TIME Evening, a few days later LOCATION The Ship Inn, Chuza
BACKGROUND:
The days since Cove Street had turned up more questions than answers – a dead child’s sketch of Dew and a dog that shouldn’t have been drawable, and a small black cross etched into a false tooth in Hawke’s own jaw. With Branson still missing and the Zhakarov Brotherhood due to hold a ‘meeting’ of their own, the Agents turned their attention to watching the Ship Inn.
WHAT HAPPENED
Raven went in plain clothes; Crowe and Hawke held the entrance outside. Inside, she clocked Valka at a card table without breaking stride, then caught sight of Thom being shown to one of the restaurant’s private booths. He was already deep in conversation by the time she worked her way round the bar for a better angle – and got her look: Zhakarov himself, a full serpent tattoo climbing his bald scalp and fangs pierced down through each eyebrow, in the booth with two bodyguards. Raven took a table nearby and settled in.
Zhakarov spotted her before Thom did, and had the Agents seated at a table of their own rather than left looming over the booth – drinks on the house. Thom, following his host’s glance, finally turned round.
“Well, well – if it isn’t Agent Willdo. Fine evening to dine out. Fiercely so.”
Thom
Nikolai muttered something to Crowe about him being in the wrong line of work for a man that handy with a kemercannon, and got a look from his boss for it. Zhakarov himself just shrugged.
“I am a man of simple rules. Eating and combat are to be kept separate. When a cook has spent this much effort, why waste good food?”
Zhakarov
Just after nine, the bell chimed and an argument over a bill started drawing attention – a patron and a waitress, getting louder. It stopped mattering fast. Two cloaked men stood, crossed the floor toward Zhakarov’s booth, were joined by a third, and opened up with repeating crossbows – invisible until the moment they fired. Two bolts hit home. A second volley of four followed before anyone at the table could so much as stand.
“Koschek sends his regards.”
one of the attackers, over Zhakarov’s booth
The shouting brought Hawke and Crowe in from the street at a run. Raven armed up and moved for a better vantage point rather than the door. Crowe went in first, calling for the assailants to surrender – Skinny answered by firing again and took a clipped shot for his trouble. Hawke squared up to Mikey ‘the fist’ and traded heavy blows blow for blow. Nikolai flipped a table on its side for cover against the crossbow fire as Zhakarov slumped to the floor in a spray of blood, and Thom bolted for the corner where Raven was waiting for exactly that.
The Agents closed the ring around the attackers as the melee spread. John the Impaler fired his last bolt and broke for the staircase.
And then Zhakarov stood up, unhurried, and dusted himself off – very much alive, to the evident surprise of the men who’d just put six bolts into him. Raven would swear afterward the bolts had hit square in the chest; whatever kept him standing, it wasn’t luck. He suggested, conversationally, that the Agents leave him to deal with Mikey and go after the one running instead.
Skinny tried to disengage, cut at Raven on his way past, and was answered with a whirl of blades that put him down for good. Mikey lasted a little longer against three angles of attack – Hawke’s barrage, a swift punch from Zhakarov himself, and finally an eye-watering hit from Crowe’s sap – before he went down too.
Zhakarov crouched over him afterward, checking his breathing with the mild curiosity of a man confirming an outcome rather than mourning one. “Ahh, the big one still breathes. Pity – I could have sworn I heard his skull crack with that smash to his head. Still, he’ll have a big headache, if he wakes. Maybe he should be put out of his misery…” He straightened at the Agents’ reaction, unbothered. “No? Fair enough – he’s your prize. Worth some bounty, eh?”
“Vasilov – let the guests know the excitement’s over. A drink to anyone who wishes to stay!”
Zhakarov, to the waiter, straightening his coat
The room took him up on it. The patrons who’d bunched up by the door drifted back to their seats in a flurry of relieved chatter, as if a gang boss hadn’t just walked off six crossbow bolts in front of them.
