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All dressed like professionals who wanted to look like thugs. It was a common trick. Dress like street trash so witnesses assumed street trash.
Raka grunted softly.
He hooked his hands under the first man's shoulders and dragged him deeper into the alley's shadow, toward a section where the stone floor sloped into an old drainage mouth.
He did not rush. Rushing created noise. Noise created attention.
He lined the bodies up near the drainage mouth, stacked the way he had stacked sacks as a child. Unromantic. Efficient.
Then he pulled out a second tool.
A folded canvas sheet, thick and ugly.
He spread it on the ground.
He rolled the bodies onto it one by one.
He wrapped them tight.
Not out of respect.
Out of practicality.
The canvas kept blood from smearing across the route.
Blood trails were the easiest thing for city guards to follow when they pretended they cared.
