The battle was an intense one, and Willow didn’t allow herself to so much as blink as she eyed her opponent. They’d been going at it for some time already, which she took to be a positive sign; with how much of a disadvantage she was at, the fact that things had yet to be decided was a good thing. Now if she could just find an opening…
But there was no more time to think as the next exchange began.
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…no.”
Holding down the urge to smirk at not having been the first to speak, Willow instead tilting her head just slightly. “No?”
“No,” repeated Dark Streak, her face impassive as she shook her head. “I’m not taking the job.”
Despite how definitive the statement was, Willow knew that the conversation was far from over. After all, if ebon-colored griffon really wasn’t interested, she would already have been making her way toward the door. Instead, she remained leaning against the far wall of Willow’s kitchen, apparently at ease as she awaited the purrsian’s reaction to being turned down.
Of course, Willow knew better than to place too much faith in that. Dark Streak held a powerful advantage – and worse, knew it – by being the only game in town when it came to contract killing. Although the griffon had only been in Equestria for a little over twenty-four hours, she’d apparently heard quite a bit about the place before she’d left Everglow, and was fully aware that murder for hire was inconceivable to the ponies who lived here. That meant that she’d had the upper paw (or talon, rather) the instant that Willow had let her know that she wanted to hire her.
But Willow had known that would be the case from the beginning, and was prepared to work around it now. After all, a potential customer having to make their interest known was part and parcel of haggling, which was a form of combat with which Willow was intimately familiar with. You couldn’t grow up in Murrage, where everything had a price and everyone was looking to cash in, without learning the ins and outs of negotiation.
Instead, she let a look of sudden comprehension cross her face, nodding sagely. “I understand. A lot of people would be afraid to face someone so powerful.”
It was a clumsy jab, but intentionally so, inviting Dark Streak to swat it away, and in doing so reveal what the real reason for her refusal was. The griffon didn’t disappoint, an amused snort escaping her beak. “And how powerful is that exactly? You said yourself that you don’t know the full extent of what this Lex guy is capable of.”
The statement was a telling one, causing Willow to frown inwardly. “I’ve spent almost three hours telling you what I do know about him. His magic, his goals, his associates. I’ve answered every question you’ve asked to the best of my knowledge, recounted everything I’ve personally witnessed about him as well as what others have told me. At this point you know him as well as I do.”
“What I know,” shot back Dark Streak, pushing off from the wall, “is that the target you want dead is an arcane spellcaster of considerable skill. One who’s used to battle,” she added, nodding toward the framed newspaper article from Sunflower’s room, now lying on the kitchen table, “and has a diverse array of spells. And yet you’ve never seen him use a spellbook to prep them, which means that there’s no chance to determine what specific spells he knows ahead of time, let alone steal or destroy it in order to cripple his renewing them.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” countered Willow. “Twilight thinks that there’s a reason why he’s been so reluctant to use his arcane spellcasting recently. It might very well be that he kept his spellbook hidden, and something’s happened to it recently, preventing him from readying magic that way.”
“Emphasis on ‘might,’” retorted Dark Streak without missing a beat. “He’s also apparently a divine spellcaster of at least modest talent, since he’s able to create food and water from nothing. Which he apparently uses to take his meals, meaning that – in conjunction with the fact that most divine spellcasters have healing magic – clandestinely poisoning him will be difficult at best.”
Knowing that she was on her way to losing this particular round of verbal sparring, Willow again leapt toward a hole in her opponent’s logic. “Lex has never used any counter-poison spells that I’m aware of.”
But Dark Streak was apparently ready for that. “Which isn’t a useful observation, since none of what you told me about him involved poison to begin with.”
There was nothing Willow could say to that, and when she saw that the purrsian wasn’t going to interrupt again, Dark Streak continued. “And then there’s that ‘dark magic’ you mentioned, which you apparently don’t even know the proper name of,” she sneered. “Whatever it is, it lets him turn into a shadow – making him virtually impossible to pin down or trap – create massive quantities of black crystals which are highly durable, and hit people with debilitating curses. Did I get all that right?”
