Most people were not as careful about putting things in writing as they ought to be, and blackmail had always been one of Arne’s little everyday pleasures. There was such a broad range of push and pull to it, and ultimately, watching people keep themselves in check with their own shame was stimulating. It ran itself and should the victims suddenly find their courage and decide to own their faults, letting them go and watching the havoc it wreaked was always a fun end to a good business relationship.
He of course never put anything in writing he would be ashamed of, or which could damage him. Well, which could damage him more. The letters to The Vampire sprang to mind but his mind was serene about it. They could no more damage him than the awful slutty dresses that kept making their appearance at irregular intervals getting somehow progressively worse. He fervently hoped they were really tailored for grownup gnomish women, not for human children. He had tried one on in a terrible moment of defiance, however, and to his horror he’d found that it fit his small, slim girl frame as though it were tailored for him.
Maybe that was The Vampire’s response to his letters of report or perhaps she would have sent these horrors to him regardless, hoping to unsettle him. He wasn’t sure what she believed she got out of it. It could hardly be a secret to a being that could hear others’ heartbeats from across the room, that he feared her, not after he had seen her eat. But he knew from his own business that fear dulled over time and reminders needed to be sent. But then why only him? The other two never received anything from her. Was she somehow sure of their loyalty? No, that was madness. Dia wouldn’t recognise loyalty if it humped her Imp, and Toog…
Toog was Toog.
Uldran obviously had no night and day cycle, and the comings and goings of the city were measured in three daily shift changes. From what he had gathered from his teacher at the temple, the dwarves had a strong sense of self tied to which shift they worked, just like Arabeskians would define themselves as day or night workers. Arne just couldn’t tell the difference between the shifts. The magically lit darkness of the impossible cavern gave his body nothing to work with.
“What can you tell me about your loyalty to our employer in Arabesk?” Arne asked Toog as the two of them made their way through the light crowds after a shift change.
“My what?” Toog asked, surprised. “Well, you know the working conditions?”
“You just phrased that as a question. I don’t know if you meant it to be. Yes, I know the conditions we work under.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“That’s not loyalty. So, are you loyal?”
“I’m a people person but you can be pretty confusing, you know?” Toog said conversationally.
“No, I mean, what does loyalty mean to you?” Arne tried to clarify.
“Who is it you think I should be loyal to?” Toog frowned, clearly nonplussed.
“Never mind.” This had actually gone a lot more lucid than he’d expected but it was time to change the subject. “We have a list of things we need, and you can just be the muscle. I'm hoping to nudge him nicely with mutual gain but if it veers off the mark you should run. If the bracelet detects what we’re doing, we could be …exploded before we know it.”
Toog gave a little laugh. “Dia would be stuck with it.”
Arne looked up at Toog’s handsomely masculine magically changed face and for a second, they shared a knowing grin. They might be revived by a very pissed off Vampire, possibly to face an eternity of casual suffering, but Dia would have to get them there. That was at least satisfying.
“So, did your temple dwarf tell you about the statue?” Toog asked.
“No, he keeps saying I can’t see any of them. I shouldn’t even have been in that hall of stonified conquerors the first time around. But he tells me about the maze voids. I don’t know. I don’t think we are looking for any of the statues in the hall at the temple. They are actual people, not works of art.”
“That’s vengefully tasteful. I wonder how they do that. If people pose politely for their death right at the end? If they have a stonifying team roaming the battlefield?”
“I’ll be sure to ask temple beard dwarf and get back to you. I think I have an idea where the real statue is, however. There is an inner sanctum and it’s huge if I understand the layout of the building correctly. Right under the central dome, spire, thingy. I know which doors lead in there, so I just have to work on it. For some reason, nobody seems to think a small girl is a threat.”
“That’s excellent, broth-nugget,” Toog confirmed.
“Broth…”
“You know, when all this began, I never dreamed we’d be visiting exotic locations, being close to strange creatures like dwarves and vampires and get to plan how to untether a race of imprisoned otherworldly powers from this plane. And…”
“I swear, if this leads to a what a great adventure-sentence, I will shank you with the sharp wooden lube spoon up Sir Nanners’ bunghole and throw your corpse in a closet somewhere if the explosion doesn’t get both me and your sorry corpse before I get as far.”
“…And yet, I feel like we could be planning things on a more Dia-esque level if we really wanted to get this done. Worst case scenario, we all die, but it will take our employer a long time to have our corpses found and shipped out if it’s even possible,” Toog said calmly.
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Arne stopped in his tracks, quickly running through his actions the last many days. Had he become complacent? Buried under the weight of hopelessness like a defiant toddler who was denied treats? And was Toog really the active party? Was Toog the trendsetter of their actions? Panic tinged his thoughts for a moment, and then he dismissed the notion and came to his senses. He began walking again. And was it really reasonable to be stuck at a point where dying was tinged with sniggering defiance?
“Alright,” he said. “What is it you feel we should be doing?”
“We didn’t anticipate the bracelets. Let’s figure out how to get rid of them so we can fix our problems. Then we fix our problems,” Toog said in a low tone of voice.
“I’m working on it. That’s what tonight’s meeting is about.”
“Ah, perfect. Then we should not tell Dia anything until we are ready to let her Dia.”
“Wholehearted agreement. But we should also work fast so she doesn’t go get herself killed and we have to pick her up. I am honestly not sure how long we have.”
“We can drug her.”
“She’ll figure that out when she comes back, right?”
“Yep.”
