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Chapter Text

The first thing you hear of Emily Kaldwin is a distant shout, the salt-rough voices of guards and dockworkers raised in alarm.

“What was that?”

“Did you see something?”

“I'll find you!”

Then the Dreadful Wale dips in the water, a little. Not something anyone else'd notice, but you know the ship better'n you know yourself, most days. You notice.

Turn to see Empress Emily Kaldwin hauling herself up over the side of your ship, dripping silt and river water.

You're not entirely sure what you were expecting of the ex-Empress, but she isn't it.

Oh- she looks like royalty, sure, this teenager who crawls, drenched and shivering, onto your ship. Has those famous Kaldwin features; sharp and hawkish, her black hair pulled back neat.

Her wet clothes cling, awkwardly, so she looks like a drowned rat, smaller and younger than you'd thought. Still a little gangly with youth for all that her spine-shoulders-chin are straight and high, courtly. She'd look right at home on a throne, you think, if she dried out a little.

But she reaches to shake your hand, and you see, for a moment, something entirely different-

She's got dockworkers hands, sandpaper rough with callous, one pinky a little crooked, a healed break.

And her eyes are flat black, raptor's eyes, fixed cold and hollow somewhere over your shoulder, a mean bootprint-bruise stamped across her left cheek, purpling and swollen.

Makes her look mean, a little feral, there's something-

dangerous about her, you think. She carries herself like someone who's been hit before; doesn't flinch, when she speaks, though the bruise pulls- just runs a rueful tongue over her molars like she's not surprised, in the slightest. Silvery scars on her hands. The sword at her belt an ugly, practical thing.

You can see her, for a moment, running with Daud's crew, coat catching the breeze, glassy eyes behind a glassy mask. She's got that lean, brutal look to her, under the nobility.

Then she says, “They'll be looking for me,” voice high and clear, and she's the child Empress again. Fine rings, neat coat, a hint of baby fat.

You don't really see her the whole journey to Karnaca-

next get a good look at her staggering up to the deck the night you arrive, eyes wide and dark, breathing like she's being chased. Some wild, hunted thing.

She paces, aimlessly, in the gray of the dawn, no hint of royal grace, boots loud against the deck, fists closing and opening, twitchy.

You think you see something on the back of her hand, that you hadn't before- a tattoo, or brand, black and steaming-

but when she finally reports to you she is all polish. Has tied a scrap of scarf around her hand like boxer's wrap but otherwise she's neat and tidy as a young gentlewoman should be, if you ignore the bruise across her cheek (now a spectacular seaweed-green).

You know better than to ask, and she “yes ma'am”s you with the best, the perfect picture of a noble child, groomed and scolded into practiced manners. Like you aren't two refugees on a tub of a cargo ship, like the fish-blood smell of the docks aren't thicker in your nose than any incense.

You can take a noble out of court... you think, and watch Emily's razor-sharp spine with a hint of unease.

You've seen bad, and you've done worse, but you feel wretched sending Emily off to Addermire.

You heard she practiced in the yard with her father, know there's wiry muscle under the coat and the hint of baby fat.

But practice is one thing, and sending a soft noble girl into a heavily guarded compound is another.

You've no love lost for gentry, and you were never that fond of kids, either, but something about it doesn't suit you, watching her skinny back as it disappears into the docks.

Under your breath, you curse the noble's scrap that started this mess, bloodthirst and greed, this dogfight of a coup that's turning teenage girls into soldiers (into corpses, you'd bet, sooner than late).

Whatever happens, this won't end well. 

Chapter Text

Except Emily hauls herself into your dingy seemingly unharmed, not an alarm raised in the whole institute.

She's silent, the long way back to the Wale- exhausted, you think, but there's something unsettling about it. Her wide, red-rimmed eyes, the bright blood on the white of her shirt- not her blood, there's not a mark on her- the stillness in her, eerie and predatory.

If Corvo means crow, you think, some ill-omened carrion-thing, what does that make her?

She is always eating.

You debrief after Addermire and she's-

too tired to be formal, maybe, or just tired of it (the rumors are probably true, then, of the trouble she was for her governess, of the way she'd fidget in court). She props herself up on the table, back slouched into a perfect question-mark, and chews through your entire fruit basket, grape by grape, as she tells you about the crown killer.

