Downtown Druid

Book 3 Chapter 9: She's a Legend

Dantes looked at the crystal sitting in Argenta’s palm, pulsing with energy as it recorded everything he did. It was a clever initiation. The guard could be bribed, manipulated, or avoided relatively easily once you reached a certain level of criminal success within Rendhold. There were only a few things that could bring them knocking on your doors once you reached that level. Fucking with the guard itself, pissing off the wrong members of the nobility, and verifiable murder. That last one was difficult, as verifying anything in Rendhold was no easy thing, much less a knifing in a dark alley. A recording of the murder though, meant that Argenta and the other Fingers could sick the guard on him at any time.

"By doing this you agree not to harm any of the rest of us directly or indirectly, and you will work with us and our operations in good faith."

He walked over to the bound man, who was still unconscious, which was a relief. It was much easier to slit a throat cleanly when the person wasn’t struggling. Dantes pulled a long thin dagger from his sleeves, jammed it into the side of the hanged man’s throat, and quickly jerked it to the side. Warm blood spilled across the floor, but Dantes managed to avoid spilling a single drop on himself. He pulled the gag from the man’s mouth and used it to clean his knife as he walked back to stand in front of his new peers. He could feel some kind of energy hit him, reminding him a bit of what he'd felt when he'd freed Syn from Mariska's pact, and he looked again at the crystal. It was a ruse, at least partially, that crystal could seal a pact somehow. Unfortunately, such magics didn't work on him thanks to his status as a two-name no-name, and even then the pact wording would be easy enough to get around. He didn't change his expression, they didn't need to know he knew, and he wasn't sure if all of them knew either. Argenta was the one actually holding the crystal after all.

“Satisfied?” he asked with a smile as he slid the knife back into his sleeve.

Argenta gave him a rare smile. “Very.”

Drake nodded. “A clean kill. A bit boring, but well done.”

“Can we wrap this up?” slurred Fritz.

Argenta sat back down, placing the crystal she’d held into her pocket. “The rest of you may go. I’d like to have a chat with our newest member about what is expected of him.”

The other Fingers made their way out, ignoring the corpse that now hung from the center of the room. Diamond winked at Dantes as she passed, Fritz ignored him, and Drake gave him a nod hinting at the barest amount of respect.

Once the rest of the room had cleared out, Dantes moved toward the table, taking the seat two from Argenta’s right, where Niklas had been sitting just one meeting ago. He gestured to the dead man in the center of the room.

“Good choice. I think even other Gatemen might wonder if he actually did it.”

She leaned forward. “Had you considered killing him before your meeting? Doing so after made all of this more difficult than it needed to be,” she spoke calmly, but Dantes could hear the slight changes in her voice and see the microexpressions she was making well enough to know she was irritated.

“I wanted to see if he’d say anything about Godfrey. I thought confronting him directly might cause him to slip.”

“And?”

“No luck. I’m certain that he was involved with Godfrey somehow, as were several of his men, but they somehow managed to avoid the majority of my eyes.”

She leaned forward in her chair, folding her hands into a pyramid under her chin.

“Things are getting more precarious. Godfrey’s manipulations have made everything more vulnerable. The Lords and their councils vote to seize Frasheid and Viscent ships. They already didn’t like us, but now they’re sending fewer and fewer merchants every day. He works to implement taxes against the mercenary companies and the adventurer’s guild. What measures could help prevent the spread of the disease in the country from spreading to us, he’s fighting through his proxies. I have worked to strengthen the Guard, at least that portion of it focused on external threats, and mitigate the damage he’s doing, but the more he touches the more vulnerable we become. If we have to seal the city because of the sickness that’s spreading nearby, or if the Academy were to fail us.” She shook her head. “The jackals will come for us, their tongues dancing across sharp teeth.”

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Dantes listened carefully as she spoke. The full extent of what Godfrey was doing had been invisible to him. He was focused only on his connection to his former gang, but the Priest of Greed’s roots were much deeper than he thought. Argenta had known though. She’d been watching him for a long time.

“I wanted you among the Fingers because you were competent, powerful, and violent. I also did it with the expectation that you would be able to help me deal with him.”

“We need to kill him. Trying to stop him on the fringes like this will only slow him down. Loan me that demon of yours and let’s rip his head off and toss it down the steps of the temple of many gods.”

“I have already made attempts on his life. Some I was even certain had succeeded. If we could tie him down to one location, or had a heads up on any of his movements I think we could manage it together. Until then we have to do what we can.”

Dantes sighed. His own efforts to track Godfrey, even with all of his capability in that regard, had come up short as well. He’d had to turn almost the entirety of his focus to just tracking his men. Those that he’d captured and interrogated had either known nothing, or refused to talk, even after he’d employed very creative methods to learn what they might know.

“He still pretends that I’m his ally, and I know he has interactions with the other Fingers, though the depth of them I am still unable to determine. If all of us Fingers openly went to war it would tear the city apart at its foundations. Godfrey knows that, relies on it. Everything he does is a careful balancing act. We just need to jostle him enough to catch him off guard and move things out of his hands.”

“Now that I’m openly in the Fingers I’ll move more openly. I can draw him into making a move. Particularly once I consolidate the Gatemen’s operation.”

“You’re confident you can manage that quickly?”

Dantes nodded. “I’ve been planning for it since I realized Niklas was attempting to overcharge me.”

“He was always our weakest link. I kept him that way. The enemy will always come for the weakest member first, and Niklas was never going to be much of a loss. Are you familiar with how dwarves keep small beetles with them when they explore new excavations? So they can detect noxious gasses that may kill them otherwise?”

“I’m afraid I’ve avoided ever having to care about mining of any kind.”

“Well, that concept is the reason I had him join the Fingers.”

Dantes nodded. Niklas had always been the odd man out of the group. He was certainly capable, but while there was an ocean between the average street thug and him, there was a long river to go before you’d reach the heights of the rest of the Fingers. Dantes had no intention of letting there be such a large gap between them and himself.

Argenta held the crystal in her hand that she’d recorded his recent murder with. She tossed it into the air and it was caught by a black smoky hand before disappearing.

“Keep following Godfrey. We need to put him down. This is my city, not his.”

Dantes nodded, pushing himself off from the table. “I’ll keep sending whatever information I dig up your way.”

With that, he walked out of the club, ignoring the solicitations of the Sin’s staff as he walked out into the Rendhold streets. He took a deep breath, sensing the tendrils of life that were connected to him from all across the city. Rendhold was Argenta’s, that was true, but only for now.

Jacopo wiggled his way out from Dantes’s jacket as he started walking back toward Midtown.

“Do you trust this woman? This Argenta?” asked Jacopo.

“As much as she trusts me, which is to say I trust that we both want Godfrey gone, but after that’s taken care of it’s up in the air. Not that it matters much. She has a pet demon on a leash, until I have a way to beat it, or keep her from using it, I can’t make a move anyway.” he paused. “Also, I like the woman. I respect her, she’s a legend. No one has risen as far as she has. I’d like to find a way around the obvious answers to what could happen after Godfrey and what he represents is taken care of.”

“Hmmm. Is this one of those two-leg situations where seduction is possible.”

Dantes laughed. “Most women are only attracted to me because I represent money and power. She has more than me of both. I don’t think that would be a great tactic. I can see Vera’s lessons are sinking in though.”

“Those lessons are interesting, it’s the ones involving eating with something other than your hands that I dislike.”

“Fair enough.”

Dantes and Jacopo changed into pigeons, and flew into the sky, heading back to the club.