Xangô POV: Day 18

Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper

Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper

There’d been a few factors at play when I agreed to attend the meeting, and only one had been the fear of being beaten into another coma.

Most pressing was the desire- the need- for something to do with my time. I wouldn’t continue living the way I had been, and had yet to figure out a suitably painless way of dying. Until that happened, a break in the monotony was much needed. Besides, I actually had no idea why Hengrard even wanted to speak with us anyway. If it was to offer work…No, it couldn’t be. Could it?

Yeah, it could. Of course it could. But was it? I didn’t want to accept the possibility, to even weigh the odds, because of one simple fact. As I was, I’d almost reached some semblance of peace. There was a reassurance in rock bottom. Hope would destroy that reassurance, shatter my certainty and leave me falling again. I could feel it doing that, already, and was desperate to cling on to my facsimile of relief.

The second factor was that I quite liked the idea of either blinding, crippling or killing the man who’d stolen our fortune before I died.

We were led into some old building that had clearly been important once, but had long since been left to decay and die. It was at least three stories, a rare example of all-stone architecture, and had windows boarded and barred on every side. A fortress, then, or as close as the king of some regional town’s criminal underclass could get. If anything it was impressive that the place was as big as it was. I started moving through the figures in my head, then gave up. Maths was never my forte, instead I whispered the question to Solitaire.

His estimates came back frustratingly fast. Three, maybe four thousand people in Jhigral. Call that three or four hundred starving and unemployed, and a quarter of them turned to consistent, violent crime. So we were looking at maybe a hundred men under Hengrard’s control. Seventy five on the lower end.

Well, seventy to ninety five, actually. I felt a rare smile widen itself across my face. Beam had put at least four in the hospital, or would have if this world had anything worth comparing to one. I’d hit one in the chest hard enough that I felt bones break, and Solitaire had bitten another’s throat out and squeezed one more’s groin so hard there’d been blood washing his fingers right up until he went down. All things considered, I was quite happy to have made a dent in the bastard’s operation, however small.

Hengrard himself was located in the centre of the building, probably for reasons of safety. We were led through more than a couple of winding corridors on our way to him, and a single glance at Solitaire told me he was memorising every turn we made on our way in. There were more than a few.

We soon came to the man’s office, finding him sitting behind some big wooden desk, parchment and quills scattered across it like something out of…Well, a fantasy novel. He didn’t look pleased to see us. Good, the feeling was mutual.

“Gentlemen.” He called out, not even bothering to force a smile to contradict his voice. “I will be frank, I was hoping we would never meet again.”

“Didn’t know you were that sensible.” Beam cut in, with his usual tact. Solitaire just eyed a metal letter-opener on the desk, staring at it as if it were some big, juicy steak. I could practically see him counting guards, considering the likelihood of managing to put it through the leader’s neck in time.

I decided to speak before he could get any of us riddled with shanks or cudgelled to death.

“We weren’t expecting to see you, either.” I answered. “After you tried to kill us and all.”

He scoffed, as if I’d just said snow was blue.

“Oh, you call that trying to kill you? No, we left you alive and uncrippled on purpose. Your debt to Corvan is well known and I’d rather not draw the ire of a magus.”

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So he might be too hesitant to fight back properly if another battle started? Interesting. Not that one could start, as we were now. If all three of us jumped our past selves from that alley, I doubted we’d even bring down a single one before getting left unconscious in a gutter.

Starvation was a bastard of a thing.

“After you beat us into unconsciousness and robbed us, then.” I snapped, glaring openly at him, well past the point of caring enough about diplomacy not to. He smiled thinly.

“You resisted my offer,” he shrugged. “And I have mouths to feed as well, you know. A lot more. Regardless, I’m not interested in hurting you again. If I was you’d both have come here with arrows through your knees first. I would like to make you an offer.”

I frowned, eying my friends with a silent question. Beam looked just as confused as me, but Solitaire had a thoughtful expression. I decided to see where this might go.

