Chapter 16: The Blood Cloak
The girl—Mira—found me three days later at the docks, where I was loading cargo for Corlys.
"Got confirmation," she said, keeping her voice low. "The man meeting Cheese. His name's Harren. Former Gold Cloak, dismissed two years back for beating a prisoner to death during questioning."
I set down the crate. "Where's he work now?"
"Butcher's stall. Fishmonger's Square. Lives in a room above the shop." She handed me a scrap of parchment with an address. "Drinks at the Pissing Goat most nights. Gets mean when he's drunk."
"Good work." I gave her three silver stags. "Keep watching. I need to know if they meet again."
She pocketed the coins and vanished into the crowd.
That night, I positioned myself in the Silk Street tavern's darkest corner.
Harren arrived around midnight. Big—I'd seen him from a distance before, but up close he was massive. Scars crisscrossing his knuckles. The kind of man who'd learned violence early and never stopped practicing.
Cheese scurried in twenty minutes later, nervous and twitchy.
They sat. Heads close together.
I'd spent weeks building my hearing through constant training and exposure to varied sounds. Now I focused, filtering out the tavern's background noise, honing in on their conversation.
"—passages are clear," Cheese was saying. "Checked them myself. Ratcatchers go through all the time. Guards don't even notice."
"And the layout?" Harren's voice was a low rumble.
"Got it all." Cheese slid folded parchment across the table. "Nursery here. Two exits. Servants' quarters next door. Guards patrol every hour, but there's a gap—"
"How much time in the gap?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen if we're lucky."
Harren unfolded the parchment, studied it. "This is good. Real good."
"So we're doing it?"
"Not yet. Need the word from—" He lowered his voice further. I caught fragments. "—Daemon's gold—" "—when the time's right—" "—royal brats pay for—"
Daemon. So he was involved, even this early.
Cheese giggled. Actually giggled. "Imagine. Us. Killing princes."
"Princess too, if the orders come through." Harren folded the parchment, pocketed it. "But we wait. No moving until we're paid and the signal's given."
They stood. Harren dropped coins on the table, left through the back entrance.
Cheese stayed, ordered more ale, got progressively drunker.
I followed Harren.
Three nights of surveillance taught me everything I needed.
Harren worked his butcher's stall from dawn to dusk. Skilled with knives, strong enough to cleave through bone with single strokes. Customers feared him. He liked it that way.
Evenings: Pissing Goat tavern. Drank steadily but never lost control. Kept his knife on his belt always.
Around midnight, he'd stumble out the back door—a performance, making himself look drunker than he was—and walk home through Flea Bottom's darkest alleys.
Alone. No friends. No guards.
Confident in his ability to handle trouble.
A professional would've varied his routine. Changed routes. Stayed alert.
Harren was just cruel and arrogant.
Perfect target.
My room. Night. Candle burning low.
I sat at the table, knife in front of me. Freshly sharpened. Balanced. Light enough to conceal, heavy enough to kill.
And I was planning murder.
Premeditated. Calculated. Not self-defense. Not combat. Assassination.
Marcus Cole—the man I used to be—had killed in war. In the cage. But always with rules. Always with justification that fit inside moral frameworks.
This was different.
Harren hadn't committed a crime yet. Hadn't hurt anyone in my timeline. He was planning to, sure, had accepted Daemon's coin for future atrocity, but right now? Just a disgraced Gold Cloak and a butcher with bad intentions.
Kill him, and I'm a murderer. Let him live, and Jaehaerys dies screaming.
I picked up the knife. Tested its weight.
Remembered Jaehaerys's laugh. Jaehaera's solemn eyes. Helaena's desperate grip on my hand.
"Don't die for them. Live for them."
Living for them meant making sure they could live too.
I practiced Shigan on a pork shoulder I'd bought for this purpose. Stiffened my fingers, drove them through meat and bone. Clean penetration. No hesitation.
Practiced Tekkai. Held it for two full minutes now. Defense against his knife if things went wrong.
Mentally rehearsed the approach. The strike. The retreat.
Harren would die quickly. Throat or heart. One strike. No suffering.
Cheese would follow within the week. Same method. Quick. Clean.
No one would connect two random murders in Flea Bottom. People died there every night. The Gold Cloaks barely investigated unless someone important complained.
And a disgraced former watchman and a ratcatcher? Nobody would care.
I set down the knife, stared at my hands.
These hands had built things. Fixed cars. Poured drinks. Held friends when they cried.
Now they'd take lives.
The Dance will birth monsters, I thought. Daemon. Aemond. All of them, turning into killers for a throne that isn't worth the blood.
But I'll become one first. On my terms. For my reasons.
Not for a throne. For two children who deserved to grow up. For a woman who saw the future and feared it. For the chance to change one small piece of a nightmare timeline.
That was worth becoming a monster.
I picked up the knife again. Slid it into a sheath on my belt, hidden beneath my shirt.
Tomorrow night. Harren would leave the Pissing Goat around midnight. Walk through the usual alleys.
And he'd die quickly, never knowing why.
I blew out the candle.
The darkness felt appropriate.
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