Chapter 34 - Brokier

The classic view of storms is that of chaotic destruction. The inversion theory is thus: a storm enforces balance. It represents a clash of unequal, opposed forces moving inexorably, violently even, toward a mean.

-Lancaster’s Manual of Wills

Smiling to myself, I followed the old man behind the shelves and down a dusty set of steps. While we descended, I wrapped the cravat around my throat and tied it off. It is somewhat foolish to don a magic item of unknown use, it’s true. But this one felt important to me. Like it might be useful presently, or that it was worth more than its appearance suggested. Maybe it had some charisma-boosting spell worked into its mosaic. I pulled my hood forward.

The proprietor, to my surprise, took me out a back door and across a muddy culvert where I hiked up my robes to keep them clean. We moved to a smaller, unmarked house no different from the dozen surrounding it. Except for the fact that it looked ready to collapse into the culvert. I never would have noted it as remarkable without the introduction and guide. Shaldar knocked with his cane; three times, then twice, then three again. Another half-elf bruiser pulled the door partway open, blocked by a small chain.

“Mr. Brokier has a visitor.”

Ah, Brokier. That made a lot more sense than broker. Maybe fume-addled johns weren’t the most reliable informants, despite the best intentions of the keen ears and coaxing tongues of my minions at the Mop.

The door slammed shut and the chain rattled. The bruiser opened the door again and looked me up and down, upper lip curled. I don’t mean he was angry, I mean his upper lip had been warped in some accident of birth or violence. I marked his face as he examined me. I opened my robe to show I had no weapons but concealed the badge beneath my hand. He jerked his head toward the inside of the house.

Actually, house was too generous a term. As I stepped over a splintered and warped floorboard and looked at the rotted and moldy walls, hovel seemed more appropriate. At least if the neighbors caught fire, this place was too soaked and damp to hold a flame. Flies buzzed around old, soiled clothes and half-eaten meals. They buzzed around something even less pleasant in the opposite corner.

A big shadow moved across the door to the back, and I paused, suddenly anxious.

“Hurry it up,” said the elf. “Ain’t got all night.

I rearranged my robes and pressed in, wary of the street tough at my back. But I stepped into the dim back room. The shadow turned around, and I stopped in my tracks at the sight of the yellow eyes, whiskers, and twitching nose. Brokier was wild-marked—by the rat. One of the few signs that thrived in cities and squalor. I had to watch myself. They could smell lies. The banker, inverted, hung in front of his forehead. Greedy, overextension, blind to danger. It was a trait I’d found to be common in the downs.

He sniffed. “A seeker. Oh-ah-ho. Fancy. Don’t think I don’t know those threads! What business have you with Brokier?”

“My business is coin. And with Kridick on the out, I need a new source of increasing it.”

Brokier sneered and tapped his still-human feet. They were bare, and filthy. I’m pretty sure I could smell them from where I stood. Then the rat-kin sniggered and all I could smell was his breath.

“Brokier offering odds to a seeker? You’d think him daft, oh-ho. But a clever kin doesn’t get this far without the knowing of many things—and one of those is that the cards and those who hold them tell naught but pretty lies about the future, ha-ho. But are they lies to the seeker? Or to the one seeking?”

“One of life’s great mysteries,” I said. I produced the cards. “Shall I do a reading for you?”

Brokier shook his head, waving his clawed hands away and turning from the deck. “Ill omens, all. Nonsense. Poppycock. Balderdash. Yet, even false fancies can alter a path. Turn left, instead of right, and WHAM!” He slapped a fist into one palm. “Flattened by a tanning vat.” he waved his fingers. “That was the eulogy I gave at my uncle’s funeral. Put them away. Away! And we’ll talk odds, oh-ah-ho. Brokier offers the best odds in Dragonmaw.”

I didn’t put them away, in fact. With my knife in Annalisa’s hands, the deck was my only defense against both the wild-marked and his mongrel elf guards. I kept them in my palm as I followed Brokier to his desk. Where Kridick’s had been the spotless(if oft-gouged) surface of a man obsessed with cleanliness, this rat was a mess. How he kept track of anything, least of all his odds, was beyond me.

“Tell me, seeker. What is your poison? If you’ll excuse the expression, ah-ha. Just a little rat humor. The ponies?” he raised an eyebrow and sniggered again. “The cards? Hmm? Ah-ha. The boat races?”

“The fights,” I said. “I have a particular interest in the Barrow pits.”

“Ah, bloodsport!” he waggled a finger at me. “So young to be drawn to the pits, ha-oh. Yes, if you were going to Kridick, I should have known.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I nodded. “He had a monopoly on odds through the Barrowdowns.”

“A stranglehold!” Brokier seethed. He slammed his hands down on his desk, scattering several of the parchment scraps. “Grabbing, choking, squeezing every clip! Putting his nose—or lack thereof, ha-oh, in Brokier’s business! And that axe of his…”

I undid the binding on my deck. “Yes, well, there was a certain brutish elegance to his solution. Personally,” I met the rat-kin’s eyes. “I prefer a lighter touch.”

The wild-marked man tilted his head. Then his already wide eyes bulged, threatening to leave his head all together as he realized what I was implying.

