ddwebb
patreon
2.6 In Which the Dark Lord Outsmarts Himself and No One is Surprised
🕑 Added 2021-09-07 02:35:12 +0000 UTCI handed my new minions off to my older minions while accepting Junko’s customary exuberant greeting. Minifrit, as usual, was up and about and in control bright and early; she smoothly swept up the new arrivals and ushered them off in the custody of herself and a few girls she had designated her helpers to get something to eat. Breakfast was being served in the mess hall, which was the usual tumultuous affair because despite my best efforts, this was a castle full of mostly ex-prostitutes and not any kind of military encampment. At this point, I figured the disorder fostered camaraderie and didn’t demand too much of my people, which was probably better for them while they were all still adjusting to such a massive change in life circumstances.
Breakfast sounded good to me, too—that and a nice long nap. However, there was as usual no rest for the wicked and I spotted something scampering through the mess hall which reminded me of a task I needed to perform. Six somethings, in fact. And I didn’t so much spot them as would’ve been run over had I been less adroit on my feet.
“Oi!” I grabbed Gilder by the collar, causing a pileup as the five children chasing him failed to stop in time. “There’s a whole courtyard out there for you to run around in, what the hell is wrong with you? People are carrying food in here!”
“Sorry, Lord Seiji!” he said, trying unsuccessfully to give me the big puppy eyes without first erasing his characteristic irrepressible grin, because Gilder had never been sorry for anything in his life.
“Being a good influence on the new kids already, I see.”
“You know it, bossman! We’ll have ‘em trained up proper in no time!”
“Great,” I said sourly, looking past Benit and Radon at the three younger children who were bringing up the rear of the pack. “That’s another fun conversation with their parents I have to look forward to.”
I had been mildly but only briefly surprised to pick up a few strays in the process of recruiting nearly all the prostitutes in the Gutters. There were others adjacent to them who had eagerly bought what I was selling, and a few who’d taken the opportunity to extract their loved ones from the city to my fortress if only because said loved ones were likely to become the targets of a very pissed-off Lady Gray if they remained. I had not expected brothel bouncers to be family men, but a couple were, and their families were now my responsibility.
In the final tally, I had picked up ninety-three ex-prostitutes, six madams (including Minifrit and Gannit), eight bouncers, three housewives attached to said bouncers and subsequently, three children in addition to my original three Gutter Rats, plus five johns who’d been nearby and really liked my speech. Well, there was also that one guy I’d spoken to during the long hike back from Gwyllthean, who’d quietly admitted he knew falling in love with a whore was the stupidest thing a man could do, but if she wasn’t a whore anymore, he figured if he stuck close he might have a shot. This was definitely not the first time someone had joined a rebellion or criminal syndicate for that exact reason, so I didn’t have the heart to tell him what an idiot he was.
Well, okay, that’s not true. I refrained from telling him what an idiot he was because that would have a negative effect on morale, and anyway, the guy seemed well aware that he was an idiot so who was I to judge? I was the Dark Lord, not his dad.
All of which had brought up the additional problem that I now needed to address.
“All right, we need to have a talk,” I said, putting on a grim tone. “You three! Go get some breakfast, politely,and eat it with your families. You’ve got all day to run around like lunatics, it’s too early for this.”
I’d pointed at the three newer kids immediately behind my trio and immediately regretted my approach. All three looked terrified; one managed an abortive two-armed twitch that might have been an attempt to fold down hands at me before they all turned and fled toward the kitchen.
“C’mon, Lord Seiji, they’re just softy town kids,” Gilder said reprovingly. “We’ve told ‘em you’re nice, but they ain’t had time to see that yet. Gettin’ told off by the fuckin’ Dark Lord’s just gonna give ‘em nightmares.”
“That won’t make their parents happy, either,” Benit added solemnly.
I agreed and hadn’t meant to spook them that badly, but this was no time to show weakness. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said severely. “With me, now. I want a word with the three of you. And no trying to run off or I’ll have Junko drag you back.”