Dark Streak let Willow’s continued silence speak for itself before she kept going. “You don’t have a conclusive list of what magic items he has in his possession. He doesn’t go drinking, gambling, or whoring, even if the rumormongers apparently like to talk up his love life, which means he has no vices that are easy to exploit. He’s a high-profile political figure, being that he’s a prince now, which makes him extremely visible wherever he goes. He’s usually accompanied by a small retinue, several of whom are notable fighters or spellcasters in their own right, all of whom are apparently thoroughly loyal to him. And you don’t want there to be any collateral damage in terms of lives lost.”
Willow shrugged nonchalantly. “It certainly sounds challenging to me,” she admitted, hoping that a change of tactics would work. “But I’m not a professional. Starlight Glimmer made you sound like an unstoppable force when you came to her rescue.”
But rather than looking flattered, Dark Streak’s disdain was palpable. “Starlight Glimmer is a child, one who thinks that power is a substitute for skill, and that the ability to improvise means that you don’t need to have a plan in place ahead of time. Which makes it no surprise that she was defeated when she tried to put Lex Legis in the ground.”
There was a tone of finality in Dark Streak’s voice that Willow didn’t like, and she knew it was time to bring things around to the topic of money. “That sort of expertise is why I’m willing to pay you ten thousand bits.”
Dark Streak clucked her tongue. “Play money,” she grumbled, glancing at one of the bags tied to her belt, one that Willow knew was enchanted with an extradimensional space that let it hold far more than its appearance would have suggested. “If I’d known that this country used electrum for its currency, I would have demanded a lot more when Twilight hired me.”
That was a sentiment that Willow could sympathize with. Equestrian bits were made from electrum, the alloy of gold and silver. While both metals were used as units of currency on Everglow – the gold coin being the standard monetary unit, with ten silver coins being equal to one gold coin – electrum had a poor reputation due to a history of counterfeit coins, where the gold portion surrounded a silver interior, letting them be passed off as pure gold. In terms of the amount of each metal used, Willow had estimated that two Equestrian bits were likely worth one gold coin back home, but that was a purely academic calculation; the alloy had long since fallen out of favor with most of Everglow’s governments, trading companies, and merchants, to the point that the majority of people on that world refused to accept electrum coins at all.
But Dark Streak didn’t say she wouldn’t have accepted the job if she’d known that Twilight would pay her in electrum, noted Willow silently. She said she’d have asked for more. And Twilight told me she paid her two thousand bits, which is a lot more than the few moneychangers who’re willing to deal in electrum back on Everglow could easily convert into gold or silver coins. Which means that she’s planning to stay in Equestria for a while. That was potentially important; a central strategy in bargaining was finding out what the other person wanted and then manipulating them accordingly.
Not letting any of that show in her body language, Willow shrugged again. “It’s the only money they accept here, and since Equestria doesn’t have much in the way of demand for professional killers, you might want to build up a nest egg now while you can.”
Dark Streak threw a sharp glance her way then, and again Willow suppressed a smirk. That’s right. You might be the only one offering this particular service, but I’m the only customer you’re likely to see for a long time. Now it was just a question of who wanted it more…
The answer was revealed when Dark Streak shook her head once again. “Not worth it,” was all she said as she turned and headed toward the back door.
Willow kept her composure, but couldn’t hide the tension in her voice, certain that the griffon wasn’t bluffing this time. Which meant that the battle was about to end in a way that it absolutely couldn’t be allowed to. “Would it be worth it for twenty thousand bits?”
Dark Streak didn’t react, reaching the door and grasping the handle.
“Fifty thousand.”
The griffon opened the door and started walking out into the night, her inky body almost invisible against the night sky, and Willow played the only card she had left.
“You can name your price.”
Halfway across the threshold, Dark Streak stopped…then slowly came back inside, closing the door behind her.
For several seconds no one spoke, Willow knowing that she’d likely won – the griffon wouldn’t have turned around if she wasn’t tempted by that – but that in terms of this being a negotiation, it wasn’t much of a victory. Still, the fact that she was spending Celestia’s money rather than her own, the alicorn having promised to cover any expenses incurred she’d commissioned Willow to kill Lex, took some of the sting out of how poorly she’d managed to keep the overhead of this particular assignment down. Hopefully the princess would be prepared to live up to that statement.
