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Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Someone had once told Viago this when he was a boy, and he, being a boy of notably suspicious temperament, had taken it very much to heart. He just hadn't realised that, at the grand and supposedly sophisticated age of thirty-five, he would still be playing this game with such vigor. Or that the enemy in question would not be a rival Crow, a disgruntled merchant prince, or even a tax collector, but a small, white, sentient cloud of fluff and flatulence with which his paramour had deigned to have the oddest of symbiotic relationships. It was a partnership that seemed to primarily involve the cloud receiving food, shelter, and adoration, and Teia receiving, as far as Viago could tell, a sort of living, breathing, and frequently damp handkerchief.
The "cloud" in question, known to the world (or at least, to the only part of the world that mattered to Viago, Teia) as Duca, was currently attempting to achieve a state of quantum entanglement with Teia’s silk-clad leg under the dinner table. It was a blur of white fluff and utter devotion, a single-minded pursuit of physical merger that put the most determined of suitors to shame. Viago took a slow, deliberate sip of his wine, a vintage chosen to impress and now tasting distinctly of sour grapes and canine-based resentment. His gaze, a practised sweep of polite interest, slid past the four-legged nebula to the true, looming threat at the head of the table.
First Talon Lucanis Dellamorte.
The man, despite his small stature, had always secretly terrified Viago. This was not an uncommon reaction to Lucanis, much in the same way that vertigo is a common reaction to looking over a very high cliff. He was cold, with a face that was all sharp angles and contours, as though cut by glass. In truth, he had ‘settled’ since becoming First Talon, a process analogous to a volcano deciding to become a mountain; the eruptions were less frequent, but the potential for catastrophic lava was, if anything, more concentrated and worrying. Viago supposed Rook, Lucanis’s partner, was to thank for that small mercy, in the same way one might thank a mouse for convincing a cat to take up a nap by way of over-exertion. The fundamental nature of the cat remained.
Still though, the Ghost of Treviso, the Demon of Vyrantium, still scared the willies out of him. There were rumours. There are always rumours in Antiva, of course. They sprout in the cobbled streets like particularly tenacious weeds. But the rumours about Lucanis were the kind that made other rumours go quiet and look at their feet. It was said he had singlehandedly eviscerated an entire family. Women, children, the family dog.
The dog part was, in Viago’s professional opinion, the only bit that seemed unnecessarily excessive. The rest was just business.
Now, Antivan gossip does have a tendency towards the operatic, but Viago, looking at the cool, collected geometry of the man’s face, could definitely have seen the old Lucanis doing just exactly that, perhaps not out of malice, but to appease his grandmother. Which brought him, by a natural and terrifying progression, to her.
She was older than the ground itself, or at least older than the wine, which was saying something. Caterina Dellamorte. Viago didn't know how old she really was, only that she, too, terrified him in a way that was somehow deeper than her grandson’s sharp terror. Of her, he’d heard she’d killed a man with a thimble. Not a poisoned thimble, or a thimble filled with a deadly neurotoxin. Just a thimble, applied with what one could only assume was immense and focused force. It was also said that in her hey-day, she had been a master seductress of epic proportions, a siren who could make strong men forget their own names and weak men forget to breathe. This was a little harder to believe now, looking at the wizened figure in the armchair, but the Dellamortes were a good-looking stock, and Viago had seen portraits. It was, he decided, entirely plausible, and somehow made the thimble thing even worse.
She sat now, enthroned in her armchair, a queen in the empire of her own drawing room. Her gimlet eyes missed nothing, least of all the level of wine in Viago’s glass, and her gnarled fingers, which had presumably once driven kings to madness, were now engaged in stroking the head of the monstrous, wheezing bulldog at her feet.
Bianca.
The dog was a creature of such profound stillness that she seemed less a pet and more a piece of morbid, wheezing furniture that had somehow achieved a state of biological animation through the work of a particularly diligent mage. She occupied a plush velvet cushion like a landmass occupies a continent, a mountain of brindle wrinkles and gurgling breaths. Each snore was a wet, rattling affair. It was the audible equivalent of a death knock, if the death in question was taking its time and had a bit of a chest infection.