She smiles, once, flashing canines. Fruit juice is smeared red over her gums and lips, a chunk of berry stuck crimson between her teeth, like meat.

When you come back with Hypatia, Emily's ripping apart a heel of bread with her bare hands, her chair tilted back on two legs and her feet on the table.

She gives you a silent nod, still chewing, when she sees you.

You never get another formality out of her, after that.

You find Emily coming out of Hypatia's cabin one morning- a few more missions under her belt now, telling in the shaky way she walks, the scrapes and bruises that pepper her skin.

She's looking faintly green, one hand pushing at her hair (a nervous tic so obvious you're amazed the courts didn't break her of it).

You catch her eye, questioning.

“She's starting to remember the murders,” Emily says in a rush, “I don't know if-”

Then she doesn't say anything, for a while. You feel discomfort crawling up your spine, algae-slimy.

“I'm only glad I haven't had to kill anyone yet,” She says, voice very low. She's not looking at you- just over your shoulder, like she'd rather pretend she's saying the words to someone else (you wish she were, too).

“I know I could do it,” she says (you're not so sure- she keeps coming back from missions successful, but something about her still seems so young and untested- her face unlined, her clean, untorn fingernails, the stubborn way she clings to dangerous, difficult non-lethality)

Emily frowns, swallows. “It's just the living with it that I-”

Then she turns and walks away, abrupt, those damn boots of hers loud on your deck.

You don't tell her, the real problem is how easy it is, to live with. You're not her mother or her mentor- she'll figure it out, or she'll die.

You wish she would stop sitting on the tables like that.

She's leaving bootprints.

You first see Emily nervous on the way to the clockwork mansion-

her leg is bouncing up and down, heel drumming staccato-fast against the steel bottom of the dinghy.

You turn to tell her to shut up, but when you meet her eyes they're wide with panic. You see the top of a blush, over her mask, and she settles her leg without you having to ask, though she starts to fidget again a moment later, spinning the house ring around and around her finger.

Void, she's jumpy- some perching songbird, flighty and nervous, you can practically see her heart drumming through her chest.

You feel, again, like you're sending her off to die, like she's been lucky so far but she is young and terrified, hunched over on herself in a tangle of outgrown limbs-

but you need her, so you just cut the engine and say, “Your mask is slipping,” and she pulls the bandanna back up over her nose, and that's that.

“Ever use a rewiring tool?” you ask, as she steps out of the boat.

“Corvo taught me the theory,” she says, shrugging.

By the outsider, you think, the theory.

Chapter Text

You first see Emily in action as she winds her way back from the royal conservatory.

This is always your least favorite part; the waiting, hunched over in the dinghy with the sea wind blowing through your coat. Never quite sure when to call it, how long to wait before-

Anyway.

It's well past nightfall when you hear a strange, muffled thump, look over to see Emily dumping a guard's unconscious body into a dumpster. She's nearly invisible, her dark coat in the shadows, the fluid way she moves; some prowling thing, razor-sharp and whisper-quiet, she is more animal than teenager.

But one of the other guards is frowning, looking around-

“Hey Marco, you walk off to take a piss or what?” There's no answer, of course, from the unconscious man, though Emily freezes up head-to-toe- looks around, frantic, but there are no handholds within reach.

She reaches into her pocket, fumbling, pulls out a phial of something summer-sea blue and shining, doesn't have time to drink it before the guard's rounded the corner.

“Hey-” he says, and Emily drops the phial and draws her sword.

Before the guard's had time to do much more than shout, Emily moves- shockingly fast, jamming her blade brutally through his gut and bringing a foot up, booting the body unceremoniously onto the ground.

You can hear the drumming of feet on cobblestone- a patrol alerted by the noise- and Emily mutters a low curse, steps over the body to face them.

It's three- no, four, on one, and you see now Emily's moving a little funny, favoring one side, blood showing black on her trousers.

The patrol rounds the corner, blades and guns drawn, and Emily bounces once, twice on her toes, and launches herself into the fray.

