051– Gangs
***
We waited outside the castle at the close of the day. The exhausted workers spilled out of the gate after a long shift at the smelter, covered in soot and toxic dust. The smoke from the coal burning furnaces left them with read and bleary eyes. The two castle guards watched over this daily migration.
“I’ve seen a lot of things in my time,” the guard said to us. “But this is a first. It’s one thing for a lord get angry and throw a person in jail. Nothing strange there. But this is the first time I’ve heard of the duke being so angry he kicked someone out of jail.”
“Knogule has a real talent.” Zambulon said. “Why was the duke angry with him?”
“For buying the old casino instead of paying off his debts. The duke’s a temperamental man. No one likes to gamble with him, because he’s a sore loser and a prideful winner. And he’s unforgiving. It’s a wonder he let Knogule out of prison.”
The nobles of the frontier always chose magical swordsmen as their lords. Instead of a child of the last lord inheriting, one of the strongest in-laws who had married into the dynasty received the title. The current duke had been a foreign mercenary who married the daughter of the former ruler. He wasn’t even a native of Sandgrave. But things like that didn’t matter to the people of the frontier. They wanted strong rulers. It was for that reason that the Realist faction supported the king’s daughter, Princess Kantha, and wanted her to take the throne.
As a result of these meritocratic leanings, the rulers of the frontier often had unrefined manners and rough personalities. The duke was born the son of a common soldier and spent his youth as a commander in a marching army. He was a hard drinking outdoorsman who preferred hunting monsters in the mountains to holding a court. The people loved him all the more for these faults, although his temper made him difficult to please.
When he returned from his most recent hunt, the duke had a row with Knogule and kicked him out of the castle, as if he were a visiting guest instead of a prisoner.
“Here he comes now,” The guard said.
For some reason, Knogule walked barefoot with his boots hanging from his neck by the laces. He carried all his things in a bulging pillowcase. His expulsion from the prison tower had been fast and unexpected.
“Hello there, friends. It’s nice to see you out of doors. Pardon me a moment as I prepare myself.” Knogule greeted us and then sat down to put on his boots. “Has all gone well since we spoke?”
“Not exactly. Your casino is still standing, but it has a few less windows,” Zambulon said.
“No worries. Those blackened panes needed to be replaced anyway. I can’t wait to see my new purchase! Finally, I can settle down as an honest business man and do my gambling out in the open.”
We returned to the Casino. The business opened at sunset, so the dealers set up their tables for another sleepy evening. Knogule gave a cursory inspection and met with all the workers.
“Let’s show you the wine cellar, Master Knogule. There are a few things you should see,” Zambulon said. “Yurk, Hwilla, would you observe the casino for a moment?”
The wine cellar was the most sound insulated place in the building. People couldn’t overhear us speaking down there. Yurk and Hwilla made sure no one else got close, and I set up several alarms nearby to detect the approach of living things. It was about as secure a place for a candid conversation we could find in Drainditch.
Knogule looked disapprovingly over the wine and liquor stored in the cellar. “They didn’t bother to keep this place in stock before selling, did they? And look at all these colonial vintages. The Sprogronian cheapskates.”
“Master Knogule, we’ve come a long way and waited several days now for you to get out of jail. Please tell us that you have some need of us beyond playing cards in a casino,” Zambulon said.
“Of course. I wouldn’t request help from the cult for such a piddling endeavor. This is just one stage in a grander scheme. However, I did ask for help from a single swordsman. Four of you might find this too small a task for your abilities.”
“These others are still disciples. They’ve come along with me as a learning experience.” Zambulon didn’t mention that he, too, was a disciple until this mission was over.
“I’m grateful for any help, even from young swordsmen. You see, my own skills do not extend to violence, which is a vital component to taking over a criminal organization.”
“Taking over?”
“Yes. I want to seize control of all the small time gangs and roll them up into one organization with me at the head. Having you swordsmen as allies will intimidate the thugs at first. Other, less brutal, means will gain their loyalty after they submit.”
“But why take over a gang? How is that any better than a casino?”
“My mission is to discover as much as possible about the Duke’s Mint and plant agents within. When the Void Phantoms come to conquer this area for the rich silver mines, the attack will be a thousand times simpler with agents already behind the gates. By then I will have given all the necessary information to Master Luniquial.
