Downtown Druid

Book 2 Chapter 59: So, What're Your Terms?

The room was well lit by torches burning with heatless white flame placed to maximize the spread of their light around the room. The carpet was rich and patterned with a moving mural that showed wars, trade, and myths all throughout it. The walls were covered in a black and gold diamond shaped pattern. The gold parts of it actually seemed to flow, like water, and he found himself watching that flow as he walked into the room.

At the far end was a semicircular table made of pure white elfwood. There were no seams on it, which indicated to him that it was carved from a single piece, or even sung into existence by one of those few elves still alive that had made the initial trip from Elfland. On the table was a brass object that seemed to be radiating heat, and from that extended five tubes which wove their way to be in front of each of the fingers. There were also the usual piles of dust and bottles of booze he always expected to be around when his class of people was meeting.

He didn’t recognize any of them, they were too far up the criminal ladder for that, but he knew enough from reputation to identify each of them at the table. Niklas, the littlest finger, sat on the far left. He was a tall skinny human with tan skin and pale gray eyes. His clothes were the rich brown of tobacco, and paired nicely with the bright gold jewelry which covered him. His hair was brown with patches of gray pulled back into a ponytail, and he had a large and surprisingly genuine smile as he regarded Dantes. He and his Gatemen controlled all the overland smuggling into the city, so he intuited that he may have a soft spot for Dantes’s disruption of Mondego’s sea smuggling operation.

On the other end of the table, wearing an elegant blue dress with glass beading so well made it shined like stars, was Diamond. She was a dwarven woman who appeared young, but Dantes knew she’d been a player in the city for too long for even dwarven aging to make that her true appearance. She had bright blue eyes and thick dark hair that fell perfectly across her back in ringlets. She was, to Dantes’s limited knowledge, the only mage fully endorsed by the academy that didn’t also work for it directly. She could cast any spells without fearing repercussions from other mages. She could still be arrested by the guard, but that was far less dangerous of a prospect for someone of her skills. She, unlike the other Fingers, had very little organization below her, but in spite of that she controlled most of the illegal magic that was spread throughout the city. Love spells, demon bindings, unlicensed necromancy, she could make all of it happen for a price.

Next to her sat Drake, a mutt like Dantes, who was mostly made up of dwarven and orcish ancestry. His chest was massively broad, as were his shoulders, and his hands looked strong enough to bend metal. His beard was wild, but clean, and his tusks were capped in steel. His orange eyes immediately locked onto Dantes’s wooden arm, but he said nothing, just sized him up. Drake worked primarily for the guilds. He and his men were strikebreakers, or Guild protectors depending on who paid him the most. He was also frequently called upon to flex his muscles when merchants and even nobles didn’t pay up for the services a guild rendered. His men were former adventurers, mercs, and even a handful of guardsmen that had pissed off one too many superiors.

Next to Niklas was Fritz. He was as short and stubbly as Niklas was long and lanky. A gnome, wearing fine green silks with details embroidered in gold, he seemed barely interested in Dantes at all as he entered. He was instead focused on taking a long inhale from the tube in front of him, and blowing out a cloud of purple and golden smoke that seemed to sparkle as it hung in the air. His eyes were half lidded and purple, and Dantes was certain that he was high beyond belief, but also that there was something beneath that. Something Dantes couldn’t pick up on. He ran the majority of the gambling in the city. Gambling was legal, for the most part, but drake fights, death matches, and games with high enough stakes weren’t. On top of all that he was a top executive in the Consortium. He had a hand in all of those pots, as well as the ability to make dirty money disappear and reappear cleaner than ever before.

Finally, in the center of all of them, was Argenta. The only member of the fingers that was also on the Rendhold council. Her story was legendary at this point. She’d started as a midtown mutt, became a master thief and assassin, rising through the criminal underworld of Rendhold before making enough money to legitimize her status as the bastard of a noble. Whether she actually was or not, was unknown, but the city was forced to recognize her either way. After that she turned her fortune from illegal to legal, slowly building legitimate enterprises in uptown until it was impossible to truly untangle her from the fabric of uptown society. Once she was rich enough she, through blackmail, bribery, and cunning, took the place of the councilor that represents the nobility of the city. She was around forty, human with maybe just a touch of elf somewhere along her family history. Her hair was black with a streak of white extending through it. Her eyes were a brown so dark that they were almost black, and she wore a simple black blouse and pants with silver accents and jewelry. She stared Dantes in the eye from the start, not sizing him up, nor questioning his being there. She saw things as they were. The other four reminded him of predators or cunning prey, but she was nothing of the sort. She was beyond baser instinct, she saw things with the clarity of an evolved mind.