Junko obliged by barking emphatically, causing multiple nearby adults to wince. Understandable; she was loud in an echoing space like this, not to mention a big scary-looking dog. Everybody who hadn’t actively scritched or played with her seemed nervous around Junko. I had decided not to discourage this.
“Now you done it,” Radon muttered, knuckling Gilder in the ribs. “Good job.”
“Biribo,” I muttered as I turned and led them away, “I need a private spot for a chat.”
“Gotcha, boss,” he replied equally quietly, right next to my ear. “South gatehouse tower was clear when we came in. I think it still is.”
The trio followed me without trouble, I suspect in part because Junko slipped to the rear to herd them. Thanks to the effects of Tame Beast, she sensed and acted on my needs even better than an actually-trained dog. Often I didn’t even have to give her commands. Sometimes I only gave her commands to remind people that I had a big dog who could bite their necks off. It was funny how that could sometimes be a more pressing threat than my known ability to cause spontaneous human combustion.
We did indeed find the tower empty, lit only by a bottled light slime. By this point they had all but replaced asauthec torches throughout the fortress. This was, I noted in some surprise, the very room into which Virya had first dropped me when I arrived on Ephemera. I hadn’t actually been in here since then. The memories weren’t great.
I waited for Benit to shut the door behind us before I grinned at them.
“Relax, kids, you’re not in trouble. I just needed to put on a little show for the onlookers so I could get a word with you away from snoopy ears.”
“Oh ho,” Gilder crowed, perking up immediately. “Just like the good old days! What’s happening now, Lord Seiji?”
“Old business first,” I said, pulling out a chair from the room’s table and seating myself. There were two chairs; I didn’t know whether this was the one the dead peddler had been in or the one I’d kicked at Kasser and frankly, I didn’t want to know. “How’s exploration going? I hope you haven’t involved those three townies, they don’t seem as scrappy as you guys.”
“Yeah, no worries, we leave ‘em out of it,” Radon assured me. “They got families who take up some of their time. Gives us a good excuse to ditch ‘em.”
“We haven’t found anything really interesting yet, Lord Seiji,” Benit reported more quietly. “We haven’t looked everywhere yet, but at this point I don’t expect to find much.”
“Hey, you never know!” Gilder said, cheery as always. “It ain’t over till it’s over!”
“I’m not expecting much either,” I agreed, nodding at Benit. “I’d be pretty surprised to find either treasure or booby traps in a dump like North Watch, but still. There’s no point in having three sharp-eyed little scouts if I don’t use you, now is there?”
All three puffed up visibly.
“Just remember my rules,” I added in a more severe tone.
“Always carry a light,” Gilder chimed.
“If we see anything weird, poke it with a stick before using our hands,” said Radon.
“Exploring the fortress is not an excuse to dig through the personal belongings of people actually living here,” Benit finished.
Truthfully having the three of them poke through the as yet un-refurbished chambers and back corridors of North Watch was pretty pointless in terms of productivity; there was nothing back there but dust, crawns, spiders, and the moldy leavings of the fortress’s previous occupation by the Kingsguard and the local cat tribe. All of which was decayed to scraps and mush by now. But I figured playing explorer would give the kids something to do that’d stave off their inevitable boredom, which out here was likely to result in them wandering off into the khora and getting grabbed by cat people.
“Very good,” I said approvingly. “Now, I have another job for you.”
“You can count on us, Lord Seiji!” Gilder said, beaming.
“Believe me, you’ve more than proved that. So, as you know, we’ve now got over a hundred people in this fortress, and that means we’ve got security risks that weren’t a factor before. There’s no way for me to know or keep track of everybody here as personally as I did when my gang was just six bandits and the three of you. Added to that, some of our new arrivals are only here because I made it too dangerous for them to stay in Gwyllthean; at least a few are bound to resent that. Plus, we’ve got recruits from several of Lady Gray’s former gangs, and the sheer number of people and the circumstances has to have created the opportunity for an operator as sharp as Gray to have slipped a spy or two into the ranks.”
