Chapter Text
He wakes in the cabin of a whaling vessel with bad news folded close in his breast pocket and the whispers of blue-hued dreams lingering on the edges of his mind. Corvo shakes away the uneasiness that seizes his heart (it tastes like the brine and blood that’s sunken deep into the metal of the ship) and rises. He stands for the length of one, two, three heartbeats beside the bed he’d been sleeping in, staring down at the backs of his hands, the fine hairs at the nape of his neck prickling.
A knock at the cabin door startles him out of his contemplation (of what? Even he is unsure), and Curnow’s voice comes through, muffled: “Lord Attano. We’ve arrived.”
Corvo realizes that the near-constant rocking of the ship in motion has stilled - the floor is stable underneath his boots, and Corvo tells himself that it had been this change, after months at sea, that had unsettled him so.
(His hands still look wrong - but he firmly steers his mind away from such thoughts. They’ll do him no good here.)
The journey back to the palace is uneventful; Corvo meets the eye of every guard he passes, refamiliarizing himself with their faces and the changes from the months he’s missed, detailed in the lines around their mouths and the shadows underneath their eyes. The chatter of the engineers, complaining about Sokolov again, is familiar, and it soothes Corvo’s nerves.
Emily’s enthusiastic greeting does as well, and he has no compunctions about spending a few minutes in a game of hide and seek. The idle talk between Curnow and the guard that had served as the pilot of their boat to the lock hadn’t escaped Corvo, nor its implications in the greater context of Dunwall for the message he will deliver today to Jessamine’s hand. There is little happiness he can grant to his Empress and his Emily anymore save small moments such as these - this is all he can do, and so he does, listening to Emily count down to her hunt for him from his perch in the branches of a nearby tree, watching her with bright dark eyes.
Sokolov paints in the courtyard, composing a portrait of the High Overseer, and Corvo lets Emily run ahead for a moment as he lingers, gaze skimming between the brushstrokes that Sokolov puts to stretched canvas and the man that stands clothed in bright red beyond the both of them.
“I would do better painting the leeward face of a cliff,” Sokolov comments acerbically to Corvo, gesturing dismissively at Campbell with the end of his brush before his eyes slide to the Lord Protector. Sokolov makes a small gesture at his own head, and Corvo reaches up to pull a few leaves out of his hair, giving the other a sheepish smile of gratitude in silent reply before moving along.
He passes Burrows on the walkway to the gazebo. The Spymaster has changed little since Corvo last saw him, and, somehow, this does not surprise Corvo. Burrows merely acknowledges him with a comment about his early arrival, and Corvo nods in reply, eyes and attention already fixed ahead upon the two figures that stand in the shade.
Jessamine… oh, Jessamine. The weight of the Empire is writ heavy across her brow in furrowed lines covered with white powder; Corvo longs to wipe them away even as he kneels to kiss the hand she offers him. He is relieved to see, at least, her eyes lighten as she takes in the sight of him returned to her. A secretive, intimate smile curves the bow of her lips for him, and, inside his breast pocket, his message burns.
She gains no other reprieve from him. Her fury and grief speak to Corvo in the ramrod line of her back and the fingers that clench the paper of his report hard enough to crease it as she stands facing out towards the sea; he finds himself resisting the urge to move towards her, to shield her, to protect her from the thing that has distressed her so, uncaring of whatever eyes may be on them - a twisted knot of emotion writhes in his throat like a hagfish, squirming in and around itself and choking him as quiet as ever.
The assassins, when they come, are almost a relief.
His anger surprises them - had they expected him to be too weary to fight or merely to not have turned on them with such rage? - and part of Corvo notes Jessamine pulling Emily tight to her side, their child’s hands covering her own ears against the ringing report of Corvo’s pistol.
The shot knocks aside the blade of the first assassin, and Corvo ducks, stepping forward at the same time even as he holds the barrel steady, putting the second shot in the thigh of the same man; the blade of the second assassin scythes neatly over Corvo’s head as the first man crumples, howling and clutching at his leg; Corvo turns, parrying a thrust from the second as he continues across the gazebo, closing the distance between himself and the first, and Corvo smiles grimly as he feels the heel of his boot come down solid upon the forearm of the downed assassin. The popping wet snap of breaking bone echoes briefly off of the stone of the gazebo when Corvo’s next step - stomp - to brace himself for his lunge back at the second comes down hard; the second barely avoids the slicing arc of Corvo’s blade, cutting low to high across where his chest had been. Corvo feints forward and leaps away again - and reverses the grip on his sword when his instincts scream at him, before his feet even fully touch the ground once again, the length of steel sliding neatly between the ribs of the third assassin to appear behind Corvo before any of them realize the source of the danger.
Flesh parts around his blade and the second assassin stands, frozen in surprise, for just one moment too long; Corvo fires two shots with the pistol still in his hand, dropping the second even as the body of the third hits the stone floor of the gazebo.
Then there is the fourth, running in from the corner of Corvo’s vision, and he ignores Corvo entirely, moves with deliberation, a dogged single mindedness that speaks to Corvo of an iron will bent in its entirety to a single goal, and Corvo ejects the loaded bullets from his pistol even as he raises his hand to throw it at the man in red to halt his sprint towards Jessamine and Emily.
The man dodges, and it’s enough; Corvo is between him and them in the next second, steel grating against steel.