“The Duke’s Mint is well guarded, especially the inner keep where they mint the silver coins. Trying to get in directly would expose me. So my plan is to take control of the criminal element in Drainditch and use them to collect information. My main tools will be predatory loans and gambling. Once I ensnare workers on the inside with debts they can’t possibly pay off, those victims will share secrets and perform acts they would otherwise never dream of. In this way, I can obtain blueprints, schedules, production reports, passwords, and material for blackmail. And when the day of invasion arrives, key players will betray their lord for our approaching forces.”
“You think people will do that for money?” I asked.
“I know it! I’ve seen it countless times. Debts have a powerful influence over people’s minds. If you rob a person, they will fight against you and seek revenge. If you enslave a person, they will bitterly resist your commands until the day they die. But when you bind them with a debt, and make them agree to it at the outset, they will submit to anything that follows thereafter. No weapons or chains are needed.”
“Why is that? The gambling isn’t fair in the first place. And the loans are given to desperate people who would starve otherwise. That’s basically force.”
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“Reality doesn’t matter. It’s all a trick of the mind. Once they agree, those words have a mysterious power, and the lingering anxiety slowly erodes their will to resist. If you were to offer an honorable knight sixty talents of gold to betray their lord, they would refuse. But if you loan them a single talent of silver and let it hang over their head for a year or two, they will perform the same act of treachery to pay off their debt. Why is this? I cannot say. Perhaps a flaw in the human character.”
“Is that why you joined the Phantoms?”
“Never! My loyalty is freely given. When he was a young prince in Olzban, Lord Hrolzek declared a debt jubilee. He canceled all the contracts of indenture. He hanged all the usurers and money lenders in the town squares. What a day that was! When I looked at all those swaying corpses, I knew our lord was a great man. Of course, that was the beginning of the end for his rule, because other people didn’t appreciate his act of charity as much as I did. When he went into exile, I vowed in my heart to serve him to the end.”
Zambulon nodded. “We respect your zeal, Master Knogule, but right now you’re the one in debt to the whole town. How can we fix this?”
“A few years ago, the local criminals scuffled with each over turf. They kept getting in street fights to the point it annoyed the local rulers, who would arrest and punish them. During that time, the casino did well. But then the gangs came to a truce in order to keep their crimes below the threshold where the authorities took notice. They agreed that each little gang would operate in only one sphere so as not to cut into each other’s profits. The Spry Knucklers took extortion, the Leech Boys took loan sharking, the Huggermuggers did robbery and pick pocketing, and the Spinning Ivories ran illegal gambling. With a gang doing gambling, and the others agreeing not to rough them up on behalf of the casino, the Black Tarnish started losing money.
“So I need you to force the gangs into a new agreement. They’ll answer to me. And the illegal gambling operations will scale back so the main business can stay afloat.”
“That’s something we can do,” Zambulon said with a grin. “We can finish this up in no time.”
***
Knogule took over as the new owner of the Black Tarnish Casino. His peculiar set of skills extended to managing a business, and he soon established lines of credit with the local business people. He had glaziers come in to fix the shattered windows and replace them with clear panes of glass. His skill with taking and managing debts might have allowed him to obtain the casino without angering anyone, but the final transaction had to be done in real metal, which was harder to scrounge up. The family of owners planned to leave town immediately, and they wouldn’t accept any promises or written pieces of paper.
“Have you four been staying in the casino?” Knogule asked me as he watched the workers put in the glass.
“Yes. We stayed in the back rooms to defend it. We worried the thugs might burn the place down.”
“Ha. It’s good to be cautious, but crooks would never destroy a business they could wring money out of,” he laughed. “Where did you sleep on first arriving in town?”
“On our first night, we stayed in the Queen’s Treasury.”
“Gah! I hope you didn’t indulge in that temple of sin,” the man spat. It was the first time he displayed a hint of anger.
“We watched a performance, but no more. You don’t like the brothel, I take it.”