It's hard to follow- she's lightning-quick, and the shadows are dark, so all you get is an impression of silver light, where the moon catches her blade, gunsmoke and dust rising in the air, the blinding-bright flash of pistols showing through the hazy air.

Someone grunts, short and pained, and a body slumps over- just a guard, quickly followed by another, both of them groaning, their blood everywhere, black in the moonlight.

You see Emily again, backing away, smoke clinging eerily to her coat, sword crossed with a third guard's- he's got probably 80 pounds on her, all muscle, Emily this scrap of a thing-

but she ducks low, viper-quick, and sweeps his legs out from under him, stomps down on his throat with a brutal sort of efficiency, turning to face the guard captain with her teeth bared, the mask slipped down over her chin, her hair and eyes wild.

The captain falters, sword dipping, and Emily takes the moment to leap across the distance between them, falling on the woman's chest and bearing her down to the cobbles- seizes her by the helmet and bashes her head against the ground once, twice, three times with a sick crunch you can hear from where you are-

and then Emily's staggering upright, panting, her teeth crimson, her lip split, her nose bleeding, a wild, animal light in her eyes. You don't see a child, or an empress, then- you see a predator, a force of nature:  torn hands, dark coat, red sword.

She takes a moment, breathing hard, watching the street, but when reinforcements don't come she folds up her sword with an efficient jerk of her hand, moves to check on the guards.

The first groans when she shakes him, and she tips his head back, dumps an S&J elixir down his throat- he coughs and hunches in on himself, wheezing, and Emily picks him up like he weighs nothing, props him up in the shadows.

The second, third, and forth get the same treatment- they won't wake up happy, you think, but they'll wake up.

The captain- Emily crouches next to her, puts fingers to her neck, and frowns. Stands. Toes the corpse unceremoniously into the river with flat, empty eyes.

When she gets back into your boat, she's bleeding from what must have been a sword-butt to the face- nose broken, lip split, a spectacular bruise forming over her cheek. He trousers- and leg- are torn open red and wet above the knee, but she doesn't seem hurt.

Just gives you an eerie, crimson grimace, sets about cleaning her sword as you start the engine.

And you know she isn't actually the crown killer, but you see for the first times how people could think so, in the steady, precise movements of Emily's hands, in her bloody coat, in her flat, lamprey eyes.

A shiver goes up your spine, like a storm's blowing in.

You see her, one day, pasting something up on her room's wall- a poster, you think.

On closer inspection, a wanted poster.

Her own.

Emily turns to you with this sharp, mirthless grin, all edges and teeth, a militant light in her eyes. “Not a bad likeness, don't you think?” She says, viciously, a hand smoothing over the neatly-printed list of her crimes. “Though they've got my eyes all wrong.”

You shake your head. Void, she must have been a terror, growing up.

You're not sure where she picked it up from, but Emily is a fairly notorious snoop.

You find her in your cabin one day, flipping through your journal almost casually, like she's perusing a library book.

“You've certainly made yourself at home,” you say, and she startles, turns.

She has made herself at home.

From the bootprints on your tables to the empty dishes scattered around the boat- Emily has carelessly, thoughtlessly made her mark here.

She's not a bad kid- you're fairly certain of that, by now, but rich, entitled-

“Sorry,” she says, simply, and turns the journal back to you.

You take it, startled.

“I'm sorry,” she says, again, “I've just been feeling- a little lost, lately- it's nice to have any insight at all.”

You don't know quite what to say, to that, so you just shut the journal back in your drawer.

Emily's already gone when you turn back around, just footprints and stirred air in her wake.

For all her loudness, all her obvious, defensive posturing, Emily disappears quicker than anyone you've ever met.

Except, you watch Emily empty her pockets out, one day, after a mission, and see dozens of crumpled notes come spilling out over the tabletop, in dozens of different hands.

She grins up at you, sheepish, like a child who's been caught snooping where they shouldn't.

Maybe she is just nosy, after all.

Chapter Text

Emily Kaldwin has a bright, wild smile- all her teeth flashing, it is either childish or feral, depending on the light.

You first see it when a courier comes, labouring up to The Wale in a wallowing tub of a row boat, paddling slowly over the swells towards you.