“You don’t know who you can trust,” Benit said seriously.
“Not yet.” I nodded at her.
“So you need us to do some good old-fashioned Gutter Rat snooping!” Gilder said with a proper Gilder Grin, the kind that made him look like his face might split in half.
“Sort of yes, but also definitely not.” I made my own expression more solemn to compensate. “I want no active snooping, and here’s why. Among my other pressing needs, I have to manage the morale of this crew. They’re pretty fired up after our successes, but things are inevitably gonna get more monotonous around here, and we will eventually lose some of our battles. I have to do everything possible to make sure everyone feels safe, welcomed, and part of the group. That can’t happen if they think I’m having my personal spies rummage through all their shit as soon as their backs are turned. Understand?”
All three of them nodded, wearing the incredibly serious expressions that only children and insufferably pompous people could wear.
“What I do want you to do is actively keep your eyes and ears open,” I continued. “Don’t go looking directly into people’s business, but don’t forget all those skills you learned working for Uncle Gently. Take note of anything you spot that pings your instincts. Don’t follow up without direct orders from me, but do come to me if you spot anything that seems like it should be snooped into. I’ll decide how to proceed from there, on a case by case basis.”
“You got it, Lord Seiji!” Gilder assured me, puffing up his thin chest.
“I’m serious about this,” I warned. “If I start getting complaints that you three are sticking your noses into shit without my permission, I’m gonna have to call off the operation and come down on you. Don’t put me in that position.”
“We won’t, Lord Seiji,” Benit said, nodding.
“You can always count on us,” Radon added.
To be truthful, while my argument about morale was correct and important, the greater part of my concern was that anybody spying on behalf of Lady Gray wouldn’t hesitate to silence and dispose of a child. That argument would impress Benit, but the boys were frustratingly oblivious to the concept of their own mortality. Hopefully this would keep them engaged enough to ward off boredom, not put them in danger, and also might even lead to useful intel if we did have a mole or two. While I was motivated in large part by my guilt over the way I’d used and endangered the kids in the past, the fact remained that they were very effective little snoops. They’d been trained for it from the cradle.
“Good!” I stood back up, dusting off my trousers, and Junko also rose from the seat she’d taken next to me. “I do love knowing who I can trust around here. Thanks, guys.”
“Are you gonna stay in the castle for a while longer, Lord Seiji?” Benit asked.
“Sorry,” I said, grimacing. “I’ve left the situation in Gwyllthean unattended for too long as it is. I need to get back there and tie up some loose ends.”
“Just…be careful,” she said, her eyes big and focused. “Lady Gray may’ve been hurt, but she’ll just be madder because of it. That bitch won’t stop being dangerous till well after she’s dead.”
“Don’t you worry, I’m well aware of what a piece of work Gray is,” I assured Benit, patting her head. “And putting her down for good is a big part of why I need to check up on my interests in the city. I’ve gotta get back there as soon as possible. Which’ll probably be tomorrow, considering the night I’ve already had. Let’s go get some breakfast, and then the Dark Lord needs some actual sleep.”
“Yeah, I hear naps start to get important, later in life,” Gilder said in an excessively solemn tone. “It must be really hard being old, Lord Seiji.”
“Well, I have good news, you little shit: keep talking to me like that and you’ll never have to find out.”
He laughed, which made me feel a bit better about the misunderstanding earlier. At least some people around here knew I wasn’t an indiscriminate murderous madman.
I really hoped they were still right about that.
***
“Some of these are going to be easier to get than others,” Cadimer Auldmaer (not to be confused with the even less pronounceable Caldimer Olumnach) said the next day in his office as he studied the list of our material needs I’d given him. “Grant me an hour to work on this and I can have it divvied up into what I can supply directly, indirectly, or not at all, with notes on where and how you can go about acquiring the objects from each category.”