“What sort of offer?” I asked, watching his face carefully as it shifted and moved.

“The sort that gets you food, warm beds to sleep in and, if you’re very very useful, perhaps enough coin to pay off most, maybe all, of your debt to old Corvan.” He said it all so simply that I almost didn’t register the magnitude of his offer.

Of course, to him it was all small stuff. Matters of no import. Food? Not a problem, warmth? Who cares? Only the coin will have registered.

But to us, he was bargaining with life itself. I had to stifle my knee jerk reaction to start begging and scraping.

“You’re in trouble.” Solitaire observed, eying the man like he were some hyena. “Someone’s moving in on your territory, right? Someone you’re not certain you can out fight. Maybe a Witchfinder, but I’d bet it’s just another gang boss, someone from Wolney perhaps? You’re scrambling to get as many fighting men as you can before it all kicks off in the hopes that you’ll still be in charge when the dust settles.”

I must say, it was bloody satisfying to see someone else glare at Solitaire when he did that. Diplomacy was my area, but you should never underestimate a paranoid’s ability to unravel ulterior motives. Even, on occasion, ones that actually existed.

By the expression on Hengrard’s face, Solitaire had hit the nail on the head. The gang leader didn’t look pleased, in fact he looked like he just had shit smeared across his face. I spoke to consolidate his victory before the enemy could adjust.

“And you remember how well we performed against your boys.” I cut in. “Even half-starved, already beaten and chilled to the bone from miles of walking through snow. Even while we were exhausted from dragging the weight of two war horses behind us. Which makes us dangerous to fuck with, and useful now, right?”

Hengrard glared, clearly taking his time before speaking next. I was quick, and I made a point of being surrounded by quick people, but I knew better than to take this as a mark of his unintelligence. If anything, taking the caution to think every sentence through was a point in his favour, and against mine.

“...You have the broad strokes right.” He conceded, at last with all the eagerness of a dehydrated man giving up water. “Eliza Wodal, is the name of the woman who runs the gang threatening to move in. See, a while ago they had a few men posted in an ambush point in the woods, guarding the road from Jhigral to some fancy tree with medicinal sap. Those men went missing, and now she’s using it as an excuse to declare war, blaming it on us. I don’t know if she killed them herself just for the excuse, honestly, or if she’s just a moron, but either way the result is the same. She has a hundred men to my seventy, which means the fight isn’t gonna be in our favour. Unless you join in.”

I almost shat my entire fucking self, and to this day I have no idea how all of us kept a straight face through that. Solitaire, I suppose, just had a naturally evil face that always looked like it was sneering, Beam might not have even been paying attention, and I was just about tearing every muscle in my head trying to keep the surprise from showing. It almost kept me from thinking through everything else Hengrard said.

One hundred on seventy, that was bad. Terrible actually- long fucking odds that I really didn’t want to be on the wrong side of. On the other hand, long odds meant high pay. I’d seen the desperation in this one, felt it palpably. He didn’t want to lose whatever he’d built here, and he didn’t want to lose his life, which meant that he could be wrangled for a damn sight more than an affordable fee.

Was it worth it? I didn’t know. We were hardly in fighting condition now, I could feel my stomach aching still, even feel my own body’s weight just pressing down on my legs from above. At the last check, even Beam was sitting at Strength 7 now, new Skillpoint expenditure included. If Hengrard thought he’d be getting the wrecking crew equal to three times its number from before, he had another thing coming.

No, but he wouldn’t be expecting that, surely. I could see the sunken cheeks and weakness in my friends even now, he must’ve been just as aware. Which meant he had other help available, or some other reason to think we could make up the difference.

So which was it? I thought it through long and hard, like Hengrard himself. And then gave the only answer I could.

“You have a deal.” I forced myself to say, burying the bitterness that came with working for the bastard who’d mugged me. “Now what in the hell makes you think we have a chance?”