12. Episode The Peacock and the Crow
Crow watched how the slave girl gathered the silks that he had torn from her body only a few moments ago. He had used her, rough and without any love or affection. He simply had taken her as the beast she was to satisfy his own needs of release. It had been several hands ago when he had used a slave and perhaps it would be more hands when he would again. There was no love making, no tenderness and the girl that scurried in his room was very much aware of his strength. She carried the scars, perhaps even bruises for several days to remind her of him. The slave finally knelt before him and pressed her forehead to his knee. “Master, is there anything I can bring you ?” she asks softly – in fear that she again would meet him in the harsh manner of before.
Crow reached out to her long black locks of hair and pulled her to his face “No.” he stated while his green eyes that had seen all the countless murders, searched for hers. “You served me well. You can give that to your owner.” He said while he reached out to his belt that was discarded next to him. He pulled the coin that he and the owner had agreed and handed it to her. “I will of course check if he will receive every one of them.” He warned before he took possession of her lips for a final time. “Now go.” He bid her, before he would turn to his tunic. The girl rises and turned to leave but stopped halfway across the room to kneel again. She pressed her head to the floor, lowering her body as far as she was able. Crow noticed and understood that the position she had taken was to express how low she was and that there was still something she wished to share – something nearly forgotten. “Master, forgive this low slave.” She whispered. “I was asked to pass a message.” She added.
Crow watched her, didn’t yet speak while he cleaned himself up and started to dress himself further. He knew that the girl hadn’t been given any time to speak when she had entered the room. It was one of his ways. Not give girls the room to come close before that act of pleasure. Have them as strangers, helpless and with no names. “Speak.” He only replied to her eventually. The slave knelt back but kept her eyes on his sandals. Perhaps she could see how well armed Crow truly was when he started to strap his daggers upon his body. “I was told that the one you were waiting for has sent word.” She said with a hint of her own curiosity, since the message held so little information. Crow nodded and knew instantly that there was only one he had been waiting for “Good.” He stated and waved his hand “If that was all you were to tell, you can leave.”
The slave girl took that intake of breath – as if she had escaped death and hurried out the room he had paid for. When the door closed Crow finally felt himself alone with the thoughts he only kept for himself. “The Peacock has recovered.” He stated to himself as if the woman was only a metaphor for what was. A woman that had endured much and always seemed to find herself carrying scars but alive. The thought that she was in a way so similar to him. He had survived several Kurri attacks, wars, chases after a kill or even a fall from his tarn. He never came out of it unharmed, for each there was a scar that would remind him of what he had escaped. The tokens of his victory on death itself.
Crow looked around the room, the smell of sex still in the air, to be sure that he had indeed armed himself completely and hadn’t forgotten any of his belongings. He was getting older and to reach for a knife that he might have forgotten wasn’t the best way in his profession. He was careful and with it always aware that danger could come from small things that others often underestimated. The Peacock was one woman he never would underestimate. He had seen her in so many ways and never could he see her as just that beast as he had with the girl that had rushed from his room a moment ago.
Crow stepped towards the window that gave him an excellent view on the small town square. He could see the merchants that carried their merchandize to their stalls. He even could hear the conversations or debates between them. Their lives were so different to his own, he thought. They could make commitments with others, take a companion or even fall in love. The last something Crow feared more than death itself. He knew that falling in love would make any men weak. The man could fight it, could try to show different, but no man would truly be without that blur that such emotions gave.
Crow leaned against the wall that still gave him that view and wondered about the story of Azrael.
Azrael
Azrael would have been one of the first Assassins, legends said. A man so skilled in steel was asked to murder for gold. Azrael had been a famous warrior, whose heart turned cold when his beloved companion had died in a war. His kills were done swift with not even a hint of his presence. Guards spoke of the ghost that seemed to murder. None had ever seen him, nor could they even shace his shadow when the murder was found out. He came and went with no witnesses there. Azrael was considered one of the best in his caste.
When Azrael was tasked to murder the same man that had ordered the needless war there had been no signs of his failure. He had done all an Assassin would do. He had been as a shadow to the man, had observed, studied all his doings. Azrael had known his e. very day step, his routine, the number of men that protected him
The Assassin Azrael had finally known that the best chance was to kill the man in his own home by night. When he had finally made his last arrangements to give him a quick exit from the murder he was to commit he had readied himself to enter the house unseen.
Azrael had dressed himself in the black of the night to hide in the shadows and pass the unsuspecting guards and painted the dagger upon his forehead – a sign that he was there to do what he had been paid for. It had been no problem to enter the house, the man that was to be killed perhaps felt falsely safe by the amount of guards that were around his home.
Azrael had been on the verge of killing when a slave entered the room of the man that was sound asleep. Azrael would kill her just as swiftly if it weren’t for the candle light that showed her face to him. The same face as that of his beloved companion. A deep and profound love that had been years ago his soul of living. The blade in place to pierce the mans heart started to tremble when the slave girl had whispered to him and pleaded for the life of the man that in his mind had been the cause of the death of his own companion. He could have killed the man in the blink of an eye, could have slit the throat of the girl in the process and yet he could not. Instead of taking the life of the man he turned his blade to his own heart and fell in it to kill himself.
An Assassin that had been only a ghost for most, an example for many other killers, had failed his caste by not doing what he was paid for, simply out of love for the memory of his own beloved companion that would await him in the City of Dust.
—
The story of Azrael always gave Crow the shivers, since he could perhaps empathise with the man that Azrael would have been. Perhaps because he also had lost a woman that he had loved so deeply or could see the reason for the failure of Azrael as one that he could make too. It was this story that made him carry the mask of the cold – harsh killer. It was the knowledge that even a slave girl could make the most fierce man bend or break.
Crow walked back to the bowl with water and splashed some of it to his face, in wish to erase these thoughts from it, before he would go to the physician to see what state he would find the Peacock in.
Crows Murder 
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