“That’ll be perfect,” I agreed, nodding. “And in fact, while you’re doing that I’d like you to keep in mind a change in procedure. My organization’s needs have grown beyond the ability of your company to directly supply them, and I don’t want to put an unnecessary strain on your resources. For the same reason, our ability to acquire liquid capital has substantially increased. I’d like you to pivot the focus of your support from directly supplying us to assisting me in meeting our own needs without leaving an annoying paper trail.”
“Splendid, that’s the best thing for us both, Lord Seiji,” he said with a grin. “And thank you for sparing me the embarrassment of bringing it up.”
“How are things looking for you so far?”
“Oh, this has been a satisfyingly profitable relationship,” he said cheerfully. “Two months isn’t a lot of time for big investments to bear fruit, but those nice conservative, boring investments we talked about have done very well in the interim, especially with you discreetly trimming some of the competition. The ‘losses’ you took from my own caravans have barely nibbled at my profit margins. I am about at the point of sniffing around for my next big opportunity, now that the company has a solid base from which to move. On that subject,” he added a bit more hesitantly, “and please understand I mean no disrespect, Lord Seiji, I think I’d prefer to pull this off without your assistance if possible.”
“No disrespect is taken,” I said, giving him a slight smile. “I think that’s for the best. All these months spent looking innocent aren’t going to amount to much if every windfall you have comes violently at the expense of your competition. Best to save your trump card for emergencies.”
“Just so,” Auldmaer said with clear relief. “I will of course keep you informed, in case such an emergency pops up. Now, in the meantime, we just need to draw up this month’s list of necessary, irrelevant, and hands-off targets.”
“I do need you to broaden the scope of those,” I said. “As I mentioned, we’re expanding operations and I don’t want to accidentally cause problems for you. Also, there’s another variable to factor in: I’ve recently learned that we’re now in direct competition with Clan Olumnach for the same general objectives.”
“Wasn’t that true from the outset?” he asked, cocking his head.
“Only in a strictly technical sense,” I admitted with a grimace. “That Crown Rose incident aside, up till now we’ve been strictly small potatoes as far as somebody like Olumnach is concerned. Starting now, though, I fully intend to cut into his business in a serious way. A massive way. As in, I’m going to take all of his business. I’ll be proceeding in such a way that the name ‘Lord Seiji’ never comes into it; the last thing I want is to accidentally create a trail back to you. By all means, profit from Clan Olumnach’s misfortune, just no more than any of the other merchant companies.”
“I can do you one better,” he mused, a sly little smile flicking across his features. “With a little…surgical accounting and some help from you, I can arrange for one of my most annoying competitors to profit significantly from Clan Olumnach’s misfortune. And then let nature take its course.”
“Now, that is creatively vicious,” I congratulated him. “Good show.”
“Fortunately, I’m ahead of you on this one, Lord Seiji. Everybody knows what Olumnach is doing, even if nobody dares call him out on it openly. There’s a cottage industry among the information brokers down at the Trader’s Guild to keep on top of his investments for the specific purpose of not stepping on his toes. All of us in the business have a vested interest in not antagonizing the bandit lord of Dount. The Auldmaer Company was previously too small to need to worry about that, but I’ve recently begun to patronize them. Staying out of Highlord Caldimer’s hair should be simple enough, especially if you forewarn me what you’re planning to do.”
“I’ll keep you posted. Olumnach should be a more distant threat, at least for the time being. Right now our big problem is the difficulty in communicating with you. I’m afraid Lady Gray is good and mad at me at present, which makes it…interesting…to get in and out of the city.”
“Yes, I wondered about that.” Eyebrows rising, he glanced back and forth between me and Aster, who was leaning against the wall by the door. “Dare I ask how you got here this time?”
“Oh, it was easy,” she said, deadpan. “We paid a teamster to smuggle us in on his cart. In crates that were supposed to be full of nails. It was extremely comfortable.”