“If any place in this accursed city should burn to the ground, it’s that one. Perhaps after I’ve taken control of the gangs, I will see it done. The owner, Mistress Luizellia, deserves to be inside as the place burns around her.” Usually, Knogule had shifty eyes that never rested on anything for more than a second, but now he gazed steadily in the distance, envisioning the fiery scene. He had a sincere hatred for the proprietress of the brothel.
“I only met her briefly, but she seemed a pleasant person.”
“To her patrons, yes. But not to the girls unfortunate to work there. Brothels take in unlucky or unwanted girls and pressure them into signing contracts. They use their parents’ debt to force them to sign unfair contracts. Then they whisk them away to far off places, so the girls have no one else to rely on or complain to. The brothels use up young girls’ beauty and then toss them out on the street once it fades away.”
“Isn’t that the same way the smelter hires employees? No one would agree to work with all that lead otherwise.”
“Yes. But it’s a hundred times worse for whores. Hard labor breaks the body, but sexual servitude destroys the spirit. I’ve seen it myself. My own dear sister was stolen away to a pit like that. They forced her to disgrace herself for others’ entertainment. It was only when the debt contracts were canceled that she returned home, a brokenhearted woman too ashamed to speak of what had happened to her in the city. And the lasting stigma of her time there meant no one would marry her.” Knogule clenched his fists in anger. “Please, young man. Avoid places like that in the future. The girls may act happy on stage, but you don’t see what abuses they endure behind the curtains.”
“I will take your words to heart,” I said.
I had no reason to doubt Knogule’s observations. Most people in this era blithely overlooked such injustices, but his seeing it happen to a family member made it impossible for him to ignore. The workers in the smelter might have had it worse from the perspective of their bodily health, but not by much. Just living in the town next to the mint and breathing the polluted air everyday could cause problems the prostitutes at the Queen’s Treasury. And the whores potentially exposed themselves to deadly diseases and, no doubt, endured lasting psychological trauma.
Knogule was hardly a moral exemplar, considering his cheating and manipulative nature, but his life experiences had shaped him and given him an idiosyncratic sense of right and wrong. Everyone in the Void Phantoms had a peculiar set of personal ethics, which didn’t make sense to me or even to each other. Weirdos and outcasts gravitated to the cult. They joined for their own reasons, but all of them were seriously at odds with the outer world. Misfits and madmen. Knogule wanted to obliterate the accepted system of money lending and put an end to the very practices he used to further the goals of the cult. A fiery resentment motivated him, and he might not have been able to rationalize the logic of his methods.
Knogule taking over as crime lord of this city would at least be a good thing for the girls at the Queen’s Treasury, because he was sure to release them from their contracts and see to it that those who chose to stay would receive better treatment. A reenactment of our Lord Hrolzek’s gracious edict so many years before.
***
We four disciples stood outside a coal black building near the front gates of Drainditch, a former warehouse for storing lumber imported from the midlands.
“This is the place,” Zambulon said grimly. “Let’s put out their lights.”
Spending a week at a lifeless casino had filled the senior disciple with anxious energy. The long ride to the frontier hadn’t been so bad, because we spent the day riding and the nights setting up our camps. But stuck inside the Black Tarnish Casino, we had nothing to do but wait and listen to the old miners tell us exaggerated tales about the silver veins they found and the monsters they saw creeping over the mountains. Zambulon was ready for an adventure of his own.
A warm light came from the fourth story of the building, as did muffled laughter and voices. The Spry Knucklers spent an evening at home. This was the headquarters of their operation. The lower levels were dark and unoccupied.
“Hwilla, open the door from the inside. Yurk, launch her up to that window.”
Hwilla was the lightest of us and first pick for any task requiring stealth. She backed up and took a running dash straight at Yurk, who waited with his hands cupped. Together, they created enough force to launch her high into the air. Yurk, the human catapult, flung his arms upward and fell on his back after sending Hwilla soaring to the upper story window. She grabbed onto the window sill. Using an iron spike, she pried open the wooden shutters and slipped inside.
People didn’t design common warehouses to keep out magical swordsmen. Drainditch’s outer defense could repel most magi, but there were certainly some with techniques to stick to walls like lizards. Passive defenses could never keep us out for long. The only way to truly protect a place was by employing other swordsmen to counter the invaders. The Spry Knucklers were far too insignificant for that.
Hwilla opened the front door a minute later and invited us in.