After returning drunk early in the morning to the place they were living, they slept almost all day long, and after eating, they drank some beers to remove the hangover. Xavier had never drunk so much in his life and was sick out of his body; his head seemed to be about to explode, his stomach was burning, and his back was hurting, but he was happy, and he managed to forget about the past for a while. They had a relaxed day and, after dinner, returned to their accommodation to discuss the plans.
'Tomorrow we go to the citadel of Tormon. We'll be there for just a few days, in and out. This will be a big job; we will take the money and escape to another kingdom. We will go south, across Veldat and the southern part of the Poem Dynasty. There we will get a boat, cross the sea to the west, and travel to the Empire of Nu. Racia knows a little bit of the language; we'll be there for a few years until things calm down. Stay alert; we should not repeat Nelsen's mistakes. Keep a low profile. Emil, no quarrels,' Vralia ordered.
Everyone went to sleep, and as the sun rose, they packed up and left. They were wearing merchant and hunter disguises. Most of the time, they walked; sometimes they managed to climb a cart of merchants. It took them a week to get to Tormon.
Entering the citadel was easy for Vralia and the other known members of the gang; they had some contacts among the guards. Pip and Xavier pretended to be apprentices of a merchant, as their ages were still suitable for the role. A little money allowed them to convince a merchant to accept them into their caravan. Once inside the citadel, they separated. Although Pip and Xavier could make some money by pickpocketing, Vralia forbade it. It was more important to maintain a low profile for the big job. While the other members of the gang coordinated the details of the coup, the two young men watched the guards, knights, and city security.
Vralia and the others entered a warehouse, where they met with one of the guards.
'This is your target,' the guard said, showing them the crest of a noble family; the design depicted an olive branch on a hammer. ′ Your goal is to kill the leader of the De Brail family; they are a fly in the soup of the Lord of Tormon. Make it look like a theft that went wrong. You can loot everything in the mansion; the more you get, the better. It will look more realistic.′
Vralia and his colleagues looked at each other with a smile.
'There is one small detail. We need a culprit; we need someone who can be charged with the theft and murder,' the guard requested.
'That is not a problem; we have two rabbits ready for sacrifice,' assured Emil with an evil smile.
The Vralia band had a bad survival record for its most recent members. The reason was simple: they used them as bait or as a sacrifice to cover their footprints. The plan was simple: they would kill the nobleman, steal everything possible, and, when the alarm rang, the guard would already be on alert; he would enter the mansion first, take the glory for stopping the two dead boys at the hands of his own colleagues, and give a false description of the other criminals on the run. Vralia and his group could even stay in the citadel while the guards were looking for criminals who did not exist.
Vralia and his band observed their target for a while. A few days later, after the victim was identified and monitored, the plan would be implemented. The guard involved in the plot was on duty, guarding the area where the noble lived. He turned a blind eye when the criminals were moving around the mansion.
The main target was Antonio de Brail and his wife, Cleosinda. Antonio was a man of low stature, about fifty years old, mulato, with brown eyes, a dense moustache, and a prominent belly. Cleosinda was a white woman, tall and very thin, with light blue eyes, thin lips, and long white hair.
The couple was at home late in the afternoon. While they were waiting for dinner, he was working in his office, reading and signing papers, and she was drinking tea. The sun was setting on the horizon. Xavier and Pip had watched the house for days. Xavier knew the routine quite well, even the secret hallway behind the bookshelf in the office. The ambush was to take place in the rooms, not in the office, so he did not see the need to discuss it with his colleagues. Furthermore, he was surprised that both he and Pip were included in the attack force. They had never allowed them to participate actively, unless it was like bait. The fact that they wanted them to enter the mansion during the band's biggest hit so far was a huge change. Pip took it as a sign of confidence in his abilities; he already had some time with the band, but Xavier was disturbed by the arrangement. Paranoia was already part of his bones, and whenever he thought of trusting someone, he saw the faces of his family, Clinton, and the masters of the tower. As he watched his targets and the moment of the attack approached, the sense of danger became more intense.