Viago tried his damnedest to hide a grimace behind his wine goblet. It was a complex manoeuvre, requiring the delicate musculature of a trained Crow assassin to contort his face into something resembling polite interest while his soul was screaming internal profanities about the biological absurdity of bulldogs. Apparently, though his attempt was not good enough.
A sharp, shocking pain lanced through his shin. The strike was impeccably precise, delivered with the silent, brutal efficiency of a viper. His eyes, wide with pain and outrage, darted to Teia. She was, infuriatingly, still smiling and chatting with Caterina across the table, her face a perfect mask of convivial charm. It was a masterclass in covert aggression. She could, he thought with a strange mix of terror and pride, probably start a war between two nations using only a fork and a well-timed compliment.
"Nonna," she beamed, her voice dripping with a saccharine sweetness that could put a hummingbird into a diabetic coma, "you spoil us with this spread! The faraona alla crema di tartufi is simply divine."
Caterina, the matriarch who had likely invented spoiling as a tactical weapon, waved a bejewelled hand nonchalantly. "For my favourite, only the best." The glance she shared with Teia was warm, genuine. The two were as close as could be, a bond forged not by blood but by something far stronger: a shared appreciation for fine food, lethal gossip, and the quiet, mutual understanding of how to properly ruin a man who deserved it.
Teia, her granddaughter in name only, was clearly the apple of the old woman's eye. A position that came with significant perks, such as the best cuts of truffle-stuffed guinea fowl, and significant perils, such as being seated directly across from the glowering monument to familial disappointment that was Illario.
Viago’s gaze slid across the table to where one of Caterina’s actual, biological grandsons was slowly turning a darker shade of puce. Illario. He had been sitting in a state of near-complete ignominy ever since his little failed coup against Lucanis. He was being so thoroughly ignored it was less a snub and more a form of social erasure. Caterina’s gaze seemed to physically bend around him, as if he were a piece of furniture that was not only ugly but also slightly in the way. Every coo and compliment directed at Teia was another invisible pinprick in the pincushion of his ego.
Viago watched Illario bristle. He was doing it quite literally; the fine silk of his doublet seemed to vibrate with the sheer force of his seething resentment. It was like watching a peacock that had just been told it was, in fact, a slightly damp pigeon with a gammy leg. For a fleeting, treacherous second, Viago felt a spark of camaraderie with the man. They were both, in their own ways, outsiders being painfully reminded of their place by these formidable women.
Then Bianca let out another seismic, gurgling snore, and the moment passed. Illario was just a man who had failed to usurp a demon. Viago’s enemy was a dog that had successfully usurped his peace of mind. It was, he reflected, a rather humbling tier of opposition.
Dinner progressed, as they are want to do, and finally it was time for the night cap.
Viago had frankly been counting down the minutes until their scheduled soujourn into the parlour. He had developed a private, mental checklist for surviving Dellamorte gatherings, and ‘Parlour’ was circled in bold, triumphant ink. In the parlour, the geometry was better. Caterina and Teia would inevitably claim the plush armchairs by the fireplace, engaging in a silent, deadly war over a game of cards where the stakes were apparently bragging rights and the occasional piece of scandalous information. More importantly, those Maker-awful canines would dutifully follow them. Duca would become a fluffy, semi-sentient footstool for Teia, and Bianca would resume her post as a wheezing, geological feature at Caterina’s feet. It was a containment strategy. A cordon sanitaire. He could, in theory, find a strategically shadowed corner with a large brandy and simply wait for the whole affair to be over.
Finally, the signal came. Caterina Dellamorte dabbed her lips with a napkin, a gesture as definitive as a judge’s gavel. The party began to migrate.
It happened as they crossed the threshold. The great exodus from dining room to parlour. Teia, with Duca tucked in the crook of her arm like a fashionable, breathing purse, swept through. Caterina, leaning on her grandson’s offered arm (Lucanis’s arm, notably, not Illario’s), followed.
And Bianca… stayed.
She did not stir from her velvet cushion. She did not so much as twitch a jowl. She remained, a monumental, brindle-splotched statue, directly in the path of Viago, who was bringing up the rear with the grim determination of a man marching toward his own minor, socially awkward execution.
