Jacopo refused to listen to Dantes. He lunged at the nearest of the disobedient rats and tore into him with tooth and claw. The others attempted to tear him off of him, but Jacopo didn’t relent until he swallowed his victim’s throat along with a draught of blood. He then kicked off of that one and leapt onto the second, turning himself into a man as he did so, the weight of him causing that rat’s spine to snap as he grew in size. He grabbed at the last two, killing one of them by slamming it onto the ground by the tail, and biting the head off of the last one, crunching into its skull as its paws scratched at his chin.

It was a bit odd, watching what happened through Jacopo’s eyes as he shifted and killed them so brutally, but Dantes had no criticisms. He certainly couldn’t deny Jacapo’s efficiency. Dantes focused on the rats through Jacopo, looking at them down to the unseeable level. He could see some sicknesses in them, but nothing he wasn't used to seeing among rats when he looked at them that closely. They were just rats. Rats that didn’t listen to him in spite of his mark being full.

“We need to figure out what just happened,” sent Dantes.

“I will search,” responded Jacopo, shifting back into is usual form, blood dripping from the fur on his chin as he started to search the nearby area, communing with other rats nearby and testing to make sure that they would obey him through Dantes's mark.

Dantes frowned as he finished his meal. He pushed his plate to the side, and stood up. He went to his audience chamber and sat on his living throne. He closed his eyes and sunk himself into the pool of interconnected life that he’d been cultivating. From the pool, he followed all of the rivers that flowed into it and out of it. Most flowed clear, but at the very edges of it, where his perception was at its weakest, he could feel something. It was like seeing a speck of dust in the air, or smelling the taint of something rotten streets away. He tried to pull his full focus on it, but either slipped away, or it wasn’t great enough for him to detect. Was it the sickness that was spreading? Or something else? Was that the source of the rats' disobedience? He hadn't sensed anything like that taint in them. Still the coincidence of it couldn’t be ignored.

He stood from his chair, pulling himself mentally from that pool of life and back into the more tangible world he preferred to live in. He slipped into his series of apartments and checked briefly on Felix and Wane. They were still unconscious, but they looked much better. Their wounds were clean and dressed, and their breathing was getting stronger by the day. He left them and went down to the club. Normally, he’d make some rounds, but he could sense that his gardens were all in good shape and his various operations were running smoothly, largely because of the work he and Jayk had done to insulate them from any damage caused by the sealing of the Academy.

He stood in the small balcony of his exclusive seat at the club and considered taking some of his restlessness and putting it toward a healthy bit of morning whoring, but before he could act on that thought one of his bouncers approached him, a young quarter orc who seemed to have some trouble with eye contact.

“Boss, there’s a kobold here. Says he wants to talk to you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tak. He’s got a smelly bag with him. I told him you were busy, but he’s insistent and I heard from one of Jayk’s guys that you were talking to kobolds so I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t one of the ones you needed.”

Dantes listened to him ramble. He could tell he was new, not just to the club, but to being intimidating in general. Still, Dantes had nothing better to do, and he liked to take a random audience here and there. It was important to hear things directly from the streets sometimes rather than through an intermediary.

“Let him in. Bring him up to me in the audience chamber, and have another one of the boys come with you.”

“Yes, boss,” said the young man as he moved quickly down the stairs.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Dantes moved back to his audience chamber, sitting on his throne resting his chin against his fist.

The bouncer opened the door, and a young kobold strode confidently into the chamber. His scales were black with flecks of green and orange scattered throughout them. His eyes were a particularly bright yellow and seemed unable to stay still as they bounced around the room. He wore a simple gray outfit, with a dagger on his waist and held a large sack that was balanced over his shoulder.

“You’re Dantes,” said the kobold.

“I am. You’re Tak?”

“I am.”

“Why do you want to see me, Tak?”

“I want control of all of the operations that were fully under the Gatemen.”

Dantes’s eyes twinkled and he leaned forward a bit. “What makes you think I’m the one who could grant that?”

He held up a four fingered hand and started counting down. “You’re the newest finger. The last finger who was in control of it is dead. Your men have been sniffing around and absorbing what you can, purging what’s not necessary. You’re the one who's in charge of it.”

“You put that together quickly. What makes you qualified to do anything for me? I’ve never heard of you, and you only have a single syllable in your name which means you’re unproven to your own people.”

“I’ve watched the Gatemen for a long time. They move their goods using a network of legitimate merchants that they have to hide those goods among their legitimate trade items. I know their entire network.”

“I know this.”

“Did you also know that they’ve been doing a shit job of it?”

Dantes smiled. He did know that. “What do you mean?”

“They were lazy about it. They relied more on bribes to the guard to let things through than they did subtlety to make sure they didn’t need to pay bribes. They didn’t properly manage their merchant network, and a lot of them would skim off the top and never be found out because the Gatemen rarely weighed and checked their goods. This also caused problems when the people they were smuggling for got less goods. They made good money, but they got complacent and were foolish about how they spent it.”

“Assuming that’s all true.” Dantes knew it was. “That still doesn’t tell me why you’re qualified to be a part of my new operations there. Much less be in charge of them.”

“I’m clanless, but I have a gang of thirty kobolds that work for me. We get things for people on the outskirts. Cheaper, more quickly, and better than the gatemen did with their little market.”

“Really? I’ve never heard of you.”

“Exactly. We don’t need a catchy name to brag on and give the guard something to go on. I can take the gatemen’s jobs, with what you’ve taken over, and I can turn it into a perfect operation. I’ve got ways to put hidden compartments on carts, or fake haunches on steers, horses, and mules. I know which merchants were skimming and can force them back into line, or kill them. I can do with fifteen men what the Gatemen needed fifty for.”

Dantes recognized the look in Tak’s eyes as he spoke. It was the same look Mez had when he was talking about a new brew. The look any kobold got when they were talking about whatever obsession their minds had latched onto. Tak was a kobold whose mind was obsessed with smuggling. The thought of that made Dantes smile.

“Well, my man is already looking into people to bring into the fold. I can’t give you lead of anything, because I don’t know you and haven’t heard his input.”

“He’s been working with the Half-Dead halfing crew, the Needle Teeth clan, the Beardless, and a small human gang just called Spit.”

“And is there a reason that you’d be better to pull in than their leaders?”

Tak nodded and opened the sack that was on his shoulder to dump out four heads. A beardless dwarf, a kobold, a halfing, and human. The heads rolled across the grass. They were still fresh, and he could feel the moss drink a bit of the blood they were dripping as they landed. It wasn’t enough to start a blood garden, at least not without him willing it so.

“I’m better qualified, because their leaders are dead.”

The bouncers each drew knives at Tak’s reveal, but Dantes held up his hand to keep them from taking action. He walked over and lifted the human head by the hair, tossing it behind himself after his inspection. The dogs moved to fight over it.

“I like you Tak. I think you’ll be a big help to us. Go have a drink downstairs on me, and I’ll tell Jayk to talk to you.”

Tak tilted his head low. “Thank you boss.”

Dantes smiled at him as he was walked out by the bouncers. Dantes stopped one of them, and had him go bring him Jayk.

Jayk arrived in the chamber moments later. He looked over the heads that were scattered across the ground and sighed.

"That was a lot of unnecessary meetings."

Dantes smiled. "I don't know that they were unnecessary, I think they still led to us finding the right candidate. The kobold at the bar. Work with him to take over the Gatemen, let him think he has control, but watch him like a hawk. He’s ambitious and young, and there’s no way his ambition stops here. If he doesn’t make any moves, then leave him be.”

Jayk listened intently. "Can I still have final say."

"Absolutely."

He nodded, and left the room.