“You don’t get to complain,” I stated, pointing at her. “My crate actually still had nails in it.”
“Things like that will work in the short term, if you don’t mind the indignity,” Auldmaer said carefully, “but every time a trick is used, its future utility diminishes. Especially when you’re dealing with somebody like Lady Gray, who knows all the tricks to begin with. I appreciated the warning you sent about her; I’ve improved security here at headquarters and around my other interests. Launching a direct attack on me isn’t a viable move for her, but someone like that has all kinds of indirect means of getting her point across. At the very minimum, I would expect her to already have my place under surveillance.”
“Dealing with Gray for good is high on my priority list,” I assured him, “but as you no doubt understand, that’s not something I can just saunter out of here and do. The necessary arrangements have to be careful. In the short term, are you reasonably confident she won’t come after you personally?”
“Oh, it’s not even about me,” he said with a grin, waving away that concern. “Lady Gray’s entire business model depends on the Clans’ disinterest in what lowborn do to each other. I’m a moneyed middleborn in the middle ring who’s financially connected to bigger trading companies and several of the Clans. If she sent thugs up here to mess with me or my business, it’s not my business that would motivate the Clansguards to stomp her back down. They won’t stand for a Gutter criminal wandering too close to their own spheres of activity.”
“Yes, so I’ve been told. My concern is that in my own interactions with Gray I have found her…frustratingly competent. She’s crafty and maneuvers fast. Like you said, there have to be ample ways for her to mess with you and not call down the wrath of the Clans.”
“Well, yes, that’s the weakness in that particular defense,” he agreed, his smile fading. “Nobody in the upper rings is going to bother moving on my behalf unless the Gutters’ crime queen steps visibly out of her place. To counter her more oblique moves, I would need the kinds of connections I don’t have. You, Lord Seiji, are my only asset against measures like that. And while your commitment to ending her permanently is reassuring, in an eventual sort of way, in the shorter term…”
“It’s the cause of your problem, not the solution,” I acknowledged. “To that end, I can still help. I’ve already primed Rhydion to be looking into Gray’s business; if I introduce you to him, then Gray putting even a plausibly deniable finger anywhere near you will call down a level of wrath even she isn’t prepared to deal with.”
“Rhydion?” He straightened up in visible shock. “The paladin? How would you—that is, forgive me, Lord Seiji, but I, ah… You don’t seem like the type of person he would associate with. Very much the opposite, to be frank.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” I said, grinning. “For now, Rhydion wants something from me, so he’s being unusually tolerant of my charmingly irascible antics.”
“The problem with that plan,” said Aster, “is that Rhydion doesn’t want anything from a trading company this size. No offense, Master Auldmaer, but he’s already got more money than you, and follows a way of life that disdains material comforts.”
“Yeah, but there are those adventurer friends of his,” I said. “His new party of locals—that priestess, and the asshole with the mustache.”
“Oh, that is a very exploitable angle,” Auldmaer said. I could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes. “Adventurers are always in need of goodies. You don’t even have to bribe them with artifacts or anything so munificent. Let’s see… A case of potions with my compliments, and the offer to sell them more at a steep discount. They always want potions. Yes, that would set the hook deeply. I’m not actively in the potions trade right now, but I’ve got a contact I can leverage to get them at cost.”
“Try the same with the city guard,” I suggested. “They’re broadly useless as an actual city guard, but the nice thing about them being a bunch of thugs is that they’re probably up for off-the-books thuggery, if they like you and/or you spend some money. I’ve already set my good friend Captain Norovena on Gray’s trail, too, so the pump is primed.”
“Paladins and guard captains,” he said, staring at me. “You know, Lord Seiji, for a bandit, you keep very peculiar company.”
“Oh, Norovena’s not such a surprising contact,” I explained with a pleasant smile. “I bribed him. A lot. He’s very interested in my continued survival and financial solvency.”