He paused. He waited. He made a small, encouraging shooing motion with his hand, the kind one might use on a stray chicken. Bianca’s only response was a soft, bubbling exhalation that smelled faintly of digested guinea fowl and existential ennui.
“Come along, Bianca, darling,” Caterina called from the other room, not even bothering to look back.
Bianca shuffled towards Caterina, and Viago tried his best—again—to temper his face into something resembling polite fondness. Finally, he made it to the parlour.
It was exactly as he had predicted and desperately needed it to be. A grand fire crackled in the hearth, its flames casting dancing shadows across the ornamental stone crows that flanked the mantelpiece, their beaks sharp and judgmental. Before the fire sat two ornate, leather high-backed chairs, a silent invitation for an evening of quiet conspiracy and gossip. Between them, a small table held two crystal glasses and an ornate metallic box that no doubt contained a deck of cards for Caterina and Teia.
Best of all, two small, pillowed beds—veritable thrones of canine luxury—lay next to each chair. That was the plan. That was the containment zone. The dogs would be lured by the plush cushions and the proximity to their humans, and Viago would be free. He could sink into the background, enter his mind palace for a few blessed hours, and mentally concoct exciting new formulas. His research had skewed heavily towards poisons in his youth, but he had gotten very thoroughly interested in aphrodisiacs since he and Teia had first gotten together. It was a far more rewarding field of study.
He claimed a deep leather sofa in a shadowed corner, the soft hide not even creaking as it consumed his form. He was comfortable. He was at ease. The plan was in motion. All was right with the world.
And then, Bianca decided that she didn't fancy her designated, undoubtedly expensive pillow tonight.
His foot.
Teia's eyes lit up with a devastating, misinterpreted joy.
“Oh, Vi!” she cooed, her voice a weapon of mass delusion. “She likes you!”
He was trapped. Pinned to the sofa by a creature that had apparently decided he was its new favourite heating pad, while the love of his life looked on, beaming at what she perceived to be a heartwarming interspecies bonding moment. He could feel the brandy calling to him from the cabinet across the room, a taunting, distant promise of solace that was now separated from him by a moat of dog.
He managed a smile. It was a small, tight, terrified thing that felt like it might crack his face.
“Charmed,” he whispered, to no one in particular, and resigned himself to his fate.
He couldn't kill Caterina Dellamorte's dog. He shouldn't kill Caterina Dellamorte's dog.
The mantra began its frantic, panicked laps around the interior of his skull, a lone, sensible thought trying to outrun the thundering herd of homicidal impulses. Can't kill the dog. Shouldn't kill the dog.
He was the Fifth Talon, for fuck's sake. A title that, while not carrying the same gut-loosening terror as 'First Talon', still implied a certain level of professional decorum. It suggested a man who dealt in political manoeuvring, in the elegant and untraceable removal of inconvenient nobles, in the delicate art of making an entire trade consortium disappear through a series of clever forgeries and one well-placed stabbing. It did not suggest a man who resorted to bludgeoning a geriatric bulldog with a candlestick because it had drooled on his favourite shoes. The reputational damage would be catastrophic. He'd never live it down.
And then there was Lucanis.
The thought of the Ghost of Treviso, the Demon of Vyrantium, deciding that Viago's continued existence was an affront to the memory of a flatulent piece of living furniture was enough to turn his piss into icicles that rattled in his bladder. This wasn't the cold fear of a business rival; this was the primal, soul-deep terror of a mouse who has just realized it has been casually sharpening its claws on the paw of a sleeping lion. Lucanis wouldn't just kill him. He would probably do it with a sense of profound, artistic disappointment, before his afternoon tea.
Can't kill the dog. Shouldn't kill the dog.
He was trapped. Not by chains or a locked door, but by the twin, unyielding forces of social propriety and abject terror, with a side of bestial halitosis. He let out a long, slow breath, the sigh of a man who has just accepted that his immediate future consisted of being an immobile, deeply resentful dog bed.
The brandy might as well have been in the fade.
It was then, that the Maker himself seemed to shine a solitary, mocking ray of light upon him. A shadow fell over him.
Lucanis stood before him, holding a smooth-glass of brandy that glowed like captured amber in the firelight. The man moved as though a ghost, barely stirring the air, his footsteps making less sound than Bianca’s digestive system. Viago hadn't even heard him approach, a fact which was, in itself, mildly terrifying.
