Downtown Druid

Book 2 Chapter 13: Such Tasty Crumbs She Gave

Dantes watered his fourth garden, drawing his black hilted stiletto to trim a few browning leaves from a bush as he listened to the gossipping of pigeons on the freshly cleared roof behind him.

“How was the park?”

“Bad. Old woman wasn’t there again. Miss her dearly.”

“Strange. She’d show up even in the rain.”

“Such tasty crumbs she gave.”

“She saved me from a cat once. Attacked him with her cane. Such a brave woman.”

Dantes had been listening in on a lot of animals since his initiation. It was interesting the differences between them. They all had similar priorities, food, water, and shelter, but they approached all of it from a very different framework. Bats were very social, almost like a single large family. Rats were like a family too, but one of criminals, they’d share, but only after making sure they got theirs first. Roaches didn’t really talk, though he felt general impressions from them. Cats typically ignored him unless he had something they wanted. Birds, of which pigeons were what he encountered the most, reminded him most of the women at a whorehouse after the day was done. Gossipping, bragging, and somehow keeping track of more than one hundred different people through their little conversations.

He finished pruning a branch, thinking that he should invest in actual tools sometimes soon, and poured some water from a flash over his hands to rinse them. He missed the Vixen and his regular access to baths….and whores. He turned his attention to the pigeons.

“This woman, do you know where she lives?”

“Oh, he’s the one that can speak? I expected it to be one of those short bearded ones.”

“Yes, I can speak, the woman you’re speaking of, where can I find her?”

Another pigeon, this one gray with flecks of emerald green at his neck, stepped forward. “Why do you want to know?”

Dantes shrugged. “Want to see if I can help her out.” He had been looking for more ways to earn favor with birds, and this seemed like something that could help. Bats had been very useful. They were great flyers, and their senses were very acute, but they had their limitations. They couldn’t fly very high, and using them during the day cost him a heavy amount of favor which was slow to build with them. Even if pigeons fulfilled the same role as them, it would still be worth it to court them. Nothing wrong with having a diverse range of options.

“I don’t know, but I think red-feather does.”

Dantes moved to a post over which his coat was slung, and threw it on. He had his meeting with Felix later in the evening to get whatever item he’d prepared to help him break the anti-vermin enchantment, so he’d been focused on garden maintenance and building favor that day. This seemed like a worthy endeavor.

“Take me to her.”

What followed was a series of back and forths with various pigeons. One wouldn’t know exactly, but would know someone who did, and all of that worked to slowly get him closer and closer until Dantes wound up in a small slum on the border of the docks and midtown in front of an old square brick house with well kept flowers sitting in the window.

He hesitated at the door, realizing that he hadn’t exactly thought through how he would approach the situation. He couldn’t exactly tell her that he was there because of pigeons. He shrugged, and knocked on the door. He’d improvise, he was confident he could come up with something on the fly.

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He heard a series of surprisingly heavy footsteps, and held out his arm so that Jacopo could leap off of it and peer through the window.

Through Jacopo’s eyes he saw what was indeed an old woman, but he hadn’t been expecting her to be a full-blooded orc who, in spite of the small spectacles and gray hair, was holding a heavy spiked club as she stood behind the door.

“I told you all, I don’t have the money! Leave me alone!”

Dantes quickly referenced what she said with what information he’d gathered about the area. Mondego controlled it, but it was on the border of what he fully controlled. His goons frequently bullied protection money out of businesses and residents. He assumed they’d threatened this woman and she was now afraid to leave her home, though based on her stature he was surprised by that. They must’ve been some intimidating goons.

“Um, I’m not here for money ma’am, but are you by any chance related to a… “ he reached through his mind searching for a common orc name, “Crushken?”

He saw the woman lower her club slightly through Jacopo’s eyes.

“... I have a cousin by that name, yes.”

“Well, I’m uh, sorry to tell you this, but he’s unfortunately passed away.”

She put her club down, and opened the door. “Crushy is dead?” she asked sadly. “I feel like I lose someone else every year. What happened? Was it during a leviathan hunt?”

Dantes smiled internally, finding exactly the way in he needed. “That’s right. A particularly profitable one, actually. I’m here on behalf of his ship. You’re the only relative we’ve been able to find… did he have a wife? Children?”

She shook her head. “No… he was always bad with women, Crushy. Got too handsy too quickly.”

Dantes nodded. “Ah, well, the final profits for the hunt, his cut as well as his cuts from a couple previous outings, the company normally pockets those to pay for replacing employees that have passed, but due to his death being pivotal in the last hunt, an exception has been made and his family is to receive the money.” Normally this is the part of the scam where he’d mention something along the lines of her needing to give him some money to pay for the legal fees required for the transfer of funds. It was an age old scam, and one he himself had done a few times when he was younger, though it hadn’t worked as well when his voice was cracking. In this case though, he wanted to give the woman money, which made things easier.

“How much?” she asked. Her eyes were narrowed suspiciously. Hard to take good new seriously in midtown, or she was familiar with the scam.

Dantes did some quick mental math. “Thirty gold, actually.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “Thirty!?”

He nodded. “Well, with leviathan hunts things are always feast or famine. He happened to die at a time of feast. If he’d lived he’d’ve been set for years.”

She nodded, collecting herself, and reaching casually back toward her club. “And what exactly do I need to do to retrieve this money?”

He smiled, she was familiar with the scam. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small sack of gold. “I suppose all you’d need to do is take this from my hand.”

She looked both ways and snatched the sack from his hand with a speed that heavily contrasted her age. He nodded at her and looked around at her house. “With this much you could afford to move to a nicer neighborhood. Maybe something closer to that public garden a few blocks down.” He smiled. “Anyway ma’am, you have a nice day.”

He felt Jacopo crawl up his leg as he walked away from her.

“Giving up money for nothing?” asked Jacopo. “Wasteful.”

“If it leads to me gaining a blessing from the pigeon god it will have been worth it." He cracked his fingers. "There are a few ways to spend gold. You can use it to further your goals, you can use it to have fun, you can use it to have nice things, and of course you need it to survive in general. Sitting on it has no value though. The richest, most miserly old men and women in Uptown often die on piles of unspent wealth that their children bicker over. I’d rather spend it.”

“The rat that hoards food is the first to die when it becomes scarce.”

Dantes nodded, “There’s that too. If you spend it on making friends it can certainly help in the long run. It’s a tool, not a goal in and of itself.”

Dantes walked through alleys making his way to the Guild district. “Are you ready to break into those bakeries that were closed to you?” he asked Jacopo.

He sensed Jacopo’s excitement, “To start with, yes.”

Dantes and Jacopo were nearly at their appointed meeting place when he decided to send some rats and roaches ahead of them. He found Felix waiting for him, clearly sweating profusely and pacing back and forth. A bad sign. Dantes stopped walking and watched him a bit longer, letting him sweat.

Felix peered down the alley and very carefully lifted up some loose cloth that was at the alley’s entrance. Dantes could see, through a bat hanging upside down, that there was some kind of arcane mark beneath it. Felix meant to trap him it seemed.

“He thinks to be the bread crumb in a spring-trap,” said Jacopo.

Dantes smiled. “Let’s see how he reacts when he’s the one that falls into it instead.”