“I do think that’ll do it,” Auldmaer said slowly. “Prestigious adventurers and crooked guards… Those are exactly the kind of friends who quietly make problems go away. Guards are almost laughably easy to get on your side, too, at least in this country. If you can provide me the actual names of those party members of Rhydion’s, in a handful of days I can have myself set up such that even Lady Gray will hesitate to poke at me with the longest stick she has. If she’s already watching my comings and goings, as I strongly suspect, she’ll even know that I’m off limits without having to learn the hard way. I must say, Lord Seiji, for all the trouble you cause, you are admirably conscientious about mitigating its unfortunate consequences.”
“I do what I can,” I said modestly, reaching into my coat. “And on that subject in particular, there’s something else I wanted to ask you about. I have a short list of people who are connected to people who are connected to the bloody lip I recently gave Lady Gray. Can you possibly locate any of these without drawing attention to them? There are limits to what I can realistically do, but if I can protect any of these from blowback, I consider it my responsibility.”
The list was pretty short, for having been drawn from everybody currently at North Watch who’d been invited to participate. Apparently few of them had connections in Gwyllthean, and of those, a lot had had the foresight to bring their connections with them.
“I can give it a look, but please understand there’s very little I can do in that regard,” Auldmaer cautioned me, accepting the sheet of paper and examining it. “Given the near-certainty that Gray has eyes on me already, I have very little chance of pulling off anything without her notice. Me investigating anyone through the channels I have access to would just lead her directly—oh! I know this guy.”
Something in his expression and tone made a prickle run down my spine. Apparently not just mine; Aster unfolded her arms and took a step closer to us.
Auldmaer set the list down on his desk and pointed to one name. “Cwynnar Alsiada. He’s a porter who works at the Trader’s Guildhall. I’ve seen him now and again but I doubt I’d have remembered him before this morning. He came by my offices just today.”
“Oh, let me guess,” I whispered.
“I thought at the time it was pretty odd,” Auldmaer said gravely. “He claimed he’d gotten a message from me offering to hire his services for the day. Obviously I had no idea what he was talking about. Poor fellow was rather miffed, but we put it down to somebody playing a somewhat dull practical joke on him. Of course, in light of this…”
Cwynnar Alsiada was the brother of one of Minifrit’s bouncers who had joined my army. Supposedly, the only family he had.
“She deliberately brought him to your attention,” Aster whispered. “And if she’s got people watching these offices, she probably knows we’re here… Oh, shit. She outmaneuvered us again, didn’t she?”
“Of course she fucking did,” I spat, already rising from my chair. Beneath the annoyance and self-recrimination, though, I felt something else rising up. Something dark, and avid—the all-consuming rage that had kept me on my feet and fighting all through the battle in Cat Alley. The thing that had all but blotted out my personality and replaced it with pure, homicidal destruction.
She had flanked me yet again; her ambushers were undoubtedly closing in already. And a big part of me welcomed it.
All right, Gray, you know I’m here. This time I don’t have a whole district full of people to protect. Round two, new rules.
Comments
ParadoxFox
Well akorshil isn’t flammable right? If he sticks to burning people, it probably won’t cause too much damage.
ParadoxFox
Yeah not sure I’m following entirely. It sounds like Gray is sending him a message that they have Cwynnar as a…hostage?
fionag11
I don't get the thing with Cwynnar. Why did she send him to Auldmar? It was kind of a long shot Seiji would ever mention him. Or maybe he's been forced to act as her spy?
Too Much Sanity May Be Madness
As much as I'd like this next one to be a final confrontation between Grey and Seiji, this soon into a new book, it feels more like an escalation than a climax. And as Seiji said, this is round two, and three is a much better number for resolutions. So with no clear winner probably forthcoming in this battle: ding ding ding, FIGHT!
Wolfkit
One problem: Nobody cares if you were to burn down the whore's district. If the trader's dristrict burns down, important people will care. And it's not Grey who will be slingning fire spells.