Wordlessly, the First Talon extended the glass. Viago took it with the reverence of a desert wanderer receiving a miracle, his fingers brushing against Lucanis’s, which were, he noted with a shudder, perfectly dry and cool. The man didn't even have the decency to have normal, warm, living-person hands.
"You will be stuck there all night, though," Lucanis stated, his tone flat and factual, as if commenting on the weather or the structural integrity of a wall. He wasn't being unkind, merely observational. "Would you like me to bring you a book?"
Viago’s face contorted into a grimace before he could stop it. All night. The words echoed in the hollowed-out cavern of his soul. All night, serving as a living, breathing, and increasingly resentful ottoman for this sentient doorstop whose weight was now making his left foot go numb in a way that suggested permanent nerve damage. His brow furrowed as he wrestled with the offer. A book? What book could possibly distract from the reality of this!?
"No," he said, the word tighter than a garrote wire. He forced a sip of the excellent brandy, which for a glorious second, washed the taste of defeat from his palate. "I am perfectly fine, thankyou."
Lucanis nodded, a single, economical dip of the chin. He had performed his hostly duty. The social ledger was balanced. And with the impeccable, baffling social graces of a particularly reclusive mushroom, he decided that his work here was done and that he had other, far more engaging duties to attend to. Such as staring at a wall, or perhaps counting his collection of throwing knives in alphabetical order.
He had always hated social gatherings in the parlour, but since becoming First Talon, he had realised the wonderful, iron-clad excuse the title provided for making oneself scarce. It was a diplomatic exit, a strategic withdrawal. "Alas, the burdens of command," one could sigh, before vanishing into the welcoming silence of a study, especially since Rook—the only person who seemed capable of making Lucanis tolerate prolonged human interaction—had been unable to join them on this night.
Viago watched, trapped and sipping his brandy, as Lucanis moved to the fireplace. He planted a dry, precise kiss on each of Caterina's cheeks, a gesture that managed to look both respectful and vaguely threatening, as if he were checking her vitals. He then performed the same ritual on Teia, who smiled up at him with genuine affection. And then, without a backward glance, the Ghost of Treviso simply… dissolved. One moment he was there, a sharp silhouette against the fire, and the next, the doorway was empty, leaving only the faintest psychic imprint of someone who was profoundly glad to be elsewhere.
Viago was alone. Or as alone as a man can be when a small, wheezing planet has chosen his feet as its orbital path. He took another, larger gulp of brandy. The parlour, which had seemed like a promised land, had become his beautifully appointed prison cell. And his warden was beginning to snore again.
A few rounds of cards, a few more glasses of a fortified wine, and Caterina Dellamorte began to show the first signs of mortal fatigue. She placed her cards down with a soft, definitive tap that signaled the end of the evening’s campaign. She rose, a slow, regal unfolding, and began her farewells.
Her eyes, those ancient, gimlet instruments that had once calculated the downfall of empires and the proper starching of collars, swept the room. They were looking for Bianca. They found her, a brindle continent still firmly anchored to the tectonic plate of Viago’s feet.
And then it happened.
Caterina Dellamorte looked at Viago, and she smiled.
It was not the sharp, calculating smile she gave during a winning hand of cards. It was not the polite, social smile she had bestowed upon the soup course. This was something else entirely. It was a warm, grandmotherly, utterly terrifying crinkling of the eyes and upturning of the lips. It was the single-most fearsome facial expression Viago had ever seen bestowed upon wrinkled features, precisely because it was so genuine.
“I shall leave you two alone,” she declared, her voice a dry rustle that carried the weight of absolute law. She patted Bianca’s head with a hand that had, according to legend, once re-sculpted the political landscape of Antiva with that very same thimble. “My darling Bianca loves you so, Viago.”
The words hung in the air, not as a simple observation, but as a royal decree. A coronation. He was no longer just a man with a dog on his feet. He was The One Whom Bianca Loves. He had been given a title, and with it, a life sentence.
The smile. The smile was the real weapon. It made it impossible to protest. How could he say, ‘Actually, your hell-beast is numbing my extremities and its digestive processes are making my eyes water,’ to a face radiating such benevolent, homicidal approval?
