Chapter 50 - The Teeth

Unfortunately, spreading our influence to Kindledown was something of an upstream swim. A half-orc cartel ran operations in that particular stretch of the lower city, affectionately known as The Teeth. In fact, Kridick had originally risen from their pits. For having so much mixed blood, the mongrels are a surprisingly insular bunch. They didn’t like control of Barrowdown falling to a human and a devilborn. Brokier had been one of their overtures to taking back control. There had been other probes, but here is where I intended to put a stop to it. I wouldn’t allow them to continue thinking I or Annalisa was someone they could muscle in on.

We met Jeedle on the eastern side of Kindledown, near one of their proper dugout pits. Annalisa’s budding popularity didn’t warrant a middle city arena like Storm-Laden's champion-level fights, but she’d at least graduated from dusty bar rooms. Plenty of coin already changed hands in the crowds watching the preliminaries. But it was nothing compared to the silver backing Anna’s fight.

Jeedle gave me the look up and down in my ridiculous getup. “Lad, I know I counseled you to cultivate a look, but this weren’t what I’d fixed in mind.”

“Jeedle, just… not tonight,” I said through gritted teeth, trying to keep my face from turning red under the wide brim of Daimen’s hat. “Let’s just get to work.”

“Oh, aye, fine,” said Jeedle. He clamped a pipe between his teeth, looked at the nearby structures, and then thought better of lighting it. He waved Annalisa through. “Off with ye.”

“Bye, Darcent!” she said, waving as she jogged off to get prepped for her fight. Jeedle reached up to loop his thick arm around my shoulder and herded me in the other direction.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What do we know about The Teeth?” I asked. Across the pit, several clusters of half-orcs with wrestling bands that marked them as members of the gang stalked the edges of the crowd taking odds and occasionally collecting.

“They’re a mean bunch, but they hurt for mages,” said Jeedle.

“On account of mages don’t like being smacked around?”

“On account o’ mages don’t like being smacked around. Not by orcs, at least.” Jeedle lowered his voice. “Them girls at the Mop is another story,” he confided. Then he cleared his throat. “Got to recruit from outside the Teeth for fixers, and that makes ‘em leery on who to trust.” Jeedle pointed to one of them, and I recognized the half-orcwoman with the veldt-cut I’d seen at Annalisa’s first match. A wary-looking mender stood beside her. I recognized him, too. She’d smacked him around when they’d lost. “That’s their boss.”

“Leader of the Teeth?” I asked. “Let me guess, they call her Fang?”

“No, boy. They call her Foe Skull Crusher Bite. An’ pay heed cause it ain’t a euphemism. Kindledown was run by an old wolf called Bartook, til she cracked open his head and ate his brains like a pudding. The only thing what kept her out of Barrowdown was Kridick having no love for her pits or her patronage.”

And now Kridick was gone, while Foe looked east with hungry eyes. If I didn’t want to end up with my frontal lobe on her menu, I had to be subtle. My plan had been to take out the fixer on their side of the pit, but I also didn’t want to get on the bad side of the Menders Guild when I so often needed their services. Their fixer being a mender made things... complicated.

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll make the rounds. Is the fix in on our end?”

“No. Bloody sniffer wanted a king’s ransom. If this was in my pit, things would differ. But it’s Kindledown, and he don’t want to feel the Teeth bite down.”

Couldn’t say that I blamed him. I clapped Jeedle on the shoulder and extricated myself from his company. Well, our fixer was out and the sniffer couldn’t be bought, that meant direct intervention on my part was necessary to see Annalisa through this. But my options were limited to the fight itself. I couldn’t expose the cheating like I had in the middle city arena.

I just hoped whoever they had punching for the orcs was at least somewhat in the same ballpark as Annalisa in terms of skill so that she could hold out until I figured how to win this thing. I found a quiet corner for myself in an alley, kneeling in the cleanest spot I could find, and did a quick three-card draw on him.