The temperatures during the Rowlian winter had the tendency to drop below zero, not even the vapours coming from the mechanical cars were enough to make the temperatures rise in the centre of the capital.
Families went to neighbours to ask for an extra set of thick blankets for the night, while mothers and fathers sent out their children with nothing more than a cotton shirt in search of a pity that should never have been there in the first place.
Or, at least, that's what Rosalynde thought as she passed through a narrow alley, a gold coin twirling between her scarred fingers as she then threw it on the ground behind her, a shuffling following soon after.
She didn't need to know how many had seen her toss the coin to the ground, how many children had rushed barefoot to try and close the palm of their small hands around that small round object, trying to secure three months' worth of expenses for themselves and the remaining bastards of their family.
The neighbourhood of District Street that Rosalynde had roamed into had always been full of these types of scenes. At least she'd gotten permission to explore the lesser recommended neighbourhoods of the capital after reaching the age of sixteen - and after eight years, she could say without bothering on spending some good amount of reasoning how that statement sounded truer than ever.
Rosalynde however kept on walking, one gun still strapped around her waist, while the other one, smaller both in terms of calibre and size, nestled deep within the internal pocket of her cloak.
She had less than three hours to prepare for the upcoming meeting, and still had so many things to do before gathering 'round to decide on the fate of their glorious empire.
Squinting, she passed by a mechanical car that had just broken down in the middle of the new street she'd exited from, going then to cover her eyes with her hand as if protecting them from the sun. .
"A small dime, my lady, a small dime for this poor man that lost everything in the last war!" Covered in bandages for head to toe who seemed to be able to only stand up on his feet thanks to the support of a wooden crutch, which for sure had seen better days, was a man that had just come out of an alley like the one she'd passed through a few moments ago.
His plea made the dame of the first apparent heir stop in her tracks, successfully making her turn around as she took her time in squaring him from head to toe.
"What has happened to you that made you become like this?" Rosalynde asked the man, a demure smile creeping over her lips as her fingers brushed the weapon concealed by her heavy cloak.
"A damn grenade got to me ma'am, was lucky enough to escape with my life, but the impact didn't leave me unscathed , and that's why you've met me in this way today."
Rosalynde cocked her head aside, her clear eyes filled with something the man couldn't put his finger on. "Must have been quite the explosion," was all she said.
"Oh it was ma'am, now pardon my indiscretion, but could you spare a single dime for this poor, hungry man?" He extended the hand free of the clutch towards her, trembling fingers inviting her to drop a dime to help him get something to warm his belly.
"Tell me-" she stopped midway.
"Arder ma'am, only Arder."
She nodded, taking out from her wallet a silver dime, watching it closely before clearing her throat."Excellent, Ander, I believe I've missed the part where you said the name of the battle you fought in? I would like to go to church and light up a candle to honour the memory of the brave soldiers that fell on your side," Rosalynde asked in a kind voice, knowing very well about the mispronounced name.
Kind enough to almost make her vomit the dinner she'd eaten less than an hour ago.
As he started telling her about the battles he'd fought in, her eyes occasionally travelled down to where his feet were. She was waiting for something to happen, and when Arder arrived at the last battle, the one he'd lost most of his autonomous mobility, Rosalynde's wait was finally over.
Meanwhile, they had started moving into a nearby alley, the same one where Arder had come out of, with her moving the conversation's place slowly so that no one around them would even notice it.
When Arder finished his tale, he gave her a smile bare of three teeth, while a fourth one on the right had been switched with a golden one.
"Thank you for your generosity Ma'am, this poor servant of God will never forget your kind gesture." But as he went to grab the silver dime in her hand, Rosalynde had already moved into action, grabbing him by the wrist- gripping it so hard that his knuckles and wrist turned white.
"I know very well the battle where you lost your foot, and I remember as it was yesterday that no grenade was deployed from both sides." Rosalynde tilted her head to the side, revealing her amused expression as her hand inching towards the weapon strapped to her sides.
The man's eyes were quick in lacing themselves with stupor, followed soon after by a blinding fury raging beneath his eyes. But he could not move, kept in place by Rosalynde's unyielding grasp.