He was trapped. Not just by the dog, but by the terrifying, unassailable power of a grandmother’s misplaced affection. He managed a strangled, gurgling sound that he hoped conveyed grateful delight.
Caterina nodded, satisfied that all was right in her world, and swept from the room, leaving Viago alone in the flickering firelight with his new, official, and deeply unwanted soulmate. The door clicked shut with the finality of a tomb seal.
He looked down at Bianca. Bianca, in a moment of what he could only interpret as pure, diabolical consciousness, let out a long, contented sigh that ended in a faint, triumphant squeak.
He was going to be here until the dog died of old age. And given the Dellamorte family’s apparent genetic predisposition for terrifying longevity, he estimated he had another twenty years to go.
Teia, with the instinctive grace of a true granddaughter, swooped in to escort Caterina to her chambers, clearly loathe to let the formidable old woman make the journey alone. She shot Viago a look that was one part apology and three parts unspoken command: Do not move. You are fulfilling a sacred duty.
The parlour door clicked shut behind them, swallowing the sound of their retreating footsteps and leaving behind a silence so profound it had its own echo. It was a silence broken only by the pop of the dying fire and the absence of anyone else. Illario, he noted with a distant, irrelevant part of his mind, had never even made it to the parlour, such was the totality of his social pariahism.
He was utterly, completely alone.
Alone with the brandy. Alone with his thoughts. And alone with the warm, heavy, and suddenly… profoundly still weight on his feet.
It was then, in that vast and empty quiet, that the thought slithered into Viago’s mind, cold and insidious.
When did the dog last breathe?
He froze, the brandy glass halfway to his lips. He replayed the last minute in his head. There had been the contented sigh, the triumphant squeak after Caterina’s proclamation… and then… nothing. No gurgle. No rattle. No wet, whistling intake of air.
He stared down at the mountainous form. It was too still. The kind of stillness that wasn't sleep, but something far more permanent. The rise and fall of her barrel chest, which had been a constant, if disgusting, metronome all evening, had ceased. The blanket of fur was motionless.
A wild, electric, and utterly terrifying hope surged through him, so potent it made his fingers tingle. It had happened. Naturally. Right here, on his feet, having received her grandmother’s final blessing. It was a poetic, peaceful, and most importantly, blameless passing. He was not a dog-murderer; he was a comfortable final resting place. A hospice of one.
Oh, fuck.
The thought hit him with the force of a physical blow.
They were going to think he killed the dog.
The narrative wrote itself with horrifying, Antivan-flair clarity. He was found alone with the body. He had a motive (he hated dogs), no alibi (empty room), and the means (he was a Master of Poisons). It was an open-and-shut case.
And in Antiva, where gossip was the highest form of evidence and drama was the national currency, "no witnesses" didn't mean "not proven." It meant "guilty, and probably in a creatively flamboyant way." The absence of anyone to vouch for him was more damning than a signed confession. It left a vacuum, and nature—especially Antivan nature—abhors a vacuum. That void would be filled instantly with the most sensational, blood-soaked story possible.
He panicked, as Viago de Riva, a man whose life was a curated collection of poorly thought-out plans and spectacularly bad luck, was often led to doing. His mind, usually a repository of complex toxins and intricate social maneuvers, short-circuited into a single, screaming loop: Not me! Not my fault!
It wasn't fair! This wasn't him! He was a victim of circumstance, a prisoner of canine biological warfare! What was he supposed to do? Sit there until the maids found him at dawn, a man-shaped statue frozen in a rictus of guilt? He had to get the evidence off of him.
Reason departed, replaced by the primal instinct to distance himself from the crime scene. With a grunt of effort, he bent forward, his hands grabbing his own numb thigh. In a move that combined the grace of a beached seal with the desperation of a man trying to shake off a panther, he began to manually maneuver his own leg, attempting to orchestrate a kick that would launch the fat lump of a dog off his feet and onto the cushion, where it could have plausibly died of natural causes in its sleep.
He was mid-manual-kick, his face a contorted mask of wild-eyed panic and intense physical effort, when the parlour door whispered open.