The enviable thing about rats is their hyper-developed sense of self-preservation. Before I could fan out my deck and weave a shadow clone infused with the three of dragons, Brokier’s paws were buried in the stack of papers on his desk, fishing for something. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to find out. I switched tactics and reinforced myself with the stone skin from the two of towers. Brokier didn’t even raise his weapon to aim. Just blasted me with a hail of flaming motes and a wave of heat that toss me away from the desk amidst flaming scraps of paper. I hit the ground hard and moaned, ears ringing and seeing spots from the bright flash—but at least, for the moment, not dead.

Unaimed as it was, the edge of the blast had caught both me and the hapless half-elf. Brokier’s mongrel enforcer sprawled near me, war-wedge smoldering as he groaned. Dragons above. Brokier raised the metal rod in his hands, and I recognized it as a charged battle wand. Usually a last resort, apparently the wild-marked thought why wait and decided to open with it. They were expensive, coming new with three charges of an arcane spell. But you could get them secondhand with only one or two left for a decent discount, which seemed more Brokier’s style.

He must have been absolutely crazy to use fire magic this close to Kindledown, but the house was half-rotted from the inside so this was probably the only standing structure on the block that didn’t legally qualify as a tinderbox. I didn’t want to bet on there only being one charge in the thing. The stone skin of the two of towers wouldn’t protect me from a a head-on blast. I needed something different. I needed my newest bonded card.

The card answered my call, zipping from the deck and into my hand. I held toward the wild-marked just as the runes on the battle wand started to glow again. The blast came just as I channeled as much will as I had into the card. Fiery motes spread out on a wave of fire, surging right towards me, until they met the two of storms. My will forked out the face of the card, attacking the chaotic spell as it surged from the battle wand, matching it with an opposite, overpowering force that traced it back to the source. The effect of the battle wand snuffed out with a puff of rising smoke, and the air grew still. Brokier and I looked at each other as the runes on the wand grew brighter and brighter.

Then the wand exploded in his hand.

I hadn’t intended that. Luckily, this wasn’t the directional blast he’d intended for me. Most of the energy went into light and sound, but Brokier was blown back off his feet. I, of course, was already on the floor now keenly aware how a pressed sausage feels against the skillet as the heat and force smashed against me. I rolled over and pushed myself to a kneel. Briefly, I groped for the hilt of my dagger before realizing I didn’t have it.

Before I could even spare a thought for how Brokier had fared, the wild-marked bookie bowled over me, scrabbling at the floorboards. I expected to feel the knife between my ribs, but it seemed his desire to be elsewhere had overpowered the non-rat part of him. All his focus went on his instinct to remove himself from the situation, and he wasn’t the only one. Dozens of rats scurried out of the shadows and made for gaps in the floorboards and shuttered up windows. Brokier stepped painfully on my chest in his egress, and his worm-like tail smacked me across the face as he raced for the door.

Coming back to my senses, I rolled over and pushed myself up, once again forcing my will back into the cards. I hurled the two of knaves at him, coated in the oil-slick sheen of the keen edge. It missed, embedding in the door as the rat-kin ducked. I cursed. He hadn’t even seen it coming. Damn that uncanny sense!

Brokier dived for the door. Before he could even wrench it open, it slammed off its hinges and flattened the rat. Annalisa stood atop it, precipice arcana blazing above her brow. She looked down at the rat, then back up at me. She pulled her hand back, and a blue-white seam split the air in front of her. She swung her fist at it, just as I felt a frigid blast from behind. I turned in time to see her fist smash emerge from a portal and smash into the face of Dragonmaw’s unluckiest guard. He crumpled with a twitch.

Annalisa pulled her hand out and the tunnel snapped out of existence with a flurry of snowflakes.

“Anna!” I shouted over the ringing in my ears. “You just tunneled ten whole paces without the three of dragons! That’s amazing!”

She beamed. “I know! And it looks like your just talking is going great!” she replied.

Brokier scrabbled and grunted, trying to shift the door. It wouldn’t work. Annalisa weighed much more than she appeared, and she had some innate control over it, thanks to her connection with the plane of obsidian. The bookie’s eyes darted back and forth, looking for any escape to be had.

I limped my way over to him.

“Devilgirl!” he said. “Don’t kill Brokier! Oh-ho, I won’t offer no more odds. No, no! Brokier is gone for good!”

I shared a look with Annalisa.

“Brokier, I ain’t Kridick. I want you to keep giving odds. In fact, I’m about to give you the hottest tip-off of your life.” I smiled. “And all I want in return is to be friends. I protect my friends. Understand?” I leaned over. “I certainly don’t kill my friends. So I’d say remaining one is in your best interest. Wouldn’t you?”

Brokier hesitated, as if waiting for the blade to drop anyway. When he realized one wasn’t coming, a grin split his face. The inverted banker arcana over his forehead faded back, and a new arcana replaced it. I hadn’t overtly changed it, like I’d somehow done to Annalisa. But I’d certainly changed his situation, and the wild-marked was remarkably quick to adapt. That self-preservation, again. The new card resolved into the villager arcana. Hard work, dutiful labor. I grinned down at the half-rat.

“Oh-ho-ho, Brokier is the best of friends to have. You will see!”

“Good,” I said, nodding to Annalisa. She backed off the door and heaved it off of the rat. The rotted thing fell to splinters as soon as it hit the floor. I’m amazed it even held Annalisa’s weight. I stayed kneeling down, couching my chin in my hands as I called the two of knaves back to the deck. It dislodged itself, and I spun the now-complete deck above my hand, beginning to shuffle and cut the cards for a reading.

“Now. Let’s talk about a few fights we have coming up and how you should frame odds for them.”