For her part, Dark Streak made a slow, exaggerated look around Willow’s kitchen. “You live in a place like this, and you have that kind of money to throw around?”
Despite herself, Willow couldn’t help but swish her tail at that remark. Bringing an assassin into your home was foolish by any measure, but there had been no other choice. Hiring a killer required absolute discretion, and having this conversation in the hotel where Dark Streak was currently staying was just asking to be overheard, whether by someone through the thin walls, a meddlesome housekeeper lurking outside the door, or some other way.
Instead, Willow had conjured a small animal to deliver a note to Dark Streak’s room, on which was written nothing but a time and a place, specifically midnight at the bridge near the middle of town. Fortunately, the griffon had showed up, and – after confirming that she’d destroyed the note – the two of them had journeyed back to Willow’s house in silence, the one place where they could speak freely since Sunflower was taking part in a sleepover at a friend’s house. It had afforded them the privacy necessary, but Willow still wasn’t entirely happy with the idea that a killer was a few feet from where her son ate breakfast every morning.
“I can assure you,” she said, her voice a touch frostier than necessary, “money won’t be an object.”
“Hm.” Dark Streak processed that for a moment, giving Willow a look. “You’re offering money beyond your apparent lifestyle, and you want this badly enough that you’re willing to pay anything to make it happen. Either you’re doing this at someone else's direction, or it’s personal and you have some sort of savings that you’re willing to burn.”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“Because I prefer to know what I’m dealing with.” Padding over to the refrigerator, Dark Streak removed a picture held to the front of it by magnets, one that Sunflower had drawn, showing him and Willow surrounded by several smiling ponies. Dark Streak held it up as though it were some sort of notable discovery. “Lex Legis looks like he won’t die easy, but it’s the unknowns that concern me more than the knowns, and I don’t just mean about him. So I want to know if this is because he pissed off someone important, or if he diddled your kid while you weren’t looking.” She raised a brow then. “Or while you were looking, and didn’t pay you afterward.”
Willow didn’t rise to the barb, knowing the reputation that her people had among the other races of Everglow. While purrsians weren’t the only ones to practice slavery, they were by far the most open about it, with almost no restrictions on who could be exploited, or how.
Snatching the picture out of Dark Streak’s grasp, Willow put it back on the fridge. “Lex needing to die is my idea,” she snapped. “If he takes over this country, he’ll ruin it, and I like it the way it is now. That’s all.”
The last two words came out more harshly than she’d intended, but they had the desired effect, with Dark Streak letting the topic go. “I’ll want one hundred thousand bits,” she said at last. “Plus you’ll need to cover my expenses, since this is going to require more than a few custom materials to pull off. I assume these ponies have a magic market?”
“There’s one in Canterlot, the city on the mountaintop near here,” nodded Willow. “But don’t expect anything like what they have back on Everglow. This world’s magic isn’t nearly as advanced as it is there.”
Now it was Dark Streak’s turn to shrug. “As long as they have basic reagents and alchemical compounds, I’ll be able to do the rest. Also, you’re going to need to give me half of the money up front, or the deal’s off.”
Willow had been expecting a proviso like that, even if the amount was still staggering. “It’ll take me a few days to get it, but fine. Start buying what you need to in the meantime.”
Dark Streak gave an amused grunt at that, turning back toward the door for the second time. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Dark Streak.”
The assassin paused, glancing over her shoulder at the sound of her name.
From the other side of the room, Willow couldn’t resist getting a parting shot in, still unhappy about what the griffon had said about her renting out her son for strangers to use. “I trust that if you fail and Lex captures you, you have ways of making sure my name never comes up.”
Dark Streak’s eyes narrowed, but in mirth rather than anger. “If that’s what you’re worried about, then relax.”
Turning away, the griffon walked out into the night, her final words hanging in the air behind her.
“When I take a job, I see it through to the bitter end.”