Both of them kept still for an infinitesimal number of seconds, studying the moves of the other.
Rosalynde thought of which gun to use. She only had two guns on her, both loaded and both with only the safe to take off. The gun in the pocket was closer, but the layers of the cloak would have alerted the man in front of her. The one strapped on the waist on the other hand was less visible, but easier to use.
Before she was even able to decide on which gun to use, a searing pain materialised on the hand gripping the liar.
A bite, blood polling out of the blood as the fake-wounded-soldier sank his teeth between her wrist and carpal bones.
Biting her lips to prevent any noise from coming out, she discarded the thoughts of handling it swiftly, her head shooting forward in less than a heartbeat, slamming it against her enemy's forehead.
Arder was pushed backwards, his teeth leaving her pale skin as Steel decided to not end it there, getting into position before rotating her body while pushing it upwards, foot locked into position as it made contact with the man's right cheek.
First, a few droplets of blood stained the corner of his lips, then he was on the ground holding his mouth as he was unable to keep the crimson from escaping his lips.
As the man tried desperately to stop the flow of blood, Rosalynde crept forward, taking out the gun from the internal pocket. Not bother checking it before gradually applying pressure to the trigger, firing it with the well-known precision she'd become famous for.
Grunting in pain and distress, Arder crumpled to the ground like a fallen branch severed from the trunk, clutching his foot as he wailed without end. Rosalynde moved to the other one, repeating her action a few times just to hear his screams tear the air once more.
"Now," Rosalynde said, crutching down herself to look at the man better, head tilted to the side as a never fading smile graced her lips.
"I wonder how many times you lured young maidens into these alleys with the intent of doing whatever you were going to do to me." She tilted her head to the other side, her icy gaze flickering down to where her injured hand was before returning to look at him straight in the eyes.
She was waiting for his answer, for his vocal response. And as the minutes passed without a single spoken word, the silence once passive became louder than an army of starved soldiers on the battlefield.
Rosalynde then stood back up, warming her hands now numb for the cold without looking at him anymore.
"How many young women lost their lives after falling into your hands?" Of course she didn't expect an answer, especially not now that he'd reverted into a cornered beast licking his wounds to try and stay alive.
His lips pursed right after she finished her sentence, spitting the excessive amount of blood that had inexorably begun pulling inside his mouthHis golden tooth too had come out, and the thought of selling it to a wealthy noble on the black market had crossed her mind more than once.
Rosalynde grinned at the scowling man, and raising her gun for the third time, she aimed the barrel a bit higher, between the man's bleeding and bandaged thighs.
But the third bullet never exited the magazine and loading chamber, for a third person had decided to enter the scene.
"Seems like you're enjoying yourself, need some time to blow off the steam before midnight arrives?" She knew someone had been following her since stepping into the territory of District Street, but she didn't know it would have been someone so annoyingly familiar to her.
Rosalynde sighed, lowering the gun in her hand."And here I was hoping you would have remained watching from afar, without moving your ass for that roof over there," Rosalynde replied, turning her head to smile at one of the few she could have a conversation with without plotting their murder soon after.
"And leave you to deal with all the bad guys all by yourself? What kind of friend does that?" Katherine Carter had developed the skill of slipping by Rosalynde without the latter noticing her presence fast enough to dodge the first attack, a skill which irked her to no end.
But, nevertheless, Rosalynde kept on smiling, the end of her lips never tugging towards the ground, shrugging at Katherine's rhetorical question. "How kind of you to aid a friend in need." Rosalynde said, tasting on her lips the still foreign word she'd just spoken.
Friends. That nearly made her laugh with sheer amusement, her smile widening at the pronounced word from her brethren.
She and Katherine were brethren. Soldiers fighting under the same crest, under the same crown. They were not friends, they weren't simple acquaintances either, just brethren who knew where priorities lied.
After all, Rosalynde couldn't afford the luxury of having friends. Too bothersome, too sentimental for the path she'd decided to go on.
A low wail from under her feet reminded Rosalynde of what she was going to do before the arrival of Katherine, checking her gun before hiding it back.
