Published at 16th of February 2024 2:24 pm

Chapter 2.36 Mid Season Snack

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An unexpected interruption woke Nox on the first Seventhday of the third month of the semester. It was Jess, the once-homeless teenager. He had employed her on his friends’ insistence. Jess had the lightest workload of all the staff and alternated between assisting the Tanner women with their jobs, cleaning, cooking, and handling the laundry. Aisha had taken it upon herself to teach the girl to read, write, and use basic apothecary and first-aid skills.

By Nox’s estimates, it was now somewhere between the third and fourth months of her pregnancy, and her belly had not long started to show. Jess was slow on the uptake and often made nonsensical mistakes. The women in the building excused it as pregnancy brain. Either way, she was a sweet young woman, and everybody liked her despite her poor manners and often blunt speech. Jess had grown up on the streets, after all, and didn’t know any better.

Urgent knocking stirred Nox and Aria. They had returned late from a dinner party at a friend, acquaintance, or some noble relation’s mansion—Nox struggled to keep track of Aria’s ever-expanding social circle. They hadn’t indulged in Spirit Caller’s Tea the previous night. Yet, Nox felt worn out. He guessed it had something to do with limited tolerance of people. He needed a few days to recover after spending long evenings with people outside of his close-knit circle. Such gatherings were essential for marketing the business. As a result, Nox had no choice but to attend.

“Everything okay, Jess?” Nox asked. He stifled a yawn as he opened the bedroom door.

The teenager reddened. Aria sat up groggily in bed with nothing but a sheet to cover her naked form, and Nox hastily pulled on a pair of baggy trousers.

“The gang got something for you, Sir Ratra,” she replied.

“What?” Nox checked the clock above his dresser. An assortment of Aria’s jewelry, skin and hair care products, and other belongings sat littered on it. Her underwear and some clothing occupied half the drawers, too. “It’s not even six. Can’t this wait?”

“You’ll want to see this before the guards do.” Jess hesitantly glanced at Aria. The noblewoman appeared confused as she struggled to blink herself awake.

“Do you need me?” Aria asked.

“No,” Nox answered. “Go back to bed.”

Aria pulled the sheets over her head as she lay back down.

Jess hovered outside the door as Nox got dressed. Then they descended the stairs together. She led him out through the side door. The staff used it as their primary entrance to the building since it let them move freely without disturbing the store. The door also made deliveries easier since the passageway connected to the building’s storerooms.

A small army of urchins waited for Nox in the alley. He had grown familiar with most of their faces and knew the gang leaders by name. They appeared more battered and dirtier than usual. Before Nox could ask them what happened, he spotted the two heaviest boys sitting on a hog-tied man. His eyes were almost swollen shut. The bruises and scratches suggested he had suffered a severe beating.

“What happened here?” Nox asked as the scene slapped all traces of drowsiness out of him.

A proud-faced child—the same girl that once tried to scam him with flowers—held up a bucket of paint and a brush. An open heavy bag of tools sat at her feet. Some betrayed signs of arcane power.

“He’s been studying your windows for weeks now,” the gang leader replied. “We caught him testing it with his tools.” The boys silenced the man’s muffled protests by bouncing on him. “The lads said you didn’t believe our reports. Here is your evidence.”

Nox left them alone momentarily as he went to the front of the store. He found scratches in the woodwork’s protective coating while examining the window. The runes underneath appeared undamaged. He returned to the children and kneeled in front of their prisoner.

“Who sent you?” Nox asked, removing the man’s gag.

“Don’t believe these lying mutts!” He spat. Blood stained his teeth pink. “I was just passing by when they jumped me.” The man craned his neck and yelled at the alley’s mouth. “Help! They’re trying to kill me! Help!”

“Jess, wake Aisha, please,” Nox said, glancing over his shoulder. His youngest staff member lingered by the door, giving the youngest gang members the desired attention. “Tell her to bring truth-saying brew and some stomach-burn.” Nox adopted his coldest smile as he continued. “It might be for the best if you send the little ones away, Alex. Our prisoner doesn’t want to cooperate, and torture will get us answers before the guards get here.”

“Honest! These shits are scamming you, sir.” The man struggled to open his eyes as he looked up at Nox. “I don’t know anything.”

“What were you doing with the paint?”

“It’s for work. I was on my way to work.”

“With an open bucket and wet brush?” Nox chuckled. “You need to lie better, man. Somehow, none of it spilled when these lovely gentlemen and ladies jumped you, either. Doesn’t sound right, does it?” Nox upended the man’s bags. He spread the tools around and checked the bits of folded paper that fell out. “If you ever find tools like these kids, don’t take them to an ordinary fence. An artificer will buy them for good coin. The university vendors charge an arm and a leg for ward etching and breaking tools. Students would much rather get them secondhand.”

Nox read the bits of paper, ignoring the man’s excuses. “What’s this? Instructions? Did you get a cheat sheet for the job?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Honest. This is all a misunderstanding—”

All mirth left Nox as he stared the man down. “Your paint is alchemist-made. I recognize the scent. You or one of your colleagues splashed it on my windows on opening day. Did you try to break the wards back then and cover the attempts with a good splatter? It’s a good tactic. Paint remover washes away the protective coating and, therefore, the scratches you leave behind.” Nox punched the man when he protested again, hitting him square on the nose. “Stop and think about your options. I’m not above hiring criminals, just like your employer. I’m not above torturing and killing those who wrong me, either. There is a rule on the street against repairs and other noisy work on Seventhday. It interferes with the market stalls. So, tell me what I want to know.”

“I don’t know,” the man answered. “It’s the truth. A broker in Outer Ring got me the job. Alright?”