After dinner, the couple returned to their activities, and when they went to bed, each went to his bedroom. They didn't sleep together; they had separate rooms. Vralia and her gang were already in position. They had thirty minutes to execute their victims and steal everything useful before the guards entered the door.
'Emil and Aleum, go get the children,' said Vraliah. 'Pip, Racia, and Gando, kill the servants.'
Vralia headed to the rooms of the house owners and went toward his primary target, Antonio. He was deeply asleep. In the darkness and with the skill of a cat, Vralia approached his victim. His skillful hand covered his mouth and nose while the dagger stabbed his heart. Antonio only managed to open his eyes. The dagger was already out, and the heart was pumping blood jets that reached the roof of the room. In seconds, Antonio bleeds out in his own bed without even being able to scream. Vralia avoided getting stained with blood with mastery. A minute later, he repeated the procedure with Cleosinda.
Racia, Gando, and Pip used techniques similar to Vralia's, only that they directly cut the throat and both the arteries at the same time. Getting a quick death and trying not to get dirty with blood was the right way to do it; everyone agreed to that, except for Emil.
Xavier and Emil were in the children's room. Xavier victim was a girl who was about eight years old. Emil got a boy one or two years younger. Both were silent in front of their victims. Xavier felt repulsion for what he was about to do. It was his first kill; he had never killed anyone directly; his job was more surveillance and acting as bait or distraction. Emil, on the contrary, was delighted with the idea of this crime. Vralia had given orders to finish the job quickly, but Emil had other plans, thinking of slowly strangling his victim, a small child who could not resist. The only idea of abusing the weaker brought him pleasure. The scarce light that entered through the windows prevented the eyes from being seen, which was a pity; he liked to look his victims in the eyes as life abandoned them, yet the idea of feeling the arms of the little one trying to fight for his life produced great excitement.
Xavier's hand stopped Emil's movement. You didn't have to be a genius to understand it; Xavier couldn't kill the girl. Although Emil was annoyed by Xavier's weakness, the idea of killing the girl before eliminating her brother was enticing. Emil approached the girl; he could not risk waking her up. A quick death was needed. Emil Dagger cut the tissues of the small neck to reach the bone of the spine with ease. There was not even a weeping; the cut was perfect; arteries, veins, trachea, everything was cut at once. Emil moved toward the boy and began to strangle him. The child's arms and legs, trying to fend Emil off, the momentary noises produced by the sister's trachea filling with blood, like background music. Emil was in paradise, while Xavier was standing in silence. He gripped the dagger on his back with strength.
"That is life," Xavier thought. "The weak die, devoured by the strong."
When the boy stopped moving and Emil was sure he was dead, he got up smiling. Rapid and silent as a cat, his dagger was heading to Xavier's heart. The blade stopped when it collided with the metal of the fire mage badge that Xavier had found in the jungle of Morr and which he usually wore under his hunter's leather jacket. As a result of his daily practice and training, his hands moved almost by reflection, and his dagger slipped into Emil's left ear. The sharp and thin weapon passed uninterruptedly to Emil's brain. Between brain damage and the destruction of the ear, Emil lost his balance and fell to the ground. Xavier didn't waste his time, and clawed the dagger into Emil's heart.
'There is no honor among bandits,' said Xavier in a low voice. 'Now I know why I didn't like this plan; they planned to kill me from the beginning.'
He fell to the ground, looking at Emil's body. He felt a little nauseous, but it wasn't as bad as he expected. While it was true that he was now a murderer, no one deserved it more than that degenerate sadist. He was not surprised or hurt by the betrayal; after all, they were criminals. After several months of moving with the band, the low layers of the criminal world had shown him that the world was full of betrayals and deceit.
Xavier checked the body. He found some silver and copper coins, plus the Malman's worm. He left the swords and the dagger stained with the blood of the children, cleaned the blood from his dagger with Emil's clothes, looked for a moment at the kids corpses, and for a second felt better about himself: 'At least they have been avenged.'
