Osprey

1.

At the bottom of the world lies the city of Ymra. It is as much a country as it is a city – a vast expanse of homes, workshops, places of business, and places of pleasure. It is split up and divided into manageable chunks by roads and walkways. In between it all innumerable alleys are scattered, some dark no matter the time of day, dead-ends both to journeys and lives.

Ymra is one city, divided. Having grown too large to be controlled by a single ruling body, different factions have torn it in pieces and divided it amongst each other. In Ymra however, few people learn from history, and the factions are locked in a battle for territory and power, complete control of Ymra being the ultimate goal, impossible though it may be.

Possibly more than anywhere else, Ymra is a haven for rogues and agents, each faction offering opportunities for ambitious mercenaries. Given the sheer number of these hired messengers, of word or of action, many legends about particularly accomplished members of the group develop. In fact, the war between factions, and especially their reliance on mercenaries to carry out their more secretive business, has led to a society and a culture with a deeply ingrained obsession with these agents and their individual accomplishment. So much so, that the recorded history of Ymra is just as much a recording of the actions of agents in faction employ as it is a history of faction power levels and territories.

Any self-respecting library in Ymra has a section dedicated to the stories of famous mercenaries, often focusing on the mercenaries that have worked for the local ruling faction, or mercenaries born in the local area. Some even focus on a single specific mercenary, giving them more attention in historic scrolls and often electing them a patron mercenary of the library and neighbourhood, incorporating the name of the agent into the name of the institution or community. Most mercenaries operate under a nickname that they have given themselves, been given by an employer, or even in some cases been given by a victim. Thus some libraries, churches and neighbourhoods in Ymra have names like The Library of the Silent Storm, Silver Tongue Tyrra Church, or Community of Goldeye the first.

To an outsider unfamiliar with the workings of Ymra, like a hunter from the Green Belt or a farmer from the Endless Plains, this way of elevating mercenaries above everymen, clergy and even the leaders hiring the rogues themselves could seem absurd. For the citizens of Ymra however, it is the most natural thing in the world. Stories of hired blades are told in pubs and inns as entertainment, they are told in churches as moral guides, they are told to get the children to sleep at night, and they are recollected and dreamed of as an escape from what is often a harsh life in the urban sprawl.

---

There was a bird of prey flying high above the canopy of roofs in the Township of Swiftmouth in Ymra, although even a trained eye would be hard pressed to spot it. Set against a dark night sky, the only way to know it was there was to notice that in one tiny spot in the sky stars seemed to blink, or disappear momentarily, as if hidden by shadow for a brief moment.

That night it would have been easier to spot the dark shape moving across that same canopy of roofs – effortlessly making its way from one roof to the next, nimbly skipping along over streets and alleys to some unknown destination – but only just. The shape, should you be skilled and lucky enough to spot it, would have resembled a cloaked figure, the cloak waving in the wind behind a slim figure during every jump, wrapping around it tightly at every landing. It moved fast, determined, and in a straight line. It obviously knew where it was going, and wished to get there as fast as possible. There was a real elegance to the dark figure, and it demonstrated great agility and coordination as it leapt towards its goal. Not far behind it another, slightly smaller shape followed. This was also the shape of a cloaked figure, but seemingly carrying something on its back. Despite the apparent burden of the extra load, this figure moved with almost equal grace as the first.

Where they were going, only they could know. However, the location where this transpired being where it was, it was almost certain that someone had a very unpleasant surprise coming to them before the night was over, if they had not received it already.

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2.

The two cloaked figures had climbed up and into an old tower that overlooked the expanse of roofs below. The tower could, at some point in the past, have been a watchtower or guardpost at the edge of the city or faction territory, before it would have been left behind by expanding borders and faction progress. The figures sat crouching atop the wide stone railing circling the top of the tower, scouting in the same direction. They sat in silence as they waited. From the skies in front of them a dark spot descended, a twisting and flowing shape trailing behind it. The dark spot, which was an eagle, dove down and then pulled up into a straight glide away from the old tower. After it had travelled a very specific distance, it suddenly dropped something from its claws, as it had been trained to do, and climbed back up into the night sky. The small pouch that the eagle had dropped landed on the edge of a roof, and as it did it suddenly lit up, the fuses sticking out from its top burning quickly and bright. The light only lasted for a second, but that was enough.

"What do you think?" asked the biggest of the figures to the other. It was a woman's voice.

The other figure quickly licked the tip of a finger and held it up while the other hand got a small metal device out from a pocket. The figure opened the device and held it up  with a flat hand.

