Reaching the table, I sit down and wait for a barmaid. I attract a few stares, but I make a point of meeting each one from the depths of my hood, and the message is received soon enough. For my part, I am busy enjoying the feeble warmth of the fire. Although ill weather does not bother me anymore, I am always cold.

At length, a sallow woman with a underfed waif’s body but a face decades older pauses at my table. My hand snaps out again, grabbing her wrist and drawing her down to my face. With my other hand, I push back the hood enough to reveal my face, my muddy eyes pinning her underneath their dead gaze. I don’t need to show her my forehead, as her own blue eyes widen in sudden recognition.

“Ale, no water,” I whisper. She draws back as if my words have just slapped her across the face. Even though she knows she won’t be paid for the drink, she’ll do what I ask, and make up for it out of her own meager wages. A fair price, considering she will still draw breath at the end of this evening.

The Master stirs, restless in the confines of my mind. “Hmm, do you fancy her, pawn? All it would take is a simple look, and she can be yours.” I feel my eyes burn with his shared power. When she returns, all I would have to do is force her to meet my gaze for a moment, and she would be my own slave…

“Of course, there are other…pleasures you could extract from her…much like you did with the last one-” the Master says, always insinuating, always teasing, his glass-smooth tones chipping away at what little self-control I have left. It is only one of the ways he extracts pleasure from my joyless existence, making me kill and rend and destroy at his whim.

“I said no,” I mutter, dropping my gaze to the table. The thought is already there, however, and I feel my hands react, curling into clawed talons, desperate to rend, to crush, to destroy anything they can get a hold of. I could fill this common room with the blood of everyone in it, enough to wade in, and that still wouldn’t be enough for my killing hands. Whatever the Master has done to me, he has filled my hands with a different kind of unholy life, one that exists only to destroy. They never attack me-I am too important to his plans-and are under my command for the most part, but now and again, I wonder just how much control I can exert on them if I must.

The barmaid returns with my drink, serving me before the other customers. Derisive hoots and catcalls cross the tavern floor. The trembling woman almost throws the tankard of ale onto the table, she’s so anxious to get away. I keep my eyes averted until her back is to me, fearful that the Master might make me use his power on her anyway. He has before, when he wishes to punish me. At times like those, he likes to control my hands himself, making them even more terrible instruments of destruction.

I hoist and drain the tankard, the pale amber liquid sliding down my dry throat. I could drink a river of it and not feel a thing. Setting down the empty flagon, I lean over and check the line again. It glows even brighter, the pulsations indicating that my prey is very near now.

The Master claims I am distantly related to the one I have been sent to kill, which is why he is using me tonight. “Most likely the bastard offspring of his father’s dalliance with a pox-ridden whore,” he had told me when he first gave me the assignment, his presence filling my mind with a palpable darkness, blacker than the grave he had torn me out of several months earlier. My target and I are bound to each other by what would seem to be the strongest of bonds, that of blood. I know, however, the fragile strength of that tie; and how it means nothing to me now, save as the way to find and kill my foe, bringing me one step closer to freedom.

I don’t often have time to think about things, and if a spare moment like this one comes, I usually choose not to. Past memories contain nothing but pain. The Master made me kill everyone I’d ever held dear, and whenever I had one of them within my reach, he always made me use my hands. I expect that tonight will be no different, even though I’ve never met this kinsman before.

For that is my power, that is why the Master holds me so dear, above all the rest. When I was first awakened, he told me that he had been looking for one such as I for years. There had been others, and he had reached out with his skills and magic to find them. But they had always died before his legions could get to them, either in the streets or discovered and destroyed by the other side. All before me.

I do not know how this person opposes the Master’s plans; indeed, he has never seen fit to share his unholy designs with me. The visions he sends when he has a new task for me, sometimes carry other images along with them, pictures of war and ruin and terror; of vast armies clashing on blood-soaked fields, and the Master’s crimson-and-black standard-a scaled hand with claw-tipped fingers clutching a sword-rising above the battlefield, or over a large city. Whether this is happening now, or is just a fevered dream of the thing that controls my every move, I do not know.

Nor do I care. To him, I am just a tool, albeit a vital one this evening, but one of many that he has created for this purpose. All of that means nothing to me now, for even if he were to accomplish whatever madness he schemes at, he would still have need of me, to track and kill more men, or anyone who would dare to resist him. But for now, my singular purpose is to end the life of the man at the other end of the trembling, blue-white line that snakes from my feet through the room and out the door.

There is a commotion at the door as a half dozen more men crowd into the packed room. The blue-white line flares with sudden brilliance, and I know he is in here at last.

“You had to pick the table farthest from the door, didn’t you?” the Master mocks.

“They would expect an attempt right away,” I reply. “Better to let them get in, surrounded by the crowd, before attacking. Harder to escape.”

“You have been planning this, haven’t you?” the Master says. “Perhaps I should let you kill him yourself. After all, I have so many other matters to attend to.”

He doesn’t fool me with his seeming nonchalance; I know a trap when I hear one. The Master is very powerful, able to command undead like myself across vast distances, carrying out his desires while staying safe in his keep far, far away. However, his power over me is lessened when he is not in contact, and there exists the small possibility that my target might escape. If that occurred, the punishment would be worse than anything I could imagine. “I know how you like to watch.” Rare enough that I am able to tease him, but the lure works.

“Mmm, you are correct, my pawn. Ah, they approach.”

The group will pass close to my table on their way toward the door of a back room. I crane my neck, fingers digging into the tabletop, trying to see which one is connected to the other end of my line.

They approach in a tight cluster, a ring of out-thrust hands to ward off the tavern’s denizens. Although I should be able to feel my target this near, they are all so close together that I cannot fix on the one I need. The wise thing would be to go for the one in the middle and so…

They pass by, their eyes looking everywhere but down. Picking up my empty tankard, I stick out my foot, tripping the nearest, a blond-haired, callow-looking boy in his late teens. He staggers over my leg and falls against the table next to mine. The three men at that table, judging by the empty tankards littering it, have been there for a long time with nothing to do but drink. As a match set to a keg of ballpowder, they are up and spoiling for a fight.

Which leaves me with all the time I need. Still holding the flagon, I stand up and come around the table. Half of the group is trying to pacify the troublemakers at the next table, the other half is moving toward the entrance to the back room. The presence in my head tenses in anticipation. “Now!”