With that she bent down, grabbing the man by the back of his bandages, making him forcefully stand up as Carter decided to take a look at the end of the alley they were in to see if someone from the main street had noticed the small commotion her friend was causing.
Rosalynde made the man tumble on himself, then pushing him lightly until his back touched the mossy, putrid wall of the district that mostly resembled the slums of the imperial city.
"Now, what should I do with you?"
Again, a new lament escaped the man, whose tears had started falling down for a while, but that didn't soften the hearts of the two executors who'd trapped him in a cage of bricks and moss.
"Oh, this just won't, do you know? I like consent a lot too." He started pleading louder and louder, his Adam's apple blobbing without rest as he had lost the ability to swallow without choking on his own excessive saliva.
"Have a lovely night, Ander, make sure to dream of me. Sweet dreams." Rosalynde smiled down at him before grabbing the few ends of his short hair free of bandages tight, pulling them closer to her body before slamming his head into the brick wall.
She kept going on and on, on and on as his scarlet blood started soaking into her clothes, staining the hems of her sleeved cloak a dark red.
The muffled sound of his head breaking against the once lucid red bricks was the only sound that resonated throughout those narrow alleys where the street lamps light did not reach at night. She ended his torment only after feeling her friend's hand grabbing tight the one she'd used to end the bastard's life.
Stepping back to admire the masterpiece she'd created, an old memory had its way into the back of her brain. Her first kill, which ironically had been pretty similar to this one, both in modus operandi and casus belli.
That time, however, all she'd tried to do was to protect her mother and the sibling in her womb from the perpetrators that had killed her father the night before. She remembered all: the screams, the pleading, her mother clutching her stomach where her unborn sibling was. She remembers the blood on her hands, too, after bashing the bastard's head with a shard of broken window where that very same man dressed in black had come through to finish the job of the night before.
"You know Rose, I may be wrong - but he looks dead-dead to me," Katherine said after surveying the carnage her comrade had done, poking the unmoving body with her foot just to be sure before going to compliment her friend.
Shaking her comrade who'd fallen into a state of the mind where words couldn't reach her, she gently pulled her away from the cooling corpse of the man, grabbing her gently by the shoulders to wake her up from the daydream she'd fallen into.
"Don't. Call. Me. Rose," Rosalynde said suddenly, enunciating every word with a singular cold reverence.
"I'll do that when you'll stop sleeping with the gun Lord Regulus gave you - that still creeps me out each time I sneak inside your night chambers to hide from the buffoons of the ministers." Rosalynde's lips twitched, debating if to pursue them in a thin smile or keep them as usual.
"Try that and your body will end up anchored on the bottom of the river," Rosalynde warned.
"I enjoy your company too," Katherine said with a smile.
Tugging the stained edges of her friend's sleeves, Katherine told her to stay hidden into the shadows of the alley as she survived District Street, thankfully full of roaming charlatans and working women without refuge. The more people outside, the easier it would be for them to mix with the crowd and vanish into the foggy night.
When Katherine deemed the situation busy enough for the two of them to move from their spot, Rosalynde had already taken care of her bloody cloak, discarding it into one of the few manufactured sewers that District Street had at their disposal.
When the patrol guards were called from a passing night worker going back to her brothel, both Rosalynde and Katherine had long ago fled the murder scene, making their way through the labyrinth of the alleys that District Street was known for – an intricate number of narrow streets where the lower-life of the city came out at night and went back with the advent of the sun.
After entering that labyrinth of rotting flesh and sewers, the sins of the perpetrator would have soon been forgotten, devoured by the indifference of the people and the general malcontent which kept on snacking throughout the filthy alleys close to District Street.
Nobody had seen anything, nobody had heard something, and if someone had indeed seen and heard the misplaced duo exiting that particular dark alley and venture into the thriving main street, they would have not said a thing– all because Rosalynde had decided for them in advance.
Farway, on the other side of a capital, eleven chimes were heard traveling down into the streets: into the houses of the Rowlian subjects, in between the stalls of the
Midnight was now approaching, and the time to hear the verdict had finally come.