“And what is the job?”

“Break in. Steal your recipes or burn it all down. The second felt like easier.”

“So you were going to burn the place down with everyone inside?”

“Only good competition is dead competition,” one of the younger urchins said.

“That’s a bit dark, don’t you think?” Nox asked Alex. “What are you teaching your little ones?”

“It's what the older gangs in the Outer Rings say,” Jess explained. Nox hadn’t heard her return. “They like parroting the Hard Men.”

“They don’t sound like good role models.”

“Not many of them on the streets, Sir Ratra.” Jess waved for Aisha to step forward.

The apprentice had brought an assortment of glass containers with her. Nox had no truth serums or brews for torturing people. He imagined overstimulating one’s senses with his empowering concoctions and then employing sensory overload. However, Nox lacked the stomach for such acts. Empty threats and decent acting appeared to do the job just as well. Aisha played along. The widened eyes betrayed her alarm, but she kept her mouth shut and her expression serious.

“Good. Aisha, inject him.” Nox glanced over his shoulder at Jess. “Is Argus up?”

“I heard him walking around—”

“Fetch him, please, Jess. I’ll need his help to drag this lying sack of shit inside.” Nox grinned at the teenage boys sitting on the criminal’s back. “Can’t have the guards walking by and catching us, can we?”

“I’m telling the truth!” The man exclaimed. “Honest. Talk to my boss. He knows more than me.”

Unfortunately, the man’s words proved true. The scare tactics got no new information out of him. They pushed him until he was in tears, and a damp patch stained his grey trousers by the time Nox gave up. Then Nox had Argus summon the guards. His prisoner sobbed a confession and departed in chains. The urchins had cleared out by then, and the guard captain appeared amused by the situation. However, she urged against vigilante justice in the Market Ring. The City of Ygg had laws, after all.

Nox and his friends waited a week for repercussions but faced none. Instead, he and Lillin launched an investigation into the Hard Men. She made several jokes and innuendoes about the gang name as they tracked the gang’s movements. Nox didn’t find them amusing. It took them several days to find the leader, discover his patterns, and isolate him.

Then, Nox and Lillin broke into his safe house in the dead of night, wearing black clothing and thick masks. A sleeping draught put his family into a deep slumber, ensuring none would hear what happened next or see either of their faces. Lillin was in charge of running the interrogation using whatever means she deemed necessary, and Nox didn’t want any ‘innocents’ walking in on the scene. The gang leader’s children had already reached adulthood or were near it and assisted in illicit activities, but their crimes weren’t as egregious as their father’s.

Research and questioning Outer Ring locals revealed that Victor Stone once served the local Imperial Inquisition chapter and received minor training as an Aether Warrior. He made it to the journeyman rank before his employers deduced his involvement in protection scams. Victor wasted no time and threw himself into a life of crime. The city guard had linked him to dozens of murders, child trafficking, Pink Sellis distribution, and a lot more abhorrent activities. Unfortunately, regularly changing safe houses, loyal gangs, and terrified locals kept the authorities from successfully capturing him.

“‘I’ve told you everything I know.” Victor spat blood, glaring at Nox. Bloody gashes covered his face, and half of his fingers now bent in the wrong direction. “We never got no names. Alright? The bastards gave us a bag of gold every few weeks and told us to watch the shop. They gave us instructions on how to break in and where you might store your recipes.”

“What about the arson order?”

Victor flashed Nox a bloody grin. “That was all me. My men were never going to break the wards, and they never found your people alone. You and your shop are a threat to no one if you’re dead.”

“Break another finger,” Nox instructed. “Maybe pull a nail off first. Keep going until we get the truth.”

Victor grimaced as Lillin executed Nox’s orders. No cries of pain escaped him. Instead, he remained focused on Nox. The sunken, bloodshot eyes and pink-yellow fingers betrayed his Pink Sellis addiction. Nox guessed years of drug abuse had deadened the man’s nerves, increasing his pain tolerance.

“I’m not lying, alright?” Victor growled. “You think this is going to work on me? You have my family hostage. I’m not going to lie. Whoever hired us used a bloody proxy. I had him tailed, but he was a nobody. A ghost. All we got was a face.”

“Fine, describe them,” Lillin told him.

Victor ignored Lillin. Instead, his eyes remained locked on Nox as he continued. “He was one of you.”

“One of me?”

“Dark. Bastard didn’t speak as well as you, though. He sounded foreign and used complicated words and long sentences when something simple would’ve sufficed. We had him followed, but the lads always lost his trail in the Nobles Quarter. But he smelled like a servant.”

“How the hell does one smell like a servant?” Nox asked, studying Victor’s face. He sounded genuine, but he imagined criminals, especially gang leaders, were practiced liars.

“Polish. Someone paying us the kind of coin we got wouldn’t smell of polish.”

Nox sighed. “I don’t think we’ll get more out of you.”

“I told you everything I know. Kill me if you have to, but leave my kids alone. Alright?” Victor’s hard mask slipped. “They’re young, stupid, and don’t got no patience. They would’ve gone straight to arson without trying to break the wards. So only Steve and a couple of others knew about the job.”

“What about your wife?” Lillin enquired. “You don’t care if we kill her?”

“Do what you want with her.” Victor snorted. “She was a whore until last season. The bitch does nothing but spend my money.”

“Can I eat him now?”

“Wait, what?”

Nox heard fear in Victor’s voice for the first time since they started the interrogation. His widened eyes darted between the captors. “Go ahead. We’re done here.”

Lillin satiated her hunger, fulfilling Nox’s end of the contract for the next ten months. They then donned their masks and disappeared into the Outer Ring’s chaos.

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