Chapter 34: Beat It

“It’s a good deal!” Damien protested, his face puckered up in offence. “A single round trip of the caravan can earn a profit of thousands of gilt. I’m not sure how you were able to hide that water of yours, but if you use that on the shipment, then that cuts the risk of discovery to almost zero. No need to look over your shoulder, worried that the outriders are going to round you up at any minute. Just a leisurely trip to the surrounding towns, there and back again, before claiming your share of the spoils.

“Indeed?” I turned to Damien now, looking him in the eye as my brows raised at his claim. “Tell me then, what kind of goods are we talking about, to have that kind of profit margin? From what you told me earlier, this operation deals in legal goods, just with a bit of skimming off the top, courtesy of dodging the Kingdom’s men, looking to take their cut. What kind of legal good can command such a premium: dragon scales?”

I was openly mocking Damien by now, which was only fair, given how he’d made a mockery of his attempt to recruit me. The boy reddened, and opened his mouth to defend himself, only to be cut off by a laugh from behind.

“Legal goods?” The man at the wall scoffed, speaking up for the first time. “That’s quite the yarn you’ve spun, that’s for certain. Look around you, lad; you’re in a house stuffed to the brim with wooden crates, each of them nice and tall, just perfect to hide something near the bottom and a disguise on top. Do you really think we’d demean ourselves, to smuggle something legal?”

“We sell drugs,” Fat Man clarified, helpfully, as the man in the back had been full of vitriol, but rather lacking in detail. “Wrap them nice and proper, douse them to kill the scent, and then pile fruits and vegetables on top to hide them on route.”

“I see,” I murmured, never taking my eyes off of Damien, even as I listened to what his criminal associates had to say. “These circumstances, Damien would have known the truth of it all, before today?”

“He must have suspected, at least,” Little Boy confirmed, throwing Damien under the bus without hesitation. “He’s not the best, where numbers are concerned, but even he should know that the hundreds of gilt we gave him to play lookout weren’t from selling fruit.”

I heard Damien inhale, doubtless to try and dissemble his way out of his guilt, but it was far too late, and I’d already heard enough.

“I can forgive a failed attempt to negotiate on my behalf,” I scowled, cutting off whatever he was about to say. “But I cannot forgive your lies. Defend yourself, Damien, you’re all out of chances.”

To his credit, Damien didn’t hesitate or beg for forgiveness. He’d come without a sword, ostensibly unarmed as I was, but quickly reached into his pants for a hidden knife, stumbling out of his chair and backing away to try and create some distance between us.

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[Plum withdrawn.]

Unfortunately for Damien, he’d fallen afoul of one of the oldest perils of backpedalling: not watching his feet as he moved. His heel came down on the ripest of the twelve plums I’d pocketed from the warehouse, and that was dangerous, because a ripe plum is barely more than a mass of slippery liquid in a peel, and at the angle he was taking, the sudden loss of balance was enough to make him tumble.

[Knife withdrawn.]

I followed Damien up, far more sedately, and came upon him as he landed, a rusty shiv clattering to the floor next to his outstretched hand. I didn’t give him a chance to recover, taking my four and a half inch knife in a reverse grip, and doing what it did best: stabbing straight down on a prone opponent. I dropped in a far more controlled fashion, my knees landing on his chest as I went for my first stab. Damien caught the blow on his arm, gritting his teeth against the pain as my blade cut deep. But whilst he was prepared to endure that much, my knife’s serrated edge did far worse as I pulled it back, drawing a jagged gash the length of his arm before tearing itself free at his wrist.

Damien screamed, the burning agony of his wound sapping his attention, as bright red blood poured out from his ulnar artery.

Unused to an injury of that degree, Damien reverted to base instinct and did the worst possible thing he could in a fight: he froze up. My second stab, accordingly, found no resistance as it punched a hole clear through his throat, as I took my knife in a two-handed grip, all the better to rip and tear until it was done. People don’t tend to live long with their throat cut open, and Damien, bless him, was no exception to this rule.

[30 XP gained for cutting out the middleman.]

Pumpkin chose that moment to hop down from my head, where he’d been perched and largely forgotten since I first left the inn. He looked up at me, his big round eyes almost pleading, and thought it took a moment, I quickly realised what he wanted from me.

“You can eat this one,” I said with a laugh. “We’ll need to hide the death, naturally, but that’s a matter of dealing with bones, this time around, and I’m sure our associates here would be willing to help with a bit of a cover up.”

[Knife stored.]

I returned my knife to my inventory, though the plum was regrettably beyond recovery, and retook my seat facing the pair of crooks, this time all on my lonesome. It was always remarkable, just how fast knife fights were in real life: none of that extended hacking and slashing, as Hollywood preferred to show, just a few seconds was all it took to snuff out someone’s life. Case in point, the entire exchange with Damien had taken less than a minute, start to finish.

Little Boy had turned three shades paler in the interim, and I mentally marked him as someone new to violence, while Fat Man merely nodded at me, an approving glint in his eye.

“That was well done,” the man at the wall, too, was full of praise just then. “We’ll deal with the body, at the cost of one percent of your cut.”

“Acceptable,” I replied immediately, because although I could sort it out myself, that would require me to reveal Death and Taxes, and I’d rather keep that in the back pocket until it was truly needed.

“And how much is my cut, while we’re on the subject? I’m sure we can all agree that three percent is a farcical offer.”

The negotiations began anew, as Pumpkin ate the evidence in the background.