Chapter 63 - A Favor from a Rat

There were, of course, more errands to run. Armor was top of the list, as it would be foolish to enter the dungeon in little more than robes and a shirt. While few individuals walked the streets clad in armor (save for lamplighters and their guards), the city had a robust network of armorers and weapon smiths catering to delvers and other adventurers.

Relying more on my agility than my constitution, I opted for a light leather jerkin that wouldn’t interfere with my preferred method of not being there when an attack landed, with coverings for my thighs and forearms that left my pockets and hands free and clear. I also got a heavy caving coat with thick sleeves and a reinforced hood, which seemed modeled after a battlemage’s robes. The thing would be absolutely sweltering in a Dragonmaw summer, but things cooled off considerably underground.

Annalisa opted for a riveted leather girdle like Storm-laden wore in his fights—though the leather worker had to make alterations and left us with instructions to pick up the piece before he closed. Annalisa’s hands and forearms, and I’d come to learn, her feet and shins, as well, had become as hard as most protective material whenever she called on the plane of obsidian anyway.

Still, I convinced her to don a thick leather half-coat with a studded collar to protect her neck and face, as well as iron-spiked knuckles to turn her lightning-fast punches into lethal blows. The salesman tried to convince us the pair were a matched, enchanted set, but the four of dragons and some quick threats not only disproved that boast but got us a substantial discount. You don’t try to cheat the guy running Barrowdown if you want to do business there.

I had a hard time not tossing Annalisa the odd sideways glance as we walked through the streets. The short devilborn woman typically wore men’s trousers, a corset, and a rolled-sleeve blouse that made her look, if I’m being honest, a bit like an extra-angry, yet ultimately harmless, waiter. Now, though? Her leather and spikes exuded an aura of danger commensurate with her actual capabilities and backed up by the dull sheen on her stolen adventurer’s badge.

Before we picked up her girdle, we also stocked our kit bags with mundane medical supplies, tinder, dry fuel, cleaning powder, and non-perishables. Dragonmaw had access to something few other cities did: a cannery. That made taking foodstuffs for extended delves almost trivial compared to many of the other ruins, caverns, and hollows beneath the Bastard, which was a big part of why the city had such a robust adventurers community. It wasn’t just the undercity that attracted them. The northern Daybreakers, the Salt Road, and the offshore isles all teemed with dangerous fauna and valuable ores and herbs.

Of course, we also wanted to avoid that particular community if at all possible, because the overlap between adventurers and bounty-hunters is a damn near identical set. So, we didn’t head for one of the sanctioned and guarded gateways into the undercity. Instead, we went to see a rat about a hole.

Brokier greeted us with his usual sycophantic aplomb, wishing after our health, our wealth, and the enrichment of his own interests. The fight in the matchbox had already advanced him significantly on that last front. After providing us our cut from the fight, he’d acquired several new gold teeth for himself in the interim. Fully on display in his ghastly, wide grin, he welcomed us inside his hovel.

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“Come, come, oh-ho! What brings you to Brokier this day? My payment I am sending with that enchanting red she-devil, mm-hmm.”

“Hello, Brokier,” I said. “Yes, Mithra brought us the cut from the Kindledown fight with Sump and Foe Skull.”

“And glad I am, to see Foe gone, ha-ah.” Brokier hawked up a wad of yellowish phlegm and spat it on his own floor. I half-expected it to start sizzling on the boards, and eventually melt another access to the undercity. “Bad for health, bad for the kin, bad for Brokier, the Teeth were.”

Well, they had set him on a path immediately at odds with our budding enterprise in order to muscle in on the power vacuum left in Kridick’s retreat. But they’d lost out in the end. Now most of their gang was either in the dirt, the canals, or piles of orc excrement.

“Brokier, I have a bit of a personal favor to ask you,” I said.

The rat-kin sniffed the air experimentally. “Tin, lamp oil, hemp, flint, and dung. You are for the Undercity, then?”

“Good nose,” said Annalisa.

Brokier bowed his head to my partner. “The lady flatters Brokier, ah-ha. This favor, you ask? It is because we are friends, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “And friends reciprocate. I’ll owe you one.”

“Oh-oh, then Brokier will strive to accommodate the Barrow Knave. But I am little use in the undercity, I fear, oh-no.”

“No, but you once spoke of passages under the city that let you traverse the city at speed without being seen. Those paths connect with the undercity, yes?”

Brokier’s eyes twinkled. “Ah-oh, yes. The young masters are wanted by law. They seek to enter away from prying eyes.” he laced his fingers together. “This, Brokier can help you with. Yes, yes. Give Brokier two hours. Come to me, and I will guide you. Yes. Leave your bags.”

The villager arcana never waivered over Brokier’s head, so I wasn’t as paranoid as I felt I perhaps ought to be. Perhaps the rat knew that we were unlikely to continue enriching him if his actions led us to perish in the undercity. Annalisa looked to me for confirmation, though, and I nodded. We shrugged out of our packs and spent the next hour and a half strolling Barrowdown’s borders, starting north from Brokier’s, turning east, setting some new wards along the edge of the unsheathing separating us from Hollowdown as we walked south, and finishing up with a stroll back west along the docks comprising the southern edge of the district.

I didn’t frequent the docks as much as I perhaps ought to. I’d been advised often as a boy to avoid them, lest I find myself press-ganged into service on some foreign crew. They were still an important part of the trade that made up a significant portion of the legitimate business interests in Dragonmaw, and keeping them out of the hands of the sharks and other interests had been our primary reason for Daggertongue’s tolerance. And that's really the crux of it: they were largely controlled by noble interests and powerful merchant families whose power over ships and captains I had no hope of contesting, and therefore little reason to spend time fretting over.

That’s not to say I was powerless entirely. While the captains were beyond reproach, their crews were another matter. Foreign and local sailors were among the most fervent consumers of bloodsport, gambling, women, and spirits; all of which could incur significant debts. Debts which could be leveraged. Some sailors go on to become yeomen, quartermasters, and even first mates—all of whom hold the power of the purse and can arrange for the occasional errant pen stroke to cause a crate to be delivered to the wrong warehouse or fall from the manifest. It was a long-term endeavor.

We finished out the hour at a foreign tea shop I’d discovered, watching ships leave with the evening tide. Chances were my father had been a sailor on one of those ships. I briefly wondered what it might have been like to follow in those footsteps visiting exotic lands, instead of meeting my fate with the Fel Witch of Dragonmaw.

It was a nice fantasy. But it wasn’t to be.