He didn't feel sorry for Emil; in fact, he was glad that his first victim had been a monster like him. He went out to the hallway; there was nobody. With the greatest agility and silence he could muster, he went to Antonio's office. He opened the secret passage on the bookshelf. It was better not to follow the original escape route of the band and to escape on his own as soon as possible. It was impossible for Emil to act without Vralia's permission, so Vralia should have given the order. He crossed the narrow hallway, closing the opening behind him. A few minutes later, he emerged from the gardens at the back of the mansion. He moved cautiously; there were a couple of guards standing at the back door, where the gang was supposed to escape.
"This was not part of the plan; what are these guards doing here?" he thought.
Using the bushes of the gardens as a hiding place, he crawled until he could see the front of the mansion. The guards were storming in.
"The guards are here before time... it's a trap." Xavier stayed down on the ground, among the bushes in the garden.
Meanwhile, inside the mansion, in the time it had taken Xavier to flee, Vralia stole the jewels of both the masters of the house. There was not much, which was not surprising; after all, they were nobles who had fallen into misfortune. After killing the servants, the other three members of the band went out to the big hall. The silver cutlery would generate some extra money. They had already cleaned up all the valuables in the living room, the waiters, and the kitchen.
A sharp pain invaded Pip's body, and it became difficult for him to breathe.
'I'm sorry, boy,' said Gando, pulling from him. His great physical strength had caused the short sword to go through Pip's body until it reached the handle; the tip of the sword went all the way out through his chest. When Gando pulled out the sword, a confused Pip jadeed, his lungs filled with blood, and red foam came out of his mouth as he bled out on the floor.
'There is no honor among thieves, and we needed a fallguy for the guards. I wish you better luck in your next life.'
Racia and Gando were about to pass over Pip's body after collecting the valuable belongings when the guards entered the hallway, charging towards them with their crossbows. Taken by surprise, the criminals were too slow to react. None of the four arrows failed to reach their target. Three of them hit Gando, one straight to the heart, another to the head, and the last to the right shoulder. Racia just got an arrow in the abdomen.
'Vralia!' cried Racia as loudly as her wound permitted.
Vralia left Antonio's room in time to see the guards, who had abandoned their crossbows and were thrusting their swords into Racia's chest and abdomen.
"We were betrayed," Vralia thought as he ran toward the back exit of the house. Racia was done for, and there was no honor among thieves. He didn't even try to save her. When the mansion's back door opened, a pair of spears penetrated Vralia's abdomen and pushed him back inside the house. A couple of guards were waiting for him. Vralia fell to the floor in the hallway, and the guards removed the spears from his body only to stab him on repeated occasions.
Meanwhile, Xavier came out discreetly through the main door. The guards had entered the mansion in troupe, and the gate was open and unattended. He quickly but discretely left the mansion and lost himself in the alleys.
Xavier pretended to be a traveler who arrived late at one of the taverns in the poorest area of the citadel, far away from the Brail mansion. He slept on the hard stone floor with other travelers and decided not to return to the hiding places that the band had planned to use, as it was possible that the guards would visit them, and he was right. The guards knew Vralia's hideouts and safehouses. At dawn, he left the citadel. On the way, he heard rumors: the guards had discovered a gang of thieves who attacked the noble family of the De Brail. Unfortunately, they did not arrive in time to rescue the inhabitants of the mansion, but after a bloody battle, they managed to eliminate the criminals. The guards received a reward from the lord of the citadel for their commendable work and exemplary service.
'This is life; no matter where you go, the world is full of people like that,' said Xavier for himself.
Xavier continued walking and left behind another of his many sins. He would return to the Veldat kingdom. Except for his short stay in Nelsen, no one knew him there. In Orphen, he had been seen with Vralia and the others in some bars and the brothel. He could not risk being associated with the band and put a reward on his head.