Published at 3rd of August 2024 7:46 am

Chapter 64: Quick and dirty

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Dantes skittered through the outskirts of Midtown with Jacopo, their small paws making little sound as they moved across the cracked and broken cobblestone streets. During the trek it had gotten dark, and a near full moon rose up over the high slum towers that lined the streets of midtown looking poised to fall. They didnt need to go through the center of the district, as the guard station for midtown was the only one located on the border of the district rather than in the center of it. Dantes had heard stories that when the guard did have a building in the center it kept getting burned down, or robbed. That had been very funny to him as a child, and it still brought a smile to his face as an adult.

They wove through a few alleys, only stopping briefly so that Jacopo could make a meal of some rotten fish that mustve fallen off a cart coming up from the docks. The guard building was a simple thing, an ugly square of concrete with barred windows and the winged sword insignia emblazoned on the front. There were clumps of excrement clinging to the outside walls, and someone had painted a mockery of the guards symbol on a bare wall with a very different kind of sword between two wings.

Dantes and Jacopo moved in a circle around the building, looking for a means of ingress, and eventually saw that one of the barred windows was cracked open just a bit. They moved across the ground lightly and scrambled up the wall. Guard buildings usually had alarm spells built into them, but those were for humans, not rats. He only hoped that this one didnt have the anti-rat enchantment that Jacopo had run into.

Luckily, as they squeezed inside, they didnt run into any invisible walls of force. The building was dark, and they found that they were in the sleeping quarters of the building. There were more than a hundred beds, but only about twenty were occupied. Small numbers made sense to Dantes. The midtown guard was basically a punishment, and hed heard of more than a few choosing forced labor over completing their guard contract if they worked there. That being said, twenty seemed even slimmer than usual. Had they been diverted to watch the underprison? Or was there something else going on that had led to their slimmer numbers?

Dantes moved under the beds, and searched for an exit, eventually finding a door that led to a large hallway. He and Jacopo began searching the building room by room. They ran into a few other rats and roaches in the kitchen munching on a loaf of bread, they found a weapons rooms full of the standard issue swords as well as crossbows and even a few wands, and finally they found a series of small offices near where the front office would be. In one of them, the light was still on. Dantes had a feeling that was the exact one they needed to search.

He and Jacopo moved toward the lit room, finding the door to be just slightly ajar. They scurried inside, and saw Pacha at a desk, writing. The desk was standard, and the office layout was the exact same as all of the other offices were. With a desk in the center, one chair behind it and two in front of it. There was a series of shelves across one of the walls filled with papers, and a small enchanted shell on the desk meant to communicate or receive communications from others who possessed one. While the other offices were filled with small knick knacks, openly displayed pornography, sketches of loved ones, or other such materials, this one was bare of any ornamentation. The spare surfaces were filled with papers and documents. The shelf on the wall was meticulously organized, and one of the walls contained notes, pictures, and lines connecting them with red yarn. Seemingly a way for the man to organize his thoughts.

Dantes took a closer look at the board. It was hard to make out the top from where he was in the small office, but the bottom corner he could make out contained gang members and leaders Dantes recognized from before hed been thrown into the pit. The sketches of the leaders were familiar, with the majority of them having been crossed out, and the few that were left connected with string leading up the board higher. Dantes risked moving toward the center of the room. He expected to see a sketch of Mondego at the top, but was stunned to instead see councilman Argenta at the very top. Mondego and the string that connected to him were all the way on the bottom left corner, taking up only an eighth of the wall.

This guard wasnt just trying to clean up Midtown. He was trying to clean up the entire city of Rendhold. In Dantes mind that made him a complete fucking lunatic. He was also a surprisingly good artist, as all of the sketches were incredibly well done.

Fucking rats, said Pacha, noticing him and trowing a paperweight in his direction that he narrowly dodged.

Dantes scurried out of the room, and took cover in a small gap between the floor and the wall in a nearby office. He wanted to go through what Pacha had thoroughly, and he wouldnt be able to do that as a rat. Particularly not while the man was in there himself. That meant he would need to wait until he left.

Jacopo grew immediately impatient, and wandered back toward the kitchen.

Dantes stayed there for an hour, listening to the soft writing of a pen the entire time before he decided that he too was getting bored, and there was no reason to sit idly and wait for the man to leave.

He began exploring the other offices more thoroughly. Shifting back into being a human long enough to pocket the odd petty coins that the higher ranking guards kept in their offices. He had to stop himself from pocketing a few bottles of rye, and some food they had leftover. Those things may have been a hot commodity down in the Underprison, but on the surface they didnt have the same kind of value. He did find a confiscated wand, one mans wedding ring that had clearly been tossed at a wall in anger, and a small store of weed in one of the desks. In other cities hed heard that illegal goods that were found were often stored in large warehouses for long periods of time, but in Rendhold confiscated goods were almost immediately sold to merchants in lots for resale with the city pocketing both the profits of that sale and the taxes that were collected when the merchants themselves sold the goods. Except for in the case of dust, which was either burned or went mysteriously missing. Dantes wished the Rendhold guard stored things that way.

He shifted back into rat form and slid back out into the office hall, moving toward Pachas office. It was nearly midnight, and the man was just leaving the office, sliding a key into the keyhole and locking the door.

Dantes approached the door, and moved to slide underneath the door as he had the others, but found that he couldnt. The door was differently sized than the others. He looked back at them, and noticed that none of the others had locks either. That was interesting. He looked around and saw no one, so he shifted back into his human form sliding the makeshift lockpicks from the prison in the door. It wasnt a complicated lock, and he heard the satisfying click of it opening after only a moment.

He pushed his way inside slowly, keeping his senses focused, particularly on the tips of his fingers, as if started to tingle as that would indicate a magical alarm or ward of some kind, but there was no such thing. He closed the door, and re-lit the candle that had just started its well earned rest on the desk. The wall that had been covered with information was now obscured by a cloth. Dantes slid it to the side. Names, ranks, places, all of it was there on the wall. Dantes crouched down and began taking everything he wanted from the corner with connections to Mondego. Notes, pictures, all of it. He kept it organized in a neat pile as he worked. Once he was done he went through the desk, and the shelves for anything else that looked relevant, and shoved all of it into his pack. He also helped himself to a fine stiletto with a clean black handle and its sheathe. Once he was done collecting what he wanted he tore down everything that was on the wall, scattered all the papers from the shelves, and carved Stop, or else into the desk.

It was quick and dirty, but for a highly focused guard he thought it was a solid provocation that could only help his own purposes. He shifted back into a rat, and called for Jacopo to meet him back at the same window. They reached it without trouble, and landed on wet streets, running their small paws through puddles on their way back to the docks.

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