Teia stood there, returned from her duties, her smile of contentment melting from her face like wax under a flame. Her eyes widened, taking in the scene: Viago, hunched over, hands on his own leg, in the unmistakable act of launching her grandmother's beloved, ancient, and—from her perspective—utterly defenseless dog into the air.
The dog’s corpulent body tipped sideways with a soft, meaty thud, rolling off his feet with the unceremonious finality of a sack of flour. It landed on the rug in a heap, limbs splayed, a picture of canine indignity. He was a naughty teenager caught booting a garden gnome, only the gnome was a family heirloom with a heartbeat and his judge, jury, and potential executioner was staring at him in horrified disbelief.
The silence that followed was louder than all of Bianca’s snores put together.
"Teia, I…" Viago began, his voice a strangled croak.
But the words died in his throat. There were no words. There was only the damning physics of the kicked dog, the frantic guilt in his eyes, and the crumbling ruins of his entire life, loves, and future prospects.
"It's dead."
The two words fell from his lips. For a single, crystalline second, he hovered outside of his own body, looking down in utter disbelief at the idiot who had just spoken. He saw the scene with terrifying clarity: the kicked dog, his own guilty posture, Teia's horrified face, and now this... this confession.
He mentally chastised himself with the fury of all of his ancestors. "It's dead"?! "IT'S DEAD"?! Of all the possible phrases in the vast and nuanced lexicon of the Antivan language, from "It fell!" to "She just slipped!" to a simple, panicked "It wasn't me!", his brain had bypassed all of them and gone straight for the one declaration that sounded like a triumphant announcement from a victorious assassin.
He could have said she was sleeping deeply. He could have feigned concern, crying out, "Darling, something's wrong with Bianca!" He could have even pretended to have been administering emergency canine resuscitation. But no. His higher brain functions, evidently having fled the scene along with his common sense, had left behind the part of his mind that simply stated obvious, career-ending facts.
Surely, of all the possible things he could have said to defuse this situation, "It's dead" was not the one. It was, in fact, the verbal equivalent of pouring lamp oil on the already raging fire of his social and physical demise.
Teia was still frozen in the doorway, a statue of appalled disbelief. But Viago, a connoisseur of her every flicker and nuance, could already see the micro-expressions staging a frantic play across her features. They ran the whole, devastating gamut from "horrified" at the act itself, through "betrayed" that he would do this to her grandmother's dear companion, and were now settling, with a sickening finality, on "pity." Not the warm, compassionate kind of pity, but the cold, distant kind you reserve for someone who has just revealed themselves to be profoundly, irredeemably stupid.
His mouth, operating without his consent decided to smooth over the matter.
"I didn't kill it."
The words hung in the air, tinny and weak. In the list of possibly the top ten things not to say when you don't want to be accused of murder, "I didn't kill it" was up there in at least the top three, right behind "You'll never take me alive!" and a detailed, unsolicited monologue about one's personal collection of arsenic.
“Viago.”
His name had never sounded so much like a verdict.
“I want you to tell me the truth…”
It was his chance. A tiny, fraying lifeline thrown into the chasm of his own making. His mouth, that treacherous organ, opened automatically—to plead, to explain, to weave some frantic, half-baked story about checking for a pulse or a sudden muscle spasm.
But the sound never left his throat.
Her eyes, usually so warm and full of mischief, narrowed into shards of obsidian. She took a single, sharp step forward, and the air itself seemed to crackle.
“DO NOT LIE TO ME VIAGO DE RIVA.”
The hissed command wasn't loud, but it carried the force of a physical blow. It was the voice she might use on a rival Crow, on a treacherous informant, on someone who was no longer afforded the courtesy of gentle persuasion. It was the voice that stripped away all their history, all their intimacy, and left him standing there as nothing more than a suspect in her grandmother’s parlour.
In that moment, he wasn't her lover. He was a source of intel, and she was an interrogator who already knew the answer. He had no choice but to tell her the truth.
"It…" he began.
"BIANCA." Teia hissed, the name a weapon. It wasn't a dog, it was Bianca. A member of the family. A Dellamorte asset with more social standing than he could ever hope to have.
