Many Words

Rakel had immediately discarded the idea of working for one of the larger gangs. For one, the stunt she had planned wouldn’t work as well on them, and for another, if there was some sort of metaphorical—or, for that matter, literal—mage-eater roaming the city, she wanted to be as far as possible from organizations known to employ users of magic.

That had left the three local gangs, at least to the best of her knowledge. She got the sense that they were busy jockeying for position among themselves, while the large gangs ignored them, or occasionally incited the weaker two against the strongest to keep them irrelevant. A mage of Rakel’s caliber would throw off the balance, and in her experience upsetting the status quo usually led somewhere interesting.

She was finding the choice difficult. If she went by name all three of them sounded ridiculous. The Red Skull Thieves and the Shadow Brotherhood had that quality that suggested unintelligent men were trying to sound menacing. It might have worked if they hadn’t overdone it to the extent that they did. The Miller Street gang apparently lacked even that modicum of creativity. They would probably claim it was traditional.

Slightly more helpful had been the information she’d gathered yesterday and the day before. She had spent some of the time coming up with a rough map of the territory each gang held and some of the rest grilling people for opinions. By and large, the people living under the Red Skulls and the Miller Street gang had loudly and nervously proclaimed what a good thing the criminals were for them, protecting them from the other criminals, who clearly had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, thank you, and providing such wonderful entertainments. After a few drinks, there had been furtive glances and half-whispered complaints from the people in the Red Skulls’ territory. From those living under the Miller Street gang, she hadn’t been able to get anything more than an ominous, “Do you know what they do to people?”

The Shadow Brotherhood had been more difficult to get a feel for. The people in its territory had spoken of it with a curious detachment, as if they were talking about the weather or the price of fish that year—it was as if the gang only existed when enforcers were knocking on the door and demanding the month’s protection fee. It was perplexing. Rakel had never gotten the sense that the city’s criminals were good at subtlety, and if this Shadow Brotherhood had somehow picked it up she wasn’t sure that they’d appreciate what she was about to do.

On the other hand, if they had picked it up they had an impressive potential for growth and a name that actually fit, to boot. That was more than she could say for the Red Skulls, who seemed to take a relatively old-fashioned approach to criminality—lay down the rules, and bash in heads if someone breaks them.

Rakel sighed. Unfortunately, when she left danger to herself out of the calculation, the result became clear. Her mission demanded a gang on the upswing, one which wasn’t a tempting target now but which might, with her presence and a bit of prodding, become one. The Shadow Brotherhood it was.

She was justifiably unhappy at planning to anger people she hoped were capable, but there was nothing for it, and at least now she could stop thinking and start doing. She collected Two and its axe from behind the inn and set off for her target.

Banks had been introduced to the world by the elves, but both the elves and the banks had been capricious, greedy, and usually outright malicious. After the defeat of the elves, the dwarves had tried the idea with more success and exported it to humanity.

It took off, and had left Vrimderheimdalskaagerholmegvorrighrimdalholm with a robust banking system, so effective that it had forced the gangs out of the business of moneylending. The gangs had quickly adapted, and now banks were so critical to their smooth operations that the criminals spent more money on guarding them than they could ever hope to make back in protection money.

The one in front of Rakel was one of about ten stone buildings within a mile of where she stood, sitting alone in the middle of a square open enough to make being in it an unwise proposition if the bank’s crossbowmen didn’t approve. She saw them patrolling the roof, and would have put money on there being more of them at the windows on the upper floors. All the entrances were heavily guarded, and the square, too, was crawling with armed men.

Rakel intended to make a withdraw, and would not be stopped by something so pedestrian as the fact that she didn’t have an account. She grinned at Two. “Ready?”

Rakel would have liked to take the next day off, too, and let her new collection of bruises turn slightly less interesting shades of yellow and purple, but in her estimation she couldn’t afford it. She was, after all, putting together a resume of sorts, and lack of determination was not a quality she wanted on it.

And so it was that the morning after the incident, Rakel woke to the sound of Two bouncing pebbles off her window. Before she could have any second thoughts, she climbed out of bed, and immediately felt the pain blossom from a dull ache to a piercing throb. She let out a hissing breath. After a bit she managed to compose herself, and resigned herself to a tenday or so of misery.

She briefly debated whether or not to see about finding the nearest public bath, and decided she’d rather not have to explain the bruises. The debate over whether or not to wear armor today raged a bit longer. On the one hand, the fact that she’d left it behind had probably saved her from a more savage beating yesterday; they might have just taken it off her, but she doubted they would have needed much of an excuse to break bones without any worry from whatever scraps of conscience they had left. On the other hand, she was certainly angling to be more subtle today, and as she was it wouldn’t take much more than a poke to the stomach to send her to the floor. She waffled for a moment more, and finally decided to wear it.

She buckled the leather plates on and wend down to the inn’s common area. She had a cup of tea and a lighter breakfast than usual, paid for another night, and set out for the day’s business.

The first item was Two. It pained her to have to take the into-the-wall toss out of its set of active instructions—that particular maneuver had cost her dozens of hours and a fortune in live pigs to get just so—but she comforted herself with the thought that she could always have Two bring it out on some special occasion. It took her half an hour or so to make the necessary changes, and when she finished, Two would loom, initimidate, and interpose itself as threats against Rakel escalated. It would take something very dire, or more probably a word from Rakel, to set him loose.

The second item was also Two, or at least related to it. As constructs went it was certainly imposing, but if it was to actually scare people it would need something more. After a bit of searching, she found a weaponsmith who had exactly what she wanted. It was relatively common among the city’s craftsmen to devote some time to making an example of their craft that was impressive but impractical; such an example tended to draw in the eye, and by extension the customer. This particular smith had a massive double-headed broadaxe hanging over the door. Rakel hefted it—it was nearly as tall as she was—and gave it an experimental swing. She had to drop it midway through; the balance was atrocious. She put a finger to the edge to test it, only to find that the axe didn’t have one.

The smith was baffled when she turned down his offer to sharpen it, but glad enough to take her money. For her part, she was glad to have a weapon for Two that neither looked like a toy in its hands, nor could accidentally kill someone stupid enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which wasn’t the same thing, she thought as Two took the weapon, as being unable to kill someone wilfully. She harbored no doubts about Two’s capacity to crack skulls if he got a decent windup.

The final item on Rakel’s list was a bit more complicated than the rest. Although the adventures of the day before had been fruitful in one way, they had utterly failed in another—she didn’t know anything about the gangs, their territories, or their relationships she hadn’t known before. With an eye toward changing that, she spent the rest of the day and all of the next, as well, in various bars, gambling dens, and racetracks, throwing money around and asking incautious questions.

By the end of the second day she had, by her reckoning, accomplished two things. First, she had a better idea of the current state of things between the gangs. It seemed to be as tenuous a web of alliances as she had ever seen, and given what she knew of Guild politics that was saying something. Second, she’d almost certainly attracted the notice of the gangs whose notice the casino incident hadn’t already grabbed.

Of course, she thought with a smile, just being noticed wasn’t enough. She settled into her usual chair in the inn’s common room. It was time to ruffle some feathers, and a plan was coming together to do just that.