"Fuck it." The man slapped his pisiform into the table, from what could be seen of his face, he was an old Oskan with heavy facial lining, Kaleo thought he looked sad, his lips curving into a jowly frown at his cheeks, he was wearing a tieless two-piece suit the color of fresh blood, his hands less hands and more talons, every finger was visible on the back of his hand, a large blue vein running up behind his yellow watch. His eyes were hidden by darkness. Kaleo tapped the tablet to open his menu, sliding the man to the right of his screen. He pushed the slider that appeared to the right with a flick of his wrist.

"Four hundred thousand." The man rolled spit in his cheeks before swallowing. He tapped his screen a few times, lowering the slider.
"Two-fifty." Kaleo tittered, raising the bar to three hundred, performing a slight genuflection and raising his hands. The man seemed to contemplate this for a moment, before crossing his legs and rubbing his prominent temple.
"It is a hard job yes, but I gave you a plan."
Which is why it is three hundred thousand and not seven fifty.
"Too high."
"My men trust in me, I won't send one to die for less than five."
"He won't die. I promise."
"We both know how much your promises are worth, Ry:kusii. Where is Kolo? You promised I'd have him back in a week, it has been five years. Give me three before I raise it to five."
"Three is too high."
"Five is higher."
"I gave my word-"
"Your words are wind flying from my ass, you want results, I want three hundred. No lower." The man pounded the table and shot up out of his chair.
"I will not pay!"
"Then the man lives. Your Kyrakii whore thinks she knows us does she? She obviously never tried to negotiate with a Loharan. I do not care if you pay, I have many other clients waiting to speak to me, you are only first due to our past. I do not enjoy killing, you make it out to seem that your temperance infuriates me, you are mistaken, Sukarius. Give me the money or find someone else willing to kill the boy."

The man stuttered and stammered, his jowls vibrating as he angrily shivered in place. His hands moved up and down, slamming into table and wall with an odd noise that sounded like a pig being slaughtered. Kaleo thought this to be quite amusing, clapping under his desk quietly until the man finally calmed down, red-faced and a sweat drop on his nose. He sniffed and gasped for air for a few moments, looking down at his table and biting at something neither could see. Finally his head turned to the camera, his lips closing for the first time in minutes.
"I'll send the fucking money." Kaleo smiled furtively.
"I'm glad. I'll send the man once the money is in my account." The man growled glottally, aggressively pounding on his screen and ending the call. A green check-mark appeared above the slider, showing that the transfer had been authorized.

Kaleo pushed his fingers together, looking at his tablet for a few moments. He folded the cover over its screen and swiftly walked around his table, opening his door with a shove.

Kaleo walked in what felt like slow motion through his building, which was filled with sounds of talk and the smell of coffee, all of the colors blended together into a cool brown, his people standing together, some leaning against the bar, others sitting alone and smoking, their eyes hanging open and not looking at anything, their bodies slightly tremoring as if they were to move, but only for nothing. A sad place, quiet and oddly serene, like a waterfall, but not unlike a used battlefield in the hidden horrors yet to be revealed. Kaleo thought in solemn silence, the same silence that encompassed the whole place. He placed his tablet upon the bar, placing it upon its stand and sliding to his bank account, waiting for the transfer of funds to be completed. The building took on an odd droning sound of silence, and when he looked up it seemed more gray then brown, oddly shaking as if it weren't even there. The number increased by a round three hundred thousand in an instant, and Kaleo smiled.

Now to find out who to send.

---

"It is just a speech my love." Afa softened at the sweet voice of his wife, her eyes the color of an angry sky, yet contained in soft white like a Lolitan castle, her lips pillowy and soft on his own, her nose a perfect-sized way to round off a perfect face.
"I know my love, it is just nerves, my grandfather expects great things, I am just a boy, I am unprepared to be crown prince!" She scoffed, placing her satiny hands upon his neck.
"You will make a wonderful king." So beautiful, so smart too. He praised her silently, his own hairless face curving into a smile as he coyly looked to his feet. Hair, straight, parted left at the brow. He began his mantra, describing his own hair which he had incessantly combed to the point where a small cut had opened on his forehead. He tapped at the wooden pavilion with his foot, counting in increments of three with each tap. Arara looked down at his tapping and frowned, looking him in the eyes, and without a word, her message was portrayed.

Stop it. She said without moving her lips. Her delicious and soft lips. Afa had suffered from his tapping for years now, he had also suffered from periodic mental breakdowns, obsessions with odd subjects and hours upon hours wasted on his computer, starting from one thing and ending many, many links away. His father had no clue what to do, and his grandfather was to busy ruling to give a damn. His brother had spent countless hours trying to help him fix it, but Afa was incurable it seemed, and more often than not, his wife was the only way to settle his mind, which never ceased to make more and more noise.

