Short Story: The Dullitch Assassins (1997)
If you could accept that killing people was a necessary part of the job, and that getting your hands dirty generally meant you ended up covered in your own blood as well as other people’s, then you were going places…though - admittedly - via the morgue. The problem with being a standout killer at Crumb Lane was knowing that you were a standout killer among a hundred or so other death-dealers who probably hadn’t had the luck or the opportunity to surpass you… yet.
Victor Franklin was a standout killer for all the wrong reasons. He’d passed his first exam because Beau Bledling had fallen backwards out of a window, he’d aced his second final because Peacock Legrand couldn’t hold his poison, and he’d scraped through the third with a critical victory over Beth Paison, which had more to do with her gammy leg than his ability to spot a lurking patch of quicksand. As far as he was concerned, Victor Franklin had never killed anybody. However, all that was about to change. If Victor didn’t kill someone this evening, there would be no windows, no poisons, and no quicksand. There would just be death, and this time…the icy fingers wouldn’t be touching anyone else.
Short Story: Lair of the Leviathan (2014)
Sunlight washed over the southern island of Lick, lending a terrible scene the sort of sharp contrast most of the observers could have done without.
It was like some sickening jigsaw of a man: all the pieces were there, they just didn’t quite fit together in the right way. This was mainly because the edges were wrinkly and, in several places, enthusiastically chewed.
Hieronymus Blush, journeyman magician and newly initiated outreach merchant for the southern islands, stepped between the two grizzled fisherman in order to get a better look at the corpse.
He’d seen a lot of tragic accidents in his five years as an apprentice at the Magician’s Proving Ground, but these mostly involved the victims disappearing without a trace. For some reason, the look of complete shock on the face of the corpse was particularly unsettling.
Nevertheless, Blush made a valiant attempt to pull himself together: something the poor native on the beach would never get another go at.
He focused on the sand, drawing a small circle distractedly with his big toe while pointing a thin finger at the body. ‘I don’t understand why he’s…complete?’