When you let him up, he coughs. Spits black phlegm onto the deck. “Got a letter from a... Cecelia Wyman for ye?”

You're about to tell him the letter's not from anyone you know, and to get his grimy ass off your boat,

But Emily's head has snapped towards you, like a hound that's caught a scent, suddenly radiating tension from every limb, spine sword-straight from where she'd been slouched, before, half dozing in the sun.

So you give the mailman his ½ coin, frowning, send him back to his dinghy and wipe the phlegm after him with the side of your boot.

When you turn, Emily's standing right next to you, practically vibrating, though her voice is practiced-level when she says, “Any new mail?”

You shake your head, hand her the letter. Try not to watch as she tears into it like a rat on a corpse.

At the first line, her face breaks into a grin, like the sun's risen all over again, bright and eager and young (you forget, sometimes, how young she is, mean and stubborn and wolf-hound lean, and sharper than she looks, but-)

“Thank you,” she says, all sunshine and court manners. “Just a bit of news from home.”

You think, considering the state Dunwall's in, news from home shouldn't make her smile like that, but you let it go.

Times like these, excuses to smile are few and far between.

She likes to be high up, or else jammed in dark corners.

A strange nesting bird she makes, perched on The Wale's cargo crane and staring out to Karnaka, coat flapping in the breeze, the most useless set of wings you've ever seen.

You catch a gleam of dark eyes in darker shadows, sometimes, as you're walking, and wonder what she's hiding from on this ship, way out in the open water.

So the night before you boat to the grand palace, you know where to find her.

Just out from your cabin, seated on the crane arm, feet dangling over the ocean.

She's got a chunk of dark bread in one hand and she's chewing at it, mechanically, as she looks out over the horizon.

“Want something a little stronger than bread?” You ask.

She startles- recovers before she tips into the ocean, but something tells you she'd have been fine, anyway.

You look her over, critically, like you haven't since you first saw her. Sharp, noble's features, still, hawklike. A small scar, over her lip, new- the last trace of the boot-bruise from when you'd first met.

And she seems- tired. Her eyes smudgy with bags, her fine coat tattered at every hem, still torn and bloody at one shoulder where she'd been hit, earlier. She hasn't gotten around to mending it, yet.

Her fingers are blistered, and her hands shake, and you can see her as a soldier, sometimes, and a child others, and both twist you up with guilt.

You blink, and all that's military about her is her posture, and she's watching you with those beetle-black eyes, red at the rims.

You offer her your rum.

She glances down, briefly, as if gauging the fall, and takes a pull straight from the bottle.

She grimaces, a little- the same face every teenager makes when they drink, a carefully hidden wince and a scrub of tongue over teeth (and void does she reminds you of Deirdre- young and pretty and reckless and good and doomed, doomed, straight from the start).

You sit there in silence with her, a long while, listening to the gulls squabble overhead, passing the bottle back and forth.

“I've always liked it when people knew how to be quiet,” Emily says, eventually, softer than you think you've heard from her.

You look over.

“I listened to your audiograph.” She says, seemingly unrelated. “Sorry,” She says.

You blink. “About listening to my audiograph, or about-”

She cuts you off with “Both.”

Both. 'sorry I infringed on your privacy and also that the person you've most loved was murdered by a nobleman in my city'.
'sorry my life's been so easy and yours has only been loss, sorry-

“I've been a bad empress,” she says, staring down at the water. She seems a thousand years old. She seems like a child.

“You're a kid,” you say, not sure why you're letting her off the hook.

“I was.”

You look at her, sideways, her face ageless in the blue light, eyes throwing back stars. You are still not quite sure what to make of her.

“You keep letting them live,” you say, on the skiff back from the palace. Her teeth are gritted so hard her lips are turning white.

“Yes,” she says, voice a careful sort of level, tide held barely back by a water break. “It's- the right thing to do.” She doesn't even sound like she believes it.

“I've seen a lot of people I love die, in my time.” You tell her. “I wouldn't blame you if you did want to off a couple.”

“I have, too.” She says. “Seen people I love die. Wanted to kill them.” She shrugs, but her shoulders are tripwire-tense. “I could, if I needed to.”