A horn blew, and Afa knew that it was time to move. Three, six, nine... Arara grabbed at his limp hands and caressed them with her fingers, pulling at the pin that she had given him earlier that year. Afa smiled and his mind was calm, he grabbed at her hand and held it in his, her face the color of warm coffee. The pin rested upon his traditional outfit, a multicolored leather overcoat that reached his ankles, no undershirt, and a brown belt, cloth hanging from it down to his knees. It looked silly, but it was tradition, and woe be to him if he ruined his grandfather's precious tradition. Nine, six, three... Finally, Arara flattened his collar gently and pushed him towards the huge stage which rested upon the pavilion, it was more scaffold than stage, but it had a podium, and that was all that was required, right? Four, eight, twelve... He began to climb up the stairs to the stage, his wife and guards being put behind him. The stairs creaked louder the closer and closer he got to the top, and Afa counted more and more frantically, taking two steps at a time to his own chagrin, his mind breaking down like an old robot. Finally, mercifully, he reached the stage, and trotted over to the podium.

No bulletproof glass? Oh good gods. Twelve, eight, four... Afa crouched and took to the podium, silently afraid. The crowd was large and smelled of sheep, they moved like a disturbed pond.

Something was wrong, something was very wrong.

He tried to begin his speech, but his words refused to come, his mind filled with frightening words. It was deathly quiet. Run, get out. Stop counting, it will never help, you are going to die here. Afraid, he turned to his wife, and felt his lip begin to tremble. She looked back with a confused look, but as the seconds passed it turned to one of worry. Afa began to cry. Its just a breakdown, you'll be fine. But all these people... they'll see me. They'll accept you, they-

The quiet was broken by a furiously loud pop, and Afa felt his side being lit aflame. The crowd gasped in horror, screaming and pleading. Afa looked at his wife again, an arm trembling up his height and pointing in her direction. She screamed and began to cry, the guards beginning to run up the steps.

Another pop, and Afa's world became dim, he shook and struggled to stay on his feet, his hand still pointing for his wife. Start counting, start counting, maybe you'll live! Afa tried to count, but his knees began to buckle, and he refused to count.

Instead he mouthed one phrase, again and again, his body feeling less and less alive.

"I love you, I love you." Arara screamed louder and reached for him. They were all that existed, they were all that mattered.

One more pop, and Afa fell, still reaching for her. Reach her, reach her.

His eyes locked with hers one last time. He mouthed again.

I love you. He whispered it now.
"I love you." And with one final whisper, Afa Oscara's eyes closed.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

The air popped one last time, and Afa died.

Four hours ago, Jozif Sligo had barely fallen asleep when his cellphone started to buzz wildly. His lackeys were practically melting the phone, calling one after the other with word from the south: the Oskan prince had been gunned down whilst attempting to deliver a speech. With this knowledge, he sprang from bed and silenced his phone to all but his highest-ranking contacts. Sligo had been waiting nearly a decade for such an opportunity to present itself, and there was no time to waste. Twenty minutes after dressing himself and throwing together a satchel of luggage, Sligo boarded a small private jet to the east, paying his pilot with two fat bundles of 500 Rhud notes for the trouble of a late-night flight to Malechia's eastern coast; with transponders off, no questions asked.

After incessantly calling his deputies in the east with urgent commands, the two hour plane ride allowed Sligo his first chance to collect his thoughts and thoroughly digest the situation at hand. His contacts in Oscan still had no idea who was responsible for the assassination. Neither the Ascuse underworld contacts nor the informants embedded within Oscan's law enforcement branches knew anything. This was a major problem for Sligo; as Secretariat of Malechia's Ministry of State Security, there was not much that Jozif Sligo didn't know about. MinSec's network of spies, cameras, and listening devices thoroughly covered the Eastern Hemisphere. One could hardly toss a gum wrapper into any trashbin in any eastern capital without MinSec being aware of it. Something as grave as an assassination would have surely raised red flags somewhere along the Ministry's intelligence network. Sligo feared the Minister was trying to keep him in the dark, and that only meant that the stakes tonight were that much higher.

Malechia was a republic - officially, at least. But in practice, the Ministry of State Security had come to dominate all aspects of the state's governance. It was MinSec working behind the scenes that controlled virtually all aspects of the Malechian state. Corruption and persuasion were MinSec's preferred means of steering the Malechian ship-of-state. But for the truly recalcitrant, MinSec's shadowy, unchecked law-enforcement apparatus - the Domestic Enforcement Division - was an effective tool for disposing of anyone who refused to tow the line. The DED's brand of subtlety and brutality would be sorely needed tonight. Coups in other parts of the world were loud affairs, magnets of undesirable attention; in Malechia, all one needed to conduct regime change was some guile and a handgun.