He sighed, the fight draining out of him, leaving only the hollow shell of a man who had made a series of catastrophically bad decisions. "Bianca," he corrected, "fell asleep on my foot… I was nursing this brandy," he motioned limply towards the empty glass sat on a gleaming mahogany side table, a pathetic prop in his tragedy. "You had all left, and I couldn't feel my leg, so I…. Manually adjusted…"
Teia snorted, a sound of pure, incredulous disgust. "You mean you kicked Caterina's dog!?"
He gave a single, miserable nod. Because yes, stripped of all context and euphemism, that was the technical, undeniable, and deeply stupid truth. He, Viago de Riva, Fifth Talon of the Crows, had indeed kicked an elderly lady's dog.
"Right," he conceded, the word a white flag. "I kicked Caterina's dog, when I realised it…"
"Bianca," Teia interjected, her voice flat.
He sighed again, a man sighing his way to the gallows. "That Bianca, wasn't breathing. And then you came in."
He let the statement hang there. It was a ludicrous story. A farce. It was too stupid, too convoluted, and too perfectly aligned with his own known character flaws to have been anything but the unvarnished, humiliating truth.
Teia stared at him, her anger visibly warring with a dawning, horrified comprehension. Her hands, which had been clenched into fists, slowly rose and clasped over her face, muffling a sound that was half-groan, half-scream of pure frustration. "We have to tell Caterina," she mumbled into her palms, the words thick with dread. "But it's so late…"
A new, chilling thought pierced Viago's self-pity. He peered at her through the gloom.
Was Teia, actually sad about this?
Not just angry at him, but genuinely grieving for the foul-tempered, gaseous, four-legged monument that had just expired? It wasn't the strategic, social-fallout kind of concern. He had not just kicked a dog. He had, in her eyes, desecrated a memory. And that, he suspected, might be the one crime the Dellamortes would never forgive.
"We could always… Not?" he offered, the words slithering out before his brain could vet them for sheer, unadulterated idiocy.
He regretted them the instant they hit the air. Teia slowly raised her head from her hands. The look she gave him could have frozen the brandy in his glass. It was a look that said, in no uncertain terms, that she was currently reassessing his entire moral character and finding it several points lower than that of a common street urchin.
"Right, no," he backpedaled furiously, "of course that would be unthinkable." Disposing of the evidence was, apparently, a step too far, even in a family of assassins. The Dellamortes had standards.
"But should we really disturb her at this time?" he tried again, switching tactics to feigned concern. "Is it not best she… be blissfully ignorant for the night? Let her have one last peaceful sleep before the heartbreak." He paused, waiting for her to interject, to declare that such a deception was dishonourable.
No such interjection came forth. Instead, a flicker of pragmatic calculation crossed her face. She was, after all, a Crow.
He continued, sensing a sliver of an opening. "We could probably rest little Bianca," he scoffed internally at the thought of anyone describing this lump as 'little', "on her bed, and make it look as though she died peacefully in her sleep. A half-truth, at least." It wasn't murder; it was stage management.
Teia nodded slowly, solemnly. "Caterina would deal better with that," she conceded, her voice soft. "Finding her in the morning, looking so peaceful… it would be kinder."
A wicked, triumphant grin flashed across Viago's face as the plan came together. It was elegant! It was compassionate! It saved his skin!
He saw Teia flash him one of those looks—the one that saw right through his feigned concern to the gleeful, self-serving core.
"Sorry," he muttered, wiping the grin away. "I'll… move her into her bed."
The dog was cumbersome, a dead weight in the most literal sense, and impossibly hard to get a purchase on. He ended up hooking his hands under its front legs, heaving its substantial bulk into his arms with a grunt. He cursed his fashionably tight trousers, which made any manual movement beyond a languid stroll an exercise in sartorial torture. He shuffled across the room, a man engaged in a macabre waltz with a furry boulder, his back straining with the effort.
And heard the door creak.
"…the servants said you were still—" a cool, familiar voice began.
Lucanis. FUCK.
Viago froze, bent over the dog's plush bed, caught in the act of depositing the "peacefully sleeping" Bianca. He looked up, his face a mask of guilty panic, and saw Lucanis standing in the doorway. The First Talon's face was, as ever, largely unreadable, save for two telling details: his left nostril was flaring wildly, and the corresponding eyebrow had arched towards his hairline in a perfect curve of lethal inquiry.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY GRANDMOTHER'S DOG!?" Lucanis roared, the sound shredding the quiet of the parlour.