"Well, the mark is about halfway to the target, and there ain't much wind..." the other figure began, its voice also being female, but younger and higher pitched, "...I'd say the number 2 or 3?"

The big figure nodded slowly.

"Yeah, they're both usable. But it's gonna be harder to get the angle right with the 3, 'cause of the extra power. Besides, no point in using more effort than ya need."

The smaller figure had a big, oblong bag slung across her back, and she lowered it so that it stood on the tower roof and rested against the stone railing. She opened it to reveal the tips of several bows and picked up the bow second from the left. She handed it to the larger figure who had sat down, one leg on each side of the railing. Then she found an arrow from the same bag and handed this to the larger figure as well.

The larger figure brought a gloved hand up to remove the hood covering her head. She squinted at something beyond the place where the eagle had dropped the pouch, and nocked the arrow.

Again waiting in silence, they sat at the top of the tower for a few minutes before movement in the distance alerted them.  The movement was a small group of three men on horseback, very slowly making their way across a tiny square where two streets crossed. This was exactly what they had been waiting for, and the woman's grip on the bow tightened slightly. However, the riders were not the only things moving in the area. There were things moving across the rooftops as well – one on the far side of the riders, and one about halfway between them and the tower.

"Look – that one might just stumble upon our mark" the large figure said as the closest moving shape made its way towards the roof where the burnt out pouch remained.

"Is there time?" the smaller figure asked.

The woman with the bow answered by raising the bow and drawing the string back, aiming towards the riders on the square. As she took a deep breath, the man on the roof had arrived by the pouch and crouched down to investigate. The woman exhaled and, holding her breath, released the string. The man by the pouch heard a faint swoosh overhead and immediately recognised it. He stood up to shout, but his warning only came as the arrow found its target and pierced the middle rider's throat at its base. He grasped his throat as he fell off the horse.

The woman handed the bow over to the girl, who put it back in its slot in the bag. Then they got off the railing and the woman took the bag. She grabbed the girl's shoulder reassuringly, although she wasn't sure whether it was mostly for the girl or herself.

"You know the drill", she said, and the girl nodded.

They made their way down the tower and then separated, running in different directions into the night.

As the cloaked woman ran away from the scene, she was joined by the eagle, flying overhead. She smiled a little to herself. She hadn't known why the middle rider had to die, and barely even knew who he had been. The important thing wasn't why – the important thing was that her boss wanted it that way. The job had gone well, so she was pleased with herself, for the moment.  In truth, she enjoyed it when her job took her into other factions' territory. It was far more dangerous than performing tasks within her employer's boundaries, and she reveled in the  challenge of circumventing guards and escaping through enemy lines. She tried to keep her thoughts lingering on that subject for as long as she could, for although she kept her concentration up until she was in the clear and back on familiar ground, the nagging sensation that unpleasant duties awaited her at home was always in the back of her mind.

---

3.

She entered the small room she called a home by climbing through the window facing the back alley. Before she had come here, she had tied a red strip of cloth to the flagpole on the tower of Whispersong the Knowing, a few neighbourhoods away. This was to signal the status of tonight's mission without ever coming into contact with the next link in the faction chain. The peculiar mode of communication was both for practical reasons and for secrecy and ensuring that no one link knew too much. There were hundreds or thousands of agents working for her faction, and meeting another agent in person was a lot of logistics for such a simple message.

She removed her cloak, which was tan and black. It was designed in a very particular way. The hood was tan, with two streaks of black running down each side from about eye-height, forming a jagged curve and growing in thickness until it met the lower part of the cloak at the shoulders and blended into the blackness of it. It had been made to resemble the eagle that followed her when she worked, the Osprey. She was a Junior Agent, and many mercenaries weren't given a proper Name until they had worked their way into a faction leader's closest circle of agents. Still, whispers and rumours about an "Osprey" had started to surface, and this was, at the moment, her proudest achievement.

Tonight she would have no trouble falling asleep, satisfied with the night's events. The feeling of success was just enough to keep her mind from wandering to unpleasant responsibilities and duties of tomorrow.

---

"No", she said, "I haven't heard anything more from him, I'm sure he'll send a letter soon".

She wasn't sure whether the lie about her brother was a betrayal or a mercy. But she was forced to believe the latter, lest the guilt of it tear her conscience to shreds.

