Rating: PG
Genre: Fantasy, Drama
Characters/Pairings: Vincent D'Malia, Lorkin Goodfellow
Wordcount: 702
Disclaimer: All original concepts and characters are the property of cenowar © 2014 to present. Any reproduction, duplication or distribution of these materials in any form is expressly prohibited. For more of my work, please visit me at Livejournal: Cenowar / Sevenwords.
Notes: Prompt #332 from Livejournal Community 500themes: If looks could kill.
Excerpt: The innkeeper said nothing as he stood and watched the near imperceptible shift from drunk to killer, from fool to fellow, in less time than it takes to breathe.

An Abbey at Dawn
by Cenowar

Any man who was well known throughout the Empire was a man who should be feared. That's how the stories went, and they couldn't have been more true about Vincent D'Malia. His eyes held a darkness that he carried with him everywhere, whether through a crowded street or across desolate moorland: it was a darkness that seemed to say Let me show you the blood on my hands. Children feared him, and men knew his name as they knew a curse. Nobody crossed D'Malia unless they wanted to lose a limb. Nobody, except one.

The inn was busy and the rain was hard, and Lorkin wiped a beefy hand across his forehead. He couldn't remember the last time they had so many patrons. Yes, you could argue that the money was good, and having beds slept in made a change from the empty, tired blankets he changed every day, but as he gazed around his livelihood, he began to wonder whether he was truly cut out to tending the inn his father had left him.

The Moon & Sixpence had been in a sorry state of affairs when Lorkin had taken it on two years before. With debt streaming out of every window and more rats than people eating the loaves of bread, Lorkin could only guess how his family had managed to survive.

Still, if the roaring fire and loud, unfettered chat were anything to go by, Lorkin had done a fine job of pulling the inn out of the mud, even if it had been with his bare hands.

"Oi, barkeep!"

Lorkin fixed a smile on his face and gave the lean, raggedy fellow at the bar a quick once-over. Red at the eyes and with tousled hair, he seemed harmless enough.

"What can I get for you, sir?" he said, his smile as forced as an arm twisted behind his back.

"How much foraroom?"

The innkeeper shook his head. "All booked up tonight, son - you'll have to find somewhere else to stay."

The young man's face became a picture of disappointment behind his dirt-mottled skin. "Come on, guv. It's like the seventh war out there with all that rain, and besides." He leaned over the counter. "I got meself a pretty lass lookin' at me, and I ain't wanting to introduce her to me mother jus' yet, if you catch my drift."

Lorkin fixed his customer with a long gaze as he idly wiped the smudges of one of the bar glasses behind the counter. "You're not from around here, are you?" he said slowly, sliding the glass over the top of the wood.

"No. Why's that?"

"There are half a dozen other such places in the vicinity who'll take your patronage tonight. Go to one of them."

Something in the young man's eyes flashed a little, like hardened glass, and it jolted in Lorkin a faint memory; a memory coated in dust and hardly worth paying attention to, but it nagged at him all the same.

The innkeeper said nothing as he stood and watched the near imperceptible shift from drunk to killer, from fool to fellow, in less time than it takes to breathe. He'd seen those eyes before, he realised. They were older now, but...

"I suppose you'll have nothing for me, then." The patron straightened, his voice silky and smooth, his accent discarded as though little more than unwanted cloth. "It's a shame I couldn't have stayed here, Lorkin Goodfellow - you and I have a score to settle."

"We do?"

"Yes." In narrowed eyes, that cut glass shone again. "Perhaps for another time."

As the gentleman disappeared into the crowd, Lorkin swallowed down the ice in his throat and lowered his gaze to the countertop. There was a piece of paper there, crumpled, old, and he reached out a shaking hand. Where had he seen that face before?

Lorkin's mouth went dry as he brought the corner of parchment up to read the words printed there: Dawn. The abbey. She wasn't alone.

He remembered. His face was ashen, and he remembered. The room seemed to fall to deafening quiet, and he remembered. The knife, the whispers, the darkness.

Nobody crossed Vincent D'Malia. Nobody, except one.

Fin.