Downtown Druid

Book 2 Chapter 30: Go In Sword Drawn and Start Swinging

While Dantes was occupying himself at the Cruel Lady, Jacopo was sitting behind some documents on a shelf in Pacha’s office. He’d just left another note on his desk, but before he could slip out, he heard someone approaching, and so had found a place to hide.

Pacha pushed open the door, in mid-conversation with another officer of the guard that was following closely behind him.

“- more funding, and more men and we could actually do something for the city,” said Pacha as he moved toward his desk. He had become much more energetic since the seizing of Mondego’s warehouse. His breastplate had been polished, his beard had less gray in it, and he’d taken to shaving the thinning hair from his head. His eyes now had a kind of light behind them, while before they’d simply been dead set with a kind of grim and hopeless determination.

“I know you need more, and I’m on your side, Pacha, but you know that the council doesn’t care. They see all of this as a lost cause. All recruiting is going to the military arm of the guard right now. Honestly, you’re lucky your promotion let you get the new men and funding that we got.” The other man looked a bit younger than Pacha until Jacopo noticed his pointed ears. He was at least a quarter elf, with a strong jaw and short curly hair.

Pacha’s jaw set. “If we do more, and make it visible enough, we can keep pushing them for more. Hells, even those people that hated me for arresting Gavain forgave me once he said I was a ‘true servant of justice’.”

“Yeah… he was a bit more dramatic than I expected him to be.”

Pacha paused as he noticed the note on his desk. “How the hells…” he moved to unwrap it.

“Your anonymous source?”

Pacha nodded as he read through it. “Gambling den. One with a large amount of dust on the premises.”

Pacha frowned. “No, we need to verify things first. I can probably get a source in there and make sure everything checks out.”.

“We’ve verified all of the notes we’ve received so far. I’m as suspicious of it as you are, but I didn’t see much caution when you listened to the note about the warehouse.”

“I didn’t have anything to lose at the time. Besides which I’d already been working an angle on that warehouse long before Gavain moved things along for us.”

“Come on boss. Even if we’re wrong on this one, what’s the consequence? We break down the door on some shit-shack and scare a few people? That kind of mistake won’t hurt anything we’ve built up so far.”

“If anything, it’s success that’ll bother the council and the house of lords,” he muttered.

“What sir?”

“Nothing, I think you’re right. We need to move on this sooner rather than later. Get the men, tell them helmets on and swords drawn… and Dulles.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You can take that pistol of yours too.”

The quarter-elf nodded, smiling. “Thank you, sir.”

…

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Once Pacha and his men left, Jacopo began making his way to Uptown, cutting through whatever nooks and crannies he could, and often pushing through the anti-vermin enchantments throughout the city in order to save time. It was starting to come easily to him. The ways that the city twisted and turned wasn’t so different from the tunnels he’d grown in. His cousins on the surface thrived in both places, though the surface certainly had a larger share of threats.

As he moved he kept a different rat monitoring Pacha. Jacopo’s focus had been improving and he was starting to be able to track what a few other vermin were doing even when he had other things he himself was focusing on.

Pacha and seven others marched quickly through midtown. A number of people scattered at their approach. Drug dealers vanished down dark alleys, thieves took their trade elsewhere, and the fences followed them. Whores threw taunts in their direction or flashed them before disappearing, briefly breaking the concentration of a few of them. The majority of them were young, and hadn’t yet been broken by their job, or corrupted by the city. They were given to him because the city thought they were the easiest thing to part with due to their lack of experience, but to Pacha that was a boon. If he was working with the experience rabble, he’d never be able to move them into action.

They reached their destination, and Pacha had them split up with a number of hand gestures. Two stayed with him at the front door, and four went around back. The last one stayed on the street and started gesturing away civilians.

Pacha held up his finger to the two men nearest to him, one of whom was the quarter-elf he’d been speaking with previously. Three fingers, then two, then one.

Just a few yards from the door, a group of rough looking men sat playing cards. There was a pot in the center that consisted of coin, weed, dust, and a necklace. They had no reason to think they were in danger.

Pacha kicked the door with enough force that it broke at the handle and swung it open.

One of the younger guards yelled as they entered. “Rendhold guard, stay where you a-” Before he could continue, there was a gunshot and he spun, falling back out of the building.

Pacha zeroed in on the shooter, and before he could reload he drove his sword into his gut.

Another man scrambled across a table toward Pacha, but he sent out a foot and kicked out one of the table-legs, causing the man to tumble onto the ground and drop his dagger. After that it was chaos.

Half of the men that were there tried to run and were quickly apprehended by the men at the back door, and the other half tried to fight. Those that fought were dealt with quickly and brutally. The guard had always made an example out of those who resisted, and those who didn’t, and those who were just standing nearby, and Pacha’s men were no exception to that.

By the end of it, all but three of the men at the game were dead. The guard that had been shot was fine, his breastplate catching the majority of force from the bullet.

Pacha stood in front of the men at the table. “Dulles, you check the upstairs for any more dust. Trent, gather all the contraband on the table, the rest of you tie these fools up and drag the bodies outside. Pallus, how’s the wound?”

The man who’d been shot was leaning against the door, he put a hand on the dent on his breastplate and winced. “No wound sir, but..” he paused to try and inhale, barely getting air in. “I’m pretty winded.”

“Sit down then. You did good work. Just, never announce yourself like that again. This isn’t the guild district, uptown, or even the docks. Around here you just go in sword drawn and start swinging.”

“Yes,” he wheezed a bit, “sir.”

Dulles moved upstairs, and Jacopo decided to send the rat he had been tracking Pacha with to follow him instead. Upstairs in an unlocked chest, Dulles found a half dozen bricks of dust. He took a small knife and drove it into one of the bricks before pulling it out and licking the blade. He shivered for a moment, then took one of the bricks and slipped it into a pouch at his waist.

“Found five bricks, sir!” he yelled.

“Good work! Maybe this will help wake the council up a bit.”

Jacopo made a note of Dulles behavior as something Dantes would be interested in, then broke his connection to focus on the task at hand. He was back in the administrative district, crouched in one of the folds of the statue of the Father at the center of it. He scanned the plaza with his own eyes, as well as the eyes of all of the other vermin nearby.

A rat munching on an old piece of bread in an alley was the first one to notice her. A woman wearing black magisterial robes, and a stern expression on her face. She was a full blooded elf, with bright green eyes, and she walked with purpose through the square.

Jacopo double checked Dantes’s memories, she was a bit less well endowed than Dantes’s recollections of her were, but he was able to confirm that she was the woman that Syn had asked them to make break the feybinding that kept her in the pit. Jacopo leapt from the statues, and started to follow her as closely as he could without being noticed, which for a rat, was very close.