"Gentleman callers" she had called them. Bottle Street thugs, is what she means and they were as clever as any foot soldier was, whether that battlefield was an open plain or back alleys. He'd fought long enough to know that they were all the same when it came to following orders without thought. He might hate them less if he weren't so much the same.
Just following orders, just doing what was asked. What was the other option? Thinking about what was left otherwise? Better to move, to keep moving, to never look back.
So he doesn't blame them, not really. Nor is he sure what he expects to find. He knows he's not what they are expecting to find. Death stalking, all glinting mask and the shimmer of the ever beckoning void. All phantom, all omen.
But in turn, he finds what is left of this rotten city. Those strong enough to have survived it, and those who had survived by luck. As he goes to the door, and with a flick of all powerful from his fingers that flings the door of it's hinges and sends them sprawling over the rain sodden streets, he doesn't find particularly worth adversaries. He finds the scared, the desperate.
He finds a boy with red eyes, white hair sticking out from a bowler hat that goes rolling away from them. Landing in the curb, sadly speckled with mud and other, worse things from these streets.
It is not much, he doesn't truly pause in his reaction, he just glances up at the boy. Seeing not a fighter, not even a thug, and nothing that would be considered a gentleman from the world Corvo had lived in. Just a boy, a boy's scared eyes, wide and nervous as death encroached in the flick out of a blade. Not for him this time, when the man he had knocked the right, moved up, launching at him. He takes a direct turn to deal with the sudden attack, forgetting all else to the welcome hum of violence.
The rest after that is a blur. Fights are not long drawn out affairs they make them out to be in the poems. They are not beautiful, ornate things. They are five seconds, and the misstep of whoever flinches the wrong way first. It ends with the first men spilling intestines over the street, the second with a blade plunged up between ribs straight into heart. With a jerking, snagging gesture, tugging to pull the blade free of muscles.
He -- all death, all merciless -- turned back to the boy then. The last one left, just - a boy. The other two men grown, with a man's reaction to violence. But this boy, with his skin whiter than a weeper, scrambled back, desperately reaching for the bottle that had been knocked out of his hand. His senses turned sharp from being soaked this far in void, he doesn't need to read the label to read the stench of pure alcohol, highly flammable, and as dangerous as fire could always be. Maybe if someone burned the bodies, instead of letting them pile high, this sickness might have been curbed in the days when an Empress smiled.
Doesn't matter now.
The boy drags himself backwards on his side, foot kicking under him to get away and Corvo -- stands. Blade turning over in his right hand, blood trickled over it and in an all too human gestures, he transfers it to the other, so he might wipe it off. Like sweaty palms before an important event. It is still there in the creases of his skin.
'Boy, should you not be tending someone?' He creaks the words, rasping and metallic echoed behind the mask.
( His mother was one of the first to die. he nursed her, even when she cursed him by his noble father's name. )
'Go away, assassin.' Stubborn, prideful, not the snarling of brutes, but the pride of the young with nothing else to loose.
Corvo's head tilts. The mask gives nothing else away, save to shift in the light, and the blade passes back to his dominant hand, less likely to loose his grip now it was not so slick. 'Quiet.' Should he kill him? No doubt, it would the bigger mercy to them both. No boy to run back to his master, no eyes to report him, the mad old woman upstairs watching with empty eyes and a hungry mouth, would be pleased. Reward him better. Sated goddess at her alter, hungry for the blood of any who was willing to spill it for her.
But he looks at the boy again and taking a step ( and rightfully so, the boy flinches to even the slightest movement ), he kicks a blade towards him, which there's no hesitation in how he takes it up immediately. 'Next time, don't let go of your weapon, even when it hurts.'
He sheathes his own then, a flick as quick as a butterfly beats its wings. It's snapped back together, and clipped back to his belt, and in a flash of magic that leaves the boy gasping in something like fear, something like awe, he's gone. Or at least, to his company he is. It's a small thing, But he watches to make sure he scrambles his way back to Slackjaw. Spouting off about spirits that walked, and the old women that commanded them.
It's a small thing, but most would say, there isn't much but the small things left.
jasper & corvo, "mercies"