Jozif reached for the gun tucked in the right pocket of his pressed gray slacks, cradling it in his hands as he gave it a cursory inspection. It was an ugly, snub-nosed model, semiautomatic with a blocky clip just in front of the trigger. It was a Sligo Dorga 788, one of the hundreds of thousands of sidearms his father had manufactured as the owner of Sligo Arms. The company had existed in some form for more than a century; the artillery pieces that proved so indispensable during Ranizas II's invasion of the Artakh stronghold of Malazan were designed and built by Jozif's great grandfather. Jozif was the fourth generation of owners of Sligo Arms. Although his responsibilities with the Ministry had forced him to appoint a company executive to serve in his stead, Jozif still held a majority stake in the company. He was the only member of the family to hold any stock in the company. Jozif's sisters pawned their shares off years ago to fritter away for their lavish lifestyles, and his cousins dumped their shares in exchange for flashy investments in seaside resorts in Mosea. Jozif could understand their wish to get out of the family business; there was no denying the company had fallen on hard times. Malechia's appetite for military hardware had dwindled steadily over the past decades. There had not been a war in decades, and the ruling establishment - still sensitive to the public's wrath from the last bout of military adventurism - had established civil relations with all of Malechia's immediate neighbors. To the common investor, investing in an arms company when there was no demand for arms certainly seemed like a bad decision. But Jozif Sligo was in a position to change the situation radically, and amass a tremendous fortune in the process.

Sligo stowed his Dorga after he checked to ensure the clip was loaded with ten 9mm rounds as the first bumps of landing turbulence jostled the aircraft. Outside the porthole window, Jozif could see the starlit sky being swallowed up by the jagged maw of the Oriental Range mountains. The airplane jolted and shuddered as the wheels gripped against the tarmac and Jozif was pressed forward by the plane's rapid deceleration, a short runway built to minimize costs without regard to comfort. The pilot unbuttoned the door and allowed Sligo to step outside.

As Jozif stepped down onto the tarmac, the smell of pine needles filled his nostrils as he took in his surroundings. He stood in the trough of a long, narrow valley in the mountains. In the starlight, he could see a thick blanket of trees covering the mountainside up to the treeline. And in the middle of this valley was a runway cut out of the pine forests. The runway upon which the airplane idled was just that - a short runway surrounded by a chain-link perimeter fence crowned with rusting barbwire. Wispy patches of sericea growing up from between the joints in the tarmac panels suggested that this runway hadn't received an airplane in some time. There were no hangars nor lamps, just a rusting cylinder tank that might have contained jet fuel twenty years ago. Sligo recognized this as a refueling station, one of perhaps half a dozen such installations scattered throughout the Oriental Range designed to allow a single airplane to land, refuel, and take off again. These had been built during a time when Malechia expected trouble from the nations across the Thalasan Ocean and sorties flying east toward the ocean were common. But as military expenditures were ratcheted down, these sites were neglected and allowed to decay. But to those who had access to the coordinates of these sites, they were perfect for discreet landings.

A pair of headlights could be seen coming down a gravel path cut through the woods, growing closer as a single vehicle could be heard crunching against the gravel. The vehicle's yellow, glowing eyes drove through the hole in the fence where the gates would have been had local scrappers not stolen them years ago, and a black SUV crept slowly down the runway up to Jozif Sligo and the idling jet.

"Secretariat Sligo," said a shadowy driver, "welcome to Odula Prefecture."

"Has the suspect been detained?" Sligo asked, forgoing any pleasantries.

"Yes," the driver responded. "He is being held at the address we were provided. We have requested his name; which we have checked against our database and found no matches."

Sligo reached for his smartphone and entered the suspect's name into the database portal on his phone.

\\Name:Davil M Creznoska
\\Serial:#001-056-9
....
\\Error_Code:#004; No records found. Re-check inputs. If you have received this message in error, submit grievance to MinSec Data and Informatics Division.

The code monkeys had done their job after all - the Minister's information had been purged from every governmental database. The Minister's birth certificate, citizenship documents, medical records, and thousands of pages of ministerial documents - had all been wiped from any database or server on which they might be found. As far as MinSec was concerned, Minister Creznoska ceased to exist. A similar information wipe was conducted for every person that the DED made 'disappear' - it was the Ministry's way of ensuring plausible deniability, of denying anyone the chance to claim that MinSec was responsible for murdering thousands of suspected dissidents over the years. These DED personnel knew full well they had raided the home of MinSec's highest leader and that they were keeping the Minister himself, the de facto leader of Malechia, under forcible arrest. But the purging of Creznoska's records allowed the DED to fully support Sligo in his bid to remove Creznoska from power. All that remained now was to physically remove the Minister from existence.

"Good," Sligo responded as he slid his phone back into his pocket beside the Dorga and let himself into one of the SUV's back doors. "Take me to him."