Which was the better decision, the moral choice? To banish him or kill him? Daud had murdered Empress Jessamine Kaldwin—Corvo’s lover—and although he had only been a hired mercenary, following the orders of Hiram Burrows, his actions had nearly brought about the end of the Empire itself.
Maybe he’d deserved death. Sometimes he’d certainly wished for it. Corvo had given him a second chance, but as Daud spent the years afterward wandering the Isles, searching for a purpose and a new life, he felt like what time he had left remaining was just wasting away.
Until he found his mission.
He glanced back to the rooftops as Emily reappeared by the small industrial dock on the riverside. She carefully stepped along a narrow outflow pipe, then at the end dived off into the water, breaking the surface a few yards later as she headed for the single ship in port, a battered steamer called the Dreadful… something. It was too far to read and the angle of the sun was all wrong.
Daud sighed. He told himself that whatever was going on was none of his business. The world