The man is Serkonan. Scars score his uncovered face, and the gray-green eyes that glare at Corvo are the flat coldness of the northernmost glaciers of Tyvia. He fights and it’s an ugly, beautiful thing, brutal strikes that shiver down Corvo’s arm and threaten numbness even as Corvo drives him back and away from Jessamine, from Emily. A slash that Corvo is unable to dodge enough to fully avoid lays open the left side of his face, and, behind him, Emily screams at the sight of his blood on the man’s blade.
The rattle of approaching guards fills the air underneath the gazebo with clattering reverberations finally, finally; the assassin’s eyes flick from Corvo to Jessamine and the scowl on his face deepens the furrows carved into it. He parries Corvo’s next strike, throwing Corvo back with the heft of his blade just long enough for the man in red to clench his left hand; it flares as bright as a torch, as a lantern, as (what?), and -
His body suddenly disintegrates, disappears into impossible fragments of shadow and void (and when Corvo gasps in confusion and surprise, the air that fills his nose and mouth tastes cold and of the sea), and the clinging edges of the world clutch futilely at him strange and grey and sluggish but failing to truly hinder him even as Corvo wheels, lunges forward on some unspoken unknown word, and closes his fingers on coarse strands of black hair as they appear out of nothing.
Corvo yanks. The man in red stumbles in his surprise, head falling back - and Corvo catches the expression on his face when it shifts from his iron-willed scowl into confusion (and something else, something dark and bitter and desperate in the depths of those cold grey-green eyes) as Corvo lays open the length of his taut throat with the edge of his blade.
Everything is red.
The taste of the cold sea is washed away by warm iron, and the first assassin makes a choked noise of grief from where he lies on the stone as Corvo lets the body drop. There’s a flash of metal in the first assassin’s hand, and he plunges the length of the straight pin in his fingers into the flesh of his broken arm before Corvo can reach him to kick it away; the guards, Burrows, and Campbell arrive in time to watch the assassin die where he writhes on the stone.
“Empress Jessamine? Lady Emily?”
“We’re alright, Corvo. We’re alright - " and Emily is suddenly pressed against his side, tiny shoulders shaking as she cries her sour fear away into Corvo’s waist. Her white clothes are staining red from the blood on him, but Corvo doesn’t have the heart to push her away to spare them.
“Burrows, take the bodies. I want to know every secret that they hold and the identities of these men. Campbell, fetch Sokolov - the Lord Protector has been injured.” Jessamine’s brisk orders turn the confused, milling group of men back into organized soldiers; Corvo watches, detached, as some take positions around the gazebo while others pick up the bodies of the assassins. He wipes off his blade on a clean spot on his coat (its fabric is likely unsalvageable now anyway) and sheathes it before resting the less bloody of his two hands on Emily’s back, gently rubbing up and down the length of it as she cries.
He meets Jessamine’s eyes from across the gazebo and is reassured by the fire in them - a welcome alternative to the quiet despair from before the attack.
Sokolov, for once, exercises his atrophied sensitivity and allows Emily to remain glued to Corvo’s side as he treats the Lord Protector; Corvo trails her like a white shadow as he delivers her to her handmaidens for a bath and a change of clothes, and when he has his own bath, she waits outside in his rooms, unwilling to let him move too far away. A servant discreetly informs him, as he dresses, that Lady Emily’s lessons have been cancelled for the rest of the day in light of the events, and Corvo nods in acknowledgement even as his stomach squirms underneath the servant’s protracted scrutiny of the bandage on his face.
Jessamine has retreated to her private study, and Corvo finds her there, Emily’s hand in one of his and his gear kit in his other. The Empress orders all others out of the room - save a single guard at the door whose loyalty and discretion Corvo had personally vetted - and rises to gather both Corvo and Emily close, clutching them to her. Her hands shake against his shoulders, and when they separate long, tense moments later, Corvo kisses her and entwines his fingers with hers.
Emily sits at her own desk and immediately reaches for her sketchbook and pastels as Jessamine leads him to her own desk. He seats himself in the chair that is unofficially his beside her and does not let go of her hand.
“Burrows has reported, preliminarily, that the man in the red coat was Daud.” Corvo feels his eyebrows rise, and Jessamine huffs out a short laugh that is as much bitterness as it is amusement. “Yes. The Knife of Dunwall himself. I took the liberty of having the Royal Treasury add the value of his bounty to your personal coffers - no, don’t give me that look. If you don’t wish to accept it, withdraw the amount yourself and donate it to some lucky soul. Whether or not it was done in the line of duty doesn’t affect that you killed him - and three of his men.” She reaches up to gently touch the bandage on his face, and her eyes harden slightly. “At personal cost, even. It’s a pity you weren’t able to take him alive - it would have done the people good to see justice meted to the blade for hire that has haunted them.”
Corvo cups her hand in his own, presses it in full to his cheek.
“He wouldn’t have come alive,” he murmurs to her, and Jessamine closes her eyes briefly.
“Yes… his job was still incomplete, wasn’t it.”
“Have you any idea…?”
“Plenty.” She scowls and turns her angry gaze to the papers laid out on her desk. “And yet none at all. Placing a target on my back for the Knife would not have come cheaply - but the situation in Dunwall is grave enough that even the most practical might willingly throw away their family fortunes for a choice between the death of an Empress and the Rat Plague. I find I cannot blame them. It hardly seems like a choice at all, does it?”
Corvo kisses her breathless to erase the dull echo of despair in her voice, and Jessamine is laughing like she had in her twenties when they’d been young and fresh in love by the time she pulls away to press her forehead to his, their gazes locked.
“I am so glad to have you at my side once again,” she whispers to him. “For the first time in these long months, my heart has been at peace.”
“And mine as well.”