Osprey grimaced slightly and felt pained when her mother winced, her old bones aching as she sat down on the edge of her bed. It was a pain like no other. It wasn't a pain of the flesh, much worse, it was a pain of the soul. Not a pain like disappointment, or sadness, or even despair. It wasn't even like the pain of sorrow and the loss of meaning after a bad breakup – less acute perhaps, but so much more disturbing. She couldn't help remembering when she was a little girl and her mother had been young, and fit, and she could remember thinking so highly of her. Her mother could do magical, wonderful things then, like cooking mouth watering meals, and curing the pain of a freshly bruised arm with a kiss. And as she watched her aging mother settle slowly on her bed she felt that somehow the magic had left her, or that the magic of adulthood was a simple trick that lost its magic once you were shown how it worked. And she felt the pain that children feel seeing their mother or father hurting. Staying there became unbearable, although that broke her heart.

She walked the streets of her neighbourhood, which were still bustling with life and would continue to do so for some time before the dusk fell over them and signalled the end of the day. She felt wholly uncomfortable walking in the street, and this worried her. She would be much happier on the rooftops, springing from house to house, seeing the world from above, free from the maze that the houses forced upon the people on the ground. She worried that the more time she spent up there, at night, running errands of action, the more she would feel uncomfortable in the streets, with the rest of the people. The more she stayed up there, the more she wouldn't belong here, until she was so removed from it that she could never return to the streets, to people, to daylight.

She made her way from the trader's neighbourhoods and into darker and poorer ones. A neighbourhood could be anything from fifteen to a hundred houses in size. They could be neighbourhoods because the same merchant owned all the houses, because a church had taken it upon themselves to care for the faith of people within a given area, because a faction leader had sent an agent to govern over it, or any other reason that made it sort of sensible for a group of residents to band together.

Osprey walked down a street very similar to the ones in her own neighbourhood, except it was dead quiet – without life. There were no traders here, no smithies or bakeries or leatherworkers. There wasn't even a pub or a brothel. She arrived at something that would have been a decent house about two generations ago. Now it was so crooked and misaligned and withered, the wood so rotten and tormented, that it seemed like it would collapse should a drunken fool collide with anything load bearing. Osprey didn't want to go inside, but it wasn't because she was afraid of it collapsing. She gently climbed the outside stairs leading to the second story apartments, and entered.

She found her brother sitting in a fetal position in the corner, his head resting on his knees. In his room was a blanket, a wooden chair with two of its legs missing, and a simple wardrobe with four drawers, all empty. He hadn't noticed her.

"Tristan", she tried, not daring to expect a response.

He moved his head slowly and looked up at her. He didn't smile when he saw her – he frowned sadly and looked at her with pathetic, pleading eyes.

"Have you...", he started, his voice weak and trembling, "... Have you brought me..." He couldn't finish the sentence.

"No", replied Osprey, "I tell you every time, Tristan. I will not bring you your poison."

Tristan looked away, stared at the wall with a look of disappointment and despair. She kneeled down next to him, pausing to assess him for a moment. He was so thin, and filthy. Part of her had immense sympathy for him, her brother, and wanted more than anything to help him. The other part hated him for what he had done to himself, to their mother, to her, and knew that whatever help she could provide he would refuse, unless it was a pouch of faintly pink powder. She sat a basket filled with a sausage, tomatoes, and a loaf of bread down next to him.

"Please, Tristan. Eat it before it rots this time. I beg of you"

Tristan still stared at the wall, motionless. She caught herself being almost impressed he had kept his head up for so long. She got up slowly. Tending to their mother was bad enough, but the state her brother was in was so horrible she had seriously considered never coming back, and she did so again.

On her way back to her own lodgings, she couldn't help thinking about her mother and brother yet again, tiring though it was. Tristan had left home years ago to seek fortune in other parts of Ymra. Their father had already died in a drunken stupor at the pub at that point, and Osprey and her mother had been left to fend for themselves. Tristan sent letters home from various regions of Ymra from time to time, but success eluded him. When he finally came home, he had less than he had left with, apart from a strong addiction to the pink powder sometimes called cherrydust. He wouldn't meet with his mother, and made Osprey promise that she wouldn't tell their mother of the fate that had befallen him. The first few years he maintained presence of mind enough to keep sending letters, telling his mother that he was fine somewhere else. Eventually he became so debilitated by the drugs that the letters stopped.

Every day their mother asked for him, and Osprey always told her that he was probably fine, and that surely there would be another letter soon. And she would have felt even worse about it if it wasn't for the fact that their poor mother had no hope of remembering a conversation from one day to the next, so every time Osprey promised a letter, it would genuinely comfort the old woman.

Osprey walked through the darkening streets and longed to be on the rooftops. She simply could not wait to don her mercenary gear, meet up with her companion animal and young apprentice and see if there were jobs to be done this night. And if there weren't, she would simply enjoy the height, explore, practice new routes. At least she would be removed from the miserable conditions of the ground level.

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