Viago panicked. His brain, having learned absolutely nothing from the last five minutes, defaulted to its factory setting.
"It's dead…" he blurted out. Why was this his first choice of words always, when in a panic? It was a verbal suicide note. He really needed to do some self psychoanalysis about where that originated.
Lucanis’s eyes widened, the flaring nostril and arched eyebrow now part of a terrifying whole.
"YOU KILLED MY GRANDMOTHER'S DOG!?"
Viago’s eyes darted from Lucanis’s incandescent fury to Teia’s horrified face, a silent, desperate plea flashing in them: “Darling, please, now would be a wonderful time to interject with a sane, rational explanation!”
She did not. She seemed to have been rendered mute by the sheer, cascading failure of the situation.
“NO,” Viago replied, his voice cracking with panic. “It died on my foot, I’m merely stage-managing the situation to look more palatable for your grandmother!” In his frantic attempt to appear reasonable, to smooth things over with placating gestures, he forgot one crucial detail: he was still holding the dog.
He gestured emphatically towards the plush bed, the intended final resting place. The motion was a little too broad, a little too theatrical. The result was inevitable.
He let the dog go.
Bianca crashed to the floor with a soft, meaty thump.
For a heart-stopping second, there was silence. And then, from the brindle heap, came a sound. Not a snore. Not a death rattle. A soft, confused, and deeply affronted wheeze. This was followed immediately by a bout of flatulence so profound, so multi-layered and resonant, it was frankly worse than any biological concoction Viago could ever have procured in his labs. It was the sound of a bagpipe giving up on a tune and just expiring in a fit of despair.
Viago stared, his mind refusing to process the data his senses were providing.
Was the fucking dog not dead!?
Teia’s face, which had been a mask of dread, erupted into pure, unadulterated glee. A hand flew to her mouth, but it couldn't stifle the choked sound of laughter that escaped.
Lucanis, however, still looked furious. Though, Viago had to admit, he honestly could barely tell the differences in "the various faces of Senor Dellamorte." They all looked about the same to him: Hungry, Angry, and The Other One (which was also, probably, just a subtler form of Angry). Right now, he was squarely in the "Angry" category, his flaring nostril now joined by a tic in his jaw.
The dog, Bianca, stirred. She lifted her head, blinked her oyster-like eyes slowly, and looked around as if wondering how she’d ended up on the floor. She then gave a mighty shake, sending jowls and loose fur flying, and fixed Viago with a look that could only be described as one of deep, personal satisfaction.
"It's not dead!" he exclaimed, the words bursting forth in a wave of pure, unadulterated relief and vindication.
"BIANCA!"
Teia shot the name at him like a crossbow bolt, her voice dripping with a disgust so profound it could curdle milk at fifty paces. It wasn't a correction this time; it was a condemnation. His glee was, in her eyes, just another layer of offense. He wasn't happy that Bianca was alive; he was happy that he was off the hook. The nuance was lost on him, but it was crystal clear to everyone else in the room.
The sound of her name, or perhaps the lingering indignity of being dropped, seemed to fully rouse Bianca. With a grunt that spoke of centuries of practiced put-upon-ness, she heaved herself to her feet. She gave one last, judgemental snort in Viago's direction—a puff of air that carried the ghost of digested guinea fowl—and then, with the dignity of a sinking ocean liner, she began her slow, waddling pilgrimage back to her velvet cushion, utterly unmoved by the human drama she had orchestrated.
Lucanis watched the dog go, his furious gaze slowly shifting from the beast back to Viago. The flaring nostril had calmed, but the anger had been replaced by something colder, more calculating. It was the "Other One" face, and Viago had a sinking feeling it involved mentally recalculating the Crows' budget to see if they could afford a new Fifth Talon.
Teia simply put her face back in her hands, her shoulders shaking. It was no longer clear if it was from laughter or tears. Probably both. The kind of hysterical, exhausted reaction one has when realizing they are in love with a man who can be outsmarted and out-maneuvered by a narcoleptic bulldog.
Viago's triumphant smile faltered. He stood alone in the middle of the room, the brandy long gone.
And his foot still ached.