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Dantes walked toward the table, scanning for any threats. There were guards hidden in shadow all around him. His fingers had been tingling in Diamond’s direction since he’d entered, and something about Argenta raised his alarm bells, but he sensed that these were their usual security precautions. If they were truly planning on killing him, they wouldn’t have actually met with him at all. The second he’d entered, he would’ve been riddled with bullets and spells that would’ve killed him on the spot.

Argenta didn’t return his smile. “Welcome, Dantes. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“The invitation left little room for refusal.”

“I don’t know. You could’ve scurried off and hid somewhere as a rat if you’d really wanted to,” said Niklas, revealing a bit of his hand.

Dantes smiled as if he wasn’t surprised by Niklas’s knowledge. “Oh, I always have options, but meeting all of you seemed like the most appealing one.”

“Oh, he’s pretty smooth for someone who looks so much like a thug,” said Diamond, smiling and leaning toward him in such a way that her cleavage became more visible.

“Calling someone as small as him a thug is an insult to the title,” said Drake shaking his head. “He’d need at least another foot of height, and fifty pounds of muscle.”

“I assume you're wondering why we called you here?” asked Argenta, ignoring her companions' barbs.

“I’m fucking with Mondego, who rumor has it you’ve been considering for a place among you. You want to size me up, and also make sure that whatever I do, I don’t disrupt whatever deals you had with him.”

Argenta nodded. “Good. Some of us worried you might be a fool, but it looks as if you’re far from it. Can you intuit why we’d want to meet with you rather than just take care of you for our erstwhile ally?”

Dantes thought about that for a moment. “There are a few reasons I can think of. You don’t want to deal with someone who can’t manage a problem like me on his own. You think that there’s a better option than him to honor the deals you’ve already made. Or, my favorite, you don’t like him. You dealt with him because he was a top earner and could make you even more, but with those earnings shrinking he’s no longer someone you want to tolerate.”

Argenta nodded. “Yes, all three of those things are true to varying degrees. There’s other factors of course, ones that you couldn’t guess with the information you have, and which we don’t benefit from revealing to you at this time. There’s still a good chance you could die after all. Mondego’s not the brightest, but that woman of his is clever, and he’s certainly a capable murderer.”

Dantes nodded. “So, what’re your terms?”

“Four months. We will give you four months to remove Mondego and take control of his assets. We will not intervene, we will not assist him, and we will consider our deals with him on hold until that time limit has passed or you have perished. If you succeed, then at the end of those months you will need to honor whatever deals we’ve made with him, along with twenty-percent interest on each of them. You do this, and we will recognize you as the one in charge of midtown and consider you for the position which Mondego is coveting.”

Dantes raised an eyebrow. Four months wasn’t a long time. For killing Mondego? It was more than enough. For taking control of all of his assets and gaining control of midtown? That was a tight turnaround. Once it was done he was fairly certain he could take on all the deals he made with little issue. He'd already watched all of his enterprises for months, stolen ledgers, and listened in all meeting. At this point he likely knew Mondego's operations better than he did. He could do it.

“You assume my goal is to take over. What if it’s just to kill him?”

The dazed Fritz spoke up. “You’ve left the skeleton of his organization largely intact. You hit assets and eroded confidence in him and his own faith in himself, but the network he works within is only broken in ways that someone else can pick up.” he took another long inhale before releasing it into the air. “You definitely want him dead, but you also have greater ambitions than that. It’s written clear as day in how the money has moved.”

Dantes squinted a bit at him. He had no indication that the Fingers worked with Godfrey, but he would be a fool not to recognize that their offices were next to one another in this building. He saw no hints of gold on any of the Fingers, but he was able to hide his own with long sleeves, so it wasn’t as if that was a difficult proposition. Only Diamond showed enough skin to dissuade that notion and she definitely had the magical ability to hide that anyway.

Argenta nodded at Fritz’s words. “Exactly. We’re not blind. The picture is clear to us. Do you accept our proposal?”

Dantes kept his smile up. There was no point in refusing. The deal could only benefit him with time and space to do what he was planning to do anyway. It just tightened up the timeline. In the end, even if he fell short, or decided he didn’t want to pay back whatever deals they had made with Mondego, he could always just renege and find another option. The fingers were powerful, but so were a number of people who’d believed they’d had him under their thumb, and his own power was only growing. In four months, who knew how powerful he’d be?

“I accept. It’s a reasonable proposition after all.”

Argenta stood up from her seat and walked around the table. She raised her right hand on which sat a large silver ring emblazoned with the letter A. Dantes approached her and kneeled. He didn't feel any of that strange energy he had when Godfrey had tried to make a deal with him, not were any other alarm bells going off in his mind. He kissed the ring.

“I look forward to seeing more of what you can do.”