Dantes pondered the way the sun shined through the tree branches while he waited for a response to his letter. His mind felt sluggish, likely due to how much he’d packed into his day. It may have been smarter to rest for a while before moving forward on so many different plans at once, but it wasn’t as if time was on his side.
The pigeon he’d sent with a message returned and hopped along the ground toward him with a note tied gently to its leg. Dantes scratched the pigeon’s head a bit, and then untied the note from it. The letter was scented like Drake-Tear flower perfume, an old favorite of hers. Dantes unfolded the letter and read it.
Dantes,
There is much I want to tell you. I want to explain to you the reasons why I did what I did, why I went along with everything without trying to help you, or at least sending you a letter while you were in the Pit. I know you though. I know you don’t want excuses, or half-truths. I’ll tell you the full truth. I didn’t love you anymore. You were high on dust all the time, you took risks that put us all in danger, and I could tell you were on a path of self destruction that I couldn’t follow you on. In my mind, you being sent to the Pit was the only way to save you and, more importantly, myself. Now I know there were other options. Choices I couldn’t see in my youth that are clear to me now. Another thing that is clear to me, is that I still love you. Mondego offered the salve of gold and power for the open wound created by your loss, but that is not love. Love is what I had with you. Tell me what I have to do to prove that to you, what you need to hear so that when I next see you we can meet one another and embrace as we used to.
Yours, Mercedes
Dantes finished the letter and sat with it for a full minute before he let out a kind of barking laugh that made all of the nearby wildlife jump. The laugh continued for almost a full minute before slowly dying down. Dantes wiped the beginnings of a tear from the corner of his eyes and tossed the letter to the side. She certainly remembered how to play the game. He remembered how well she played him when he was young and enjoyed playing with her.
They’d met when they were both picking pockets in the Guild District. She’d taken the coinpurse off of an adventurer and threw it at him when the adventurer was about to catch her. The adventurer was more interested in the coin and so had chased him instead of her. What had started as an easygoing and productive day that he’d hoped would end with a pocketful of weed had ended up being a chase through the city that he’d only survived because he knew the alleys, streets, and buildings better than an adventurer from another continent. Dantes had spent the next month keeping an eye out for the girl that had so thoroughly screwed him over. When he ran into her in a small party the first thing she’d said to him was that she wanted the gold she’d stolen returned. Dantes had liked that, and from then on they’d been courting off and on for nearly a decade. He enjoyed her games, and she liked that he played them so well.
Clearly, she was hoping he’d take the bait to play games with her some more. The only question he had in his mind was whether she was playing the game for herself or for Mondego. It could be for herself. She was a clever woman, she could sense the tides turning his way and wanted to secure a place for herself when Mondego fell. She could also be doing all of this for Mondego and setting him up for a betrayal.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Dantes smiled as he picked up a pen and paper. He would play her game, he’d take the bait, but just like Jacopo he’d run away with the cheese long before the trap could clamp down on him.
Mercedes,
Drake-Tear perfume, that brings back memories. Your reasons don’t matter to me. What you and my former friends did to me is unforgivable. You say that you are not going to come at me with excuses, then immediately provide one. You hurt me. You betrayed me along with those I considered friends less than a year after my mother’s death. I want to tell you to go straight to the hells where you belong. To tell you that soon I will be there to send you to them myself. I can’t though. I don’t hate you fully as I should, even though you deserve it. That said, I can’t bring myself to love you. How could I love someone I don’t trust? I will be coming for your husband, do your best to stay out of my way.
Yours, Dantes
Dantes carefully crossed out a few words as he wrote, to make it appear as if he had agonized over what he was writing. The ‘yours’ he made particularly obvious with only a single line through it. Once he was done he wrapped it around a new pigeon's leg, deciding to give the last one a break, and sent it off toward Mercedes. He’d left that little bait of his own for her. By making his ‘trust’ the key part of the letter, he’d indicated she would need to prove that she could be trusted which meant she’d need to leak something of Mondego’s or do something herself to harm him. Even if it was all a bluff, she’d need to give him something that he’d recognize as valuable. She knew he was too smart to be fooled by anything too obvious.
Dantes stood and rubbed his eyes. His energy level was always high since he started his garden, but he was approaching the limits of what he could accomplish in a single day. His time was all spent working toward revenge or trying to protect those that could be harmed by his pursuit of it. He awoke every morning thinking of spilling blood, and fell asleep imagining the sensation of it dripping down the hilt of a dagger and onto his hand. It was starting to become… exhausting. He had sustained himself with a focus on only survival when he was in the Pit. Once he had a way out of it, he started to use revenge to fuel himself, but he wanted more. He’d found himself thinking more and more of what would come after. He’d certainly still have enemies he’d need to go after, such as Godfrey, but it wouldn’t be with the same hate that had been put into him by being betrayed. He was ready to move past revenge, maybe back to those ambitions he’d had when he was just a mutt on the street picking pockets.
He’d wanted power, respect, comfort, and even with vengeance on the forefront of his mind he hadn’t fully lost sight of that. When Mondego and Mercedes were dead there would be a power vacuum in midtown. He’d already started to make a few moves to put himself where he wanted to be in that vacuum, but every time he started to put real thought into his future his mind turned to twisting daggers and exploding warehouses. He needed to fight to keep himself from being totally a creature of revenge. He couldn’t forget the allure of power, money, and a good lay just because some people had harmed him in the past.
Dantes stretched, hearing a few of his joints crack as he did so. He moved to the small bedroll he kept and laid down. Once everything was over he’d put a roof over his head, and Vera’s and all those who had helped him. He’d eat a meal that would make the gods jealous, smoke enough to put new clouds in the sky, drink enough to full a lake, and fuck enough that he’d need his bed replaced by the next morning.
He closed his eyes and dreamt of Mercedes that night… then of Tilly, Tiera, Alessa, Caressa, and a half dozen others. Unfortunately, by morning he was dreaming of his fists raining down on Gaspard, his dagger stabbing into Danglars’s back, and pulling the trigger of his pistol as Mondego opened the door to his manor with a look of surprise.