“Is that wise, sir?” asked the interrogator. “Daud is a dangerous man.”
“I don’t think our guest is here for a fight, but your point is noted.” Norcross turned to the guard. “Have him followed, but at a distance. I want you ready to assist me, should I call for it.”
“Sir.”
“In the meantime, take another guard and go to the Whitecliff gallery.”
“Whitecliff gallery, sir?”
Norcross nodded. “There is something I need you to bring with you.”
17
THE NORCROSS ESTATE, SOMEWHERE IN SOUTH-CENTRAL GRISTOL
26th Day, Month of Earth, 1852
“The earliest stories tell of a gang-killer without mercy, moving among the shop keepers and City Watch officers of Dunwall like a reaper through wheat. Then a period of silence followed; years we now believe he spent traveling the Isles, studying anatomy and the occult in the great halls of learning and in hidden basements frequented by fellow dabblers in the forbidden arts. Daud is even purported to have spent a winter in the Academy of Natural Philosophy itself. And for a time, before a schism developed, he counted the Brigmore Witches among his allies. All the while, he honed his craft, and it is during this time that we believe he began to consort with the Outsider.”
—RUMORS AND SIGHTINGS: DAUD
Excerpt from an Overseer’s covert field report
Daud moved through the galleries in silence, and while the entire building was well lit, he found plenty of places to hide—behind cabinets, around corners, behinddoors. He made good progress, easily avoiding the blue-coated guards as he made his way back to the roped-off staircase that led up to the main tower.
That had to be the place, it had to be. Norcross had called it his “private” collection. He had a reputation for collecting and trading in the arcane and heretical. Daud had seen no such objects on his tour of the galleries. And while he hadn’t explored the entire castle, all signs pointed to the tower as being where the collector locked away his special treasures.
He stepped over the low velvet rope, and crept up the stairs. The steps themselves were stone and thickly carpeted, but as they began to spiral, his forward vision became obscured. Taking no chances, Daud kept to the edge of the staircase, pausing every few steps to listen for any movement before continuing.
So far, so good. This part of the castle seemed to be empty.
The stairs continued up without interruption, the floors only counted by narrow windows that Daud passed on his left—four, five, six, seven, each offering a view of nothing but deep blackness beyond, the desolate moorland lost in the night.
On the eighth turn of the spiral, Daud came out onto a landing. In front of him was an arched double door of shiny black wood, two great silver rings for handles. Daud moved to the door, listening for any signs of life beyond.
The tower was silent.
And the doors unlocked.
Daud stepped through.
The vaulted chamber beyond was large and circular, occupying the entire top level of the castle’s tall tower. The room was well lit—like all the other galleries in Morgengaard Castle—by numerous electric globeshanging from golden chains. Glass-fronted cabinets lined the curved wall of the chamber and stretched from floor to ceiling. And behind the glass—bonecharms and runes and other carvings of ivory and metal, their surfaces crawling with arcane inscriptions. Daud could feel the Mark of the Outsider pulse softly on the back of his hand as he approached the heretical, powerful objects. He couldn’t begin to count the number of artifacts—there were hundreds of charms and runes, each one immaculate, as though they had just been fashioned from fresh whale bone.
He had guessed right. He was in the right place.
But what captured Daud’s attention, what made his breath catch in his throat and his head buzz with excitement, was the object directly ahead, on the other side of the room. There, standing clear of the curved cabinets behind, were two plinths of glossy black stone. On each was an artifact resting on a glass stand, itself an elaborate work of art that would not have looked out of place elsewhere in Norcross’s collection. On the left-hand plinth was a mirror, or at least a part of one; the jagged shard roughly square and about the size of a large dinner plate. It looked like it was made of glass, but the surface was dark, as if smoked. Sitting at an angle in its frame, Daud could only see the reflection of the light globes and the vaulted ceiling above the chamber’s arched doorway.
On the other plinth was a weapon. It was a bronze knife with two parallel blades, each long enough to be more like a short sword than a dagger. The weapon was plain and unadorned, and while its surface was dull and unpolished, the metal of the blades seemed to flash as Daud blinked, reflecting a light that wasn’t in the room but which seemed to be moving, like firelight, like the light of an inferno, trapped in the metal and echoing down the millennia.Daud was drawn in by the light, the blades almost pulling him physically toward them, like the artifact had a gravity all of its own. As he got closer, he heard whispering, far away at the edge of sound—music, or a song, perhaps. A cold feeling began to swim up his arm, radiating from the Mark of the Outsider.
The Twin-bladed Knife. It was real, and it was here.
He took another step toward it, his hand reaching out for the weapon, almost moving of its own accord.
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
Daud stopped, rocking on his heels. Then he turned to look over his shoulder. Behind him, Maximilian Norcross was walking through the arched doorway, dressed in a long robe of green silk, a loose-bound folio of papers in one hand.
Norcross joined Daud at the plinth and looked down at the Knife. “It’s almost like you know it, isn’t it?