You don't doubt it. You wonder how you ever did. You're just half glad for whatever instinct's keeping her from total carnage- with her power, you're not sure you'd be so reserved.

Chapter Text

The night before Emily goes to Delilah, you finally tell her what you did, all those years ago.

The hand you had in killing her mother.

You can't quite meet her eyes- look out at the horizon, instead, the lights and fog of your childhood (hers, too, you suppose).

There's a long pause, after you finish- you almost think she hasn't heard, but when you sneak a look at her-

her spine's board stiff, shoulders hunched, fingers white where they've locked around the railing, the ragged scabs on her knuckles cracking open with the pressure.

And her eyes-

dead, eel black, like old paintings of the Outsider. Unearthly. A chill crawls up your spine and you take a step back.

Two.

She turns to face you, then- still silent but shaking, a little, now, and not the lost-lamb shivers from when you first met.

Her hands are trembling at her sides, balled into fists, blood dripping sluggish and gaudy from her split knuckles.

For the first time, you're afraid of her.

You have been an assassin, you have wielded the power of the Outsider, but Emily-

She's another thing entirely. Matted hair, twitchy fingers, scars livid-pink against how pale she's suddenly gone- and just below your hearing, just outside of detection, that sea-salt-sick music of the Void- you can feel the tug of power just below the surface, know she could kill you quick as blinking-

She tells you she won't- can't- forgive you. Says, quieter, though, that she's sure you've changed, since then. Her words are steel-hard, her whole body wound so tight you think she'd snap, if you touched her, and yet-

she finds room to tell you she thinks you're better, now, than you were. Not forgiveness, but closer to it than you expected. Deserved, probably.

You feel a sudden, unwelcome rush of affection for her, this young woman who crawled onto your boat a noble brat, and who turned out to be dangerous and merciful and strange, who eats like a feral dog and leaves bootprints on your table-

you watch her steer the skiff towards Dunwall tower and do not doubt she'll succeed in her mission- you've seen in come back from too much to doubt her now.

But you think, probably, it is the last time you'll see her, and it hits you like a punch to the gut, like coming home to find your room's been sacked, the sort of sharp, raw loss you thought you were too old for, by now.

But nonetheless, you watch the skiff disappear into the fog, and feel like your own kid's slammed the door in your face (maybe not your kid- maybe a niece, a sister- you're not so sure, about family. Don't have enough experience to know, really, except you cared for her, and you're losing her).

You wait in Dunwall, till it's over.

Stupid, of course- even if Emily needed your help, there's no way she could ask for it, all the way out in the city.

But-

you need to know.

If she'll make it, if-

You hear her voice, clear and joyful and a little shaky, over the street speakers, like you knew you would.

“Citizens of Dunwall.” She says. “This is your empress speaking...”

You're sure she'll do a good job- pull this city back from the brink, like her daddy did all those years ago, the last time people like you broke the world in two.

It has you thinking, some, if an old dog like you still has a couple new tricks.

You sail from Dunwall in search of answers.

You think, often, of Emily, steel-hard and wind-soft and wiser, in some ways, than you'll ever be, the kind of merciful you're not sure how to even try at.

Years later, when you have buried Sokolov and seen the world and found the truths you were looking for, you will return to Dunwall.

Emily will still seem young, to you, but older and older people seem young to you, now.

There will be paint and blood in the cracks of the tiles, still, where the wash water can't reach, and Emily will sit atop her throne like she never left (feet not propped up on any of her tables), father a graying shadow at her shoulder.

She will meet your eyes, steady.

The years of comfort will have her looking like a noble, again, but all you will see is the danger you're astonished you couldn't, at first-

there's a blade hidden at her waist, a coiled strength in every bone, like she could spring at any moment, a shrewdness to her gaze you're sure was hard-won. The scar over her lip will have healed badly, livid and obvious in the pristine nobility of her court.

She will invite to you stay for dinner, and you will say yes.

You will eat at her table, and talk into the night, about what you've seen and done and been.

By the time dawn creeps over the horizon, you think you have more friends in Dunwall than you thought.

As you come back to the city, again and again over the years, you will find yourself proved right.