LIGHTNOVELONLINE 108 – A Hornet Steps Into a Hive of Flies
“Am I right to assume that you intend to test it against a live target some time soon?”
“I’m not in the mood to go looking for trouble, but trouble has a habit of finding me nonetheless. All my leads go straight into Hashem territory, so I’ve got a good feeling that I’ll get to give it a test run sooner rather than later…”
In preparation, Krahe loaded six dregshot bullets into two clips; in the first, they alternated with thaumstone-core lead bullets, while in the second, three dregshots came first, followed by three Mescalt solid-cast bullets. Unfortunately, she had found that Mescalt’s superior properties didn’t function correctly with a core of thaumstone; on impact, the same material reaction that would normally produce a spear of semiliquid metal would just crush the thaumstone core and scatter it with the pathetic power of a .22LR Snake Shot round.
She did, indeed, not actively go antagonizing random Hashem Family members, despite being able to identify them by the quirks of their dress and the tattoos which the more dedicated of them displayed. They weren’t nearly so crassly overt as gang tattoos she was used to, but they were identifiers nonetheless, subtle enough for deniability.
However, it just so happened that, when she went out to investigate at a place known to be under Hashem control, she did so without any disguise whatsoever, wearing the same exact outfit she had when she depopulated the Old Street Butchershop - biosuit, loose green trousers, and Shiva’s boots.
In an unremarkable tavern on an unremarkable street in an unremarkable corner of Audunpoint, a man sat with his feet up on the table of a bar, greyish-blue smoke pouring from a cigarette in his mouth and gathering into a puddle at his chair’s feet. On the table stood a bottle of fruit liquor distilled from a fruit found only on Xaugeth. It was absolutely revolting, and cost 500 DDs per bottle, but on the upside, it conferred the mild prestige of costing 500 DDs per bottle, and inflicted a clear-headed kind of intoxication that neither left a hangover nor harmed one’s health. From his seat on the upper-floor balcony, he surveiled his domain as some two dozen people, a mixture of civilians, contractors, and his subordinates, gambled away. The games were rigged, of course, but in a fair way; the odds were just skewed in the house’s favor was all, and anyone who won too much too quickly or even just too consistently would be removed. Anything more overt drew too much trouble, and he was content with the profit margins as they were. The gambling was the reason this place was cheaper than others; the drinks were a loss leader, meant to get asses in seats and to stupefy the gamblers’ risk assessment. Some of these innovations were his own, but most of what he used to make money hand over fist was based on advice from a friend who owned one of the great gambling houses in the Sultanate.
Cassius Hortator III was his name. He ruled over this one street, as a Hashem Family lieutenant managing this gambling house in addition to three front-businesses. There was also the obvious protection racket, book-forging, and a small waystation for the family’s butchering business. Below him were grunts and made men, though dealing with the latter required a more cautious hand, since any made man could replace him at any given moment if he fucked up. Above him stood the Three Bosses, and above them, Damrus Hashem himself. Within this area he was king, and he had both the good wisdom to have eyes on every corner, and the raw power to exterminate any invaders. At his rank, he was known for completely disproportionate firepower from a combination of six Lesser Eidolons and the ability to modify Red Reapers into a wide variety of aftermarket subtypes with adjusted properties.
Being part of the Hashem Family wasn’t all fleecing gamblers and screwing scaly saurian whores, of course. Whenever some serious shit went down, ripples carried out even to the clever, smaller fish that didn’t muddy up the pond, like Cassius. His High-priority Tenants - people he had to house and protect, yet whose identities he wasn’t allowed to know - were being pissy and sending him requests for extra security. It was all because of that goatfuck at Slaughterhouse 9. As far as he was aware, some power-hungry idiot named Jahangir Panahi had sold out the family to church dogs by arranging for a Banisher Mamon Knight to get broken out of jail. All it got him was slaughtered by that same Mamon Knight and some buttfuck insane anathemist - so the story went. Cassius was sure the facts were a bit different, but he didn’t care. All that mattered was the shit on his shoulder and the face on his table. A shitty, exaggerated sketch of a razor-grinned woman with charred skin and huge, absurdly puffy black hair. The verbal description, at least, was specific enough to get an idea of how she might really look.
He was under orders to report any sightings, to kill her if possible, or to obtain her gun by any means necessary. Of course, he wasn’t about to do any of that shit unless she waltzed herself straight into his line of sight.
Which, unfortunately, she did, and Cassius, though not a particularly ambitious man, was a man of principle. Then, alongside most of his subordinates, watched the woman come in, play cards for half an hour, and leave 20 DDs richer. But he was a man of principle; so, he finished his cigarette and rose up from his comfortable seat, and prepared himself alongside a handful of his subordinates to ambush That Woman if she came this way again. Side alleys and street corners, the windows of the gambling house, every spot within around twenty meters of where he stood at that exact moment. This way, he could feel good about having done something without actually doing anything.
Meanwhile, Krahe walked straight into an apartment building filled with Vedesian Evoy, because that was the location of her contact, a broker not unlike Garvesh, and one of the only individuals she knew for certain to know something substantial about the Talisman Mistress.