“Then she’ll probably kill us in a blind rage and explode, so unless we don’t plan on reviving her, maybe we can activate her in some way instead?” Arne said, thinking aloud, puzzled at this completely coherent side of Toog. A fellow planner all of a sudden? Something didn’t add up. “Why are you proactively having this conversation with me?” he asked, deciding to just get the madness out in the open.
“What do you mean?” Toog asked, puzzled.
“A lucid, unambiguous, on point conversation on the merits of different approaches is hardly normal for us.”
“I know, you are usually so busy bossing people around and making lists. I think it’s really healthy for you, this,” Toog gestured to Arne’s small body with a breezy wave. “Being less easy to see.”
Arne felt his fists clench and took a deep breath to calm himself but before he could respond, Toog continued, “And besides, there are no gnomes here.”
…And right back to form, he thought. “And that means what?”
“Oh, I'm allergic.”
Arne sighed inwardly but knew he would have to ask. “Allergic to …gnomes?”
“Yes. They cloud my thinking something fierce. Make my ears pop.”
“Gnomes make your ears pop?” Arne repeated, outwardly calm. “You know there are literally hundreds of different kinds of families and clans and so on of smalltribers? They are also supposed to be related to dwarves. So why are you fine here?”
“I’m not allergic to dwarves,” Toog just said, looking at him like he was a poor listener.
“That’s like saying you’re allergic to dressing!” Arne stated, more forcefully than he hoped. It wouldn’t do to let himself be distracted before a meeting but somehow Toog managed to shatter any calm he had.
“What, like putting clothes on? Are there people who are aller–“
“No! I meant like dressing for salads and meats and porridges and riceflowers. It’s an overarching term covering a vast multitude of different things. You can’t be allergic to all of them!”
“I’m not allergic to dressing? I never said I was.”
Arne took a deep, forceful breath and stared down the street in front of him as they walked. “You are right,” he said between clenched teeth. “You didn’t say that.”
The miner’s house was close, and he had to gather his thoughts so he wouldn’t bungle it. A personal approach was quick and to the point. They couldn’t afford to wait.
On his list of things to achieve with this encounter were 1) safely get rid of the bracelets, and 2) get information on the statue in the inner sanctum.
They were wildly off course, or rather, worse, had never really been on course in the time they had spent here. It was time to see if the bracelets were sensitive to extortion in practise.
If it was, they, and the man from the mine who smuggled gems out with his friends, would be exploding shortly.
o-0-o
“So, what you are saying is that you want a replica of your bracelet, have the real bracelet removed, are fine with going outside the tracking radius and into the Maze to do that and will tell the authorities of my dealings if I don’t make that happen. Somehow.”
Arne nodded calmly. “That’s a nice sum up, yes. Clearly, I’m hoping we can do this exchange like two gentlemen, one of whom is a nine-year-old girl.” He shrugged his small shoulders and looked at the red-bearded dwarf across the table.
“You are a very strange child,” the man said with equal calm.
“I hear that surprisingly seldom,” Arne responded, not lying. “So …”
“It’s doable, absolutely. Making a copy is not difficult. It’s a catapulting offence, but not hard. But just to be clear, so is getting caught with a false bracelet. If you get lost or have to cross a checkpoint or enter a restricted space or leave the city for that matter, you will be read, and then you will get caught.”
“I appreciate the warning. But I’m not used to having a metal parent dictate my comings and goings,” he held up the bracelet and jiggled it a bit.
“You are aware I can just say you and your… whatever that guy is,” he nodded at Toog who had stood calm and silent behind Arne the whole time, “tried to force me to do all this because you are evil foreigners trying to force their way into our free economy?”
Arne nodded. “Absolutely. You can. Maybe I can’t talk my way out of it. Maybe your justice system will even convict foreign children.” He held up a small finger. “But are you sure, completely sure, they won’t as much as consider that my side of the story might be at least partially true? Not a single person would have any cause to doubt your story?”
They stared at each other in silence for a while, none of them giving the other any expression or reaction to work with.
“I am willing to bet that we would go down together at the very least,” Arne said quietly. “But probably unlike you, I have no fear of your executions, I have no pride or dignity to ruin. No family or friends to mourn my passing and forever be marked and have to live with the associated shame of my fate. Frankly, it looked rather quick. I’ve seen so much worse ways to leave this life, believe me.”
“Alright. I can give you the fake bracelets, and I can tell you how to remove the real ones. But it will require some funds for the materials.”
“Doable,” Arne confirmed. “I’ll happily tag along. Help you carry things. For educational purposes, of course. Time frame?”
“Roughly a day from when you bring me the money,” the smuggler replied.
“You're taking this really well,” Arne said. “Commendably well.”
The dwarf shrugged. “I'll find some way to prosper from it. I always do.”
“Sounds vaguely like a threat. I really prefer working with scared people.” He sighed. Then his thoughts went to the scene that had likely played itself out in the Flayed Monkey bar when all his people were murdered. “Which is of course common as muck in this business,” he added. “I imagine you need to move your goods away, too? The further away the better?”
The man nodded slowly, keeping eye contact but saying nothing.
“I can give you a list of people who might be interested in gemstone acquisition in Arabesk and Sonderport. And some knowledge on how to get an audience and speak to their individual particular greed. I will throw that in, to prove my sincere wish to be civil and cordial in this matter.”
He wasn’t quite sure why he did that. Proving civil sincerity wasn’t exactly in his playbook. If he had proved anything earlier on, it was the opposite. He could only assume it was the bracelet working its dark magic.
He really needed to get rid of that thing!