The floor dropped away, turning on a pivot. Daud cried out in surprise and found himself falling. Below him was a steel chamber, the walls lined with geared mechanisms—and directly underneath, a large motor with spinning flywheels.
Daud transversed downwards, angling himself to land beside the motor, out of the way of the rotating wheels. He hit the floor with a thud, the energy of the impact surprising him. He pushed himself up, shaking his head.
The room moved again. Daud spun around, saw a larger control panel—the controls on it moving of their own accord—and made for it, only for the wall to which it was attached to shoot upwards as the reconfiguration continued.
Here, somewhere in the heart of the machine-house, Daud could see into multiple levels and rooms as everything moved around him, the entire house changing shape. If he was going to get out, he had to move quickly.
Looking up, he judged a gap between two rooms as their walls swung away from each other. He reached forward and transversed, finding himself in another wood-paneled chamber. But again, as with the steel box below, he slammed into the wall, the force of the impact knocking him off his feet.
The room shifted, pulling apart at the seams. Daud turned, picked his spot and moved again.
And found himself in a dead end.
He turned. The wall behind him was moving away, exposing another gap in the structure on the left.
He focused. He transversed—but the wall moved toward him, as though his power had tethered it and was pulling it in.
The wall hit him, knocking him back. He fell against the panel behind him.
He turned. Another gap, another chance.
He transversed.
And he cracked his nose against the wood, his power once again not having moved him anywhere, but brought the wall to him.
It was impossible. That wasn’t how his powers worked, he knew that. Maybe it was something to do with his sickness, his connection to the Void unpredictable and slipping out of his control.
He thought back to his dream. Was the Outsider watching him? Playing with him? Turning the Mark on his hand against him?
The walls closed in. Daud spun on his heel as the light faded. There was nothing around him but wood and steel.
He yelled in anger, his voice deafening in the tiny box that continued to shrink. He curled in on himself, the walls pressing ever closer.
He was trapped.
31
THE (FORMER) RESIDENCE OF KIRIN JINDOSH, UPPER AVENTA DISTRICT, KARNACA
24th Day, Month of Harvest, 1852
“The most elegant approach to warfare is to never fight at all. If you can subdue the enemy without a single strike, then you shall know the purity of victory.”
—A BETTER WAY TO DIE
Surviving fragment of an assassin’s treatise, author unknown
Daud stood at the top of the sweeping flight of shallow stairs that led up to the grand entrance of Kirin Jindosh’s hillside mansion. The door behind him was open.
He stood with his back as straight as a rod, his arms stretched out at his sides. He shuddered, like he was touching the live terminal of a whale oil battery. His chin was up, his eyes open, staring into the milky-blue haze that connected him to the dead man standing in front of him.
Challis’s body mirrored Daud’s, his back straighterthan it had been in years, his skeletal arms rigid as they poked out from his tattered cloak. His body, like Daud’s, shook, trembling with arcane energy as it poured between them. His face was missing from forehead to chin—in its place was an oval of blueish glass, an Oraculum lens, jammed into his skull, the bottom wedged against the witch servant’s broken jaw, the top scooped under the flap of scalp that remained on the dead man’s head.
Smoke-like tendrils of energy coursed from the Oraculum lens, pouring into Daud’s staring eyes.
Caitlin peered as close as she dared at Daud. She almost wanted to reach out and poke him with a finger, to see if he would just fall over. He probably would—but she didn’t want to interrupt the spell. To be able to mesmerize a victim like this, holding them as though in a clenched fist… this was a rare spell indeed for a witch.
Lucinda stepped out from behind Challis, joining her sister.
“It worked!” said Caitlin. “The trap worked!” She paused, one finger pulling playfully on her lower lip. “I wonder where he thinks he is?”
Lucinda looked into Daud’s face, her already bleached skin looking almost translucent in the blue glow of power. The morning air was warming, but already she was soaked with sweat. It ran out of her hair, down her face, dripping from her fingers.
“Inside the house,” said Lucinda. “Forever running, trying to free himself as the walls close in around him. The ultimate nightmare.”
Caitlin clapped and danced on her toes. “But it worked! We have him! We have him!”
Lucinda nodded, a smile breaking across her tired features, the effort to sustain the unusual witchcraft—a mix of true magic and natural philosophy, the lastremnants of power inherited from her mistress, Breanna Ashworth, channeled through the Oraculum lens and the dead mind of her servant, Challis—now showing.
“We have him,” said Lucinda. “Daud is finally ours.”
EPILOGUE
The world turns, and the Outsider watches, and waits.
The Outsider is patient.
But a change is coming. The Outsider knows it—he has seen it. And he is ready for it.
So the world turns, and the Outsider waits, and he watches.
He sees:
In Karnaca, the Duke fell and in his place rose up a man of the people. Paolo had come into the world with nothing and knew the lives of the least privileged.
Sometimes power shouts, and sometimes it whispers.
He sees:
In Dunwall, without ever realizing it, Delilah passed into an imagined world where her father’s promises were fulfilled and her subjects would love her forever, as she sailed the ocean with a great fleet and trekked across the Pandyssian wastes.
While in the true capital, Emily the Just—Emily theClever—ruled
