Downtown Druid

Dantes was finishing a letter when Wane entered his garden. He didn’t look up, but instead finished it, and began to fold it, placing it alongside the other letters he’d prepared. He had some for Danglars from his mother, a few for Pacha, one to simply be dropped into Mondego’s front lawn with a cryptic note about one of his lieutenants that meant nothing, but was meant to make him anxious, and the last one which he folded with additional care and held in his hand staring into the middle distance for almost a full minute before Wane coughed to get his attention.

Dantes calmly crumpled up the last message, then began to tie a different one to the leg of a pigeon that hopped off of his shoulder and onto his hand. Then he looked at Wane with a smile as he stood up from his makeshift desk.

“Wane! I wasn’t sure when I’d see you again.”

They clasped hands and drew into a quick embrace, then separated.

“I wasn’t sure myself. I hadn’t actually planned to see you for some time yet. Merle has us all… very busy with some things I can’t talk about.”

Dantes shrugged. “I’m familiar with secrets, though I’m surprised I haven't even noticed any of you with my vermin.”

Wane smiled. “Now that the collars are off, it would take an archmage to find us.”

Dantes plucked two peaches from his tree and tossed one to Wane before biting into the other one. “So, what brings you here then? The first bit of help was free, but anything else and I’ll need to charge.”

Wane took a bite through the peach along with a bit of its pit, his half orc teeth carving through it like it wasn’t there. “No, this isn’t anything to do with them. This is about you and me. Something more personal.”

Dantes nodded, pulling a small piece of his fruit away to hand to Jacopo who stood on his shoulder.

Wane took a moment to give a warm nod to Jacopo, who returned it in kind.

“It’s Pillion. I found him.”

Dantes swallowed. “Where was he? Hiding under a half-pint mug?”

Wane chuckled. “No. He’s in the lower west side. He’s still with the Consortium, but now he’s a contact for the Kobolds there that want things to make their way down into the pit.”

“Last I’d heard, he’d betrayed the Collared to the Consortium and because of that my blood garden went out of control… Still, I can’t say that wouldn’t have happened anyway.”

Wane shook his head. “This isn’t about the results, this is about the betrayal itself. Pillion wasn’t well liked, but he knew a lot of Merle’s plans and was willing to sell us out once before. Merle is too focused to give it his attention, so I’m going to take care of it for him. I thought you might be interested in taking a piece of him yourself.”

Dantes tossed the remains of his fruit onto the ground and carefully wiped the juice of it from the corner of his mouth with his wooden hand. “Do you think he’s gotten his collar off?”

Wane looked confused at Dantes’s hand as he spoke. “I’m not sure. None of what I was told indicates that he did. Kobolds don’t always consider the same details pertinent that we do.” He paused. “Is your hand fucking wood now?”

Dantes laughed and held up his new hand, making his fingers bend backward and forward a few times in such a way that made Wane grimace.

“Yeah, I was forced to make a change.”

“What happened?”

“Mondego, an old enemy of mine. He attacked some friends to draw me out. It worked.”

Wane nodded. “He’s dead I’d guess.”

Dantes’s eyes seemed to reflect the sunlight so strongly they almost appeared to be glowing. “Oh no. Not until he has nothing left.”

Wane suppressed a mild shudder.

“But, there’s nothing I can actively do about it today. So, let’s find Pillion. What’s the usual punishment for someone betraying the Collared? I don’t think it happened even once in all the time I was there.”

“There was really no reason to betray us. We didn’t care if you left to join another gang, or wanted to do some hustling on the side. The only way to ‘betray’ us was to steal from us, kill one of us, or give our secrets to others. We have the same punishment for betrayal as every other gang in the underprison. Death.”

Dantes nodded along as Wane spoke and took his jacket off of a branch from which he’d had it hanging. He slipped it on, then made sure his gun was loaded, his stiletto was in the right spot, and slipped a bit of dried meat into his pocket for Jacopo.

“Alright, let’s go kill a gnome. How should we do it? Drown him in a thimble?”

“I was thinking we’d stab him to death with a toothpick.”

“Feed him to Jacopo?”

“No, he definitely tastes like shit. How about we just toss him into the air and brain him on a cloud?”

“Too much work. Maybe we can bury him alive in a burnstick box?”

“Waste of a perfectly good box. Maybe get him stuck in a glue trap?”

“No, no. I’ve heard too much from rats how cruel those are. You know what, let’s just see what mood strikes us when we find him?”

Wane nodded. “Excellent idea. No reason to settle on anything before we’re certain how we feel. Besides, we may come up with even better ideas on the way there.”

Dantes nodded, smiling, as they made their way out of his garden and started heading for the gate.

…

The trip to the outskirts of Rendhold was uneventful, but Dantes never liked feeling the change of cobblestone roads under his boots to dirt and mud paths. He kept a few pigeons watching things above them, and a few rats keeping eyes on the corners, but didn’t expect trouble this far from Midtown where his main enemies resided. They made their way past the small square where Hema had her herbalist shop, and then deeper into Kobold territory.

Dantes liked Kobold territory a bit more than the other sections of the city’s outskirts. The territory was divided into multiple smaller squares that each could function mostly independently of the other. Each square would have a single large sleeping building in which a few dozen of a specific clan would reside. They’d also have their own workshops, public mud-baths, and even a designated stone square on which they could take turns sunbathing.

The Kobolds largely ignored both Dantes and Wane as they walked through their spaces, but it wasn’t out of rudeness or dislike, but rather they were all so absorbed in whatever it was they were doing they couldn’t bother with anything else. The workshops were full of Kobolds that were staring at their work with enough attention that Dantes felt almost as if they could bore holes through things with their eyes. Even the younger Kobolds, those whose scales hadn’t fully taken on the richness of color found in their older peers, were often hunched over solving complicated puzzle toys, or were so focused on whatever games they played that they dove through Wane’s legs, or in one case climbed over Dantes rather than divert course.

Dantes had frequently heard people compare Kobolds to dwarves. They both tended to live in caves and had a tremendous capacity for creation, but in his mind that’s where the similarities ended. A dwarf would create something that can be standardized, applied to dozens of other things, and profited from. A dwarf may take joy in the invention, but that was never its only purpose, they tended toward practicality. A kobold would spend a year perfecting the perfect pair of glasses that could clasp to a snout rather than a nose, and adjust the magnification as needed, and it would be perfect and completely useless to anyone who wasn’t that particular kobold. They did it for the love of the game, which was something Dantes could very much appreciate.

They passed through two or three of the square enclaves before Wane started looking around more closely.

“The info I got was that he was working mostly in Buried Claw territory. They tend toward dark gray and brown scales.” He shook his head. “I’d attempt a divining spell to find him, but if he has his collar off it would almost certainly warn him that we’re coming… I wish a Kobold would gain a passion for mapmaking and signposting. Gods that would make things more convenient. ”

Dantes smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll use a kind of divining spell of my own.” He reached out his will and began gathering a small flock of pigeons. He sent them off in all directions around them. When one of them came upon Kobolds that tended toward more gray and brown he sent more pigeons in that direction, and started walking toward that block with Wane. It was interesting watching the colors of the kobolds slowly change from the reds and greens they were around into the grays and browns they were searching for. From what Dantes understood, crossbreeding was frowned upon, but common. A bit like whoring.

“You think this is it?” said Wane looking around.

“Hmmm, let me try using another power to make sure.” Dantes began to make a fancy gesture, then simply waved a hand in front of a Kobold tinkering with an elaborate locking mechanism to get his attention.

“This Buried Claw territory?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks.”

He looked at Wane. “Yeah, this is it.”