Downtown Druid

After they’d finished an hour of nitty gritty discussions, everyone shook hands and felt that solid mix of satisfied and dissatisfied that always came with business agreements. Dantes feigned a frown, letting all parties feel that they got the best of him, even though he’d just turned the ability to grow fruit with a few drops of blood into a profitable enterprise that would take little daily maintenance in which all parties thought his cut was lesser than it actually was.

When they left the room, Grimald paused for a moment to speak with Merle a bit more about logistics between the Undermarket and Collared territory, leaving Dantes standing near the gnome’s elven guards that had so recently been hunting him.

The younger of them turned toward him, but kept his distance, looking him up and down, his eyes pausing at the rapier on his waist.

“Nice blade,” he said with a sneer.

“Thank you. It was a gift from a very dear friend.”

“You think you’re funny, mutt?”

“I know I am, actually. You’re just not the right audience for the joke. Knifed ears sometimes have difficulty hearing the nuances of good humor.” It wasn’t smart to taunt them, but the continuous sips from the flask of booze throughout the day was making it more difficult to filter himself than he’d anticipated. He’d become much more of a lightweight in the Pit.

“You fu-”

The older of the elves put his hand on the younger one's shoulder, giving him pause, then looked at Dantes.

“Our mirrors. How did you steal one? We have rangers that have led men to war, that can hear any intruder within one hundred paces, and the mirrors were always deep in our territory. You have some skill at hiding from your betters, as the lesser races always do, but not the skill to infiltrate our territory.”

The question gave Dantes pause. He’d expected more posturing and back and forth that led to nothing. That was typically how these sorts of interactions went, but the older elf clearly didn’t care about short term revenge. He wanted to know what weakness it was that had led to their loss, so that he could amend it in the future.

Dantes gave a smile. “I didn’t have to steal it. It was given to me.”

The older and younger elf exchanged a quick glance. “Who?” asked the older of the two.

Dantes shook his head. “Come now, even you two must know the rules down here, even isolated with the other Kings like you were. I’m no rat.”

The older elf nodded understanding, he’d clearly been in the pit a long time and knew the rules at least as well as Dantes did.

The younger elf looked at the older one. “A traitor? Maybe someone hiding a touch of orcish blood?”

Dantes pretended to start saying something, then stopped himself.

That caused them to exchange another glance with each other.

“Alright, let’s go,” said Grimald, having wrapped up his conversation with Merle.

The two elves nodded and fell in line behind him as if they hadn’t been making comments about the height and weakness of gnomes just a month prior. Such was the power of security and profit.

Dantes let himself smile more widely. He doubted the elves would come after him while they were working for the consortium and he was controlling a substantial stake of the drink coming into the undermarket, and now they’d been more focused on figuring out who betrayed them. A mutt that defended himself from them was deeply offensive to them, but betrayal always stung deeper. Dantes knew that from personal experience. There was the chance that they would see through his deception, but based on their limited information he didn’t see how they could. Them having a traitor in their midst was the only explanation that could possibly make sense from their perspective. The lie would hold at least as long as Dantes kept his own abilities secret.

“So, when can we pick up the first load?” asked Merle, moving to stand next to him.

“Today if you’d like. Mez already has it ready. Some of your men should already know how to reach him, I know Tel does at least.”

Merle stroked his beard for a moment. “You know, it’s been quite some time since someone mixed things up down here as much as you have.”

“I’d’ve kept my head down if I’d had a choice. The Kings forced me here.”

Merle nodded. “True, true…but still, your sudden turnaround, all of your mysterious successes, it’s almost like… magic.” He turned his eyes toward Dantes with the last word, his gaze piercing.

Dantes smiled. “You know, back up on the streets of Rendhold, I was able to steal gold coins from a man’s purse without him noticing, leaving the purse intact as I did so. No one else could figure it out, not my mother, not my friends, not my… not my gang. They accused me of using some kind of enchanted item, or magic, but do you want to know what it was?”

Merle stayed silent, waiting.

“Skill, and a bit of luck. Plain and simple. If I had magic Merle, the first thing I’d do is break all of you out of your collars and have you fly me the fuck out of here.”

Merle shifted his lower jaw as if literally chewing on what Dantes had said.

“We’ll talk later, Dantes, when we're divvying up profits.”

Dantes nodded. It was clear Merle didn’t fully believe him, which made sense because Dantes was lying. He had considered speaking with Merle or Tel about his abilities, but kept deciding against it. He was fairly certain that his abilities had a trace of magic to them, but even with his limited knowledge he knew that it wasn’t equivalent to what a mage wielded. As a child, he, like so many other dirt poor whoresons, had hoped that some latent magical ability would manifest within him so that he could escape the streets and join the academy, and he’d done his research on what that would mean. That research came in handy for some later robberies and scams, but he had never manifested any magical power, and he knew enough to tell that what was happening now was distinct. He was certain he wouldn’t be able to remove their collars. Since that was the case, keeping his abilities to himself was the best call, as it was what gave him the largest advantage. Besides, others learning about his powers would immediately put him at risk with the dwarves, not to mention anyone else that would happily make any missing food, or coin his responsibility.

He lifted a hand in goodbye to Merle. “Keep that first cask. A gesture of goodwill.”

Merle nodded, raising his own hand as they parted.

Dantes walked through the Collared’s chambers, still enjoying the looks and whispers. When Tel stopped him.

“Dantes, up for a few more rounds of dice? Maybe a drink since I hear you’ve got quite the supply.”

Dantes grabbed the two sample flasks from his jacket, and tossed them to him.

Tel caught one, and the other fell flatly at his feet, but he scooped it up quickly.

“You can have what’s left in those, but I’m heading back for some rest. I’m planning on visiting Syn tomorrow though, if you want to tag along.”

Tel lifted his eyebrows. “I’m not really uh, interested in that kind of arrangement. I didn’t realize you’d changed your mind on the brothel either.”

“I didn’t. I’m just visiting her. I owe her a favor, want to see what she might want from me to pay it off.”

“Oh, in that case I’ll go with you. Won big a bit ago at dice, have a decent amount to trade. Want to do it before the next drop into the Maw, while I can get better trade for it.”

Dantes nodded, still impressed with Tel’s adaptability in the Pit. Taking advantage of the lean times was common practice of course, but few Collared ever got savvy enough to take advantage of it. “Alright, see you then. You can pay me back for the booze at the market once you’re done trading.”

“I thought it was a gi-”

Dantes raised an eyebrow at him.

He sighed. “Yeah, I’ll pay you back then.”

Dantes held up a hand and walked back into the outskirts toward his cave. He scouted ahead and behind himself with a number of rats, the gold of his ratmark barely regressing as other rats in his garden ate and enjoyed safety from the more dangerous creatures in the Pit. He made it back to his cave, had a meal, and set some rats to wake him if anything with two legs got too close. Once that was done, Jacopo leapt out of his jacket, laying on top of a small second bed of rags that Dantes had made for him. Dantes himself followed suit, laying on his own makeshift bed and closing his eyes. He imagined the soreness of his muscles slowly draining from him as he took long deep breaths. It wasn’t long before he fell asleep.